The crawler’s engines echoed over the dead plains.
Above, the sky was a bruised violet, lightning rippling across the horizon.
Inside the crawler, silence pressed down like a weight.
Raze was at the controls, jaw clenched. Iko sat behind him, typing furiously on her holo-pad. Nova leaned against the side wall, watching Leon.
He hadn’t spoken since Vega-9.
His gaze was fixed out the window, the red-and-blue light of his eyes reflecting faintly in the glass. His hand trembled slightly every few minutes, he’d tighten his fist until the tremor stopped.
[Host Status: Critical.]
[Infection Rate: 23.8%.]
[Cognitive Drift: Increasing.]
He ignored the warnings — the way he always did.
Finally, Nova broke the silence. “We need to talk about what happened back there.”
Leon didn’t turn. “No
