We sit in the darkness, huddled together, as dirt and dust and atomized rock clog the air. Our masks filter our breathing, but the faintest taste of stone and clay pass through to seep into my tongue. Not a single sound from the Grineer is able to reach us through the rocks; a bulwark of stone still settling into it's new position. The sounds of the occasional shifting or tumbling rocks are loud, and each one drives home a message. The Grineer can't get in, and we can't get out. We're fully sealed in this tunnel. Trapped, for lack of a better word. My body is still wound tight, the adrenaline in my system not even having begun to drain; I'm on the balls of my feet ready to explode into motion, to do whatever it is that I need to do.

  "What I need to do, is relax," I think, manually and forcibly releasing tension in every one of the hundreds of spring coiled muscles in my body. There's a schwick sound that undoes some of that progress, and a fosfor flare springs to life, casting all of us in stark relief against the tunnel walls. My attention is drawn to it's wielder, to Caz, who's stood next to the supply cart, and he places the light source in a holster to avoid needing to keep it aloft. His hand shakes as he does so, but once he removes it from the light, he places it on the cart itself; a solid anchor obscuring the motion. My gaze shifts from him to the rest of the squad, to the rest of Space Trauma as a whole. "What a stupid fucking name," I think, a sour taste on my tongue. A joke turned prophecy. I try to ignore the feeling of blame that comes with it.

  We're all covered in the thick layer of dust that had swept down the tunnel in a wave, clinging to our fabric in whatever direction it'd first encountered us. As I look at the other four, I start process a million tiny sounds I'd been hearing, but not noticing; strained and heavy breathing, grunting, minor hisses of pain from bruises left by Grineer ordnance even through the shields. The moment of fragile peace is shattered by ice. "Caz-V," says Ko-lee, carefully enunciating each portion of his full name, dash and all. "What. Happened." Her tone is low and dangerous, the sound of promised violence upon delivery of an unsatisfactory response. He stares at her, his eyes wide, in shock, in confusion. There's a furrow in his brows as he opens his mouth, but no sounds escapes it. "That's not fair," says Ella, her voice winded. It's clear she's trying to head off the argument that we all feel building. Instead, it lights the fuse.

  "It is fair!" Ko-lee shouts, her voice loud, reverberating within the confined space. "He had ONE job as a squad leader, ONE! He LEADS. THE. SQUAD!" She's shaking with anger, and a look at her death grip on the opposite side of the supply cart makes it clear that she's quite literally holding herself back from engaging more physically with Caz. "It wasn't supposed to be like this!" Caz shoots back, his voice uncharacteristically unsteady. It's exhaustion and fear and frustration and despair all mixed up in six words. He gesticulates briefly as he speaks, before he too, reaches out for the cart, though more for support rather than restraint.

  "You JACKASS," Ko-lee says, her voice a growl more than anything. She lets go of the cart, and for a brief moment, I'm convinced it's so she can close the distance with him, but instead she uses it to step farther away, to pace. Back and forth, only a step or two, but her shadow is racing in front of her and then behind her with every step, adding a frantic energy to the space. "I KNEW YOU'D FREEZE! I KNEW YOU'D FOLD WHEN IT CAME DOWN TO A REAL SITUATION." Her frame is heaving with the effort of emotion, as her rage burns. Her hand flings out, pointing at me, and everyone's attention snaps towards it's destination, catching me off guard.

  "I voted for Antimony not because she's my girlfriend, but because I've seen her kill. I knew she'd be able to do what you COULDN'T!" She breaks her pattern of pacing, taking an extra step towards Caz, and everyone tenses, convinced that the two are about to come to blows. "Fuck off!" says someone. It takes me more than a few seconds, and observation of the other's attention to realize it's me. Ko-lee looks at me, confusion and frustration, and just a touch of hurt. I want to rescind the outburst, but words flow to my lips before I have the chance to vet them. "Unless you think 'line up and get shot like fish in a barrel' is a good plan, you do not want me in charge! Because that's all I had," I say, pointing to my temple. My finger moves from my mind to Caz, who doesn't look particularly glad that I've drawn attention back to him.

  "Caz didn't know about the tunnel, because that information went straight to the FO, to the Sarge. We cut him out of the loop, and somehow he's supposed to pull a plan out of his ass that saves us all??" There's a level of disconnect as this all plays out; words that don't belong to me being said with my voice. There's derision in my tone, an emotion I... I guess I feel? I feel more like a passenger than a driver, and I squeeze my eyes shut for a few moments to try to ground myself. "A competent squad works as a unit," I say, in a mimicry of Sarge's words from what now feels like a lifetime ago. "We succeed or fail together. Just because Caz is calling the shots, doesn't mean the blame falls solely on him." I take a deep breath and focus on my senses around me; on touch, on smell, on sound. I feel the tension melt, just a fraction, and as mind and body aligns I reopen my eyes.

