She dropped the slate. It shattered.
She smiled. “Enjoy the silence.”
Then she walked to the horizon, as far from the shaft as her failing suit could take her, and sat down on a ridge of frozen ammonia to watch the stars. Behind her, the Sisyphus detonated. The nuclear flash turned XV-827 into a brief, furious sun. The shockwave vaporized the shaft, the cathedral, the sphere.
Somewhere in the Nyx system, the Interstellar Mineral Survey updated their charts. XV-827: Destroyed. Cause: reactor overload. No survivors.
And in the sudden, absolute darkness that followed, Elara Venn’s final act was not to run, but to redefine.
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