Sephra didn’t lie when she said she had an identical spaceship. Although it was a secret that the rebels stole from the Empire, she didn’t particularly feel guilty about revealing this information to the others. Later on, the rebels didn’t need to steal more ships; they simply copied the design and began manufacturing them with the help of stolen factories.

She knew the interior of the ship like the back of her hand. The security systems had been slightly altered, and the guards were patrolling in different places, but none of it posed any significant challenge to her. She knew exactly where the secret passages were. She merely had to open one of them. She had a lot of time to learn which led where. There was one that went straight to the prison level, although she wasn’t sure which cell Angron was in. The wall was divided into sections by regular depressions.

Sephra stopped at one of them and carefully slid the tip of her finger in. It was a very tiny button, not easy to find even for an experienced person. But when she heard the soft click, she smiled. The wall slid aside, and she hurried inside because she knew how the passage worked. It stayed open for a total of ten seconds before closing again.

It was pitch black, so Sephra felt her way forward. She didn’t have any source of light, but she wasn’t concerned.

One thought was constantly on her mind—the warning Solar gave her before they parted ways. “It won’t be a pretty sight.”

The darkness did her no favors because it slowly but surely brought forth old memories. Angron had killed those two, and everything that happened afterward…

Sephra and the pilot had been very close friends, which was why she did everything she could to help him. That’s why the man had ended up on one of her teams. She wouldn’t have let Angron work in a place where he could have been a problem. She knew the deep pain that resided in her friend. Even back then, it had been hard to dissuade him from suicidal thoughts.

Sephra had an almost manic desire to see Angron recover, although it was theoretically impossible.

She took a deep breath, banished all those dark thoughts from her mind, and continued moving through the darkness until something else came to her mind.

The weapon was not with her. There must be an armory down there, and Quilen most certainly kept the right weapon because he knew precisely what Angron’s problem meant. He had known him for a long time as well. Sephra and the Rebel Leader had both spent some time on Shouta when they were young, and they both had a good relationship with Angron and his family. At least for a while. And not to mention that Angron’s father knew everything and worked for the Leader. Quilen was well aware of what he risked when he brought the pilot on board his ship.

Her hand finally encountered a wall from the front. She felt for the button and was momentarily blinded by the small amount of light in the prison corridor. As she stepped out, she looked around and listened. Eerie silence reigned, apart from the faint, almost inaudible scream that came from somewhere in the distance.

She spent a few seconds deciding from which direction the sound came. It was from the right. The armory was in that direction, reserved for the case if someone broke out down here, and they needed to stop them.

Sephra quickly noticed that, except for Angron, there was no one else on the prison level. Quilen knew exactly what he was doing, and it was wise to bring everyone up. He probably either sent them back to work or tasked them with pursuing the Imperials, like Daron. Guards weren’t needed anymore. They would be too terrified of the pilot. There wouldn’t have been anyone beside him for a long time.

Even Sephra herself knew only one person more fearsome than Angron in his transformed state.

In front of the armory, she stopped and then kicked the door open with determination. She immediately found what she was looking for, picked up the weapon, and examined it. It was loaded.

Taking a deep breath, she turned and headed toward the source of the sounds. This gun couldn’t kill Angron, just like any other known weapon. The pilot was practically invulnerable. They had developed a single method to stop him. The bullet in the gun could briefly block his mind if it hit the right spot. During such times, Angron would pass out, and if they weren’t careful, he would quickly wake up as the same wild beast as before.

The screams occasionally subsided. Sephra felt infinite pity, as she knew exactly what was happening. Angron was conscious and could see what he had done this time. She was certain that if he hadn’t transformed back into the beast, he would have eventually begun screaming from pain and despair. Even she was afraid to face what had happened, but she continued her journey, each step more difficult. Her heart beat faster and faster.

She spotted the only cell with an active energy barrier. She didn’t want to look, but she had to. She approached and peered inside.

In that moment, there was silence. She could only hear sobbing. The room was soaked in blood, body parts were scattered on the floor, along with limbs and internal organs. She couldn’t have told what kind of creature’s remains these were if she didn’t see the boy earlier.

Angron was sitting on the ground, rocking back and forth. His broken arm hung next to him, completely twisted, but he seemed not to notice it. He was in shock. He held his other hand in front of his face, attempting to cover everything from his view.

“I’m s-sorry… I didn’t mean to… I didn’t mean to…”

As he kept repeating that, Sephra began to blame herself. This whole thing should never have happened.

She approached the control panel and started inserting the code with a deep breath. She knew what it was. She had time to figure it out.

