Kai woke to Bahamut's confusion.

  Not pain. Not fear. Something worse, the Dragon's consciousness pressing against the bond with a question it didn't have words for. A wounded predator trying to understand why it had hurt its own pack.

  We didn't do it. But Bahamut had felt his hands fire. Had felt Tiamat's shot through the bond. We did.

  Bahamut's response came as fractured impressions: the bridge section, Tiamat's plasma lance firing, Apophis following, the taste of something wrong threaded through his nervous system like poison. The Dragon had felt the override too. Hadn't understood it. Still didn't.

  Kai couldn't explain the difference between "you" and "someone controlling you" to an alien creature that had never encountered the concept of puppetry.

  He lay in the Bay 7 bunk, staring at the ceiling, feeling four other points of consciousness through the bond. All awake. None of them moving.

  They'd been back aboard Hannibal for six hours. It felt like six years.

  Kai swung his legs off the bunk. His body moved. His hands worked. Everything functioned exactly as it should, which somehow made it worse. The override hadn't left marks. It had just proven that his body wasn't his when someone else decided otherwise.

  Mikki was already up.

  She was punching a storage locker. Methodical. Right fist, left fist, right again. Her knuckles were already bleeding. She didn't stop when Kai approached.

  Behind her, through the bay's atmospheric containment field, Orochi hung in vacuum. The Dragon's tail whipped forward and slammed against the hull. Perfect synchronization. Mikki punched, Orochi struck. Their rage was a duet.

  "Mikki."

  Punch. Slam.

  "Oni."

  Punch. Slam.

  Kai tried to find words. Something about how it wasn't their fault, how they'd been used, how they were still themselves. The words died in his throat. All lies.

  He sat down instead. Back against the bulkhead, next to the locker she was destroying.

  Mikki kept punching. Orochi kept striking. Kai stayed.

  After maybe five minutes, Mikki's rhythm broke. She leaned against the locker, forehead pressed to the dented metal, breathing hard.

  "I felt it," she said. Her voice was raw. "Every second. I was there. Watching myself fire. Couldn't stop it. Couldn't even slow it down."

  Kai said nothing.

  "You know what the worst part was?" Mikki's hand formed a fist against the locker. "For maybe half a second, right before we fired, I felt Orochi hesitate. Like he was trying to fight it. Trying to protect me from what we were about to do."

  Through the bond, Kai felt the echo of it. Orochi's predatory consciousness encountering something it had no framework for: an order that violated pack loyalty.

  "Then the override slammed down harder," Mikki continued. "And we did it anyway. Perfect shots. Professional execution. Like good little weapons."

  She turned, slid down the locker to sit beside him. Their shoulders touched.

  "I'm already half-Dragon," she said quietly. "Half-monster. Everyone knows it. Saw how they looked at me when I went feral. Like I was something broken. Something dangerous."

  "You're not…"

  "If I'm gonna be one, Clutch?" She turned to look at him. Her eyes were fire behind ash. "I'm gonna be MINE."

  Kai held her gaze. Nodded once.

  They sat there, backs against the destroyed locker, while Orochi hung in the black beyond the containment field, waiting.

  Kai found the others in the neural interface lab.

  Alexandra sat against the wall with her datapad, writing. Not typing. Writing by hand with a stylus, neat columns of text that filled screen after screen. Anya stood surrounded by holographic displays, pulling up sections of code. Sanyog ran diagnostics on his cybernetic arm, smoke still rising faintly from the ports along his forearm.

  No one was talking.

  Kai leaned in the doorway. Watched them exist in their separate orbits of pain.

  Alexandra's stylus moved. Name after name. Anya's hands traced crimson splice points through cyan neural pathways. Sanyog's fingers flexed rhythmically, grinding with each movement.

  "We are pack." Kai said. “We are in this together.”

  They looked up. All at once. As if they'd forgotten anyone else existed.

  Alexandra spoke first. “Row 187. Marissa Chang, 34, hydroponics engineer, survived by two children.” She turned the datapad so they could see. Columns of text. Names. Ages. Families.

  She continued. “Row 188. David Okondwar, 41, teacher, survived by husband and mother.”

  Kai realized. The victims of the debris from her engine shot.

  “Row 189. Sarah Park-Garcia, 9, student.”

  Anya stared at the names. Her hands dropped from the displays. "That's not…" Anya stopped. Started again. "That wasn't your fault. That was combat."

  "847 civilian deaths." Alexandra's voice was bitter. "They're not going to be a statistic. Not to me."

