REN PLUTO
The walk back to Deathpig was a death march.
Ren was a ghost. A bloody, limping ghost.
The fog on the cliff was thick, swirling around his knees, but the fog in his head was worse.
Dr. Gray. Tomorrow. 0900.
Thorean's voice. Amused. As if Ren had landed in a trap.
He hadn't been punished in that office. He'd been vetted.
Tate, the witness, had been screaming about murder and Erasure. And Thorean had just... smiled. Checked the cameras. Sent a dive team. When they found nothing... he hadn't punished Ren for the fight.
He'd rewarded him for the cleanup.
Law 11.6. If they can't find the body, it didn't happen.
Ren had just passed the real test. The one not in the handbook.
He was in agony. The stop at the infirmary had been a joke. A bored medic with dead eyes looked at his shoulder—dislocated, fiery mess—and gave him a staple gun for the gash on his head.
"We don't waste painkillers on Pigs." The medic's voice droned. "Your rank isn't high enough for trauma care. Be more careful next time, 448."
So Ren had shoved his own shoulder back into the socket.
The pop was so loud he blacked out for a second.
Now he was just... raw. Raw and pissed.
He got to the door of 734. 0400. The real dead time at Vara Rose.
Didn't knock. Just shoved it open.
The room was... waiting.
No one asleep. All there. A silent terrified tableau of Pigs.
Ravi on his feet. Pacing. Looked like he'd aged ten years.
Nyx on her bunk. Sharpening a knife. Shing-shing-shing. The only sound.
Jules a wreck. Rocking back and forth on his bunk. Eyes screwed shut.
Zelie painting her nails. Chemical smell sharp. Apathy as armor.
Sayer a lump in her hoodie. Perfectly still.
Maven at her lab. She'd scavenged a goddamn hot plate from somewhere. Cooking. The Coudhayes vial in front of her. Running low-voltage current through it from a battery pack. A fucking alchemist.
The second Ren walked in, they all froze.
The shing stopped.
Ravi's pacing stopped.
Maven's head snapped up.
They weren't looking at him.
They were looking at his face.
"God..." Ravi whispered. Not looking at the blood. Looking at the staples. Three black metal staples holding the gash on his forehead closed.
"What did they do to you?" Jules whimpered.
Ren just... walked. Limped past them. Every step a spike of glass.
Stalked into the center of the room. A target. Now so were they.
He dug in his pocket. Covered in his own blood. Thorne's blood. Didn't care.
Pulled out the stolen handheld reader. Tossed it onto the nearest bunk.
Heavy plastic thud.
Nyx just... looked at it.
"Tate sang." Ren's voice flat. "Went right to Thorean. Invoked the Severance Clause."
The room stopped breathing.
"And?" Ravi whispered. Voice cracking.
Ren turned. Looked at them. The whole pathetic terrified crew.
"And Thorean laughed."
Confusion on Ravi's face.
"No body." Ren's voice flat. "Tate got flagged twenty points for falsifying a report. They're dragging him to the Pit."
He let that sink in.
Just confessed to murder. Just confessed to beating the system.
Ravi's face went from pale to gray. "You killed him."
"He got in my way." Ren snarled. "I cleaned up. That's the law."
He looked at Maven. Staring at him. Eyes wide. Not with fear.
With understanding.
"You're a monster." Jules sobbed from his bunk.
"Good." Ren snapped. "Monsters survive. Crybabies get Erased."
"ENOUGH."
Ravi's voice. Not a yell. A command.
Ren turned.
Ravi stood in the middle of the room. Not the Handler. Not Sunny Boy. The Alpha.
"I don't care what you did." Ravi's voice shaking but hard. "I don't care that you're a killer. I don't care that you're proud of it. You just painted a target on this room."
"I took care of it." Ren shot back.
"No." Ravi said. "You escalated. You think Thorean letting you go was a win? You think he rewardedyou? You stupid—he didn't reward you. He just told the entire faculty you're the interesting one. The one to watch."
"He's right."
Nyx's voice. Off her bunk. Holding the reader.
"He's right, Ren. This win... it's a leash. They're not letting us go. They're tightening the grip."
She looked... scared. Nyx. The weapon. Scared.
Ren's blood went cold. "What are you talking about?"
Nyx looked at him. "This. The reader. You brought it here. Stolen tech. Into the one room they're now watching. You just confirmed we're a conspiracy."
Fuck.
He hadn't even thought—
Ren's mind racing. So focused on the win. Surviving the Severance Clause. Didn't see the next trap.
"What did he say?" Ravi demanded. "When you left. What did he say?"
Ren looked at him. Out of road.
"He said we're loud." Ren growled. "Said we're red-flagged."
A small high-pitched squeak.
Maven.
Standing. The vial of Coudhayes in her hand.
"Red flagged?" She whispered.
"He scheduled an Academic Audit." Ren's voice dead. "For the whole suite. Tomorrow. 0900."
Like pulling the pin on a grenade.
Jules just... fainted. Listed sideways. Fell off his bunk in a heap.
Ravi didn't even look at him. Face white.
"An audit?" Ravi whispered. "No. No no no. Not an audit."
"What's an audit?" Nyx demanded.
"It's not a test." Ravi stammered. Leader mask crumbling. Terror breaking through. "It's a purge. A psych eval. A deep one. They look for liabilities. Find the weak ones. Break them."
He looked at Jules. Out cold on the floor.
"Who?" Ren demanded. "Who's doing it?"
Ravi looked at Ren. Eyes dead.
