Not the guards shoving delinquents forward. Not the Council members watching from the observation deck. And not the hundred teenagers pretending this is an adventure instead of an execution dressed up as hope.

The air in the launch bay smells like oil and overheated circuits, like recycled oxygen that's been scrubbed and reused one too many times. For a brief, disorienting second, I think about how ironic it is that the Ark smells like suffocation when I'm the one who knows exactly how little air remains.

Three months. Ninety days.

The number pulses in the back of my mind like a countdown I can't silence—the ghost of the file I wasn't supposed to open. The system diagnostic I followed one layer too deep until I found the truth hidden beneath encryption and Council permissions. The Ark is dying.

I had stared at the screen in the dim tech bay light, fingers frozen over the console, watching the oxygen projection drop to a number that wasn't theoretical or conditional but absolute. Absolute enough that I understood immediately why they buried it. Panic would tear the Ark apart faster than lack of air ever could.

I didn't even get the chance to decide what to do with that knowledge before security descended and the narrative was rewritten around me. Not Kane's daughter. Not a tech specialist. A risk. A liability. A spark that needed to be smothered.

Solitary confinement had been colder than I imagined, quieter than space itself. In that silence, the number echoed louder than any voice ever could.

Three months.

Control, even in the smallest ways, still matters.

The ramp groans closed behind the last body, sealing us into darkness broken only by dim emergency strips along the curved walls. The sound changes immediately. No longer the echo of a bay. Just the hollow, enclosed resonance of something that was never meant to feel this crowded.

A hundred breaths. A hundred heartbeats. A hundred unknown futures.

I don't see him.

The ship bucks violently, veering to one side as someone shouts for everyone to brace. Through the chaos, through the engine's deafening scream and the metal's tortured groan, I hear something else. A voice cutting through it all. Commanding. Familiar. Steady in a way that feels impossible in this moment.

Bellamy Blake.