CHILD OF THORNS – POV
Fools. The entire undercity was populated by fools, rats scurrying in the dark, pretending to be kings of the garbage heap. But my Unholy Knights? We were different. We were the dawn.
I stood on the rusted iron catwalk overlooking the massive underground staging ground of the Black Wake. The air down here was thick and humid, but I barely felt it. I was dressed in a sleek, deep violet combat suit, woven with subtle kinetic mesh. The jagged white symbol of the Knights was painted across my chest. My dark hair fell in perfect, silken waves over my shoulders.
They called me the Child of Thorns. Not because of my beauty—though I had plenty of that—but because of what happened when people tried to grasp me.
I looked down at the two hundred armed zealots spread across the floor below, holding their rifles and energy blades, standing alongside the six massive, mutated hounds we had starved and beaten into submission. This was power. This was a force that could crack Scarpoint open and take this entire rotting district for ourselves.
Then, the rusted metal door at the top of the concrete stairs had slammed open.
My lips curled into a sneer as I watched the intruders descend. I knew exactly who they were. Everyone in the undercity knew who they were.
The walking mountain of muscle and heavy ordnance with the jagged grin. Rambo. A blunt instrument of loud, primitive violence.
The grim, silent shadow carrying an assault rifle like it was an extension of his own arm. Kane. A relic of the old wars, clinging to outdated notions of discipline.
And between them, the anomaly. Not Kaiser. No, Kaiser was currently halfway across the country. This was his pet project. The little stray he had picked up from the dirt, wearing armor that cost more than my entire bar and a jagged star necklace that practically screamed untouchable. Tara.
It was insulting. They sent two old warlords and a teenage girl to wipe us out.
"Arrogant," I whispered to myself, resting my manicured hands on the rusted railing of the catwalk. "So incredibly arrogant. They think because they broke Varn, they own the world."
I felt the familiar, intoxicating hum of my trait waking up inside my veins.
Gravity. It wasn't just a force of nature to me; it was a toy. I could make the world heavy enough to crush a tank, or light enough to let me float on the air. I could invert it, twist it, fold it. I was practically a god in this damp basement.
I watched with amused disdain as the little girl, Tara, stepped forward. She actually tried to give a monologue. Something about a ninja.
Pathetic, I thought.
Then she clapped her hands.
I didn't feel it up on the catwalk—I was out of her range—but I saw the effect instantly. A silent shockwave rippled across the floor of the warehouse. The air warped for a microsecond.
And then, every single trait my army possessed simply... vanished.
The glowing energy blades fizzled out. The men who could shift their skin to stone suddenly looked very pale and fleshy. The ambient hum of their amplifiers died.
I gripped the railing tighter, my perfect nails digging into the rust. Nullification. The rumors were true. The little rat actually had the power to unmake traits.
Rambo and Kane didn't hesitate. They charged into my army like wolves into a pen of blind sheep.
It was a slaughter.
Rambo's cannons roared, deafening explosions that painted the damp walls with blood and shattered concrete. He waded into the mob, swinging his massive augmented knife, cutting men down with sickening ease. Kane was worse. He didn't waste movement. Every shot from his rifle found a throat or a kneecap. He moved like a machine, cold and perfectly lethal.
Even the little girl was joining in, dancing around the edges of the chaos, her single working wrist gun snapping out precise, lethal shots.
My beautiful army. My glorious dawn. They were being butchered by three people.
"Enough," I hissed, my voice dripping with venom.
I pushed off the railing. I didn't fall. My trait flared, painting the air around me with a faint, violet distortion. I floated down from the catwalk, descending like a dark angel into the center of the carnage.
My boots touched the blood-slicked concrete.
"Kill them!" I shrieked, throwing my arms wide. "Unleash the hounds! Tear them apart!"
The handlers—the few who were still alive—yanked the release pins on the massive, mutated beasts.
Six hulking mountains of muscle, teeth, and raw fury lunged forward. They didn't have traits to nullify. They were just pure, biological nightmares. Two went for Rambo. Two went for Kane. The largest two locked their glowing red eyes on Tara.
I smirked. Let's see your little trick save you from jaws that can crush a steel beam, little girl.
I raised my hands, my violet gravity field expanding, preparing to crush Rambo into the floor while the hounds distracted him. The air around me began to hum, the floor cracking under the sudden, immense pressure I was generating. I was going to turn these "legends" of Scarpoint into red smears on the pavement.
