RAMBO – POV
I was just trying to polish my guns in peace.
Motor bay two smelled like cheap grease, stale coffee, and whatever electrical fire Jerry had accidentally started and subsequently ignored that morning. I was sitting on the lowered tailgate of my truck, running an oiled rag over the heavy, scarred barrel of my left cannon. Beside me, my augmented knife rested on an empty ammo crate—black-bladed, thick, and ugly enough to make a kingpin blink twice.
It was quiet. Well, Scarpoint's version of quiet. Some kid was grinding a welded joint a few bays over, throwing sparks into the dim air, and the massive underground ventilation fans were humming their endless, rattling tune.
Kane was currently standing near the front bumper of my truck. His eyes were closed, arms crossed over his tactical rig, doing his daily impression of a heavily armed statue. The guy could sleep standing up. I was ninety percent sure he was doing it right now.
Then, the bay speakers clicked on with a sharp hiss of static.
Clara's voice, smooth, synthetic, and completely immune to the grime of the undercity, filtered down from the ceiling.
"Priority ping from Kaiser. Forwarding audio."
I stopped polishing. Kane's eyes snapped open, instantly awake, hand dropping a fraction of an inch closer to his sidearm purely out of instinct.
Kaiser's voice filled the bay. He sounded tired, maybe a little beat to hell—which made sense, considering he was currently playing hide-and-seek with the sovereign of ruin and a masked ghost on a radioactive island—but underneath the exhaustion was that usual, lazy arrogance that made you want to either laugh or punch him in the jaw.
"Hey, shadows," Kaiser's voice drawled over the speakers. "Minor headache in lower Sector Nine. Some idiots calling themselves the Unholy Knights are trying to start a trait cult. Kidnapping strays, screaming about destiny, that kind of fun. Nothing big, but I'd rather not come home to a baby apocalypse."
There was a short pause. Even through the distorted audio of the bay speakers, I could practically hear the damn smirk on his face.
"Rambo, Kane," he went on. "Take care of it. Wink, wink."
The speakers clicked off.
I sat there for a second, staring up at the rusted ceiling. I let out a long breath, tossing my dirty oil rag onto the crate.
"He actually said 'wink, wink' out loud," I said, shaking my head. "He's getting real comfortable handing out side quests from his little vacation. Who says 'wink, wink' instead of just winking?"
Kane didn't move from his spot against the bumper, but the air around him felt instantly heavier. He let out a sigh that sounded like it had to scrape past a mile of gravel to get out of his throat.
"Ah, fine," Kane muttered, pushing off the reinforced steel of the truck. "Can't even rest for one day. I miss Scourge's reign. At least back then you knew exactly which day you were supposed to bleed. It was usually scheduled. This guy just texts us a cult on a Tuesday."
"Don't lie, old man," I laughed, hoisting my massive cannon onto my shoulder. The familiar, heavy weight of it settled against my collarbone. "You love this. We get to shoot a cult. You know how much I love shooting cults? They always bunch up in groups. It's an area-of-effect dream."
"I love sleep," Kane said flatly, adjusting the strap of his rifle. "This is just work. And 'Unholy Knights'? That is a terrible name. It lacks creativity."
We started toward the cab of the truck.
I grabbed the driver's side door handle, already mentally calculating how much ammo I'd need for a standard cult wipe. If they were bunched up in a basement, two belts of high-explosive. If they were scattered in a warehouse, maybe standard shredder rounds.
Kane was at the passenger side, reaching for his handle.
Neither of us had pulled the doors open when we heard the thump.
It wasn't a heavy thump. It wasn't the sound of an assassin dropping from the rafters, or a piece of machinery falling. It was a light, fast, entirely too confident drop through the half-open rear window of the truck's extended cab.
Kane and I both froze.
We turned our heads slowly.
KANE – POV
Of course.
I looked through the open back door of the truck.
Sitting right in the middle of our spare gear, nestled between a crate of incendiary grenades and a pile of medical foam, was a figure that didn't belong in a war zone, yet looked entirely at home in one.
