The mining rig on Prion-A remained protruding from the ocean, caught on the trench walls beneath the ocean, becoming a feature of its environment. It took the Atlas and Kythera rescue teams two days to put out the immense flames, and upon arrival, the death toll continued rising. Nearly one thousand people survived the wreckage, and more are believed to be trapped in underwater pockets with oxygen running out. But the death toll far surpassed the potential survivors.

  Riza was still beside herself, uncertain of whether or not the collapse may have been caused by something she’d missed in the breach- but, even by her calculations, the worst that could’ve happened was a rather serious leak… This… This had to be something else. The data just wouldn’t allow it.

  “And so the breach that you sealed was in E-Seven?” Asked the Atlas Commander in charge of the entire system. He shifted his arm, taking notes on his chip as his eyes gazed off to the side. He adjusted the red cape that fell over his right arm, revealing the golden buttons down the centre of his white uniform- as if he wanted to show off his rank before he glanced back at Riza.

  “I’ve answered the same question from four different people,” Riza sighed “Yes, the breach was in E-Seven.”

  He took a moment to observe her, maintaining eye contact. “What else can you tell me then?”

  “I don’t know,” she shrugged, anxiously itching at the glowing scar on her cheek, “You have all the data,”

  His cold gaze became stern, and he leaned forward in his seat, tilting his head ever so slightly as if he was scanning her for the truth. Is he reading my heart rate or something? She wondered.

  “The data,” He reiterated, “In my years of service, I’ve learnt a few things. One of them is that the data doesn’t provide the whole picture. The second is that it takes a certain level of intellect to achieve certain crimes.”

  “Well, I’d love to help provide the ‘whole picture’, but I’ve told you everything I know.”

  “A young woman from Cintri will have seen a lot of poverty in her upbringing.”

  “Rims are underfunded and mistreated,” She responded.

  “And yet you made it out. Something many Rims only dream of achieving.”

  “I got lucky.”

  “You were better than them.” He smirked, his pale skin and eyes squinting in enjoyment, “You’re proof that the deserving rise beyond the rest.”

  “Deserving?” The word rubbed her the wrong way.

  “You earned it… Your place in society.” He shrugged, “The majority of Rims just can’t accept that they’re not fit to live amongst the rest of us.”

  “Excuse me?” She couldn’t believe her ears. She’d heard prejudice before, but rarely this blunt and direct.

  “It’s a shame the majority of them couldn’t learn from someone like you.” He added before mumbling under his breath. “Must be a learning deficit.”

  “You have no right to judge them!” She grit her teeth. “Puela Ka’im, you have no idea what life is like in the Rim.”

  The officer paused, somewhat satisfied with the nerve he’d pinched.

  “You seem agitated,” He squinted.

  “I haven’t slept well since-” She paused, the thought of Violet and Duncan came to mind, and she had to swallow the rising sorrow. “I haven’t slept well,” She repeated.

  “You had two members of your crew on the rig, correct?”

  “Yes.” She clenched her jaw.

  “Were they good at their jobs?”

  “The best.”

  “I see. A data analyst and a biochemist. The best, you say.” He paused, glancing off to the side yet again as he read whatever showed on his chip. He looked back at her, taking a moment to think before there was a shift in his demeanour. “Can I be honest with you, Riza?”

  “Sure,” She shrugged.

  “I’ve dealt with many cases, but few at this scale. I’ve seen an entire fleet vanish- like a ghost. But only four and a half thousand people died in the incident. I’ve seen cities, flattened by showers, mass killing by the rebellion, and yet… Few cases ever reach a death toll of this magnitude.”

  Riza listened, maintaining an attentive gaze as he continued reading her expression.

  “I smell foul play.” He said, assertively, “And I believe it takes some rather intelligent folk to achieve it.”

  Riza's eyes darted open, and her heart sank at what he may be suggesting.

  “I believe you and your team sabotaged the Prion-A rig on behalf of the rebellion.”

  “On what grounds?!” Riza sat upright, enraged. “You can’t- There’s no way we coul-” She couldn’t think of a defence that didn’t sound like what a culprit would say. She looked at her hand as her palms went numb, and the micro-jitter of her anxiety slowly crept up her arm and throughout her body.

