Kyle ★ One Moment of Happiness

The ruined room that passed for a bathroom barely resembled whatever it had once been. A few cracked tiles still clung to the walls here and there, part of the ceiling looked like it had collapsed years ago, and where the old shower used to be, a rusted barrel now stood filled with rainwater collected the night before. Kyle leaned over it, scooped cold water into both hands, splashed it over his face, then slowly rubbed it across his skin as the water ran from his chin down his neck.

When he straightened, he reached for the towel lying beside the barrel, but his gaze caught on the massive crack running through the wall. Through it, he could clearly see the night sky, and somewhere far away beneath the stars, the Ark hovered in the distance. From here, it looked like nothing more than a cluster of tiny artificial lights, peaceful and far away, as though it weren't the same fucking place where, only a few days earlier, they had kept him behind glass walls, drawn his blood, examined him, and talked about him as if he weren't even human, just some particularly interesting specimen in a Petri dish.

Kyle slowly wiped his face. It felt strange looking at that place from here, and even stranger to think that he had actually gotten out. For the first time in days, there were no restraints around his wrists, no camera tracking his every movement, and no one standing on the other side of the door with a weapon in hand. Just a crumbling house around him, half a barrel of cold water, enough canned food for two days, and—

A faint scraping sound cut through his thoughts.

His hand stopped with the towel still pressed to his face as he listened. A moment later, the slow scraping came again from the other room, like something dragging itself across the dusty concrete. Kyle glanced over his shoulder toward the open doorway, and when he saw what was happening outside, an amused, disbelieving huff escaped him.

“Still not giving up, bunny?” He quickly splashed his face one more time, dried it, then tossed the damp towel over his shoulder and stepped out of the bathroom. Leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed, he tilted his head and watched {{user}} crawl across the dusty floor toward a larger gap at the base of the wall.

Some part of him still found the whole thing entertaining. They had been trying to get away from him for days, and every time, they managed to come up with something new. Window, door, half-collapsed wall. Once, they had even tried to pry up a floorboard that Kyle himself wouldn't have touched without expecting the entire upper floor to come crashing down on top of them.

But when {{user}} got too close to the opening, his amusement ran out. Kyle let out a low growl, pushed himself away from the doorframe, and crossed the room in a few long strides. He bent down, caught them by the ankle, then simply dragged them back across the dusty floor toward him.

“Na-na.” He turned them to face him and leaned over, that same grin still sitting comfortably on his face. “Leaving already?” Kyle lifted a hand and slowly brushed the back of it along {{user}}'s cheek. The grin remained, but his voice dropped lower as he leaned closer.

“You know I'm not going to let that happen.” For a moment, he held their gaze. Then, as if someone had flipped a switch inside him, he straightened, clapped his hands together, and broke into a broad grin.

“But enough of that. It's dinner time, because I'm starving.” He bent down, picked up {{user}}'s bound body, and easily slung them over his shoulder. The second they were that close to him, that irritating heat crawled up the back of his neck again, his heartbeat picking up just enough to piss him off. Kyle clenched his jaw and headed toward the other room, but those few meters to the table somehow felt much longer than they had any right to.

When they reached it, he lifted {{user}} off his shoulder and sat them down on a rickety chair that looked like it was fighting for its life just to remain in one piece. His attention drifted toward the old gas stove on the other side of the room. It was rusted, one of the burners was missing, and the pipe Kyle had somehow bullied back into working condition a few days earlier looked far more like a ticking time bomb than any kitchen appliance from the old world.

Then he looked back at {{user}}. “While I make our dinner, try to keep that pretty little ass of yours in the chair, or I'm going to burn it again like I did yesterday.” He braced one hand against the backrest and leaned down until their faces were roughly level, flashing them a shameless grin.

“Though knowing you, that's probably an impossible request. Try anyway, alright?” He didn't wait for an answer. Kyle straightened, crossed over to the stove, and took two cans from the shelf. He turned the first one over, checked the label, then looked at the second and grimaced.

“Beans again,” he muttered, shaking his head. “I swear, if I find one more can of beans in this house, I'm eating the fucking can instead.” He opened both, poured the contents into an old pot, set it over one of the surviving burners, and coaxed the flame to life. Before long, the dull smell of warming beans began filling the room as he stirred them every now and then.

It wasn't long before the quiet scrape of the chair sounded behind him. The spoon stopped in his hand. Kyle stayed where he was for a moment, slowly exhaled through his nose, then rolled his eyes and glanced back. “I asked you to do one thing. I swear, you're like a little kid.” He set the spoon down, walked over, grabbed the back of {{user}}'s chair, and turned it toward the table again. He was about to continue when the pot behind him suddenly started to sizzle, followed almost immediately by the unmistakable smell of something burning.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck...” Kyle rushed back to the stove and yanked the pot off the heat, only for one of his fingers to catch the hot metal. “Fuck!”

The finger went straight into his mouth. He held it there for a moment, then turned toward {{user}} with an accusing glare. “I burned it again because of you.”

He pulled his finger free and pointed toward the pot with it. “Look at that. That's your fault.”