A small girl, sitting cross-legged, grinning like she had just won a prize at a carnival.
She didn't look like the terrified, starving stray Kaiser had dragged out of the ruins a long time ago. Jerry and the medics had been busy. She was wearing a sleek, highly modified suit of armor now—dark, fitted composite plates layered over a flexible, charcoal-grey undersuit. It looked tough enough to take a stray ballistic hit, but light enough to let her move like a ghost.
Golden eyes, bright and unnervingly sharp, stared back at us from the shadows of the cab.
Around her neck, catching the dim neon light of the motor bay, was a simple silver chain. Hanging from it was a flattened bullet casing stamped with a jagged, crooked little star. I knew that necklace. Kaiser had given it to her a long time ago, back when she first arrived. It wasn't just jewelry. It was a brand.
A warning.
It meant she belongs to me, and if you touch her, I will end you.
In the undercity, seeing that necklace on a kid was enough to make a warlord turn around and walk the other way.
But the real upgrade was on her arms.
Twin wrist rigs hugged her forearms. They were matte black, incredibly low profile, and reeked of Jerry's obsessive over-engineering. As I watched, the girl flexed her fingers. A series of sharp, mechanical clicks echoed inside the cab. Compact gun barrels slid forward smoothly from the housings, locking into position just above her knuckles, directly wired to her nerve impulses and muscle twitches.
She looked small, ridiculous, and dangerously armed.
Tara.
"Shotgun," she announced brightly. She looked down at where she was sitting, realized she was in the back, and frowned. "Or, back-gun. Whatever. I'm coming."
I stared at her.
"This is a bad idea," I said, my voice entirely deadpan.
"This is an awful idea," Rambo agreed loudly from the driver's side, leaning his massive head into the window.
"Kaiser will literally skin me alive, make a coat out of me, and wear it to his next kingpin meeting if you get shot, kid."
"I'm not a kid," Tara shot back. She crossed her arms, and her new wrist-guns retracted with a soft, highly satisfying whir. "And I've been practicing. I just blew up a training dummy in three seconds. Ask Clara. I turned it into snow."
"A dummy," I pointed out, resting my forearm on the roof of the truck. "Cultists tend to shoot back. Usually with poorly maintained, highly unpredictable firearms."
"I can handle myself," she insisted, lifting her chin, the golden eyes flashing. "Besides, you two need backup. You're old. You might pull a muscle carrying all those guns. I'm providing tactical youth."
Rambo let out a booming bark of laughter. "Old? I will literally throw you over this truck right now.
I could bench press this truck."
"You can either waste ten minutes arguing about it," Tara said, leaning back into the cracked leather seat and looking entirely too comfortable, "or we can go crack a cult before dinner. Your call. But I'm not moving. You'll have to physically extract me, and if you try, I'll melt the tires."
I looked at Rambo over the roof of the truck.
Rambo looked back at me. He gave a slow, helpless shrug, his massive shoulders rising and falling.
"She's his kid, alright," Rambo muttered. "Got the exact same annoying, suicidal stubborn streak. It's like a disease."
"Fine," I said, opening my door and climbing into the passenger seat. I looked back at her in the rearview mirror. "But if things go bad, you stay behind Rambo. He has significantly more surface area to absorb ballistic impacts."
"Hey!" Rambo yelled, getting in and slamming his door hard enough to shake the chassis. "I am not a meat shield! I am a precision instrument of war!"
"Drive the truck, precision instrument".
TARA – POV
They caved exactly as fast as I knew they would.
I settled back against the seat, a massive grin plastered across my face, my heart beating a rapid, excited rhythm against my ribs.
Rambo fired up the engine. The truck didn't just start; it roared. Jerry hadn't merely "fixed" Rambo's vehicle—he had resurrected it as an angry mechanical beast. Armor plating was bolted over the wheel wells. A heavy, electrified shock grid covered the front bumper. The dashboard looked less like a car and more like the inside of a dropship, covered in glowing dials, switches, and a massive set of speakers that Jerry claimed were for "tactical acoustic disorientation" but were really just for playing music too loud.
