Yellow Jacket

He should have killed him when they had the chance.

Not just Warren, though him most of all, but the lot of them. The traitor scholar. The deluded pup. The wild-bloods who mistook fury for freedom. All of them.

But that day, back in the hauler, when those two mad dogs tore poor Tarric apart for doing his duty, Vaeliyan made a choice. He didn't flinch. Didn't cry out. He buried what was left of the real soldier and took his name like a stolen weapon. Wore it like armor. Not to hide, no. To honor.

Tarric had died a patriot. Vaeliyan would make sure he didn't die in vain.

They didn't know who he was. Not truly. If they'd even suspected, if they'd seen the bloodline in his bones or the legacy in his stride, they would've slit his throat in his sleep, just for the chance that his name might actually mean something.

Let them keep believing. Let them think he was just another faded enforcer in a sea of lookalikes. That he was tired. Broken. Beaten into submission by their myths and bonfires.

Let them think it until it was far, far too late.

The Ark was breathing different now.

Not just the walls or the air cycling through vents warped by time, but the tone of the place. It had shifted. Bent. Begun to lean, ever so subtly, in Warren's direction.

The Yellow Jacket wasn't just a man anymore. He was becoming gravity.

And Vaeliyan knew what came next. He had seen the holos, the real ones, the ones not meant for public consumption, during the House purges, when rogue elements grew too strong. When belief swelled bigger than boundaries. You didn't wait. You didn't watch it swell. You cut.

That's what he was here to do.

Isol and Jurpat laughed too easily these days. Ate stew with rebels. Gave away statecraft like carnival tokens. Blood traitors. They disgusted him. Especially Isol, who knew better. Who had taught better.

Wren? She was just a wound waiting to be pressed. The girl mistook softness for strength. It would be a kindness to end her quickly. He wouldn't hesitate.

Florence unsettled him. She had too much access, and her composure ran too deep. She didn't flinch like the others. That made her dangerous. Nanuk, Batu, Grix, Cassian, they were all iron around Warren's rising flame. A proper phalanx of fools. Dangerous. Trained. Loyal to a myth.

And the AI? That was the real prize. The Ark's intelligence was still ductile. Unclaimed. But it was already leaning. He could feel it.

A few more steps and the thing would register Warren as primary.

They were about to make their move. He could see it in the way they gathered. Whispered plans. Smiles shared over maps. Isol had let it slip: they needed a Veil to reach the Citadel.

A Veil.

He didn't know what that meant. The word hit wrong, like a command phrase half-remembered from a corrupted file. He waited. Listened.

Cassian asked Isol something, and Isol responded quietly, but clearly, "It's a body. A cover. Something to walk you through the scans. You can't get into the Citadel without a registered citizen ID. You need a face the System expects."

Vaeliyan's pulse tightened. A body?

He caught Wren replying, almost offhand, "He'll need one soon."

That was when he understood.

Not just mimicry. Replacement. Assassination, followed by infiltration. Warren intended to take someone's place.

A Green citizen would die for that to happen. An innocent, likely. And not just one, whoever got in the way. More pillars torn down in the name of this backwater war criminal.

Warren was no better than the Warlord.

He wouldn't let it happen.

He walked the corridors alone that morning, tracing the limits of the Ark's main level with a calm gait. Every wall hummed with quiet power. The lights dimmed at the edges, subtle, like the Ark itself was holding its breath.

He paused near a junction node, pretending to inspect a damaged relay. One of Florence's drone blinked past. He didn't flinch. His presence was expected now, routine. Just another member of Warren's team

He listened to them talk. They spoke in low voices, always just far enough away to seem innocent, but never out of earshot. Planning. Preparing. Warren's hands gestured with the ease of someone certain of command.

Vaeliyan committed every detail to memory.

He marked the midpoint of the cycle by the soft shift in corridor lighting and the timed rotation of the Ark's ambient hum. He saw Isol give Warren a data slate. They spoke for nearly ten minutes. Vaeliyan couldn't hear it all, but he caught the words "access," "routing layer," and most damning of all, "override."

