Hughes found the plasma torch in the equipment shed behind the infirmary.

Of course it was buried under three broken lanterns, a crate of cracked ward plates, two boxes labelled DO NOT TOUCH — ARCADE, and one box labelled SERIOUSLY, DO NOT TOUCH — ARCADE.

He ignored both warnings.

A little property damage had already become the flavour of the day.

The torch was old Council make, heavy in the hand, with a brass grip and a mana-core that coughed violet sparks when he tested the ignition. It would cut through Ray’s bent pipe easily enough.

Probably.

Assuming it didn’t explode.

Hughes tucked it under one arm and headed back through the Egg Tree base.

The halls were quieter now, but not calm. Quiet after a fight was never calm. It was only the bit where everyone pretended they weren’t bleeding.

Somewhere outside, children dragged debris across the yard under supervision. Someone was crying in the kitchen. Arcade was muttering curses at C.H.I.P. down the corridor. Topsy’s voice drifted from the Cookie Room, too bright, too forced, offering Celeste snacks like snacks could patch a heart.

Hughes reached the turn toward the meeting room.

Then stopped.

A faint violet glow leaked from beneath Ray’s door.

No shouting now.

No firestorm.

No fury loud enough to shake the walls.

Just that glow.

Low.

Restless.

Wounded.

Hughes stood in the corridor with the plasma torch under his arm and listened.

Nothing.

He could leave her be. Let the anger burn itself out. Some soldiers needed that.

But Ray wasn’t a soldier.

Not really.

She was a frightened young woman wearing flame as armour and calling it leadership.

He shifted his weight.

One of her boots lay in the corridor outside the door.

The other was embedded toe-first in the opposite wall.

Hughes sighed.

“Bloody hell, lass.”

He knocked once.

No answer.

He didn’t go in.

He leaned one shoulder against the doorframe and waited.

That was the thing about folk on the edge. You didn’t always barge in. Sometimes you stood nearby and let them decide whether to open the wound.

After a long moment, Ray’s voice came from inside.

“If you’ve got a problem with what I did, shove it.”

Hughes looked at the boot stuck in the wall.

“Tempting invitation.”

The door was half-open. Through the gap, he could see her sitting on the edge of her bunk, shoulders hunched, rune shoved back into place but still glowing faintly at the nape of her neck. Her boots were gone, obviously. Her bare feet were planted on the floor, claws flexing against the boards.

Her hair was a mess.

Her eyes were fixed on the opposite wall.

She didn’t look like victory.

She looked like someone who had thrown everything she had at fear and discovered fear had teeth.

Ray’s jaw tightened.

“I did what was best for the team.”

Hughes didn’t answer right away.

Then he stepped inside.

Not far.

Just enough to stop talking to a door.

“I understand the fear,” he said.

Ray gave a sharp little laugh. “Do you?”

“Aye. I do.” He set the plasma torch carefully against the wall. “It’s a real fear. Council retaliation. Core dependency. Celeste running off. The whole lot of us being strung up because one frightened girl makes one desperate choice. I understand it.”

Ray’s eyes flicked toward him.

Hughes folded his arms.

“But do you think sticking your commanding officer to a wall was the correct response?”

Her mouth tightened.

“She was about to run into a death trap.”

“Like it or not, Ray, it wasn’t your call to make.”

Ray shot to her feet.

“She was going to get herself killed.”

“And your temper nearly split this team in half before she even reached the door.”

Ray’s face flushed violet at the edges.

Hughes held her stare.

“I swear, lass, you need to get it together.”

He expected her to snap back.

Expected fire.

Expected one of those sharp, ugly remarks she kept ready like knives under a sleeve.

But Ray only looked away.

All her rage, all her fear, all that violent certainty had collapsed into one place.

Celeste.

“She isn’t cut out for this,” Ray said.

Hughes blinked.

Ray’s voice stayed low.

“She isn’t. You know she isn’t.”

Hughes rubbed a hand over his face.

Ray turned on him, eyes bright.

“You should have been in charge.”

For one awful second, Hughes stared at her.

Then he laughed.

Not cruelly.

But because the idea was so exhausting it knocked the air out of him.

“Oh, I agree,” he said. “She shouldn’t be in charge.”

Ray froze.

Hughes lifted a finger.

“But I’m too old for this shit.”

Ray stared.

He gestured toward the ceiling. “Command? Politics? Prophecy? Council eyes? Children with world-ending cores? No, thank you. I’ve done my time being shouted at by idiots with medals.”

