The smoke started to clear.
The glow of Valicar’s HUD cut through the haze, outlining their silhouettes—first in shadows, then in shape, and finally in impossible detail.
There were twelve of them in the doorway, fanned out in a half-circle formation around me like a noose made of metal and light. More moved in behind them, stalking through the main corridor—limbs clattering, armors shifting, languages flickering like fireflies through the air.
Thirty at least.
Maybe more.
And still coming.
There were only a few Rue.
The rest?
Sure as hell not human.
They weren’t even from the same species.
One looked like a living statue—jagged, glowing cracks running down obsidian stone arms. Another slithered over the ceiling, scaled and sleek, its helmet fused into its flesh. A pair of insectoids crawled sideways along the walls, long legs twitching and eyes like black glass. A floating molluscoid hovered behind them, its translucent flesh pulsing with soft blues and greens.
Others were worse.
One was made of twisted roots—plantoid, maybe—its limbs bending like wet wood. Another had no visible body at all, just swirling vapor inside the shell of its armor, breathing cold across the floor. A crystalline avian folded wings made of what looked like living glass. And hulking behind them was something lava-veined and wheezing, like it had to exhale magma to breathe.
One moved like a fungus colony in motion—its armor bulging in slow, uneven pulses, spores leaking with each step.
Another stopped her cold.
Humanoid. Too close to human. Its face was smooth, symmetrical, pale—but too perfect. Skin like latex, eyes like mirrors. It looked like something from an old Earth flick she’d watched as a kid—like a man in makeup pretending to be an alien. Only now it was real. And it was staring at her.
A few were furred—mammalian, wolfish or feline, with twitching ears and hands that gripped weapons like they were born to fight.
And one… some kind of mollusk-squid hybrid—long tendrils trailing behind it as it glided effortlessly across the floor, boneless and slow, like it didn’t need legs to be lethal.
And yet—they all wore the same armor.
That shifting, mercury-slick silver that adapted to each of their bodies, smooth and featureless unless activated. When they moved, the light inside them pulsed in unison. A shared protocol. A unified rhythm. Someone had designed this invasion.
They weren’t a swarm.
They were a coalition.
Valicar confirmed it in a whisper against my skull:
“Thirty-four combatants. Eight distinct biotypes. Nineteen unidentifiable. Command units likely in the rear. Armor consistent with cross-species adaptive systems—this is the Coalition your father spoke of, a strike team made up of aliens across the galaxy,” Valicar whispered against my skull.
“Loadout analysis complete. Weaponry and armor sophistication rival current Jericho tech. These are not fodder. They are elite. The best of their kind. Their presence here suggests desperation—this is an all-in deployment.”
And still, they didn’t open fire.
They just stood there—weapons raised but not engaged. Waiting. Watching.
Then one of them stepped forward.
A tall, canine-featured humanoid—broad chest, fur a deep storm-gray. He had two thick tails swaying behind him and four arms ending in hands with nine fingers each. His armored skull was ridged like obsidian, smooth and wet-looking beneath silver-fused plating.
Weapon slung across his back.
Hands up.
Palms open.
One step.
Two.
His armor shimmered faintly, and then—
“Sor…rah…der,” he said, voice strained and guttural, like a dying radio signal through broken glass. “We… dohn’t… wan’… to keel… you…”
He took one more step, armor pulsing faintly. “You… no… chanz… 'gainst uz… We are… ze elite… ze bes’ in… all gala-zee…”
I blinked. The best in the galaxy, huh? This is what they send? No wonder they’re losing to the Hive. The galaxy’s already fucked.
The word slammed sideways into my brain—foreign, heavy, almost familiar.
The alien’s hands lifted higher. Runes shimmered into existence around them—glowing like flowers opening in reverse, pulsing with soft, rhythmic light. The air vibrated faintly, like sound trying to become language.
Valicar whispered against my skull, clinical and calm:
“Translation probability: 64%. Closest match: Surrender. Syntax suggests non-lethal intent.”
