REN PLUTO
The words hung in the air, thin and sharp as a razor.
What did you find?
The room—which had been a symphony of chaos—compressed. Jules's sobbing, Zara's hissing, Ravi's nervous shuffling—it all flattened. Faded into a distant buzzing whine.
The only thing Ren could hear was the frantic thump-thump-thump of his own pulse, hammering against his ribs like it wanted out.
Fuck.
She saw him. He'd been so careful, tracking every person, every camera, every exit. And the smallest one, the one ranked dead last, the one he'd dismissed as furniture—she'd seen everything.
Maven Blackthorn stood frozen, her hand still half-raised. Tiny. Barely five feet. Black hair in that severe tight bun. Huge eyes in a pale face. She was trembling so hard he could see it from three feet away.
Ren's brain, which had been on fire with discovery, went ice cold.
He knew this feeling. The cold before the fight. The moment before the glass breaks.
His mind became a checklist.
She saw the hole. She saw me take the package. She knows.
She's a loose end.
In a place like this, you don't leave loose ends. You cut them.
He rose.
Not fast. Not slow. He unfolded, pushing up from his crouch, using the bunk frame for support, eyes never leaving hers. One second he was on the floor. The next he was in her space, body blocking her, pinning her between himself and the cold concrete wall.
Close enough to feel her panicked huffs of breath. Close enough to smell the sanitizer on her skin—sharp, chemical, burning his nose.
The journal was a hard square lump digging into his lower back. Guilty as sin.
Shut her down. Now.
He didn't grab her. Didn't touch her. He just leaned in, close to her ear. Whispered.
Yelling was for people who'd already lost control. Whispering was scarier.
"You saw a piece of dirty floor, 500." His voice was low gravel. "You saw me checking a loose panel. You saw nothing."
He was trying to scare her. Push the fear into her, make her more afraid of him than of whatever she'd seen. It's what he always did. Make yourself the bigger threat. Control the outcome. Live to see another day.
But she didn't react right.
She wasn't crying. Wasn't screaming. Wasn't even nodding.
She was shaking—a fine high-frequency tremor rocking her whole body. But her eyes... her eyes weren't just scared.
She was processing.
She didn't look at him. She stared at the spot on the floor where he'd been kneeling, as if she could see the black empty hole right through his legs.
"It's... not right." Her voice was barely air. "It's... wrong."
Ren froze.
That wasn't the answer he'd expected.
Not I'm going to tell. Not what is that?
It's wrong. Like a math problem that didn't add up. Like a piece of broken code.
He'd pegged her as a shy, quiet girl. A mouse.
He was wrong.
This girl—the one who scrubbed walls, the one ranked dead last—she wasn't just a mouse. She was a fixer. And he'd just shown her the biggest, most broken, most goddamn wrong thing in the whole room.
And confirmed it was real.
Stupid. Stupid.
"Is someone dying back there? What the hell are you two whispering about?"
Zelie's voice. Sharp, annoyed, loud.
It broke the spell.
The room came flooding back. The sobbing. The buzzing light.
And the cameras.
The red light on the dome, twenty feet away. Watching. Always fucking watching.
Ren moved.
No more time for whispers. No more time for threats.
In one fluid motion, he kicked the loose floor panel back into place. THUD. Heavy. Final.
At the same instant, he grabbed Maven's arm.
Brutal grip. A vise. He felt the small bones under her thin sleeve. Felt her flinch—sharp sudden intake of breath. He didn't care.
He yanked her. Hard.
Dragged her out of the corner, out of the shadow, away from the bunk. Spun her around. Slammed his hand against the wall next to her head.
Back in her face. But this time, it wasn't a secret.
It was a performance.
For her. For the room. For the goddamn cameras.
Nyx was watching. He saw her from the corner of his eye. She hadn't moved. Just watched.
"Listen to me, 500." Ren's voice was a low snarl now. Loud enough for the others to hear the tone, not the words. "You are a liability. You're in the way. You're breathing my air. You're a witness to nothing."
He jabbed a finger into her shoulder. Light tap. She was so coiled with terror she jumped anyway.
"You are going to go to your bunk. You are going to unpack. You are going to clean. You're going to do whatever the hell keeps you from fainting. And you are going to forget the last two minutes ever happened."
He stared into her eyes. Tried to burn it into her brain.
"You. Saw. Nothing."
Maven stared back. Eyes wide, wet, black. Trembling so hard she might fall apart.
She didn't speak. She nodded.
Tiny. Frantic. Bird-like.
Got it. Got it. I got it.
"Good." Ren growled.
He let her go. Didn't just release her—shoved her, just a little, away from him. Final act of dismissal.
Maven stumbled. Caught herself. Fled.
Didn't run. Just... evaporated. Scurried to the bunk directly across from his—farthest from the door. Opened her suitcase. Started unpacking. Hands shaking so badly she dropped a pair of socks.
The rest of the unit stared.
Ravi looked horrified. Like he might jump in and "make peace."
Zelie looked disappointed. Like she'd expected the violence to be more interesting.
