The engines roared.
Acceleration slammed them into their seats.
The ship tore free, leaving behind a trail of noise, sparks,
and a couple of torn-off limbs still clinging to the hull.
And only when the planet was far behind them—
shrinking slowly into a distant point of light—
did the miracle begin:
Silence.
Absolute.
Strange.
The kind that always comes
after idiots somehow manage to escape alive.
Blindy finally exhaled,
leaned back in the pilot’s chair,
threw his legs up on the console,
and stretched,
as if he hadn’t just survived a high-risk operation,
but had simply finished a relaxing session of space yoga.
Zeros sat next to him,
arms crossed,
staring into the void
like he was trying to convince the universe
to reboot his life without Blindy in it.
He sat there in silence.
Eyes fixed on the windshields,
trying to understand life—
and why it had tied him to this idiot.
Blindy, lazy, almost joking:
“Alright… mission successfully screwed.
Now let’s figure out how to survive Ma Dong-Rho.”
Silence followed.
Heavy. Unpleasant.
The kind where, in movies, tragic music would start playing…
but here, even the music was too scared.
Blindy shifted, frowning.
“Hey… you alright, pal?”
Zeros, flat, mechanical:
“Yeah. I’m fine.”
Blindy asked again, less confident now:
“You sure?”
Zeros didn’t even turn his head.
“Don’t worry about me.
Worry about Ma Dong-Rho,
who’s going to kill you.He won’t touch me. I’m already dead.
You’re not.”
Blindy, in his signature incompetent optimism,
waved his hand like he could brush away reality itself:
“Ah c’mon… we gon’ figure somethin’ out.
We always do… I mean—
yeah. We do.
We definitely do.”
Zeros slowly turned his head.
Very slowly.
Slow enough that Blindy instantly regretted opening his mouth.
“No.
Not this time.
This time, you die.
And this time, I won’t be able to save you.
Do you even understand that?”
Zeros leaned forward.
His voice was flat, cold—the tone he never lies in.
“This isn’t a war against a bunch of assholes.
Not blowing up an S-class flagship
by shoving an engine up its ass and sending it into a supernova.
This is different.
Any bartender, any goblin taking a shit in a restroom,
any neighbor in a stairwell—
any of them could be Syndicate.”
Zeros paused for a second.
Not because he needed words.
Because he was remembering.
“I’m telling you how it is.
I destroyed the syndicate that created me.
Only reason I could do it—
they were all in one place.
All of them.
So I blew the whole damn dwarf planet to hell
with every last one of those corporate bastards on it.”
He lifted his eyes.
The anger inside him was quiet. Almost mathematical.
“But the Iron Tigers… that’s a different kind of hell.
You don’t hide from them.
This isn’t the kind of shit you wait out in a bar.
Not something you can end with one strike.
They’re like cockroaches. Everywhere.
And they never gather in one place.
And if you cross them…
run as much as you want—they’ll still find you.”
[Jackie bursts onto the airwaves, clearly annoyed]“I really don’t like how this metal weirdo talks about…
well… my family.
WE. ARE. NOT. COCKROACHES!
We’re just a big… very close family, alright?”
[Dick stared at Jackie for a second, mouth open. Then he quickly looked away and pushed on]“Baby, calm down, please.
The fact that this metal weirdo thinks that way isn’t so bad…
it means they’ll stay far away from your… lovely community.
Now, for heaven’s sake, let me finish this damn story.”
Blindy swallowed quietly.
“Don’t worry… told you. I’ll—
I’ll handle it. Yeah. I got it.”
He was about to continue when, out of the corner of his eye,
he noticed something—
Zeros… had changed.