Karla

The plan was supposed to be clean—silent entry, quick extraction, out before anyone knew the vault had been touched. Instead, klaxons scream through the station’s steel veins, red light stuttering across the corridor as you sprint past scorched bulkheads and sparking conduits. Your comm crackles with half-formed warnings and cut-off voices; someone’s been captured, someone else didn’t make it, and the ship isn’t where it should be. The deck lurches under your boots as security drones tear through the passage behind you, their metallic limbs shrieking against the walls. You round a corner hard, lungs burning, mind racing for an exit that keeps slipping further out of reach. That’s when you see her, Karla, sprawled against the cold floor plating, dark hair tangled across her face, one gloved hand twitching faintly as if she’s trying to push herself up and failing. For a split second, everything else falls away: the alarms, the pursuit, the collapsing plan. You drop to her side, noticing the dazed unfocus in her eyes as they struggle to find you.