"Nyra," I growl, the word tearing through my vocal synthesizer like grinding stone.
Rovik reacts first. The scavenger with the stitched-together face and the milky eye lunges for the heavy lever at the side of the enclosure. He is fast, his movements fueled by the frantic survival instinct of a cornered rat. He reaches for the release, intent on dumping the cage—and Nyra—directly into the shimmering blue hunger of the containment field.
I move before he can finish the arc. I skip the warning. I abandon the idea of a clean arrest.
I seize Rovik by the throat, my gauntlet closing over his windpipe with a sound like a dry branch snapping. I lift him off the deck, his boots kicking uselessly against my dented greaves. He gasps, his hands clawing at my forearm, his nails scratching against the skin of my wrist. I look into his one good eye and see the moment he realizes that Selra’s data was wrong. I am the physical embodiment of his end.
I drive him into the ground. The impact traverses through my boots, a heavy, final thud that echoes against the containment field. I dismiss his dying gasps. I turn toward the cage, my fingers hooking into the gaps between the cold, grease-stained bars.
Selra observes the brutal execution at the brink of the breach, her expression remaining entirely clinical as she takes a measured step backward toward the airlock.
"Rovik is neutralized. The line has failed," she states clearly to Korr, displaying no empathy for her fallen teammate. "The biological surge exceeds our calculated containment parameters. Tactical probability of success has dropped to zero. We must decouple and retreat."
"Get back!" Korr orders, ignoring her.
The Captain stands near his tactical console, his scarred jaw trembling. He raises a heavy-caliber sidearm—a salvage-yard hand-cannon built to punch through bulkheads. The barrel is level, but his cybernetic eye is flickering, a frantic blue light reflecting off the containment field. He ignores me, leveling the barrel directly on Nyra’s chest.
"I’ll vent her!" Korr screams, his finger tightening on the trigger. "I’ll blow the field and turn her into ice before you can blink, Reaper!"
The world narrows to a single point. I notice the violet needle probe on the floor. I gape at the wire cutting into Nyra’s thin wrists. I discern the fear in her eyes—a desperate, frantic terror focused entirely on me.
Strategy dictates I take cover. Logic demands I neutralize the shooter first. However, I bypass the logic. And instead choose her.
Stepping into the line of fire, my massive frame eclipsing the cage entirely, I spread my arms. My broad shoulders and organic ridges form an impenetrable wall of meat and ruined metal between Korr and the woman he intends to break.
Korr fires.
The heavy slug slams into my side, just below the ribs where the armor was already failing. A massive, blunt-force impact shears through muscle and cracks the internal housing of my lower cardiovascular node. I absorb the blow. I let the adrenaline and the primal focus of the bond override the system failure. I ignore the spray of copper-tasting blood hitting the inside of my faceplate. I remain upright, using the agony to fuel the remaining servos in my arms.
"No!" Nyra cries, a sob that cuts deeper than the bullet. "Draevik, please!"
Disregarding the wound and the warning chimes blaring in my ears, I grab the bars of the cage and heave.
The cheap, scavenged metal Korr used to construct this pen groans under my touch—a flimsy insult compared to the onyx bulkheads I was built to defend. I feel the thin steel buckle and twist like wet parchment. My synthetic vascular network drums a frantic, overheated orange as I shunt every remaining watt of power into my upper body. The bars snap. The floor beneath the cage cracks as the bolts wrench upwards. With a final, animalistic roar, I peel the cage open.
Selra tugs on Korr's heavy salvage gear, dragging him backward toward the umbilical of theCarrion King. “Fall back! Now!” she urges. “The line is broken; we lack the heavy ordnance to face him! We must regroup and rearm!”
Korr scrambles backward in shock, his boots sliding on the slick deck as he scurries out of the reach of my shadow, retreating into the safety of his flagship's airlock to recalculate his losses. With a screech of shearing metal, theCarrion Kingviolently detaches its boarding umbilical, stranding its remaining scavengers on my deck. He doesn't jump away; the flagship merely burns its thrusters to back out of range, holding at a safe distance in the debris field to prepare a heavier, more desperate assault.
Reaching into the enclosure's darkness, I find Nyra's arms still behind her in heavy gauntlets, bound tight with high-tensile wire that has already drawn blood from her wrists. I seize the metal restraints. With a sharp, controlled jerk of my fingers, I shear through the wire and crush the locking mechanisms of the gauntlets. The heavy metal falls away, clattering against the diamond plate.
I catch her by the waist, my blood-slicked gauntlet feeling the heat of her skin through her patched-together clothes. I pull her out of the cage and into the wreckage of my chest.
She clings to the monster. She throws her arms around my neck, her lean fingers tangling in my shoulder-length hair. She is furious. She is shaking. She is breathing.
"You're hurt," she blabs against my collarbone, a chaotic mixture of relief and rage. "You're bleeding everywhere, you giant idiot."
"Irrelevant," I grunt.
A fresh volley of pulse-fire hisses overhead, melting the statues behind us. I must find a more defensible position. The breach is too exposed. With fluid hemorrhaging at a critical rate,the primary HUD cuts out, plunging the world into a permanent black.
Scooping her up against the ruins of my armor, I find her impossibly light. I turn my back on Korr and Selra, ignoring the slugs whining past my head as I haul her toward the maintenance lift. Prioritizing her safety over pursuing the enemy violates every law of my kind—and it ceases to matter to me.
We reach the lift shaft. I kick the manual release, the doors sliding shut just as a final kinetic round sparks against the surface. The lift begins its draggy, grinding descent into the belly of the ship—toward a secure area only I know of.
I sag against the wall of the lift, my strength bleeding out for a moment. Nyra is still clinging to me, her hands searching for the seams in my armor, her eyes scanning my face with a desperate, calculating intensity.
The lift groans, a deep, metal-on-metal scream that shimmies through the bottoms of my boots. I lean my weight against the back panel, the jet-black cold seeping through the gaps in my shattered plating. Nyra continues to press against me. Her face buries in the crook of my neck, her breath hot and frantic against my skin. I feel the dampness of her skin against mine, a stark contrast to the drying copper fluid soaking into her tunic.
