JERRY – POV
The workshop was my sanctuary, mostly because people knew better than to touch my tools.
It smelled of burnt ozone, hot solder, and whatever synthetic coffee Scourge's quartermaster had managed to scrounge up this week. I had my goggles down, sparks flying in a bright arc as I welded the final suspension joint on a hover-bike frame. It was sleek, mean, and capable of outrunning most anti-air missiles—provided the rider didn't mind a little bone-rattling turbulence.
Over the whine of the welding torch, the shop's internal comms chirped.
Clara's voice, eternally unbothered, floated out of the speakers. "Update: Unholy Knights cult has been wiped. Sending in the footage now."
I cut the torch. The sparks died, leaving a glowing red spot on the metal.
I pushed my goggles up and wiped a streak of grease off my forehead.
"Let's see it, Clara. Put it on the main screen."
The massive holo-monitor mounted over my workbench flickered to life. The feed was compiled from Kane's shoulder-cam and Rambo's tactical rig, cross-cut to show the basement of the Black Wake Bar.
I leaned against my workbench, crossing my grease-stained arms, and watched the show.
There was Rambo, turning into a blur of raw, terrifying speed, his cannons painting the room red. There was Kane, punching mutant hounds so hard their skulls caved in. Classic. Reliable.
But my eyes tracked the smallest figure on the screen.
Tara.
She moved like she'd been born in a war zone—which, sadly, she had. But now she wasn't just surviving it; she was thriving. I watched her perfectly time a dropkick into the cult leader's spine. I watched her use her nullification trait with terrifying precision, shutting down hundred heavily armed hostiles at once. I watched her calmly shoot a guy in the kneecap without even blinking.
And then, I saw the close-up on Kane's feed. Her left wrist rig. My rig. Cracked right down the housing, sparking like a cheap firework.
I groaned out loud, rubbing the bridge of my nose. "I literally reinforced that casing with poly-carbide steel yesterday. How does she keep breaking my masterpieces?"
But even as I complained, I couldn't stop the grin spreading across my face.
I looked at the freeze-frame of her on the screen. The golden eyes. The jagged star necklace. The absolute, unhinged confidence of a kid who had realized she had a family of warlords backing her up.
God, I thought. She's going to be a menace when she grows up.
Kaiser had found a stray in the ruins. But looking at her now, I realized we weren't just raising a survivor. We were raising an apex predator. If she kept learning from people like Kane, Rambo, and Hawk, there wasn't a kingpin in the undercity who was going to be able to sleep soundly in five years.
"I need to build her something better," I muttered to myself, turning away from the screen and grabbing a digital datapad. "Plasma core. Double barrel. Maybe a localized shield emitter..."
The heavy blast doors to the workshop hissed open.
"Talking to yourself again, Jerry?"
I didn't need to look up to know who it was. Karin walked in, her footsteps impossibly quiet for someone who carried that much classified data in her head. She was dressed in her usual sharp, practical tactical wear, a holopad tucked under one arm.
"I'm brainstorming," I said, tapping furiously on the pad.
"Tara broke her wrist gun. Again. I'm going to have to armor the next one with tank plating."
Karin walked over, peering at the frozen footage of the smoking basement on the screen. A small, dry smile touched her lips.
"She has an eighty-five percent success rate on her first live field op," Karin noted, adjusting her glasses. "Her tactical awareness is surprisingly high. But her collateral damage quotient is... well, it looks a lot like Rambo's."
"I'm so proud," I said, wiping a tear that wasn't there.
"We need to talk about Morgana," Karin said, seamlessly transitioning to business. She set her holopad on my workbench, sweeping a pile of loose bolts out of the way. "Now that Kaiser officially recruited her, she's requesting custom gear."
I groaned, tossing my datapad down. "Let me guess. She wants something practical? A concealed compact SMG? A nice, quiet vibro-blade?"
"She asked for a staff," Karin said flatly.
