Thom Layn sat in the stillness of his bunker, staring up at the reinforced ceiling. No cracks, no tremors, no dust sifting down like a warning. It held, as it always had, but something about the silence above it felt wrong.
His fingers flexed against the cold grip of the hatch lever. Solid, reliable. Steady as the ground should've been, but wasn't.
He didn't want to go up there.
The bunker had been his project, years of hard-earned credits and harder hours poured into the thing. The colony had called it paranoia—what did a miner need with blast-proof walls, air filtration, an escape route straight to the surface? New Abraham was safe, they'd said.
Until it wasn't.
The air was stale, but clean. The walls held firm. It was built to last, better than the prefab homes above. Stronger than the weak promises of militia men who thought a few months of drills made them soldiers.
"Yeah," Thom muttered under his breath, voice low. "Safe, sure."
The air burned hot as he climbed, sharp with smoke and something sour. Chemical. Bad. It stuck to the back of his throat, but Thom kept moving, his boots heavy against the rungs. Halfway up, he froze.
Silence. Thick. Pressing.
His fingers tightened on the ladder, cold biting into his palms. He listened. No voices. No engines. Nothing but the faint hiss of smoke curling through the hatch. His gut twisted. Nothing meant safe. Or it meant worse.
He climbed faster.
The surface hit him like a punch—bright light, heat, all that shit.
His gaze swept the ruins. Miner's eyes. Always looking for stress marks, signs of collapse. But what he saw—twisted beams, melted steel, gouges torn into the dirt—wasn't just destruction. It was sloppy. Rushed. He crouched near a set of grooves carved into the ground, his gloved fingers brushing the edges. Shuttle skids, maybe. They'd bolted. Fast.
Why?
Thom's hand clenched around the strap of the pick slung across his back. Old habits. Stupid. It wasn't a weapon, not really, but it was something.
His jaw tightened as he scanned the horizon again. The militia'd said they were ready. Turrets. Drills. "We'll hold the line," that fresh-faced bastard'd told him, grinning like he'd already won.
A half hour. Maybe less.
"Good job, boys," he muttered, bitter. His voice caught in the smoke, rough like it belonged to someone else. "Real prepared."
He stepped closer to what used to be Rachel's place. Good woman. Two kids. Fought like hell for a garden. His fingers brushed a charred doll half-buried in the rubble.
Thom swallowed hard. "Goddamn kids." The words stuck in his throat, catching on something sharp.
He straightened, the knot in his chest tightening as he glanced toward the horizon. The Batarian shuttle was still there, twisted on its side like a dead thing. Scarred. Gashes too deep and wide for any weapon he figured the militia could field
He straightened again, his chest tightening, the air thick and clawing at his throat.
His gaze drifted past the Sokolovs' place, toward the colony's edge.
His gut twisted, the thought settling heavy and hard.
Batarians didn't leave this fast. Not when there was still meat on the bone.
The silence around him pressed in, thick and stifling, but he kept moving.
His eyes moved, miner's eyes, scanning the wreckage the way he'd read rock walls for signs of strain or veins of ore. Prefab frames sheared apart, metal panels warped and peeled like the colony'd been picked apart by something precise.
He stopped at the edge of what used to be Rachel's unit. Two kids. Dog. A garden she'd fought to keep alive against the dust and drought.
His hand brushed against the twisted remains of a food locker, the warped metal still faintly warm. Not fresh, not old.
There wasn't much left for anyone to take.
Why the hell were they in such a hurry?
The whole thing gnawed at him, same as it had since he'd first surfaced. Twenty minutes, thirty tops. No time for the kind of thorough stripping they'd usually pull.
"Doesn't make sense," he muttered, voice rough from the smoke clawing at his throat.
The words didn't need to go anywhere. Just had to get out.
His mind flicked back to the overseer—fresh-faced, full of speeches about how the colony "didn't need to live in fear."
"Turrets'll hold," they'd said, smiling like the grin could stand up to a raid.
Yeah, you were ready all right.
He stood, the burnt oil stench still turning his stomach as he wiped his gloved hands against his pants. The gesture didn't clean anything, didn't help, but it was something to do.
The stillness wasn't natural.
He scanned the horizon again, half-expecting movement where there was none. Smoke and shadows flickered, shifting with the hazy light. His fingers adjusted their grip on the pick handle slung across his back, the rough wood digging into his palm.
Not much for a fight, but better than nothing.
A flicker caught his eye, faint, at the edge of the ruins. Just shadows, maybe, or the sun fighting through the haze.
He stilled.
His instincts told him to keep quiet, to let the silence do its work. The bunker had kept him alive—no point rushing into something now.
