Beep. Beep. Beep.
The steady, rhythmic sound of the heart monitor was the first thing Catrin registered.
Then came the smell, clean, sharp, and smelling heavily of expensive antiseptic. She slowly opened her eyes. The bright LED lights of the Ark’s medical bay stabbed at her retinas, making her wince.
She tried to sit up, but a sharp, white-hot flare of agony ripped through her right side.
"Don’t move, Boss."
Quinn’s voice was unusually soft. Catrin blinked until her vision cleared.
Quinn was sitting in a plastic chair beside the medical bed, her sniper rifle resting across her lap. She looked exhausted. Across the room, Graves was standing perfectly still in front of the locked door, his arms crossed. Commander Jax was pacing at the foot of the bed, his heavy armor covered in soot and dried blood.
"Nico," Catrin croaked, her throat dry. Panic instantly spiked in her chest. "Where is he?"
"He’s okay," Jax said quickly, stopping his pacing. He pointed to a secondary hospital bed on the other side of the room, hidden behind a privacy curtain. "Elias put him to sleep. He passed out in the hallway. He doesn’t have a scratch on him."
Catrin let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding. She slumped back against the pillows. She looked down at herself. She was wearing a clean hospital gown, and her ribs were tightly bound in thick, white bandages.
"Elias ran the auto-doc," Quinn explained, handing Catrin a paper cup of water. "Julian punctured a muscle, but he missed your lung by half an inch. You lost a lot of blood. You’ve been out for ten hours."
Catrin took a sip of the water, her mind racing. Ten hours. The breach. The warlord.
"Sit-rep, Commander," Catrin ordered, her voice regaining its usual cold authority. "What happened to the Rust Faction?"
"Wiped out," Jax said flatly. "When they heard the gunshots, the scavengers in the outer ring tried to push forward. Briggs and the boys mowed them down. Once they realized Silas was dead, the survivors broke rank and ran back down the mountain. We sealed the grates. The Ark is secure."
"And Julian?" Catrin asked, her green eyes narrowing into dangerous slits.
Jax crossed his arms, his expression turning confused. "He’s in holding cell four on the detention level. But Boss... I don’t know what happened in that hallway. When I found you, Julian was thrown thirty feet away. Every single rib in his chest is powdered. His lungs are bruised. It looked like he got hit by a truck."
Elias walked into the med-bay just as Jax finished. He was holding a tablet, rubbing his tired eyes.
"The structural damage is crazy, Boss," Elias sighed. "The steel wall behind Julian is physically dented in. And all the lights in the corridor exploded at the exact same time. The power surge was massive."
Catrin’s heart pounded against her ribs.
They didn’t know. They had heard the blast, but they hadn’t seen the telekinetic shockwave. They hadn’t seen Nico.
If her team realized that her four-year-old son was a walking, gravity-crushing alien weapon, everything would change. They were loyal to her because she provided safety and food. But humanity feared what it didn’t understand. Outside, they shot mutants on sight. If they thought Nico was infected, or worse, a monster, she would lose her fortress.
She had to lie. And she had to do it flawlessly.
"Silas had a sonic explosive," Catrin lied, her voice completely smooth, her face a mask of bored annoyance. "It was some kind of scavenged military tech. When Julian stabbed me, he accidentally triggered the detonator on Silas’s belt. It blew Julian backward and fried the corridor’s circuitry."
Elias blinked, looking at his tablet. "A sonic charge? That... actually makes perfect sense. The blast radius matches a concussive wave. I’ll run a sweep for the shrapnel."
"Do that," Catrin said. She started to push the blankets off her legs.
"Boss, you need to lay down," Graves warned from the door.
"I’ll rest when my house is clean," Catrin snapped, ignoring the searing pain in her side. She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and stood up on shaky legs.
She walked over to the privacy curtain and pulled it back.
Nico was fast asleep, buried under a thick, heated blanket. His small chest rose and fell evenly. But resting against the stark white pillow was the undeniable proof of what he really was.
The violent streak of glowing silver-white hair cut through his reddish-brown curls like a neon sign.
Elias walked up behind her, looking down at the sleeping toddler. "Yeah. I was going to ask you about that. When I picked him up, his hair was like that. Is that... from the explosive?"
Catrin’s mind worked at a million miles an hour.
"Marie Antoinette syndrome," Catrin said, not missing a beat. She looked at Elias with the fiercely protective eyes of a traumatized mother. "It’s a real medical condition. Extreme psychological trauma can cause the hair pigment to instantly bleach. He watched his father stab me, Elias. The shock did it."
Quinn swore under her breath, looking sick to her stomach. "That poor kid."