I stared at her. "A what?"
"A staff," Karin repeated, pulling up a crude, hand-drawn schematic on the pad. "She says she wants to look, quote, 'like a proper mysterious oracle.' She specified it needs to have a glowing rock at the top."
I burst out laughing. I laughed so hard I had to lean on the hover-bike frame.
"A glowing rock!" I wheezed. "Is she serious? We're fighting warlords with railguns and bio-engineered titans, and she wants to cosplay as a wizard?"
Karin sighed, the long-suffering sound of an intelligence officer who had to deal with eccentric trait-users all day. "She claims it's for 'theatrical intimidation.' And she wants the base of the staff to house a high-yield taser."
"Oh, well, if it has a taser, suddenly it's tactical," I grinned, shaking my head. "Fine. I'll make her a magic stick. But I'm putting a hidden shotgun in the handle. I have a reputation to maintain."
"Do what you want," Karin said, tapping the pad off. "As long as it keeps her alive. Now, grab your gear. We have a walk to take."
"Where to?" I asked, grabbing a heavy wrench purely out of habit.
"The Cage," Karin said.
My smile vanished. The Cage. Scarpoint's maximum-security detention block, buried deep under the lowest foundation levels.
"Why do I need to go down there?" I asked.
"Because," Karin said, turning toward the door, "Scourge wants you to check the electromagnetic dampeners on cell block four. We have some... unhappy guests from the Varn raids. And I need to visually confirm their miserable conditions for my intel reports."
"Sounds like a lovely afternoon," I muttered, following her out.
The elevator ride down took three full minutes. The deeper we went, the colder the air got. The slick, high-tech aesthetic of upper Scarpoint faded away, replaced by raw bedrock, heavy iron, and thick blast doors.
When the doors finally opened, the sound hit us.
It wasn't loud. It was a low, constant murmur. The sound of a hundred dangerous people breathing, pacing, and waiting.
We stepped out onto a reinforced steel catwalk that ran over a massive, cylindrical chasm. Cells were carved directly into the rock walls, sealed by thick fields of crackling red energy.
I walked beside Karin, my boots ringing on the grating.
We passed a cell where a man twice the size of Rambo threw himself against the energy barrier. The shield flared white-hot, throwing him backward with a hiss of ozone. He didn't scream. He just got up and prepared to do it again.
"Old Blood Rust enforcer," Karin murmured, not even looking at him. "He's been doing that for three days. His bones are mostly micro-fractures at this point."
We kept walking.
I looked into another cell. A woman sat perfectly still in the center of the floor, her eyes completely black, whispering to shadows that weren't there. As we walked by, the shadows stretched toward the energy barrier, scratching at the glass with long, wispy fingers.
"That's creepy," I muttered, gripping my wrench tighter.
"Trait-induced psychosis," Karin said clinically, making a note on her pad. "She's harmless as long as the dampeners hold."
"That's exactly why I'm here," I said. "If my tech fails, she's turning us inside out."
We reached the end of the catwalk, stopping in front of Cell Block Four. This was the deep end. The heavy hitters.
Inside the central cell, chained to the wall with thick, tungsten-weave cuffs, was a man who looked like he was slowly melting. Green veins pulsed under his skin, and his breathing was a wet, ragged rattle. He looked up as we stopped.
Baron Varn's old chief biochemist.
"You," the man hissed, his voice bubbling. "You can't keep me here. The plague... it will eat this fortress from the inside."
Karin looked at him with an expression of absolute, terrifying boredom.
"Your plague is currently sitting in six sterilized vials in Molloy's lab," Karin said, her voice like ice. "You, however, are sitting in a box. I'd say the fortress is digesting you just fine."
She turned to me. "Check the dampeners."
I stepped up to the control panel beside the cell, pulling a diagnostic wire from my belt and plugging it in. The screen lit up with lines of code.
