GLADIATOR | ELYSIUM RISING 1 ✔️

⍢| 33

"Is he dead?"

"Do I look like a MedBot to you, Jax?"

"No need to be a smartass, Ace. Just check his breathing for me, will you?"

"I'm not a Hand anymore, you know that right?"

"But you are a member of my crew. Now, check his breathing."

A pair of cold fingers pressed against Iggy's jugular vein. His eyes snapped open. Crisp oxygen flooded into his lungs as he shot up from the cot he'd been laying on. His head spun as blinding light shrouded his vision for a moment. He rubbed his eyes until he could see again.

Jaxon Gunn and Ace stood at the foot of the small cot with their brows lifted in amusement as they watched the boy before them. The three of them were in a small room with black-painted walls, low ceilings, and recess lighting hidden in the ceiling. Screens built into the wall to Iggy's left displayed his medical information along with a spinning, three-dimensional model of his body. A red glow covered his shoulder.

He winced as the pain of the blaster bolt from earlier returned. A bandage had been wrapped around the wound. He could vaguely see the blood seeping into the white gauze.

"Rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty," Jaxon quipped. He patted his hand on the boy's injured shoulder before grumbling an apology. "Sorry, kid."

Iggy blinked twice at him as he continued to look around. "Where are we?"

"We're in the Manta. More specifically, we just passed Azphadel*."

"Azphadel?" His mouth dried. They were still in the Inner Rim. "What about the—"

"Relax, kid. There's a reason why we went around Azphadel. I'll bet my last dollar they don't have a single pilot as talented as me. No way one of their stupid ships made it through that planet's rings. By the time they make it around, we'll be long gone."

Nodding, Iggy laid back down. He stared at the ceiling for a moment as his brain went completely blank. After a while, a single thought exploded into the dark expanse of his mind.

"What happened to the emperor?"

Jaxon and Ace exchanged a sour glance. The former cleared their throat before answering. "We lost him to the soldiers. If it wasn't for Noia and her magic, none of us would've made it off that beach alive."

"We barely got your scrawny ass on the ship," Ace grumbled as they folded their arms. Jaxon shot them a scathing look. The android simply shrugged. "Just being honest."

He blinked, surprised. They came back. They came back for him. Why?

But before he could ponder that question any further, memories from the beach slammed into him with full force. He squeezed his eyes shut before the tears could escape them. Frustration and anger and embarrassment bundled together within his chest, sticking to his insides like tar. A massive wave of shame washed over him as he recalled what happened on the sand before he blacked out.

The mission failed. He failed.

Voltai had been right there in his sights. A single press of a trigger would've stopped him from reaching the soldiers at the edge of the beach. His short reign of tyranny over the empire would've been over.

But the empire would've remained standing. Voltai would become a martyr for them—a symbol the Elysians and their people could've rallied behind. They would've used his assassination as justification for publicly going after the other systems in the galaxy. Iggy had thought the galaxy was burning now; murdering the emperor might've incinerated it.