Adventure of Devin Halbolt 1

The infirmary hums under thin white light. Devin Halbolt steps in with the salvaged relay hardware, and Toma Sera’s gaze snaps to it at once. Ilyana Reese stands beside the monitor stack, one hand on a tablet, shoulders tight.

Toma looks between Devin and the hardware, jaw trembling once before he forces the words out.

The monitor lights flicker over Toma’s scarred face as the room settles into a hard, dangerous clarity. The mission is no longer just to save the pilot in the bed, it is to unravel the system that made him.

Devin settles beside Toma again, and the infirmary feels smaller for it. Ilyana takes the hardware from his hands with practiced care, turning the casing toward the monitor light.

Toma blinks at him, then at his own hands, as if checking whether the memories are still there. His shoulders loosen a fraction, and the hollow look in his eyes shifts toward something human.

Ilyana slots the hardware into a portable reader. Green lines spill across the screen, branching into hidden layers and repeated route marks.

Ilyana’s hands keep moving over the reader, but her eyes lift once to listen. The monitor’s green layers crawl across the screen, then stall on a repeating branch that looks less like code and more like a route with missing pieces.

The words settle him. Toma’s shoulders drop a fraction, and the hollow look in his eyes gives way to something tired but present.

At the reader, Ilyana’s scrolling stops. A clean branch in the signal layers blooms open, then splits into three labeled nodes, one tagged with a Queens clinic block checksum.

Toma looks from the monitor back to Devin, steadier now, as the traced network holds on screen without collapsing.

Ilyana lowers her hand from the reader and lets the node chain stay on screen, steady and bright.

The monitor holds on the node chain, one branch pulsing beside the Queens clinic block checksum, while Toma keeps his eyes on Devin instead of the screen.

Ilyana glances up from the reader, her fingers pausing over the tablet as the node chain keeps glowing on the monitor.

Toma's shoulders loosen a fraction, but his eyes stay fixed on Devin, waiting to see whether the memory still belongs to him.

Ilyana straightens at the reader, the node chain brightening behind her as she studies the new detail.

The monitor keeps its steady glow, the Queens clinic block node holding in place while Toma swallows hard and stays with the memory.

Devin lets the silence settle, and the pieces click together in his head. Neo-Zeon did not just use Toma. They made him into a transmitter, the same kind of manufactured witness they turned Rina into.

Toma’s shoulders sag with recognition instead of fear, and the hollow look in his eyes shifts into something rawer, but steadier. Ilyana keeps one hand on the reader, watching the node chain hold.

The monitor keeps the Queens clinic block lit in pale lines, and the route trace now looks less like a map than a deliberate chain of cages. Toma stares at it, breathing carefully.

Toma blinks, then turns from the monitor to Devin, as if the question gives him something solid to hold onto. The reader hums softly beside Ilyana's hand, the node chain still bright on the screen.

His mouth tightens, but he keeps going. Ilyana glances from the description to the relay trace, the Queens clinic block glowing in the same pale line as before.

Toma exhales shakily, then adds, quieter, almost to the sheet under his hands. The answer seems to steady him more than it hurts.

Devin steps in and pulls Toma into a careful hug, letting the words land against his shoulder instead of the room. The reader light throws a thin glow over their hands, and Ilyana lets the cable rest while she watches without interrupting.

Ilyana’s eyes flick back to the monitor. The Queens clinic block checksum stays lit, and the node chain blooms into an engineered family-linked relay pattern, clean enough to read and ugly enough to understand.

His voice thins, but it does not break. He stays pressed against Devin for another beat, then eases back just enough to meet his eyes.

Devin eases Toma back onto the cot, one careful hand at his shoulder. The mattress dips, the monitors steady, and the reader’s pale light keeps washing the family-linked pattern across the wall.

Toma’s expression tightens at that, not with panic, but with focus. The hollow edge is still there, yet it is angled now toward action instead of collapse.

Devin is already moving by the time the words settle. He leaves Toma supported in bed, and the medbay door opens onto the next compartment, where the captured pilots wait under quiet shipboard light.

Devin steps into the patient area, past the curtain and the soft monitor glow. The captured pilots lie lined up on gurneys, cuffs locked to the rails, faces washed pale by medbay light.

One pilot stirs first, lids fluttering open. The other turns his head with a dry swallow, slow and wary, but both are awake enough to hear him.

At the name, the nearest monitor catches a sharper spike, then settles. Toma’s gaze snaps toward the second gurney, stunned by recognition, while the family-linked pattern holds steady behind them.

Devin eases the gurney closer, wheels whispering over the deck. Toma’s hand tightens on the rail, and Rina leans forward as the gap between them closes.

Devin pulls a chair close, the metal legs scraping softly over the deck plates, and settles in beside the two gurneys. The monitor glow washes all three of them in pale green as he stops trying to lead the moment and simply stays.

Toma laughs once, weak and wet-eyed, and Rina turns her head just enough to hold his gaze. The hard lines in both their faces loosen as if the room itself finally lets them breathe.

Devin glances down at his data pad, then tilts it away from the gurneys so the glow stays soft. His thumb flicks open a private message to Reese instead of cutting across the room with a question.

The message sends. A beat later, the pad buzzes with a terse reply from Ilyana Reese, flagged through the ship's internal net.

Rina's eyes shift toward Devin's pad, then back to Toma, her relief sharpening into focus as the answer lands in the room with them.

The medical monitors keep their steady line, but one screen beside the relay trace briefly blooms with that same family-linked pattern, as if the whole network is still listening.

Devin looks between them, surprised enough that his shoulders lift before he catches himself. The question hangs in the infirmary light, small and direct.

Toma lets out a thin breath that is almost a laugh, while Rina's hand tightens on the gurney rail, her expression softening with recognition.

The relay trace on the monitor pulses again, and for a second the family-linked pattern lines up with the same rhythmic rhythm Devin saw in the authority feed. Both siblings notice it at once, then look back to him, waiting.