They jammed everything.
Holonet. Entanglement. Emergency transponders. They didn’t just cut communications; theysmotheredthem with something military-grade and precise, the kind of suppression you don’t buy unless you’re planning to do something you can’t let anyone call in.
I thumb my mic anyway and speak into it like a prayer.
“Mayday. Yatori Ops is under attack. Civilian staff being executed. Containment field down. This is Jordan James—contractor—please?—”
Static answers me, thick and indifferent.
I lower the compad, my hand shaking so hard the holographic projection flickers.
“Okay,” I whisper, breath coming fast. “So it’s just me. Cool. Love that.”
The broadcast tone strengthens, and for a moment the air seems to vibrate with the authority of it. The sound is coming from the station’s external speakers and the open field, a message meant to be heard by anyone alive.
I can’t make out the words yet from here, but I catch the cadence—formal, clipped, like someone reciting a statement they practiced in a mirror.
I force myself to move.
I slip along the ledge, then drop down to the rocky ground, landing in a crouch that jostles the drive in my jacket. Pain flashes up my ankles, but it’s dull compared to everything else. I stay low and run, using the scattered boulders and the uneven terrain for cover, angling away from the kill lanes and away from the station’s main sightlines.
Every breath burns cold in my lungs.
Every footstep crunches grit, too loud in my own head.
The wilderness swallows me faster than I expect, the station shrinking behind ridges and rock outcroppings until the lights become a harsh glow on the horizon and the gunfire becomes a distant, relentless percussion.
I run until the ache in my sides turns sharp, until my throat tastes like blood from breathing too hard in thin air, until the world narrows to the slap of boots on dust and the heavy thud of my heart.
And then?—
Movement.
Three figures break from behind a boulder ahead, staggering, swaying, running not with purpose but with hunger.
Inmates.
Even from this distance, I can tell something is wrong with their eyes—too wide, too glassy, pupils blown like they’re drowning in chemicals. Their mouths hang open, lips cracked and flecked with foam. Their skin looks gray under the pale light, sweat slicking them in uneven patches.
They spot me, and the moment they do, their bodies change.
They don’t hesitate.
They lunge.
“Oh my god—” I choke, stumbling back instinctively.
One of them—taller, wiry, with a shaved scalp and an IHC inmate band still clinging to his wrist—lets out a sound that is less a scream than an animal rasp, like his throat forgot how to shape language. He sprints at me in a straight line.
The second one veers left, trying to cut me off. The third is slower, limping, but he’s got something in his hand—a jagged strip of metal, sharpened to a point.
I pivot and run.
My lungs are already on fire, but adrenaline dumps gasoline on the pain and I move anyway, legs pumping, boots slipping on loose scree as I angle around a rock outcropping. The dust here is finer, softer, and it gives underfoot like ash.
Behind me, the first inmate gains ground. I can hear his breathing now—wet and ragged, like his lungs are full of grit. I can smell him when the wind shifts: sweat, rancid protein, chemical bitterness.
“Get away from me!” I shout, voice cracking.
