Armando woke to light.
Not the gentle kind. Not the kind that eased you out of sleep but a sharp, invasive brightness that stabbed straight through his eyelids. He groaned softly and turned his head away, only for the pain to bloom behind his eyes like an explosion.
He blinked.
Once.
Twice.
Thrice.
The world swam into focus in disjointed fragments: white walls, the steady beep… beep… beep of a monitor, the faint scent of disinfectant hanging thick in the air. The ceiling above him was unfamiliar, smooth and sterile, broken only by recessed lights that hummed faintly.
A hospital.
The realization came slowly, like wading through thick mud.
Armando sucked in a breath and immediately regretted it.
A sharp, searing pain lanced through his chest, stealing the air from his lungs. He choked, coughing weakly, his body instinctively curling inward as if that might protect his ribs from shattering completely.
"Ah…shit…" he rasped, his voice hoarse and unused.
He pushed himself upright anyway, stubborn instinct overriding common sense. His arms trembled as he leaned forward, muscles screaming in protest. Sweat broke out across his forehead as his vision blurred at the edges, but he managed to sit.
Only then did the memories hit him.
Not in a clean sequence. Not like a story.
They came in flashes.
Darkness only illuminated by flashlights.
The echo of gunfire swallowed by stone.
A sound—metal grinding against rock, like claws scraping their way out of the earth itself.
Something moving beneath them.
Armando squeezed his eyes shut, his heart pounding harder with each breath.
Bullets. They had fired so many bullets.
They should have worked.
They always worked.
But not this time.
He remembered shouting orders, his voice bouncing uselessly off the tunnel walls. He remembered seeing the first thing burst from the ground—no, not burst, unfold, like some grotesque machine waking from a long slumber.
Mechanical arms.
Too many joints. Too smooth. Too wrong.
They shot out of the earth like spears, cables and metal plates twisting together in impossible configurations. He remembered the sparks when bullets struck them—and how those bullets ricocheted away as if they'd hit solid steel plating.
Then the screaming.
Two soldiers—men he had trained with, laughed with, eaten with—were grabbed before they could even react. The arms wrapped around their legs, their torsos, and yanked them down into the darkness beneath the tunnel floor.
Gone.
No blood.
Just echoes.
Armando's jaw tightened.
He remembered pushing the last soldier behind him, shoving him hard enough that the man stumbled.
"RUN!" he screamed.
Then he charged.
It hadn't been bravery. Not really.
It had been instinct. Reflex. The same thing that made him step in front of gunfire without thinking, that made his body move before his mind could catch up.
One of the arms struck him mid-charge.
The impact slammed him into the tunnel wall with bone-crushing force. The air was punched clean out of his lungs, his vision exploding into white-hot stars. His rifle shattered against the stone beside him, the stock splintering, metal snapping free.
He remembered thinking, So this is it.
And then—he didn't die.
The broken rifle had taken the worst of it.
Adrenaline surged through him like electricity. He forced himself upright, lungs burning, vision swimming, and grabbed the first thing his hand touched.
Rocks.
Stones.
He hurled them blindly, roaring in defiance as another arm thrust toward him. He ducked, stumbled, rolled across the uneven ground as metal blades sliced through the space where his head had been a moment earlier.
He came up on one knee, momentum carrying him forward.
One arm was close now.
Without thinking, he yanked the taser from his belt and drove it into a gap in the metal plating.
The crackling zap echoed through the tunnel.
He smelled something burnt.
For just a second—just a second—the arm froze.
Armando didn't hesitate.
He grabbed a rock and brought it down again and again, screaming as he struck. Sparks flew. Metal screamed. A piece snapped loose and embedded itself deep into his left hand.
He didn't even feel it.
He tore the fragment free, blood slicking his fingers, and shoved it into his uniform pocket without looking. Then he turned and ran, knowing he couldn't defeat this thing by any means.
That was when something struck the back of his head.
The world went black.
Armando gasped and snapped back to the present.
His hands flew to his uniform, fingers digging frantically into every pocket, every fold of fabric. His heart raced as he searched—once, twice, again.
Nothing.
The metal fragment was gone.
His breath came fast and shallow. Panic flared in his chest before he forced himself to stop.
You're alive, he told himself.
The thought settled over him like a blanket, heavy but comforting.
He lifted a trembling hand to the back of his head. Tender skin. A large, painful bump—but no bandages. No stitches.
He'd been lucky.
Then his hand drifted down to his ribs.
The moment he pressed even lightly, agony ripped through him.
He screamed, the sound raw and broken, immediately collapsing back into the bed as his body rebelled. He coughed violently, each spasm sending fresh waves of pain through his chest.
"F—fuck…" he wheezed.
Broken ribs. No question.
As the pain slowly dulled into a manageable throb, Armando lay staring at the ceiling, sweat cooling against his skin.
A weak chuckle escaped him.
"Maybe… maybe it's nice getting a few days of sick leave" he muttered.
The laugh turned into another cough.
"Yeah… worth it…"
***
Jeanne Ancora sat alone in her office, surrounded by paper.
Reports stacked on her desk, on the floor, on every available surface. Casualty assessments. Security briefs. Infrastructure damage reports. Requests for resources. Complaints. Protests. Silence where there should have been answers.
She rubbed her temples and sighed deeply.
After Filian's death, she had shut the world out.
Locked herself inside her home. Closed the curtains. Let the days blur together as she tried—desperately—to protect what little remained of her sanity. She had needed that time. Needed the quiet. Needed the space to grieve without uniforms and command structures pressing down on her shoulders.
And now the world had returned all at once.
She flipped another page, eyes skimming lines of text that refused to stick. Her thoughts kept drifting—back to the tunnel, to the missing soldiers, to Incarceratus lying unconscious and pale beneath harsh hospital lights.
Something was wrong.
She felt it in her bones.
The door to her office slammed open.
Jeanne looked up sharply as a staff member stumbled inside, breathing hard, face pale with urgency.
"Commander Ancora!" he gasped. "Major Invidia is coming!"
Jeanne froze.
Her stomach dropped.
"Oh," she said quietly, pushing herself to her feet. "That's bad news."
Major Invidia never came without reason.
And she never came gently.