Panels tore free, alarms bleeding into one long metallic scream.

  “Brace,” Oruun said, too calm to be comforting.

  I did, though there was nothing to hold. The stars flipped, turned into a white blur, then a smear of red and metal. Bǎo’s seat restraints snapped tight across her chest. My shoulder hit the console. Sparks feathered out.

  “Oh my mom, we are coming in way, way too hot here,” Bǎo said.

  “That’s relative,” Oruun murmured.

  “Relative to not dying!? Fix it right now, bug eyes!”

  Down. Towards Earth. Everything rattled. The world became heat, vibration, and the colour white. My seat restraints bit into my chest.

  Bǎo’s harness jerked wrong, twisting across her shoulder. She hissed, breath catching. I lurched forward against my own straps, fingers shaking as I clawed at the belt. It was snagged. I shoved it flat, forced the clasp to sit right.

  “Hold still,” I said, and it came out like a plea.

  Bǎo’s eyes snapped to mine for half a second, and I thought she’d punch me.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Keeping you in one piece...!”

  The console exploded in static. Oruun was shouting something technical, but it didn’t survive translation through the noise.

  Bǎo’s voice cut through it, raw but sharp. “Oruun! Slow down!”

  “I’m trying,” he said, low.

  “Do better, now! Now!” she screamed, voice breaking.

  The hull split. For a heartbeat, the hull held. Then it didn’t.

  Impact. The Sanctum tore across the ground.

  Bǎo’s voice broke the silence. “Is everyone—?”

  She didn’t finish. Her breath caught halfway through the word alive.

  No one answered for half a second. That was enough. Oruun was already moving, one hand on the emergency seal, the other tracing something across the broken panel. The hull groaned like a whale dying under ice.

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  “Russia,” Oruun said.

  Outside, the city was dead and frozen in place. Tower blocks leaned inward, their concrete skins split and blackened, windows packed with ice. Snow buried the streets so deep it swallowed cars whole, buses locked mid-escape, power lines sagging. Everything felt old. Poisoned by time. This was what was left after people stopped pretending the world could be saved.

  I wondered if this was what I looked like now, from the outside.

  The hull creaked again. Cold air poured through the ruptured plates, cutting through the heat and bringing with it a smell. Metal dust and rain.

  The dragon sphere in my hand pulsed once. I looked down. A pale, green heartbeat, faint but there. The source of my power. I was glad it wasn’t damaged.

  Oruun emerged last, carrying a small console core from the Sanctum. He set it gently in the dirt.

  “The nanites will self-repair,” he said. “Eventually.”

  Bǎo turned to me. “You okay?”

  I nodded, then shook my head. “I don’t know what okay means anymore.”

  “Means breathing,” she said. “You’re alive, piggy. Because Bǎo saved your butt.”

  She smiled, but it was the kind that meant don’t look too closely.

  “North,” Oruun said softly. “New Russia is this way. We can’t be outside without protection like this.”

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  I hadn’t known they’d rebuilt New Russia on top of its own ruins. It was ambitious, if not haunting. I tried to imagine what it must look like when it’s finished. How new it could really be.

  Bǎo nodded. “Piggie, you look like garbage.”

  My throat had turned to sand. I looked down. Shapes moved through the smoke. Figures. Hazmat suits, faceless, visors glinting like shards of a broken sun. Their boots crunched the scorched snow in rhythm. Rifles hung heavy in their gloved hands.

  Two stepped forward, bulkier than the rest. Reinforced faceplates, heavier seals around the neck.

  My stomach lurched. “We… should run. Right? We should—”

  “Stand still.”

  Gravity clenched around my boots before I could move. Oruun didn’t look at me, didn’t need to, the weight pinned me in place like a leash.

  The suits didn’t speak. One swept a wand across my chest; another skimmed Oruun’s throat. Their voices crackled in Russian, muffled by filters. Then syringes appeared. Stainless. Certain.

  Bǎo shrieked. “Excuse me?! Needle marks? Do you have any idea what my skin costs?”

  The jab silenced her. My world tilted sideways. The last thing I saw was my reflection in a visor: pale, ragged, broken.

  Then black.

  When I woke, the air was wrong. It tasted like rust and disinfectant, heavy with recycled breath. Condensation dripped from ceiling strips that buzzed faintly, flickering shadows across metal walls. I was on a cot; a thin blanket tangled around my legs. Bǎo sat nearby on a gurney like a queen on her throne, legs crossed, sword leaned against her knee.

  Oruun stood near the sealed door, posture perfect, as if waiting for court to resume. His expression was unreadable, but I could feel the weight of his judgment on me anyway.

