Massive Disaster III-9 (Patreon)

Miranda Lawson sat still in the dim confines of her private cabin, the barely-noticeable vibration of the disguised Cerberus transport ship humming beneath her. The metal walls reflected her image back at her—calm, composed, immaculately controlled. She did her best to ignore the bruising on her neck, above all else, the visible signs of her failed mission.

It wasn’t severe. 

Truthfully, the marks were barely visible in the right light. But Miranda knew how to read wounds nearly as well as she did people; none of these were incidental. The bruises were intentional and, more than anything, purposeful.

The product of restraint rather than carelessness.

Kai Leng hadn’t wanted her dead. Truthfully, she could tell the man didn’t care either way, but it was his charge — Zedd Victors — that had no real interest in her death.

But the brat had wanted her to know just how easily that could have changed.

Her fingers ghosted over the faint discoloration, tracing the memory of steel against her skin. Kai Leng had been behind her before she’d even registered the shift in weight, his sword positioned with clinical precision. She had barely needed to breathe before the blade had been there, a silent warning made tangible in cold metal.

She should have anticipated counterintelligence measures. She should have accounted for paranoia.

And yet, the moment the tour at Victory Innovations had ended, even before he spoke the words that damned her, she had felt it. That prickle at the base of her skull, the kind that only came when a game was already lost before it had begun.

He knew.

The moment she had walked in, Zedd Victors had known.

Not suspected. Not considered.

Known.

Miranda exhaled slowly, pushing down the instinctive irritation that threatened to rise. It wasn’t anger. Anger was emotion. It was calculation, pure and simple—analyzing every step, every microinteraction, every moment she might have miscalculated.

Her credentials had been impeccable. Her responses perfect. Her cover unbreakable.

And yet, it hadn’t mattered.

That unsettled her more than she was willing to admit.

Her jaw tightened as she activated the ship’s QEC link, the transmission buffering for only a moment before the air in front of her warped with blue light.

And then, he was there.

The Illusive Man.

Seated as always, exuding the kind of control that never needed to be asserted. The ember of his cigarette glowed faintly against the dark, curling smoke dissipating into nothing as he studied her with that ever-present air of detached amusement.

Miranda straightened, every trace of reflection or frustration smoothed over before she spoke.

“The Lightman identity is burned. Zedd Victors was uncooperative.”

The Illusive Man exhaled smoke, watching her with an unreadable gaze.

“Define ‘uncooperative.’”

A fractional pause. Just enough for Miranda to choose her words with precision.

“He anticipated infiltration and prepared countermeasures.”

That was the simple version. The diplomatic one. She didn’t mention how quickly he had unraveled the illusion, how easily he had toyed with her, how little effort it had taken for him to peel back the layers of her constructed identity.

It wasn’t just that he had suspected something.

He had known.

And that was what mattered.

The Illusive Man didn’t look surprised.

If anything, he looked pleased.

Miranda’s brow furrowed, ever so slightly. He had expected this.

“Your assessment of him?”

His tone was idle. But Miranda knew better. There were no idle questions with him.

She didn’t hesitate.

“Highly intelligent. Paranoid. Unshakable.”

A beat.

And then, more carefully:

“He despises Cerberus.”

That, finally, earned a reaction. The faintest ghost of a smirk.

“Then he’s more useful than I thought.”

Miranda stilled. That wasn’t the response she had expected.

He was gathering data.

This wasn’t just about recruitment. It wasn’t about persuasion.

It had all been a test.

Not of her.

Of Zedd.

The pieces slotted into place with an uncomfortable sort of clarity.

The moment Zedd had been presented with Cerberus, with the mere concept of them, he had done exactly what the Illusive Man had wanted him to do.

The brat had rejected them. Completely.

And yet this was somehow a success.

The Illusive Man leaned back, his smirk barely visible through the haze of cigarette smoke.

He wasn’t concerned about one failed approach.

This was a long game.

The call ended.

Miranda remained seated, staring at the fading afterimage of the transmission.

The bruises at her throat a quiet, lingering reminder of just how deeply Zedd Victors understood the game, even if he hadn’t realized he was playing it.

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –​

HOURS AGO

It was funny how so many people tried to get into what he was working on. Funny thing was, no matter how many attempts they made, they never stopped trying. Some tried to do it the digital way, penetrating his systems. Others tried to make their way into his company the physical way, by attempting to break in. And yet, a third group thought they could walk right in through the door with a job offer. 

