The silence after Magnus fell was the kind that rang louder than the battle. Steam hissed from cracked vents overhead, curling through the wreckage in ghostly trails. Sparks crackled down from a ruined overhead array, flickering out before they reached the floor. The control room was unrecognizable. Just a heap of slag and shadow, heavy with the stench of burning insulation and oil.

  Kade moved through it like she still expected to be shot. One step, check the angle. Another step, scan the shadows. The weight of losing Holt, along with several other Marines, sat between her shoulders like a loaded rucksack, but there was no room to set it down. Not yet.

  Stone crouched beside a downed Marine, her lips tight as she pressed fingers to a sloppily bandaged chest. Pale healing light sparked against her knuckles, then guttered out like a candle in a storm.

  "I’ve stabilized the criticals," she said. "But I’m dry too. No mana left. Anyone else is waiting ‘til we’re back aboard. Captain is stable but out cold. He'll be fine once we get him back to the ship."

  Kade nodded once. "Appreciate the triage."

  Stone didn’t answer. Just moved to the next casualty and checked for signs of life without bothering to hope.

  Mercer sat slouched against a half-crushed console, head tipped back like she was waiting for the ceiling to give up and come down. A long, blackened slice ran across her chest plate, a reminder of the near-critical wound she had taken earlier. Stone’s healing had sealed the worst of it, but pain still lingered in her eyes with every shallow breath.

  Her crossbow lay across her lap, ruined. One limb was splintered halfway through, string snapped, gears stripped along the side. She stared at it like it had betrayed her, then like it didn’t matter at all.

  "You know," she said, not looking at Kade, "I always figured if I died in a bunker, I’d at least get a gigantic explosion as part of the deal. Or a last stand. This just feels… bureaucratic."

  "You’re not dying," Kade said.

  "I might be."

  "You’re too stubborn to die. That’s a compliment, by the way."

  Mercer grunted. "I'll take it that way and with all due respect, Ma'am. You look like shit."

  Kade snorted once. "You’ve got hydraulic fluid in your hair."

  "Adds character."

  "Yeah, smells like it too."

  Kade left Merer to her wall-staring and moved on. She passed Webb, who was crouched beside Holt’s broken form, retrieving the man's pike pole with careful hands. He stared at it like it meant something. Then he picked up Holt’s tags, thumbed them once, and tucked them away without a word.

  Near the north end of the room, Sergeant Myers hunched over a pile of half-melted gear and slagged file cabinets, muttering to himself as he sorted through the wreckage. His gloves moved with purpose, but his shoulders sagged like they were trying to remember how to stand upright. From where Kade stood, it wasn’t clear if he was after intel or salvage, but the way he moved made it obvious he saw value in something. Even if that value was just the act of doing something than fighting.

  Kade paused beside him. "Anything salvageable?"

  "Couple burnt logs. Comms data, maybe. No promises." He held up a scorched fragment of a command journal, then tossed it into a bag at his hip. "Already grabbed them for later review."

  She nodded once and kept moving.

  Lawson and Briggs arrived a moment later, both dragging the weight of attrition behind them. Ozone and coolant reeked from charred patches on their armor. A crack marred one side of Briggs' helmet, and a blackened tourniquet was on Lawson's bicep. A streak of blood marked his chest plate, too far from the wound to be his unless he’d started bleeding uphill.

  "Report," Kade said, not slowing.

  Briggs responded first. "Fighting was heavy all across the facility. Pirates had dug in hard. Base defenses didn’t seem to care who they were shooting at. Saw a couple of pirates get cut down by one of those robot things as it was trying to get to my team."

  "No SMC survivors?"

  Lawson joined in as he shook his head. "Signs of a heavy engagement and bodies. I grabbed what dog tags I could. Near a giant ring-shaped thing, I saw a sign saying 'transfer portal,' but someone had broken the ring in two, and a last stand occurred there."

  Kade exhaled. "They may have made it out. Just not with us."

  "Given what we're seeing here, I think it's confirmed that someone knew this was coming," Briggs said.

  "Yeah," Kade said. "They did. Project Catalyst was real. They had a warning. We missed the window."

  Kade stopped walking.

  Heated voices echoed from deeper in the ruined chamber. The kind of fight that wasn’t about ideology or tactics, but about blood and grief and payback. Pirates. Again.

  She glanced toward the noise and saw the gathering storm. Three of the pirates had squared off against two others, bodies coiled and faces clenched. The one who hung back was the same man Kade had yanked the explosive from during the final push on Magnus, now watching the argument with dead eyes. The one at the center wore the fury that didn’t have a reason, just a trigger.

  Briggs made an indistinct sound. "You want me to break that up?"

  "No, I was already heading in that direction to deal with this. I wanted to check on you all and get a moment to catch my breath before the next crisis," Kade said as adjusted her speed and headed straight for the brewing fight, bootsteps crisp across the debris-strewn floor.

