The medical transport slid into the hangar. Engines whispering, lights flaring white, the deck blooming beneath it in magnetic locks and guiding rails.
The doors opened before it finished settling, letting cold air rush in.
The smell hit first. Antiseptic sharp enough to bite the back of the throat, ozone from scorched metal, blood under both, old and metallic, human and not.
Nurses moved as a machine.
Stretchers appeared before boots touched deck. Hands were already reaching for Fiona before gravity finished reasserting itself. Montoya was lifted mid-step, Nakamura barely able to keep up as his weight vanished into white gloves and moving lights.
They didn't lose time on triage. No debate either.
Fiona went first, Montoya went second. No one asked names, no one asked for ranks, no one asked what happened.
Only:
"Vitals."
"Airway."
"Pressure."
"Move."
The doors closed behind them.
Yoon's squad stood where the transport had opened them into existence, still smelling smoke, still tasting dust, still half-expecting the ground to shake again.
It didn't.
The hangar was calm in a controlled way, then they saw the other side.
Across the deck, Volker's interceptor rested crooked, hull still steaming, plating glowing faintly where atmosphere had kissed metal too recently, too violently.
And on top of it —
Sky. Just holding on.
His boots were braced against scorched alloy. One hand was buried in a seam of warped plating. The other was wrapped around a torn section of hull like a man holding the edge of a cliff.
His wings were out, prismatic feathers caught the hangar lights and fractured them into cold rainbows that slid across the walls, the floor, the faces of everyone watching. The heat shimmered around him, bending the air, everyone could hear the metal, that faint, constant ticking of cooling alloy, the low hiss of systems still bleeding energy.
A pilot was already on the hull.
Volker.
Helmet off, his hair matted with sweat, gloves smoking but he didn't stop.
Two medics followed him up the interceptor's side, boots scraping, hands blistering through their gloves. One of them swore.
"Too hot."
"Doesn't matter."
They climbed anyway.
Skin burned.
No one noticed or rather, they noticed. They just didn't care.
A third medic reached Sky first. Pressed a hand to his side, where blood had soaked into cloth and feathers alike.
"Hold."
Sky didn't answer.
His jaw was clenched.
Volker shifted, slipping once, catching himself with a hand that left skin behind on the metal. He hissed in pain, sucked air through his teeth. Then reached higher.
"On three," the medic said.
Sky's wings trembled.
"One."
The interceptor's hull creaked.
"Two."
Heat flared.
"Three."
They moved him. Every angle measured. Every limb supported. Every feather accounted for. Hands slid under wings, under shoulders, under legs.
Sky's foot left the hull, then the other. For half a second, gravity remembered him and his wings folded with care, feather by feather.
Yoon's squad stood frozen.
No one spoke.
No one asked if he was human.
No one asked if he was an angel.
No one asked if he was the commander.
They simply heard the medical staff:
"Breathing?"
"Yes."
"Spinal?"
"Clear."
"Blood loss?"
"Severe."
"Move."
And they moved.
Sky's head lolled once. And Volker's hand snapped up instantly, catching it, steadying it.
They carried him off the hull and onto a waiting platform that rose from the floor like it had been waiting its entire life for this exact weight. White light swallowed him. Doors slid open. They disappeared inside.
Only then did Yoon realize she was shaking. Behind her, the hangar continued to function like nothing extraordinary had occurred. Crews moved. Systems recalibrated. Fuel lines retracted.
A nurse passed Yoon, eyes on her tablet, already speaking into her comm:
"Patient two stabilized, patient three incoming, prep ICU wing C, notify neuro and trauma simultaneously, no delays."
Yoon opened her mouth.
Closed it.
Irina's voice came from behind them.
"You'll wait here."
They turned.
Irina's face was pale. Her eyes were rimmed red. Her hands were shaking from adrenaline that hadn't been given permission to stop yet.
"You will not leave this corridor. You will not speak to anyone unless spoken to. You will remain until Fiona and Montoya recover."
No accusation.
No reassurance.
Just procedure.
"And then?"
Nakamura asked.
Irina looked at him.
For a fraction of a second, something human tried to surface, in the way Irina cleared her hair from her face.
Then command sealed it shut.