For all three, he had ADAM to stop them like the world's snarkiest firewall. Kai Leng also was rather quick with his sword for the second.

Still, with the third group, there were a few to get past ADAM's strict standards for the jobs intended to be very close to his person. Two, in particular. Half of those two, like Kai Leng, were actually the exceptional and above-board badasses their resumes said they were. The other half, like "Melanie Lightman" may have been exceptional but they definitely were not above the fucking board.Zedd’s fingers tapped idly against the smooth surface of his desk, a sharp contrast to the tense silence filling the room. He leaned back slightly in his chair, the blue tint of his aviators hiding the exact way his gaze narrowed on the woman standing in front of him.

The woman who had walked through his front door as “Melanie Lightman” and was now standing at swordpoint, Kai Leng walking her into his office with the blade never leaving her neck the whole time.

Said blade still hovered a fraction of an inch from her throat and had barely moved a milimeter since, his grip on her neck just firm enough to keep her from thinking about pulling anything stupid. Not that she seemed like she was going to. If anything, the fact that she hadn’t flinched, hadn’t given him even the slightest tell that she was uncomfortable, only irritated him further.

No hesitation. No sign of discomfort. That wasn’t normal.

Zedd exhaled sharply, shaking his head. “…Did I fucking stutter? All I asked was what Cerberus is.” The nineteen year old narrowed his eyes behind his aviators. “I didn’t ask for the price of tea in France. Cer-Ber-Us. What are you?”

His words hung in the air for a moment, but if "Melanie" was rattled, the woman didn't do him the simple courtesy of showing it. In fact, when she finally spoke, her voice was smooth, carefully measured, not a syllable out of place. “Cerberus is an independent human interest group. We prioritize humanity’s advancement in the galaxy, ensuring our people aren’t left behind. A necessary counterweight to the status quo.”

Zedd frowned.

That answer. That phrasing. It sounded like something he’d say.

And that, more than anything else, pissed him off.

He leaned forward, hands clasping loosely in front of him on the desk, voice going flat. “I’ve heard rumors of them being exactly that, but I also know that’s bullshit. You people sent me a coded message a few months back. It was clearly bullshit then, and it sounds like a steaming pile right now.”

She didn’t react. No defensive body language, no attempt to refute him. Just standing there, taking up space like she still had some kind of upper hand in all this.

Zedd tilted his head slightly. “Oh, okay.” His tone shifted, mockingly light. “And I’m related to this how?”

Miranda—because let’s be real, that was her actual fucking name—adjusted her stance just slightly, as much as Kai’s grip would allow. When she spoke, she didn’t sound nervous. She sounded like someone laying out simple, inevitable facts.

“Cerberus has been monitoring Victory Innovations’ expansion. Your work has... captured our interest.”

Zedd snorted. “Oh, I bet. You know you could just buy my shit, right? It’s on the market.”

“That isn’t the concern.”

His head tilted slightly. “No?”

“You don’t just create technology, Mr. Victors.” There was something unreadable in her expression. “You guide it. You decide what it’s for. Where it goes. Who has access to it. That control is of interest to Cerberus.”

Zedd exhaled sharply through his nose, a humorless laugh rolling out. “Protection, huh? I’m sure you wouldn’t pocket any proprietary morsels for yourself, now would you?”

Miranda didn’t blink. “With your cooperation, that would never happen.”

Zedd laughed again, low and unimpressed. “I’m sure,” he muttered, shaking his head, “you fucking liar.”

Kai’s grip stayed firm, the blade never wavering. Miranda didn’t even acknowledge it. She was disciplined—well-trained, dangerous, the kind of person who could kill someone with a pen if given half an opening. Zedd wasn’t stupid enough to assume she wasn’t capable.

That didn’t mean he gave a shit.

He tapped his fingers twice against the desk, a quiet rhythm as he shifted the conversation. “You recognized Kai. How?”

Miranda hesitated, just briefly, but it was there. A half-second of deliberation before she answered.

“Cerberus had interest in hiring him after his discharge.”

Zedd’s eyes flicked toward Kai, who remained unreadable, his grip never loosening.

“Kai, bud… mind filling me in?”

Kai’s expression remained impassive. “I had no interest in serving any grander organization. I wished to seek my own path, so I rejected their offer.”