Jules was still curled on his bunk, watching through his fingers.
Ren ignored them all.
He turned his back on the room. His heart was still a cold hard knot in his chest.
The journal was still in his jeans. Heavy. Secret.
He needed to read it. All of it.
Somewhere the cameras couldn't see.
He stalked toward the one place that might—might—offer a second of privacy.
The bathroom.
Buzzing. Flickering. Filthy.
It would have to do.
The bathroom was smaller than a prison cell.
Ren knew because he'd been in enough of them.
A rust-stained sink. A toilet with no lid. A shower stall with a yellowed curtain that looked like it hadn't been changed since the Clinton administration. The floor tiles were cracked, grout black with mold. The fluorescent light above buzzed like a trapped wasp, flickering in a rhythm that made his eyes hurt.
No camera.
He'd checked. Ceiling corners. Behind the toilet tank. Inside the light fixture. Nothing.
First piece of luck all day.
He locked the door. The bolt was flimsy—a toddler could break it—but it gave him warning. A second. A second was enough.
He pulled the journal from his waistband.
The leather was cold. Damp-warped. The pages crackled when he opened it.
The handwriting was small. Sharp. Frantic. Different inks, different pressures—written over days, weeks, in terror.
He started at the beginning.
Day 1.
My name is Eunice Choi. Rank 497. Tier 4. Deathpig Hall. They say if I work hard, if I prove my value, I can move up. They say the Horacatein system rewards merit.
They lie.
Day 4.
The fog isn't natural. I asked my Horacatein Leader where it comes from. He smiled. Said, "The island breathes." No one else thought that was strange. No one else thought at all.
Day 7.
J. Cole disappeared today. Bunk 8. The one in the corner. He was asking questions about Sub Level 12. Said he heard noises at night. Machinery. Screaming. This morning his bunk was stripped. His name already scrubbed from the roster. Like he never existed.
They said he was "Redacted."
I checked the floorboards under his bunk. Found scratches. He wrote something before they took him. Just one word:
RNUKE.
Ren's blood went cold.
He knew that word. He'd seen it in his stepfather's shed once, scrawled on a newspaper clipping tucked inside a hunting magazine. His stepfather had caught him looking. The beating that followed lasted three days.
Don't ask about things that aren't your business, boy. Some questions get you dead.
Ren turned the page.
Day 12.
I found the compartment. Under bunk 8. J. Cole's hiding spot. He left things. A phone. Vials. A locket. The vials are labeled COUDHAYES. I don't know what it means. I don't know if I want to.
But I know one thing now.
The mist isn't weather. It's a drug. It's in the air we breathe. It's in the water. It's how they keep us calm. Keep us docile. Keep us from asking questions.
I stopped drinking the tap water today.
Day 18.
They moved me to a different room. Said my "performance metrics" required closer monitoring. I think they know. I think they always know.
I hid the package back in the compartment. If you're reading this—if anyone is reading this—it's yours now. The truth is yours.
Don't let them take it from you.
Day 23.
The dreams are getting worse. The Coudhayes—it builds up in your system. Even if you stop drinking the water, it's in the air. It's in everything. I see things at night. Faces in the walls. Hands reaching from the floor.
Last night I dreamed about Sub Level 12. I saw what's down there.
I won't write it down. Some things are too terrible to commit to paper. But I'll tell you this:
The high ranks know. They're not students. They're not leaders.
They're guards.
Day 31.
They came for me tonight.
I heard boots in the hall. I had seconds. I wrote this. I'm hiding it in the compartment. If you find it—
RUN.
Not from the island. You can't.
Run from them. From the ones with the shiny ranks. They're not like us. They're not even people anymore. The Coudhayes changes you. Changes what you are.
I see the door opening—
I have to go—
Tell them—
TELL THEM WE WERE HERE—
The entry ended.
Ren stared at the page. His hands were shaking. He hated that.
He flipped forward. Empty pages. Flipped back. More entries, but his eyes caught on one near the middle:
Day 16.
The RNUKE project. I asked an upperclassman—a real one, Tier 2, not a leader. He laughed. Said everyone knows about RNUKE. Said it's why the island exists. Said it's what they're building under Sub Level 12.
I asked what it is.
He stopped laughing. Walked away without answering.
The next day, he was gone. Redacted.
Don't ask about RNUKE.
Ren closed the journal.
His mind was racing, skidding, trying to find purchase on something solid. There was nothing. Just fog and fear and a word that kept echoing:
RNUKE.
He needed to think. Needed to process. Needed to—
A knock on the door.
Three sharp raps.
Ren shoved the journal back into his waistband. Zipped his jeans. Grabbed the sink edge.
"Yeah?"
The voice that came through was low. Rough. Female.
"We need to talk."
Nyx.
Ren stared at the door. The flimsy bolt. The cracked paint.
He'd known she was watching. Known she'd seen more than she let on. The question was: what did she want?
Only one way to find out.
He unlocked the door.
Nyx stood in the hallway, arms crossed, back to the wall so she could see both the bathroom and the main room. Smart. Her dark eyes flicked past him, checking the bathroom for threats, then settled on his face.