He checked the nearest terminal an hour later. The Ark's routing permissions had changed.

They were carving a way through the Ark's spine, one node at a time.

He stood in the supply chamber and stared at his reflection in the mirror-like surface of one of the pedestals. His face looked tired. Like armor that had seen too many winters.

Tarric would have died to protect the green. So would Vaeliyan.

He walked to the central column before dusk. A sensor node embedded in the column flickered as he passed. Not a malfunction. A scan.

It didn't flag him.

But it didn't reject Warren either.

He watched Warren speak to Car and Nanuk near the map interface. They laughed. Laughed. As if this place were already theirs.

He found Wren near the upper access ladder. She was humming softly. Hand on her belly. Content.

He didn't speak to her.

He couldn't.

Later, he stood beside Batu near the auxiliary junction, where the others occasionally gathered to review protocols or plan rotations. Not because anyone expected an attack, this place was buried so deep not even the sky remembered it, but because routine brought comfort. Batu didn't call it a watch. Just a habit. Old reflexes, too ingrained to shake. Batu trusted him. Called him by a name that wasn't his. Didn't even flinch.

It almost hurt.

He dreamed of fire that night. Not the violent kind. Controlled flame. Precision. Ritual cleansing.

He woke before the others.

Slipped through the halls with purpose.

Checked every route. Every choke point. Every blind corner.

Confirmed sightlines. Measured silence.

Vaeliyan activated his Skill.

All Around You.

The air folded.

He let it seep from his spine into the Ark's vents, dispersing like ash through a lung. The Skill didn't announce itself. It settled. Saturated. The recycled air turned heavier, harder to breathe, not for him, but for everyone else. A slow pressure tightening around the edges of their thoughts.

The AI didn't register it. It wouldn't. The signal threads were too fine, the interference too slow, too natural. Not a breach, an atmosphere shift. Nothing a camera or sensor could name. Only the human mind, once it was too late, might recognize the unease.

He didn't move at all. That was the trick. The Skill moved for him. Spread out like vapor threaded through conduit and steel. It wasn't stealth. It was pressure. Presence without footsteps. Death without origin.

He reached the observation deck. Saw Isol alone with two slates, flipping through readouts, adjusting something in the active node queue.

He drifted closer, soundless, formless.

His reach hovered near the man's neck.

Not yet.

Let the air work. Let the fear sink teeth into the back of their throats. Let them notice the silence.

One more check. One more confirmation.

Because when he struck, there would be no second chances.

It started with a single cough.

Isol blinked, rubbed at his throat, and cleared it like it was nothing. He sniffed, once, then twice. Looked around, confused, as if the air had shifted. He took another breath, and coughed again.

Then Jurpat, somewhere down the hall, let out a sharp rasp. Grix followed next. Then Calra. One by one, like a thread being pulled tight, they began to choke.

Not violently. Not at first. Just small sounds. Minor struggles. A rasp. A wheeze. A hand at the collar.

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Then it built.

The air thickened. It felt like breathing through cloth soaked in water that never dried. Pressure against the temples. Weight behind the eyes. Every breath pulled like it had to be earned.

Nanuk stumbled from one of the side corridors, dragging his heel like something had snagged his lungs. He slammed a hand against the wall, cursed, then dropped to a knee.

Cassian shouted, asking if someone had breached the sealant protocols. Florence's voice, clipped and hard, barked something back from deeper inside. She didn't sound calm.

Someone triggered an alert. The lights didn't respond. The Ark didn't answer.

Wren gasped. Not loud, but close. Her hand on her stomach. Her knees wobbling. Batu caught her before she fell.

The pressure spread.

It laced through the vents. No scent or color. Just presence, slow and invisible. It didn't announce itself. It simply arrived and stayed.

Lights flickered, subtle, like a shiver.

Batu tried to stand, but paused. His brow furrowed. He was beginning to suspect.