  “There was a large deposit of funds into your team's account from an unknown entity four months ago in the amount of two hundred thousand units.”

  “Research and living funds… From Kythera.” She murmured.

  “There’s no evidence of that.”

  “Violet handled the finances; she would have kept the data in-”

  “Did you know Violet was a part of the rebellion from the age of eight?”

  “She was born into it, but left when she was nineteen.”

  The officer paused, as if his suspicions had been confirmed, “So you did know?”

  “She told me the story once, we were close.”

  “I’m sure you were.”

  “I-” Riza didn’t know what to say, “I want my lawyer.”

  “That’s not how this works.”

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  “What? I have the right to have my attorney present.”

  “You don’t have one, Riza.”

  “I do, I do! Kythera provides me with-”

  “Kythera is suing you for sabotage. You are no longer their employee.”

  Her heart rate spiked; she felt it. And she saw the look in his eyes the moment it did. She felt trapped. Every word, every action betrayed her, and for the second time in three days, she’s been caught in an impossible position.

  “I don’t believe you.” She shook her head, “There’s just no way.”

  “Did you know that Pilo was also part of the rebellion? And fled the inner rim with Violet?”

  “Huh?” She stuttered as her eyes welled up. He told me everything, there’s just no way he- Her mind ran blank. She didn’t know what to think or what to feel anymore. Was he right? Or was he lying to get a reaction out of her? Nothing made sense, but she could see the threads clearly enough to follow them.

  “No,” She shook her head in disbelief, fighting the tears from her eyes. “Uh uh,”

  The Officer didn’t say anything further and stood up from his seat. He then placed both hands on the table as he leaned over, “You are under arrest for conspiring with the rebellion to sabotage the mining rig of Prion-A. In addition to this, you are charged with the homicide of nearly two hundred thousand Kythera employees.”

  He looked down on her with the eyes of a victor, one who hated the rebellion and anyone who would defend it.

  “Someone will be here soon to read you your rights and disable your BCI.” He stood up straight, pulling the cape over his shoulder as he kept his oppressive gaze. The pain in Riza’s chest swelled as the thoughts of Violet and Duncan came to mind. Their innocence was being tarnished by uncertainty. Lies that were convincing enough for her own memories to elude her.

  The Officer left the room, and the door sealed behind him. She planted her head into her hands, sobbing as the memories of their time on Prion-A resurfaced like her own analysis of when or how this could have happened. There’s just no way, she struggled for her breath. They wouldn’t do this. Was she a bad leader? Did they die on her watch? Or was she fooled, and convinced by the lies of people she thought were her friends?

  All the possibilities are what hurt the most. They kept her in a place of uncertainty and doubt. She hated it here. She needed some fresh air, but- She glanced out the small window of the interrogation room. The ocean remained as still as ever as she could barely make out the rig in the distance– a spec from the orbital view of the command ship.

  She just wanted to get back to the Skipper and continue her research like nothing had happened, but she knew there was no going back. Possibly never again, now that she’d been accused of something so heinous. The Atlas command ship is one of the largest ships produced, housing a crew of a thousand Atlas soldiers. If they had her locked up like a criminal, there was little she could do to fight it.

  _INCOMING TRANSMISSION_

  A small, text screen appeared in her vision, catching her by surprise. It was a suppressed signal, hiding its origin point. Who is this? She wondered. No text arrived, but the channel was open and tracking her data.

  _TRANSMISSION DISABLED_

  Odd, she raised an eyebrow as the signal closed. She then noticed a sound from the hall- distant, heavy footsteps that caught her attention. It grew nearer, and the sound of metal clanging against itself startled her.

  “Aah!” A voice from beyond the door yelled.

  “Wait, wait!” A second voice called out before hefty thuds vibrated the room, and a silhouette moved about from beyond the doors' frosted glass.

  There were a few beeps; someone was trying to enter the code of the room, but it failed four times before there was a surging sound that even flickered the lights in the interrogation room. Riza grew anxious and stood up, preparing to defend herself when the door swung open.

  “Boss?” A familiar voice whispered.

  “Pilo?” She asked.

  “Thank fuck, Boss we gotta go!”

