The hallway inside the command center is a mess.

  The hole made by the asteroid continues through the floor, and scattered everywhere are chunks of concrete and a desk with the owner’s various things scattered about.

  Nyx isn’t sure where to go from here. Perhaps the third floor to the governor’s office?

  She jumps over the hole and the desk. The room itself is fairly large, and she sees other desks, each with its own terminals and clues about the owners.

  Nyx moves to the door. She’d listen to see what’s going on outside, but with the thin air and her helmet, she doubts she’d hear anything.

  She raises her pistol and cracks the door open and sees no one leading down the hallway. Dying plants and pictures of Mars and even Earth decorate the hallway. It’s dark because the lights are off other than emergency lighting, and she sees more holes peppered here and there.

  She can’t see in the opposite direction, so she rolls out and readies her gun as she checks for enemies.

  There’s no one here, and she sees that it’s partly collapsed and blocked off.

  She pushes a button on her wrist computer as she runs to the end of the hallway, “Be showin’ me the insides of this dum place, suit, and be showin’ me to the place where the important people are usually meetin’.”

  Her visor lights up with the plans for the command center, and she sees the layout. Then it blinks: ‘Current position?’

  Nyx doesn’t know, “Dum it!”

  She looks around the corner. She knows she’s on the second floor, but the hallways look the same.

  There still isn’t anyone she’s seen so far and assumes they’re all busy fighting off Sandel’s security.

  She passes an elevator, but sees it doesn’t have power. If it’s here, maybe there’s a stairwell nearby?

  A quick search reveals a stairwell down a short side hallway.

  When she opens the door, she hears the faint noise of gunshots below.

  She doesn’t want to get caught in the crossfire, so bounds up the stairs and only stops at the door exiting to the third floor. Here, when she peeks out, she sees two people running down the hallway away from her.

  It’s even more damaged here. Much of the hallway has collapsed or has holes. She’s sure she can fit through them, but…

  A stun round hits the door, causing her to jump back, hissing and her tail floofing.

  She considers going back and helping security clear the first floor, but she wants to take care of this herself. She imagines putting a bullet in Dr. Yang’s leg or shooting a hole in Allison’s air supply. It’s possible they’re with the hostages in the basement, but she’s already here on the third floor with people shooting at her, so she will keep going.

  Nyx returns to the door, and kicks the door open.

  A few stun rounds spark against the door, then she guesses which direction they’re coming from and fires blindly twice by sticking her arm around the door frame.

  She doesn’t expect to hit anything, but hopes its enough to make whoever was outside jump behind cover and rolls into the hallway. She notices movement and runs behind a piece of fallen concrete.

  It’s not enough cover, and stun rounds hit her helmet and shoulder. Her armor shrugs them off, but the round to the helmet causes her HUD to flicker wildly and the one to her shoulder still makes it go slightly numb.

  She raises her pistol and fires.

  She sees two men in stolen security exo-suits, one hiding behind a fallen concrete pillar, and the other taking cover in a doorway.

  They go to fire again after reloading, and she fires back until her clip empties, hitting the one behind the pillar in the shoulder. Blood sprays from the wound, and air escapes with it.

  A round hits her breastplate, and she feels nothing.

  She realizes that unless a round hits the soft parts of her suit, it won’t affect her, and even then at worst make her limbs go numb.

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  Why had Cai made an armored suit for her? Micro meteors?

  Nyx reloads her gun, then charges the last person and realizes they’ve gone already. She then turns to the injured one to make sure they’re still not trying to fight, but sees they’re busy trying to seal their exo-suit.

  Nyx picks up the pistol they dropped, aims, and shoots them in the chest.

  They’d mostly sealed the holes, so she leaves them and turns to face the room that the other person fled into and a stun round hits her left arm, causing it to go numb.

  By the time Nyx aims at them, they’ve already fled back into the room.

  Her left arm is now limp, but she doesn’t stop and fires once into the ruined room.

  It looks like another office, and there’s a ruin of concrete, metal, and wires on the far side, leaving just a small space to use. She doesn’t need to go into this room, but she doesn’t think it’s a great idea to leave someone behind her.

  She sees movement, and another stun round sparks off her shoulder.

  Another shot, and they fall to the ground.

  Nyx stands over them, her hands shaking. Through the tinted visor, she can see the face of an orderly who had escorted her once. Air and blood escaped from a wound in his chest as he grabbed at it, then slowly fell limp.

  She’d just killed someone.

