The emergency klaxons blared like dying animals. Scarlet light flooded the corridors of the research vessel Astra Veil, flashing over shattered consoles and the burned corpses of security personnel.
Dr. Elara Voss-Thorne limped through the smoke-choked hallway, her arms trembling as they clutched the infant against her chest. The child didn't cry. He only stared up at her with unnaturally quiet eyes the same silvery gray as his father's.
The Astra Veil was falling apart. Bulkheads collapsed behind her. Fire licked at the walls.
"I'm sorry, little star..." she whispered into the boy's hair. "But you can't shine here. Not yet."
They had come too close to the truth. She and Kalen had unearthed something no one should have found Sirioum, buried in the heart of a black asteroid, a fragment of something older than the galaxy itself. A miracle element… useless without the formula. A formula they had encrypted, tested, perfected and then, when the Virellium Pact came for them, destroyed.
Kalen was already dead.
She would be next.
But their son… he could not be found.
She stopped at a sealed cryo-capsule an escape pod refitted for stealth infiltration, preprogrammed with false credentials, orphanage credentials.
One last breath.
She pulled out a bloodstained chip from beneath her coat. a recorded message. A truth she couldn't allow even her son to hear until the time was right.
She placed it in a hidden compartment beneath the baby's blanket.
"Your name is Xion Moon now...."
The baby blinked.
She hesitated only for a second then sealed the pod with a hiss. It clicked into lockdown. Xion's gaze never left her.
Behind her, bootsteps echoed. Metallic. Steady.
They were here.
She turned, cloak fluttering behind her, and walked toward them away from her son, away from hope, into the fire.
As the cryo-pod silently launched into the void, her voice echoed in the chamber, recorded one final time by the ship's dying system:
"You are my last and final hope. One day, you will awaken. And when you do… the stars will burn for what they've done."
Then the screen went black.