A viscous liquid surrounded her, warm and dense, like a crystal womb.

  Nebula floated within the containment tube, suspended among cables clinging to her pale skin like metal snakes

  She opened her eyes and the world was emerald green. Flickering lights slid over her naked body—red, green, blue—like artificial gazes dissecting her without pause.

  Needles pierced her right arm, feeding a milky flow into her veins.

  Pain.

  She didn't know where.

  Nor why.

  The last thing she remembered: the officer, the electric shock, the smiles before the darkness.

  Captured.

  An interrogation lab.

  Corven.

  She tried to move a finger. It obeyed partially. The whole arm trembled, as if the muscles belonged to someone else.

  On the screens, incomprehensible symbols scrolled past—DNA sequences, neural pulses, codes without syntax.

  Then the world exploded.

  A blast shook the walls.

  The lights flickered.

  Through the curved glass she saw shadows, muzzle flashes, bodies running. Screams drowned in the fluid.

  Pirates.

  Void primates.

  Fucking scavengers.

  A blinding roar.

  An explosive device struck the controls and the circuitry burst into flame.

  The glass shattered into a thousand sharp fragments.

  The emerald fluid drained out and Nebula fell with a blunt, heavy impact.

  A broken, almost childlike whimper escaped her.

  She vomited liquid that tasted like metal and chemical sleep.

  The air scraped her throat like ground glass.

  She tried to stand, but her legs failed.

  Her muscles—what remained of them—shook violently.

  She collapsed again, gasping.

  She tore out the cables with numb fingers. Her skin split open; violet blood—dark, thick under the red emergency lights—oozed far too slowly.

  She crawled through the puddle, slipping like a newborn animal.

  Through smoke, cold air, and the stench of blood, shadows entered the lab.

  Coarse laughter, rough voices, rusted weapons.

  —Let’s see what the hell they were keeping here—one said, sweeping the area with his flashlight.

  Nebula desperately searched for something to defend herself with. She found a metal shard from the broken tube.

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  She grabbed it.

  Her hand trembled so much the edge sliced her palm.

  The pain anchored her.

  Something real. Something hers.

  She was back.

  She held her breath.

  Waited for them to walk past.

  When adrenaline hit, she levered herself up in a single shaky motion and strike with the shard.

  The first cut didn’t go through—bounced off armor.

  The pirate shoved her violently.

  She hit the wall and dropped to her knees.

  —Well, well… look what I found.

  His smile was the spark.

  She screamed—more from effort than a battle cry—and drove the metal into his throat, into the soft part where the armor had no cover.

  She felt it sink in from sheer weight and rage, not strength.

  The second pirate swung at her.

  She tried to dodge.

  Failed.

  The blow exploded against her cheek and she fell backward. Violet blood streamed from her nose.

  Blind, she fumbled at the dead pirate’s belt.

  Found a pistol.

  Lifted it with both hands trembling as if it weighed a ton.

  The first shot went off by itself, punching a hole in the ceiling.

  The second blew out the pirate’s eye.

  His body collapsed on top of her—heavy, hot, smelling of gunpowder and urine.

  Silence.

  Her heart pounded so hard she thought it would burst through her chest.

  She pushed the corpse off her and stood using the console for support; her legs were still gelatin.

  In a broken shard she saw her reflection—irritated eyes, shaved hair.

  —How long was I here?

  She grabbed a scientist’s lab coat hanging from a blood-stained chair. The rough fabric scraped her wounds like punishment.

  Every step was an act of will.

  Her body barely obeyed.

  Her feet didn’t feel like her own.

  The corridor was filled with smoke, flashes of gunfire, broken screams.

  Lab personnel ran in every direction; guards fired blindly at shadows, unable to tell enemies from ghosts.

  As she stumbled forward, something grabbed her arm.

  She screamed—fear, not fury.

  She turned with the metal shard.

  This time it sank in clean—from the pirate’s jaw to his temple.

  His skull cracked like an eggshell. Hot crimson blood splashed across her face.

  Another pirate froze in shock.

  Three point-blank shots tore open his chest into red clumps and splintered bone.

  She didn’t know if she was crying from pain or panic.

  Maybe both.

  She reached the hangar crawling more than walking.

  Chaos reigned: bodies floating in partial depressurization; entrails uncoiling like ribbons in the void; emergency lights spinning red over the slaughter.

  Among the wreckage she saw a pirate ship: small, filthy, its hatch yawning open like a hungry mouth.

  She dragged herself to the ramp, threw herself inside, and fell face-first on the rusted floor.

  She slammed the emergency close button.

  The mechanism responded with a slow hydraulic groan—too slow.

  The hatch began to lower centimeter by centimeter, hangar light filtering through the shrinking gap.

  The facility’s central system roared:

  —Extreme protocol activated. Full airlock release.

  Air fled with the fury of a wrathful god.

  The hatch kept lowering.

  Bodies, tools, metal fragments, ships, guards—everything was ripped from the floor and hurled into the void.

  Nebula clung to the console, her fingers bleeding as the pressure ripped the air from her.

  The small pirate ship sealed itself just in time.

  Gravity vanished.

  Cosmic silence swallowed her entirely, leaving her lost, alone, suspended in nothingness.