Grix clutched her stomach. Not pain, exactly. A wrongness. Like her lungs were resisting the shape of her ribs.

Florence snapped something to Calra, who didn't answer. She was pressing her knuckles into her sternum, bracing for a pain that hadn't fully arrived.

Cassian coughed into his sleeve. Looked at the fabric. No blood. Just heat. Unexplainable.

Jurpat had slumped against the wall now. His breathing shallow, chest hitching every few seconds.

Isol wiped his brow. Looked at his hand. It shook.

A muffled thud echoed from a far hallway. Someone had fallen.

Nanuk tried to move again but froze mid-step. His hand clenched. Something flickered behind his eyes, recognition.

Florence barked orders to get to filtration. Grix laughed. It wasn't a good sound. It had edges.

A siren tried to start. It warbled, cut short.

The Ark's response protocols were failing. Or confused. Or overwritten.

Wren shifted on the floor. Her breath shallow. Her eyes darted, not from panic, but protection.

Batu reached for his weapon, then stopped. Couldn't remember why.

Isol reached out blindly. Touched a railing. Gripped it like it might tell him what was real.

No one was screaming. That was the best part. They couldn't express what was killing them, no words could pass unless he let them. And as he tightened his grip, no words would leave this place.

It was quiet. Too quiet.

Not a silence born of calm, but one cut from fabric already drenched.

The sound of air moving had changed.

It whispered now.

Vaeliyan did not move. He did not breathe hard. His heart did not race.

He waited.

Because this was how his Skill worked. Not like a hammer, but like a sickness given purpose.

He watched the points connect.

Florence started to run. Not fast. Just enough to know she felt it too.

Cassian knelt. Whispered something to no one.

The lights dimmed again.

They had begun to understand.

He allowed himself one final thought.

This is how you stop rot. Before it spreads.

One by one, they began to fall.

Cassian went first. He staggered, blinked, then collapsed against the wall. No cry. No final command. Just a dull thud.

Florence followed. She tried to speak, to issue some last order, but her throat locked up. Her slate slipped from her grip. She hit the floor hard, eyes wide with the realization that there was no countermeasure. No safety net.

Grix pushed forward two steps before her knees buckled. Her knife fell with a faint clatter. She didn't.

Wren dropped beside Batu, shaking. Her mouth opened, but no sound emerged. She wrapped her arms around herself, instinctively shielding the child she carried from the poisoned air.

Calra and Deana folded next, almost together. Not dramatically. Just... gone. Their bodies crumpled inward, like marionettes with the strings cut.

Nanuk fought longer. His frame shook. He grunted once, then leaned against the wall. His knees gave slowly. One hand still gripped the stone like he might pull himself back up.

Batu remained upright, arms around Wren, unmoving. A frozen sentinel.

Isol slumped over a console. His fingers twitched as if trying to finish typing a command. Jurpat reached for him, dragging himself forward, but collapsed mid-crawl. They dropped together, a pile of breathless limbs.

Only one moved.

Warren.

Red-faced. Muscles trembling. Dragging himself inch by inch across the floor. Eyes locked on Vaeliyan. No words. Just raw, animal defiance.

Vaeliyan watched him crawl.

He hadn't expected Warren to hold out this long. Impressive, in a way. Not enough to matter.

"Too late," he said. Quiet. Certain.

He smiled. Then he laughed. Not wild laughter. Cold. Controlled. Satisfied.

He had done it.

With a Skill his great-grandmother Justinia had called trash, unworthy of a true Verdance, beneath the dignity of those bred for war and crowned by conquest.

She'd called it weak. Inelegant. A coward's tool.

She, who had broken siege lines, buried cities.

But it had worked.

He, the bastard son of a bastard son. The discarded, the exile.

Had saved the Green.

They hadn't seen it coming. None of them. Not from him.

No fight. No spectacle.

Only silence.

When he delivered the Ark, they would understand.

They would see what he had prevented. What he had secured.

There would be no question.

He would no longer be tolerated. He would be welcomed.

