Chapter 8 : Escape PlanThe dust of the city of Varot hung in the air, suspended like dirty fog.
The underground hangar was low and wide, its walls covered in rust and dry tire marks. The lights barely lit anything, and the electric hum of the main generator vibrated with an irregular rhythm, as if it were tired too. They were only twenty kilometers away from Pact Square, but the war and the distance had left Varot in misery.
Tessio slammed the ship’s hatch shut. The echo was swallowed by the depth of the structure. At his side, his partner Jackie walked while spinning a key between his fingers.
“What do we have this time?” he asked. “Sensitive cargo, defective units, or straight up condemned meat?”
“They did not say. Twenty prisoners, zone 7C. We have to take them to the Mining Valley,” Tessio answered, without looking at him.
“And why are we not flying? Faster, cleaner, fewer bumps. Less time having to endure your smell.”
Tessio tightened the zipper of his jacket as they walked toward the land vehicles. They were heavy armored transports, with wide wheels and rear compartments fitted with pressurized cells.
“Because they do not want anyone to detect them. Supposedly the Predators are sending out scout drones. If we cross through the sky, they will see us coming.”
Jackie let out a dry laugh.
“The things we have to do for those degenerate Balmorean pigs.”
Tessio stopped in front of the first vehicle and rested a hand on the hood. The metal was cold. Inert.
“Even the prisoners are more valuable than us these days,” he said. “They do not want to lose them.”
“What a privilege. I wish they would capture me one day, see if I get that special treatment,” Jackie said.
They climbed into the vehicle. Tessio at the controls, his partner in the seat beside him, still wearing the smile of someone who laughs so he does not have to think too much.
“What do you think they are?” Jackie asked while checking the control panel. “Loose-mouthed civilians, maybe some fallen from grace delegate?”
“I do not care,” Tessio replied. The engine shuddered as it started. “We do not ask. We only deliver.”
“Beautiful profession. Logistics transport with a doubtful moral bonus and poor pay. We really did win the lottery.”
The hangar gate opened slowly. In front of them, the road of crystallized dust wound between rock formations and long shadows.
“You could have another life. You decided to screw it up, my friend,” Tessio said.
Jackie laughed with bitter amusement.
“Thank you, my friend. Sometimes I think I am going to forget it, but luckily you remind me of my lovely fate.”
Tessio allowed himself a faint smile.
“And if they resist back there?” he asked, tightening his belt without enthusiasm.
“They are sedated. Or broken. Or both. I do not think they will say much. Besides, we have Tick and Tock with us to help.”
He jerked his head toward the twins Revira and Solia, who were staring at them. They were big, threatening women, with scars on their arms and legs. Both had loose brown hair, and they were so hard to tell apart they could just as well have been the same person duplicated.
“Are they coming with us?”
“Affirmative. From now on we are going to call them…” He pointed at them. “Tick and Tock.”
Tessio gave him a hard look.
“Do not provoke them.”
Jackie pretended to be offended.
“It makes me furious that you do not know I am obviously going to do it.”
The armored vehicle moved forward. The wheels screeched against the uneven surface, and the interior shook at every bump as if the planet were breathing underneath.
“Tell me something, Tess,” his partner said after a few minutes of silence. “Do you not get tired of this?”
“Of listening to you? All the time.”
Jackie laughed.
“Well said.”
They drove for a while longer. In the distance, a swarm of drones crossed the sky like mute insects.
“Have you noticed that lately all our missions are about bringing meat closer to the Balmoreans?”
Tessio did not answer right away.
“It has been weeks since we have done anything that actually has value.”
Jackie smiled.
“That means we are doing well.”
The armored truck kept going, disappearing among Varot’s crystals, dragging its silent cargo toward a dawn no one was waiting for.
The air inside the cell was thick, saturated with humidity and the stench of unwashed bodies. Nolan woke with the sticky feeling of sweat on his neck, the rhythmic sound of dripping on rusty metal marking the seconds like a sentence. He no longer remembered how long he had been locked up there. There was no point in counting.
His father’s voice, as it had for months, spoke inside his head.