  "I'm good at making plans, Ko-lee. I never said I was good at making good plans." I watch my tone carefully, and this time it comes out a little more naturally, a little less aggressively. She looks frustrated, but it's less the rage and fury of before, which seems like progress. "I'll always have something new to try, but we don't get a second shot at life if we die," I say, ignoring the irony in my words. "Caz didn't want to throw us away on some half baked plan. That doesn't make him a bad leader."

  "But she's right though," says Caz. I shoot him a confused and slightly frustrated look, mainly due to the fact that it feels like he's undoing my work. "You're both right. I didn't know about the tunnel, and I didn't want to commit to anything that would get us hurt. But I did freeze. There was a moment where..." he trails off, and his expression looks haunted. Instead of finishing the thought, he swallows, and locks eyes with Ko-lee. "But I won't let it happen again. The Grineer aren't... I can deal with the Grineer. We can. If you'll let me." There's a level of conviction there that I've never seen on his face before, and it manages to burn off the last flakes of anger in Ko-lee's eyes. Or, at the very least, redirect them, if her glance towards the collapsed portion of the tunnel is any indication.

  Her expression , her body language is still severe, and there's a few seconds of silence while she looks at our squad leader. "It won't happen again," repeats Ko-lee. A statement, and a warning. Caz nods. While it doesn't fully clear the tension, the unsteady team cohesion feels a touch better than it did minutes ago. "He's dead," says Rease, who'd been splitting his attention between the argument and the body he had been carrying. It takes me a few moments to shift gears, to process his words. "Sarge?" I ask, feeling lightheaded. I turn towards him, only needing to take a few steps to close the distance to the crouched form of our squad member.

  My eyes shift towards the partially darkness shrouded form, the shadows cast by our bodies and the supply cart lending difficulty in making out details. Difficulty, but not impossibility. Up close, and in more steady light, he looks even worse. The blackened skin peeling away from muscle, melted flesh and polymer fabric dyed crimson from oozing wounds. I'd spent enough time on the internet as a child that the sight and smell doesn't immediately turn my stomach, but to see it applied to someone I know... to have it so viscerally real, instead of just pixels and glass?

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  I can feel a part of my soul die.

  The deaths, in Sharip, those were a nightmare, but the same sort of nightmare that a hurricane might evoke. As much I'm logically aware that the Grineer are people, and not just a force of nature, it felt hard to see them that way at the time. They were an overwhelming force that we could do nothing about except flee. This, on the other hand? This is war.

  And war is hell.

  But I compartmentalize as best I can for the moment. A therapist - assuming those exist in this universe - is direly needed, but that's for after we escape. I realize my gaze had drifted away from the corpse... from Sarge. From Sarge's corpse. I force myself to look back, to confirm what Rease said. To face reality. And as I do, I'm able to note why it is that Rease looks so haunted. The fire, while severely injuring Sarge, wasn't what killed him. Instead, multiple bullet holes are peppered along the top half of his back, leading trails of vitality that trace up towards his head. I collapse, physically unable to continue crouching over the body, and land on my ass, the uneven rocky surface of the tunnel jabbing into my back.

  "Dead," I say, maybe in confirmation of Rease's claim, or maybe something else. I hear a choked sob, one cut short as though in an attempt to conceal, and my eyes flick to Ella, who has tears streaming down her face. There's the expected pain in her eyes, but also an anger I don't think I've ever seen from her before. "I was... I didn't know he was taking hits," says Rease, off to my left. "I didn't have... I didn't have time to..." he says, his words trailing off. He's taking this better than anyone else, for whatever that really means. Rather than anger or despair or misery or disassociation, Rease has this look of grim acceptance. Of resignation, of unhappy acknowledgement. He sighs, one of bone weariness, of great effort. "I don't know if he would've survived with his injuries, but now..."

  "Now we'll never know. Now it doesn't matter," I think, finishing the sentence in my mind. I don't think anyone blames him. I know I don't. I shift my head slightly to look at Caz. "What do we do with him?" I ask. There aren't any dog tags, and I hadn't spent time looking into post mortem practices for the Tenno. It wasn't something I had wanted to think about during training, and it wasn't something we'd gone over either. My question catches him off guard, and it takes a few seconds for him to pull himself back down to earth. "Oh. Uh..." he stutters, briefly. "Either we take him with us, try to give him a proper Tenno burial, or we leave him here, and take something of his as a token," he says, his forehead wrinkling, his eyelids closed. Rease shakes his head.

