Instead, I lie awake, staring at the faint glow of my compad across the room, ticking out radiation warnings in dull pulses of orange and red. The heat regulator thuds and wheezes like a dying beast, pushing recycled air through vents thick with mineral grit.
Outside, the night air thrums like it’s holding its breath.
Then the world explodes.
I bolt upright in my bunk as the unmistakable scream of laser fire tears through the silence. The walls shudder as fusion charges detonate somewhere near the cliffs. Outside, boots hammer the gravel, shouting voices layered over the sharp percussion of weapons discharge.
“Odex! Odex—two o’clock ridge! Take it down!”
I slam my helmet on and wrench the hatch open, heart jackhammering as I stumble into the night. The air tastes like ozone and scorched metal. Dust swirls in thick clouds around the floodlights as marines fan out toward the west perimeter, guns raised, eyes wild.
“What the hell’s going on?” I shout, already jogging toward the commotion.
Grady, helmet off and jaw set, yells back without even looking at me, “Target sighted at the ridge—tall, fast, moving like a goddamn specter.”
I skid to a halt near the edge of the blast zone. Scorched rock smolders in jagged chunks, the fusion charges having ripped divots into the already fragile terrain. Smoke curls upward, backlit by flickering floodlights that make the shadows dance like specters.
But it’s not the fire or the shouting that roots me in place.
It’s what I saw.
Just before the thing vanished—whatever it was—there was a shape against the ridge line. Silhouetted by the red shimmer of the magnetic haze. Towering. Broad-shouldered. Almost… human in profile. But too big. Too fluid. And those eyes?—
Gold. Not glowing. Not artificial. Alive.
And then it moved. Not away like a predator cornered or an enemy routed. No. It… paused. Like it was watching us as much as we were watching it. Calculating. Curious.
There was no roar. No threat display. It didn’t even bare teeth. Just that beat—a frozen second where the world held its breath and it turned slightly, like it was making a choice.
And then it was gone.
“Is anyone hit?” another marine barks. “Was it armed?”
“Negative,” someone else replies, breathless. “Didn’t return fire. Just bolted.”
I walk a few paces toward the edge of the ridge before Grady’s arm shoots out to stop me. “No civilians past the line,” he snaps.
“I saw it,” I say quietly.
He squints at me, sweat beading along his brow. “You what?”
“I saw it,” I repeat, louder this time. “Just before it disappeared. It wasn’t charging. It didn’t even raise its arms. It just stood there. Watching.”
Grady scoffs. “You don’t know Odex behavior.”
“Neither do you,” I shoot back.
He points to the scorched gravel, the mangled rocks. “Odex don’t need a damn reason to kill. Last time they showed up here, we pulled teeth out of what was left of three students.”
I feel the weight of that. I do.
But still…
“This one didn’t attack.”
Grady waves me off and shouts over his shoulder, “Ridge sweep! I want bodies or at least a blood trail. Move!”
The marines scatter into formation, the sharp click of their boots fading into the static-laced night. I linger at the edge of the blast zone, eyes still scanning the cliffs. My pulse is slowing, but not by much.