“Do you like where you ended up, traitor?”
“Why do you not tell the truth? Maybe they will let you out and everything.”
He forced himself to silence the voice. The memories piled up: the war exploding in step with bombs everywhere, Nolan half his father’s height, running beside him while shots tore through the air.
The last time he had seen him in person had been long ago, but his voice had never left, it was always at his side. And his voice was right, he had earned this. If something happened to him there, he would deserve it. But Harlan was not part of that.
He sat up with a low groan, feeling the pain in his joints, the stiffness of too long without moving enough. His back protested when he tried to straighten up. He ran a hand over his face and felt his beard, grown out, rough and messy. There were no mirrors in the cell, but he did not need one to know he looked wretched.
Beside him, Harlan lay on his back, arms folded under his head, his gaze lost on the metal ceiling. The scant light that slipped through the bars cast long shadows across his face, making him look even more gaunt than he really was.
“I did not know you could sleep that much,” Nolan muttered, rubbing the back of his neck.
“I would not call it sleep,” Harlan answered, without taking his eyes from the ceiling. “It is more like… disconnecting for a few hours. Did you sleep?”
Nolan snorted, a dry smile on his lips.
“Two hours, I think. I woke up when that bastard in the next cell started talking to himself again.”
“Yes… I think he is praying to something,” Harlan said in a thick voice.
“Or he is losing his mind.”
Harlan made a face. Then, as if the idea had rushed through his mind, he asked:
“What do you prefer? Dying in combat or going insane in a cell?”
Nolan raised an eyebrow.
“You woke up chatty today, Har.”
Harlan shrugged.
“It is not like we have much to do, right? Until they come to rescue us, we only have each other.”
There was a brief silence. Nolan rubbed his jaw while he thought about it. He was not going to ruin Harlan’s illusion, so he decided to answer the question.
“It depends. If I go insane, does that mean I do not realize I am insane?”
“I suppose so,” Harlan said with a small shrug.
“Then death. If I cannot even realize I am losing my mind, what is the point of anything?”
Harlan laughed, but it was a tired laugh.
“That is a good point. You did not even last a damn month locked up before wanting to smash your head against the wall.” He deepened his voice. “We have to fight, Harlan. We have to endure.”
Nolan mirrored his empty smile.
“And you? Trust that they are going to save us, you will see.”
Harlan sighed.
“But I do believe that, Nolan. I truly believe it is only a matter of time. The light only comes after the darkest moment of the night.”
Another silence fell, this one heavier. Nolan glanced at him sideways.
“Since when do you talk like that?”
“Since we have been locked up in here, I guess,” Harlan replied, in a tone so neutral it nearly sounded like he was giving a report.
Nolan said nothing at first. He just watched him.
“I did not know you were such a philosopher.”
“I was not,” Harlan said, fixing his eyes on the ceiling again. “But after enough days, my only company is my own brain.”
Nolan snorted.
“You and your brain.”
Harlan smiled faintly.
“And you? Do you not have any hope that they will get us out of here?”
Nolan rubbed his jaw. He did not want to admit it, but part of him still clung to the idea that, with the war raging outside, someone could rescue them. That the Universal Government might arrive with an unexpected offensive and wipe this place off the map. But that was an illusion, something that would not happen. Even so, it was not worth stealing that illusion from Harlan.
“It is possible, sure,” he lied at last. “But I am not going to sit still waiting and dry out here expecting them.”
Harlan let out a dry laugh. Silence seized the cell for a few minutes. Nolan’s memory drifted back to when everything had seemed bigger. “You are a coward,” was the phrase that always echoed whenever…
“Is someone waiting for you outside?” Harlan interrupted.
Nolan rested his head against the wall and closed his eyes for a moment.
“I do not have a partner, I barely have any friends. I do not have a family.”
Harlan turned his head toward him.
“Did they die? Your parents, I mean.”
“Many years ago.”
“On your home planet? Or are you from Klynos?”
Nolan clicked his tongue.
“I think that is too many questions at once,” he said. “Tell me about you.”