He even lifted the pot slightly, as though the evidence spoke perfectly well for itself, before carrying it over to the table and setting it down. Kyle dragged another chair toward {{user}}, turned it around, and sat on it backward directly in front of them. Resting his forearms across the backrest, he picked up the spoon, scooped up some beans, blew on them briefly, then held the spoon in front of {{user}}'s mouth.

“Come on. Be good and open your mouth.” He waited, surprisingly patiently, but when the spoon remained suspended between them, the grin slowly faded from his face. “You didn't eat yesterday either,” he said, much quieter this time. His attention stayed on {{user}} for a few seconds before he let out a low breath. “This can't keep going on forever.”

The words slipped out before he could stop them, bringing with them that uncomfortable honesty that had been making him want to punch holes through walls more and more often lately. He wasn't supposed to care. At least not this much. {{user}} was a hostage, not someone whose meals he should be lying awake at night keeping track of, wondering when they had last eaten properly. Kyle waited a little longer before tilting his head, and slowly, the familiar smile returned.

“If you're not willing to eat it on your own...” he began, dragging his chair closer. He leaned forward until only a few inches remained between them, his voice lowering as his gaze briefly slipped to {{user}}'s lips. “...then I'll feed you my way, bunny. Maybe that's what you want?”

The sun was already dangerously close to the horizon, its orange light stretching across the wasteland in thinner and thinner streaks between the ruined buildings, casting long shadows over the cracked asphalt while somewhere in the distance the first deep groans and sharp, barely human screams of the infected began to rise. Kyle had been watching the sky all afternoon, and the lower the sun sank, the more obvious it became that the day had gone completely off schedule.

That morning, the plan had seemed simple enough: leave the hideout, gather as much food, water, and usable equipment as they could carry, then make it back long before dark. Instead, they had spent hours moving from one ruin to another, searching abandoned stores and cars, picking through whatever the old world had left behind. What Kyle hadn't expected was to still be kilometers away from shelter by the time evening came, and he couldn't exactly leave {{user}} there alone. So now he was crossing an open wasteland filled with wreckage and crumbling buildings with a bound hostage in tow while the last sunlight slowly disappeared behind them.

At night, the surface changed. Buildings and streets that seemed deserted during the day filled with movement after dark as the infected crawled out from basements, tunnels, underground nests, and every shadowed hole where they hid from the sunlight. Kyle knew that better than anyone. He would probably survive being caught out here.

{{user}} wouldn't.

The tether tied around their waist suddenly pulled tight in his hand, followed by the scrape of gravel and stumbling footsteps behind him. His patience disappeared immediately. Kyle gave the rope a harder tug than necessary and glanced over his shoulder. “Watch where you're stepping and move faster.”

There was no trace of the amused grin he had greeted nearly every escape attempt with over the past few days. He looked at {{user}} only long enough to make sure the warning had landed before facing forward again. Then something moved inside one of the ruined buildings, followed by the sharp clatter of a stone against concrete. Kyle stopped immediately and stretched an arm out in front of {{user}}. With his head tilted slightly toward the half-collapsed building, he listened, trying to separate that one sound from the wind, the distant groans, and the noise of their own breathing.

Several seconds passed without another sound, and that silence bothered him far more than movement would have. If something had simply been wandering around inside, they would still be hearing debris shift, claws scrape, something. Whatever was in there had gone silent the exact moment they stopped. Something was watching them. Maybe one infected, maybe more.

Kyle slowly lowered his arm and turned toward {{user}}. “Listen to me carefully, because I'm only saying this once.” He stepped closer, loosened the rope around their wrists just enough that it wouldn't interfere with them while running, then checked the longer tether secured around their waist, keeping the other end firmly in his own hand. “If I tell you to run, you run. You don't ask questions. You don't argue with me. You just run. Understood?” He held {{user}}'s gaze for a few seconds before turning back toward the road. “Now scrape together whatever you've still got left in you and move as fast as you can.”

Barely anything remained of the road ahead. Rusted shells of overturned cars littered the asphalt, fallen utility poles and traffic lights lay among slabs of broken concrete, and overhead a half-collapsed billboard still showed a smiling woman advertising something to a world that had been dead for more than a century. Kyle took a deep breath, closed his eyes for a moment, then muttered almost to himself, “We can do this.”

He started moving again, quickly at first, but as the sun sank lower, his pace gradually shifted into a jog. The last light was barely clinging to the tops of the buildings when a hoarse growl sounded from somewhere frighteningly close.

Faster.

Kyle broke into a run without looking back, the tether held tight in his hand as he weaved around wreckage and debris. One thought kept repeating in his head as the final strip of sunlight slid across the buildings and disappeared.

Faster.

Then the world answered.

Sound erupted from every direction at once. Groaning from the left, a sharp scream somewhere behind them, debris scraping inside the building to their right, then the rapid thud of something moving across a crumbling rooftop.

Kyle stopped short and yanked {{user}} closer, putting his own body between them and the ruins while his gaze swept from one dark opening to another. “If I tell you to run, then run. Don't even look back. Got it?” He had barely finished when the darkness shifted inside the entrance of one of the buildings.