“That’s not funny.”

“It is a bit.”

“It’s not.”

“No,” he admitted. “It isn’t.”

Ray turned away again, arms wrapping around herself.

“Then why are we doing this?”

Hughes watched her carefully.

Ray’s voice rose, cracking at the edges.

“Why do we keep having to guide a frightened weed like her around like we’re her goddamn parents just because she has a special core?”

“Ray.”

“No, seriously.” She spun back to him. “I wish her range was further. Then she could stay here, all safe and glowing, while we do the heavy lifting and don’t get eaten alive by the Council.”

Hughes raised an eyebrow.

“Is it the Council you’re worried about,” he asked, “or her?”

Ray opened her mouth.

Nothing came out.

She turned back toward the wall.

The violet glow around her rune pulsed once.

Then faded.

For a long time, she said nothing.

When she finally spoke, her voice had lost its blade.

“Both.”

Hughes didn’t move.

Ray stared at the wall as if the answer was written there and she hated having to read it.

“I just want her to stop running off,” she said. “Stop making choices in a panic. Stop acting like love is a strategy.”

Her throat bobbed.

“I want her to understand we’re supposed to be a team.”

She looked down at her bare feet.

“That we’re supposed to weigh the cost of all our lives.”

Hughes’s voice softened.

“And what is that price?”

Ray looked at him then.

Properly.

Her eyes were wet, though she looked furious about it.

“If she dies, any hope of making things better for hybrids dies with her.”

Hughes said nothing.

Ray’s words came faster now, as if she had been holding them back all day and they had finally found a crack.

“Any safety we have in this apocalypse dies. Any reason the Council has to tolerate us dies. The Knights die. House Astallan dies. The whole stupid fragile little story everyone is starting to believe dies.”

She wiped angrily at her face.

“I wish she understood that we are expendable. Not her.”

Hughes’s expression tightened.

Ray laughed once, bitter and small.

“And it pisses me off, knowing I’m expendable while she’s allowed to be useful.”

The room went quiet.

Hughes looked at her for a long moment.

Then he said, “Don’t you think, lass, that being useful puts a target on her head?”

Ray’s jaw flexed.

“And everyone around her,” he added.

Ray nodded sharply.

“Yes. Which is why she needs to act like a commander for once.”

Her voice hardened again, but not enough to hide the fear underneath.

“Not leave me high and dry. Not smile sweetly and make stupid decisions and expect the rest of us to just… catch her.”

Hughes sighed through his nose.

“Get a grip, Ray.”

She flinched.

He didn’t soften it.

“You can’t throw things at your commander. You can’t tie her to the base. You can’t order her not to make stupid decisions like she’s a recruit who forgot her boots.”

Ray glanced toward the corridor.

Hughes followed her gaze.

“Aye,” he said dryly. “Speaking of.”

Ray looked away, cheeks darkening.

Hughes stepped closer, voice rough but steady.

“Yes, Celeste running off to get Lumina was stupid. Yes, it put us in an impossible situation. Yes, her wanting to run after Bonbon alone is worse.”

Ray’s eyes narrowed.

“But she came back, didn’t she?”

Ray’s mouth opened.

Closed.

Hughes held her gaze.

“She came back with Skye. With Lumina. With Topsy. With half the bloody apocalypse biting at her heels, but she came back.”

Ray’s voice dropped to a whisper.

“We could have died.”

“I know.”

“And if she runs off tonight?”

Hughes didn’t answer.

Ray looked up at him.

“If she gets captured or killed tomorrow, the Council won’t care that she was trying to save Bonbon. They won’t care about Lumina or Skye. They won’t care about a toddler or a gumball or feelings.”

Her voice shook.

“They’ll care about the message.”

Hughes’s jaw tightened.

Ray stepped closer.

“They’ll say the Knights can’t be controlled. They’ll say hybrids are unstable. They’ll say Celeste was reckless and we enabled her. At best, we’re arrested. Flogged. Locked away. At worst?”

She swallowed.

“They hang us.”

The room seemed to shrink around the words.

Ray’s arms wrapped tighter around herself.

“I miss Bonbon too,” she said, quieter now.

The anger drained from her face for just a heartbeat, leaving something young and frightened behind.

“I do. She’s annoying and sticky and loud and she keeps putting jam on things that should never have jam on them, but I miss her.”

Her eyes lifted again.

“But this concerns all of us. And have you seen that gumball? It’s a zombie death trap. We go in, we’re dead.”

Hughes let out a long breath.