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Nothing came.
The tightness in his chest refused to let up, though. He shifted his weight, exhaled slow, forced his shoulders to drop.
Manageable. Barely.
The militia wouldn't have an answer for this. They never did.
"Caught off guard," they'd say, voices stiff and just polished enough to hold together.
Off guard, my ass.
His eyes drifted up to the horizon, to where the turrets sat dead along the edges, their metal scorched and bent back like old wiring ripped from the wall.
New Abraham's defenses had gone down fast. He hadn't seen one body in the outskirts, not militia or civilian. Maybe the fighters had all stayed clustered downtown, right where the overseer had said they'd "stand their ground."
He stood, brushing his hands against his pants without thinking, the motion sharp, automatic. His boots carried him forward, eyes sweeping across the ruins without slowing.
The haze thinned as he moved, sunlight cutting through smoke and casting deep shadows between the wreckage. That's when he saw it. Movement.
A shape wavered in the distance, sharp and uneven, like an afterimage caught in the corner of his vision. Thom stopped mid-step, his gut tightening on instinct. His grip shifted on the strap slung over his shoulder, the rough material grounding him as his eyes locked onto the figure.
Too thin. Too off.
His muscles coiled, everything ready to bolt back toward the hatch. But then the shape lurched closer, and he saw it more clearly.
Not one of them.
Dark skin. Wild hair sticking up in every direction. No symmetry to the way it moved, like every step might send it toppling over.
Human.
Barely.
He straightened, shoulders tense but locked in place. His eyes tracked the figure's jerky, uneven motions, each one screaming exhaustion or injury. Still too far to know for sure.
He squinted as the light shifted, catching its face, and his stomach dropped. Zedd Victors.
The knot in his chest tightened, squeezing his breath into a shallow rasp.
The kid staggered into view, his silhouette taking shape against the ruins. Thom had seen enough to piece the rest together, but seeing it didn't soften the blow.
He nearly let out a hiss as he took in the boy. The repairman's clothes hung in ribbons, streaked with red and black. There was something else—yellow-green, faintly glowing. Like bile. Thom tried not to think about what it was, where it came from.
His face was no better—just grime, dried blood, and too much space between blinks.
The worst of it was how he moved. Zedd wasn't walking so much as stumbling forward, like his own weight might knock him over. His hands twitched, fingers flexing like he was still gripping something that wasn't there.
"Zedd?"
Nothing. Thom's voice scratched in his own ears, louder than it needed to be. He shifted his weight, gravel grinding under his boots, and tried again.
"Zedd, it's me."
Still no answer.
"Zedd?" He forced the word out again.
Nothing. No response. Just the sound of the kid muttering something low and broken. Thom shifted his weight. Gravel crunched under his boots, loud enough to make his own stomach tighten.
"Kid," he said again, louder, sharper.
Zedd froze. Lips twitching, half-formed sounds still caught in his throat. Then he smiled. Or tried to.
It wasn't a smile.
His boots stayed planted. His eyes swept Zedd—hands twitching, feet dragging like they didn't remember how to stand. Not right.
Thom forced an awkward smile. "That mine dust mess you up, or what?"
Nothing.
"That my plasma cutter?" The words slipped out before he could stop them, rough and automatic.
Zedd tilted his head, slow, mechanical. "Nah," he rasped, voice jagged. "You didn't come back for it."
Thom blinked, caught off guard. "Oh."
The kid's smirk twisted, hollow. "Used it on some four-eyed bastard," he said, too calm. "Should've seen it."
The statement hit Thom square in the chest, and for a moment, his mind blanked, scrambling to make sense of it.
The kid—Zedd, the quiet one, the one always tinkering with scrap like it was worth more than gold—had done what?
"Thom."
Zedd's voice cut into his already confused thoughts.
"Huh?"
The kid shook his head. "Drugs are bad, mmkay?"
He didn't get the chance to even be confused as Zedd let out another choked laugh, and as if that was too much for him to handle, his body crumpled, the boy's legs buckling out from under him.
"Kid!" Thom was moving before he thought about it, dropping to his knees beside the boy. His hands hovered uselessly over Zedd's shoulders, afraid to grab hold of anything that might already be broken.
The smell hit him first—burnt oil, blood, and something else acrid and sickly sweet, clinging to Zedd's clothes like a second skin. The kid's chest rose and fell in shallow, uneven breaths, his body limp but still alive.
"Zedd?"
No response.
Thom stared down at the mess in front of him, his throat tight, his mind scrambling to pull anything useful from the wreckage of the moment. Nothing came. Nothing except one thought, cutting through the haze like a drill splitting rock:
The hell did they do to you, kid?
