I pause. My vision blurs with sweat and smoke. My ribs roar. My breath hitches. The metal knife — my finger closes around it, leather sheath digging. I taste iron. I taste fire. I taste hell coming.
I take a step. Then another. I walk toward the darkened skiff. My footsteps echo loud in the empty dock — every clink a heartbeat in the night.
I glance to the grated walkway above — silhouettes linger in smoky light. Traitors in hunt formation. Guns leveled at shadows. They step forward. The grating quakes under weight.
I hold still. Knife raised. A promise of teeth and bone.
They hesitate.
I smile. A low twist of lips.
“Come get me,” I murmur. Voice ragged but alive.
One fires — a molten bolt of energy streaks across the dock floor. It splashes against metal plate — sparks, smoke, hot stink. The echo hits like a drum.
I don’t dodge. I don’t flinch. I step forward anyway.
Pain splits across ribs — but I don’t stagger. I don’t falter.
I walk.
Because tonight, I bring hell.
I walk toward what remains of the command uplink. Toward the traitor’s heart.
Toward vengeance.
The corridor smells of ozone and burning metal when I slip in — like the compound’s breath is shallow, desperate, ripping with static. Every panel blinks red overhead. Alarms rain down in shrieks — but I move in the shadows, silent on scarred plating, even as my own ribs ache, a dull drum under broken armor.
Ahead, past smoking wires and sparking conduits, I see him. The monster I swore to make him pay for. And behind him — a glowing barrel aimed at Vokar’s chest. Cold light, charged energy. Death ready to fire with one pull.
Trebuchet doesn’t notice me at first. His barrel hums, spines of blue-white light sliding along its edge. A hiss escapes from the energy coil — mechanical threat. The air tastes like burnt wiring, the aftertaste of shock. I taste blood on my lip, dry.
He laughs — harsh, hollow, mocking. “You? You’re a smudge on the galaxy.”
His words hang in the air, taunting. The cannon’s hiss grows louder. I step forward, breathing shallow. Each breath tastes of smoke and steel.
I don’t speak. I don’t give warning. I move.
I drop low — crouch under his aim — and I go for the junction box behind him: the twisted web of wires, the neural uplink hub I memorized in days of cleaning halls and wiped-own consoles. My fingers tremble but not from fear. From purpose. From finality.
A slide of claws against metal. A breath held.
I jam the knife blade into the junction housing — ribs of metal bending, thin wires igniting under pressure. Sparks explode — white-hot flares licking the dark. The hum of the cannon snaps. The barrel shutters. Lights flicker. And Trebuchet jolts, body jerking as circuits die.
The weapon discharges — but it’s a tang of misfire, not energy. The beam sputters out, fizzing into uselessness. The recoil spins him — off-balance.
That’s when Vokar hits.
He comes like a war demon unchained, muscles coiled in bone and rage, eyes burning red as the dying strobes of the hall. He crashes into Trebuchet with the force of a falling star. Armor — half-broken — scrapes metal. The shockwave rattles the plating, nozzle sparking, circuits frying.
Trebuchet tries to twist free, servo-joints rasping under torque. But Vokar doesn’t stop. Claw-hand clamps around shoulder plating, teeth gleaming under flickering light. He drives his strength — bone, muscle, vengeance — into the cyborg’s chest.
The smell of scorched wiring, the hiss of overload, metal cracking — the world distorts in static and fury.
Trebuchet’s optic flares then dims. Metal limbs go slack. The barrel drops. The last hiss of venting energy tastes of ash and finality in the stale air.
I push forward, boots thudding on cracked plating — scorching heat still licking wires beneath. I reach the wrecked conduit box, the scorched floor, the half-collapsed bulkhead. My fingers drop to the panel again. I yank free the last control rod. Wires spark, coils unwind.