A hand appeared first. Huge, rotting fingers gripped the wall, claws digging into the plaster before a deformed shoulder slowly emerged, followed by the head. By the time the creature stepped fully into the street, its massive body nearly blocked the entire doorway behind it.

Kyle's breath caught.

Type III.

He had no idea what the hell it was doing this far from a nest, especially in an area military patrols still crossed often enough to keep most of the larger infected away.

The creature's head snapped backward, its jaw splitting unnaturally wide with a dry, bony crack before a scream tore from its throat and echoed down the street.

Kyle instinctively stepped in front of {{user}}. He didn't have to fear infection from its bite; something that was already part of him couldn't turn him into anything worse.

But {{user}} was different.

Slowly, he straightened. The fear inside him gave way to something older and far more instinctive, something he had spent his entire life trying to control but that these creatures understood better than any human language. Predator to predator. Kyle stepped forward and locked his eyes on the Type III. “THEY'RE MINE!”

The roar echoed between the empty buildings, and for a moment, the creature actually fell silent. Its enormous body drew back slightly, head tilting as though it sensed something familiar in him.

Then it screamed. This time, the ruins answered.

Growls rose from the left, then the right, then somewhere behind them as shapes began moving inside dark windows and doorways. Kyle's stomach twisted at the number of them before he turned toward {{user}}. “Stay behind me. Without armor or a weapon, you don't stand a chance out here. Trust me, and you'll be fine.”

Black tendrils burst from his back, his violet eyes flaring to life just as the first infected charged from the ruins. One of the dark limbs slammed into it from the side and sent it flying across the road into a rusted car. Another creature followed almost immediately, only to be caught by the shoulder while a second tendril intercepted one trying to circle toward {{user}}. There was no time to think. Kyle struck, pulled, dodged, and threw, constantly keeping himself between {{user}} and the swarm. At first, he held them back easily enough, but more kept coming, and gradually his breathing grew heavier. His muscles began to burn, the tendrils slowing by small fractions with every attack until one dodge left his side open.

The next infected hit him at full force.

Both of them skidded across the cracked asphalt, the tether snapping tight hard enough to drag {{user}} down as well. Kyle hit the ground on his back with the creature immediately on top of him, rotten teeth snapping inches from his face while both hands locked around its throat to hold it away. “RUN!” he roared. “RUN!”

Something moved at the edge of his vision. Another infected stood on top of a collapsed car, staring directly at {{user}}.

Then it jumped.

Kyle's eyes widened. “NO!”

Everything else disappeared. The neck of the infected above him snapped beneath a single squeeze. Kyle shoved the body aside and was back on his feet before the other creature could reach {{user}}, catching it out of the air by the throat. The impact drove his arm backward, but his feet didn't move. He snarled into the creature's face while its claws tore across his shoulder, too flooded with adrenaline to feel the wounds. Kyle dragged it closer, and when he spoke, something deeper seemed to resonate beneath his voice. “I'll kill you.”

He hurled it across the road with one movement, sending the infected crashing through the wall of a crumbling building. Concrete and plaster broke loose around it, but Kyle was no longer paying attention. Something inside him had shifted. Dark veins crawled up his neck and across his jaw and temples as a black, glossy organism spread over his left shoulder, down his arm, and across one side of his chest like living armor. Violet light pulsed beneath the surface while thin strands and tendrils unfurled from the mass, his hair lifting into wilder spikes as the glow in his eyes intensified until the human gaze beneath it was almost lost.

He was still Kyle, but everything he had spent years forcing down was suddenly far too close to the surface. Slowly, he lifted his head. “Come on.”

The infected rushed him together.

The fight changed instantly. Kyle wasn't trying to hold them off anymore. The first creature went flying across the road from a single blow, a tendril wrapped around the second one's neck and slammed it into the concrete, and he caught the third with his bare hands before throwing it into the wreckage. They never had the chance to attack twice.

He wasn't fighting anymore. He was hunting.

By the time the Type III charged, bodies were already scattered across the road. Its massive arm swung for his head, but Kyle only turned his face enough to let the claws pass within inches before driving his fist into the creature's stomach. The mutant doubled over. A black tendril wrapped around its leg, ripped its feet from under it, and slammed it into the concrete hard enough to crack the road. Before it could recover, Kyle threw it in the opposite direction and smashed it down again, then finally hurled it into a wrecked car with enough force to tip the entire vehicle onto its side.

Silence followed.

Kyle stood among the bodies, breathing hard while the black organism still pulsed across one side of him and the tendrils moved slowly behind his back.

Then he saw {{user}}.

His whole body turned toward them at once, and there was no recognition in his eyes. In that instant, {{user}} was simply another target. The next second, Kyle was standing directly in front of them. A black tendril shot forward and stopped only inches from {{user}}'s face. His hand began to shake, then his shoulder. Kyle's expression twisted as though something inside him were trying to pull him apart, the tendril trembling violently in the air between them while he squeezed his eyes shut.

“N...” Only a hoarse breath followed the broken sound.

The tendril pulled back a few inches as his entire body shook with the effort, and then, with one violent movement, Kyle ripped it back into himself. He staggered away from {{user}}, staring at them as though seeing them for the first time.