I didn’t know how to read them. But Valicar could.
Not fully. Not yet.
But I felt them—like a second heartbeat echoing in my chest.
The same light-language the Rue used. Not speech. Not sound.
Something deeper.
That strange, bioluminescent tongue that bypassed sound altogether. A universal language, maybe—the only thing that could function in a galaxy where half the things trying to kill you didn’t even have mouths.
But I wasn’t in the mood.
And I wasn’t in the habit of trusting anyone who showed up with an army and a net.
I narrowed my eyes. “Valicar, translate this exactly.”
“I will translate as best I can, Sol. Accuracy will vary—currently 60%. More data is needed to decode their language.”
Golden light pulsed from my suit’s chest and formed glyphs in the air—simple, aggressive.
“Fuck off before you all die.”
The alien’s face twitched—his eyes widened, muzzle curling. Shock. Confusion. Maybe offense.
Then he stepped forward again. Too fast. Too sudden.
I felt it shift—his posture, his weight. He wasn’t pleading anymore.
He lunged.
I reacted.
My blade arced up—clean, perfect, like muscle memory forged in fire.
His hand hit the ground with a wet slap, twitching in its own silver puddle. The armor sloughed off around the stump as he dropped to his knees, letting out a sharp, guttural cry.
His eyes met mine.
Too human.
Brown and soft and shaped like a dog’s—wide and afraid.
And for one heartbeat—
I hesitated.
Then the first shot hit my shield.
And all hell broke loose.
They didn’t come to kill me.
They came to take me.
Stun rounds. Concussive bolts. Flash-pulse nets. Every shot aimed at my knees, wrists, shoulders. The joints. The nerves. The mind.
Trying to break me down.
To bag me alive.
“Concussive rounds. Stun-class. Shield integrity holding—
Warning: concentrated fire at focal points—threshold 15%.”
They didn’t know what I was. Not yet. But they were about to.
The hunger lit up inside me like someone poured napalm through my veins. It hit hard and fast, demanding fuel, demanding blood.
And these things? These strangers? These goddamn beautifully armored things?
They weren’t human. Not even close. And right now? I didn’t care what they were.
Because I was about to show them what I am.
I kicked the dog-man hard—just enough to send him flying back into the hallway. He hit the wall with a crunch and slid down, groaning. He’d live. Probably. I didn’t want a massacre. Not really. But I couldn’t hold back.
The ship rocked as continuous fire hammered through the void. I didn’t have to see the battle to know—it was a one-sided slaughter. Jericho was the pinnacle of humanity. And if my father said that meant something… I had to believe it.
My training with Holt and Wolf had burned hesitation out of me. I’d only ever killed Garin—and I didn’t feel bad about that. This was different. Bigger. But the choice was gone the second they raised their weapons. The hunger roared in my gut, but there wasn’t time to feast. Just time to fight. To push Valicar to its limits.
I moved like a storm. Blade high, pistol humming. I cut what I couldn’t disarm. I crippled what I could spare. I set fire to the rest. My wrist-mounted flamethrower painted the walls in screams. Cryo grenades dropped from my back—shattering one crawler mid-pounce into frozen shards. My gravity boots crushed a serpentine bruiser into the deck, its armor crunching like a car wreck. Missile pods hissed and launched—one slamming dead center into the chest of a lithoid brute and blowing its molten core out the other side.
Some tried to scatter. The fungus colony split into segments, dodging my blade with a dozen twitching limbs—but it couldn’t outrun the fire. The plantoid with vine-wrapped limbs wrapped around the ceiling rafters, but my pistol turned its trunk into smoking pulp. The molten golem roared through its cracked vents, glowing hotter as it charged—until a cryo grenade stopped it mid-stride, freezing its joints into a statue that shattered under the weight of my next blow.
They all bled, all burned, all broke.
And none of it was thought.
It was instinct.
Those that bled—bled weird.
Some hissed vapor. Others leaked black ichor streaked with blue. A few sprayed glowing sap or black crystal dust that hung in the air like shattered glass.