“I have a son. I think by now he has turned one.”
Nolan opened his eyes, staring at him.
“What?”
Harlan smiled again, without light.
“Vátimo, yes. He was an accident we had with his mother. At first she wanted to keep him, but then she decided motherhood was not for her. It is a shame she realized it when the boy had already been born. Now my parents take care of him until… well, if I ever come back.”
Nolan could not hold back a prolonged laugh.
“I never imagined you as a father.”
“And I am pretty dumb.”
Nolan felt a weight in his chest as he looked at his companion. He thought of Vátimo, of how he would need a father to laugh and cry with, someone to play with and to grow up beside. Harlan had to get out of there alive.
The sound of footsteps cut the conversation short. Nolan tensed immediately, and Harlan sat up as well, more slowly.
Down the corridor, a few guards walked with lazy steps, muttering to each other in low voices. But what drew the prisoners’ attention was not the guards, it was what they were dragging with them.
A woman.
Nolan and Harlan saw her before the light reached her fully. Her dark hair was matted, stuck to her face with dirt and sweat. Her clothes, if they could be called that, were pieces of torn, stained fabric. Her wrists were tied behind her back, and her steps were heavy, nearly stumbling.
The most shocking thing, though, was the expression on her face. It was not just exhaustion or pain. It was something deeper. Something Nolan knew far too well.
Emptiness.
They dragged her away in an unknown direction.
“Shit,” Harlan murmured. He turned to Nolan with a frown. “Who do you think she is?”
“I do not care,” Nolan replied, without looking at him.
Harlan frowned.
“Do not be like that.”
“And how do you want me to be?”
“I do not know,” Harlan muttered. “She reminds me of us when we got here.”
Four shadows appeared in the threshold of the cell. The first barely glanced at them, but the second amused himself watching them through the bars, with the entertained expression of someone studying prey. Behind them two women stood, one with her arms crossed and the other leaning on her rifle.
The amused one had blond hair, a long face and an unbearable permanent smile.
He wore the reddish armor of the separatists, but kept his helmet hanging at his side, leaving his face exposed. He was smiling, but it was not a friendly smile.
“The Boy Scouts,” he murmured with sarcasm, leaning against the bars. “How are the holidays going?”
Nolan did not answer. Harlan only frowned.
The blond man clicked his tongue and shook his head with feigned disappointment.
“The soldiers of the Universal Government have no sense of humor. They used to be more fun. Do you not think so, Tess?”
The other man, huge, dark skinned, with very short jet black hair, replied with indifference.
“I guess so.”
The blond man frowned at his partner, then turned his eyes back to Nolan and Harlan.
“I am Jacques, but you can call me Jackie. And the quiet giant here is Tessio, but us friends call him Tess. The girls are Tick and Tock.”
Silence stretched for a moment.
“What do you want?” Nolan asked, voice flat.
Jackie shrugged, still smiling.
“I just wanted to see how you were doing. How you were feeling. It is important to be considerate with our guests.”
Nolan felt his stomach knot. He did not like the way Jackie was looking at them.
“What for?” Harlan asked, unable to hold the question.
Jackie pressed his lips together.
“We have a little trip to take together. Get your things and belongings ready. You have five minutes. See to your peeing and shitting, we have several hours ahead and I am sensitive to smells.”
And with that, he vanished into the corridor’s gloom.
Nolan and Harlan looked at each other in silence.
“I do not like this,” Harlan murmured. “We were at a fixed point, ideal for them to find us sooner or later.”
“I do not like it either,” Nolan admitted. “Something strange is going on here.”
But maybe, just maybe, this was the best chance to escape.
They pulled him out of the cell with a sharp shove. No unnecessary blows, but with the firmness of someone who expects no resistance. Tick walked at the front, setting the pace with the butt of her rifle against the floor. Tock closed the line, checking the cuffs at random as if looking for an excuse to tighten them.
Harlan walked in the line, cuffed, looking straight ahead. At his side, Nolan said nothing, but his presence anchored him. Between them, the woman they had seen advanced without expression. No one knew where they were going.
