Chapter 1

There were worse places to be stationed at than the Kyln. Personally, she didn't know any, but her mother used to tell her stories when she was little about vast dark spaces beyond the Crunch, filled with monsters and terrifying machines.

As it was, the Kyln was both good and bad. It provided energy for other planets, but it imprisoned many of their inhabitants.

Most of them were criminals or warlords who belonged here, but Mila wasn't certain everyone deserved to be here.

Take the new prisoners, for example. They seemed, well...different. One of them was a large, walking, talking tree. The other was some kind of raccoon. Very foul-mouthed. Then there was the famous Gamora, the Green Assassin Lady, whose name and reputation even she had heard of. Someone of her skill would not end up behind bars. And lastly, there was the Terran, Peter Quill, who, out of all, stuck out the most. He just didn't give you the impression that he could seriously harm anyone. Troublemaker, sure, but killer? No.

The rest of the people in her section started making bets on which of them would survive longest. Most of them thought Gamora would be the first to go, since so many prisoners wanted to see her dead. They gave her three days, at the most. The rest, they gave five.

Mila was asked to bet too.

"I bet...I bet they'll make it. All of them. For a month."

She had said it in order to spite her colleagues, but they only laughed.

"You have to bet units, Mila."

"Fine. Twenty units on their victory, then."

It was the most interesting topic they'd had in a year. It was surprisingly dull living in an intergalactic prison.

The Kyln was split up into upper levels, where the administration, information and security sections were housed, and lower levels, where the actual prisoners were held.

Mila had been scared the first couple of months because, despite this divide, some of the galaxy's most dangerous and powerful entities were locked up only miles away from her bedroom, but soon, she realized she was living in the most secure fortress in existence where everything was controlled and simulated, and she gradually became accustomed to the Kyln.

Now and then, she was called up to the lower levels where she would accidentally have to interact with some of the prisoners, but nothing bad ever came out of that. Unlike her fellow corpsmen and corpswomen, she was in the useful habit of smiling at the prisoners. It was more of a polite reflex, but it helped when you were trying to convince a ten-foot tall behemoth that you meant well.

That night, as she was lying in her cot, thinking about the bets they had placed and whether hers would come true, she was startled by a strange sound coming from the administration deck.

She wobbled to the bay window and looked at the outer hallway. It looked empty, but she could hear commotion further down the pod.

Dressing up quickly and picking up her blaster, she ran out of her room only to bump into corpsman Rhomann Dey.

He was walking briskly in the direction of the administration deck and didn't stop for her even when she called after him.

"Corpsman Dey! Sir! Has there been an emergency?"

Rhomann was her superior and could choose to ignore her, but Mila knew he was just distracted. She trailed after him.

As they got closer and closer to the deck, the sound became clearer and she realized what it was. She just couldn't believe it. The security measures had been activated.

Those hadn't been in use in at least a couple of years, if not decades.

"Get on your spiraulic with the rest of the team and get ready for an ambush. There's chaos among the prisoners," Corpsman Dey told her over his shoulder.

Mila nodded her head and broke away from him, running down the deck to the transportation area. Several of her colleagues were already there, looking just as alarmed as her.

"Do you think it's serious?" one of them asked.

"It's probably just some stupid malfunction in the security system," another replied.

"Only one way to find out," Mila said, placing both hands on the levers of her spiraulic.

They all seemed to get on their vehicles at once. You could see them flying like a swarm of insects from the upper levels of the corps-pods to the lower level of the prison-pods.

Mila felt the artificial breeze running through her hair. She had forgotten to pull it up in the usual Nova Corps fashion. She wondered if the new prisoners would be found in the general commotion, or whether they would be huddled up in their cells, away from danger. She wondered if there had been a fight. She wondered if they were the reason for it.

But all that vanished from her head when they reached the lower levels.

The security section was already there, working diligently to control and desist the turbulence. Inmates were running amok, screaming and kicking whoever stood in their path, blasters were shooting everywhere, and one of the guard towers had been taken over. The corpsmen were aiming all their weaponry at it in an attempt to force the prisoners to come out.

Mila looked up at the tower's window and was shocked to see Gamora's green complexion reflected in it. Next to her, she could see Peter Quill.

It's them. It has to be them. All of them.

Her thought process was interrupted when she saw one Sakaaran inmate running at her. She pulled out her blaster and fired at him, aiming for his legs in order to disable him. He lunged at her, but he was already on his knees.

She was about to hop off her spiraulic, when suddenly, her foot only hit air.

She was free falling.

And then, she was up in the air and everything and everyone around her was floating.

It took a few moments to realize what was happening. The Sakaaran prisoner was flying up past her towards the ceiling, screaming obscenities.

The artificial gravitation had been turned off.

Mila almost wanted to throw up.

She could see her body stretching in odd ways, her feet dangling clumsily, her hands waving spasmodically, but she could do nothing about it. She closed her eyes and focused on staying still. It would be a long night.

A/N: Hello, I'm new here, I guess. I was compelled to get an account and start writing thanks to the Guardians of the Galaxy and Marvel in general. This story largely ignores the comic books, sorry, so it won't include Ronan's wife or elements of backstory outside the movie, mainly cuz it would be too tricky and the MCU is too big. So yeah, this is just an attempt. You'll decide whether it's good or not.