  His eyes were full of fear as the light faded from them. They didn’t close, but continued to look at her even in death. She’s seen death before. How they soil themselves. The cries of pain or the gasps of breath. But it had always been others who did the killing. This was her first.

  She felt nothing. Why didn’t she? Just seeing that movie with Twoey had set her off seeing the blood and gore. Now it did nothing for her. She also realizes that her nightmares have stopped. Was it because of the drug they’d given her? They said it would help her trauma. Maybe it has helped too much?

  She should have felt happy finally killing one of those responsible for the deaths of her siblings and others she’d never met.

  Nyx takes their extra magazines for the stun pistols, then turns away from the body and rushes out into the hall. She has more important business than staring at dead bodies.

  She walks out to someone kneeling over the man she shot in the hallway.

  Nyx raises her pistol and fires as they reach for their own, and shoots them in the neck then rushes down the hallway without even bothering to see if they died.

  Around the corner, she sees five enemies taking cover around the hole made by their attack, taking shots at the security outside.

  Nyx fires at the closest and clips their suit, causing air to escape from it. So she fires again, hitting their shoulder before taking aim at the next nearest.

  They’ve noticed her, but she fires again.

  With only one arm, her aim is terrible, but she hits their leg, and concrete shattered from a miss has pierced a small hole in the enemy behind them.

  The enemy she’s hit stumbles backwards, and several rounds from outside hit his side, causing him to convulse and fall over. The one she’d hit in the arm is firing at her again, but they all go wide as she ducks back around the corner.

  She’s down to one spare clip and what’s left in this one, so she can’t afford to waste shots.

  Nyx returns fire, emptying the clip, then returns to the enemies behind that she’s already shot and takes their clips of stun rounds. She’s lucky the colony seems to only use these rounds and not live ones. She’d be dead by now if they had. The hit to her helmet alone would have ended her, and the spider webbing across it reminds her constantly.

  She picks an extra pistol from them and five more clips.

  There’s movement, and she sees an enemy aim around the corner she’d been at.

  “Dum it!” she’d gotten distracted.

  She jumps behind a nearby piece of broken concrete for cover and feels static from a near hit to her right leg.

  She then returns fire, and charges from behind cover.

  The rounds spark harmlessly on the concrete.

  The enemy jerks and falls over, and Nyx sees two people standing over the enemy that were there. They have ?red marks on their shoulders showing they’re with Sandel’s security.

  They almost shoot Nyx, then recognize her as she walks up.

  They’re already checking rooms by the time Nyx catches up to them.

  A stun round nearly hits one of them as they open a door, many others sparking behind and around where they stood as they pull back out of the way.

  The other security officer returns fire.

  Nyx charges in, shooting at anything that moves.

  A round hits her breastplate before she jumps behind a console.

  Once inside, she takes in the room. The left side is gone, and there is rubble and antennae from the roof filling it. She also sees a leg sticking out from under a pile of concrete that’s bent and twisted into unnatural angles. The rest of the room has broken desks, debris, and other furniture.

  There are two armed individuals, one a woman from their figure. She can’t see through their tinted visors, but she thinks this woman has the same build as Heidi.

  Nyx replaces the gun with stun rounds she’d taken from the enemy back to hers with the live rounds. The woman is hiding behind a desk that’s tipped over and that could stop stun rounds, but not live ones.

  Nyx waits for the colony security to fire into the room, and when the enemy takes cover, she fires.

  The round pierces the desk, and the woman falls backwards.

  Nyx doesn’t wait to see if she’s still moving and aims at the other enemy and fires.

  They move, but are too slow, and Nyx hits them too.

  Nyx doesn’t see any others, so moves from cover.

  She sees the woman isn’t Heidi through the tint of their visor. She’s still alive, and air is leaking from the hole from Nyx’s shot.

  The man she sees has taken her shot to the shoulder and is frantically patching his wound and the hole in his suit and kicks his gun away when he sees Nyx aiming the gun at him.

  Nyx looks around the room, her eyes stopping on the leg sticking out from under the rubble. How many people had died when Twoey and Cai launched that asteroid into this place? How many were under that rubble?

  Nyx takes one last look at the woman as she finally fumbles at her wound.

  The security finished searching the room, then they moved to help the two injured foes.

  Nyx leaves the room and looks outside through the large gash in the building. Then, to the broken dome. Then to the sky. She doesn’t care about the scientists anymore. Shooting them and killing them didn’t fill the hole in her heart, but it didn’t make her feel guilty either. She felt numb to it. And now, the rest would get justice. Now she wanted back on the Donati and to go see the secret Cai kept.