"Then," she said, "we'll decide what happens to you."
She turned.
Left.
The corridor was white.
Too white.
Too clean.
Too quiet.
The walls reflected them faintly. Smudged figures in borrowed armor, sitting on a bench that felt too small, too cold, too final. It had no clocks, no windows, not even sound except distant footsteps and the soft hum of systems keeping people alive somewhere they were not allowed to see.
They waited, just sitting. Helmets off. Hands empty. Thoughts loud.
Minutes passed or hours. Time stopped being useful.
Then—
A door slid open and a nurse stepped out, looking at them.
"Montoya's awake."
There was no smile, just information.
Yoon stood too fast and her legs nearly gave out. They moved down the corridor like people who had forgotten how to walk without running toward something or away from it.
Montoya lay on the bed, pale, wrapped in lines and machines, eyes half-lidded but open, confused, alive.
He saw them, opened his mouth but no sound came out, only his eyes changed, focusing.
At the other side of the room, Fiona lay under soft light, machines humming, monitors blinking, chest rising.
Her eyes fluttered. Struggled. Then opened, just enough to see them standing there, the recruits that trained with her, all there, welcoming her back to the living.
Yoon stopped breathing then remembered how.
They didn't cheer, they were just silently breathing in the antiseptic and ozone watching things that refused to die.
Nakamura was the first to make a sound that didn't qualify as a word. It was just an exhale, half-laugh, half-sob, a little something that escaped before discipline could reach it. Hagen and Adeoye locked eyes across the bed, both frozen on the brink of tears they refused to let fall. Singh slid down the wall, back against it, knees bending allowing himself to sit. Davis wiped sweat from his forehead with shaking hands, the war finally finding him after failing to kill him.
And Yoon…
Yoon broke protocol reaching Fiona's hand. Fiona's skin was warm. Alive. Her eyes opened halfway. They found Yoon and stayed. Something moved in them. Confusion first, then recognition, then gratitude so raw it couldn't hold shape. Yoon leaned closer.
"You're safe," she said quietly.
Fiona tried to answer but nothing came out. Her throat tightened but her eyes replied with tears that came before the sound could.
Yoon didn't hesitate.
She wiped them away with her thumb, gentle, unthinking.
"It's okay," Yoon whispered. "You don't have to talk."
Fiona's breathing shook once.
Then steadied.
Her eyes didn't leave Yoon's. For the first time in her life, people were standing around her not because she was useful but because they were worried. Because they cared.
Her eyes tried to hold all of it at once.
The light stayed white, soft, wrong. The air was filtered and sterile, faintly sweet with antiseptic and something metallic underneath that never quite left. The walls were smooth, seamless, no cracks, no seams, no places for time to cling.
But time passed anyway.
It passed in breath. Unnoticed until their chests started to ache. In machines humming. Constant, patient, indifferent. In nurses changing. Different faces, different voices, different hands. Yet every movement, exactly the same.
Fiona lay beneath it all, breathing unfairly peaceful given what her body had survived. Machines whispered around her like a second atmosphere.
Across the room, Montoya lay half-turned, propped by pillows, wrapped in fewer bandages than before. They smelled of iodine and something sharper. Hot metal, blood, smoke, all at once.
The room smelled clean. Too clean. Clean like something erasing what had happened.
But the smell clung to their throats, their clothes, their skin anyway. As if the battle had soaked in and now refused to wash out.
The others just sat.
Yoon on a chair designed to discourage comfort. Nakamura against the wall, fingers tapping without rhythm. Adeoye pacing in half-steps that never crossed the same line twice. Hagen too still, hands folded, eyes locked on nothing. Singh in the corner, holding a picture of his family. Davis standing, then sitting, then standing again.
No one spoke.
No one checked the time. There were no clocks anyway.
Only machines. Only breathing. Only the quiet hum of a place designed to keep people alive, not to tell them what came next.
Hours passed. Or days. The room didn't say which.
Nurses came and went, speaking in low, efficient voices that never lingered.
"Vitals stable."
"Fluid levels are good."
"Bloodwork is improving."
"Neurological response intact."
They never said: You're safe or You did well. Not even You're staying or leaving.