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The corridor was long and damp. The walls were the same as always: dull metal, mold stains, flickering lights that trembled as if they too were about to break. Now, after so much time locked in, everything felt different. More real. More hostile.
They passed a room once used for interrogations. Harlan knew it not because they had taken him there, but because of the sounds that sometimes slipped out during the night: dry screams, stifled moans, the sharp hum of some device he preferred not to imagine.
The group crossed a passage that connected the isolation sectors. The walls there were reinforced with double layers and numbered plates. Each cell had a small circular grille through which one could barely see the darkness inside. Harlan thought he glimpsed a face behind one of those openings, only a shadow with eyes. No hate, no pleading. Only eyes.
He wondered how long it had been since they were captured. Every day was the same. The ceiling lights turned on and off with no apparent logic. Sometimes they brought food. Sometimes they did not. Sometimes they left them alone for hours, other times they checked on them without saying a word. Time was no longer measured in hours. It was measured in deterioration.
Stepping out into the underground hangar hit him like a slap. New light, different, artificial but intense, struck his eyes, used to the dimness. He blinked, and for the first time in weeks smelled the dry dust of the outside, mixed with the reek of burnt metal.
The interior of the vehicle vibrated with a dull clatter that traveled through the metal floor, crawled up his back and reached his teeth. Harlan sat in a corner of the mobile cell, knees drawn up and arms crossed, as if that could protect him from the movement or from reality itself. At his side, Nolan settled without a word, as motionless as a rock in a storm.
The cell was half lit by a yellow lamp above the access door. The rest was shadows and silhouettes of prisoners. Twenty of them, by his count. Most limited themselves to breathing, taking up as little space as possible. No one spoke naturally. No one asked anything. It was not the silence of resignation but of waiting, of calculation.
A few meters away, sitting with her back against the opposite wall, was the woman from the corridor. Her arms were crossed over her chest and her legs stretched out, though not in a relaxed pose. The movement of the armored transport made her body shake slightly, but she did not seem to notice. Her gaze was fixed on an invisible point on the floor.
Harlan watched her for a moment, cautiously. There was something in her presence, in that cold way of looking without seeing, that shook him. As if she had already reached the end of the road, and he was only halfway there.
He leaned toward her.
“Does anything hurt?” he asked quietly.
The woman blinked, stirred a little. She turned her head, looked at him as if she had just realized he was there. Her lips were cracked, and the skin of her face was stained with dust and dried blood. Her eyes, however, were clear.
“Everything,” she replied, without emotion. “But I am used to it.”
Harlan nodded slowly. He did not want to tell her that the phrase hurt more than being hit.
“Do you have a name?”
She hesitated for a moment.
“Vela,” she said at last.
“I am Harlan. That one over there is Nolan,” he said with a gesture of his head, but Nolan did not react.
She went silent. She closed her eyes, as if the effort of speaking had been enough for now.
Harlan leaned back against the wall. The rattling of the vehicle grew louder. Behind them, between the cargo section and the cab, muffled laughter drifted in. One of the guards, probably the blond one, Jackie, was telling something. A deeper laugh answered him, as if the idea of transporting twenty people to an unknown fate were an inside joke.
The sensation of confinement wrapped around Harlan like a sticky layer. He wanted out of there.
He looked at Nolan.
“Listen to me… we could try something. On the way. Break the doors, force something. There are many of us.”
Nolan looked at him slowly. His eyes were red, but lucid. Harlan thought that for a second he agreed. What he got instead was a dry refusal, almost toneless.
“No.”
“Why not?” he insisted, leaning toward him. “There are twenty of us in here. They are four and distracted. You do not hear much else outside. It is now or never.”
Nolan leaned a little closer and spoke in a low voice, only for him.
“Why? Because we have no weapons and they do. If we break this now, they will shoot us before we can take three steps.”
Harlan clenched his fists in frustration.
“So what then? Wait for them to hand us over like cattle?”
“No. Wait for the exact moment,” Nolan said. “In transit there are eyes. At destination there are flaws. There is always a distraction, a routine, a tired guard. That is where you escape. Not now.”