  "We can't take him with us," he states, before anyone speaks. "We have no way to preserve him. unless we can find a way out of here in the next day or so, he'll turn." His words are clinical, emotionless, as though we're talking about the best way to store vegetables, and not what to do with the body of the man we'd just spent the last day and a half with. "We should take his eyes," Ella says, after nearly a minute of silence. "Eyes?" I press, giving a glance at the slightly warped metal attached to his face. Whatever systems had been used to hide the headset from view are no longer running, although I'm unsure if it's because of the damage to the device, or the damage to the operator. Ella nods, the streaks from the tears still clear on her cheek. Her voice is clear though, or mostly clear, as she speaks. "People store stuff on their eyes. He might have... pictures or something."

  "Like a phone," I think. "Wouldn't that sort of thing he backed up? Saved somewhere?" I ask. "They are," she responds, "but with the comm blackout... maybe he has something on there. Something recent." I can guess at what she's driving at; the insinuation that there might be something of us on there. I'm not confident that we'd made that much of an impression on the man, but the token is really meant to be symbolic anyways. My hands are shaking more than I'd like as I reach out towards the metal. Just an inch away, they freeze, and I feel the justification form in my mind. "Just making sure it's not too hot," the thought passes. "Yeah, it's totally not the fact that we're pulling a headset off a dead body. No sirree," counters another.

  My hands hang there for a moment, but eventually I make contact, touching the still slightly warm metal. I reach for the various straps and clips, undoing them with more effort than I'd usually need to, fumbling to pull the headset off his face. I manage to tug it free, and a tiny spike of adrenaline shoots through me when I finally see his still open eyes. My hands are full, but luckily Rease reaches out to close his eyelids, hiding the glassy orbs from sight. I stand up, every muscle protesting, and turn towards the supply cart before placing the headset on top of the pile of stuff we'd managed to escape with.

  The Sarge's final, pained expression is burned into my mind's eye, but I do my best to push past it, leaning on my training with De'Launda. Everyone gathers around the cart, the fosfor flare burning brightly, revealing our exhausted faces. There's silent acknowledgement, but we don't linger, with Caz pushing us into gear. "Let's move out," he says, leading the way into the darkness. While my body protests, I'm grateful for him slipping into the role of leadership; if given the option I would have absolutely laid down on the floor here and passed out. Instead, without being asked, I pull on the harness for the hover cart, and the five of us begin trekking down the hall, and towards the unknown.

  "Still no luck," says Caz, after an hour of hiking. He'd been trying to get in touch with the next FO in line, hoping that we'd at some point move outside the interference field during the trip, but it seemed to be present no matter how far we roamed. The fosfor flare on the cart is dimming, but there's no move to replace it. I can't tell if it's apathy at the situation, rationing of resources, or something else leaving it burning at such a low level. "Intersection," says Caz. "We're heading left." This was one of a few intersections we'd encountered so far, and with no real route, we'd been having to pick random directions as we forged on. Sometimes, we'd hit a dead end, leading to a miserable case of having to turn back around, but more often than not we found ourselves walking down seemingly endless tunnels, every particular stretch being both unique in formation and frustratingly identical.

  Rocks, dust, rocks. We're tiring... no, we are already tired. We had been tired, and we are continuing to be tired, but sheer stubbornness is helping us put one foot in front of the other, even after all the adrenaline from combat had worn off. "Listen," says Caz, drawing our attention. "If we can't find somewhere to crash for the night in the next 30 minutes, then I say..." his words trail off, and it takes me a few seconds to catch on to why. The tunnel we are in are transitioning. Rather than the same stone and dust, it's... well, it's still stone, but crafted stone. Cut blocks in an arch, like the top half of a tube. Some of it - most of it - is crumbling away, the wear and tear of an excessive amount of years, but the damage is minor. The ground is no longer unsteady, the pressure of having to watch our every step lessened, and the change from natural to man-made structure is injecting a bit of life into the squad. I exchange glances with Rease and Ella, the two closest to me, but nobody says anything. There's nowhere else to go, and the tunnel isn't obstructed, so we continue down the hall in silence. It only takes a few minutes before we reach it.

  Moonlight sneaks it's way through a large gash in the stone roof to dimly light a set of remarkably well preserved ancient stone ruins; the remnants of some unconsensually insular culture long since dead and gone. My eyes trace the cave wall up towards the roof, towards a possible route to freedom. They trace higher and higher, up to the 50 foot overhangs above unyielding stone floor. A very technically possible climb, but one with dire consequences following even a single mistake. But still, the sight of fresh air, and of what would be sunlight in the morning, buoys my spirit regardless. "Change of plans," says Caz, as we all crowd around the tunnel exit, looking at the carved stone ruins. "Space Trauma, time to set up camp."

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