It’s not chaotic.
It’s controlled.
Kill lanes laid out by someone who knows how to funnel motion. Somebody who’s done this before.
I narrow my eyes, tracking the line of fire back to the station’s open perimeter.
Armored troops. Vakutan-sized silhouettes, moving with tight coordination.
They should be roaring.
Vakutans do not kill in silence.
Vakutans brag while they fight. They insult. They shout challenges. They make war a performance because their entire culture is built on being seen as the biggest dog in the room.
These troops don’t make a sound I can hear. No visible gesturing, no flamboyant flourishes. Just disciplined movement and careful, economical violence.
That’s not Vakutan.
That’s hired.
I watch for little tells. A pause where a real Vakutan would rush forward. A shift in formation that favors efficiency over glory. A hesitation when a shot risks collateral.
No hesitation.
I taste something else now, faint on the wind: copper.
Blood.
“Yeah,” I murmur. “This is a show.”
Behind the troops, the station’s interior lights flicker again, emergency red pulsing faintly through the tall windows. The atrium’s huge central space flashes with movement—figures running, bodies dropping.
I can’t hear the screams from here, but I can see them in the way people move, the way panic makes a body small and stupid.
I grip my knife harder and force myself not to move forward. Instinct saysgo. Survival sayswait.
Because if this is staged, the staging doesn’t end at the field.
Somebody is controlling more than the containment grid.
Somebody has eyes on the turret network.
And if I step wrong, I die in the dust like everyone else.
I shift my weight and scan wider.
Beyond the main rush, scattered inmates hesitate, confused by the sudden absence of pain and suppression. Some fall to their knees as if expecting the field to snap back. Some keep running until the kill lanes catch them and erase them.
A few—smart or lucky—break sideways, angling away from the station, using boulders for cover, moving like animals that have been hunted long enough to understand the pattern.
I recognize that movement. The ones who survive aren’t the strongest. They’re the ones who learn.
My stomach twists with a feeling I hate naming.
Envy.
I push it down.