He would be rewarded for this. Might even be accepted into the main family, not as a tolerated echo, but a true son of the House of Verdance. He could hear it already, the praise, the recognition, the shifting tone when they spoke his name.

Blood. Merit. Victory.

And Warren Smith, the myth, the mistake, would die silent and forgotten, just like the rest.

Vaeliyan stepped forward, slow and deliberate. Each bootfall echoed like a verdict. He looked down at the broken circle around him, the fallen rebels, the would-be legends, the fools, and he began to speak.

"Do you hear it? That silence? That's the sound of judgment. Of justice. Of me."

He turned slightly, letting his voice carry.

"You brought me here. You invited me in. You trusted me. And for that, I hate you. Each and every one of you."

He knelt beside Florence, her lips still parted in frozen defiance. He didn't touch her. Just watched her fade.

"You called yourselves visionaries. Survivors. Heroes. All I saw were children playing war. Pretending at revolution."

He moved to Nanuk next. "You thought strength alone would save you. That noise and numbers could match discipline. But you never saw the real threat, not once."

He circled them, slowly.

"You think I betrayed you? You think this is treason? Then tell me, who bled the Green when you stormed the city? Not me. Not once. While your so-called tribes carved their way through our walls, I made sure civilians got out. I rerouted patrols. Disabled comms. Delayed response teams."

He paused by Wren.

"Even you, little flower. I knew what you were. What you carried. I could've ended you a dozen times. But I waited. Because you deserved to see the truth before it came."

He looked toward Warren, who was still dragging himself forward.

"And you. They call you the Yellow Jacket. The vaunted Ghost in the Mist. Nothing but a butcher of your betters. All I see is a man who couldn't finish a job. Who let his enemies live. Who hesitated when he should have burned the world."

He sneered.

"You crawled toward me like a beast. That's all you are. Not a symbol. Not a savior. A sick animal refusing to die."

He looked back to the others.

"You were warned. Again and again. Not by me. By the world. By the Green. You just didn't listen."

His voice dropped to a whisper.

"And now, you can't speak. Not one of you. Not unless I let you."

He spread his arms wide.

"You dragged me here thinking I was some common enforcer. Some stray dog. You never stopped to ask why I knew your codes, your networks, your tactics. Why I was always one step behind but never far."

He pointed at the ceiling.

"This place, this Ark, do you know what it will mean to them? The Green will weep for this. They will raise statues. Recite oaths. And I will be the man who brought them their salvation."

He looked down at Warren again, just a few feet away now, barely breathing.

"You all thought me beneath you. Unworthy. Unreliable. But I was the only one who saw the truth. You were the infection. I was the cure."

He stood tall.

"There is no glory in this. No joy. But I don't need joy. I need recognition."

He clenched his fist.

"Let the House Verdance try to deny me now. Let them look upon the Ark and say I was not a true son. Let them see the ashes I leave behind and call me lesser. I have done what none of them dared."

His voice rose again.

"I didn't do this out of hate alone. I did it because someone had to. Because the Green deserves better than to die at the hands of you monster."

He paced between the bodies.

"They called you legends. But legends are just stories. And stories end."

He stopped at the center of the room. The fallen surrounding him. The Ark humming beneath it all.

"But me? I am not a story. I am the author."

He looked to Warren, one last time.

"And this chapter is closed."

Vaeliyan stood before the Ark's mirrored interface, posture tall, expression serene. Behind him, silence stretched wide and absolute. The still air was heavy with victory.

He didn't whisper now. He spoke as though addressing a great chamber.

"I will be known as Vaeliyan, the savior of House Verdance. Justinia will train me herself as a reward for my service to the green."

He turned slightly, arms out as if inviting applause.

"And it's all thanks to you. You may have burned a city to the ground... but in its ashes, a true hero will rise."

A sound.

Not words. Not machine.

A growl.

Then claws.

They came from nowhere.

A blur from behind the pedestal, a rustle from the pipes above, a flicker of shadow that had gone unnoticed in the corners of the room. Styll and the cats descended like a whispered sentence, quiet, inevitable, and final.

