Acidic rain fell in sheets, turning the jungle path to a sucking mire of blood-tinged mud. The gray fog clung to the skeletal remains of radiation-twisted trees, their phosphorescent leaves pulsing like diseased hearts in the perpetual twilight.

  Rani’s breath came in ragged gasps as she jogged alongside Meera, their broken ankle monitors—cold chrome collars stamped with Leir Cade’s stylished bird logo—clinking against their shins with each step. The company uniforms they’d worn for years at Perseus India were reduced to filthy rags, plastered to their skin by the relentless downpour.

  Beside her, Meera kept pace, their breaths forming small clouds in toxic air.

  "Just five more kilometers to the neutral zone..." Rani gasped out a laugh that bordered on hysteria. She squeezed Meera’s hand, slick with rain and something darker. "We're really free. Can you believe it?"

  Meera stopped abruptly, pulled Rani to her, and kissed her forehead with desperate tenderness. "When the war ends," she whispered against Rani's damp skin, "we'll open that noodle shop. The one with the big window overlooking the river. You can cook the broth. I’ll handle the accounting." Her thumb brushed away a streak of grime on Rani’s cheek. "No more corporate ledgers. No more cage doors."

  Rani smiled—a real smile that reached her eyes for the first time in months. "You always did hate numbers."

  The sound hit them first—a high-pitched, insectile whine that split the air. Then the shadow, cutting through the rain curtain like a blade through silk.

  Rani had time for one blink.

  The first blade sheared through her neck with a wet , clean as a surgeon’s cut. Her head spun away, eyes still wide with that impossible smile, before disappearing into the crimson mud.

  Meera's mouth opened in a silent scream, eyes wide with incomprehension. She didn't even turn before the second blade skimmed past, its blade slicing her cleanly at the waist, bisecting her with such force that her upper half was flung ten meters before hitting the ground.

  The Hellwraith raider craft didn't even slow. It banked sharply, revealing the full horror of its front modification: a pair of outward-folding titanium alloy blades, sharpened to molecular precision, mounted at exactly neck height for a human running through the undergrowth. The hull was adorned with a macabre wind chime of human heads, hung from the undercarriage, desiccated and leathery. Their hair bellowing wildly in the downdraft as the craft turned back toward its patrol route.

  Inside the Red Vulture, Alina Ludwig's knuckles whitened on the control yoke as she listened to the hacked channel feed through gritted teeth. The skimmer’s exterior was a nightmare of corporate salvage and brutal pragmatism—a modified anti-grav hull retrofitted with outward-folding titanium blades. Their macabre trophy stands littered with dried parts—some animals, some human—arranged with grotesque glee by a deranged artists.

  The comms channel erupted with wild laughter, the bass thump of heavy metal music, and the guttural shouts of men who’d long since forgotten mercy.

  The platoon commander’s voice was a sandpaper rasp, hoarse and audible over the engine whine.

  The raider who'd just killed the two women laughed, a wet, phlegmy sound. "

  The channel exploded in crude laughter, punctuated by the blaring of heavy metal music and the sound of dry bones clinking together.

  Alina’s knuckles turned white on the control yoke. Her face was a mask of ash and fury in the emergency lighting. "Fucking animals," she muttered, her New Terran accent thickening with rage. "They think this is a ? A fucking game? Monsters!"

  This disagreement in worldviews is beyond ideology.

  The Red Vulture lurched as laser targeting beams painted its Adamantine hull. Alina cursed and slammed the vehicle into a sideways drift, the tracks digging furrows in the mud as they slid behind a massive fallen tree.

  a Hellwraith voice barked over the comms.

  Flora Rosenkrantz sat rigid in the gunner's seat, her hands trembling on the controls of the 3cm autocannon. Her finger hovered over the trigger but wouldn't press. Through her visor, she could see the ghostly outlines of the raider crafts hovering just beyond effective range.

  "Flora, what are you waiting for?" Alina snapped, her voice tight.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  Flora's voice was flat, mechanical. "Targeting parameters—"

  Alina didn't wait. With a swipe of her hand on the console, she remotely took over the autocannon system. The Red Vulture shuddered as the weapon spun to life with a mechanical scream. Three high-explosive rounds spat from the barrel, cutting through the rain with deadly precision. The first and second round flew wild, missing the speeding open-top vehicle entirely. The third hit dead in the middle of one of the crafts.

  The lead raider craft exploded into a fireball of orange and black, the blast wave rippling through the downpour. Shrapnel tore through the foliage, and the wreckage slammed into the mud with a sickening crunch of metal and something softer.

  The channel went silent for a heartbeat, then erupted in furious shouting.

  The remaining two craft immediately pulled back to a safer distance—1,200 meters—hovering like vultures waiting for the prey to exhaust itself.

  Alina checked the thermal imaging display, her expression grim. "They're just tracking us now. Waiting for us to run out of road, or fuel, or fucking luck." She spat the words like venom. "Motherfuckers."