But now she had little time. Angron could transform at any moment.

Sephra heard the sobbing cease, replaced by low growling. The sound was getting closer, but she simply refused to look up, even as her hands trembled. She knew Angron was standing right there, with only the energy barrier, she was about to disable, separating them.

When she was about to press the final button, she looked up, right into the bloody face of her best friend. Angron was watching her. His mouth was frozen in the same bloody smile she remembered. Though he resembled a wild animal to some extent, he still had thoughts, albeit in a distorted way. He knew Sephra was preparing to release him, and he was ready to jump.

Sephra studied his face for a long time. She hadn’t seen him like this in ages. Angron had always been cautious to avoid the tragedy that now seemed inevitable despite all precautions.

He raised his hand as if he wanted to touch her face but was careful not to reach the energy barrier.

“Seph… ra…”

This was a surprise. The admiral never thought Angron could recognize her even in his current state.

“I… I see. I see them. Sephra… They’re here with me.”

“Where?”

Angron’s bloodshot eyes looked at something only he could see before he pointed to his own head with a twisted smile.

“They’re in here… They’re with me…”

This surprised Sephra. The monster’s thought process and sense of reality were far more developed than before. He knew that what he saw wasn’t real and that something was wrong with him. He could recognize others. He was no longer a mindless wild beast. If he continued to develop in this direction, he might become stronger, smarter, capable of logical and complex thinking.

This thought was horrifying.

Angron looked at Sephra again, and his expression changed. It was almost as if he were sad.

“Sephra… Help… Let me out… Please…”

Sephra reconsidered. If the monster had learned to use emotions and manipulation, this was not only horrifying but downright terrifying.

She pressed the last button, and then immediately jumped back because Angron tried to grab her. Sephra raised the gun. For a brief moment, she imagined that Angron would attack her, tear her to pieces, and then go on a killing spree, slaughtering the entire crew of the ship.

She fired twice. Both shots hit Angron in the chest. A look of surprise crossed his face, and then he collapsed.

Sephra waited for a moment before approaching her unconscious friend. She turned him onto his back. She had roughly thirty minutes to reach the exit. She slung the gun over her shoulder and hoisted Angron on her back, securing his arms over her shoulders.

As a soldier, Sephra possessed a good deal of physical strength, and she could manage the weight fairly easily. She tried not to imagine what would have happened if Angron had suddenly regained consciousness. Would he have bitten her neck or torn her arms off?

“Enough of this!” she muttered angrily to herself. She partly blamed herself for what had happened, even if she couldn’t have done anything to prevent it. It was the knowledge that she hadn’t noticed what was happening on Shouta that bothered her.

Sephra had thought extensively about how, despite her love for Angron, it might have been better for him to die like everyone else. It would have been a more merciful fate. She was fully aware that he sometimes had the same thoughts, as he had mentioned before. Moreover, this creature was indestructible, as no known weapon could harm him.

Just like…

Sephra pushed the thought from her mind.

She reached the exit, and as she had expected, nothing blocked her way. Quilen hadn’t placed any obstacles, and she was confident that her comrades had also escaped from the hangar. Everything was going perfectly. She immediately contacted them to let them know it was time to come.

While waiting for the ship, she took a spacesuit and secured Angron in one as well, but not before she fired twice into him for safety. The timing was perfect. She heard the ship docking with the airlock. Within a minute, she hauled the pilot to the ship, placing him in the first compartment.

Only then did she speak when the three others had gathered around her.

“Everything’s fine. He won’t regain consciousness for a while. You didn’t engage in any fighting, did you?”

Solar nodded.

“We had no choice. The hangar was completely empty, but we were spotted in one of the corridors, and they sounded the alarm. Fortunately, we were better fighters. We got blasters. And this guy? He uses that knife like a madman.”

Sephra looked at Serion and nodded.

“Quilen won’t be pleased. Let’s go!”

Sephra rushed to the pilot’s seat with Solar as the ship’s crew cleared the way, while Serion and Daron carried Angron into one of the rooms and kept a vigilant watch over him.

“You can fly this thing, right?” the young woman asked with a touch of uncertainty in her voice.

Sephra grabbed the wheel.

“While I’m not as good as others, I’d feel pretty foolish as the Grand Admiral if I couldn’t pilot a ship.”

As expected, the crew of the starship did their best to shoot them down, but Sephra skillfully evaded the desperate shots fired at them. In a matter of minutes, they successfully escaped the danger zone, and she accelerated the ship to full speed before launching into space.