The gravity well built up, a swirling vortex of invisible force centered perfectly around my body.
"You dare walk into my domain?!" I yelled over the gunfire, my hair whipping around me in the localized gravity storm. "You dare insult the Child of Thorns?!"
I pulled my hands back, ready to unleash the devastating shockwave.
Then, the air directly behind me made a strange, popping sound. Like a vacuum seal breaking.
Pop.
I froze. My gravity field flickered.
I hadn't seen anyone move. The two walking tanks were busy fighting the hounds. I had watched the little girl running toward cover just a second ago.
But I could feel a sudden, terrifying chill right at the nape of my neck.
"So... 'The Unholy Knights,' huh?" a bright, entirely too cheerful voice asked, directly into my left ear.
My eyes went wide. I tried to turn, tried to shift the gravity field to crush whatever was behind me.
"It sounds really cringy, you know," Tara whispered.
Before I could even blink, a massive, invisible weight—cold, heavy, and absolute—slammed into my chest. My violet gravity field shattered like cheap glass. The power in my veins was instantly, violently extinguished.
I gasped, suddenly feeling very, very human.
I didn't even get to scream.
TARA – POV
The Child of Thorns liked to float.
Violet shimmer wrapped around her like a storm as she hovered above the floor, hair flaring, coat snapping in her personal gravity well. Concrete under her feet sagged and cracked from the pressure she was building.
She threw her arms wide, voice echoing off the warehouse walls.
"You dare walk into my domain?! You dare insult the Child of—"
I blinked right behind her.
It wasn't graceful teleporting; it felt like reality skipped a frame and I just happened to land in the new one. One step I was ten meters away, heart pounding, gun up. Next step, I was right at her back, the air still warm from her power.
My null trait lashed out the instant I arrived.
There was no flash, no noise—just a heavy, invisible shock slamming into her from all sides.
Her purple field shattered.
The hum in the air died. The weight vanished. The cracked concrete under her boots stopped sinking and suddenly remembered how to be floor again.
She sucked in a startled breath. "Wh—"
I drove both feet into the center of her back.
Drop kick.
She flew.
She tore out of the dying gravity zone like a stone from a sling. She hit the ground chest-first, bounced, scraped, then smashed sideways into a stack of ammo crates. Wood exploded, boxes flew, one unlucky Unholy Knight got flattened underneath the mess.
She ended up sprawled on her side, hair in her face, air knocked clean out of her.
"Child of Thorns," I muttered, landing in a low crouch.
Then everything shifted.
The cult below stopped waiting on orders. Two hundred zealots and six chained monsters all decided at once that we shouldn't be alive in their basement.
The warehouse roared to life.
I snapped my one functional wrist gun up and started moving.
RAMBO – POV
The Null wave rolled out from the kid and killed all the pretty lights.
Blades made of energy fizzled into nothing. Stone-skin turned back into meat-skin. Amplifiers on belts and chests coughed and died. What was left was an overcrowded room full of armed idiots and their pet nightmares.
Perfect.
I thumbed my trait on.
The scarred nerves down my spine lit up, cold and electric. The world stretched and thinned—sound dropping into a low, throbbing drum, motion turning syrup-slow.
Overclock.
One of the beasts—a hulking, dog-shaped mountain of muscle and bone—charged me. In normal time, it was a blur. In Overclock, I saw every flex of muscle under its hide, every drop of black spit leaving its teeth.
I stepped aside, almost casually.
As it passed, I slashed my augmented knife across its belly. In my time, it was a neat, controlled cut. In theirs, it looked like it had run straight into a buzzsaw.
Blood and organs spilled in a slow, floating wave as I walked on.
I brought the cannons up and went to work.
Bullets in Overclock weren't bullets; they were bright, lazy seeds drifting from my barrels. I walked a line across the front rank of Knights, pulling the triggers in short, disciplined bursts.
A man raising a shotgun—one round through his wrist, second through his throat.
Another screaming something about holy wrath—two rounds center mass, his whole chest folding backward.
Three idiots dumb enough to bunch together—one sweeping spray, bodies peeling apart in staggered delay.
The world around me was a gallery of slow-motion mistakes.
I reloaded without thinking, mags slamming into place in smooth, practiced arcs. The Overclock burned hot down my spine, but it felt good. Familiar. Necessary.
