Agent Anni steps into the containment sector.
Behind her, the airlock seals with a hiss —
as if the station itself, like some iron-jawed beast,
is locking its teeth shut.
Cutting her off from the rest of the world.
Two guards follow at her heels —
broad-shouldered, silent.
Only their boots hammer a slow rhythm
against the grated metal floor.
---
The sector is drowned in a dead, white light.
So bright it burns away the very idea of shadows.
The walls' metal doesn't feel sterile —
it feels bled dry.
The air trembles with stored tension.
It smells of dust, ozone, scorched servos…
and something else.
Something ancient.
As if a ghost from the past has taken up residence here,
smouldering, refusing to let the living or the dead rest.
It is not the smell of death.
It is the smell of what once was hope.
---
At the center — a frozen tableau.
Android figures hang suspended in the air,
as if cut out of the flow of time.
Magnetic clamps hold them,
vibrating so faintly it feels like they fear
to let go too soon.
They are motionless.
Eyes closed.
Yet their bodies are taut as strings.
They feel. They wait.
Anni stops.
Her face — a mask of indifference.
But her fist trembles.
I was supposed to fix them.
And I am angry.
---
A single, short gesture —
and the guards trigger the procedure.
A thin hum cuts through the chamber,
like a cathedral bell tolling through vacuum.
The androids begin to move.
Slowly.
Like participants in some ritual — ancient, doomed.
They glide toward the airlock,
drawn-out, silent,
like puppets whose strings are pulled by gods.
"Load them onto the shuttle,"
Anni orders, her voice like a sentence passed.
"No delays. Protocol only.
Anyone who lags — stays behind."
The metal answers with echo.
The guards' voices sound muffled,
as if coming from inside a sarcophagus.
And all of it happens…
too slowly.
Like a dream before death.
---
Anni approaches the last two.
Ragnar. Veronica.
Their names are no longer just names —
they are history.
They are the ones who never bent the knee.
Even now — shackled, silent —
their posture speaks louder than words.
In Ragnar's eyes burns a glint of mocking fire.
He looks at Anni
as if he has already seen the end of the play
before the third act begins.
"Congratulations,"
she says, her voice ice-cold,
"from refuse to icons. From prisoners… to the free."
She narrows her eyes,
her tone sweet as venom.
"Though… which of us is truly free?"
---
Ragnar smirks.
"Pure humanism. I'm almost in tears.
Someone scared you, Anni?
Or have you always been this… flexible?"
"Maybe I simply listened to reason,"
she replies evenly, but with a blade hidden in the words.
"We have been made an offer.
And in these games, as you well know…
pride is the first thing to burn."
---
"Smells like surrender,"
Veronica cuts in, her tone ironic.
"Though sometimes it's the only way to survive,"
she adds with a nearly cheerful curl of the lips.
"Just… not our way."
---
The magnets release with a sharp, dry snap.
The bodies shift, drawn toward the black, ink-dark airlock.
And then—
"Wait,"
Veronica whispers.
Her head turns a fraction,
as far as the clamp allows.
Anni halts at the exit.
Slowly, cautiously, she turns her head.
"What?"
"The amulet.
On my chest.
Take it.
It might… be useful to you. For your experiments."
---
A pause.
Anni does not move.
Suspicion glints in her eyes.
A trap? A beacon?
Or… a gift?
She approaches.
Gently lifts the object away:
dark, inscribed with symbols older than memory.
The amulet is warm.
And it hums faintly.
As though a foreign mind is breathing inside it.
"For research, then,"
Anni murmurs.
"Prudent."
She slips it into a hidden pocket.
And inside — gooseflesh.
As if something has entered with her.
---
A guard's voice crackles in the comm-channel:
"Loading complete. All subjects at the airlock."
Anni nods.
Her face — blank again.
"Release them."
The sound is a chorus of snaps —
sharp, clean.
Like a gunshot.
Like an ending.
Like a birth.
The magnets die.
The shackles fall with a metallic ring.
Chains cast off,
spinning into the air before disappearing into the walls.
For a moment, everything stops.
Even time.
---
Then — movement.
The docking collar retracts.
The hatch closes.
Dull. Final.
Like the lid of a sarcophagus.
The shuttle detaches.
No sound. No farewells.
No backward glance.
Within seconds it is gone into the black,
where one cannot tell
if it is salvation…
or exile.
Or both.
---
Anni remains alone,
standing before the empty airlock.
Her face — even.
But in her pocket, her fingers feel the warm pulse.
The amulet breathes.
As if inside it,
a voice is waiting.
A voice that has not yet been allowed to speak.
Perhaps it is an answer.
Or perhaps — the beginning of the end.