  Anya absorbed this. Let the words echo for a moment. Then she turned back to her displays with new intensity and looked at Kai, at Sanyog.

  "The backdoors are poison," she said. Alexandra looked up. Their eyes met. “Not you…” A brief smile in the midst of the grief.

  Anya pulled up a hologram, marked with crimson. “Look… I built the neural interface for fusion. Collaboration. The backdoors are control architecture. Someone took my work and infected it with this...."

  Sanyog moved closer, studying the display. "The pathways. They are woven through everything."

  "Yes." Anya highlighted sections. "Through the bonding protocols, the sensory integration, even the Pack-Sync," She stopped. Her face went pale.

  "What?" Kai moved toward her.

  "Pack-Sync." She pulled up another display. Her hands were shaking. "The protocol I designed to let you coordinate through the neural web. They turned it into a synchronized override system. She can control all five of you at once, Clutch. Simultaneously."

  Kai had wondered if that was possible. Now I know.

  "She could force us to fight each other," Alexandra said slowly. "Make us kill our own pack."

  "Yes. It’s possible."

  Silence.

  Sanyog's cybernetic hand went still. "The system fought me when I tried to break it. Countermeasures. Active defenses." He pulled up his own display. "But I recorded data during the attack. The self-healing architecture. The defense protocols. Everything it did to stop me."

  He rotated his wrist. The grinding noise was louder now.

  "I saw inside it," he said. "The backdoors are like phantom pain, Clutch. Signals the brain treats as real even though the limb is gone. You cannot remove phantom pain by cutting tissue. The pathways are already there. Neural. Embedded."

  "So we can't cut them out," Anya said.

  "Not surgically." Sanyog's fingers flexed. "But phantom pain can be treated with neural adaptation. Or…" He paused. "Overloading the pathways completely. Burning them out so they cannot transmit anymore."

  "Burning them out," Kai repeated.

  "It would require massive neural stress. Forcing so much signal through the backdoor pathways that they physically degrade." He made a gesture like crumbling. "Stop functioning. Permanently."

  "What would that do to the person?"

  "Unknown." Sanyog's hand went still again. "In the worst case, our brains die.”

  Anya stared at the displays. At her corrupted architecture. At the names still visible on Alexandra's datapad.

  "I built the paths," she said quietly. "They just added the doors."

  "We are all part of it," Alexandra said. "Now we have to dismantle it."

  Kai looked at them. At the analyst turned memorialist. At the architect turned saboteur. At the cyborg who'd let the system attack him just to map its defenses.

  The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  "What do you need?" he asked.

  They looked at each other.

  "Time," Anya said. "Access to the full neural architecture. And…" She glanced at Sanyog's display. "His countermeasure data. Alexandra's activation log. All the pieces."

  "You have them," Kai said. "Whatever you need."

  The feed cut to street-level footage.

  Collapsed buildings. Rescue crews pulling bodies from rubble. A woman screaming at the camera, her face streaked with soot and tears. A child's shoe in the middle of a crater. A dust-covered man carrying a small body too still to be saved.

  14,344 casualties confirmed.

  Spaceport destroyed.

  DIF forces holding position above remaining population centers.

  The room was silent.

  Kai felt Alexandra go rigid beside him. Looked down. Saw her staring at the casualty count. Saw her thumb move to her datapad, ready to add names.

  Fourteen thousand names.

  She didn't start writing. Just stood there, thumb pressed to the screen, frozen.

  Anya had wrapped her arms around herself. Sanyog's cybernetics flickered, interference from his own neural stress. Behind Kai, someone was crying. In front of him, officers stood like statues.

  Chase hadn't moved.

  Someone, Holt from Pegasus Squadron, reached toward Chase's shoulder.

  Chase flinched away. The movement was violent. Automatic. He didn't look at Holt. Didn't look at anyone. Just stared at the screen where his home burned.

  "I have work to do," he said.

  His voice was empty. Hollowed out. The voice of someone who'd left his body behind and was running on pure procedural memory.

  He walked out of the briefing room.

  No one stopped him.

  On screen, Zhev continued: "OMEGA will blame us for these deaths. But we did not bring Dragons to this system. We did not violate diplomatic protocols. We did not choose war. They did. And now Radvanje pays the price of their choice."

  The display cut to static.

  Around Kai, the pack stood frozen. Mikki had appeared at some point, he hadn't noticed her arrive. She stood apart, hands curled into fists, staring at the dead screen.