Miranda’s gaze stayed steady. “His expertise would have been useful to Cerberus.”

Zedd smirked slightly. “I’m sure.” His gaze lifted back to his bodyguard, something sharper in his tone. “Kai, you were black ops, right?”

Kai didn’t flinch. “N7 Special Forces, yes.”

Zedd’s smirk faded. “Black ops,” he echoed quietly. His attention turned back to Miranda, exhaling sharply. “Melanie, or whatever your name is, lies with the best of them. You should know what she won’t say.”

His voice dropped, more measured now. “What the fuck is Cerberus?”

Kai spoke up, his voice flat and matter of fact as usual. "Cerberus is a black-ops group operating under the pretense of human advancement. They operate in cells, minimal oversight. Funded through an uncountable number of shell companies, illegal arms trades, and black-budget siphons, along with friends in very high places, they engage in actions that would be considered akin to terrorism. 

Zedd raises an eyebrow.

Kai: However, terrorist is too broad a term, as it's my opinion that the Alliance tacitly supports Cerberus, which was part of my reasoning for avoiding them. A group that well-funded, that well-connected, operating across human and Alliance space without greater pushback, when the Systems Alliance is doing it's to appear cooperative with the Citadel.” His voice lowered towards the end. “It's ridiculous to accept otherwise, but that's politics.

Zedd stared at him, a worrying though worming itself into his head. "You said... you said terrorist. Like terrorism against aliens?"

Kai Leng didn’t shake his head but his bodyguard managed to pack a ton worth of disdain into a single flat “No.” The former N7’s grip tightened slightly around Melanie’s neck. “Cerberus is responsible for multiple eezo-dispersal operations in the form of sabotaging eezo plants, transports , They target colonies, transport hubs, even major metropolitan centers on Earth. Anywhere they can seed the next generation with biotic potential. They call it ‘preparing humanity for the future.’ I call it reckless.

Zedd felt the ground fall out from him, the most words he'd ever heard from Kai Leng hammering into his skull like nails as he did his best to stand still. He felt his chest tighten as he stared in silence as Kai Leng continued to speak.

Kai: Cerberus doesn't bomb for attention. They do it for control. Everything they touch is about ensuring humanity comes out on top, no matter who they burn along the way."

Sabotaging... sabotaging eezo transports... In major metropolitan centers.

Zedd took a long slow breath, pushing everything else aside and pulling himself together. He finally glanced at "Melanie", reading her expression, watching for the tells. A flicker of amusement? Contempt? He wasn’t expecting guilt.

Zedd took in a shallow breath through his nose. "That about cover it, or you got another sales pitch?"

Melanie’s lips pressed tightly together before they parted just slightly. “I j-”

Anything else she had to say was silenced as Zedd pulled out something and aimed it at her head. The Victor Mk X sat in his palm, the sleek white-and-blue-personal pistol having gone through nine different iterations since he had first put it together 15 months ago. Zedd doubted there was a pistol not in the hands of a Spectre that was more dangerous than his own piece.

More than anything, it was more than overkill for threatening one woman. He didn't really care right now, though.Zedd’s grip on the Victor Mk X was steady, but his mind was anything but.

The weight of it in his palm wasn’t the problem—it was familiar, comfortable, an extension of himself after over a year of refinements. The custom pistol had been rebuilt so many times that he doubted there was a single original component left from the first prototype. It wasn’t just a gun anymore. It was a statement.

And right now, it was pointed straight at Melanie Lightman’s head.

Her expression barely flickered. Not shock, not fear—just a momentary stillness, a calculation running behind her eyes that he couldn’t quite read.

Zedd could read Kai Leng, though. The man was standing just behind her, his stance loose but predatory, his left hand resting lightly on the grip of his sheathed sword. The quiet kind of ready that made Zedd’s pulse tick up, though not for the usual reasons.

Kai had spoken more in the last two minutes than he usually did in a week, and every word had burrowed under Zedd’s skin, clawing at old wounds, at memories he’d deliberately buried under logic and engineering and the relentless push forward.

He forced himself to breathe, forcing the words out before the tangled mess in his head could catch up to his mouth.

"Question… Miss Lightman.'" He kept his voice as calm as he could, but he felt almost no control inside as he kept his arm still. If anything, he felt steady the way a cracked hull was steady, moments before catastrophic failure. "July 12th, 2173. An eezo transport shuttle reported engine issues above the Chesapeake Metroplex, causing an explosion as it crashed into the highway. Fifty-seven people were pronounced dead at the scene." 