We tore out of the motor bay, tires squealing on the polished concrete, and blasted out into the neon-streaked darkness of lower Scarpoint.
The wind whipped through the open windows. Rambo drove like he was actively trying to hit every pothole in the district, grumbling to himself about the lack of lane discipline among the scavengers pushing carts out of our way. Kane sat shotgun, perfectly still, staring out the window like a man trying to calculate the mathematical probability of a peaceful life.
I looked down at my hands in the flashing light of the passing streetlamps.
My new armor felt right. It hugged my shoulders, tight but breathable. The wrist guns felt right, a comforting weight on my forearms. The necklace felt warm against my collarbone.
I touched the little flattened bullet casing.
I remembered the day Kaiser gave it to me. The absolute terror of the ruins, the smell of ash, the sudden realization that the monster standing in front of me was actually on my side. Wear this, he'd told me. It was a shield made of reputation. A promise of horrific violence to anyone who dared touch me.
We're doing it, I thought. We're actually doing it. I'm part of the crew.
Rambo reached out and slammed a hand onto the dashboard console. A heavy, thumping rock song from decades ago blasted out of the speakers, vibrating the floorboards.
"Rambo, turn that down," Kane said without looking at him. "It ruins awareness."
"Acoustic camouflage, Kane!" Rambo yelled over the guitars. "If they hear the rock and roll, they won't hear the guns!"
"That makes absolutely no sense," Kane sighed.
"It makes perfect sense to me!" I yelled from the back. "Play it louder!"
Rambo grinned at me in the rearview mirror and cranked the dial. Kane just rubbed the bridge of his nose like he was staving off a migraine.
We bumped over a massive crack in the pavement, sending me flying an inch off my seat.
"So," I yelled over the music, leaning forward between their two seats. "What's the deal with these guys? Unholy Knights? Who names a gang that? It sounds like a bad video game."
"Right?" Rambo shouted back, taking a corner so fast the truck tilted on two wheels before slamming back down. "Back in my day, we had decent gang names. The great retards. The Iron Skulls. Simple. Gets the point across. 'Unholy Knights' just sounds like they spend too much time reading and not enough time stabbing."
"They're a splinter faction," Kane said, his voice somehow cutting perfectly through the noise. He didn't yell; he just pitched his tone perfectly. "Probably low-level thugs who suddenly manifested traits after the atmosphere shifted, or they stole some old Varn tech. Now they think they have a divine mandate to rule the lands."
"Cults are the worst," Rambo complained, swerving to avoid a burning trash barrel in the middle of the street. "They never just fight. They always have to monologue. 'Behold my dark power!' 'You cannot stop the coming dawn!' It cuts into my shooting time."
"What's the plan?" I asked, flexing my wrists again just to hear the snick-clack of the guns extending. It was the best sound in the world.
Kane looked at me in the mirror. "Plan is simple. We locate the structure—Black Wake Bar in lower Nine. We breach. Rambo provides shock and awe. I provide precision overwatch. You stay in the middle and do not engage unless directly threatened."
"That's boring," I complained.
"Boring keeps you breathing," Kane said flatly.
"Look at her, Kane, she's practically vibrating," Rambo laughed. "Listen, kid. Rule of the undercity breach: If they have a gun, shoot them. If they have a sword, shoot them. If they are currently speaking, shoot them. Basically, if they aren't us, shoot them."
"That is terrible advice," Kane muttered. "Disregard everything he just said."
"I thought it was inspiring," I grinned.
Rambo reached over and turned the music down just a fraction. The neon lights outside were getting sparser. We were leaving the upper rings of Scarpoint, heading down into the deep trenches where the fortress lights barely reached. Down here, the buildings leaned against each other like exhausted drunks, and the air smelled like rust, stagnant water, and bad choices.
The truck hit a smooth patch of road, the engine settling into a steady, vibrating hum.
Up front, the atmosphere shifted.