But they all dropped. Eventually.
Because I didn’t stop.
Couldn’t stop.
Valicar roared behind me, antimatter core burning white-hot along my spine. My sword melted through crystal, bone, and bio-armor. My pistol slammed shockwaves into things that shouldn’t even have nerves. My hands moved faster than thought—but I didn’t fight with just my hands.
My hair was a storm of motion—snatching sidearms from alien grips, dragging weapons off walls. It wielded my sword in wide arcs behind me while I tested their gear mid-battle—scavenged rifles, sonic throwers, a concussion whip that folded a mammalian in half with a single crack. Non-lethal to them, maybe. Not to me.
I dropped one weapon, my hair caught another. I was switching constantly—modulating fire, disarming what looked like humanoids, breaking the rest.
I’d barely started testing an exotic-matter shotgun when a plasma rocket slammed into my chest—hard enough to punch through my shield for the briefest moment. Heat bloomed. Alarms screamed. Flesh ruptured. My ribs caved. Armor peeled open in molten streaks.
The inhibitor barely sparked. It was done. Spent.
And for once—I was grateful.
Phoenix caught the blast mid-air, like claws uncoiling in my chest. I felt bones snap back into place as I landed. Skin regrew in wet pulses. Blood boiled, then reabsorbed. My suit hissed and crawled over me—nanites sealing ruptured plates, stitching scorched polyfiber and armor weave as fast as I could heal.
It should’ve killed me.
But I wasn’t built to die easy.
I hit the deck hard, skidding across blood and shrapnel. My blade spun out of reach. My pistol skipped across the floor in a trail of sparks.
Didn’t matter.
My hair grabbed both before they touched metal. Every piece of me was meant for something else. I wasn’t built for war. I was meant to lead—to birth daughters like me: immortal, compliant, crowned in silence, able to control the Hive without ever needing to lift a weapon. Julian’s vision. Knight’s design. The perfect sovereign wrapped in porcelain skin. A living symbol.
But they made one mistake. They gave me space to break. And in that fracture, I reforged myself. Not into a ruler. Not into their Queen.
Into a weapon.
Not Knight’s doll. Not my father’s heir.
Just me.
And so, I say let them come.
Teleport signatures flared like violet lightning. The air bent with pressure. Dozens more aliens materialized mid-charge.
Then it showed up.
A towering fungoid behemoth, twenty feet long—swollen with biomass, trailing vapor and spores. Several smaller ones fused into its limbs like tumors, rooting into its mass as it lumbered forward. A colony. A singular hive of its own.
They couldn’t crack my shields without almost killing me.
But they could slow me.
The first limb grabbed my arm. Another coiled around my waist. I lashed out, burning and cutting and screaming, but they were fast—too fast. Too many.
I should’ve been faster.
They pinned me in place. Armor creaked. Warning lights flashed red.
“Shield integrity compromised. Focal stress: 89%—collapse imminent.”
The flash hit like lightning—and just like that, I was lighter. My left leg was gone clear up past the hip, the right foot blasted off below the ankle.
I didn’t even scream. Just gasped—like the world punched a hole through me and forgot to stop. Flesh peeled back, bone liquefied, Phoenix trying to rebuild mid-thought. I slammed the trigger on my back-mounted rockets and detonated them point-blank.
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The shockwave shredded the fungal mass latched around me. Blew apart the floor. Smashed what was left of my shield.
And the whispers came crawling through.
Not words. Not yet.
Just pressure.
Like wet fingers brushing the base of my skull. Breathing. Watching.
Too close.
Way too close.
The blast hurled me backward. I hit the floor hard, skidding through blood, shattered glass, and molten metal. One bare foot, regrown from the ankle down, scraped against the deck. My other leg—gone to the upper hip—would take longer.
It was already trying.
But too slow.
Valicar hissed, nanites surging, but I knew what that meant—emergency override. Damage critical. Regeneration priority escalating fast.