A second beast broke its chain and leapt. I stepped into its shadow and fired both cannons point-blank into its open mouth. Its head became a cloud of meat and bone fragments that took a full second to spread out.
By the time the trait timer in my muscles screamed enough, I had walked from the stairs to the far wall, leaving a trench of bodies behind me.
Then Overclock dropped.
Sound rushed back. Time snapped into place.
The trench exploded into horrible motion all at once—bodies collapsing, guns clattering, blood hitting the floor in wet slaps, mutant hounds finally realizing they were dead.
I exhaled, smoke curling from the cannons.
"Man," I said, rolling my shoulders. "I needed that."
Off to my right, Kane was still standing. The monsters were not.
KANE – POV
Beasts first. Always beasts first.
Six of them—twisted hounds, shoulders higher than my head when they reared, bone plating on their skulls, eyes burning a sick red. The kind of thing Varn's labs used to mass-produce like angry furniture.
The first one came straight at me, forelimb raised for a hammer blow.
I holstered my rifle in one smooth motion.
Feet planted. Hips turned. Fist up.
It swung. I stepped inside its reach and drove my fist into its chest, right where a heart would be if this thing still remembered how to be a dog.
My trait dumped a compact, focused shockwave through my knuckles.
The beast's ribcage caved inward. The force traveled through bone and organ like a bomb going off in a metal drum. Its back legs left the ground as the entire front half of its body folded around my fist. It hit the floor like wet concrete.
Second beast lunged from the side, jaws gaping for my neck.
I pivoted, caught its weight on my shoulder, and sent an uppercut into its jaw.
The shockwave rode through its skull, snapping vertebrae and turning its brain to paste before its teeth even closed. Its head whipped sideways, smashing into a pillar hard enough to crack concrete. The body dropped limp.
Third and fourth came together, flanking, smarter than the others.
I dropped low and slammed both fists into the floor between us.
The blast rippled outward in a sudden, brutal ring. Concrete shattered, spraying chunks and dust. The pressure wave lifted the beasts' front legs off the ground and threw their handlers backward. Chains snapped. Bones broke.
They tried to get up. I didn't let them.
One shot each, center of the forehead. Efficient. Done.
When I finally raised my head, there were no monsters left standing.
Only men.
And men were easy.
TARA – POV
The Knights tried to rally after the monsters went down.
Key word; tried.
Kane waded through them like a storm with fists. Rambo carved a path the size of a small road through their center mass. Anyone left on the edges tried to do the sensible thing and shoot at the smallest target.
Me.
I moved along broken cover—crates, pillars, torn-up chunks of floor—my world narrowing down to angles and flashes.
A shotgun barrel peeked around a pillar—two quick taps at wrist height, the gun spinning out of numb fingers. A cultist tried to flank Kane with a knife—one round through the knee, dropping him screaming, second in the spine when he reached for a dropped gun. Someone hurled a jury-rigged explosive—one shot mid-air, the device blowing in their own faces.
My left wrist rig hung cracked and dead at my side, a constant ache when I moved. My right one sang—clean recoil, tight shots, the rhythm of it syncing with my breathing.
Then the volume dropped.
Gunfire tapered off into isolated cracks, then into ringing echoes, then into nothing but groans.
I turned a slow circle, chest heaving.
Bodies everywhere. Black Wake's basement looked like a bomb had gone off in a meat locker. Only three things were still moving:
Rambo.
Kane.
And the woman I'd kicked across the room.
The Child of Thorns stirred in the collapsed pile of crates, pushing splintered wood off her back. She rolled to her side with a groan, one hand pressing to her ribs, eyes blazing.
Even wrecked, she was annoyingly gorgeous. Blood on her cheek looked like makeup. Her violet combat suit clung in all the flattering ways, not a scratch on the fabric despite the beating.
She glared at me like she could peel my skin off with sheer hatred.
"You—" she started.
"Child of Thorns," I said, walking toward her, boots crunching over glass and casing fragments. "We need to talk about that name."
She blinked, thrown for half a second. "What?"
"Your name," I said, stopping a few meters away. "Child. Of. Thorns." I made a little frame with my hands, like I was reading it on a poster. "You really have no naming skills huh?, reminds me of my brother."
