Purgonis doesn’tkillyou.
Itundoesyou.
Takes your pride. Your certainty. And strips it until all that’s left is survival—or silence.
Two of their soldiers go missing.
They were chasing a heat spike—probably thought they’d found a thermal cache, or maybe another Odex lair to bomb. They didn’t listen. Theyneverlisten.
The report says they vanished just past the western ridgeline.
I don’t need to read the rest.
I know what happened.
The steam vents there pulse irregularly—fast enough to cook a man mid-step. The rock sweats acid. And the tunnels beneath hum with something older than even I can name. I told them, once. Long ago. When I still believed there was a point in trying.
They didn’t believe me then.
They won’t believe it now.
But maybe… maybeshewill.
Because she looks.
Because shewaits.
And every time I see her slip down those trails alone—toward places no one else dares go—I feel something stir in me I don’t have a name for.
Maybe it’s duty.
Maybe it’s madness.
Or maybe, it’shope.
And hope is a damn dangerous thing.
CHAPTER 13
JILLIAN
The food stores are lower than they should be.
No one says it out loud, but it’s clear in the way Darwin double-checks inventory with a furrowed brow, or how the meal rations have quietly slimmed from “enough” to “barely.” I hear Grady cursing under his breath near the comms array, slamming metal panels like it’s the system’s fault the supply ships haven’t made orbit in a week.
No one talks about it. No onedares. But I see the tension winding tighter each day—like a cable about to snap.
And that’s not the worst of it.
The water tastes different.
It hits me first thing in the morning—sitting in the mess, sipping from my tin cup while trying to review lab logs. I pause mid-drink and frown. It’s subtle, like the ghost of a flavor, but it’swrong. Flat. Metallic. Like someone dragged a rusted nail across my tongue.
I swirl the water around in my mouth, then spit a little back into the cup.
Darwin’s sitting across from me, poking at his rehydrated eggs like they personally offended him.
“You taste that?” I ask, voice low.