At the same time, Quilen watched from the bridge as they made their escape, then turned on his heel, ignoring the mistake, and departed with his frightened soldiers. A barely noticeable smile graced his face.

***

Sephra refused to do anything until she had Angron stabilized. Once they reached a safe distance, she set the autopilot on a simple course and rushed into the room where the others had taken the man. Cigarette packs, likely bought on the black market in Darella, littered the room. They couldn’t be acquired legally. His problem wasn’t too common.

She picked up one of the packs, pulled out a cigarette, and put it in Angron’s mouth. His breathing slowly but steadily stabilized.

“What about his broken arm?” Serion asked.

“Leave it as it is.”

Solar snapped. “Have you gone mad? It’s broken!”

“I know what I’m doing, kid.”

Sephra simply secured Angron’s arm in a tight splint and left it at that.

All four of them sat in silence in the same room on the other beds. The two younger ones had calmed down somewhat, but they were still nervously fidgeting. They couldn’t forget the way Angron had looked at them in the cell.

“Do you think he’ll be alright?” the girl asked quietly.

Sephra nodded.

“He got his dose. It will be much more challenging to calm him down when he wakes up. He’ll have terrible guilt for killing the younger boy.”

Solar and Daron remained silent.

“You don’t want to tell us what’s really going on with him, do you?” Serion interjected, voicing what everyone was thinking.

“No, I know you think you deserve to know, but… I can’t. If he wants to talk about it, he will. I’m sorry.”

“We understand,” Solar grumbled, though it was clear she didn’t really understand.

At this point, Serion decided to change the subject.

“Would you show us again what you found?”

The girl nodded and retrieved the green shard hidden in her clothing. She noticed how Sephra’s purple eyes gleamed.

“Does anyone know what this is?” Solar asked.

The admiral reached out her hand, and the girl handed her the shard.

“Yes, I think I do. Did you find anything else?”

“Hira downloaded something when she deactivated the energy field around that thing. I don’t know what it is, but I think we can check it here.”

They all jumped when Angron suddenly moved. He slowly raised his hand to his head, and with a hoarse voice, he asked, “W-What happened?”

No one replied. Angron looked at each one of them, starting with Solar, then Daron, and his eyes widened. The change that occurred on his face was almost as terrifying as when he transformed. He grew paler as more memories flooded his mind.

He turned towards Solar, who involuntarily moved back on the bed.

“You… I asked you to take both kids out, didn’t I?” Angron said.

The pilot tried to get up to grab the girl’s throat but used his broken arm for support, causing him to fall back.

“It’s his fault!” Solar pointed at Daron, who was shaking his head in terror.

Angron managed to sit up on the bed and began to wave his good arm frantically.

“Shut up! Everyone get out of here! Now!”

“Ang…” Sephra started, but the man didn’t let her finish.

“Out!”

Serion, Solar, and Daron got up and rushed out one by one. The white-haired man paused in the doorway and looked back at Sephra, who was still sitting on the bed. Sephra turned towards him and nodded. Serion grimaced; he didn’t want to leave her alone, but in the end, he left and closed the door.

Sephra turned back to the pilot, who was staring at her. She knew what he needed most right now. He wanted to rage, slam the walls, break everything around him, all freely, without supervision. However, given the circumstances, she couldn’t afford to give him that chance.

Sephra picked up an open box, took out another cigarette, and extended it toward Angron. He swatted it out of her hand.

“I don’t want it! Leave me alone!” he shouted.

Sephra wordlessly picked up the cigarette again and looked back at her friend. As much as she despised this, she had to do it now. She took a drag and exhaled the smoke. She felt it sting her lungs, but she didn’t care. She wanted to help, and this was the only option at the moment.

Angron moved back on the bed, but he quickly realized he couldn’t do anything. He let the smoke take effect and then reached out, taking the cigarette from Sephra.

Neither of them knew how long they sat in silence. Sephra watched the man, while he stared at the ground. As soon as he finished the first cigarette, he immediately pulled out another one. Then a third.

“I tried… I really tried… I did everything to prevent this from happening again. I made sure I always had some with me. Yet it still happened. It wasn’t even my fault. Why does this happen to me? I didn’t want this. Why did my father do this to me? I’ve never harmed him. I haven’t even seen him since he left. Yes, we’re on different sides, but still… So far, I’ve seen terrible things, and now I’m going to have that kid on mind. What’s worst of all is that I know I enjoyed it. I mean, in transformed state. I liked tearing him apart…”

Sometimes he spoke rapidly, sometimes he muttered, once loudly, then quietly. He wasn’t sure if Sephra understood everything he said, but it didn’t matter. He just wanted to talk.