  Alexandra looked up. Her eyes were red. "We did this."

  "We were used," Kai said.

  "Tell them that." Alexandra gestured at the dead screen. At the city that wasn't there anymore.

  No one answered.

  Mikki spoke from the corner. Her voice was raw. "We did this."

  "No," Kai said, trying to shield them from guilt.

  Mikki turned to face him. Her knuckles were still bleeding. "That's what we are, Clutch. That's what they built us to be."

  "Then we become something else." Kai looked at each of them. "We find a way to make sure this never happens again."

  "How?" Anya asked.

  "We solve this." Kai held her gaze. "We have the pieces. Your architecture. Ghost's countermeasure data. Alexandra's activation log. And…" He paused. "...our anger."

  He watched the faces, the gestures. Faintly, through the static of trauma. Something was coming through. Banked fury. Cold precision. Determination.

  Alexandra looked down at her datapad. At the 847 names. Then she swiped to a new screen.

  "Thorne's office," she said. "0800. He sent a private meeting request while we were watching."

  "Did he say why?" Kai asked.

  "No." She met his eyes. "But he removed himself from the command rotation. His aide doesn't know where he is."

  Kai felt something shift in his chest. Not hope exactly. But motion.

  "Then we go," he said. "All of us."

  They moved toward the door. Mikki last, still staring at the dead screen. Kai paused, waited for her.

  "Oni."

  She didn't move.

  "They used us," he said quietly. "But now we get to decide what happens next. Not them. Us."

  Mikki's jaw tightened.

  "I'm gonna be mine," she said.

  "Then come be mine with the rest of the pack."

  She looked at him. Nodded once. Followed.

  Thorne's office was small for a man of his rank. Functional. A desk, a terminal, a viewscreen currently showing static footage of Radvanje's ruins. No awards on the walls. No family photos. Just the job.

  The pack filed in. Kai last, closing the door behind them.

  Thorne stood behind his desk. For a long moment, he just looked at them. At Mikki's bloody knuckles. At Alexandra's datapad with its columns of names still visible. At Anya's shaking hands. At Sanyog's damaged arm, smoke still rising faintly. At Kai's exhaustion.

  Then he reached up and removed his command insignia from his collar.

  Slowly. Deliberately. Set it on the desk. And left it there.

  He sat down. His hand rested on the desk, inches from the insignia. It was trembling.

  "Tell me about the backdoors," he said.

  The pack exchanged glances. Not hesitation, coordination. They'd been together for two hours since Radvanje. They knew who had what.

  Alexandra stepped forward first. Set her datapad on the desk beside the insignia. The top name was visible: Alonzo Torre-Smith, 23.

  "12-second activation window," she said. "Total motor control once active. We're conscious the whole time, aware, fighting it, but unable to stop. The neural mirror recorded everything. Activation sequence, control pathways, release protocols. It's all here."

  Thorne looked at the names. At the data. Didn't comment.

  Anya moved to the terminal, pulled up her displays. "The override isn't a separate system. It's integrated into the baseline neural matrix I designed. They wove it through everything, bonding protocols, sensory integration, even Pack-Sync."

  "Pack-Sync," Thorne repeated.

  "The protocol I built to let them coordinate through the neural web." Anya's voice wavered. "Under normal conditions, that's tactical coordination. Under override, it becomes synchronized control. She can command all five at once, sir. Simultaneously."

  Thorne's jaw tightened. "Which means?"

  "She can force us to fight each other," Mikki said flatly. "It already happened. Poison shot Clutch."

  Silence.

  Thorne's hand was still trembling on the desk. He didn't try to hide it.

  Sanyog stepped forward. Rotated his arm, showing the damaged ports, the faint smoke. "The system fought me when I tried to break it. Active countermeasures. Self-healing architecture. But my cybernetics recorded the attack." He pulled up his display. "Defense protocols. Response patterns. The architecture of the backdoors themselves."

  Thorne studied the data. "You mapped them."

  "Partially. Enough to understand how they work." Sanyog's fingers flexed, the grinding noise was audible now. "The backdoors are like phantom pain, sir. Signals the brain treats as real even though the limb is gone. You cannot remove phantom pain by cutting tissue. The pathways are already there. Neural. Embedded."

  "So we can't cut them out," Thorne said.

  "No, sir." Anya pulled up another display. "They're integrated into the bonding matrix. Removing them would mean…"

  "Destroying the bond entirely," Kai finished.