The clarity of his words did not calm Harlan, but it did force him to think. To slow down.
He closed his eyes for a moment. He listened to the others breathing. Vela seemed asleep, or something similar. To his right, another prisoner murmured a barely audible song, like a prayer. Every so often the vehicle turned, climbed or descended, and everyone tilted together, like in a slow shipwreck.
A thin man near the door was the only one who did not seem to adapt to the movement or resist it. He simply let it pass through his body, as if traveling in a memory, not in a transport.
Outside, the outskirts of the capitol still hummed with hidden life. The buildings did not rise to the sky in straight angles, they flowed in soft curves, woven in iridescent threads that reacted to each variation in the artificial weather. The wind, produced by hidden systems, carried the scents of alien vegetation and the almost melodic hum of surveillance drones.
At a bend in the main corridor, a fallen sign flickered in the shadows. A mix of political slogans, official notices and poorly contained rage. The last protest had left no dead, but it had left questions.
Now they were being moved beneath all of that. As if they were what the system did not want to show.
Harlan opened his eyes. He clenched his teeth. He looked at Nolan again.
“Do you want to escape?” he asked in a firm tone.
Nolan did not answer immediately. He let a long second pass.
“What do you mean?”
Harlan shrugged. Exhaustion had taken hold of him, and the frustration escaped in words.
“You are the one who said no one is waiting for you. I do have someone. I do want to escape.”
Nolan clicked his tongue.
“It is good that you finally decided that, Har, because you spent months whining and waiting for someone else to save you.”
Harlan felt the words like a humiliating blow. He thought of a reply, but nothing came to mind.
“Guys, sooner or later we are all going to die, so please let me die in peace without your couple arguments,” one of the prisoners at the back said.
Harlan looked at him and immediately felt ashamed. He had raised his voice at his friend, his only friend there.
“Sorry, Nolan. I do not know what is wrong with me.”
Nolan looked at him for a moment, then gave him a light punch on the shoulder.
“Let us think instead about what we are going to do to escape. On this trip we are going to have several chances.”
The rattling of the armored vehicle still pounded against the walls, but Nolan no longer heard it. He was leaning forward, elbows on his knees, eyes fixed on the floor, but he did not really see it. In his mind, he reviewed every curve they had taken, every acceleration, every small stop. The watch shifts, the structure of the compartment, the looks of the soldiers who glanced at them through the inspection window. It all became part of the same calculation.
Around him, the prisoners were growing restless. They did not talk, but their bodies gave them away, the tension of people who sense something is about to happen. One of them, a bit too heavy to have been a soldier, had thrown up near the beginning of the trip.
The rattling changed. It was no longer the long sway of a steady route. Now it was small vibrations, intermittent stops, the muffled sound of doors sliding open outside.
Nolan opened his eyes. He said nothing, but straightened a little, his body bent as if trying to listen with his back. Harlan noticed and tensed as well.
“What is it?” he whispered.
“Short stops. Closer together. That is not open road. We are entering a control zone. It might be a complex or an underground facility,” Nolan murmured, more to himself than to the others.
Some prisoners lifted their heads. The atmosphere shifted. The air smelled of lubricated metal and dry dust. Something told them the trip was coming to an end.
“And what do we do?” Harlan asked, jaw clenched.
Before Nolan could answer, someone else spoke.
“I will follow him if he makes a plan,” a man in the back said. Broad shouldered, face lined and determined. He had an old scar on his eyebrow and knuckles deformed by too many fights. His long black hair fell to his chest, just like his beard.
Nolan nodded.
“I am in no position to refuse help, but I would at least like to know the names of my allies.”
The man gave a brief smile.
“My name is Ebran. From the Kor Tresh militia.”
Nolan hesitated for a moment when he heard the name of the group.
“Can I trust you?”
The man shrugged.
“Do you have another option?”
Good point, Nolan thought.
“This will not be like any usual operation,” Nolan said.
“If it is a chance to escape, I do not care if I bleed for it,” Ebran answered.