"The head of the program." Whispered. "The one who runs the Pit. The one who invented the fucking fog."
A new voice. Sayer.
Sitting up in her bunk. Hoodie down. Face pale. Eyes huge.
"Dr. Morana Gray." Sayer whispered.
Ren's blood just... stopped.
Dr. Gray. The Psychological Vampire.
The name from the journal.
This wasn't an audit.
This was a harvest.
Thorean hadn't just marked Ren. He'd marked all of them.
Saw Ren's rage. His violence. The potential.
Now he was sending in the butcher to see what she could carve out.
Ren looked at Nyx. She was white.
Looked at Ravi. Trying to wake Jules.
Looked at Maven.
Just... staring at him. Face a mask of cold hard terrifying focus.
"The locket." Her voice a sharp clear note in the chaos.
Ren looked at her.
"The reader." She pointed at the tech in Nyx's hand. "The glitch. The paradox."
"Yeah?" Ren's voice raw. "What about it?"
Maven looked at him. Not a mouse. Not an alchemist.
A prophet.
"It's not a weapon." She whispered. Eyes wide with dawning terrible revelation. "It's a defense. Sarah wasn't building a bullet for them."
She took a step closer.
"She was building a way out... for us."
The room went silent.
Even Jules's faint breathing seemed to stop.
Ren stared at Maven. "Explain."
Maven grabbed the reader. Hands flying across the keypad. Pulling up Sarah's notes. The micro-dot. The code.
"Look." She turned the screen toward them. "The paradox isn't something you do to them. It's something you become."
Ren squinted at the screen. Chemical equations. Neural pathways. Something about "simultaneous antagonistic valence states."
"She's speaking fucking chemistry, Maven. Translate."
Maven's eyes were on fire now. The mouse completely gone.
"Dr. Gray's chair—the Nocturne system—it reads your emotional state. Maps it. Harvests it. But it's designed for pure signals. Fear. Rage. Grief. One at a time. That's how the Coudhayes works—it isolates the trauma, keeps it contained, makes it extractable."
She pointed at the screen.
"But if you're feeling two things at once—two opposite things, at the exact same intensity—the system can't parse it. It's a paradox. A logical contradiction. The chair tries to resolve it and..."
She looked up.
"It crashes. The connection breaks. The harvest stops."
Ren's mind raced. Love and rage. Hope and despair. Simultaneous.
"But that's just escaping the chair," Nyx said. "That's not a way out."
Maven shook her head. "You're not understanding. Sarah wasn't just talking about the chair. She was talking about the network. The Coudhayes grid. The whole system. It's all connected. One massive neural network running under the island."
She pulled up another file. A schematic. Crude but clear.
"If someone in the chair generates a paradox signal—if we can generate it—it doesn't just crash their connection. It propagates. Ripples through the whole grid. The fog. The harvest. The RNUKE process. All of it."
Silence.
Ren looked at the screen. At Sarah's notes. At the dead girl's final gift.
"How?" His voice rough. "How do we make someone feel love and rage at the same time?"
Maven looked at him. "Not someone. You. Has to be you. The trauma has to be yours. The contradiction has to be yours."
She pointed at his chest.
"You're full of rage, Ren. We all see it. It's what makes you dangerous. But love? What do you love?"
Ren's jaw tightened.
His mother. Her face when he left. The hug. The whisper: Be safe.
"I got something." His voice barely audible.
Maven nodded. "Good. Now you need to find the trigger. The thing that makes you feel both at once. The paradox has to be earned. You can't fake it. The chair will know."
She looked around the room. At the others.
"We all have trauma. We're Pigs. That's why we're here. That's what they want from us." Her voice hardened. "But if we can weaponize it—if we can turn their harvest into their destruction—"
"We burn it all down." Nyx finished. Flat. Deadly.
Ren looked at the reader. At the locket. At the journal.
Eleven hours until Dr. Gray. Until the audit.
Eleven hours to turn their trauma into a weapon.
He looked at his unit. His broken, terrified, fucked-up unit.
They were all staring at him. Waiting.
Even Ravi. Even Zelie. Even Jules, who'd woken up and was listening with wide wet eyes.
Ren stood. Shoulder screaming. Head pounding. Blood drying on his skin.
"Everyone rests." His voice was iron. "Two hours. Then we plan. We figure out our triggers. We figure out how to make this work."
He looked at Maven.
"You keep working on Sarah's notes. Find me a way to trigger the paradox on command. Not just in the chair. In all of us."
Maven nodded. Already turning back to her lab.
Ren looked at Nyx.
"You're on watch. If anyone comes—anyone—you wake us. No heroics. Just noise."
Nyx nodded. Moved to the door. Baton in hand.
Ren looked at Ravi.
"You're still the Handler. Keep them calm. Keep them focused. When they break, you fix them."
Ravi swallowed. Nodded.
Ren looked at the others. Zelie. Jules. Sayer.
"All of you. You're not Pigs anymore. You're not trash. You're soldiers. Because tomorrow, we go to war."
No one argued.
No one moved.
Ren limped to his bunk. Sat down. Pulled out the journal.
Flipped to Sarah's last entry.
If you're reading this, don't trust the mice.
He looked at Maven. Hunched over her work. A tiny figure in the dim light.
Don't trust the mice.
But the mouse was building their only weapon.
He closed the journal. Lay back. Stared at the ceiling.
Eleven hours.
Then they'd find out if Sarah's ghost could save them.
Or if they'd all end up like her.