The laughter faded slowly.
Not all at once.
Small pieces of it lingered around the recovery suite like warmth refusing to disappear completely. Torres still looked personally vindicated by the existence of emotionally significant pudding while Aria threatened him with increasingly creative forms of violence from across the couch.
But underneath it—
something heavier remained.
Wrong Sky.
The room felt it every time conversation slowed.
Every time someone looked too long toward the medbay corridor.
Every time silence lasted more than a few seconds.
Mei finally lowered the portable synchronization display onto the center table and looked around the room.
"We need to get ahead of this."
The atmosphere shifted immediately.
Not panic.
Focus.
Because everyone there understood exactly what she meant.
Outside this room—
Helius Prime already knew something had happened.
The academy network had gone unstable hours ago. Emergency routing channels activated. Faculty override locks engaged. Medical corridors restricted. Half the command staff missing from their normal sectors.
Cadets noticed things like that.
And if Helius didn't get the truth soon—
they would build their own version of it.
Torres sat up straighter instantly. "Oh, absolutely not." He pointed dramatically around the room. "If the forums start inventing theories before we release official footage, we're going to end up with conspiracy documentaries."
Lucian looked tired already. "You say that like you wouldn't watch them."
"I would critique them professionally."
Aria threw another cushion.
Torres caught it one-handed this time without looking.
Growth.
Mei ignored all of them.
"We need a controlled release." Her eyes moved toward Ryven briefly. "Enough information to stabilize the academy." A pause. "Not enough to expose what happened to Kael."
The room quieted immediately again.
Because that line mattered.
Very carefully.
Very specifically.
Ryven leaned slightly forward in his chair.
"No Omega reveal."
"Agreed," Mei answered instantly.
Darius folded his arms near the wall. "No bond details either."
"Definitely not," Rafe muttered.
Torres pointed between them rapidly. "YES." He looked deeply offended suddenly. "Do you know how fast Helius gossip networks would become clinically insane with that information?"
Lucian adjusted his glasses. "…faster than usual somehow."
"Exactly."
Marcus Calder finally spoke from the far side of the room.
"What do they need to know?"
Simple question.
Important one.
Mei answered without hesitation.
"That the convoy was ambushed." "That the seniors survived." "That command is handling the situation." A pause. "And that Helius held."
That settled over the room heavily.
Because that part mattered most.
Not just survival.
How they survived.
Ryven looked toward the darkened display wall near the center of the recovery suite.
"…show the line."
Everyone understood immediately.
Not speeches.
Not heroics.
The line.
The moment Helius stopped panicking and started fighting back.
Torres stood abruptly.
"I knew there was a reason I archived literally everything."
Aria narrowed her eyes. "That sentence concerns me."
"It should inspire confidence."
"It inspired fear."
Torres ignored her completely and rushed toward the primary console, fingers already moving rapidly across layered feeds and combat recordings.
The wall display exploded into overlapping footage instantly.
Distortion-filled battlefield clips.
Telemetry overlays.
Broken squad communications.
Drone recordings.
Heat signatures.
Fragments of Wrong Sky stitched together through Torres' obsession with redundancy.
Lucian stared slowly at the screen.
"…you archived all this live?"
Torres looked offended.
"I archive emotionally important historical moments."
"You illegally recorded military exercises for years."
"That sounds so negative when you say it like that."
Mei stepped beside him immediately, reviewing the incoming footage with sharp focus.
"No cockpit recordings."
"Already removed."
"No medbay feeds."
"Obviously."
"No Omega indicators."
Torres gasped dramatically. "Mei." A hand against his chest. "Do you think I'm incompetent?"
Everyone in the room looked at him.
Torres sighed. "…fair."
The footage continued scrolling rapidly across the screen.
Then—
Mei stopped one.
The room quieted.
Wrong Sky filled the display again.
The fractured convoy drifting beneath distorted stars.
Static crackling softly through damaged comm channels.
Then—
Kael's voice.
"Our enemy brought us here like sheep to slaughter."
The room went still immediately.
Even after living it—
hearing it again hit differently.
The footage rolled forward.
Panic across multiple fleets.
Broken formations.
Pilots scattering.
Then Kael again—
"Remember who you are."
Mei paused the recording there.
"…this."
Rafe leaned forward slightly. "The turning point."
"Yes."
Marcus Calder nodded once.
Because they all knew it too.
That was the moment the battlefield changed.
Not strategically.
Mentally.
Mei resumed playback.
Retreat vectors slowing.
Cadets reorganizing.
Support units reforming.
Combat squads stabilizing.