He lowered his aviators with one hand, looking her dead in the eye as the glasses sloped down his nose. "My question to you, Melane, is simple. Did Cerberus have anything to do with this?"

The room was silent.

A long, stretching silence that hummed through his skull like a tuning fork, rattling against the things he already knew but didn’t want to know for sure.

Melanie—or whatever the hell her name actually was—didn’t flinch. Didn’t break composure. But she did exhale, slow and measured.

"That event  was never confirmed as having anything to do with Cerberus or any other external organization," she said at last, Zedd wanting to pull the trigger as the last syllable left her lips.

One of those perfectly crafted non-answers. 

Never confirmed wasn’t the same as a fucking no.

Zedd’s jaw tightened.

He didn’t believe her, of course.

Not because of anything obvious—her tone was perfect, her expression smoothed out, her body language relaxed—but because it was too perfect.

A lie told by someone used to telling lies.

"Try again." His voice was sharper this time, the muscles in his forearm flexing slightly as he adjusted his aim. The pistol's custom micro-stabilizers hummed in his grip, compensating for movement, keeping the shot lined up even as the words curdled in his throat. "And this time, tell me something I can actually fucking believe."

She met his gaze. Steady. Unflinching.

And then—she exhaled through her nose. If he wasn’t watching her like a fucking hawk, he might’ve missed the slight tick in her jaw, the way her lips pressed together before she spoke.

"I wasn’t involved in that operation. It was before my time… and if Cerberus was involved," she said carefully, "the objective wouldn’t have been destruction for its own sake."

He didn’t blink at the quiet confirmation wrapped up in the neat tiny bow that was plausible deniability.Instead, he Zedd felt something cold settle behind his ribs. He’d known. He’d fucking known as soon as Kai mentioned it. He didn’t need this confirmation—didn’t need to hear it from the mouth of some black-ops operative playing at civilian—but now it was real. 

Zedd felt his fingers tighten around the grip of his pistol, every nerve screaming at him to pull the trigger just to make a point.

Kai was watching him now, his gaze sharp, calculating. Not moving to intervene, but ready if he did.

The breath he let out was slow, controlled, measured—but the moment it was gone, something else settled into his chest, something heavier. Cerberus had been in Baltimore.

Had touched the Metroplex.

Had been there when everything went to shit."That’s not an answer," he said, voice steady."It’s the only one I have."No begging. No pleas for mercy. He hated that he almost respected it.

His fingers twitched again. A fresh spike of adrenaline burned through him, sharpening everything—his heartbeat against his ribs, the cool weight of the pistol in his grip, the distant sound of ADAM running passive security checks in the background.

Zedd had spent his life solving problems. Fixing things. Finding solutions.

But some things weren’t problems.

Some things were just true.

"How many?" His voice came out lower than he intended, quieter, almost thoughtful.

Melanie blinked. "How many?"

Zedd’s thumb flicked the safety off with a mechanical click.

"How many of those fifty-seven people were collateral?"

For the first time, something flickered in her expression.

It wasn’t fear.

It wasn’t guilt.

It was something worse.

It was understanding.

Like she knew exactly why he was asking.

Like she knew exactly how deep that particular knife had sunk into his ribs, and had the courtesy not to twist it too hard.

She didn’t answer.

And that was an answer all on its own.

Zedd closed his eyes for half a second, barely long enough to breathe.

Then, without another word, he flicked the safety back on, lowered the pistol, and turned away.

Kai didn’t relax.

Neither did Melanie.

 "I’m not working with a bunch of fucking terrorists. And if I see your people trying to involve themselves with me and mine any time soon, you’ll have to report them missing."  Zedd’s voice was flat, final. He holstered the pistol, adjusting his jacket as if nothing had happened, as if his entire world hadn’t just tilted sideways in the span of a single goddamn conversation. His gaze darted to Kai. “Now get her the fuck off my property.”

Melanie didn’t argue. Not when security came to the door in Mark 2 VESTs.Not when Zedd turned his back on the whole thing.

She stepped back, smoothly, evenly, not turning her back on him or Kai. Her posture still poised, her expression still unreadable.

"A shame," she murmured, more to herself than to him, before letting herself be dragged out.