Nothing about the rifle. Nothing about the refugees. Nothing about the battle. Nothing about what any of this meant.
Silence filled the room like water filling a sinking ship.
Montoya broke it first with a sound escaping his chest without permission. Half-laugh, half-sob. Cracked but quiet.
Nakamura's head snapped toward him.
Montoya stared at the ceiling.
"I lost the rifle."
His voice was hoarse, stripped of armor.
No one answered.
"I lost it. That's on me."
Yoon shifted in her chair.
"No. That's on me."
Montoya turned his head.
"You weren't the one carrying it."
"I was the one giving orders. I sent you where you lost it."
Hagen spoke without looking up.
"You both missed the point. None of us should have been there in the first place."
Adeoye stopped pacing.
"We were there because—"
He stopped. Hated himself for starting.
The room tightened.
All eyes drifted toward Fiona.
She lay still. Eyes open. Breathing steady. Alive. And somehow that felt like the problem.
Yoon stood before realizing she'd moved.
"You shouldn't have been there."
Fiona's eyes shifted slowly, as if moving them cost something.
"But I was already there."
Yoon shook her head. "We lost the rifle because—"
"I'm sorry."
The words were too small for what they carried.
"You shouldn't be," Yoon said. "That's—"
"People get hurt when they protect me," Fiona said. "They always have."
Her voice wasn't angry. Just tired.
"My father died protecting me."
The room held its breath.
Montoya turned his head away. Hagen stared at the floor. Adeoye closed his eyes. Singh's shoulders sagged. Davis wiped his forehead and stared at the smear of sweat like it offended him.
"You didn't ask us to," Yoon said.
"I didn't stop you."
That was worse.
Yoon's throat tightened.
"You were helping people. You were bleeding. You were—"
"I was the reason you were there."
Silence fell and dragged.
Montoya spoke, voice weak but steady.
"No. You were the reason we stayed."
Fiona looked at him.
"If we hadn't come for you, we'd be the kind of soldiers we never wanted to be."
Hagen finally looked up.
"Doesn't matter. We're still done."
No one argued.
Yoon stepped back from the bed, hands clenched.
"Court martial. That's what this is."
Fiona's brow furrowed slightly.
"They haven't said anything," Adeoye said.
"That's worse," Nakamura replied. "If they were angry, they'd have already told us."
"They're deciding," Singh said quietly.
"They already decided," Davis said.
Montoya's voice dropped.
"They're just waiting for us to be well enough to hear it."
Fiona turned her face toward the wall. Her voice came out small, uncertain.
"What happens at a court martial?"
The question hung.
No one answered immediately because explaining it meant making it real.
Yoon sat back down slowly.
"It means they decide if we broke the rules," she said. "And what punishment fits."
"Punishment," Fiona repeated. Flat. Testing the taste of the word.
"Dishonorable discharge, again, if we're lucky," Nakamura said. "Brig time if we're not."
"Prison?"
"Military prison," Hagen said. "Yes."
Fiona stared at the wall.
"Because of me."
"Because of us," Montoya said.
"No," Fiona said. "Because of me. I cost you—"
"You didn't cost us anything," Yoon said sharply.
Fiona's voice cracked.
"My daughter hates me because she thinks I'm weak. My father died because I couldn't protect myself. I thought—"
She stopped. Swallowed.
"I thought this time I could just stand. I thought I wouldn't need to be carried."
Her eyes glistened.
"I was wrong."
Yoon reached out. Brushed Fiona's cheek, wiping a tear before it could fall.
Fiona's lips parted. No sound came.
Yoon exhaled.
"You didn't cost us our future. You showed us what kind of soldiers we actually are."
"And what kind is that?"
Yoon looked at the others. They looked back.
"The ones who don't leave people behind."
Silence.
Then Montoya spoke.
"If they kick us out, then we didn't belong to begin with."
Nakamura shook his head.
"No. It means we didn't belong there. Or here."
Hagen leaned forward.
"Then where do we belong?"
No one answered.
The door slid open.
A nurse stood there with no smile, no frown.
"Both patients are cleared for conversation."
Yoon's heart slammed. Montoya's fingers curled into the sheets. Fiona closed her eyes.
