They ran into the glowing dark. Behind them, Mira’s tools sang. Ahead, the ground groaned like a dying beast.

, the mechanic, was already knee-deep in the access panel, her multi-tool whining. “Ten minutes. Maybe five if I reroute coolant through the waste exchange.”

Behind them, the hovercraft roared to life, Mira’s voice crackling over the comm: “Thrusters green. Where do you need the pickup?”

As the ground began to cave, as Jax lifted the boy onto his shoulders and Kael triangulated the extraction point, Ryan thought about all the people who had told him a squad like this couldn’t work. Too messy. Too emotional. Too unofficial .

Behind him, the three members of his squad didn't flinch. They never did.

When they found the boy—no older than seven, trembling on a crumbling pillar of dirt—Ryan dropped to his belly and reached down.

But as the hovercraft’s belly hatch opened and the boy laughed—actually laughed—at the rush of wind, Ryan knew the truth.

Ryan’s Rescue Squad wasn’t a team because of orders or ranks.

Ryan finally stood. He was the youngest commander in the sector, and the most doubted. His crew wasn’t military; they were misfits, burnouts, and the forgotten. But when a distress signal went unanswered, when the official rescue corps logged it as “low priority,” Ryan’s Squad was the one that showed up.

Halfway there, a sinkhole opened at Kael’s feet. Jax caught his arm without a word, hauling him up while Ryan fired a grappling line across the chasm. They didn’t stop. They didn’t argue.

“What’s the angle?” Jax asked. There was always an angle with Ryan.

And they always, always came.

Ryan grinned—a small, fierce thing.

, the squad’s whisper—their intel specialist—tilted his head, listening to the silent frequency only he could hear. His eyes went distant, then sharp. “The survivor is a kid. Trapped in a sinkhole three klicks north. Ground is collapsing at a meter per hour.”

“Directly below us. And Mira? Make it fast.”