#saffron crew

First snippet of writing for a new WIP about my Neon Odyssey OCs, the Saffron crew!

Word count: 821

CW: guilt

Fandom: Neon Odyssey (D&D)

Hacked

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Aeza’s blood ran cold as the decrypted message typed itself across the console’s hologram screen. 

[The program. I know you have it. Bring it to the attached coordinates.

Or will you have yet another’s blood on your hands?

PHAZE]

Aeza could only stare at the tagline.

“Who…” Jay fussed with the console screen, urgently tabbing back and forth through menus as he echoed, “‘The program.’ They know about Coda. Who—how did they find out?”

<Tracker bug?> Jet suggested with a twitch of his antenna. 

Coda’s pale blue hardlight dimmed and gained a tint of a fearful, Somber lavender hue as she looked back and forth between Jay, Jet, and the console. “I can run a scan on the Saffron’s systems—”

“No!” Jay shoved a hand between Coda and the console. “Kid, if there’s a tracker bug, if you connect with the system you might get detected. We can’t risk that.”

“But if they already know about me—”

Jet gently pulled Coda away from the console and stepped around her, propping himself up on his tiptoes to reach buttons on the console. <I got it.>

Aeza’s breath quickened the longer she stared at the message on the screen, now surrounded by other windows as Jay and Jet pulled up status report upon status report of the Saffron’s computer network.

Phaze.

Her breath escaped her with a muttered, “No…”

She knew that name.

She knew that name. 

Jay started to turn around and ask, “Aez, why would the message have come to—”

But Aeza barely heard his voice as she pivoted and ran. 

She all but flew down the stairs from the bridge, dashing through the lobby. Her hand caught the handrail to the main stairs, and her momentum spun her into the stairway. 

A chorus of footsteps behind her rang dully on Aeza’s ears beneath the racing of her own heart and breath. At the base of the stairs she flung herself forward, dashing down the corridor to her quarters.

The automatic doors couldn’t slide open fast enough. She shoved herself through them before they even parted fully. 

There had to be something here. 

Something had been bugged. Aeza threw her covers aside, her drawers open, and all but her most fragile belongings out across the floor. Her more fragile belongings she lifted and inspected more gently but no less frantically before setting them aside as well.

I must have missed something. What could she have bugged?

She threw herself at another set of drawers, holding nothing but a handful of spare pairs of socks and an old photograph she usually kept hidden.

Normally she pulled it out for comfort and nostalgia. Now she frantically turned it over and over. Searched it for anything amiss, anything she must have overlooked that could possibly be a tracker.

Nothing. 

I need to look again.

The doors to her quarters slid open again as she dashed to her closet for another round of searching. 

“Aez! What’re you doing!?” Jay demanded, his pale eyes darting around the rapidly increasing mess of Aeza’s room before fixing on her. 

Aeza ignored him, instead darting again to the desk.

But his firm hands stopped her, grabbing her on the shoulders and spinning her to face him. “Aeza! What’s going on? What’s gotten into you?!”

“I—” Aeza pulled herself out of his grip and turned. Every nerve she had pled at her to search her room again, but she froze when she finally registered the mess. Everything she owned now lay across the cold floor, seeming to join with the industrial walls in mocking her failure. She could only run her hands through her hair and mutter, “It’s all my fault.”

“What?”

“It’s all my fault,” she repeated, voice soft even to her own ears. “I—she found me. She must have. She found Coda because of me.”

Jay frowned and spun Aeza around with a firm but gentle hand to her shoulder again. “What are you talking about? ‘She’ who?”

“Phaze!” Aeza insisted, meeting his eyes before glancing down and finally noticing Jet and Coda standing in the doorway behind him. Guilt shot a dart of frost through her heart as she met Coda’s eyes, still tinted lavender instead of innocent blue. She had to pry her eyes away, else she feel Coda scanning her soul and finding her guilt as she forced out, “I…I know who Phaze is. Or…I used to. I used to know her. But I…I thought she was dead. But now she—she’s found Coda. Because of me.” Her voice weakened as she groaned again, “It’s all my fault. Again.”

“Aez, listen to me,” Jay said, stepping forward to put himself in her field of vision again while Jet waddled into the room and looked around. “I don’t know what you’re on about, but we’ll figure this out, ok? Doesn’t matter whose fault it is; we’re not gonna let her get Coda.”

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For this week’s prompt courtesy of @flashfictionfridayofficial!