“Imagine how much insurance they would need to pay if any of this was legal.” Atticus mused, probably more to himself than to anyone else.

Hyejin stared at the wall of holodisplays. This can’t be happening…

Her whole plan had hinged on recruiting the two most renowned weapon experts on the border worlds.

Everything was riding on this plan going off with exact precision. Everything.

“Do you have a backup plan?” Dion asked from the corner of her vision. She ignored him.

The entire hotel suite was decked out with the best holodisplays money could buy. Each one showed a different angle of the race track from the point of view of the drones that hovered over the chaos. Right there, in front of her very eyes, from every possible angle, she saw her last hope get literally crushed up into tiny pieces in the highest possible definition. 

She had to tell herself that wasn’t human body parts in the wreckage, just to keep herself grounded. It wasn’t working. Her hand tightened around her left arm, vivid memories fighting for her attention. She couldn’t look away. Burning wreckage. The pain. The warmth rapidly draining. Someone calling her name…

“Hyejin?” Atticus asked, moving to stand in front of her. He looked taken aback when he saw her face, reaching out to touch her, but quickly withdrawing his hand again. “Are you crying?”

Her teeth hurt from how tightly she was clenching them. This race was barbaric. This was what people came here for? It was beyond reason. This wasn’t entertainment; this was just insanity incarnate. She just didn’t understand it at all.

The Tollindo Bi-Annual Annihilation Trial was known throughout the galaxy for its brutality, but the violence she had just witnessed far exceeded any nightmare she could ever have dreamed up herself. Of course, none of it was legal, but the race was single-handedly responsible for keeping the dying world afloat without government funding. It was the galaxy’s most famous ‘secret’. Hyejin couldn’t fathom any justifiable reason for allowing the race to continue. Not when lives were literally lost. 

Hyejin was in way over her head. A wave of nausea washed over her. She could feel the bile burning low in her throat. It was hard to get words out. At the same time, she couldn’t stop staring at the smouldering wreckage. With a deep breath, she wiped her watering eyes and shook her head at Atticus. She sank back into the sofa, her head in her hands. 

Everything was ruined.

‘Jim and Dom-the-Distructor are now neck and neck, fighting for first–’ Hyejin let out a furious scream and smashed her fist down on the control panel beside her, muting the commentator. 

She had been so close. 

The plan had always been flimsy. Hyejin could barely contain her excitement when she found Atticus. The fact that someone who could hack into NexTech existed in the first place was a miracle. In six hundred years, not a single other person had ever breached NexTech. For once, she really thought she was getting closer. She was too excited about the possibilities. It was her own fault for letting herself build false hope.

“It’s probably a good thing we were late. It would have been worse if we’d met them beforehand.” Dion commented, sipping from his glass. He seemed completely unaffected by the whole ordeal. Even Atticus had been on the edge of his seat with excitement throughout the race. 

Were these people really so disconnected from their humanity? She had started with very little respect for the men who looked half-starved and beaten within an inch of their lives, but the disapproval at the time was far from the bitter disdain she felt for them now. They were enjoying themselves. It was sickening.

“It’s over,” Hyejin sighed, leaning back to look at the ceiling at last. “The job is dead. They are dead.” She gestured to the screens that were still closely following the remaining racers. “This is… There are no words for this…”

Before she knew it, she was accepting a glass of amber liquid from Dion. “Welcome to the border worlds. This is about as hospitable as Agafra gets. If it helps, there are no innocent parties here.” He offered, sitting so close to her that she could feel his body heat.

Hyejin couldn’t look at him — didn’t want to look at him.

She peeked out of the high-rise window to the crowd lining the streets, watching the race on an oversized holodisplay. It wasn’t just the two men in the room. It was all of them. Cheering and hollering with every destructive confrontation. With every crash, both near-fatal and fatal alike, the cheers from the crowd were so loud that she could hear them from their suite on the eighteenth floor. The border-born were practically animals.

Dion was right. There were no innocent parties. Even he was a lowlife criminal she’d hired to risk his life for money. She was surrounded by people who had no care in the worlds for the sanctity of life. The realisation felt heavy in her stomach. This whole adventure had been a mistake. These people would happily gut her like a fish for money or for fun, depending on the particular depravity that swayed them. Suddenly, Dion’s words at the starport made sense. ‘You don’t want to stand out on Agafra alone, trust me. ’

Her gaze darted back to Dion, who was still happily watching the chaos, casually sipping his drink. Could she trust him? She hadn’t paid them yet, thankfully, but if she’d been naive enough to pay up front, would they even be sitting together now? Just because they hadn’t murdered her yet didn’t mean they wouldn’t. She knew nothing about either of them.