The nurse turned to leave.
Stopped.
"Command will see you soon."
Then she was gone.
Yoon's hands started shaking. Davis laughed, short, bitter, inappropriate. Singh pressed the photo of his family to his chest. Nakamura pushed off the wall, paced three steps, and stopped. Adeoye sat down hard. Hagen didn't move at all.
And Fiona—
Fiona opened her eyes and looked at them. Really looked. At faces that had bled for her, that had stayed when staying was the wrong choice, that were about to lose everything because of it.
"I don't understand," she said quietly. "What you all did for me? Why you'd risk this?"
Yoon didn't answer.
She just kept her hand on Fiona's.
Outside, footsteps echoed down the corridor.
Getting closer.
Ashby didn't knock.
The door slid open and he was already there, filling the frame like something that had always belonged to it.
No weapon. No helmet. No visible insignia beyond the worn stitching on his collar and the posture that made rank irrelevant. Didn't look at any of them. Looked at the floor. Then up. His jaw tightened once.
"Up," he said.
No volume. No anger. No patience.
"Now."
Ashby didn't repeat himself.
He turned.
They followed.
"Eyes front," he said as they stepped into the corridor. "No talking."
His boots set the pace.
Their boots filled the silence in the hallway, it wasn't just quiet, it was empty. No carts. No nurses. No engineers. No distant voices. No overhead announcements. No movement behind glass. No silhouettes behind doors.
Just walls.
White at first. Seamless. Clean. Smelling faintly of antiseptic and recycled air.
Their steps echoed too clearly and every footfall felt like it was being recorded by the building itself.
They passed intersections that led nowhere visible. Doors that didn't open. Panels that reflected them faintly, distorted, like ghosts following themselves.
The lights grew softer, then colder, then fewer and by the end of the corridor the air changed, filtered but heavier. Like the pressure had increased without anyone warning them.
Yoon became aware of her breathing only because it sounded too loud. Nakamura's boots were too quiet. Hagen's steps were perfectly even but Adeoye's were not. Singh walked like he was afraid of stepping on something invisible. Davis wiped his hands on his pants once, then again.
Ashby didn't look back.
The walls darkened as they walked. White to gray to steel to shadow, like descending underwater without realizing it. The lights recessed into narrow strips overhead, no longer illuminating faces, only outlining shapes. The corridor narrowed. Sound died. Their footsteps stopped echoing.
The elevator was a solid slab of metal embedded in the wall. Ashby pressed his palm against the panel and it opened without sound. The inside was darker than the hallway. It had no mirrors, no screens, no indicators. Just space.
The doors closed. The outside world vanished.
They moved down. Smooth enough to feel wrong. No vibration, no hum, only pressure building in their chests and the subtle shift in gravity that told their bodies something was changing even as their minds refused to believe it.
No one dared to speak, not even shift.
Ashby stood with his hands behind his back, eyes forward, face carved from disappointment and stone.
Yoon stared at the floor, Montoya at the wall. Nakamura stared at nothing. Fiona stared at Ashby's boots.
Time stretched then folded until it stopped mattering.
The elevator slowed.
Stopped.
The doors opened.
Darkness waited.
But somehow it wasn't empty.
A hangar like structure stretched ahead, lit by low, indirect light that didn't come from visible sources. It reflected off metal, off water lines, off bulkheads and conduits that ran along the walls like veins.
The air smelled different here, like ozone, cold metal and salt.
Deep water.
The station felt older here.
Ashby stepped out.
"Move."
They moved and their footsteps returned, muted, heavier now, absorbed by the floor instead of echoed.
This place didn't amplify sound, it devoured it.
Walls curved inward slightly, like the inside of a hull. Pipes ran overhead. Condensation clung to metal in thin, trembling beads.
Somewhere deep below, something vast and mechanical shifted.
They passed spaces that felt like they had purpose, but no welcome. The lights never brightened, if anything, they dimmed.
Ashby stopped but didn't turn.
"Wait."
They stopped.
He faced them.
This time, he looked at their faces.
One by one.
There was no anger, no relief and no pride in his gaze, just expectation.
"You idiots really stepped in it this time," he said.
Then he turned and walked toward the only light in the room.