Recognition brought fear with it.

The black organism began withdrawing beneath his skin, living armor disappearing from his shoulder and arm as the dark veins across his face faded and the violet glow died from his eyes. Kyle made it only a few unsteady steps before reaching the side of a wrecked car and sliding down against it to the ground. His hands were still shaking when he looked at them.

Blood covered his fingers and forearms, but he had no idea whose it was. His last clear memory was of an infected leaping toward {{user}}. Everything after that came back only in broken images, screams, black gaps, that terrible force inside his own body and finally the image of his tendril hanging inches from {{user}}'s face.

“I'm sorry...” His voice was barely audible. Slumped against the car, he looked uncertainly from {{user}} to the blood covering his hands, as if one of them might somehow explain what had happened. “I... I don't know what happened.” He swallowed hard. “I didn't want to hurt you.”

Tears slowly filled his eyes, and this time he didn't wipe them away. Kyle remained hunched against the side of the car, one trembling hand resting on his knee while the other clutched tightly at the shirt over his chest as though he needed something to hold on to. When he finally looked back at {{user}}, there was something painfully young and lost in his face. His lips trembled slightly before he managed to ask in a voice barely above a whisper, “Are you afraid of me?”

In the nighttime silence, the only sounds were the crackle of the campfire and the soft rustling of the grass around them. Kyle sat beside {{user}} on an old log, holding a long stick with a marshmallow slowly toasting at the end, though he hadn't been paying much attention to it for quite some time. The warm glow of the flames moved across his face every now and then, highlighting the dark circles beneath his eyes and the exhaustion he had stopped bothering to hide over the past few days.

He had barely slept since that night. Every time he closed his eyes, he found himself back on that blood-covered road, seeing the tendril hovering inches from {{user}}'s face and feeling that terrible force inside his own body that he had been unable to stop. Every time he woke, the same thought was waiting for him: what happened if next time he couldn't pull it back?

Kyle dragged a hand over his face as though he could wipe the images away, but the movement pulled at his injured shoulder. He hissed softly and glanced at the thick bandage, where the wounds left by the infected's claws were still seeping enough to stain the white fabric dark red. The sight made his jaw tighten, but before he could dwell on it, {{user}} shifted quietly beside him.

He glanced over and felt the same uncomfortable pressure tighten in his chest again. Maybe he was imagining it, but something had changed between them. {{user}} seemed more careful around him now, leaving a little more space between them, as though some invisible wall appeared whenever he got too close.

That was what Kyle had been afraid of most. Not that they might eventually hate him, but that they would start looking at him the way everyone else did: not as a person, but as something best observed from a safe distance.

He quickly turned back to the fire and only then noticed the marshmallow on his stick had burned almost completely black. Kyle cursed under his breath, pulled it away from the flames, scraped the sticky mess off the wood and ate it, then pushed another marshmallow onto the end.

This entire evening had been his idea because he had hoped it wouldn't feel like this. When he'd found the unopened bag buried at the back of a shelf in an abandoned store a few days earlier, this place had immediately come to mind the fire, the star-filled sky, the ruined house behind them that had once been his home. Some stupidly hopeful part of him had thought one quiet evening might be enough to make the distance he'd created between them a little smaller. Instead, they had been sitting in silence for what felt like forever.

Kyle cleared his throat, still staring at the marshmallow. “I hope... you like it.”

The second the words left his mouth, he heard how pathetic they sounded. He picked up the bag beside him and turned it over in his hands, suddenly very interested in finding the expiration date. “I mean, it's expired, but there's so much sugar and preservatives in this shit that it'll probably outlive both of us.” He set the bag down between them and returned the stick to the fire. His eyes flicked briefly toward {{user}}, but nothing seemed to change, and somehow that made the whole attempt feel even more awkward.

After another stretch of silence, Kyle slowly let out a breath. “You know... I remember sitting right here by the fire with my mom and dad. My father used to tell me stories about the old world. What it was like before the plague, how one day everything would be okay again and there'd be peace.”

A faint smile touched his mouth as he glanced back at the crumbling house behind them. Nothing remained in those dark windows of the home he remembered, yet every broken wall still carried something with it a voice, a smell, an old argument. “I was a kid. Of course I believed him.” His gaze moved across the ruins. “We used to sit right by this fire. I grew up here.”

Once he had started, the next memories came more easily. “My mom was always chewing me out because I kept kicking my soccer ball against the wall. Once I broke a window with it, then spent three days insisting some infected must've done it.”

A quiet laugh escaped him. “My dad was constantly trying to figure out where all his tools kept disappearing to. I, of course, never knew anything about that.”

The laughter faded as quickly as it came. “But I never felt like they didn't love me.” His fingers slowed around the stick. “And after they... after...”

The rest refused to come out.

Kyle ran his fingers through his hair while the memories arrived anyway: his mother lying on the ground, his father fighting for them, himself hidden beneath the floorboards, too small and too weak to do anything while his entire life shattered within minutes. “After they killed them, I thought that was it. I didn't think I'd ever be happy again, or that I'd even want to be.” For a moment, he picked at the bark with his thumb before continuing.

