The sky tore open just after dawn.
Not in silence—but with fury. A controlled descent. Streamlined. Intentional.
This wasn't debris. This wasn't a crash.
It was a landing.
I stood on the ridge above the valley as a rescue vessel—sleek, Earth-marked, and well-armed—cut a burning trail through the clouds and disappeared into the northern treeline.
Ka'lenna appeared beside me, her expression tight.
"That's not one of yours," she said flatly.
"It is," I replied. "But it's not coming for me."
By midday, we found what was left of the clearing.
Trees were leveled. The ship had taken damage on descent, scorched along the hull, but intact. The insignia on the side was unmistakable.
EARTH EXO-CORPS // SEARCH & RESCUE UNIT 42-A
My stomach clenched.
They came looking for someone.
And I had a damn good guess who.
The first body we found was a scout—neck snapped clean, still strapped into a drop rig. But the others had made it out. Tracks led east, away from the wreck, toward the foothills.
I signaled Ka'lenna. We tracked them like prey.
Four heat signatures. Three armed. One injured.
They weren't moving fast.
I motioned to circle. Her warriors fanned out through the brush.
I didn't expect to recognize their faces.
But I did.
Thorne. Varik. Seela.
All of them older, broader, wrapped in armored suits and carrying plasma rifles.
But I'd never forget their eyes.
They were the ones who tormented me back at the academy. Back before I escaped them by signing up for the explorer corps. I thought I'd left them behind. That I'd outrun them in the stars.
And now here they were—sent to rescue the very crew that had left me to die.
We hit them fast.
Thorne went down with a leg shot. Seela screamed when Ka'lenna's coil-blade caught her side. Varik tried to run. I caught him myself.
He stared at me, stunned, half-recognizing. Then it hit.
"…Tarek?"
I didn't answer.
His shock twisted into a sneer.
"You—you were supposed to be dead."
"And yet," I said, pressing the barrel of his own rifle to his chin, "here we are."
We tied them and dragged them back to their own wreckage. Their wounded comrade was already dead—throat torn by some beast they weren't ready for.
They sat there now, bound and bruised beneath the wreck's open hull.
Seela coughed blood. "We're rescue ops. We came for the others—your crew. They got a signal out. Weak, but just strong enough."
I stared at her.
"So they had power. And a chance. But instead of sending it for everyone, they used it to save themselves."
Varik spat. "You should've died in that forest."
Thorne added, "If you think this little tribal cosplay act makes you anything, you're wrong. We'll be extracted, and when we are—"
"You'll what?" I asked.
"Report you. For theft. For obstruction. For mutiny."
I leaned in.
"You abandoned me."
"You were weak. You slowed us down."
Seela snorted. "Your own crew said you sacrificed yourself to save them."
I froze.
"…What?"
Thorne smirked. "They told us you made a heroic last stand. Your girl was a mess for a week. Then she moved on. She's with Elias now."
Elias. The comms officer.
The one who stood silent when they left me.
I said nothing.
But something in my face must have changed.
Because they went quiet.
Ka'lenna approached, eyeing me. "Who are they?"
I looked over them. Broken. Bound. Angry.
And meaningless.
"Nobody."
She frowned. "Kill them?"
I shook my head. "They're already dying. Let the jungle decide how fast."
She didn't question it.
She never did.
We stripped their ship bare—plasma reserves, repair gel, encrypted uplink cores, a functioning atmospheric scanner. The good tech. The kind I could fold into something new.
And I found something else.
Buried in the nav logs.
A map.
A relay trace. A signal bounced across the hemisphere toward another vault. Larger. Active. Broadcasting.
I uploaded it to my visor.
More truths.
More lies waiting to be unburied.
That night, Ka'lenna found me at the ridge again.
"You didn't kill them," she said.
"I wanted to," I replied.
"Why not?"
I turned to her.
"Because they think I'm still that weak boy. Still scrambling for their approval."
"And you're not?"
I reached out, brushing ash from her cheek.
"No. I'm something else now."
She didn't flinch.
Not from the touch.
Not from the heat in my eyes.
We stood like that for a long time.