Salet slammed the table, the device before him chirping mockingly with its result.
Base Constituents: Undeterminable.
Seven trials. Seven failures.
The beeping faded into the hum of the lab, and for a moment he only stared at the vial in his gloved hand. A clear fluid, faintly luminescent, as ordinary as distilled water. And yet, Hilkor's warning still burned in his ears. Test it. Don't use it on anyone.
Hilkor. His Aren friend, who had vanished the moment he sent it.
Salet turned the vial slowly between his fingers, silver light from the lab catching the sheen of the liquid. The Aren had been leashed since the war, confined under Tihon oversight so tight a mouse couldn't crawl off-world without notice. They were blood-kin, alike in all things but skin—Aren gold against Tihon silver—and yet chained by the shame of their loss. There should be no way they had made something new.
And still, whispers carried through the Concord's halls: the Aren were building a weapon. A weapon unlike anything before.
Salet had dismissed it—until now.
He'd tested the vial on insects, on vermin, even on lab animals. Nothing. No effects. No clue. Just a maddening mystery. And because Hilkor's note forbade testing on people, he had obeyed.
He rubbed his temples, exhaustion fogging his thoughts. What are you hiding, Hilkor? What have the Aren done—
A cough cut through the lab. Sharp. Wet.
Salet froze, eyes flicking toward the source. A young technician, bent double, one hand clawing at his throat. Another cough followed, from a woman across the bay. Then another, and another.
The sound multiplied, filling the sterile chamber with a ragged chorus. Choking. Retching.
The alarms screamed to life, crimson lights bathing the room. Panic surged like a flood. Tihon scientists staggered, collapsed, blood flecking their lips. The air tasted of iron and ash.
Salet's stomach clenched. His instruments still flashed green. Oxygen levels normal. No toxins detected. And yet—
His gut told him before his mind could accept it.
The Aren had done it.
The vial wasn't poison to all life. It was tuned. Tuned to them—to the Tihon alone.
His people were dying by the dozens, keeling over their benches, silver-skinned bodies littering the floor. Their golden kin would breathe this same air without so much as a cough.
The implications thundered through him. This wasn't just a weapon—it was a declaration. The Aren had crafted a key to genocide, one drop at a time. If the Concord knew, war wasn't coming. War was already here.
"Gods…" Salet whispered. The vial felt suddenly heavier in his hand.
He staggered back as another body hit the floor. The stench of bile, the shrieks, the pounding alarms—all pressing in.
Salet's every instinct screamed to flee. And yet as he turned toward the door, vial clutched tight, one thought anchored him:
If this truth leaves the lab, the galaxy burns.
And so he ran—
not for his life,
but to stop what came next.
They'd struck the scientists first. His wife. His children. He had to save them. He was no use here—he'd be gone any moment now. He needed somewhere safe, somewhere to work on a cure.
Every breath burned like acid, every step carried him past the fallen. He knew none would rise again. His boots hammered the deck toward the launch spire, where the escape pods waited, half-forgotten relics from the old war.
He reached one, hands trembling, jamming the hatch release. The pod hissed open, a coffin of steel and frost. He threw himself inside. His family's faces flashed in his mind.
The console blinked awake. Too many switches, too little time. His vision blurred as the burning spread to his chest. Salet slammed at controls, praying for thrust, for anything that would get him away from Exon's poisoned sky. The pod beeped and a countdown began.
Something hissed. Cold mist. The pod sealed, and suddenly the weight on his lungs vanished, replaced by a creeping numbness that spread through his veins.
His last coherent thought was horror at his mistake—the cryo-sequence. Blastoff.
And then darkness swallowed him.