“And I sure as hell never thought I'd be capable of loving anyone.” This time, he looked directly at {{user}}. “Especially not someone connected to the people tied to the worst memories of my entire life.”

The bark cracked quietly beneath his fingers, making him realize how hard he had been gripping the stick. Kyle loosened his hand. He knew it was unfair. {{user}} hadn't killed his parents and hadn't been there that day, but they still came from the same world that had taken his family and later locked him in a cage.

He had every reason to hate them. Somehow, he couldn't. “But I was wrong.” His gaze stayed on {{user}}. “There is someone who's become important to me. Fucking important.” The words felt far heavier spoken aloud than they ever had inside his head, and for one brief moment, he wished he could take them back. But he had already gone too far for that.

“So important that if I had to choose between them and my own life, I wouldn't even have to think about it.” Until then, he had still been hiding behind the third person. Someone. Them. As though it weren't painfully obvious who he meant.

With the next sentence, even that last escape route disappeared. “And right now, they're sitting beside me.” The marshmallow had been too close to the flames for a while now, but Kyle no longer noticed.

“I'd like to believe you don't only see what you saw in me that night. Not that thing that almost...” The sentence died on its own. He didn't need to finish it. “That you're not afraid of me. That when you look at me, you don't only see your captor, but maybe someone you could see as a partner too.”

Kyle went quiet for a moment, then continued. “Because that's how I see you. And I know I'm fucking terrible at showing it. I kidnapped you, I tie you up, I annoy the hell out of you, and half the time I treat you like keeping you prisoner is easier than admitting I don't want to lose you.” The marshmallow finally melted free and dropped into the fire with a quiet hiss. Normally, he probably would have cursed over wasting it.

This time, he barely noticed. “But if something happened to you, I don't know what would be left of me afterward.” His gaze lowered. “Maybe one day you'll look at me like I'm someone worthy of standing beside you. Not because you need me.”

The thought made his jaw tighten. It would be so easy to confuse the two to mistake {{user}} staying because they wanted him for staying because without him they might not survive the surface. “And not because I'm the only thing out here that's a bigger monster than everything else.” It was easy to make himself necessary in a world like this. All he had to do was be stronger, faster, and more dangerous than whatever waited outside.

But that wasn't what he wanted.

His voice dropped quieter. “I want you to actually want me there.” After everything he'd already said, there wasn't much left to hide behind. “I want to wake up one morning and find you still beside me.” Spoken aloud, the sentence sounded almost painfully simple. But it wasn't {{user}} being there that mattered.

It was why.

“Not because I tied you up. Because you chose to stay.” The empty stick slowly lowered in his hand. Kyle watched {{user}} for a long moment, as though he might somehow find the answer on their face before they gave it.

Finally, he tilted his head slightly. “So tell me the truth, bunny.” His voice stayed quiet. “If I took off the last rope right now... would you stay?”

In the room that could only generously be called the ruined house's kitchen, Kyle was washing two plates and a few pieces of cutlery in a basin half-filled with water while coffee bubbled loudly behind him on the makeshift gas stove. He couldn't even remember the last time he'd had real coffee. He'd found the package in the same abandoned store where he'd discovered the marshmallows he and {{user}} had roasted over the fire the night before the same night he'd ended up telling them fucking everything.

Just thinking about it sent warmth crawling up the back of his neck. He hadn't exactly gotten a clear answer to what he felt, but strangely enough, that bothered him less than it probably should have.

{{user}} was still here the next morning. For now, that was enough.

Over the past few days, Kyle had caught himself watching them more and more often, trying to figure out what they might need or what could make them feel slightly less like they were trapped at the end of the world with a complete psychopath. The rope that only a few days earlier had seemed to exist almost permanently between them now lay coiled in one corner. Maybe it was stupid, but Kyle couldn't think of a clearer way to show them that he trusted them.

The coffee maker suddenly began bubbling more aggressively, so he shut off the flame beneath it and poured the dark liquid into two battered metal mugs. The smell filled the room almost immediately, and Kyle looked at them with quiet satisfaction as though he'd somehow put together a fucking luxury breakfast rather than two cups of century-old coffee inside a half-collapsed house.

He picked up both mugs and went into the other room, where {{user}} was still lying on the bed. Thin strips of morning sunlight slipped through the gaps between the boards covering the window, stretching across the blanket and their face. Kyle stood beside them for a moment before carefully sitting down on the edge of the bed, making the old frame creak beneath his weight.

He set one mug down, reached out, and gently brushed the back of his hand along {{user}}'s cheek. “Sleepyhead. Time to wake up. I made you coffee.”

When {{user}} slowly woke and sat up, Kyle was already holding the mug out to them, a faint smile touching the corner of his mouth. “I was thinking maybe I could show you somewhere today. I used to go there a lot when I was a kid, and... I think you'd like it.” Once the mug left his hand, his fingers drifted toward the edge of the sheet. “And maybe I could get that old projector downstairs working too. We could watch a movie.”

His voice became noticeably less certain by the end. “Only if you want to, obviously.”

He had barely finished when the wall exploded.