Kane turned around in his seat, ignoring the dark road ahead, resting his arm on the backrest. He looked directly at me. The easy, banter-filled air vanished, replaced by the heavy, evaluating stare of a man who had survived a hundred wars.
"Why are you doing this, Tara?" he asked.
The question came out of nowhere. It wasn't a joke. It wasn't a lecture.
I blinked, thrown off balance. "Because you guys are too slow without me? I told you, I'm tactical youth."
"Don't play games," Kane said, his tone low, cutting straight through the hum of the engine. "Why follow him? Why follow Kaiser? You're young. You survived the plague camps. You got out. You could stay in the fortress, deep in the safe zones. You have a room. You have food. You could learn to build things from Jerry, or let Molloy train you in medicine. You don't have to put on armor. You don't have to go out into the dirt and bleed with us. So why do it?"
Rambo didn't say anything. He didn't turn the music back up. He just kept driving, his eyes locked forward, but I could tell he was listening.
The cab suddenly felt very small. The neon lights flashing past the windows seemed muted.
I looked at Kane. I looked at the scars on his face, the gray in his hair. I looked at the back of Rambo's thick neck. These were men who had lived in violence their entire lives. They knew what it cost. They were asking why I was volunteering to pay the same price.
I thought about the first time I met Kaiser. I thought about Baron Varn's monsters closing in on me in the ruins. I had been nothing. Just a piece of trash to be swept up, experimented on, and discarded.
And then Kaiser had stepped out of the shadows.
He didn't know me. He didn't owe me anything. But he stood between me and the end of the world, and he looked at the monsters like they were the ones who should be afraid. He gave me a name. He gave me a home. He gave me a life.
I dropped the joke. I let the cocky grin fade from my face.
"Is that really important?" I asked quietly.
Kane didn't answer. He just waited, his eyes locked on mine. He wasn't going to let me brush it off.
I took a breath, leaning forward a little, staring at the space between the two front seats. I didn't yell, but my voice was completely steady. Hard.
"Just know this," I said, looking right into Kane's eyes. "If anything happens to him... I will blow the entire earth to bits. So this is like a training for that role."
I meant it. I felt the nullification trait pulse hot and cold in my chest, a physical reaction to the words. I would unmake the whole world if it meant keeping him safe.
For a long, heavy moment, the only sound was the engine roaring and the tires hitting the cracked asphalt of Sector Nine.
Kane held my gaze for three seconds. Then, slowly, he turned back around in his seat, facing forward again.
Rambo and Kane looked at each other across the front console. They didn't say anything to me, but I saw Rambo's mouth twitch into a slow, jagged smile. He shook his head, a low chuckle rumbling in his massive chest.
"Yeah," Rambo said to Kane, keeping his voice low, though I could hear him perfectly. "She's as mad-crazy as he is."
Kane let out a single, huffed breath that sounded a lot like respect.
"Worse," Kane said. "He just wants to break the rules. She wants to break the board."
"I'm sitting right here," I pointed out.
"We know," Rambo grinned, reaching out and cranking the music dial back up to deafening levels. "Lock and load, kid. We're two blocks out from the Black Wake. Time to go to church."
The Black Wake Bar was at the bottom of a dead-end alley in lower Sector Nine. It smelled like spilled fuel and rotting garbage. A neon sign flickered above the rusted steel door, buzzing like an angry hornet.
Four thick-necked guys in ragged trench coats painted with jagged white symbols stood outside. They were trying to look intimidating.
They failed.
Mainly because Kane didn't even slow down. He just walked up to the biggest one and hit him in the throat. It wasn't a big swing. It was just a fast, brutal jab. The man dropped like a sack of wet cement, choking.
The other three blinked, hands going for their guns.
Rambo grabbed the nearest one by the collar and casually head-butted him. The sound of skull on skull cracked through the alley, and the guy's eyes rolled back in his head.
I didn't even use my guns. I just stepped past them as Rambo kicked the rusted door off its hinges with a metallic shriek.
"Subtle," I said.
"Subtle is for people who get paid by the hour," Rambo grunted, stepping over the door.
We walked in.