"Walk with me."
It wasn't a request.
She turned without waiting for an answer, heading not toward the main room but toward a narrow service corridor Ren hadn't noticed before—half-hidden behind a rusted pipe, leading deeper into the dark.
Ren hesitated. Every instinct screamed trap.
But the journal was burning a hole in his jeans. And Nyx was the only other person in this shithole who looked like she knew which end of a knife to hold.
He followed.
The service corridor was narrow. Concrete. Pipes ran along the ceiling, sweating condensation that dripped into cold puddles. The air was thicker here. Harder to breathe.
Nyx stopped where the corridor T-ed. She could see both directions. So could Ren.
Good. She knew what she was doing.
"What did you find under the bunk?"
Direct. No preamble. No bullshit.
Ren considered lying. Considered playing dumb. Considered all the ways this could go wrong.
"Nothing useful."
Nyx's eyes narrowed. "Don't."
"Don't what?"
"Don't treat me like the rest of them." She stepped closer. Not threatening—assertive. "I saw your face when you pulled that panel. I saw what you hid in your pocket. And I saw you shut down the mouse before she could blow it for everyone."
She held his gaze.
"I'm not your enemy, 498. But I'm not your friend either. I'm someone who wants to survive long enough to figure out what the hell is happening on this rock. If you found something that helps with that, I want in. If you didn't, I go back to the room and pretend this conversation never happened."
Ren studied her.
Tall. Lean. Muscular in the way of someone who'd done real work, not gym workouts. Dark brown skin, close-cropped black hair, eyes that missed nothing. The kinetic baton still strapped to her thigh. She hadn't unpacked. Probably hadn't even sat down.
She was smart. Careful. Dangerous.
Exactly the kind of person he needed.
Exactly the kind of person who could get him killed.
"What's your real rank?" he asked.
A flicker in her eyes. Just a flicker. "What?"
"Your rank. The machine gave you 495. But that's not your real number, is it?"
Silence.
Then Nyx smiled. It wasn't a nice smile. It was the smile of someone who'd just been recognized.
"497," she said. "I was 497. Then I made them change it."
Ren's blood went cold again. "You can make them change it?"
"No." She stepped closer. Lowered her voice. "But I can make them want to change it. I can make myself look less useful than I am. Less threatening. Less worth watching."
She was looking at him the way he'd looked at the Arch when it spat out 498. With recognition. With understanding.
"You're not 498 either," she said. "You're something else wearing 498 as a mask."
Ren didn't answer.
Didn't need to.
"What did you find?" she asked again.
This time, he told her.
He kept it brief. The journal. The vials. The phone. The name Eunice Choi. The word RNUKE.
Nyx listened without interrupting. When he finished, she was quiet for a long moment.
"Choi," she finally said. "I know that name."
Ren's heart kicked. "How?"
"Orientation packet. They gave us a list of former students—"success stories," people who'd "graduated to Tier 1 placement." Choi was on it. Eunice Choi. Said she'd been promoted to special operations after her second year."
"That's a lie."
"Obviously." Nyx's voice was dry. "The question is: who's telling it? The school? Or someone using her name to cover tracks?"
Ren pulled the journal from his waistband. Handed it to her.
She took it. Flipped through the pages, reading fast, eyes moving like she'd been trained to process information at speed.
When she reached the final entry, she stopped.
"Sub Level 12," she murmured. "What's on Sub Level 12?"
"No idea. But I'm going to find out."
Nyx looked up. "You're going to try. There's a difference."
"You in or out?"
She handed the journal back. "I'm in. But we do this my way."
"Which is?"
"Slow. Careful. No one else knows. Especially not the mouse." Her eyes hardened. "She's a liability. She cracks, we all go down."
Ren thought of Maven's face. The way she'd said it's wrong. The way she'd processed the information instead of panicking.
"She's not what she looks like," he said.
Nyx raised an eyebrow. "You willing to bet your life on that?"
Ren didn't answer.
Because he didn't know.
And not knowing, in a place like this, was the same as being dead.
They walked back to the suite in silence.
The room was quieter now. Jules had stopped crying—just lay on his bunk staring at the ceiling. Zelie was on her phone, still stabbing at the screen like it might magically find signal. Ravi had finished unpacking and was now... organizing the spare bunk. Making it neat. Like that would help.
Sayer was still by the window. Still staring at the wall.
Maven was on her bunk, back to the room, shoulders rigid with tension. She didn't turn when Ren entered.
Good. She was following instructions. For now.
Ren sat on his bunk—the one with the compartment underneath. Nyx took the bunk across from him, facing the door, her baton within easy reach.
The camera in the corner watched. Red light steady.
They're always watching.
Ren lay back. Stared at the ceiling. Felt the journal pressing against his spine.
Somewhere under this island, Eunice Choi had found something terrible. Something worth killing for. Something worth redacting people over.
And now it was his turn.
The fog outside the barred window glowed faintly—that same electric blue. Pulsing. Breathing.
The island breathes.
Ren closed his eyes.
He didn't sleep.
He planned.