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Ash Protocol: Zero Mission, Final
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The medbay was too quiet. Even the machines seemed to hush themselves between their patient beeps, as if reluctant to disturb whatever fragile thread tethered Sammy to wakefulness. The lights were warm and low, a subtle amber hum spread across the ceiling. Synthetic comfort, but she’d take it. It was softer than the sterile white she remembered from other Federation clinics—too bright, too clean, too full of questions she couldn’t answer.Ash Protocol: Zero Mission, Final
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She stirred in the cot, a breath catching behind her ribs like something trying not to break. Her uniform was torn in a dozen places. A strip of dermal foam clung like frost around her shoulder, faded plasma burns still smoking in her dreams. Every muscle ached. Her eyes were dry.
Something shifted beside her.
She didn’t open her eyes—not at first. There was no alarm, no threat, just... warmth. The sort you didn’t question when you were this tired. Small, steady. A presence. She let herself drift in it, unsure if it was a memory or real.
Then a voice—barely a whisper, but unmistakably a kid’s—cut through the haze.
"You were really brave."
She blinked. Her eyelids were slow, like they were soaked in resin. It took effort to focus.
The boy was sitting next to her on the cot. Legs drawn up. Too big for the chair across the room, too small to carry the kind of trauma his eyes held. He had something in his hands—pressed close to his chest—and when he held it out to her, it felt like an offering.
The doll was simple. Homemade, clearly. Brown yarn for hair, an uneven smile stitched into felt. He placed it gently on her chest.
"It'll keep you safe," he said. "Just like you kept me safe."
Sammy’s fingers curled around it slowly, every tendon protesting. The fabric was warm from his hands. Familiar, almost. Her breath hitched as she stared at it. She didn’t remember the last time she’d held something without a trigger.
She found her voice in the quiet, ragged and unused.
“We never really got to be kids, yanno?”
Her voice cracked. She wasn’t sure if she’d said it to him or to herself.
When she looked over, the cot was empty.
She blinked. Once. Twice. The light overhead flickered. She hadn’t heard him leave.
Her heart began to race, weak and slow like a sluggish engine. She tried to sit up and failed, head spinning, throat catching on a dry gasp. The doll slipped to her lap, bouncing once against her thigh.
"Nurse?" she called, her voice rasping out like gravel. "Where—where’d the kid go?"
A nurse moved quickly into the room, tablet in hand, eyes scanning vitals before focusing on her. There was concern, not panic. That made it worse somehow.
“The boy,” Sammy said again, more urgent now. “He was just here. Gave me this.”
The nurse looked at the doll, her face unreadable for a second too long. Then, gently, she stepped closer.
“There was a boy brought in with you,” she said. “But he didn’t make it. Trauma was too extensive. He was gone before they even finished patching your chest.”
Sammy’s fingers clutched the doll like a lifeline.
“No,” she said, almost to herself. “He was just here. I saw him. He... he gave me this. He—”
The nurse placed a hand on hers, not prying the doll away, just anchoring her.
“I believe you,” she said quietly.
Sammy’s eyes stayed fixed on the far wall, unfocused. There were no tears—she couldn’t seem to find the part of her that still cried—but her chest ached in ways that had nothing to do with cracked ribs or bruised lungs.
Maybe he’d been there. Maybe not. Maybe her brain had conjured him in the fog of pain and painkillers. Maybe ghosts were real in the silence between heartbeats.
Did it matter?
She looked down at the doll again, the tiny smile sewn into its face like a secret.
“Somnus in astris, kid,” she whispered.
Sleep reclaimed her before the tears could.
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The debriefing room stank of heat and gun oil.
It had been several years since her Zero Mission.
Captain Delran paced the steel floor like he thought motion added weight to his words. It didn’t. Not with Sammy seated at the far end of the table, uniform scorched, blood crusting at the neckline, and half-dried mud still caking her boots. She hadn’t even dropped her pistol in the locker before the summons. Not that anyone had asked.
Delran slapped a report pad onto the table like he was throwing down a gauntlet.
“You call that precision? You were authorized to retrieve one data node. Not level three entire storage halls.” He jabbed a finger in her direction, voice rising. “Collateral counts, SAM-08. Federation resources count.”
Sammy didn’t respond. She leaned back in her chair, cracked her neck slowly, then shifted her arm just enough to rest her hand on the doll peeking from the side pocket of her gear satchel. The soft brown fabric was darkened with soot, but the stitches still held.
The captain followed her gaze.
He sneered.
And reached.
It was fast—casual, even. Like he was brushing lint off a desk. His fingers closed around the doll’s middle, tugging it upward, squinting at it like it was some foreign contaminant.
“You still cart this thing around?” he said, laughing without humor. “Are we playing sentimental now?”
That’s when time broke.
She didn’t rise. Didn’t shift her feet. Just snapped her right arm across the table in a blur, her fingers closing around his wrist mid-air. The crack was clean, crisp, almost sterile.
Delran howled. The doll dropped. Sammy caught it one-handed before it hit the floor.
Silence fell like a gravity shift.
The air in the room became still. Cold.
Sammy stared at him, eyes bright but void of heat. She didn’t shout. Didn’t curse. Just examined the doll briefly—checked for damage like a field surgeon assessing a wound—then gently placed it back in her satchel.
Only then did she speak, voice low and even:
“Don’t touch my shit.”
Delran staggered back, cradling his ruined wrist. His eyes were wild, scanning the walls like a cornered animal trying to remember protocol.
The door hissed open. Commander Raleth stepped in, flanked by two MPs.
She took one look at the scene and didn’t flinch.
“Dismissed,” Raleth said, not to Sammy—but to Delran. “Medical wing’s to your left.”
He stammered something. The MPs didn’t move to restrain Sammy. They moved to open the door wider.
Delran left clutching his arm, dignity dragging behind him like a snapped leash.
Raleth stood in silence for a long moment after he was gone, then turned to Sammy.
“You know,” she said, voice unreadable, “they’re asking if you’ve lost your edge. If the rogue flare’s catching.”
Sammy didn’t answer.
Raleth studied her.
Then: “He shouldn’t have touched it.”
“No,” Sammy said, finally. “He shouldn’t have.”
Raleth nodded. Not approval. Not disapproval. Just… acknowledgment.
“You’ve got three hours. Next drop’s in fringe space. You up for it?”
Sammy rose slowly, picking up the satchel, pressing the doll into the space between her armor plates and shoulder.
“I’m always up for it,” she said.
As she left the room, the whispers began. Again.
Don’t cross SAM-08, bitch is crazy.
And somewhere in the silence, the doll would remain warm against her skin. The last piece of softness she still bled for.