The bar was a cavernous, low-ceilinged room filled with stale smoke and the hum of bad music. There were at least forty people inside, all wearing those stupid painted trench coats. The Unholy Knights. The music died. Forty heads snapped toward us.
"Showtime," I muttered.
I stepped out from behind Rambo and Kane, taking the center of the doorway. I flexed my wrists. The internal rails clicked, and my compact guns slid out, locking over my knuckles.
"Good evening, ladies and cultists!" I yelled, throwing my arms wide like a circus ringmaster. "We're from Scarpoint Administration! Unauthorized doomsday preaching and kidnapping are now officially banned! You have ten seconds to use the back door before we start the renovations!"
A big man near the center—shaved head, scar across his mouth, some kind of crude metal crown fused to his skull—stood up slowly.
He looked at me, ignored the two walking tanks behind me, and sneered.
"This is what Kaiser sends?" he spat. "A child? We are the dawn! We are the—"
"Boring!" I yelled.
I didn't wait.
I reached back, plucked an incendiary grenade off Rambo's tactical belt—ignoring his startled "Hey!"—and sprinted forward.
The cultist with the crown reached for a massive shotgun.
I slid under his aim, boots skidding on the sticky floor. As I passed him, I jammed the grenade straight down the back of his trench coat, right between his armor plates. I didn't stop moving. I planted my hands on the floor, kicked both feet up into his chest, and launched him backward into a table where three of his buddies were sitting.
"Fire in the hole!" I yelled, rolling behind a concrete pillar.
BOOM.
The table, the crown guy, and his three friends turned into a massive ball of white-hot fire and splintered wood. The shockwave rattled the bottles behind the bar.
I popped out from behind the pillar, grinning.
Kane and Rambo were standing in the doorway, staring at the crater I'd just made. Kane's eyebrows were actually slightly raised. Rambo looked like a proud father who had just watched his kid hit a home run.
"She stole my grenade," Rambo said softly.
"She utilized available resources," Kane corrected. "Good form on the kick."
"Thanks!" I chirped. "Now shoot them!"
The room exploded into total chaos.
The Unholy Knights finally realized we weren't just a threat—we were an extermination squad. All across the room, traits started lighting up. A guy near the back burst into literal flames. A woman leaped onto the bar, her hands crackling with blue electricity. Cultists grew bone-armor, shifted into beasts, or pulled weapons out of thin air.
"Kill them!" the burning man screamed.
"Nullification!" I yelled, slamming my hands together.
The heavy, silent wave of my trait ripped across the room.
It was glorious. The burning man's flames snuffed out, leaving him standing there in a singed coat. The lightning woman's sparks fizzled. The bone-armor flaked into dust. In a fraction of a second, the terrifying army of super-powered zealots became a room full of very confused, very normal thugs.
"My fire!" the leader gasped.
Rambo laughed, a deep, booming sound that shook the floorboards.
"Merry Christmas, assholes," Rambo and Kane said at the exact same time.
They opened fire.
The roar of Rambo's heavy cannons and the precise, deafening bark of Kane's rifle tore the bar apart. I added my own sharp pop-pop-pop to the storm, my wrist guns kicking cleanly.
It was loud. It was messy. It was over in five minutes.
The bar was a smoking ruin. Unholy Knights were groaning on the floor, zip-tied, or unconscious.
I was standing near the back, breathing hard, heart pounding with pure adrenaline. I had done it. I was really doing it.
Then, a guy I hadn't seen—a massive cultist who had hidden behind the shattered bar—lunged out of the smoke. He swung a heavy iron pipe.
I raised my arm to block.
The pipe slammed into my left forearm.
CRACK.
Pain shot up my arm, but it wasn't my bone that broke.
I staggered back, looking down at my wrist.
The sleek, matte-black housing of Jerry's custom wrist gun was cracked straight down the middle. A small spark fizzed from the internal wiring. The barrel hung slightly loose, the alignment ruined.
My breath hitched.
The adrenaline vanished, instantly replaced by a wave of crushing, childish grief.