"Power flow is steady," I said, tapping the screen. "Trait suppression is at ninety-nine point eight percent. He couldn't mutate a cold virus right now if he tried."
"Excellent," Karin said. She looked back at the melting man.
"Enjoy the view, doctor."
As we turned to leave, the man threw himself forward against his chains, the metal shrieking in protest.
"Kaiser will fall!" he screamed, his voice echoing off the deep cavern walls.
"The summit... the top five... they won't let an anomaly rule the world!"
I paused, looking back over my shoulder.
I thought about the video of Tara wiping out an entire basement. I thought about Kane breaking mutant hounds with his bare hands. I thought about Kaiser, currently hunting a ghost while the deadliest kingpin in the world is hunting him.
I looked at the screaming, broken man in the cell, and I just shook my head.
"Buddy," I said quietly.
"You really have no idea what's coming for you all."
KARIN – POV
The ride back up from the Cage always felt like surfacing from deep water.
I stood in the elevator next to Jerry, the heavy hum of the gears vibrating through the metal floor. Jerry was idly spinning his wrench, humming a tune that was entirely out of place after walking past a hundred caged nightmares.
"You know," Jerry said, not looking at me, "that biochemist guy was right about one thing."
"Which was?" I asked, eyes on the floor indicator as it climbed back toward the living levels of Scarpoint.
"The top five. The kingpin summit," Jerry said, stopping the wrench mid-spin. "They aren't going to just let Kaiser kick the board over. The moment he steps into that Manhattan Vault, he's painting a target on all our backs."
I adjusted my glasses. "Jerry, Kaiser painted a target on our backs the day he blew a hole in the undercity hierarchy. The only difference now is that we have the firepower to shoot back."
The elevator doors hissed open, spilling us out into the brightly lit, bustling corridors of the command deck.
"I'll start upgrading the perimeter defenses anyway," Jerry muttered, already turning toward the nearest maintenance shaft. "And I have a magic stick to build."
I watched him go, a faint smile touching the corner of my mouth. We were all completely insane, but at least we were functional.
I walked into the main tactical hub.
Screens covered the walls, scrolling lines of data, structural readouts, and resource algorithms. A few analysts looked up as I entered, but quickly looked back down. They knew better than to interrupt me when I was reviewing the raw data feed.
I walked to the central console and tapped the main holo-table.
"Clara," I said. "Give me the wide net. Any abnormal spikes in Sector Nine since the extraction?"
"Negative, Karin," Clara's calm voice replied. "Sector Nine is remarkably quiet. The Unholy Knights' dissolution appears complete."
"Good," I murmured, swiping through the reports.
Suddenly, the console pinged. It wasn't the standard incoming-data chime. It was the sharp, encrypted trill of a direct, high-level override.
"Incoming transmission," Clara announced. "Source: heavily encrypted proxy relay. Signature matches Kaiser's personal comm."
"Put him on," I said, leaning forward and resting my palms on the edge of the table.
The holo-projector flickered. Kaiser's face resolved in the blue light.
He looked terrible, and he looked like he was having the time of his life.
There was a fresh, bloody scrape across his cheek. His hair was a mess. Behind him, the background was a blur of fast-moving, rusted metal and sickly grey sky. Wind roared through the audio feed, masking the sound of whatever vehicle he was currently standing in—or hanging off of.
"Karin!" Kaiser shouted over the wind, flashing a grin that didn't reach his tired eyes. "Tell me you guys are having a better Tuesday than I am."
"We just dismantled a cult," I said smoothly. "Tara drop-kicked a cult leader, and Jerry is currently building Morgana a glowing wizard staff. I'd say our Tuesday is highly productive. Where are you?"
"Fukushima!" he yelled, ducking as a heavy, metallic thud shook his camera. "Still hunting Artemis! We've been tracking the bastard for weeks. Turns out, ghosts with god-complexes are really hard to catch!"
"Is that gunfire I hear in the background?" I asked, narrowing my eyes at the audio feed.