Vaeliyan barely had time to process.

One cat slashed across his thigh, drawing blood. Another lunged at his wrist, biting into the meat above his gauntlet. Styll rolled forward from under a table, fangs gleaming, and drove them toward Vaeliyan's ankles.

He roared, not in pain, but outrage, and lashed out.

The bite didn't land deep. The cats didn't maul. But they didn't need to.

Because now he was off-balance.

Turning.

Too late.

Car was behind him.

Silent. Upright. Alive.

He had waited. He hadn't twitched when the others fell. Hadn't moved when the coughing started. No scream, no scramble. Just breath. Even. Uninterrupted.

Hands reached out. Gripped the sides of Vaeliyan's neck with practiced, mechanical calm.

Vaeliyan's eyes went wide.

He activated his skill again, pulse flaring. The air thickened like tar.

Car didn't flinch. Didn't so much as blink.

Vaeliyan gasped, desperate. The pressure of his own power building in his veins. Still, Car held fast.

"Whatever you're doing," Car said, voice even, almost bored, "it's not going to work."

Vaeliyan's pupils spasmed. A rattling breath escaped him. He poured more into the suffocation, trying to snuff the air out from every vent, every pocket of the chamber.

"My lungs got replaced a long time ago."

He leaned in, his tone shifting, gaining edge.

"One of the few things P.G.I. gave all its security. Can't let a bit of poison, or lack of oxygen, stop us from protecting the higher-ups, now could they?"

There was a pause. Just long enough for the implication to set in.

Vaeliyan thrashed. But it was frantic, like a child flailing against a wall.

He tried to reach for a weapon, but the lack of breath in his chest made him lose his grip, and the lance clattered to the floor. Was this how his victims had felt under his skill's grip, he wondered, as the world darkened at the edges of his vision.

Styll stood in front now, crouched low, but not attacking. Watching. Making sure he didn't recover.

Car didn't let go.

He squeezed. Just a little tighter.

Vaeliyan gurgled, then stilled.

He dropped to his knees, the strength leaving him all at once. The suffocation collapsed with him.

He opened his mouth one final time, but no air came. No words.

And the self-proclaimed savior of House Verdance fell, surrounded by animals, ghosts, and the air he could no longer control.

The silence after Vaeliyan's fall was not relief. It was too heavy for that, too full of something unspoken.

Warren coughed, dragging air into his lungs like he was pulling it through broken glass. His body shook, rage boiling under the surface as he pushed himself to his feet. Styll darted to his side, tail flicking, eyes scanning, but Warren waved her off. He wasn't hurt, just angry.

Not just at Vaeliyan. At himself.

He should've seen it.

Nearby, Jurpat slumped against the wall, head in his hands. Isol stood beside him, pale, trembling, not from the aftermath, but from the betrayal. They weren't choking anymore. The air was clear. Car had made sure of that. But neither man could seem to breathe right.

"It was Tarric who died in the livestock hauler," Isol whispered.

Jurpat didn't answer. He stared at Vaeliyan's body like he still expected it to move. Like it would wake up and explain everything.

"We thought we knew who we were traveling with," Jurpat muttered finally. His voice was hoarse, scraped raw from the coughing and something deeper. "Thought he was loyal. Thought he was just... difficult."

Warren laughed. It was dry and ugly.

"He was never loyal," Warren said. "He was just biding time."

Car said nothing. He stood over the body like a monument. Not proud. Just present.

Isol looked to Warren, eyes dark. "We brought him here. We brought a Green loyalist into the Ark."

Warren's face twitched. He glanced around the chamber, at the unconscious bodies, the broken edges of hope that had nearly been wiped clean.

"No," Warren said. "We brought Tarric. Tarric died."

He stepped past them and looked at the fallen figure, jaw tight.

"We just didn't bury him the first time."

No one spoke after that.

They just listened to the quiet hum of the Ark as it processed what had happened, and waited for someone, anyone, to move again.