Youri woke hours later.
When his eyes opened, the world was white.
Not the sterile white of a medical bay, but something softer. Muted. The walls around him were padded—thick, seamless panels that absorbed both sound and impact. They curved slightly at the edges, giving the room a compressed, insulated feeling. No corners sharp enough to injure. No edges to grip.
Isolation.
He lay on a single bed positioned against the far left wall. It was narrow, secured to the floor, its frame reinforced and bolted in place. Restraint bands lay unused at its sides, but he didn't need them.
He couldn't move.
Not his arms.
Not his legs.
Not even his fingers.
Only his eyes obeyed him.
Slowly, he shifted his gaze.
The front wall was not padded. It was a vast sheet of black tempered glass stretching from floor to ceiling. Opaque. Reflective. It mirrored him faintly—his still body against the sterile white surroundings. He looked small. Contained.
Trapped.
He tried to move.
Nothing responded.
His muscles felt distant, as though they belonged to someone else.
Sedatives.
His breathing was steady, mechanical. He could feel his heart beating, slow and controlled. His body was alive.
But it felt detached from him.
Then—
A voice broke the silence.
"I see you woke up."
Youri's pupils tightened instantly.
He knew that voice.
Halvek.
It came from speakers embedded somewhere in the walls, echoing softly but clearly.
"Your first mission was a success," Halvek continued, calm, almost conversational. "You should be proud of that."
Youri could only blink.
Pride.
The word meant nothing.
"I have to say, D7," Halvek went on, "you have truly amazed us with your performance. Firing the antimatter cannon and living to tell the tale is something no pilot has accomplished before."
A faint pause.
"But you seem… special."
The black glass shifted.
Without warning, it became transparent.
Behind it stood Halvek and the doctor. The observation room beyond was dimly lit, consoles glowing faintly around them. Halvek's hands were clasped behind his back, posture rigid as always. The doctor stood slightly behind him, arms folded, eyes studying Youri carefully.
"Due to your recent outburst," Halvek said evenly, "you are under heavy sedatives. Your post-Flow cognitive backlash was… concerning."
The doctor stepped forward slightly.
"In approximately three hours," he explained clinically, "you will regain full motor control. When that time comes, we ask that you refrain from harming yourself."
The words reached Youri.
He heard them.
But they did not land.
They drifted past him like distant radio static.
He stared through the glass at the two men as if looking through water.
Youri had struggled since childhood.
Hardship had not been an event in his life—it had been the foundation of it. Loss had carved itself into him early and often. Torture, betrayal, abandonment—he had known them all in different forms. And yet, every time he had fallen, he had found a way back.
He had clawed his way toward the light.
He had endured.
He had survived.
But this…
This was different.
As he lay on that cold bed, unable to move, something inside him had not merely broken.
It had gone quiet.
His gaze was empty—not wild, not furious, not grieving.
Empty.
He had the look of a man who had exhausted every emotion available to him.
A man who had finally understood something irreversible.
Everything he touched withered.
Everyone he loved disappeared.
Every place he tried to protect burned.
He had fought to save his home.
He had trained, bled, endured humiliation and pain for that singular purpose.
And in the end—
He had erased it himself.
The trigger had not been pulled by a monster.
It had been pulled by him.
Three billion lives.
Gone in a beam of gray light.
He could still see it when he closed his eyes—the antimatter wave swallowing atmosphere, cities flickering out like sparks in a storm. He had watched it happen without flinching.
Flow State.
They had hollowed him out and called it efficiency.
They had stripped him of hesitation and called it strength.
Now the hesitation had returned.
And it was unbearable.
"There was no neurological collapse beyond expectation," the doctor was saying behind the glass. "Cognitive function remains intact."
Halvek nodded faintly.
"Good."
They were discussing him like equipment.
Like a device that had malfunctioned and required recalibration.
Youri's mind drifted inward.
He had always known something about himself.
Even before the academy.
Even before Altopereh.
He had not been born from love.
He had not been shaped by gentle hands or protected by fate.
He was the result of something else.
A project.
A forbidden experiment.
A code written by a madman who believed he could rewrite life itself.
Deep down, Youri had always felt it.
The distance.
The difference.
He did not belong to the world the way others did.
He moved through it like a borrowed presence.
Perhaps that was why chaos followed him.
Perhaps that was why peace never stayed.
He had tried to cling to something pure.
To sunlight in open fields.
To laughter around a table.
To faces that smiled without fear.
But life had rejected him every time.
And now—
There was nothing left to cling to.
The goal he had chased his entire life—Trying to be free—was gone.
Not stolen.
Not taken.
Erased by his own hand.
What can a man do after that?
What remained of a man who destroyed his own world?
His body still lived.
He could feel its pain even through the sedation. The ache in his bones. The faint throb behind his eyes. The weight of scars layered across his skin.
Each one told a story.
Each one marked a battle fought for survival.
For hope.
But hope was gone now.
He was not chosen by destiny.
He was not guided by god.
He was not saved by love.
He was engineered.
Manufactured.
Conditioned.
A weapon shaped to fulfill a purpose forbidden by nature itself.
And weapons do not deserve peace.
They are forged.
Used.
And discarded.
His eyelids grew heavy.
Not from the sedatives.
From surrender.
He stopped trying to understand.
Stopped trying to feel.
Stopped trying to justify.
If life did not want him—
Then he would stop wanting life.
Behind the glass, Halvek watched in silence.
"He's not reacting," the doctor murmured.
"He doesn't need to," Halvek replied quietly. "He completed the mission."
Youri closed his eyes.
He did not struggle.
He did not rage.
He did not cry.
In that padded white room, surrounded by silence and observation, something subtle shifted.
The boy who had once run beneath summer skies.
The boy who had dreamed of saving his home.
The boy who had believed suffering had meaning.
He faded.
Not in violence.
Not in fire.
But in quiet resignation.
Youri Kronos died there—not physically, not biologically.
But in spirit.
In his place remained something colder.
Something simpler.
Purpose without question.
Obedience without emotion.
Pain without resistance.
When he opened his eyes again hours later, control would return to his limbs.
But the warmth behind them would not.
There would be no more hesitation.
No more grief.
No more dreams of sunlight or long tables filled with laughter.
Only directives.
Coordinates.
Targets.
And the silent understanding that he had finally become what he was always meant to be.
D7.
Pilot of Altopereh.