"No! Well, yes!" Kaiser yelled, adjusting his comm piece. "But the immediate problem is Kazuo! He got tired of us playing in his sandbox! We've been running from his latest batch of bio-titans for three hours!"
"Three hours?" I raised an eyebrow. "You and Hawk are running? That's out of character."
"We tried shooting them!" he shot back defensively. "But Kazuo upgraded them! Spoiler alert, Karin: when you blow the new ones up, they detonate and decay a fifty-meter radius into absolute mush! Hawk almost lost a boot!"
Right on cue, a sharp, incredibly loud crack echoed through his feed—the unmistakable sound of a high-caliber sniper rifle.
"Drive faster, idiot!" Hawk's voice snapped from somewhere off-camera.
"I'm driving as fast as I can!" Kaiser yelled back at her, briefly turning away from the comm. He looked back at me, panting slightly. "Anyway, just calling to check in! How's Tara? Rambo didn't let her blow up the fortress, did he?"
"She's fine," I said, a genuine smile breaking through my professional facade. "She's sleeping in Kane's arms as we speak. She did perfectly."
Kaiser's expression softened instantly. The chaotic warlord vanished for a split second, replaced by a guy who just wanted to make sure his kid was okay.
"Good," he breathed, the wind still whipping his hair. "Tell them... tell them good job. I'll see you all soon. Keep the lights on."
"We will," I said. "Before you go, pass a message to Hawk for me."
"Yeah? What is it?"
I leaned a little closer to the holo-receiver, keeping my voice deadpan.
"Tell Hawk," I said clearly, "that her pretty girlfriend is currently back here, making aesthetic adjustments to your living quarters."
Kaiser blinked. The vehicle he was in hit a bump, jostling the camera, but his face remained frozen in utter confusion.
"Wait. What?" he said, his voice dropping the shouting volume entirely. "Her pretty what? Who? Karin, what are you talking about—"
I reached out and hit the disconnect button.
The holo-projector fizzled out, leaving the table empty.
I stood there for a second, listening to the quiet hum of the command deck. I imagined the absolute chaos currently happening in whatever speeding rust-bucket Kaiser and Hawk were currently trapped in.
I let out a soft laugh and turned back to my data streams.
The heavy blast doors of the motor bay hissed open.
I'd walked down from the command hub to meet the extraction team. The wide, grease-stained floor of motor bay two was already buzzing with activity. Medics were moving crates of salvaged gear, and Jerry's drones were scurrying around, plugging into the stolen data drives.
Through the massive exterior bay doors, Rambo's battered, highly illegal truck rumbled in, the engine growling like a tired beast. The shock grid on the front bumper was sparking faintly, and the armor plating was dented in three new places, but it was otherwise intact.
The truck rolled to a stop in the center of the bay. The engine cut off with a heavy shudder.
Rambo stepped out of the driver's side first. He stretched his massive arms over his head, joints popping like firecrackers, looking incredibly pleased with himself.
I walked over just as the passenger door opened.
Kane stepped out. He moved carefully, adjusting his stance before fully standing up. Cradled against his chest armor, completely dead to the world, was Tara.
Her face was smudged with dirt and gun smoke, her breathing slow and even. Her good arm hung limply by her side, the unbroken wrist rig gleaming dully. The broken one was still strapped to her left arm, the cracked housing finally out of battery and silent.
"I see the cavalry survived," I said, stopping a few feet away.
"Barely broke a sweat," Rambo boasted, leaning against the hood of the truck. "You should have seen the kid, Karin. She stole my grenade and blew up a table. It was poetry."
"I've seen the preliminary data," I said, folding my arms. "I also read that she engaged a high-tier trait user in close-quarters combat while you two were busy showing off."
Kane looked down at the sleeping girl. "She was effective."
"She was reckless," I corrected, though there was no real bite in my tone.
