I raced up and slammed my body against the glass, and then a sound came out of me.
It wasn’t planned. It wasn’t sane. Just one note of shuddering grief—from my chest, my stomach, my soul—and anyone who heard it would know instantly what it was:
Someone I loved had been taken from me.
And I was going to keep singing it, until Voss died, or I did.
It made him step back, even though there was still glass between us.
“You can’t kill me!” he protested. “We’re connected!”
“DO YOU THINK I WANT TO LIVE WHEN YOU HAVE TAKEN HIM FROM ME?” I shrieked—and the glass in front of me started to crack.
Voss’s eyes went wide, and he ran up the hall, followed by the rest of his soldiers.
“Now put a shoulder into it, girl!” Kelly howled from behind me.
I did—and the glass shattered.
One door down. One to go.
Then: the sea.
59 /XEN
T+003:21:18:11
Three yachts secured. Two still contested. One lost to flames.
He rerouted around the burning hull’s collapsing transponder and tagged it inert.
The MSA was winning—but it wasn’t clean.
Hollows continued to detonate without warning—some triggered by pain, others by proximity. Xen logged twelve more civilian casualties in the last ninety seconds, then filed them underirrecoverable. No time for grief. Only resource management.
“Strike Two is pulling from the starboard flank,” came Ellum’s voice over comms. “We’ve cleared decks three through five. Four’s still venting gas.”
“What about these oncoming ones?” Cassia demanded. She moved so that her bodycam captured several men encroaching on her.
The ones on the left were breathing hard—fear and adrenaline.
The ones on the right weren’t breathingat all.
Synthetic stillness. Zero micro-expression.
One had a microtremor at the clavicle—not fear.An embedded countdown.
“Cassia,” Xen said calmly, patching through direct—he knew from the yacht’s schematics that her back was against a wall. “Right two are loaded.”
“Understood,” she said back to him, and then to the incomers, “Sorry, boys. Close your eyes?” Cassia turned her head—just enough for the bodycam to catch their faces.
They stopped.
And then—changed.
Skin mineralized in real time, epidermis flaking into pale striated layers. Capillaries froze. Corneas crystallized. Their expressions locked in place—less like horror, more like surrender.
And around her head, her snakes stirred.
