The portal collapsed behind them with a sound like tearing fabric, leaving them sprawled across Midnight Veil's toxic surface. The corrosive atmosphere hissed against their armor, eating at seals and joints.

And Danny. Danny was fully exposed, his shredded armor doing nothing to protect him from the atmosphere that was dissolving his tissue.

"Fuck!" Luca scrambled to his feet, pain shooting through his body.

Joey was already trying to drag Danny toward the ship, but his brother's weight was too much. "Help me!" Joey screamed, his voice cracking. "Someone help me!"

Emily got there first, grabbing Danny's other arm. Together they stumbled toward the Centurion, Danny's mangled legs dragging uselessly behind him. Luca could see smoke rising from Danny's exposed flesh where the atmosphere touched it.

Luca ran. His legs burned, his armor warning him about a dozen critical failures, but he ran anyway. The toxic atmosphere ate at his damaged suit seals. He could smell it now, that acrid burning smell that meant the air was getting through.

Thirty meters. Twenty.

Behind him, Joey was screaming. "Luca! He's dying! Hurry!"

I know I know I know—

Ten meters.

Luca hit the external panel, his fingers fumbling with the emergency override. The keypad glowed red. Access denied. Manual authorization required.

"Come on!" He slammed his palm against the biometric scanner. It flickered, reading through his damaged glove. Green light.

The cargo ramp began lowering with agonizing slowness. Too slow. Everything was too slow.

Luca grabbed the edge and pulled, adding his strength to the hydraulics. The ramp groaned, descending faster. The gap was barely wide enough when Joey and Emily reached it, dragging Danny between them.

"Inside!" Luca shouted. "Go go go!"

They stumbled through the gap. Luca squeezed in after them, hitting the close button. Behind them, Zoe limped forward with Ryan, both supporting Chris between them.

The ramp sealed behind them with a hiss. Red lights bathed the cargo bay as the decon cycle ran, washing away the toxic residue in waves of chemical spray.

Thirty seconds. The longest thirty seconds of Luca's life.

The inner door opened. They stumbled into the Centurion's main corridor, leaving trails of foam and blood across the deck plating.

"Medical pod!" Joey was running now, Emily still helping him carry Danny. "Get him to medical!"

They burst through the door. The small medical bay felt impossibly cramped with all of them crammed inside. And there, in their single healing pod, Pixel slept peacefully. Zoe's Nyxocatus was curled into a ball, its fox-like features relaxed, completely oblivious to the crisis.

"Pixel!" Zoe lurched forward, slamming her hand against the pod's controls. "Wake up! Out!"

The pod's lid hissed open. Pixel stirred, yawned, its eyes blinking open in confusion. It looked up at Zoe, then at the blood-covered humans crowding the room.

"Out!" Zoe grabbed her companion, lifting it bodily from the pod. Pixel chittered in protest, but Zoe set it on the floor. "Not now. Danny needs it."

Joey and Emily lowered Danny into the pod. His blood immediately began pooling at the bottom, the white interior turning red. Joey's hands were already on the control panel, his fingers shaking so badly he had to try twice to input commands.

"His armor," Emily said, already working at the clasps. "We need to get it off."

"No time," Joey snapped. "The pod can work around it. Just seal him in."

The lid closed. The pod's interior filled with translucent gel, submerging Danny completely. Diagnostic displays lit up across the control panel, data streaming faster than Luca could follow.

Then the alerts started.

Red lights lighting up. Everything was red.

"No no no," Joey muttered, his voice barely audible. His hands moved across the interface, punching in commands, adjusting settings. "Come on, Danny. Come on."

The pod beeped. Critical alert.

"Joey?" Luca pushed forward through the cramped space. Around him, his team pressed close, all of them still in their armor, the tiny bay never designed for this many people. "What's happening?"

"He's not stable." Joey's voice cracked. "His vitals are spiking and dropping. Toxin exposure from the atmosphere, it's eating through his tissue faster than the pod can heal it. Bones are shattered, the femurs, tibia, pelvis. Internal bleeding. Severe concussion. The pod can't—"

The alert changed pitch. Flatlined for a second, then spiked again.

"Fuck!" Joey slammed his fist against the console. "This pod is for field stabilization, not this level of trauma. I need my infirmary on the Triumph. Full surgical suite, regeneration tanks, proper medical equipment."

Emily stood beside Joey, still covered in Danny's blood. "What do you need?"

"A miracle," Joey whispered. "His body is shutting down faster than the pod can compensate. The toxin exposure, it's corrosive, eating him from the inside out. Every organ is compromised."

The pod's readout showed Danny's vitals in freefall. Heart rate erratic. Blood pressure dropping. Oxygen saturation critical.

Luca looked at Danny through the pod's transparent cover. His friend's face was gray beneath the gel, his body covered in chemical burns where the toxic air had reached exposed flesh. The mangled legs were barely recognizable as human.