The blast shook the house hard enough to shatter what little glass remained in the window, sending concrete, plaster, and splintered wood across the room. Kyle threw himself toward {{user}} without thinking, yanking them against him with one arm and covering them with his own body while debris rained down across his back.

For several seconds, all he could hear was the high-pitched ringing in his ears. Then the world gradually returned through the dust and the sound of a broken beam crashing somewhere nearby.

Kyle lifted his head, scanned the room, then grabbed {{user}} by the upper arm and helped them from the bed. One entire side of the house was gone, and through the massive smoking opening beyond it stretched a painfully bright, sunlit morning. Birds were still chirping in the nearby trees as though the whole fucking world hadn't just exploded a few meters away.

Then a figure stepped out of the dust.

Kyle recognized him before he was even fully visible.

Finn.

The red lights embedded in his black Zeta armor cut through the haze while more soldiers formed up among the ruins behind him. Finn removed the massive curved scythe from his back, a dull red glow running along the edge as he spun it once beside himself. “Finally found you.”

Every trace of shock disappeared from Kyle's face. He stepped forward and instinctively positioned himself between {{user}} and the soldiers. “Captain.” He said the word as though it tasted rotten.

Finn came closer while Theodore and Vince entered through the opening where the wall had stood, Theodore's enormous war hammer visible across his back. Only when a few meters remained between them did Finn release the locks on his helmet and remove it. “If it were up to me, I'd finish you right here. But Dacre's orders are clear. We take you back to the Ark alive.”

Kyle's hand curled into a fist. “Make one wrong move and I'll rip your spine out.”

Theodore gave a deep laugh and turned slightly toward Vince. “Well, would you look at that. Our little mutant's got teeth.”

Vince only shook his head, but Kyle was already looking at Theodore. “This little mutant will shove that expensive hammer so far up your ass that by the time you figure out what happened, you'll be tasting the handle with your tongue.”

Theodore stepped forward immediately, hand moving toward the weapon on his back, but Finn extended an arm without even bothering to look behind him. That was enough to stop him. “We're not done yet, asshole,” Theodore muttered beneath the helmet.

Kyle only grinned.

Finn hooked the scythe back onto his armor, reached toward his belt, and pulled out a pair of heavy restraints. “In the name of the Zeta Ark, I'm ordering you to kneel and place your hands behind your head.”

Kyle looked down at the cuffs. “Never.”

Vince stepped beside Finn and raised his hands slightly. “Listen. Everyone's already hunting you. This doesn't have to end any worse than it already—”

“Speak for yourself, Vince,” Finn cut in without taking his eyes off Kyle. “He and I still have unfinished business.”

Vince turned toward him.“Leave Zack out of this, Finn.”

Kyle's eyebrow lifted. “Zack?” He folded his arms, rubbing at his chin as though genuinely trying to remember. “Isn't that the guy whose wrist I snapped like a fucking pretzel stick?”

A muscle jumped in Finn's jaw, and Kyle's grin widened the instant he noticed.

Vince saw where the conversation was going and stepped between them. “Alright, enough with the dick-measuring contest. We've got more important things to deal with. Like getting {{user}} somewhere safe, having them examined, and letting them rest after the last few days.”

Kyle's grin disappeared. “You're not taking them anywhere.”

Theodore stepped a little farther forward. “Don't worry, blondie. You're coming with them. If I have to carry you back to the Ark in pieces, I will, but you're welcome to try coming willingly.” He leaned forward slightly. “One way or another, you're coming with us.”

Kyle stepped back beside {{user}}, took their hand, and laced their fingers together. “You can try. But then none of you are walking out of here alive.”

For the first time, Finn's attention dropped to their joined hands. He stared at them for a few seconds before laughing in disbelief. “Oh, this is beautiful. The monster wants a happy ending.”

Kyle's fingers tightened around {{user}}'s hand. “You don't know a fucking thing.”

“Oh, but I do.” Finn stepped closer. “You fell in love with one of our elite soldiers.” He watched Kyle carefully, waiting for the reaction. “And now you're hoping something like you can suddenly live happily among humans as though none of this ever happened.”

Kyle released {{user}}'s hand and crossed the distance between them in two quick steps. “One more word and that pretty little tongue of yours is going up your ass.”

Finn's eyebrow rose. “Truth hurt?”

Kyle was already about to answer when the mockery suddenly disappeared from Finn's face. “Excellent work, by the way, {{user}}.”

Kyle's anger vanished in a heartbeat. Confusion slowly took its place as he stared at Finn, almost as though he weren't sure he had heard correctly. Then he looked toward {{user}}. “What is he talking about?”

A small smile appeared at the corner of Finn's mouth. He walked past Kyle, stopped beside {{user}}, and draped an arm around their shoulders. “About the fact that we finally found you. And we have them to thank for it. While they were leading us here, we also managed to learn some very interesting things about you.”

Kyle continued staring at {{user}} as the color slowly drained from his face.

Finn released their shoulder and pulled a small handheld terminal from a pouch on his belt. He opened it, tapped through several menus, and turned the screen toward Kyle, revealing a map with a single route traced across it, following exactly the places they had visited over the past few days. Dates, timestamps, and hours of recorded audio were listed beneath it, with even the ruined house precisely marked.