He snapped back to awareness when the smoke began to sting his eyes. Perhaps the ventilation was turned off. Looking sideways, he saw that an entire box was already gone. Luckily, he had bought a lot of them.

He looked up at the woman who was just getting up, moved closer to him, and embraced him. It felt good. Perhaps it was the only good thing he had felt lately. He leaned closer and rested his head on Sephra’s shoulder. He smelled her hair, and it was entirely familiar.

He could barely remember the last time he had the opportunity to be alone with her. Perhaps back on Shouta. It had been so long. Now he had a chance to tell her what he felt.

No. Not under these circumstances. Perhaps the opportunity would never come. Maybe he would always be alone. But as long as Sephra was with him, even if only as a friend, nothing bad could happen. Even if they weren’t together the way he wanted, he felt it was worth staying alive as long as she was there.

What happened? How did they manage to escape from the cell? So far, no one has succeeded because the panel controlling the energy field was too far away for anyone to reach. Did they receive help from the outside? Is someone a traitor? Why is there only footage of them at the hangar? Weren’t they noticed before? Why didn’t any alarm go off? Why weren’t the aquatic man and the Grand Admiral in any of the pictures? Will everyone be questioned about this? Who is responsible for this?

Who made such a serious mistake?

The surviving soldiers whispered these questions to each other but fell silent when the Captain hurried past them with a dark look on his face. He went straight to the Leader.

As he entered, he saw that his lord was sitting at his desk, silently listening to the guards’ report.

Quilen looked at him with his glowing blue eyes and then pointed to a chair.

“Sit down, Captain! Listen to the report!”

The guards bowed deeply to him before they began speaking in a rush.

“The prisoners have escaped, my lord. All of them. We tried to stop them, but the fight started too late. Until then, for some reason, no one saw them and nothing had signaled their escape. They took their ship. We could no longer target them. Furthermore, not only have they disappeared, but also what we were guarding on the second-floor corridor.”

Quilen looked at his subordinate again, waiting in silence. The Captain looked at the guards, who simply showed him the evidence. They pressed a few buttons on the keyboard of a nearby device and pulled up the right footage. The monitor displayed how the young girl who came with the imperial forces went into the room, disabled the energy field with some small object, examined the green shard, and simply took it with her. The alarm didn’t sound.

The Leader stared at the recording in silence, which replayed before his eyes. The Captain tried to read anger, despair, or something similar in his gaze, but he couldn’t. As always, Quilen’s brilliant blue gaze was utterly empty.

The red-haired man finally pressed a button and, at the same time as the image disappeared, closed his eyes.

“Tell me something honestly!” he said. “Who is responsible for all of this?”

“I don’t know, my lord,” one of the guards replied.

The Captain shook his head. He didn’t want to name anyone.

“Who is responsible for all of this?” Quilen repeated the question, louder and more firmly this time. “Who allowed them to escape?”

“Many are responsible, my lord. Do you want to punish everyone for it?”

Quilen shook his head. His red hair swayed in front of his face.

“Of course not. Gentlemen, you may leave. Do everything to find out who was responsible!”

The guards looked at each other in disbelief and then hurried out of the room in joy, relieved that they were not held accountable.

When the Rebel Leader and the Captain were left alone, Quilen turned off the monitor.

“I’ll ask again. Who is to blame for their escape? Who said that they didn’t need stronger protection?”

“You, my lord. You are to blame for what happened.”

Quilen grinned. “Exactly. I appreciate this honesty. It’s not a mistake, when everything goes according to plan, am I right?”

The Captain responded without blinking.

“We lost the...”

Quilen knew what he wanted to say, so he immediately raised his hand. He didn't want to hear it.

“It was not important. We will manage without it. You've done an excellent job with destroying the recordings, Captain.”

His subordinate bowed at the praise. “As you commanded, my lord.”

“In which direction did they go?”

“I think the admiral randomly chose a direction. Should we go after them?”

“There’s no need to rush. I would wait to see what our spies have to report. Nevertheless, Angron is indeed as uncontrollable as we expected. He needs to be kept in check during the whole time.”

“I agree, my lord.”

“I assume, you didn’t tell him the truth this time either.”

“No, my lord.”

“Why? Do you want to live forever with your son’s anger? Maybe I have no business with your family affairs, but I still suggest that when you see him next time, explain everything to him. You may leave.”

The Captain bowed deeply, then straightened and left the Leader’s office.