Then two more shots—tight, deliberate—slammed into me. One tore my midriff wide open like wet cloth, the other cracked into my collarbone and shoulder. My shields were still rebooting. I felt the break more than heard it. A third blast—low and cruel—caught my left arm and severed it at the elbow. One second it was there. The next? Gone.
“Warning: Structural breach. Abdomen compromised. Left arm: 52% amputated.”
I choked, coughed blood into my helmet as alarms shrieked in my skull.
I didn’t think.
I screamed it out of reflex. “Emergency Protocol Gamma!”
“Emergency contract re-established with Jericho,” Valicar confirmed, cold and clear, snapping back into control like a second spine.
“Armor integrity at 29%. Repairs underway—damage exceeds onboard nanite reserves. Left leg: bare to upper hip. Right foot: regrown. Stomach: exposed. Chest and shoulder: punctured. Left arm: amputated at joint. Warning: suit cannot fabricate mass from vacuum. External resources required for full recovery.”
I forced myself to look down.
My left leg was raw meat wrapped over twitching bone. My right foot—new, fragile—slid in blood. My stomach gleamed pink, unsealed, ribs twitching. A hole smoked under my collarbone, and where my left forearm had been was just cauterized ruin. The limb was gone.
Valicar’s nanites scrambled to patch it all—crawling across skin and shattered plating like ants in panic. But the suit didn’t have enough. Neither did I.
I was starving.
And the hunger—God, the hunger—howled.
My teeth itched. My jaw ached. Canines pressed low and sharp behind my lips. The corpses around me didn’t look like bodies anymore.
They looked like meat.
And then the monster was on me again.
The massive fungoid—twenty feet long, laced with pulsing green veins—lurched forward and wrapped its limbs around my arms. My left arm was still regrowing, but slower now. Even Phoenix had limits. So did I. Every reserve in my body was screaming—tapped, stretched thin, holding on by nerve and instinct.
It pinned me like a twitching puppet. Smaller ones crawled onto its back, latching on like tumors. A colony of fungi. A hive.
But not my Hive.
I twisted. Thrashed. Burned my shoulder trying to ignite it with my flamethrower. Nothing. The spore-mist doused the flame before it could catch. My blade was gone. My pistol, somewhere across the deck. Both feet bare now—no armor to brace, no leverage. Blood slicked the floor beneath me. My strength was bleeding out with it.
Something slammed into my back—twice. Heavy. Cold. Final.
I didn’t fall. I was placed. Pinned, like a knife slid back into its sheath.
Face down. No leverage. No tricks left.
Chest to steel. Jaw to deck.
Not just pinned.
Positioned.
The tentacles coiled around my calves and thighs, locking my legs. My arm—half-regrown—was wrenched behind me. I bucked, twisted, snarled—but I wasn’t strong enough. Not anymore.
Then the others surged.
A dozen of them, maybe more—crawling over me in coordinated waves. Insectoid limbs, mammalian paws, fluid tendrils. Working as one. Pushing me down. Burying me under sheer weight and alien precision.
“Shields need twenty more seconds,” Valicar snapped in my ear, voice tight and clinical.
“Antimatter core is priority. Once stabilized, plasma and quantum systems will return online.”
Too long.
Crystal cuffs—grown like bone—snapped shut around my wrists, yanking them behind my back. My left hand had just finished regrowing—I felt the tips of new flesh brush the crystal. Then it pierced me. Fine, needle-like spikes stabbed through skin and armor alike, lancing deep into the nerves. My hands went dark. Not crushed—just gone. The signals cut, severed at the root. I couldn’t even feel the pain. Just silence where sensation should’ve been.
I screamed into the deck, throat raw.
Not just from pain.
From fury.
“Signal spike detected,” Valicar warned. “Mental breach attempt in progress.”
Then the monster leaned close—and tore my helmet off in one wet, jerking motion.
I gasped.
Air hit my lungs—cold, sweet, rancid. Spores clung to my throat. Blood coated my tongue.
And then—I heard them once again.
Not in my ears. In my mind.