“Bleeding is not the problem,” another prisoner said, younger, with sunken eyes and ragged breathing. “The problem is that there is no way. These transports are watched inside and out. Minimum three soldiers in the cab, two patrol drones and perimeter turrets. I… I read it in the manuals. Before they threw me in here.”
Nolan studied him.
“Are you a technician? Military?”
“I was a cadet at the Government Systems Academy in Klynos. Mikael Skarasca.”
Nolan nodded. Not with sympathy, but like someone taking inventory.
“What else do you know about this type of transport?”
“They have automatic opening sensors, but if there is a power cut, they switch to manual. For that they use a hidden panel behind the inspection light, close to the inner door.”
Ebran smiled faintly.
“We already have something.”
“And how are you going to cut the power from in here?” another voice asked. Raspy. Mimicking a children’s chant.
A very tall prisoner, with wide open eyes, was watching Nolan as if he were a beautiful insect. He had a burned tattoo on his forehead and rocked slightly forward and back.
“And who are you?” Harlan asked, wary.
“Karr. The one who screams. The one who bleeds nicely. The one who goes first if someone has to die so you can run,” he said, with a sincere and delirious smile.
“You will trust this one?” Ebran asked, skeptical.
Nolan frowned.
“I do not understand you, Kor Tresh man. What do you mean?”
Ebran stood from his seat and moved closer, pointing a finger at Karr.
“He is a cultist, can you not see his tattoo? One of those death god cults.”
Karr laughed openly, and Ebran pressed on.
“You are laughing? Are you going to deny it? I am sure you love handing your souls over. Brainless little animals.”
Nolan held Karr’s gaze. The insolent look of the prisoner did not change in the slightest when he sighed and answered:
“He calls us… what was it? Brainless little animals. Your friend has the brain of a Kaljen. Yes, we follow the teachings of Poro and Valeno. The gods of the underworld, of peaceful passage into death. That, stupid man, does not mean we try to create corpses. Quite the opposite. It is about accepting our own mortality, understanding that they will accompany us in our passage to the next life.”
Ebran clicked his tongue, raised his eyebrows and sat down again. Nolan watched him for a second, but Ebran did not meet his eyes, so he turned back to Karr.
“Perfect,” Nolan said quietly. “Let us move on to the plan then.”
He looked at Harlan, then at Vela. She observed everything without speaking, eyes steady, weighing the risk.
“We are not going to wait until we reach the camp. There we will have no chance. During these stops, some last longer than others. They might be checking something, or waiting for clearance. In those gaps there are errors. Habits. Routine. There is always someone who gets distracted. Someone who smokes. Someone who turns away.”
He straightened a little, resting his back on the wall of the transport.
“Mikael, can you reach the panel you mentioned?”
“Only if I see it. And only if you give me some excuse to stand up.”
“You will have one. Karr,” Nolan said, turning to the madman. “When they open the door, you run. You scream, you bite whoever is closest. Throw yourself down the stairs if you have to.”
“I will break myself to pieces,” Karr said proudly.
“That will cause confusion. Mikael, you use the moment to examine the area near the panel, see if you can open it. Vela and Ebran will cover you. If you can reach the power, you cut it. In that second, the systems will reset. The doors go into manual mode. That is when we move.”
“And what do you do?” Harlan asked.
“I have to hurt you,” Nolan said, dry.
“Again with that?”
“It is the best distraction. If the guards see an internal fight, or a hostage, or blood, their attention will not be on the structure or the panel. You shout. You are the chaos from inside. When you open it, you give me a signal.”
Harlan swallowed hard and nodded.
“Fine. Just do not hit me too hard.”
“I promise nothing,” Nolan said, and for a second he smiled.
Vela, who had said nothing until then, spoke for the first time.
“And if it does not work?”
“Then we try anyway,” Nolan replied. “I prefer to die fighting than vanish in some file with an end date.”
No one answered. No one opposed it either.
The vehicle slowed with a sharper vibration. This was no longer just stopping. It was the prelude to a final halt.
The prisoners looked at one another.
The plan was set.
And the hatch was about to open.