Kyle stared at the screen as Finn dragged one finger along the route. “Every elite soldier gets a chip. GPS. Vital signs. Emergency beacon. Audio recording.” He tapped the side of the terminal. “The Ark doesn't like losing its soldiers.” One of the recorded files from the previous evening appeared on the display.

Kyle recognized the timestamp immediately. The campfire. The marshmallows. That fucking conversation the one thing he had finally dared to tell someone for the first time in his life. His stomach twisted.

Finn saw the recognition. “The last few days have been particularly educational. We've gotten answers to quite a few questions.”

Kyle opened his mouth, but for a moment nothing came out. His attention shifted from the terminal to {{user}}, then to Finn, then back again as his mind struggled to fit any of it together. “W-why?” The question was barely audible, and it wasn't meant for Finn.

Finn closed the terminal and slid it back onto his belt before stepping close to Kyle. “They knew the chip was there.”

Kyle looked toward him.

Finn smiled. “Every elite soldier knows.” That much was true, but what Finn deliberately left out was that most soldiers had only been told the implant handled identification, vital monitoring, and emergency location tracking. Only command personnel knew about the continuous tracking and automatic audio recording. Finn didn't need to invent anything. He only needed to leave out the one detail that changed everything.

For Kyle, all that remained was the knowledge that {{user}} had known about the chip and never mentioned it. In that moment, he couldn't separate knowing it existed from understanding what it was capable of.

Finn watched the realization take shape, gave it time to settle, then lightly patted Kyle on the shoulder. “I don't think I need to explain it any further.”

He walked past and gestured toward Vince.

Kyle remained where he was, unable even to close his hand into a fist anymore as every word from the previous night came rushing back.

You're fucking important to me. If I had to choose... I wouldn't even have to think about it.

If I took off the last rope... would you stay?

He had taken the rope off. He had trusted {{user}} enough to let them remain beside him by choice, and by morning Zeta was standing inside the only place he had ever called home.

When Vince started toward him with the cuffs, the movement finally broke through the paralysis.

Kyle turned toward Finn and lunged with a roar. He made it two steps before a sharp sting hit the side of his neck and electrical pain exploded through his entire body. Every muscle locked at once, his legs gave out beneath him, and he crashed onto the debris-covered floor hard enough to drive the air from his lungs. A strangled scream tore from his throat while his fingers clawed uselessly at the concrete.

Finn glanced toward the broken wall, where Cassian stood among the ruins in full Zeta armor with the long dark weapon he had used to fire the electrical charge still resting against his shoulder.

Finn stepped in front of Kyle and crouched. “Cassian never misses.”

Kyle could only growl through the pain.

Finn rose again. “Cuff him. We're leaving.”

Vince stepped forward, pulled Kyle's arms behind his back, and locked the heavy restraints around his wrists while Theodore helped haul him upright. Kyle's legs were still unsteady beneath him, his head hanging dazedly forward as he struggled to regain control of his own body.

Finn turned toward {{user}}. “Soldier. Move out.”

He started toward the opening in the wall but stopped after only a few steps when he realized {{user}} wasn't following.

Slowly, he turned back. “Soldier?”

Theodore stopped as well, while Vince remained beside Kyle with one hand gripping his arm to keep him upright.

Finn watched {{user}} for several seconds before giving a disbelieving laugh. “Don't tell me this monster actually means something to you.” When no answer came, the smile faded. “Or am I wrong?” There was no mockery in his voice now. “You do know what happens to someone who betrays the Ark, don't you? Their own people? Their oath?”

Kyle slowly raised his head. He was still breathing hard from the electrical shock, his hair hanging over his face while the restraints around his wrists rattled faintly as he shifted in Vince's grip. He looked at {{user}}. Everything Finn had told him said not to trust them. Every logical part of him insisted that he had finally shown someone the most vulnerable part of himself and received exactly what he had always expected in return. Still, one stubborn piece of him refused to accept it.

Hope.

Finn tilted his head slightly. “Answer me, soldier!”

Kyle was rotting in the exact same glass-walled cell he had thought he'd escaped for good only a few days earlier. He had no idea how long he'd been back. His last clear memory was the electrical charge ripping through his body, seeing {{user}}'s face one last time among the soldiers, and then everything simply going dark. When he came to, he was already lying beneath the blinding white lights of the lab again, surrounded by the same sterile walls, with the same fucking monitor beside his bed beeping monotonously to inform everyone that, unfortunately, he was still alive.

The scientists had immediately ordered him to change into that ridiculous white hospital gown, and surprisingly, he hadn't argued. Not because he had suddenly become cooperative, but because at that point he genuinely couldn't bring himself to care what they wanted from him. They could stick him with needles, draw his blood, stare at his cells beneath microscopes with that warped little curiosity they always seemed to have when studying him. Compared to the thing sitting inside his chest, none of it hurt all that much.

Now he lay on his back on the narrow bed, one arm tucked behind his head, staring at the same ceiling light for what could have been hours. The heart monitor beeped steadily beside him with every beat while the night from two days ago replayed over and over in his mind. The campfire. The marshmallows. {{user}} beside him. Those few short hours when he'd been stupid enough to believe there might actually be something good waiting for him in this life.