Queen, they hissed, we have come to save you from this meal. We will consume them for you. Come. Join us.
I froze.
Not out of fear.
Out of recognition.
It was the Hive.
But different.
Stronger.
Louder.
This voice didn’t whisper—it commanded. It was clear, resonant, like it had finally found the right channel to crawl down my spine and speak in my bones.
“Uplink with Jericho successful. Ten seconds until shield reboot. Incoming tactical update,” Valicar reported.
But I didn’t need the feed.
I could feel them... they were here.
A vision detonated inside my skull like liquid static. Hundreds of them. Ships. Organisms. Both. Neither. Four hundred and twelve infected vessels, distorted beyond recovery. Screaming shapes of metal and flesh, wrapped in hive-light and nerve-cable. And at the front, its presence undeniable—The Devil. A warship from Earth, drowned in rot, now something far worse than dead. Human war-tech reanimated by a plague that wore consciousness like a mask.
“Hive signal confirmed,” Valicar said, voice distant through the haze. “Origin: The Devil. Target: You.”
My heart twisted.
I looked up—inside a vision. Through the fire and smoke, I saw through their eyes. Jericho’s data streamed in, flooding Valicar with updates. The Hive’s presence pressed in from the other side, whispering behind my teeth.
With my shields gone, the whispers weren’t silent anymore. Jericho spoke aloud, cold and clinical. The Hive sang in colors and rot.
Two voices. Two networks. One mind—mine.
It should’ve broken me.
Instead, I understood.
Jericho had already answered.
The void was lit with hellfire—nukes flaring like second suns, drones swarming in tight, precision arcs, each carrying antimatter payloads.
The deck beneath me rattled—another railgun blast, maybe two. I didn’t need visuals to know the Coalition ships were still in the fight. The air thrummed with the high-pitched whine of targeting locks and the low, distant thunder of drone squadrons carving kill patterns through the dark. Every impact echoed through Jericho’s frame like it was groaning back to life—resurrected by war. Somewhere above, a hull breach hissed shut.
Railgun slugs ripped through ship hulls like celestial spears. Plasma lances carved the void clean, slicing cruisers into sizzling fragments. Fighters streaked overhead in brutal formations, banking along the hull’s curve. Even the solar beam had fired—only partial strength, but still enough to melt a juggernaut like wax.
Weapons I hadn’t even been briefed on were online. The entire arsenal unleashed.
And it wasn’t enough.
Twenty-four ships gone.
Just gone.
The rest didn’t hesitate.
Half of what remained broke off and charged the Hive armada.
Not to win.
To stall.
To buy time.
To hold the line—for me.
They came to die, and they knew it. Every pilot. Every soldier. Every species in that Coalition fleet.
They didn’t come to rescue me.
They came to keep me from being taken.
How did they even know?
That thought slammed into me harder than the Hive’s voice.
How did they find me? How did they know about me?
How does any of this even work?
We were years from the front line. I was supposed to have time. Just a little more time.
But that was before I made contact with the Hive.
Before everything changed.
Did they track the signal? Like the Devil did? Like I let them?
I triggered this… didn’t I?
I could barely breathe. My wrists were still cuffed behind my back. My legs were gone or growing. My face was pressed to blood-slick steel, the monster still looming over me.
No time to figure it out.
No time to scream.
I’m fucked.
Because if the Hive gets me—if they sync with my blood, my mind—
Julian always said I was humanity’s hope.
But now?
Maybe I’m the matchstick.
“Leg regeneration at 24%. Midriff: 16%. Shields coming back online now.”
And in a single pulse, they were gone.
My shield flared to full—an eruption of heat and force that blasted the swarm off me like shrapnel. Bodies flew. Screams followed. Smoke cleared as the psychic pressure vanished, the whispers silenced like a curtain dropping mid-sentence.
But the monster held.
It screamed, its limbs blistering and smoking under the renewed shield, but it didn’t let go. Even as its flesh burned, it burrowed deeper—clinging like it knew this was its only chance.
I couldn’t move.
So I bit it.