Zedd didn’t watch her go.

Didn’t move until the doors hissed shut behind her.

Then, finally, he exhaled, his hands resting against the desk, bracing himself against the sudden, quiet weight of everything that had just clicked into place.

Kai was still there.

Zedd didn’t look up. "No comment?"

The former N7 didn’t speak for a long moment. Then, finally… "You didn’t shoot her."

Zedd huffed out a dry, humorless laugh. "Yeah. Lucky her."

He shook his head as his omnitool beeped again, a message coming through.

The nineteen-year-old took off his aviators as he read the message, and let out a long sigh that Kai Leng had probably grown used to. “...this fucking guy, man.”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –​

“This fucking place, man…” The smell always pissed him off even if he never said anything out loud—sharp, chemical, wrong. 

Like someone had bottled up every hospital he'd ever been in and sprayed it over the walls, hoping to disguise the fact that this place wasn’t any different. New Abraham Major Medical had less of the old-world wealth than Greater New York Memorial, but it didn’t matter—sterilized air, bright lights, that quiet hum of machines pretending to keep people alive. 

The bed was awful, some high-end foam type material. Those things always claimed to adjust to your body but they were talking about regular people’s bodies. For his, they always just left him aching in new places compared to the harder stuff. His spine throbbed in time with his pulse, and his left leg—the one responsible for landing him back here—had settled into a steady, radiating pain, creeping upward like a slow burn under his skin.

Brilliant work, Rogers. He rolled his eyes at himself as he lay there, just tired of being in here again. Some real genius-level execution.

Same shit, different hospital.

Patient Rogers shows continued degradation.

Symptoms of muscular atrophy accelerating.

Genetic disorder resulting in a progression of complications.

He'd tried to follow his doc’s advice, as much as he could. Exercise without the VEST, she’d told him, like he didn’t know that. Build up his muscles instead of relying on it for support, she reminded him all the time. 

Yeah, sure, that was all good on paper. You could repeat simple stuff like that all the time, but in practice was always different than on paper. That’s why fifteen minutes into a "light jog" that was more like a shuffling stumble, his leg had given out completely. The crack of bone meeting pavement had been as loud as loud could get, to his ears at least, but the pain… well, he’d say he was used to it but it hurt every goddamn time.

The irony wasn't lost on him. Get stronger by not using the thing keeping him alive, only to nearly kill himself in the process.

A nurse poked her head in—Sanchez, her nametag said. A couple years older than him, probably new to the colony too, with that slightly too-bright smile people wore when they were trying not to show how much pity they felt everytime they looked at you

"How are we feeling, Mr. Rogers?" She approached the bed, datapad in hand, already checking the monitors like she didn't actually care about his answer.

"We're feeling awesome," Caleb deadpanned with as much a smile as he could manage, trying not to make her feel bad. "Planning to run a marathon later."

The smile faltered. Just for a second, but he caught it. They always tried so hard to act normal, like they weren’t staring at the guy who’d probably been wheeled in more times than most of their patients combined. She recovered quick, back to professional cheer. “Your scans are almost ready. Dr. Sharpe will be in shortly.”

“Can’t wait.” He gave her another sharp-edged smile, the kind that didn’t reach his eyes. Those usually made people back off for some reason. This time, it worked like a charm. She nodded and retreated, the door sliding shut behind her with a soft, almost silent, hiss.

Alone again, Caleb let his head fall back against the pillow, letting out a slow tired breath. 

All he had ever wanted was to be normal, just like other people. Not special. Not inspirational. 

Just normal. Really doesn’t feel like too much too ask. Normal, like the other sventy percent of humanity who got the majority of their genetic issues knocked out.The kind of normal where you could walk down the street without being worried about if the oxygen quality was good enough for you to be fine the rest of the day Without being worried about muscle strain, or if that crowd of people was coughing or sneezing a bit too much for it not to be a disease. The kind where people looked at you and saw a person, not a bundle of symptoms wrapped in fragile meat.

His mind drifted to the weird questions Zedd had hammered him with a few days ago. That helmet. Those crystals burning against his skull. The increasingly disturbing scenarios.

If you could steal someone else's healthy lungs to replace your failing ones, knowing they'd die but you'd live a normal life, would you do it?

He’d said no. Immediately.

And he’d meant it.

Mostly.