The armored vehicle stopped with a sharp jolt. Stronger than the previous ones.
For the first time during the whole trip, the engine went silent. It was not a technical pause. It was an operational one. Outside, they heard footsteps. Voices. The sharp hum of a drone descending.
“Do you feel ready?” Harlan asked in Vela’s direction.
She simply nodded.
“It is time,” Nolan murmured.
Karr started moaning. First like a child, then like a cornered animal. He rolled on himself and hurled his body against the door with a dull thud.
“He passed out. He is bleeding,” Mikael shouted, his voice high pitched, nervous, but convincing.
There was silence. Then the sound: the latch turned on the outside.
The side hatch opened.
The first guard barely had time to look inside when Karr jumped on him like a beast, biting his forearm with inhuman violence. The soldier’s scream shot through the tension.
“Now!” Nolan shouted.
He was already moving.
Ebran, huge, followed him at once. He took what little space he had, launched himself like a stone at the second guard who was trying to react and crushed him against the metal wall with a sickening crack of bones.
Mikael threw himself at the panel next to the inspection lamp. He was trembling, but his hands did not fail. He felt around, found a slot and pulled. Sparks burst. The light went out. A sharp electric squeal ripped through the vehicle.
“The lock disengaged,” he shouted, hardly believing it.
The rear door shuddered.
Ebran, still panting, threw his shoulder against it. It opened. Humid air and the dusty night hit them full on.
“Run,” he shouted.
Three prisoners jumped out. Then two more. Karr let go of the guard and threw himself after them, still laughing.
“Harlan, bleed,” Nolan whispered.
And he hit him hard. This time on the side of the torso, right where breath breaks but bones do not. Harlan screamed and doubled over. Nolan held him, pretending to use him as a shield.
Everything was going well.
Until the ground shook with a single step.
Tessio.
He emerged from the side of the transport like a living wall. Two meters of muscle in black armor, helmet on. In his hand, an electric baton as long as a human forearm.
The first prisoner who crossed his path was lifted off the ground with one hand. Tessio slammed him against the body of the transport. The crack was horrifying.
“Back,” his voice roared from inside the helmet.
Another prisoner tried to run. Tessio took two steps and swept him aside with a brutal kick. Then he drove the baton into Karr’s back. Karr convulsed like an electrocuted insect and fell to his knees, his laughter broken into spit.
Behind him, Tick and Tock aimed at the group of prisoners, covering the flanks while he advanced, as if they were used to keeping up with monsters larger than themselves.
From the back, Jackie Durnan appeared, climbing down from the cab as if arriving late to a party.
He did not run.
He did not shout.
He wore a tired smile.
“What happened here?” he asked quietly, surveying the scene.
One guard was bleeding from his arm. Mikael struggled on the ground with a drone that had dropped to restrain him. Vela tried to cover him without success. Nolan still held Harlan, both gasping.
Ebran, who had just put down a third soldier, turned to face Tessio, his face blazing.
“Give me one more,” he shouted, charging like a tank.
Jackie already had him in his sights.
The big man with the long hair and beard who was running toward Tessio exhaled for the last time.
Jackie fired.
The projectile pierced his neck from the side. The man did not fall immediately. He took two steps, staggered, then collapsed like a stone. Blood poured out in dark, thick spurts. He convulsed once. Then nothing.
The silence lasted longer than the fight.
Tessio crouched, picked up one of the fallen weapons and inspected it with professional calm. The drones hummed in the air again. One of the prisoners who had escaped was shot down at a distance. The others were captured within seconds.
Jackie walked among the bodies as if inspecting cattle. The smile did not leave his face.
He stopped in front of the inert body. He watched it for a few seconds.
“What a shame,” he said softly. “This one was useful. I could definitely have sent him to the Balmoreans. They love big animals that know how to die well.”
He turned toward Nolan.
“And you?” he said, pointing at him with the barrel of the rifle. “Are you the brains behind this?”
Nolan did not answer. He barely held Harlan, who was struggling for breath.
“There is no need for you to answer,” Jackie said with a sigh. “But I have to congratulate you. You almost made it.”