My teeth tore into the fungus where it wrapped around my shoulder. The flesh gave—soft, spongy, wet. It tasted like rot and ozone and something older than both.
It didn’t bleed.
It just grew more.
The spores pulsed and split, sprouting new threads from the wound. The monster didn’t flinch. It didn’t even register the pain.
It was like trying to eat a forest.
Or a disease.
But it fed me.
Not much. Just enough to take the edge off—to slow the hunger gnawing through my ribs. It wasn’t meat. It wasn’t blood. But it was alive.
Barely.
And still—it didn’t let go.
The ship jolted again—hard. A few shots must’ve slipped past Jericho’s shields. The railguns answered almost instantly—three, maybe four blasts—each one pounding through the ship like a war drum in my chest.
He might’ve been winning the war up there… but I was losing mine down here.
Cuffed. Barefoot. Bleeding.
My left leg had fully regrown—pink, trembling, the muscles were still knitting, nerves still stitching fire down my thigh. I couldn’t stand, couldn’t brace. My face was pinned to the floor, armor cracked and soaked in blood.
Valicar spat warnings. Recalibrating systems. Trying to stabilize heat vents. Trying to keep me alive.
The hunger boiled inside my gut, clawing for release—but I couldn’t reach it. My arms were still locked behind my back, wrists crushed in alien cuffs. My hands twitched uselessly.
And that thing—that thing—was still wrapped around me like it owned me even as its flesh cooked.
Its tendrils curled closer to my face, one glowing with spores like a lantern about to bloom. I could feel it.
I shut my eyes as pain arced down my spine.
Tears slipped free. Not fear. Not surrender.
Just truth.
I never had a choice.
And then—
The wall exploded.
Steel peeled open like paper. Flames poured in.
A roar tore through the bay as metal screamed and split. Fire punched through the breach, sucking wind and light into the room like a wrathful god had just arrived.
And in that light—
Something massive came through. Taller than any of them. Gold and burning like the sun.
A voice followed—deep and sharp, like a sword cutting reality in half.
“Step away from her Highness.”
I didn’t need to see him to know.
Lion.
I never thought I’d be happy to see him.
He didn’t walk—he landed, hammer already in motion.
The first swing liquefied three crawlers.
The second crushed a brute’s ribcage into its spine.
A flyer shrieked—he caught it out of the air and hurled it like a spear, impaling another through the throat.
Two insectoids leapt in sync—he ducked, spun, and swept them off their legs in a single, thunderous arc, both bodies breaking mid-air.
A crystal avian dove behind him—he slammed his heel backward and shattered its skull like glass.
The last one—a sleek serpentine hunter—tried to teleport.
Lion grabbed it mid-phase and ripped it back into reality just to end it.
Ten bodies hit the floor in under three seconds. I couldn’t even track his movements—just the aftermath. And in the next breath, they all stepped back. Even the brave ones.
Even the thing holding me down—twenty feet of fungus, muscle, and mass—froze.
It knew. A apex predator had entered the room.
And to Lion… everyone is prey.
He stood there in the smoke and light— a walking weapon forged in gold, armor steaming with reactor heat, hammer glowing with stored momentum.
His helmet visor blazed, faceless, merciless.
“My orders,” he growled, “are clear.”
He didn’t look at the monster.
He looked at all of them.
“I’ve never failed a mission.”
He stepped forward, hammer dragging behind him— each footfall ringing like a countdown to execution.
“And I’m not about to start with xeno trash who think breathing makes them a worthy opponent to humanity's strongest.”
The room held its breath.
“You want mercy?”
“Kneel now. I’ll make your death painless.”
He paused—just long enough.
“But that’s already more than you deserve.”
The air tightened. Even the fungus beast coiled back, tendrils loosening.
It knew what was coming.
I could feel it too.
The moment before a storm hits.
Before a god decides you’ve had enough time to beg.
He raised the hammer.
“So please… resist.”
For a moment, no one moved.
Then Valicar’s voice pierced the silence, sharp and clinical.