"He’s going to be fine," Catrin said firmly. She turned to face her team, stepping between them and her son’s bed. "I want everyone out of the med-bay. I need a moment alone with him. Jax, go double-check the perimeter cameras. Elias, patch the lighting grid. Quinn, get some sleep."
Jax hesitated, looking at her bloody bandages. "You sure, Boss?"
"That’s an order, Commander," she said.
Jax nodded respectfully. "Yes, ma’am. Let’s go, people."
The four of them filed out of the med-bay. The heavy door hissed shut, and the lock clicked.
Catrin was finally alone.
She let out a long, shaky breath and leaned against Nico’s bed, clutching her bandaged side. She reached out with a trembling hand and gently stroked his hair. The silver streak felt softer than the rest of his curls. It practically hummed with an invisible, terrifying energy.
"What did I get myself into?" Catrin whispered into the empty room.
She couldn’t leave the silver streak. It was too obvious. It looked too inhuman. If any of the mercenaries looked closely enough, they would realize it wasn’t just white hair, it possessed a literal, metallic glow.
Catrin closed her eyes and focused her mind.
Retrieve.
Deep within her hidden, frozen spatial dimension, her mind sorted through the billions of dollars of luxury goods, survival gear, and supplies she had hoarded before the apocalypse. She bypassed the pallets of MREs and the crates of military hardware, zeroing in on the beauty supply crates she had looted from a high-end salon.
A small, dark-brown root-touch-up spray can materialized directly into the palm of her hand.
Catrin quickly shook the can. Being as gentle as possible so she wouldn’t wake him, she sprayed the dark brown pigment over the glowing silver streak. She rubbed it into the strands, completely masking the alien glow. Within seconds, Nico looked like a perfectly normal, human toddler again.
Store.
The empty can vanished back into the void of her spatial dimension.
Catrin let out a deep sigh of relief. The physical proof was hidden. But there was still one massive loose end left in the fortress.
Julian.
Julian had seen the golden eyes. Julian had felt the telekinetic crush. If he opened his mouth to Jax or the guards, her lie would fall apart.
Catrin walked over to the medical supply cabinet. She grabbed a thick, black trench coat and pulled it on over her hospital gown to hide her bandages. She slipped a small, loaded pistol into the pocket of the coat.
She left the med-bay, locking the door securely behind her.
She took the elevator down to the detention level. The air down here was cold and smelled of damp concrete. Holding Cell Four was at the end of the hall.
Catrin swiped her security card. The heavy iron door slid open.
Julian was lying on a metal cot in the corner of the dark cell. He looked absolutely horrifying. His chest was wrapped in tight medical braces, but his breathing was wet and shallow. Both of his eyes were swollen shut, and dried blood caked his lips.
When he heard the door open, he flinched violently, letting out a pathetic whimper.
Catrin dragged a metal chair to the center of the cell and sat down. She crossed her legs, looking at him with absolute, freezing contempt.
"Hello, Julian," she said softly.
Julian cracked one swollen eye open. When he saw her, true, primal terror washed over his broken face. He tried to scramble backward against the wall, but his crushed ribs made him scream in agony.
"Keep him away from me!" Julian sobbed, his voice bubbling with fluid. "Keep that monster away from me! He’s a demon! Catrin, please! Don’t let him look at me again!"
Catrin tilted her head. She didn’t correct him. She didn’t explain. She let the terror marinate.
"My son is resting," Catrin said smoothly. "But whether or not he comes down here to finish the job depends entirely on you."
Julian was shaking so hard his teeth rattled against each other. "What do you want?"
Catrin leaned forward, her green eyes piercing through the darkness of the cell.
"You are going to forget what you saw," Catrin commanded, her voice leaving no room for argument. "If you breathe a single word about Nico to my guards... if you even hint that he is anything other than a normal little boy... I won’t shoot you. I will open this door, and I will let Nico come in here to play."
Julian let out a choked gasp, tears streaming down his bruised face. "I won’t say anything! I swear! I’ll tell them it was a bomb! I’ll tell them whatever you want!"
"Good." Catrin stood up, kicking the chair aside. "Enjoy the concrete, Julian. It’s exactly what you deserve."
She turned and walked out of the cell, the heavy iron door slamming shut behind her.
Her secret was safe for now. The team believed her. Julian was silenced.
But as Catrin walked back to the elevator, she looked up at the thick titanium ceiling of her fortress. A cold, nagging dread settled in the pit of her stomach. The Ark could protect her from warlords, scavengers, and the freezing weather.
But if Nico’s power had flared that brightly... what else was out there looking at the sky?