There’d been a flicker—quick, shameful, the kind of thought that barely had time to settle before he stomped it out. What if? What if he could just… breathe? Like a normal person, without having to think about it. Without measuring every inhale like he was budgeting his own survival. What if his body didn’t keep track of every decision like it was waiting for him to fuck up? What if he could just be?

Caleb tried not to dwell, but that voice in the back of his head had a habit of resurfacing. The one that whispered about how maybe he was being stupid about this. Medical tech wasn’t Zedd’s thing—he knew that. The guy built weapons, machines, entire companies, but he wasn’t a doctor. 

Then again, Caleb wasn’t stupid. 

That original VEST wasn’t some off-the-shelf rig he’d given Caleb just because. It was built for him, custom, designed to compensate for his specific weaknesses. Zedd hadn’t just built an exoskeleton; he’d built his exoskeleton. And if he could do that in a few months after Caleb got hurt, then…

The door slid open. No knock, no warning, just the soft hiss of mechanics and then there he was, like Caleb’s thoughts had summoned him.

Zedd stepped in, crisp as ever, black and blue suit untouched by the fact that it was—Caleb glanced at the clock—2:43 PM. He looked like he’d walked out of some corporate meeting, all smooth confidence and sharp edges, not like someone dropping by a hospital room. Caleb blinked. For a second, he wondered if the painkillers were stronger than he thought.

“Damn, Rogers.” Zedd stopped near the foot of the bed, hands in his pockets, head tilting just slightly. “Can’t leave you alone for five minutes without you falling apart?”

Despite everything—despite himself—Caleb grinned. That was the thing about Zedd. No careful phrasing, no kid gloves, just straight to the point. Most people tried to soften their words around him, like they thought he’d break if they so much as implied he wasn’t a fully functional human being. Zedd? Zedd had never given a shit. Maybe because he honestly didn’t care, maybe because he knew Caleb would rather eat glass than get treated like he was fragile. 

Either way, it was better.

“What can I say?” Caleb shrugged automatically, and immediately regretted it, pain spiking up his shoulder like an electric shock. He clenched his jaw, exhaled slow through his nose. “Figured the hospital food was better than Dev’s cooking.”

“Low bar,” Zedd muttered, stepping closer, his gaze already flicking over the medical readouts like they were blueprints he was memorizing.

“Yeah, well, turns out running on fucked-up legs isn’t the best idea.” Caleb shifted, testing a new position. It sucked marginally less than the last one. “Doc says I gotta lay off the VEST for a while. Says I’m getting too dependent.”

Zedd snorted. “And how’s that working out for you?”

Caleb waved a hand toward his immobilized leg, the bruises running down his arms, the general disaster that was his entire existence. “Got all the way to the end of the block before biology reminded me who’s boss.”

Zedd grabbed a chair from the corner, dragged it over with a scrape of metal on tile, and dropped into it like he had nowhere else to be. He pulled out an apple—from where, Caleb had no idea—and took a bite, crunch obnoxiously loud in the quiet room.

“Speaking of biology,” Zedd gestured vaguely in his direction, mouth half-full, “how long they keeping you?”

Caleb sighed. “Overnight. Maybe longer.” He could already hear the tests stacking up in his future, more scans, more reports, the same conclusions. “They’re running more sequencing. Bone density, genetic markers. Pretty sure Dr. Sharpe’s just looking for new and exciting ways to tell me I’m falling apart.”

“You’ve got the VEST.”

“Yeah, and apparently that’s part of the problem.” Caleb raked a hand through his hair, exhaustion pressing in all over again. “The more I use it, the weaker I get. The weaker I get, the more I need it. Fun little spiral.”

Zedd didn’t respond right away. Just finished his apple, tossing the core into the bin without looking, the movement so casual it almost pissed Caleb off. Something about how easy it all was for him. The guy who could build anything, just sitting there, no effort, no struggle, while Caleb lay in a hospital bed for the millionth time, his own body working against him like it had some grudge.

The silence stretched.

Caleb hesitated. Then, before he could stop himself—before he could talk himself out of it—he said, “You know, those tests you ran on me. The weird questions.” His fingers curled against the blanket, grip tightening like that might stop the rest of the words from coming out. “Zee… can you—”

A pause. Swallow. Try again.

“Can you fix me?”

The words landed like a weight, heavy in the air between them. The moment he said it, he wanted to take it back. Too much. Too direct. Too fucking pathetic.