“Shield at 74%. Sustained contact draining energy. Brace.”
The tentacles still burned around me, blistering against my armor—but the beast didn’t let go.
Not yet.
Then one of the aliens snapped—spitting out something guttural as runes flickered into the air around him. Orders.
The squad just reacted.
Some fell back, circling to trap me.
And the monster finally dropped me—let me fall like meat no longer worth holding—all but one scorched tendril still cinched tight around my waist, refusing to surrender its claim.
That lone tether burned against my armor, blistering metal. The beast hadn’t let go fully. Not yet.
But the rest—those still loyal to the mission, not survival—tightened formation. Weapons raised. Protocols reignited.
They knew they were marching toward death.
And still—they formed up.
Then one broke ranks.
Twitching. Trembling. Panicked.
It bolted forward, a weapon unlike the others in one hand—sleek, sharp, humming with crystalline heat. And in the other, a small, glowing device.
Valicar whispered against my skull translating:
“It is a teleporter lock. They mean to claim you, Sol.”
The alien screamed something raw and broken as it slammed the crystal weapon into my shield—again and again—desperation bleeding from every strike.
The dome flared—hotter, thinner.
“Sixty.” Cracks spidered. “Fifty.” The dome shrieked. “Forty?five—structural failure.”
My suit whined like it was screaming with me.
It was going to give.
And just as the lock was raised—just as the crystal blade sparked for one final strike—
A voice broke through the bay.
Cold. Familiar. Inescapable.
“Stop, Lion. You must not interfere.”
He froze.
Something Lion never did... was hesitate.
Behind the alien line, a recon drone lifted its head. Its eye flickered gold. A voice came through the static—fragmented, distorted, but unmistakable.
Julian.
I thought… our father.
Even the Coalition troops hesitated, unsure why their golden monster had paused his slaughter.
I stared at him. Unsure. Afraid.
“You told me to serve her,” Lion said, low and rough. “Your Majesty.”
“I did,” Julian replied through the drone. “But serve me one last time—and believe me, this is what’s best for her.”
He always obeyed dad.
But now? Was he mine?
“Shield at 32%. Breach imminent,” Valicar warned as the xeno above me continued tearing into my defenses.
My breath caught. I watched Lion’s back—unmoving.
My heart twisted.
“Please… help me, brother.”
The whisper barely left my lips.
But I know he heard me.
He didn’t move.
But his grip shifted—subtle. His fingers flexed around the hammer. His shoulders tensed.
Julian’s voice softened—almost kind.
“You remember, don’t you?”
His voice lowered like a ghost whispering through old circuits.
“After you saved me from that prison… you kneeled. You asked me to give you purpose. And I did.”
“You knelt as a boy,” Julian murmured. “But you rose as something more than a man.”
“I rebuilt you when the Rue broke you. I gave you the virus. The armor. The name. You were mine, Lion. My shield. My sword.”
And beneath the calm—ownership.
“Obey me, one last time. Serve humanity. I’ve entrusted you with so much—my most advanced tech—because I know you’ll do the right thing.”
Lion didn’t speak.
But I saw it—the tremor in his gauntlet. The shift in his stance. The tension rippling through a frame built for war… faltering.
The aliens flinched.
Even they—creatures ready to die for duty—sensed the change.
They had feared him before.
But now?
Now they felt it.
The weight of something ancient stirring.
A god waking from obedience.
He turned—just slightly.
Looked at me.
Not through me. Not past me.
At me.
Under that gold visor, I could imagine it—
His eyes—gold and red—burning like twin stars on the edge of collapse.
His jaw clenched.
His chest rose.
Then he moved.
Slow. Deliberate.
Fingers curling tighter around the hammer.
And finally—finally—he spoke. Not like a soldier. Not like a weapon.
Like a brother.
“I’m sorry, Father. I cannot obey. I will not betray… Highness… my sister again. Thank you for everything. I will use Dragon to follow the last order you gave me as king. I will use it to serve your heir.”
The words didn’t just hit.