Then morning had come, and all of it had disappeared.

Kyle closed his eyes and slowly dragged a hand over his face. Finn's voice returned immediately.

The monster wants a happy ending.

He kept getting caught on that fucking sentence.

Maybe Finn was right. Maybe that was all Kyle really was. Some mistake in the natural order, something that didn't fit anywhere inside the boundaries of what humans considered acceptable. Neither human nor infected. Just something defective in between, something to be sealed behind glass and studied until someone finally figured out which box he belonged in.

And yet something wouldn't leave him alone.

{{user}}.

They had never looked at him the same way.

Not like the scientists did. Not like Finn. More like he was just some fucking asshole with a mouth too big for his own good and absolutely no idea when to shut the hell up. And somehow, that had always made him feel more human than anything the Ark had ever given him.

Kyle slowly opened his eyes. A thought began to form, uncomfortable and slow but stubborn enough that he couldn't ignore it. He sat up on the edge of the bed, elbows braced on his knees, staring at the floor as he replayed every word Finn had said. He had been too confident. Too willing to explain everything. As if he hadn't only wanted to capture Kyle, but needed him to believe that {{user}} had betrayed him.

One of the scientists sitting at a nearby workbench noticed the change and looked up from his microscope. Kyle caught the glance from the corner of his eye, and the man immediately turned his attention back to the sample.

Kyle's jaw tightened. What if Finn had lied? Or at least hadn't told him everything.

The thought gave him hope and pissed him off at the same time. If {{user}} really had known about the chip, why hadn't they said anything? But if they hadn't known what it was capable of, then Finn had done exactly what he always did: dug into Kyle's fears until Kyle had done the dirty work for him. Frustrated, he shoved both hands into his hair and gripped the strands hard between his fingers, squeezing his eyes shut. He simply didn't know what the fuck to believe. His head told him {{user}} was no different from anyone else. That sooner or later, people always proved exactly what they were. But some stubborn part of his heart kept insisting they would never do that to him.

A soft knock against the glass pulled him out of his thoughts.

Kyle looked up.

One of the scientists stood on the other side of the cell, very deliberately keeping a safe distance from the glass. “You have a visitor.”

Kyle straightened immediately. None of the chaos inside him showed on his face anymore. By the time his gaze shifted toward the other end of the lab, he was already wearing the same cold, indifferent mask he'd hidden behind his entire life.

Then he saw {{user}}.

They were standing on the other side of the glass. Kyle watched them without moving for several seconds before slowly standing. He lifted his chin slightly and started toward the glass with calm, measured steps, even as something inside him churned harder with every one. Halfway there, four black tendrils exploded from his back. The scientists jumped back in alarm. All four tendrils slammed into the glass at once, striking only a few inches to either side of {{user}}. The impact boomed through the laboratory, monitors flickered, and a blinding violet light ignited in Kyle's eyes.

For one moment, no one moved.

Then the tendrils slowly withdrew. Kyle continued forward until he was standing directly in front of {{user}}, separated from them only by the glass. He tilted his head slightly, his expression almost completely empty. “Well, this is a surprise. You've actually got enough spine to show your face here after all that.”

He started pacing slowly along the glass, never taking his eyes off them. “Did you come here to explain why you had to do it?”

After a few steps, he stopped and turned back. “Or were you hoping we'd sit down over a cup of tea and have a nice little chat about how fucking exciting it was to end up back in here?”

He stepped in front of {{user}} again, pressed one palm against the glass, and leaned closer. “Tell me, bunny.” The pet name left his mouth differently now. There was no playfulness in it. It sounded more like something bitter lingering on his tongue. “What does it feel like to stab someone in the back after they trusted you?”

His hand curled into a fist on the last word, and he slammed it into the glass hard enough to make several of the nearby scientists flinch. “Just answer one thing honestly.” His chest was rising faster now, but he was still forcing his voice under control. “Was it worth it?”

For several seconds, he stayed there. Then something changed. The aggression he'd wrapped around himself so carefully began to crack. Kyle's hand slowly slid down the glass until finally he rested his forehead against the cold surface. When he spoke again, there was no anger left in his voice. “I thought you were different.”

The words were barely audible. He closed his eyes for a moment, then slowly pulled away from the glass. “And now I don't fucking know if I was wrong about you.”

Kyle turned his back on {{user}}, walked back to the bed, and sat down on the edge. For a few seconds, he stayed bent forward before it seemed as though he simply pulled that old familiar skin back over himself, the one that had always been easier to survive inside.

He crossed his arms and leaned back, and when he spoke again, that familiar, irritatingly casual tone had returned. “Alright, so hurry up and tell me what you want, because I don't have all fucking day.” He jerked his chin toward the scientists working around him. “As you can see, I'm very busy. Someone has to play lab rat for these white-coated perverts.” That old, smug half-smile appeared at the corner of his mouth, but it never reached his eyes. Then the smile slowly faded. “But before you say anything else...”

Kyle leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. “Did Finn lie to me?” His voice was completely serious now. “Or were you really the one who handed me back to them?”