  Chen sat in the rear compartment, his back against the bulkhead, his helmet discarded. His hands rested on his knees, trembling slightly despite the chemical dampeners flooding his system. The double dose of pills was wearing off. The static in his mind was returning.

  His brother’s face on the family video feed. Chen Yun, smiling, saying, The screen cracked like spiderweb glass. Blood seeped from the fractures.

  A cold white room. Fluorescent lights buzzing like angry hornets. His arms strapped to a metal chair. A man in New Terran uniform leaning close, repeating in flat Terran Gothic: The interrogator’s breath smelled of synth-coffee and antiseptic.

  Barracks shower room. Steam rising. A group of middle-aged women in Republic uniforms surrounding him, their laughter sharp as broken glass. Their words slurred, incomprehensible, but their contempt was clear. One spat at his feet. Chen couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. His body wasn’t his own.

  The warehouse collapse. Dust and smoke. A small hand reaching from beneath the rubble. Fingers brushing his boot. The heat signature fading on his HUD. A child’s voice, barely audible, crying for salvation that never existed.

  His ears rang—a thousand alarms screaming in unison. His vision tunneled. The compartment walls dissolved into flickering images of stone tiles and blood-soaked streets.

  In Mandarin, so low only he could hear it, the words escaped like a final breath:

  Flora stood abruptly from the gunner's seat. Her movements were precise, mechanical.

  "He's slowing us down," she stated flatly, her voice devoid of emotion. "Must dispose of him."

  Alina’s head snapped toward the internal monitor. She saw Flora standing over Chen’s prone form, her white armor glowing in the dim emergency light. For a heartbeat, Alina thought it was a joke. A sick, stress-induced joke.

  Flora wasn’t joking.

  She yanked open the rear hatch, the sudden rush of acidic rain and howling wind nearly tearing the door from its hinges. Outside, the jungle blurred past at thirty kilometer per hour, vines whipping against the hull like angry serpents.

  Chen didn’t react. His eyes were empty. Distant. As if he’d already left this world.

  Flora grabbed his collar—Adamantine-reinforced, slick with rain—and began dragging him toward the open maw. "Sorry," she said, the words clinical, detached. "This is for the survival of your betters."

  Alina saw it on the monitor. Her blood turned to ice.

  "Damnit—" She screamed, wrenching the Red Vulture into a sharp left turn.

  Flora lost her footing, crashing against the bulkhead as the IFV fishtailed. The sudden deceleration threw Chen’s limp form back into the compartment. Alina switched to autopilot, threw herself from the driver’s seat, and charged into the infantry bay.

  The fight was brutal. Short. Final.

  Alina didn’t hesitate. A left hook to Flora’s jaw——followed by a right uppercut that snapped her head back—. A knee to the solar plexus——then a spinning back kick that sent Flora crashing into the wall locker. Blood streamed from her nose, dripping onto her grime-smeared field uniform like red ink on fresh snow.

  Alina dragged Flora back to the cockpit by her collar, shoved her into the copilot seat, and slammed the compartment door lock with a definitive .

  She stood over Flora, breathing hard, her face inches from the other woman’s bloodied visor. Her voice was low. Dangerous. A blade wrapped in velvet.

  "Touch him again," she whispered, "and I’ll personally throw you out to feed the blades."

  Flora didn’t respond. She curled into herself, blood dripping from her chin onto the tactical console, her breath coming in shallow gasps. The red lights from the dashboard reflected in her wide, unblinking eyes.

  Alina threw herself back into the driver’s seat, slamming the throttle. The Red Vulture’s anti-grav engine whined, straining against the mud and dead weight. She gunned it forward, plunging headfirst into the densest part of the radiation jungle.

  Vines lashed against the hull like claws, scraping the Adamantine plates with a sound like grinding teeth. Glowing fungi coated the trees in sickly violet luminescence, painting the inside of the cockpit in shifting, nightmare shadows.

  [Warning: Anti-gravity engine coolant temperature: 127℃]

  [Estimated failure time: 8 minutes]

  Alina's eyes flicked to the rear thermal display. Two red dots blinked steadily 2,000 meters behind them—ghosts hanging at the edge of detection range, patient, relentless. Her jaw tightened. Her eyes darted from the overheating gauge to the rear display to the jungle path ahead. Her voice was a raw scrape against the roar of the engine and rain.

  "Gotta think of something... gotta think of a fucking way..."

  The IFV barreled deeper, the jungle closing in like a living trap. Unseen in the depths ahead, a rust-red giant loomed in the rain—a corporate-era dome, its weathered bulk like a slowly opening steel maw, waiting to swallow whatever dared approach.

  Behind them, the two red dots on the thermal display crept far, 1,800 meters, but always looming.

  The rain fell harder. The engine whine deepened to a scream.

  And in the rear compartment, Chen Feng sat motionless, his trembling hands clenched in his lap, his eyes fixed on nothing at all.