But Zedd didn’t mock him. Didn’t smirk, didn’t toss back some lazy quip.

For the first time since he walked in, Zedd was completely still.

Then, finally, a single, measured response.

“No,” he said. “I can’t fix you.”

Caleb swallowed down the pit forming in his gut, trying to smother it before it could get any bigger. Stupid to hope for anything. Stupid to even ask. He wasn’t sure why he had. Wasn’t sure where it had come fr—

“Because there’s nothing to fix.”

His laugh came out sharp, bitter. “Yeah, yeah,” he muttered, forcing something like a smile, but it didn’t stick. “Because I’m perfect just the way I am.”

“No.” Zedd’s voice cut through, hard, clipped. “No one is.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and Caleb felt something shift in the air, tension stretching tight between them like a wire. “Don’t interrupt me.”

Caleb blinked. “Uh—”

“I can’t fix you because that would imply you’re broken.” Zedd didn’t let him recover, words rolling over his in that slow, deliberate way of his, like he was piecing together a circuit board mid-sentence. “You’re not broken. Your body just—” He made a vague gesture toward him, something between dismissive and diagnostic. “Didn’t put itself together right. But that’s not the same thing.”

The blue glare of the monitors behind Caleb pulsed, flickering in his periphery. He shifted against the mattress, fingers twitching in his lap, pressing down against the scratchy fabric of the hospital blanket. His knee throbbed beneath the immobilizer, his lungs felt just a little too tight, and his heart was picking up a beat that had nothing to do with either.

Zedd reached up, took off the aviators, and suddenly, Caleb was frozen.

It wasn’t the first time he’d seen him without them, but something about the way Zedd was looking at him now—really looking at him, eyes locked onto his like a sniper sight—made the entire room feel smaller.

“You were scared,” Zedd said, voice softer now, but not any less focused. “But not for yourself. Not really.” His fingers tapped lightly against the chair’s armrest, the only movement. “You didn’t want your family to find you dead. Didn’t want to put them through that. So you left Earth. Ran for the Frontier. If you were gonna go, better to go doing something. Maybe saving people. Making some kind of difference. That way, it wouldn’t feel like it was for nothing.”

Something thick caught in Caleb’s throat. He had no idea how to respond to that.

He wasn’t even sure how Zedd knew—how he’d figured it out. It wasn’t like Caleb had said that, not out loud, not like that. And yet, there it was, laid out in front of him, undeniable.

Zedd didn’t stop. “That’s the kind of person who could never be broken.”

The beeping of the monitor above his head spiked. Caleb didn’t look at it. He couldn’t.

Zedd leaned back slightly, watching him, head tilted like he was considering something. Then, voice dropping low, almost reverent, he said, “I don’t want to change that.” A beat. “I just want to make you strong enough to save the people who can’t save themselves.”

Caleb’s heart was hammering, too loud in his ears. He wanted to look away, wanted to crack a joke, throw up some kind of wall before this conversation got any worse, but he couldn’t move. He could barely breathe.

The quiet stretched between them, stretching tight like a thread about to snap. Zedd didn’t fill it. Just waited, gaze steady, patient. Letting it sink in.

Caleb’s hands curled into the blanket.

“What are you saying?” he asked, barely recognizing his own voice.

Zedd didn’t blink. “I’m saying that I can make it so you never need the VEST again.” He extended his hand, palm up, easy, effortless, like he was offering Caleb a trade.

Like he was offering him a choice.

“You in?”

Caleb looked at the hand. Looked at his own.

Bruised. Weak. The same hands he’d used to push himself up off hospital floors, to clutch at his chest when his lungs seized, to brace against walls when his legs refused to hold his weight.

The same hands that had never been able to hold anyone else up.

His fingers twitched once.

Then, slowly, deliberately, he reached out and took Zedd’s hand.

He smiled, sharp, something wild sparking in his ribs, and said, “I’m in.”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –​

5K Words (100 FP)

ROLL: Lab Standards (200 FP) [Starbound] {Quality Design}: You are comfortable around technology. You can deduce what complex machines do, at least as far as scientific principles go, and once you understand them, you can standardize them. Technology that you study can be converted into generic versions which may be weaker or less versatile but are easier to maintain and produce. You also can follow the most complicated techno-jargon as if it was plain English.

Forge Points: 500