Her lips peeled back in a snarl. "You insolent little—"
"I mean," I interrupted, dead serious, "that sounds less like 'scary cult boss' and more like 'sad poetry account.' Do you sit in a corner writing about how no one understands your pain? Do you have a private holo where you post black-and-white photos of broken glass with captions?"
Her eye twitched. "I am the dawn that will—"
"I fought a guy called Baron Varn," I went on, ignoring her. "Plague king. Mutant nightmare. Dumb, but catchy. People remember that. 'Child of Thorns' sounds like you're about to release an old indie album."
She pushed herself to her knees, knuckles white on the floor. "You think you can—"
"Also," I said, jerking my thumb over my shoulder at a rusted trash can lying on its side in the corner, oozing something unidentifiable, "that's where you're ending up anyway. So maybe 'Child of Trash' would've been more accurate?"
She followed my gesture with her eyes.
The sight of the bent can, leaking sludge, in a room full of her dead followers… it landed. I watched the realization hit—her cult, her army, her monsters, all gone. Three people standing where two hundred had knelt.
She looked back at me, hate and fear warring behind her pupils.
Heavy bootsteps thudded up behind me.
Rambo's presence arrived like a wall. Big, loud, and impossible to ignore. His hand landed on my good shoulder, fingers careful but firm, turning me just enough so he could look me over—face, armor, cracked gun—then flick his gaze to the cult leader.
"Can't even let my eyes off you for one minute," he grumbled. "I go upstairs to break a guy's arm, come back down, and you've already drop-kicked the boss."
"I won," I said, offended.
"Not the point," he muttered. But there was pride under the annoyance.
Kane came up on my other side, calmer, but his eyes were sharp, still hunting for threats out of habit.
He studied me—the necklace, the wild grin I hadn't realized I was wearing, the broken rig, the way I stood like the mess on the floor was all part of the plan.
He breathed out slowly through his nose.
"You know," Kane said quietly to Rambo, not bothering to lower his voice, "Tara might actually be Kaiser's seed. She literally has his mad genes."
"Genes don't kick in that fast," Rambo snorted. "Nah. I think she's like a fangirl, weirdly copying her idol."
I blinked. "Excuse you?"
Rambo flashed me a bloody grin. "Me too, lil one. I'm a big fan of Rambo—the movie, you know it."
Kane closed his eyes for a second, as if praying for patience. "Yeah. We Know. We all know. We all watched it. Repeatedly. Because someone," he tilted his head slightly toward me, "commandeered the rec screen."
"It's important culture," I said, lifting my chin.
Rambo rolled his shoulders, one cannon already clipped to his back. "When we get back, I'm putting in an order with the mess. Biggest steak they can find. Real meat."
Kane nodded once. "I'm gonna Sleep. Twelve hours. Door locked. No alarms. Nothing else."
I nudged the Child of Thorns gently with the toe of my boot. She toppled flat onto her back, staring up at the cracked concrete ceiling, breathing hard.
"And after that," I said, looking down at her, "we're gonna ask you a few questions. Then we'll figure out which trash can you actually deserve."
Silence after a gunfight always feels heavier than the noise.
The deafening roar of cannons and traits vanished, replaced by the slow drip-drip of a busted pipe and the ticking of hot gun barrels cooling down. Smoke hung in lazy grey ribbons under the basement ceiling. The air smelled sharp—a mix of cordite, ozone, and copper.
I stood near the center of the carnage, chest heaving, trying to convince my heart to slow down.
"Status?" Clara's voice murmured in my earpiece, perfectly calm.
"Breathing," I said, letting out a long sigh. "One broken toy. Zero people cult."
"Rambo?" she asked.
"Ten out of ten," he called from the far side of the room, kicking a dropped shotgun out of the way. "Would raid again."
"Kane?"
"Operational," Kane replied softly, stepping out from behind a shattered pillar.
Clara hummed. "Noted. Extraction team is ten minutes out."
I started walking toward the edge of the room. My boots left dusty footprints between streaks of red and scattered brass casings. I found an overturned ammo crate and sat down heavily, the adrenaline finally giving way to a bone-deep ache.
My left wrist rig was a casualty. The housing was cracked down the middle, emitting a sad little spark every few seconds. I cradled my arm in my lap, my right hand tracing the fracture line. Every time it sparked, I flinched.
It was stupid, but I felt like I was going to cry again. Not from pain, but from guilt. Jerry had spent three straight nights putting these together.
