Camp Delta-M-E-4.Summer 2045
The camp had no official name. Just a code: Delta-M-E-4.
An old logging base, repurposed into a reeducation facility with forced labor. No visible fences. No need. The forest itself was the barrier — cold, wet, watched.
And above all: time.
It had been seventeen years.
Jan broke stone with bare hands. Billy rewired electrical panels, helmet clamped tight, always under the hum of a silent drone. They were fed just enough. Slept in shifts, sometimes packed into dorms, sometimes alone.
They had learned to ration hope the same way one rations water.
But they still talked. Quietly.
Not to dream. To plan.
Camp courtyard. End of day. Pale light filters through pines and sensor mesh. Five prisoners. Stiff bodies. Watchful eyes. Jan leans against the wall. Billy stands, fiddling with a toolbox left deliberately ajar. Reyes smokes a damp stub. Olek, the youngest, keeps watch.
Billy (low, eyes on the box)
— North generator gets maintenance every 23 days. Eleven-minute gap.
Jan (scraping the dirt with a rusty nail)
— Not enough. We need at least fifteen to get through the waste trench and avoid the thermal sensor.
Reyes (snorts)
— You really think counting minutes is gonna get us out of this hole?
Billy (calm)
— I think they think they're invincible. That makes them sloppy. That's our edge.
Olek (quick glance)
— There’s one guard who sleeps through his shift. The guy with the fake leg. He disables the inner alert to avoid being logged.
Jan (nods slowly)
— Useful. If we kill the rear cam while he’s out, we can crawl through the vent grid. That gets us to the supply depot. Maintenance suits are stored there.
Reyes
— Then what? Freeze to death barefoot in the woods? Great plan.
Billy (finally looks up)
— Not barefoot. Two klicks east, there’s an old weather station. I stashed gear there. Ten years ago. If it’s still there...
Jan
— ...we have a shot.
(A silence. Then a distant scream. An alarm bleats to life. Someone tripped a sensor.)
No one moves. They're used to it. The silent fear. Reyes crushes his cigarette in the mud. Olek melts back to his post.
Billy (quiet, clipped)
— Next blackout’s in nine days. Get your legs ready. Your heads. And your silences.
Jan (rises)
— We’re not escaping to survive. We’re escaping to return.
(The drone passes. Conversation dies.)
The five of them barely had time to look up before the drones descended — three of them, hovering low, metal bodies pulsing with blue strobe light, voice modules set to Command Mode.
Drone Alpha
(Flat, synthetic voice)
— This is a restricted assembly. Disperse immediately. Resume assigned tasks.
Drone Beta
(Identical tone)
— Failure to comply will result in neurological deterrent protocol.
They didn’t move. Not right away. Jan stood still, eyes narrowing. Billy didn’t even blink. Just slid the screwdriver back into the rusted slot of the toolbox.
Drone Gamma lowered faster than the others — too fast. Its stabilization software sputtered, fans whining in protest. It jerked left, then overcorrected. A hard tilt.
It clipped the side of the dormitory block with a sharp metallic crack, carving a chunk out of the siding before spinning upward erratically and shooting back into the sky like a wasp on fire.
Silence.
Then a sharp mechanical ping, and Alpha and Beta rose slightly, recalibrating.
Drone Alpha
— Work cycle reinstated. Return to labor grid B-4.
They flew off.
For a breathless second, no one said a word.
Then Jan turned slightly, not even trying to hide the smirk tugging at his lip.
Jan
— “So much for invincible systems.”
Billy (dryly)
— “One day the whole program will crash because someone forgot a semicolon.”
Reyes let out a short chuckle. Even Olek cracked a grin.
The moment passed. But the smell of scorched drone metal lingered. And something had shifted — just a sliver — in the thick air of the yard.
Hope, maybe. Or something sharper.