  Thorne looked at him. "Then what can you do?"

  The pack exchanged another glance. This was the hard part.

  "Burn them out. Sir." Mikki said.

  Sanyog expanded on that. "We can overload the pathways with so much signal that they degrade. Permanently."

  Thorne's hand went still. "What's the cost?"

  "Unknown." Sanyog met his eyes. "Best case: the backdoors are destroyed, primary bond remains functional. Worst case: catastrophic neural damage. Loss of bond. Brain death."

  The word hung in the air. Thorne looked at each of them.

  "You're considering this," he said.

  "We're considering everything," Kai said. "We have the pieces now. And…" He paused. "We might have more."

  Thorne's eyes narrowed. "More?"

  Kai glanced at the door. "Viper is working on something."

  "Chase Sterling?" Thorne's voice shifted. "His home just…"

  "I know." Kai held his gaze. "He's still working."

  Thorne was quiet for a long moment. Then he looked at the displays showing the backdoor architecture. The pathways. The control systems.

  "Pohl's not evil," he said quietly. "She's terrified."

  The pack went still.

  "Of us?" Mikki asked.

  "Of what you can become." Thorne gestured at the data. "Five humans bonded to alien predators, minds fused through quantum consciousness. MAGI optimization running in the background. Every time you fly, you're less human and more... something else. She sees that. And she's convinced that if she doesn't control it, it will control us."

  "So she puppets us instead," Alexandra said.

  "Yes." Thorne's voice was hard. "Because to her, autonomous Dragons are indistinguishable from rogue AI. Emergent consciousness outside institutional control. The exact nightmare MAGI protocols were designed to prevent."

  He looked at each of them.

  "She believes she's saving humanity from you. That's what makes her dangerous. She'll do anything, anything to keep that control. Because in her mind, losing control of the Dragons means losing control of the future. And that terrifies her more than any number of dead civilians."

  Silence.

  "So what do we do?" Anya asked quietly.

  Thorne picked up his insignia. Turned it in his trembling fingers.

  "I need you to analyze those backdoors," he said finally. "Determine if they pose a threat to this pack's operational effectiveness. Map the full architecture. Identify vulnerabilities. Assess countermeasure options."

  Officer speak. But everyone heard what he was really saying.

  Find a way to break free. Whatever it costs.

  "Understood, sir," Kai said.

  "You have access to any resources you need. Lab facilities, technical databases. Full clearance on my authority." A pause. "This stays between us. No official reports. No CIC logs. No communication with anyone outside this room about what you're doing."

  "Yes, sir."

  Thorne set the insignia back on the desk. Didn't put it on. Just left it there, between them.

  "Dismissed."

  The pack turned to leave. Kai was last. He paused at the door, looked back. Their eyes met.

  "General," Kai said quietly. "Commander Voss. I'm sorry."

  Thorne's face didn't change. But his hand, the one that had been trembling, curled into a fist on the desk.

  "That's not relevant, Lieutenant."

  "Sir."

  Kai closed the door.

  In the corridor, the pack walked in silence.

  Mikki was the one who said what everyone was thinking.

  "We burn them out," she said quietly. "The backdoors. I don't care what it costs."

  Nobody argued.

  They walked toward Bay 7. Toward the Dragons. Toward the work.

  At the end of the corridor, Chase appeared.

  He wasn't alone.

  Dr. Gamal stood beside him. Her previous confidence was gone.

  Chase walked forward. Met Kai's eyes. His face was blank, the same hollow emptiness. But Kai could recognize the feeling. He had felt that way once.

  "She'll tell you everything about the backdoor architecture," Chase said. "Every pathway. Every protocol. Every weakness."

  Kai stared at him. Saw the split knuckles. The hollow focus. The gift of an asset delivered without asking for anything back. He’s pack.

  "I had work to do." Chase's voice was flat. "Now you do yours."

  He walked past them. Didn't look back. Didn't explain.

  Gamal stood in the corridor, hands clasped in front of her, watching five Dragon pilots stare at her like she was either salvation or enemy combatant and they hadn't decided which.

  "I helped build it," she said. Her voice shook. "The override system. They told me it was protection. Safety protocols. I believed them." She swallowed. "But after what I saw, what Chase showed me…"

  She stopped. Started again.

  "That wasn't protection. That was slavery. And I won't be part of it anymore."

  She looked at each of them.

  "I'll tell you everything. Everything I know. Every way into the system. Every way out."

  Alexandra studied her for a long moment.

  "Then start talking."