Jerry had made these for me. He had spent days working on them, muttering about calibrations and making sure I was safe. They were my favorite thing in the world. And this idiot had broken them.
Tears pricked my eyes. I didn't want to cry—I was trying to be a badass Scarpoint ninja—but the crack in the metal looked so permanent. A hot tear slipped down my cheek, leaving a clean track through the dust.
The massive cultist grinned, raising the pipe again. "Not so tough without your toys, little—"
He didn't finish the sentence.
He didn't even get to finish the thought.
Rambo's massive hand clamped down on the man's face from behind, fingers wrapping entirely around his skull.
The cultist dropped the pipe, suddenly thrashing.
Kane stepped around the shattered bar, his rifle lowered, his eyes entirely devoid of humanity.
They both saw my tears. They both saw the cracked wrist gun.
The air in the room didn't just get cold; it felt like a vacuum had sucked all the oxygen out.
"Oh," Rambo said softly. His voice wasn't booming anymore. It was deadly quiet. "Oh, you fucked up."
"I... wait!" the cultist muffled through Rambo's fingers, suddenly realizing he was trapped between two walking nightmares.
"You are going to whine," Kane said, his voice a low, terrifying rasp. "You are going to cry. And you are going to be in a torrent of endless pain."
Rambo didn't use his cannon. He didn't use his augmented knife.
He just reached down with his free hand, grabbed the cultist's right arm, planted his boot against the man's ribs, and pulled.
The sickening sound of tearing meat and popping joints echoed through the ruined bar. The cultist shrieked—a high, wet sound of absolute agony—as Rambo literally ripped the man's arm out of its socket with brute, terrifying strength.
He tossed the severed limb onto the floor like a piece of trash.
"Starting off with this," Rambo growled, dropping the screaming, one-armed man onto the glass-covered floor.
Kane stepped forward, leveling his rifle perfectly at the sobbing man's kneecap.
Rambo stood over him, a massive shadow of pure violence, his eyes burning with an overprotective rage that made even me take a step back.
"Who," Rambo snarled, his voice vibrating the remaining walls, "gave you the right to touch our star, fool?"
KANE – POV
The cultist did not survive the lesson.
By the time Rambo and I were finished, the man was less of a person and more of a modern art installation made of meat and regret. His torso was crumpled in a corner, various limbs were scattered across the sticky floor, and, through a combination of Rambo's raw strength and a very specific upward kick from my combat boot, the man's head was currently wedged firmly into the ceiling tiles above the bar.
I wiped a speck of blood off my cheek and turned around.
Tara was still standing there, cradling her left arm. The tear tracks were still wet on her face, and her golden eyes were fixed on the cracked, sparking housing of her wrist gun. She wasn't looking at the gore behind us. She was just mourning the broken gear.
I slung my rifle over my shoulder and walked over to her. I wasn't good at this. I knew how to breach a compound, how to calculate wind shear for a five-hundred-meter shot, and how to interrogate a spy. I did not know how to handle a crying teenager.
I stopped in front of her, trying to soften my posture so I didn't look like a murderer holding a gun.
"Hey," I said quietly.
She sniffed, looking up at me, hastily trying to wipe her face with the back of her good hand. "I'm not a baby," she mumbled. "I'm just... Jerry worked really hard on this."
"I know," I said. I looked at the cracked metal. "It's a good piece of tech."
She sniffed again, her lower lip trembling just a little.
I awkwardly patted her on her uninjured shoulder. It felt like patting a small, sad bird.
"You know," I said, my voice gruff, staring at the wall over her head because eye contact felt weird. "I... I also cry sometimes."
Tara stopped wiping her eyes. She blinked at me, her face completely blank. "You do?"
I nodded stiffly. "Yes. When my... when my rifle jams. Or when Scourge buys the cheap coffee."
Tara let out a sudden, wet laugh. It was a small, hiccuping sound, but it was a laugh.
Rambo walked up behind her, wiping blood off his augmented knife with a surprisingly delicate touch. He looked at the ceiling where the cultist's head was stuck, then looked down at us.