  Two hazmat figures faced us, their filters hissing.

  “Name,” one demanded.

  My lips cracked. “A-Arata Tanaka.”

  “Origin.”

  “The… Island… I-I mean, Japan…” Seeing myself tied up in the reflection of their mask encouraged truthfulness.

  “Intent.”

  I hesitated, looked to Oruun. He gave me nothing. My voice cracked. “S-survival?”

  They exchanged muffled words. Then the taller figure raised both hands to the collar, twisting latches. A hiss of air. The helmet came free. Beneath it was a woman with cropped black hair, eyes like cold glass, and a face carved into stillness.

  She set the helmet down carefully, like it was a crown. “I am President Lidiya Voronina,” she said.

  Bǎo straightened, her smile freezing in place. “Ooooh. Her.”

  The second stayed masked, voice smooth, softened. “Doctor Kaspar Illich. Research division.” His visor lingered a moment too long on Oruun.

  Voronina’s gaze cut across us like a blade. “Most of the world is poison. Russia sealed its skies. Nothing breaches them. Until tonight.”

  Her eyes rested on me, unblinking. “And you survived. That makes you… anomalous.”

  I swallowed, heat rising to my face. “We weren’t… we weren’t trying to breach anything. We just—”

  “Survived,” Oruun finished, bowing his head slightly, voice calm as frost. “As your people do. Madam President.”

  Her mouth twitched, almost approving. “You will be evaluated before New Moscow. We do not entertain variables freely.”

  Kaspar inclined his head. “A controlled environment has been prepared. You’ll be escorted. Do not be clever.”

  Bǎo giggled, sharp and theatrical. “Impossible. I’m always clever.”

  I just nodded. My stomach hadn’t stopped twisting since the crash.

  They didn’t bring us into the city. They gave us something else. We were led out into a containment zone, a scarred crater of stone and ash cordoned by soldiers in heavy gear. Voronina and Kaspar stood behind glass, silent.

  The ground trembled.

  The first Eldros, a monster even more terrifying than the Island Ape, crawled from the ceiling, carapace black as obsidian, limbs jointed backward, mandibles twitching with a faint chatter. Another followed, and another. The tunnel filled with movement, wings buzzing in low harmony.

  “Hive,” Oruun said flatly. “There’s an Eldros taking over New Russia.”

  “Correction,” Bǎo muttered. “Bǎo’s going to stop them.”

  They attacked all at once, too many directions, too little space.

  Bǎo’s sword traced pink arcs that left after-images in the dark, cutting through chitin and spraying translucent ichor. Oruun crushed one mid-leap by bending gravity downward; the impact painted the floor with silver dust.

  I tried to help.

  I spun to catch a flanker, but my body over-rotated. I was used to the counterweight of a right arm that wasn't there anymore. I stumbled, boots skidding on slime.

  An Eldros caught the scent of weakness and lunged.

  I tried to raise a guard, but my right shoulder just twitched, sending a spike of phantom agony straight into my spine. I barely ducked under its claws, hitting the wall hard.

  “Guh...!”

  It shrieked, mandibles snapping inches from my face. Desperate, I drove my boot into its thorax and kicked it back. Green veins flared from my shoulder stump—it felt like tearing the scar tissue open all over again.

  Roots shot forward, impaling the creature in a quick, ugly burst.

  I slid down the wall, gasping, clutching my stump.

  Bǎo grinned through blood and dust. “Still got it, Piggie.”

  “Some parts are missing,” I wheezed.

  The swarm retreated as fast as it had come. Then the tunnels began to widen.

  At the center lay the Queen. She stood at least three meters tall, painfully thin, skin so pale it looked powdered with ash. Her hair hung in ropes of black matted strands that almost touched the floor; bangs hid most of her face until she lifted her head.

  The smile beneath was too wide, framed by shark teeth slick with black saliva. A segmented scorpion tail coiled behind her, ending in a stinger that dripped smoke instead of venom. Bat-like wings, shredded and translucent, folded close against her ribs. She was unlike any Eldros I’ve seen.

  And she laughed. Not human laughter, something cracked, joyous, hungry. The sound bounced off the hive walls.

  “Well,” Bǎo said under her breath. “She’s adorable.”

  Oruun’s voice tightened. “Obsidian Jet.”

  The woman cocked her head, bones creaking. “Ooooooh, Oruun! I’ve seen your little ship buzzing around for years. I’m so glad I can finally get my hands on you.”

  She raised one hand, thin, taloned fingers twitching like antennae, and the air blackened. Dark magic condensed into a sphere that pulsed with reversed color, swallowing our torch-light whole.

  “Scatter!” Oruun barked.

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