Darius stepping forward into pressure that should have broken the line entirely.
Marcus locking formation.
The Forest twins disappearing through blackout sectors like moving ghosts.
Mei rerouting collapsing systems while Torres flooded hidden communication channels fast enough to reconnect drifting units before they vanished entirely.
Not clean.
Not perfect.
Real.
The room watched silently.
Not reliving it.
Studying it now.
Different perspective.
Different understanding.
Then—
the corridor formed.
The trap.
The enemy herding formations inward.
Ryven's eyes narrowed slightly.
"We cut before the spine adapts."
Mei nodded immediately.
No one here said the word aloud casually anymore.
The spine.
Even thinking about it felt wrong somehow.
Torres adjusted the timeline rapidly.
The footage shifted.
Kael's voice again.
"…we break it."
Ryven answered immediately afterward.
"Of course we do."
Lysander leaned back slowly across the couch cushions. "You know what's terrifying?"
"No," Sylas replied immediately. "But I'm sure you'll tell us anyway."
"They didn't even discuss it."
Silence.
Because that was true too.
No hesitation.
No debate.
The decision existed between them before words caught up to it.
Lucian looked toward Ryven quietly.
"…you already knew what he was going to do."
Ryven answered without looking away from the screen.
"Yes."
Another quiet settled across the room.
Different this time.
Understanding.
Torres suddenly froze mid-edit.
"…hold on."
Everyone looked toward him.
He leaned closer toward the display.
"That's Commander Mercer's channel."
The room sharpened instantly.
Mei moved beside him quickly.
One of the surviving senior channels flickered weakly across the lower corner of the feed.
Static-filled.
Damaged.
But alive.
Torres immediately opened a direct communication request.
The line connected after two attempts.
The screen flickered.
Then stabilized.
Another medbay appeared.
Crowded.
Chaotic.
And filled with familiar faces.
Helius seniors.
Instructors.
Exhausted medics.
Commander Mercer looked like someone had physically fought an exploding engine and won through spite alone.
"…well," Mercer said roughly. "There's the emotionally unstable children."
Torres pointed triumphantly. "I TOLD YOU I COULD REACH THEM."
"Unfortunately."
A few battered seniors behind Mercer laughed weakly.
The tension in the recovery suite eased instantly.
Alive.
They were alive too.
Aria leaned forward. "…how bad?"
Mercer glanced behind him toward the crowded medbay. "Better than expected." A pause. "Worse than acceptable."
That sounded about right.
Dr. Rho appeared briefly in the background reviewing medical scans beside Commander Hale and Major Volkov.
Even through the screen—
they looked exhausted.
Hale noticed the footage compilation immediately.
"You're preparing a release."
Not a question.
Mei nodded.
"Controlled information." A pause. "No classified exposure."
Dr. Rho studied the assembled Elite quietly from the background.
Then nodded once.
"…good."
That single word carried approval heavier than most speeches.
Mercer rubbed one hand slowly down his face.
"Academy's already panicking?"
Torres pointed immediately. "Emotionally imploding." A pause. "Also there's probably at least twelve conspiracy theories already."
"Conservative estimate," Lucian added.
Mercer looked deeply unsurprised by that.
Mei focused again.
"We want unified confirmation." "Both medbays." "Both survivor groups."
Commander Hale folded his arms slightly. "…smart."
Volkov finally spoke from behind him.
"Show them the line."
The room quieted.
Because she understood too.
Not the damage.
Not the trauma.
The line.
The choice.
Mei nodded once.
"That's the plan."
The call ended shortly afterward.
The recovery suite fell quieter again once the screen dimmed.
Torres finally leaned back dramatically in his chair.
"…we almost died."
Aria stared at him. "That's your conclusion?"
"No." He pointed toward the frozen footage of Wrong Sky. "My conclusion is that we are never emotionally recovering from this."
Lysander lifted one finger. "Counterpoint." A pause. "We survived."
Sylas looked toward the screen quietly.
"…barely."
Ryven finally stood again.
Not abruptly.
Slowly.
Like exhaustion had finally started reaching him properly.
The room instinctively tracked the movement.
He looked toward Mei.
"When it's done— send it to Garrick."
Mei nodded immediately.
No one questioned why him.
Because everyone in the room already understood.
This wasn't just information anymore.
It was responsibility.
Ryven looked once toward the medbay corridor again.
Toward Kael.
Then back toward the footage.
"…Helius needs to see it."
No one argued.
Because he was right.
And somewhere beyond the walls of the recovery suite—
an entire academy waited to understand what almost happened beneath the wrong sky.