They detonated.
The air cracked around him.
Did he say Dragon? I think—but there’s no time.
The alien with the lunged, raising the device toward my side. My shield flared, strained—
And shattered with a snap of golden light.
Too late.
We will be there soon, Queen-Mother, the Hive hissed—sweet, oily, amused. The food fights and flees, but they cannot escape us. Even now, they send themselves to death to delay our hunger. But it will not be enough... you are already ours. We are already inside your blood. And nothing they do can stop us.
It laughed.
Not a sound.
A sensation.
Like rot blooming behind my eyes.
The device latched onto my side with a hiss of light and gravity. I screamed.
“Teleport lock engaged,” Valicar confirmed, voice sharp. “Extraction field charging—ten seconds.”
And the monster—still half-burning—rushed forward like it knew what was coming. It sliced through the final scorched tether still wrapped around my waist—finally, violently severing its claim now that the teleporter was active. The limb hit the floor twitching, steaming, forgotten. It didn’t care. It only needed to buy time.
And Lion—
Lion moved.
And the aliens charged to meet him.
They screamed.
All of them.
Some teleporting mid-stride, others howling in fractured bursts of static and light. Blades hissed to life. Shields flared. Guns locked in.
One voice rose above the rest—sharp, guttural, broken with rage.
Valicar translated as best it could, voice cold in my skull:
“Kill the Golden Sin. Such an abomination cannot be allowed to wield the technology of the divine.”
Lion met them like judgment made flesh—proving the alien right.
He wasn’t a man.
He was a monster in the shape of one.
The pinnacle of humanity—if you believed in things like gods made of blood and gold.
And for once, I was glad that monster was mine.
He erased the massive fungal beast I struggled with in one swing—flattened it to steam and ash. Its body didn’t even hit the floor—just vaporized under the force of his gravity hammer, the air ringing with the shockwave.
And behind it all—I felt the pull.
The lock was charging.
A slow, crawling gravity dug into my side, yanking at the meat and metal of me, like reality was getting ready to tear me loose.
I couldn’t stop it.
All I could do was watch.
Then Lion turned—faster than a god should move—and unleashed.
“Out of my way, xeno scum.”
He barreled forward like judgment day with legs. One brute lunged—he crushed it mid-stride, hammer igniting with a pulse that atomized the torso before the limbs could hit the deck.
A crystalline flyer tried to flank—he snatched it out of the air and slammed it into the floor hard enough to crater the plating. Shards flew like glass rain.
Three insectoids swarmed—he spun once, hammer sweeping wide. The impact vaporized one, shattered the second’s spine, and sent the third skidding across the bay like a broken toy.
A root-bodied creature wrapped vines around his arm—he roared and tore them free, dragging the thing with it, then crushed its core like snapping a wet log.
They kept coming.
Ten more charged in desperation, some teleporting mid-step to try and blindside him.
“Four seconds,” Valicar announced—calm, cold, clinical—like it wasn’t the end of the world counting down.
It didn’t matter.
Lion smashed another one with a backswing, cracking its skull like it was made of wet clay. Another tried to phase—he slammed the hammer into the flicker and forced it back into existence just to annihilate it. The gravity pulse warped the air itself, bending light and bone in the same breath.
A mollusk-squid hybrid slithered too close—he caught it by a tendril and used it like a whip, obliterating two others before hurling the corpse through a wall.
One, just one, tried to speak—tried to beg.
Lion didn’t even slow down.
He broke the alien’s legs with one downward strike, then crushed its chest until nothing remained but ash and shattered armor.
In less than seven seconds—twenty of them were dead.
Not maimed.
Gone.
And then he was at my side —knee slamming down with a weight that cracked the floor.
I was still bound.
The device blinked red.
"Activation."
His hand touched my back.
Everything changed.
I felt gravity twist. Light snapped. The taste of copper and ozone hit my tongue before I even opened my eyes.
No warning. No sound. Just a flash—
—and the world tore open beneath us.
Is Lion a good or bad person?