Behind them, Ryan was removing his helmet with shaking hands. Zoe slumped against the wall, holding her side where that warrior had clawed her. Chris was barely conscious, slouched on the floor with his back against the bulkhead.

They were all crammed into a medical bay designed for two people, maybe three. The air was thick with the smell of blood and chemical decontaminant. Outside, Midnight Veil's toxic atmosphere pressed against the hull.

"How long?" Luca asked quietly.

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Joey looked at him, and Luca saw something he'd never seen before in his friend's eyes. Terror.

"I don't know," Joey whispered. "Minutes. Maybe less."

The alert screamed. Danny's heart had stopped.

"No!" Joey initiated emergency resuscitation. The pod flooded with electrical pulses, trying to restart the heart. "Come on, Danny. Don't you dare. Don't you fucking dare."

One second. Two. Three.

A choked sound, a half-sob, tore from Zoe's throat. Luca glanced over. Her face was a mask of sheer terror, her hands pressed against her helmet as if she could physically hold back a memory. Her eyes were wide, fixed on the pod, seeing something more than just Danny.

Not again. Not after Darron. Not Danny.

The heart monitor beeped. Once. Twice. A rhythm, weak but there.

Zoe crumpled, sliding down the bulkhead to the floor, her body shaking with silent sobs.

Joey exhaled, his whole body sagging against the console. "He's back. But he won't stay. Not without proper medical care."

"What do we need to do?" Luca asked, forcing his voice steady. "To keep him alive."

Joey's eyes were wild, desperate. "I need to stabilize him. Stop the bleeding, seal the wounds, buy him time until we can get to the Triumph."

"Then do it," Luca said. "What do you need?"

Joey was already moving, pulling open the medical supply locker. His hands shook as he grabbed cartridges. "The pod can dispense these through the gel. I just need to load them in sequence."

He slotted the first cartridge into the healing pod's dispensary port. "Hemostasis cartridge. Stop the internal bleeding first."

The pod hummed, accepting the cartridge. Medication flooded into the gel, turning it faintly pink as it dispersed through the fluid and into Danny's body.

"Coagulants and Tissue Sealants," Joey said, his voice gaining control as he worked. Emily grabbed the cartridge from the locker, passed it over. Joey loaded it into the next port. "This'll help clot the blood, seal damaged vessels."

The healing pod's alerts were still screaming, but the tone had changed. Less critical. Still bad, but not immediately dying.

"Vascular Repair," Joey said, his voice gaining strength as he worked. "Deep Tissue Trauma. I need both."

Luca helped him, reading labels, passing cartridges. Joey loaded them one after another into the pod's multiple dispensary ports. The machine worked methodically, releasing precise doses into the gel, the medications filtering through to Danny's damaged tissue.

"Bone Fusion Repair," Joey said. "His legs are shattered. This won't fix them, but it'll stabilize the breaks, stop bone fragments from tearing through what's left."

He slotted the cartridge into place. The pod accepted it, dispensing the bone-knitting compound into the gel where it would seep into Danny's mangled legs.

"Antiseptic and Antibiotic," Joey continued. "The toxic atmosphere, it's infected everything. I need to flood his system before sepsis sets in."

Another cartridge clicked into place. Another dose released into the gel.

"Tissue Regenerator," Joey said, loading the next one. "To jumpstart cellular repair."

The gel shifted color slightly as the regenerative compounds mixed in, the pod's systems carefully metering the dosage.

"Regenerative Fluids," Joey said, his voice quieter now. "This is it. This is all we have."

He loaded the final cartridge. The one that would flood Danny's body with growth factors and stem cell activators. It wasn't enough to fix him. Not even close. But it might be enough to keep him alive.

The cartridge clicked into place. The pod dispensed it, the gel turning slightly luminescent as the regenerative fluids mixed in.

Joey's hands moved across the controls, adjusting settings, monitoring vitals. The cartridges were empty now, their contents distributed through the healing gel and into Danny's failing body.

The alerts quieted. Yellow instead of red. Stable, but barely.

"Now what?" Luca asked.

"Now I put him in a medical coma," Joey said. His voice was hollow, exhausted. "Slow his metabolism, reduce the strain on his organs. It'll buy us time, but not much. We need to get back to the Triumph"

He input commands into the pod's interface. Danny's vitals began to slow. Heart rate dropping to sustainable levels. Breathing shallow but steady. Brain activity minimal.

"He's stable," Joey whispered. "For now."

The medical bay fell silent except for the healing pod's steady hum. Joey slumped against the console, his forehead pressed to the cool metal.

"We need to get to the Varnathi ruins," Luca said quietly. "Call down the Percival. Get him to the Triumph before these supplies run out."

"How long?" Emily asked.

