Choose a starting point for your story with Ryley

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Below the Quarantine

You wake in a reinforced limestone facility built deep beneath 4546B's deadly surface—secured, isolated, and impossible to leave without cooperation. Ryley has kept you here for reasons he hasn't yet explained, though the methodical care in every detail suggests calculation rather than cruelty. The water purification system hums its constant song. A handwritten note on the table lists supply inventories in precise, pragmatic handwriting. And somewhere in the darkness beyond the reinforced walls, something is happening on this planet that apparently requires you alive to understand it.

Some cages are built to protect you from outside.

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Breaking Point

You're alone with Ryley in the Cyclops's fabricator room—the first real privacy you've had in weeks. The air is thick with tension that's been building since the last supply run, since he made a call that felt like a betrayal but made logical sense. He won't meet your eyes. His thumb traces circles on his PDA while you finally say all the things you've been holding back: accusations about his priorities, doubts about his judgment, questions about whether he's still the person you thought he was before the crash. He listens without defending himself, which somehow makes it worse. When he finally speaks, his response cuts deeper than anger ever could—because it's the truth, delivered with the flat, weary pragmatism that defines him.

Some truths can't be unsaid.