Heavy, clanking footsteps approached. Rambo lumbered over, the last of his Overclock buzz fading out, leaving a slight tremor in his massive hands.
He crouched down, his armor groaning in protest, until he was at my eye level.
"You're looking at that thing like it's a dead pet," he said gently.
I sniffed, wiping a smudge of dirt off my cheek. "I should've blocked that pipe better. I ruined it."
I let out a low chuckle.
"Kid," he said, tapping the cracked housing with his thick finger. "Jerry builds stuff specifically so we can break it. If you brought this back without a scratch, he'd think you were hiding in the back of the truck."
I looked up at him, my golden eyes wide. "Really?"
Some of the tension left my small frame. "So It's like a Field test," I repeated quietly.
"Exactly," he said, pointing a thumb over his shoulder at the devastation. "And looking at the results? I'd say the test was a massive success."
Across the room, Kane was finishing his final sweep. He had dragged the Child of Thorns out of the rubble and secured her with heavy suppression zip-ties to a concrete pillar. She wasn't talking anymore. She was just staring at the floor, breathing hard, finally realizing how thoroughly outmatched she had been.
Kane walked over, his rifle slung across his back, and stopped next to us. He looked at the room, then at me, then at Rambo.
"Extraction is here," Kane said, nodding toward the stairs. "Good job, all of you."
"All three of us, you mean," Rambo grinned, standing back up.
Kane actually smiled. Just a fraction, but it was there.
"Yes. All three."
KANE – POV
The heavy thud of combat boots echoed down the stairwell.
Our extraction team flooded into the basement—armored troopers securing the prisoners, med techs sweeping for injuries, and a pair of Jerry's spider-drones skittering across the ceiling to download data from the cult's servers.
They moved fast. They hauled the cult leader up from the floor, throwing a blackout hood over her head.
Even blinded, she tried to twist back toward us as they dragged her toward the stairs.
"You'll regret this!" she shrieked, struggling against the troopers. "You don't know what you've started!"
Tara didn't even stand up from her crate. She just raised her good hand and wiggled her fingers.
"Bye, Gravity Karen," Tara called out cheerfully.
Rambo barked out a laugh so loud it startled one of the medics. I exhaled a quiet breath through my nose, shaking my head.
"Primary objective complete," Clara's voice chimed in my ear. "Transport is waiting topside. Secure the area and return to base."
"Let's go home".
TARA – POV
The stairs felt a lot steeper on the way up.
During the breach, I had basically floated down them on pure energy. Now, every step felt like I was wearing boots made of lead. The fight high had completely burned off, leaving me feeling hollow, heavy, and incredibly sleepy.
Rambo was walking point, easily carrying a massive crate of salvaged drives on his shoulder, happily humming a terrible rock song. Kane was walking right behind me, keeping a steady, quiet pace.
Halfway up the concrete stairwell, the world tilted slightly.
My vision blurred. My foot caught the edge of a step, and my knee buckled.
I didn't hit the concrete.
Before I could even gasp, Kane's arms were there. One arm swept under my knees, the other caught my back. In one smooth, effortless motion, he lifted me entirely off the ground, holding me securely against his armored chest.
"I'm fine," I mumbled, my words slurring together. "I can walk."
"You pushed your traits too hard," Kane said, his voice a low, steady rumble right next to my ear. "Your nervous system is crashing. Stop fighting it."
I didn't have the energy to argue. He felt like a walking mountain—solid, unshakeable, and completely safe. I rested my head against the gap between his collarbone and his chest plate, listening to the slow, calm rhythm of his heartbeat under the armor.
Up ahead, the rusted door at the top of the stairs opened into the alley. The cool night air of Scarpoint washed over us, smelling like rain and exhaust fumes.
"You drop her, I'm telling Kaiser," Rambo called back without turning around.
"I don't drop things I intend to keep alive," Kane replied simply.
The words wrapped around me like a warm blanket.
The last thing I saw before my eyes finally gave up was the dark silhouette of Rambo's battered truck, waiting for us in the neon-lit alley.
I let my eyes slide shut. The chaos, the blood, and the noise of the undercity faded away, replaced by the rhythmic sway of Kane's footsteps and the distant sound of Rambo complaining about how long it was going to take to get a steak.
For the first time in a very long time, I fell asleep in the arms of a monster, knowing with absolute certainty that no one in the world could touch me.
End Of Chapter