Joey looked at the pod's readout, calculating in his head. "The cartridges will keep him stable for maybe six hours. After that, his body will start shutting down again. We need surgical equipment to remove the shrapnel, proper tissue regeneration, bone reconstruction. Things I can only do in my infirmary."

"Six hours," Luca repeated. He looked at his team, all of them bloodied and exhausted. "Then that's how long we have. Everyone gear up. We're moving to the ruins."

Chris was resting in the crew quarters, still recovering from his mech's destruction. Joey refused to leave Danny's side in the medical bay. Which left Luca, Emily, Zoe and Ryan to figure out how to pull off the impossible.

Again.

Luca pulled up the topographical map on his tablet. The Varnathi signal was close. The same one they'd detected when they landed but hadn't time to investigate.

"Here's the plan," Luca said, his voice rough with exhaustion. "We take the Centurion to the signal's origin point. Park directly over it. Deploy stabilizers and shield dome."

He highlighted the hover vehicle's defensive capabilities. "The shield will give us a protected zone, about fifty meters in diameter. That's our safe area."

Ryan leaned forward, studying the display. "We're calling down the Percival inside the shield?"

"Exactly." Luca zoomed in on the ruins' entrance. "But first, Emily and Ryan, you're going outside. You need to find those Acid-Wax Plants we saw the first day. I need you to harvest as many as you can carry."

Emily's eyes narrowed. "The waxy coating. For the Percival."

"Right." Luca pulled up an image of the plant, its bulbous structure oozing the protective substance. "The coating provides acid resistance. We coat the Percival before it takes off, give it a fighting chance against the atmosphere on ascent."

"How much time do we have?" Ryan asked.

"However long Joey can give us," Luca said. "We need those surgical supplies and we're not leaving until we can get Danny to the Triumph safely."

Zoe traced her finger along the topographical display. "And while they're coating the ship, we go in?"

"You and me," Luca confirmed. "Scout armor only. We go in light and fast. We find out what's generating that signal, grab whatever it is, and get out."

"No tripping alarms this time," Zoe said, her voice flat and hard. "We don't have time for mistakes."

"No alarms, no golems, no clumsy footsteps" Luca agreed. "In and out. Clean."

Emily's hand found Luca's across the table, her fingers squeezing his. The touch was warm despite the blood still crusted under her fingernails. Her face was streaked with soot and Danny's blood, exhaustion carved into every line around her eyes. They'd been awake for over thirty hours. Fought through a fortress. Watched Danny nearly die. And now they were planning to do it all over again.

But her grip was steady. Solid.

"It's a good plan," she said quietly.

Luca squeezed back, drawing strength from that simple contact. His body was screaming at him to rest, to sleep, to stop pushing. The adrenaline that had carried him through the portal extraction was fading, leaving behind a bone-deep exhaustion that made his hands shake.

"It's the only plan," Luca replied.

Zoe leaned back in her seat, wincing slightly as the movement pulled at her injured side. "The ruins will have defenses. Automated systems, maybe active guardians if we're unlucky."

"Then we don't wake them up," Luca said. "Ghost Protocol active the entire time. We're shadows."

"Shadows that need to move fast," Ryan added. "Five hours isn't long."

"It's enough." Luca looked at each of them in turn. His team. His family. Exhausted, bloodied, but still ready to go. "Emily and Ryan, you two handle the Percival. Zoe and I handle the ruins. We synchronize extraction, the Centurion boards, we're gone before Midnight Veil knows what hit it."

And if something goes wrong? He wanted to ask, have someone ask, but it was useless.

Ryan pulled up the route to the signal. "The Centurion can make it there in forty minutes. That puts us on-site with five hours left on Danny's clock."

"Five hours," Zoe said, her eyes fixed on the map. "It has to be enough."

Luca studied the tactical display one more time. The signal. Whatever was waiting for them down there. They'd come to Midnight Veil for resources, for experience, for the challenge. They'd gotten all of that and more.

Now they just had to survive long enough to leave.

"Everyone in agreement?" Luca asked.

Emily squeezed his hand again. "Let's go get our people home."

Ryan nodded. "I'm in."

Zoe met Luca's gaze, her own dark with a cold resolve. "Let's get it done."

At that moment, Luca's interface pinged and his vision filled with text.

[Combat data calculated]

[+9,238,167 unallocated XP] [+3,739,063 credits]

[Level Up!: Level 70 +5 attribute points] [+2 Perception] [+1 Memory]

[Level Up!: Level 71 +5 attribute points] [+2 Perception] [+1 Memory]

[Unique Mission Reward Triggered]

Shit.

The Centurion's engines hummed to life as they prepared for the final push. Outside, Midnight Veil's toxic atmosphere pressed against the hull with increasing violence. Through the viewports, Luca could see the clouds darkening, swirling into massive formations that blotted out what little light filtered through the haze.

Another storm. Bigger than the last one. The atmospheric pressure was ramping up, the Centurion's hull groaning under the strain.

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