Irina led them down a long, softly lit corridor where the hum of the facility deepened into something almost like a heartbeat, doors sliding open with quiet precision, finally allowing them somewhere to rest after everything they had bled through to stand here.
The door to their quarters opened, and the space greeted them with that strange in-between feeling of military rooms. But these were too clean to feel lived in, too human to feel like a machine, the kind of place designed for survival with the illusion of comfort layered on top.
They spilled inside.
The rec room still smelled faintly of antiseptic and metal, but laughter broke through it immediately, sharp and bright, like sparks in a dark tunnel. Blood had dried on their uniforms. Their insignias were fresh, still sore against their chests, and none of their nervous systems had accepted that the moment had passed.
Yoon entered.
Montoya snapped to attention with the crispness of instinct.
"Ensign!"
Yoon blinked. "What—"
He dropped the salute and extended his hand. "Second Lieutenant."
She reached for it.
He snapped back to attention. "Ensign!"
Nakamura joined in. Saluting. "Ensign."
Handshake. "Second Lieutenant."
Salute again.
Yoon's jaw tightened. "If you all don't—"
"Ensign!" Hagen cut in, Adeoye added and Singh followed.
All saluting now, synchronized, absurdly perfect.
Yoon sighed and extended her hand.
They dropped into handshakes. "Second Lieutenant!"
Then, instantly, back to salutes.
"Ensign!"
"I'm going to have you all—"
Davis lifted a hand lazily from the couch. "My rank is cooler than yours, Privates."
Silence.
Nakamura was the first to turn, slowly. "What?"
"Lance Corporal," Davis grinned. "Sounds way better than 'Private First Class.'"
Hagen snorted. "It's literally the same pay grade."
"Not the same title."
"It's Marine for 'fancy Private,'" Adeoye said flatly.
"It's Lance Corporal. There's a lance."
"You don't get an actual lance, Davis."
"I could get one."
"Where? The medieval fair?"
Montoya leaned against the wall, smirking while showing off his insignia. "Airman First Class. That's a real rank."
"You're Air Force," Nakamura said. "You don't count."
"I count more than 'fancy Private.'"
"At least I'm not Navy," Davis muttered.
Yoon's voice cut through the noise. "Are you all done?"
They looked at her and she raised an eyebrow.
They saluted.
"Ensign!"
She turned and walked out. Behind her, muffled laughter. Fiona didn't laugh. She walked down the short hall to her assigned room, her steps quieter than they had been in months.
The door slid open.
The room was small. Functional. A narrow bunk fixed into the wall. A compact desk bolted to the floor. A screen mounted above it. Communications, news, calls, distraction on command.
She stepped inside and the door closed, then silence.
Her eyes drifted to the desk. A single photograph rested there.
Camilla.
There was a real, printed photo.
Camilla standing in front of a mirror, testing new clothes for her new job, smiling with that particular brightness that didn't just light her face but seemed to radiate outward, touching everything around her, the same smile Fiona remembered from mornings before the world shattered.
There was a note beneath it with Ho-jin's handwriting.
This is the best picture I could take of her, so you never forget why you are doing all this. Good luck, Fiona.
Her breath stalled.
Her hand rose almost without permission.
But it stopped.
There was nothing between her fingertips and the photograph but air. It might as well have been intergalactic space.
She looked at her hand as though it belonged to someone she had only recently met. It bore the same scars. The same broken nails. The same swollen knuckles. But she no longer remembered when it had stopped being the hand that tucked Camilla into bed, a lifetime ago.
She almost touched the photograph.
These hands.
They had crossed too many borders. They had broken bones, had pulled triggers, had carried bodies.
Those made sense.
But a photograph...
A photograph did not.
Her fingers curled inward while pulling her hand back. She couldn't touch it. She couldn't touch her. But she stared at the photo instead.
Too long.
Her chest tightened, her breath shortened and her vision blurred.
She turned and walked out of the room.
Didn't look back.
The hallway felt longer this time, quieter and colder. Each step echoed like a question she didn't want to answer, didn't have the answer.
She found herself outside Irina's office.
Yoon stood there waiting. Leaning lightly against the wall, arms crossed, but something in her posture was different. Lighter, as if gravity had loosened its grip on her shoulders.
"Um, Ensign?" Fiona said.
Yoon looked up. Smiled. "You going to see the commander?"
Fiona nodded.
Yoon studied her for a moment. "I was just with Irina. She told me."
"Told you what?"
"That Sky brought my aunt and my mom here."
Fiona blinked. "Here?"
"Yeah." Yoon smiled, but something sharp glinted behind her eyes. "They're getting the treatment they couldn't get back home. No paperwork. No waiting lists. No excuses." She exhaled. "I don't think I've ever owed anyone this much." Her smile held but her eyes didn't.
She straightened. "I'll catch up with you later. I have a briefing."
Fiona nodded.
Yoon paused. "Vega."
"Yeah?"
"…Thank you."
Then she turned and walked back to their quarters.
Fiona kept going, the medical wing was colder. Everything was white here, even the silence. The kind of place where pain was hidden, not erased.
Fiona stopped in front of the observation window.
And saw him.
Sky lay suspended inside a cocoon of light and machinery, his body weightless, his skin pale under the glow, fibers carrying actual starlight from the surface. Real stars, real night. Down into the depths, feeding the chamber as nanobots moved like invisible constellations beneath his skin, repairing what war had taken.
He looked… fragile.
Smaller.
Breakable.
Her reflection appeared in the glass. She didn't see herself, she saw a monster.
She staggered but didn't fall.
A nurse entered quietly behind her.
"Oh, the commander said you would come," she said. "So he left you these."
She handed Fiona a book. The Modern Prometheus.
The original, and inside she saw the word Anonymous crossed out. Below it, in Sky's handwriting:
Master Mary Shelley.
Her breath caught.
The nurse handed her a holodisk.
Its label read: Inuyashiki.
"He also said you would have questions," the nurse continued softly. "Hopefully you can find your answers in those."
Fiona didn't move. She couldn't even speak, couldn't blink either. She just stared at the reflection of herself in the glass.
The monster stared back.
She turned and forced herself to walk away.