Tessio came up beside him. The visor of his helmet lifted. His face was expressionless.
“Do we take them all back in?”
“Yes. But leave the door open,” Jackie said, as if deciding on a whim.
Tessio blinked.
“What for?”
“I am going to travel with them for a while. I do not trust them anymore. If someone tries something again, I want to be the first to know.”
Tessio looked at him with a trace of weariness.
“What? It will be useful, you will see.”
In a few minutes, the armored truck was full again. More rancid air, more invisible weight, although now with three fewer bodies. There were seventeen of them now. The thin man stayed in the same place as before, only splashed with dust and other people’s blood, sitting straight backed, serene, as if none of it had disturbed him at all.
Tessio stayed outside, coordinating drones and collecting weapons. Two guards climbed aboard, breathing hard. Jackie sat in the open hatch like a crow on the lintel of a moving tomb. He did not close it. Tick leaned on the outer frame, smoking something that barely lit, staring at the prisoners with a practical boredom.
Nolan clenched his jaw. That had been the window. And they had left it behind.
Jackie smiled. He rested his rifle on his shoulder and sat on the very edge of the hatch, facing the prisoners inside. He rested his elbows on his knees and leaned forward, relaxed, as if they were about to chat.
He tapped the metal twice with his knuckles. The engine woke with a contained roar and the hulking vehicle moved again. With the door open, Varot streamed past like a silent film: towers of black crystal throwing back red flashes from drones, walkways suspended like taut nerves between curving buildings, the Karvell River below, broken into domestic channels and pipes that glowed under the fake dome moon. The city breathed on its own. Valves on the walls exhaled steam, photosynthetic panels closed their leaves like sleeping plants, announcements dripped slogans over wet stone.
Nolan made sure Harlan was all right. The wound was superficial, nothing serious. Still, guilt hit him as if he had really harmed him. Poor Harlan, he only wanted to escape, to get out, and Nolan had just hurt him for nothing.
“I will give you some free advice, Brainy. If you are going to sacrifice your friend,” Jackie said, nodding at Harlan, still wrapped around his pain, “try not to let it show that it hurts you.”
“It does not hurt,” Nolan lied.
“Sure, sure. And another thing,” Jackie added, pointing his finger at Karr. “Watch out for this one. If he ever gets hungry, with those teeth he could have a feast with your head.”
Karr growled. Nolan said nothing.
“What was the dead man’s name?” Jackie asked.
Nolan pressed his lips together. He was not going to give him the pleasure of seeing a reaction.
“Ebran,” he answered, spitting the word.
Jackie nodded as if it pained him to hear the name.
“Poor Ebran. No one wants to end up like him. You know how you can avoid it? Do not move a single muscle, all right?”
No one replied.
Jackie clicked his tongue and looked down at the void outside, where the Karvell River threaded its black line between warehouses and loading yards, and farther away the towers repeated their pitiless geometry like an industrial prayer.
They passed an open ramp. Below, a triangular yard with old machinery parts, inspection hatches gaping like jaws. A group of feral children, only shadows, watched the armored transport from a stairway, motionless, silent.
The artificial wind brought the smell of moist vegetation from some hidden hydroponic garden. The taste of metal still coated their tongues.
No one spoke for long minutes.
Karr, awake again, bit his palm and laughed softly, tapping his head in time with the engine. Mikael had his eyes closed and murmured formulas like prayers: “manual override, subroutine of…” as if naming things again could give him back some control. Vela watched the city outside with unsettling calm, as if nothing it could do would touch her anymore. Harlan tried to share a complicit look with her, but failed.
Nolan counted the stops again in his head. Three, four, five. He wrote them on his body. One on his shoulder, one on his knee, one on Harlan’s swollen side. He stored them like someone collecting stones.
Jackie watched him from the corner of his eye, then leaned back on the frame of the hatch, master of the threshold.
“Sleep if you can,” he said, in a twisted attempt at kindness. “There is still a way to go.”
Nolan did not close his eyes. He waited to count one more stop.