  “Pilo, did you just-” She stepped towards the door where two soldiers lay on the floor. She looked up at him in confusion, slightly terrified.

  “They’re just unconscious.” He reassured her.

  “How did you find me?”

  “I got your transmission,” He said, “Right in time, too. I just escaped.”

  “My-” She knew she didn’t send that transmission, but her words were interrupted by the blaring alarm that began ringing throughout the ship.

  “We have to go, I know where we can get a ship!”

  “What, Pilo, we can’t just flee- we’ll be fugitives.”

  “We’re already criminals in their eyes, Boss. We have to get out of here.”

  She was surprised by his certainty, but a brief moment to consider it made it obvious that he was correct, so she followed him down the corridor.

  “They were making up lies about you, Boss. They said that-” He raised a hand to her, prompting her to slow down. He slowly peeked around a corner and turned back to Riza. “Three soldiers. We have to take them out.”

  “Take them out? What the hell do you mean?”

  “Knock them out. Put them to sleep- or whatever makes you comfortable. I’ll handle two of them, you just need to handle the one, yeah?” The urgency in his voice gave her little time to process the situation, and she hesitantly shook her head before he confidently walked down the hallway.

  “Hey!” Called out a soldier in his red tunic with gold buttons, “You two aren’t authorised to be here.”

  “Sorry, we got lost on our way to the-” Before Pilo completed his sentence, he punched the guard in the throat. The guard choked and fell to his knees as he clutched his neck. The second guard reached for the blaster at his hip when Pilo lunged at him and got into a curfuffle.

  Riza hesitantly watched, uncertain of what to do as Pilo scrapped with one of the guards. She noticed the third guard was reaching for his blaster as well, and that Pilo had his back to him.

  “Shit,” She muttered to herself as she charged towards the guard.

  Right when the guard noticed her, she smacked the guard in the face with a hefty backhand and grabbed the gun in his hands. She nearly managed to disarm him, but the guard recovered, and they began tugging against the blaster. Riza struggled against his strength and stomped on his boot, but not hard enough.

  The guard headbutted Riza, which sent her falling to the floor, and when she looked back up, the barrel of the blaster was pointed directly at her. She flinched, closing her eyes and expecting a gunshot when there was a large thud beside her. She opened her eyes to see that Pilo had knocked the soldier out, having finished his conflict with the one before.

  “Good job,” He said, extending a hand and pulling her up. “Let’s get moving,”

  Riza had never seen Pilo fight before, but clearly, Pilo knew much more than the rest of them. Was the Officer telling the truth? He picked up an access badge from one of the soldiers, and they continued down the hallway

  “They were saying all sorts of shit,” Pilo continued his thought, “They said you were part of the rebellion once.” He passed her a prolonged gaze, and he squinted when she hesitantly looked down at the ground.

  “They were saying the same about you.” She scratched her neck.

  “I haven’t worked for the Rebellion a day in my life.” He said with certainty, “I presumed you hadn’t either.”

  She grit her teeth, unsure of what to say as they continued jogging.

  “There’s the hangar,” He pointed at a sign above-head.

  “I don’t know if this is going to work,” She stammered.

  “It’s our best bet.” He said, “But if you have a better idea, I’m all ears.”

  She shook her head, still discomforted by what Pilo had said about her. The same tension in her chest returned, and she couldn’t help but feel the anxiety numbing her body.

  “Pilo,” She murmured.

  “Uh huh?” He mumbled as he opened a doorway to the hangar.

  “It’s true,”

  “Huh?” He grunted as they made their way inside.

  “I was part of the rebellion.”

  He stopped in place and turned to her with a look of complete disgust- as if she wasn’t the person he thought he knew. It was that very expression that she feared most about her past. The reason she kept it a secret for so long. She never intended to tell anyone but understood and respected Violet's decision to do so.

  “But Violet and I left a long time ago, we were just scientists for a short while, we didn’t kill anyone-”

  “Over there!” A soldier called out from behind as a handful of them started moving in their direction.

  Pilo pointed into the expansive hangar with combat jets and small carriers lined up into the distance, “I can hack a cargo ship; everything else is too advanced.”

  Riza nodded, and they headed toward the impound lot where there was a dingy-looking cargo ship shaped like a boring origami.