The boy's face had gone pale from what he had just witnessed.
His chest rose and fell in ragged bursts, every muscle trembling as if the memory of the slaughter had seeped into his bones. The paralytic effects of the baton were fading, but his mind was still frozen by fear.
With effort, he pushed himself off the blood-soaked ground, knees wobbling, and staggered upright. Then instinct took over—he turned to run.
But before he could take a step, a sharp tug seized the back of his tunic, yanking him off balance.
"You're not going anywhere," Vyzen said, voice low and certain. He slung the boy over his shoulder as though he weighed nothing, the struggling limbs no more than a nuisance.
"Let me go! You monster—let me go!" the boy shrieked, thrashing, his fists pounding against Vyzen's armored back.
Blood still dripped from Vyzen's fingers. It smeared across the boy's clothes as he struggled, painting streaks of red down his back.
Vyzen barely noticed. His mind was still fogged with that familiar numbness. The eerie hollow that always followed a kill.
It wasn't rage.
It wasn't sorrow.
Not even hate.
He knew where those emotions lived—buried somewhere deep, locked behind walls he no longer visited.
This state was different. A sharpened emptiness. A void sharpened into a scalpel. Precise. Efficient. Merciless.
A shiver crawled down his spine.
He stared at his hand, flexing the bloodied knuckles. Was that really me who butchered that Mantos?
There was no guilt in the answer. Only the silence of something inside him that had stopped being human long ago.
Is it the organism they put in me? he thought. That dead thing in my blood? Or was it always me? Just better at pretending otherwise?
He forced the thoughts aside. Dwelling on them was poison. He had a real problem now.
That voice. The one on the comm. Admin.
Administrators weren't field commanders. They weren't supposed to exist here, on a grave-world like Aqski. They were the iron core of the Arbiterium's bureaucracy—nurtured from birth, handpicked, augmented with computational implants until their minds ran like living supercomputers. They advised the Supreme Arbiter directly. They didn't travel to rotten planets unless there was something here worth fortunes.
This boy. This human.
It wasn't chance. The Arbiterium wanted him badly. Enough to send Administrators and their Peace Force hounds.
Vyzen's jaw tightened. That meant backup was already on its way.
He needed to move.
He crouched low, coiling his muscles, and launched himself up the cliff face in bounding leaps. The boy pounded his fists against Vyzen's back, but his resistance meant nothing. Vyzen's stride never broke until the familiar silhouette of his ship came into view.
The Butterfly.
It crouched on the ridgeline like some predatory insect, its wide solar wings spread open to drink the pale light of Aqski's star. The hull's angles caught no reflection—absorbing light through Arnon-core panels, charging its unusual engines. Its design was ugly, asymmetrical, and unlike any standard Federation ship. That was why Vyzen loved it. The Butterfly was unreliable to others, but to him, it had never failed.
He approached, boots grinding rock, and palmed the hatch. It hissed open. Vyzen stepped inside without ceremony and tossed the boy against the inner wall. He hit with a grunt, sliding down in a heap.
Vyzen didn't even bother tying him up.
"Don't move," he muttered, tone flat, as he moved toward the controls.
The boy coughed, eyes flashing with fury. His hand slipped to his belt.
A knife. Small, crude, but precious—passed down from his father. His last tie to a family stolen from him.
With a strangled scream, he lunged.
"DAMN YOU! YOU MONSTER!"
He stabbed, over and over, the blade clanging uselessly against Vyzen's back and side. Each strike bounced, sparks spitting from the augmented flesh.
Vyzen barely flinched. Slowly, he turned his head, meeting the boy's desperate eyes. He caught the knife mid-swing, holding it effortlessly.
"Really?" he asked, voice weary. "You thought this would work on me?"
His hand shifted, unraveling into a blade of its own. He tapped the knife's edge once. The steel chipped, splintering in half. Vyzen flicked the broken hilt across the cabin.
The boy collapsed to his knees. Tears welled in his eyes, fury draining into despair. His father's knife—destroyed like it was nothing.
Vyzen turned back to the console, dismissing him as one might dismiss a shadow. His voice came again, flat and final:
"I don't want to hear another sound."
Engines ignited. The gyroscope whined beneath the floor. The Butterfly's wings folded inward, magnetic coils humming, and then the ship lifted gracefully into the air, cutting free of the moorlands and ascending toward the sky.
The boy—Yuviel—dragged himself into a corner. He wrapped his arms around his knees, trembling. The sound of his breath echoed against the cabin walls.
But Vyzen didn't have time to think about him.
Because a shadow fell across the viewport.
A ship. A warship. Massive, its shape blotting out the upper atmosphere as they ascended.
It dwarfed the Butterfly a hundred times over, its hull bristling with rupture cannons. Twenty on each flank.
Vyzen cursed under his breath. "They know."
The cannons glowed with yellow fury, charging.
Vyzen gripped the controls. The Butterfly lurched sideways, diving into a sharp vector. Yuviel was thrown across the cabin like a ragdoll, slamming into the wall.
The rupture blast fired. The sky lit up in a blaze of destruction. Vyzen spun the Butterfly in a rolling arc, the blast tearing past by inches. The shockwave rattled the hull, but they lived.
The boy clutched the wall, eyes wide with terror, trying not to vomit as the ship twisted violently again. Vyzen didn't look at him. He couldn't afford distraction.
The Butterfly wasn't a warship. It carried no heavy cannons, no shield projectors, nothing but a pair of repurposed ground rifles strapped beneath its hull. It was fragile in any straight fight.
But it was fast. Faster than anything the Arbiterium built.
And speed was all Vyzen ever needed.
Another rupture beam roared past them, shredding the atmosphere. Vyzen's fingers flew over the controls, pushing the Butterfly into maneuvers that should have snapped its wings. The ship groaned, creaked, but held.
They broke free of the sky.
Aqski hung behind them, shrinking to a pale green orb streaked with clouds and seas. Three moons circled in silence: Ayim. Hecan. Nesephir.
Ghosts orbiting a corpse of a world.
Yuviel's breath caught. His throat tightened. That small planet—that scarred rock—was all he had ever known. Home. And now it drifted away behind him, untouchable, lost. His eyes burned. He pressed his forehead to his knees and sobbed, quietly this time.
Vyzen said nothing. He kept his eyes fixed on the navigation panel. His mind was already racing.
He couldn't risk the government drifters. They'd be crawling with enforcers by now. His only option was the Trade Union's drifter, two days out. From there, he had choices—none of them good.
He could contact the Dark Trade Union, sell the boy into chains. Or deliver him straight to the Arbiterium for a bounty.
One path ended in slavery.
The other—something far worse.
Vyzen's jaw clenched. His knuckles tightened around the controls.
For now, he set the course, silent.
The Butterfly carried them into the void, leaving only the ashes of Aqski behind.
And in the corner of the cabin, Yuviel drifted into exhausted, tear-streaked sleep.