“You’re right. The majority of them are drunks and hooligans.” Hyejin’s gaze narrowed on the drink in Dion’s hand. He caught the accusation and smirked, locking eyes with her while he swallowed the rest of it.

“Maybe I can get in from the outside?” Atticus suggested, leaning on one of the windows to see below. “I’m sure I can find a way. All of the systems are connected to the same networks. I would just need to decrypt the security layers.” 

It was a wild concept, even for the man who had successfully broken into the network. NexTech was locked down harder than most people seemed to realise. Until she started digging, she didn’t truly understand the scope of it herself as an employee. 

“If you could get the information I need from the outside, we wouldn’t even be here. Not everything is connected to the network the same way. Some of the machines are isolated and locked up beyond typical safety features. I can’t even find signs that they exist at all,” she explained before taking a sip. “I was going to get into the details once we had our group together, but that’s pointless now.”

“You said you could get us into the building. Do we even need more people?” Dion asked.

Hyejin groaned with frustration and shook her head. “No, no, it’s not enough. Besides the hundreds of human staff, there are turrets, drones and Sentinels crawling every inch of the place. The moment we are noticed, every one of those things will be aimed at us. We would be the only casualties. This is NexTech HQ. Those two are the best—”

“Were,” Dion interrupted with an entertained snort. “Sorry,” he added when Hyejin glared at him. “Then we have to hire someone else. Look at this city. Tollindo is the perfect place to find someone willing to throw their lives away. There is always a guy who knows a guy.”

“Forget it. It was never going to work, anyway. I didn’t even know how to get them off the planet. This whole thing was…” She resigned, standing up. “Stupid. I was stupid. It’s over. I’ll give you money to get back to Oryxs for your troubles.”

Hyejin’s father had always told her she was asking foolish questions. ‘You need to let her go,’ he would repeat to her over and over again like a glitched recording. She wasn’t the only one who missed her mother. It didn’t take long for her father to grow cold and distant with grief. On more than one occasion, Hyejin had caught her father weeping alone over family pictures. She would crawl into his lap and cry with him while he held her so tight that it hurt. They were both the saddest and the fondest memories she had, the rare times it felt like her father was still present.

The tragic accident that took the lives of the Horus Research Station was public information, along with a promise from NexTech to improve their safety systems. Her father threw every resource he had into researching and developing new technology. As the years passed, he seemed to have less and less time to be present in her life. Yet, as much as she ached for his affection, she understood. She couldn’t sit still either.

No amount of digging through records showed anything new, even after Hyejin joined NexTech. It was always the same: a catastrophic gas leak tragically took the lives of the whole research station when the failsafe mechanisms didn’t engage. 

In under two minutes, all two hundred and thirty-seven of the Horus inhabitants died. There were no survivors. There wasn’t even time for someone to realise something was wrong. The surveillance footage gave her nightmares for months. They dropped like ragdolls.

The problem was that something didn’t sit right in the back of her mind. Even now, when her haphazard plans were unravelling in her hands, she was sure she was missing something important. Maybe her therapist was right. Maybe that important thing was just closure… 

“Listen,” Dion snapped, “You brought us all this way across the galaxy to a dangerous planet for this project of yours. The money you are offering isn’t petty change. This means something to you. Don’t just give up because of one little setback. Yeah, Skidmark was smashed up. Those guys died. So what? NexTech doesn’t punish treason with a slap on the wrist. Atty and I are already risking our lives to help you—”

“Then what should I do? Put it in your hands? I didn’t even want to hire you,” Hyejin shot back at him, “I only wanted him!” She gestured wildly to Atticus. “You’re only here because you insisted. We are done, Dion. It’s over. Unless you plan to be a one-man army the second you walk into NexTech, I am not interested in anything you have to say.”

“We can find someone.” Dion insisted again, not willing to drop it. He was worse than she was.

“Enough. Why are you pushing this?”

“Because I need this—We need this job and you need…” He waved his hand around in the air. “Whatever is behind closed doors. I don’t know. I don’t care.”

Hyejin couldn’t help but burst into laughter. Her eyes stung, her stomach twisted. She felt like she was going mad. “Of course it’s about the money. Your problems are none of my concern. We never should have met. This deal is over. Go home. I intend to do the same.”

They both glared at each other in silence, interrupted only by the roar of the crowd outside. Someone else was out of the race.