He let out a long, heavy sigh that rumbled in his chest.
"Yeah," Rambo grumbled, putting a massive hand on top of Tara's head and ruffling her hair. "Me too, buddy. Me too. Specially when they run out of the good protein paste in the mess hall. Breaks my heart."
Tara looked between the two of us—two massive, blood-soaked warlords solemnly admitting we cried over coffee and protein paste—and completely lost it.
She started laughing. Not a quiet giggle, but a full-belly, genuine laugh. She leaned against Rambo's armored leg, pointing up at the ceiling.
"His head is in the roof!" she gasped between laughs.
I looked up. The cultist's dead, surprised face stared down at us from between the cracked acoustic tiles.
"I believe it was a necessity," I said completely deadpan, which only made her laugh harder.
RAMBO – POV
I let the kid laugh until the tears on her face were from humor instead of sadness.
"Alright, tiny," I said, gently pulling her arm up to inspect the damage. The housing was cracked straight down the middle, and the barrel alignment was shot to hell. "It's fine. It's just a casing. The internal feed is intact."
"You think Jerry can fix it?" she asked, her voice hitching a little.
"Fix it?" I laughed loudly. "Kid, Jerry is gonna take one look at this, complain for ten minutes about how we don't respect his art, and then he'll build you a version that shoots plasma or something. He'll make an upgrade. Don't worry about it."
"Promise?" she asked, her golden eyes wide.
"Promise," I said, tapping the unbroken wrist rig on her right arm. "Now, you got one good gun left, and we haven't cleared the basement yet."
Kane was already moving toward the heavy metal door at the back of the bar, checking the magazine in his rifle. "Stairs going down. Heat signatures are clustering. A lot of them."
"How many is 'a lot'?" I asked, hefting my cannons.
"Over two hundred," Kane replied calmly, kicking the basement door open. "And Clara is registering irregular biological mass. They have pets."
I grinned, the adrenaline kicking back into high gear. "Oh, I love pets."
We walked down the concrete stairs, boots echoing in the stairwell. The air grew damp and smelled like ozone, raw meat, and fear.
At the bottom of the stairs, the basement opened up into a massive, cavernous underground warehouse. It used to be a smuggling hub back in the old days. Now, it was a staging ground.
Two hundred Unholy Knights were waiting for us.
These weren't the low-level thugs from upstairs. These guys were armored. They held heavy rifles, energy blades, and crackling trait-amplifiers. And Kane was right about the pets. Chained to the pillars were six hulking, mutated beasts—part hound, part muscle-mass—snarling and drooling black spit.
The entire army of cultists stood in perfect, tense silence, waiting for us to step off the stairs.
Kane stopped on the bottom step. He didn't raise his rifle. He just looked at them like they were an inconvenience.
I stopped next to him, resting my cannons on my shoulders.
I looked at Kane. Kane looked at me.
We both stepped aside, leaving a clear path down the center of the stairs.
"After you, princess," I said, sweeping my arm toward the waiting army.
Tara stepped down between us. She didn't look scared. She didn't look sad about her broken gun anymore. She looked exactly like Kaiser did right before he ruined someone's entire year.
She marched to the front, standing alone against an army of two hundred heavily armed cultists and their mutant dogs.
She took a deep breath, puffed out her chest, and pointed her one good wrist gun directly at the horde.
"Monsters!" Tara shouted, her voice echoing loudly across the massive warehouse. "And whatever the fuck you guys are! You are in the presence of the greatest ninja in Scarpoint, and—"
"Hey! Language!" Kane shouted from right behind her, sounding genuinely scandalized.
Tara flinched, looking over her shoulder. "Sorry!"
She turned back to the army of heavily armed zealots who were currently staring at her in absolute bewilderment. She sighed, her shoulders dropping in frustration.
"Well, great," Tara grumbled, waving her hand dismissively at the horde. "My monologue is ruined. Kill 'em all!"
She raised her hands and unleashed the Nullification wave.
Rambo and I didn't need to be told twice.
We charged.
End of Chapter