“Aye,” he said. “I know.”

Ray looked at him with something almost desperate.

“So why is everyone acting like I’m the monster for saying it?”

Hughes softened then.

Just a little.

“Because you’re saying it like a hammer.”

Ray blinked.

“No,” she snapped suddenly, voice breaking open before she could stop it. “No, don’t do that. Don’t make it sound like I’m just being loud.”

Hughes stilled.

Ray’s paws curled into fists.

“I can’t go down like that,” she shouted. “Do you understand? I can’t stand here and watch it happen. I can’t run from it. I can’t control this situation, or the Council, or Celeste, or the bloody zombies, or anything.”

Her breath hitched.

“And I hate it.”

The last words came out raw.

Not angry.

Afraid.

Hughes stopped speaking.

Stopped preparing his next argument.

Because there it was.

Not tactics.

Not command.

Not even Celeste, not really.

Control.

Ray had spent her life having people put hands around her choices. Her mother. The Council. The Mythics. The laws that named hybrids unstable before they had even opened their mouths.

And now this.

Another chain.

Invisible, maybe.

Made of core range, Council threat, Celeste’s importance, everyone else’s expendability.

But a chain all the same.

And Ray, for all her flame, was still terrified of being dragged by it.

Hughes lowered his voice.

“Aye,” he said softly. “That’s the part that hurts, isn’t it?”

Ray looked away at once. “Don’t.”

“We’re all wearing chains, lass.”

She went very still.

Hughes nodded toward the corridor. Toward the base. Toward the broken city beyond the walls.

“Some are iron. Some are law. Some are blood. Some are duty. Some are love. Some are just fear dressed up clever so we don’t recognise it when it pulls.”

Ray’s jaw trembled, but she set it hard.

Hughes stepped closer, careful now.

“You’re not wrong to feel trapped.”

Her eyes flicked to him.

“You’re not wrong that this situation is unfair. You’re not wrong that Celeste’s core makes all our choices smaller than they ought to be.”

Ray swallowed.

“But if we have to wear the chains,” Hughes said, “we can at least stop using them to choke each other.”

Ray’s face twisted.

For a moment, she looked like she might snap at him.

Then she looked down.

Quiet.

Listening despite herself.

Hughes let the words settle.

“We make it bearable,” he said. “That’s what a team is. Not freedom. Not always. But folk standing close enough that the weight doesn’t crush one person alone.”

Ray rubbed at her face again, angrier this time because the words had got through and she clearly resented them for it.

“I hate when you make sense.”

“Aye. Most people do.”

She gave a shaky breath that almost became a laugh, but didn’t quite manage it.

Hughes reached down, picked up her remaining boot from near the bed, and tossed it lightly onto the blanket beside her.

“You’re not wrong to be scared. You’re not wrong that Celeste needs to learn. You’re not wrong that this could get every one of us killed.”

He nodded toward the wall outside.

“But you were wrong to do that.”

Ray looked toward the corridor.

Where Celeste was still pinned.

Where Bonbon’s doll was probably still crushed against her chest.

Ray’s face crumpled for half a second before she forced it hard again.

“She would’ve left.”

“Maybe.”

“She still might.”

“Maybe.”

Ray looked back at him. “So what do we do?”

Hughes picked up the plasma torch.

“I’ll try talking Celeste down for the day.”

Ray’s face shifted. Relief and guilt crossed it too quickly to name.

Hughes pointed the unlit torch at her like a warning finger.

“But you, lass, are going to calm your temper. Properly. Not pretend. Not shove it into a corner until it burns someone.”

Ray’s shoulders sank.

Hughes’s voice gentled, but the order stayed inside it.

“Think like a leader if she can’t be one.”

Ray looked down at her boot.

Then at the wall.

Then, very quietly, she said, “I don’t know how.”

Hughes paused at the door.

For a moment, he looked every bit his age.

Tired.

Scarred.

Still standing because someone had to.

“No one does at first,” he said. “That’s why good leaders listen before they start throwing people into walls.”

Ray winced.

Hughes let that sit.

Then he picked up the other boot from the corridor and tossed it into her room.

“Put your boots back on,” he said. “Then apologise to the wall.”

Ray frowned. “The wall?”

“It didn’t deserve your boot either.”

For one tiny second, almost against her will, Ray snorted.

Hughes nodded as if that was enough.

Then he turned and headed back toward the Cookie Room, plasma torch humming in his grip, the weight of two impossible choices waiting for him at the end of the hall.