As if the word 'reckless' was a trigger phrase, Tara suddenly gasped, her body jolting in Kane's arms.
"No!" Tara shouted, her golden eyes snapping open wildly, her hands reaching out to grab empty air. "Not my other gun too! Jerry's gonna kill me!"
TARA – POV
I woke up swinging.
My brain was still halfway in a dream where a giant mutant hound was trying to eat my right wrist rig while Jerry stood in the background screaming about warranties.
I flailed, realizing a second later that I wasn't fighting a dog. I was safely tucked against Kane's chest in the middle of the brightly lit motor bay.
Rambo was leaning against his truck, laughing so hard his shoulders shook. Kane was looking down at me with an expression of mild, patient endurance.
And standing right in front of us, looking entirely too put-together, was Karin.
I felt the heat rush to my face. I blinked, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes with the back of my good hand. "Uh. Hi."
"Good to have you back in the land of the living," Karin said smoothly.
Kane finally set me down. My boots hit the concrete, and my legs wobbled just a fraction before holding my weight. The adrenaline crash had passed, leaving me feeling just normally exhausted, rather than 'about to pass out' exhausted.
Before I could adjust my armor, Karin stepped forward.
She didn't lecture me. She didn't yell. Instead, she reached out with both hands and pinched my cheeks. Hard.
"Ow! Ow!" I mumbled, trying to pull my face away, but her grip was surprisingly strong.
"I read the mission logs, you little menace," Karin said, her sharp eyes boring into mine, though the corners of her mouth were twitching upward. "Drop-kicking the Child of Thorns? Sprinting into the open to plant explosives? We gave you armor so you could survive, not so you could use it as an excuse to jump in front of bullets."
"But it was my first job!" I protested, my words coming out squished because she was still pinching my face. "I had to make a good impression! I promise I will be carefully reckless next time!"
Karin let go of my cheeks with a sigh, shaking her head.
"Carefully reckless," she repeated, crossing her arms. "That is an oxymoron, Tara."
"It's a lifestyle," Rambo corrected helpfully.
"It's a terrifying precedent," Karin shot back, though she reached out and gently smoothed a piece of my messy hair back into place. She looked me up and down, checking the damage for herself.
"You're lucky Kane and Rambo were there to absorb the worst of it."
"I absorbed nothing," Kane stated flatly. "I merely removed the things that were trying to shoot her."
"Same thing," Karin said. She looked back at me, her expression softening into something almost sisterly. "Next time you want to go on a field op, you should join me. I'll show you how to dismantle a syndicate using compromised bank accounts and localized EMPs."
She cast a side-eye at the two massive warlords beside me.
"Unlike these maniacs," Karin added dryly, "who only know how to blow shit up."
RAMBO – POV
I clutched a hand to my chest armor, feigning a mortal wound.
"I am wounded," I gasped dramatically. "Deeply, spiritually wounded. I am a master of tactical precision."
"You literally threw a man through a wall because he looked at you," Kane pointed out without missing a beat.
"He was looking at me disrespectfully!" I argued.
Tara started laughing again, the bright, clear sound echoing off the high ceilings of the motor bay. I looked at her, then at Kane, then at Karin, who was trying very hard to maintain her cold intelligence-officer persona and failing miserably.
It was a good feeling. We were standing in a fortress surrounded by enemies, waiting for the rest of the world to try and kill us, but right here, right now? We were fine.
"Alright, enough bonding," I said, clapping my hands together. "Med bay first, to make sure the kid doesn't have a concussion. Then, Jerry's shop so he can yell at her for breaking his toys. And then..." I pointed a finger at the ceiling for emphasis. "...steak."
"Agreed," Kane said, already turning toward the med bay corridors.
"Can I get ice cream with the steak?" Tara asked, jogging to keep up with Kane's long strides.
"You just wiped out a cult," Karin called after her, a genuine smile finally breaking across her face.
"You can have whatever you want."
End Of Chapter