  "You two watch my flank though," she said.

  Kade closed the distance, boots striking hard against the fractured flooring as the argument ahead sharpened into a blade’s edge.

  "He shoved Cam into the vent!" one pirate snarled, voice ragged with accusation.

  The reply came fast and venomous. "Cam tripped. You weren't there! You didn't see him panic and bolt. I tried to pull him back!"

  "That's a lie!" someone else snapped.

  They weren’t drawing weapons, not yet, but fists were clenched and every one of them looked like they were just waiting for someone to throw the first punch. The wrong word would turn the room into a free-for-all among the few remaining pirates. The one with the faded Marine Corps tattoo had pushed off the wall. Kade recognized him immediately as the bastard she’d pulled the explosive from during the Magnus fight.

  Kade didn’t stop, Lawson and Briggs flanked her in silence. Their presence steady but ready.

  She stepped into the loose ring of bodies, close enough to smell the blood and coolant in the air. Close enough to feel the charge hanging over the room like it was waiting for a trigger.

  The ex-Marine didn’t speak. Just stared through her. He shifted his weight from foot to foot, eyes narrowed, like he was still weighing the odds of stepping in. That or he was questioning how he ended up with the pirates. It wouldn't surprise Kade if he ended up asking to come with the crew. Once a Marine, always a Marine wasn't just a pretty slogan.

  "Enough," Kade said. She hadn’t raised her voice, but the word cut through the room like a blade of frost. No one moved. The arguing stopped, the heat bled off, and the air shifted. It felt like everyone had suddenly forgotten how to breathe.

  "We’re not spilling more blood," she said, "not when we’re this close to being done."

  A few of the pirates straightened, eyes narrowing as the moment of shock passed. Their shoulders squared, not in defiance yet, but in preparation. She could see it in the way they looked at her, like they were about to start arguing instead of swinging.

  She took another step forward and met each of them in turn, eyes steady, jaw tight.

  "You want to kill each other? Fine. Do it back on the mainland. You can tear each other apart over drinks, or in the dirt, or wherever the hell you want. But not here. Not while I’m still pulling bodies out of the wreckage."

  No one answered. Not out loud.

  The pirate with the clenched jaw held her gaze a second too long before finally looking away. The others didn’t move, but the fuse had burned short. It wouldn’t take much to set it off again. The pirates hadn’t backed down entirely, but at least they’d stopped posturing like junkyard dogs ready to rip each other apart. Kade had seen cleaner ceasefires in war zones locked in blood feuds and generational hate. But for the moment, it would hold.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  She held position like she owned the room, eyes sweeping the group to make sure no one was twitching toward a weapon. Behind her, Lawson and Briggs hadn’t moved, still holding the kind of stillness that came just before orders dropped or before all hell did.

  The silence lingered just long enough to feel unnatural.

  Then Myers’ voice broke up the moment as he came up beside Kade. "Boss, uh, so why haven’t we gotten the reward for completing the quest? We got the captain back."

  The tension in the air stuttered. A few pirates exchanged glances. One scoffed. Another ran a hand through dirty, matted hair like that question had been sitting just behind his eyes too.

  Kade blinked once. She hadn’t even thought about it until now.

  The simulation notification icon had been blinking in the corner of her vision since the assault began, but she’d ignored it the way soldiers ignored pain. Too much of it during a firefight would get you killed.

  "I’ve got a dozen system flags and backlog crap to sift through," she said. "Give me a moment."

  She brought up her interface. The display flickered to life across her vision, jammed with stacked alerts, partial logs, damage warnings, along with character updates. Checking the quest tab quickly, she reviewed the quest to recover the captain.

  Into the Widow's Web

  Quest Update! Naomi Darkmoor, the infamous pirate captain of the Widow’s Grin has abducted captain Voss of the Horizon Talon. Naomi’s motives remain unclear, but reports suggest she needed the captain’s command codes for an unknown purpose. The situation grows increasingly dire, and the stakes could spell disaster if her plans come to fruition.

  Difficulty: Impossible

  Completion Conditions: Rescue Captain Voss and return him to the Horizon Talon. If the Captain dies before rescue, or if the quest takes longer than 48 hours, the quest fails.

  Ship Rewards: 20,000 Gold, Return of Captain Voss, Two Magic Items

  Individual Rewards: 50 Gold, Experience, One Epic Magic Item, Two Magic Items

  "The quest says we have to get him back to the Talon. However, we never got a quest for Magnus, like we have all the other big monsters." She said.

  Lawson spoke up, voice low and steady. "We pulled some data suggesting that the base was built around pre-existing artifact structures. Old ones. SMC found them and built on top of them. That might mean that they aren't officially tagged as Simulation bosses?"

  Kade didn’t like that. She liked nothing about this place. Secrets within secrets and she wasn't playing the right secret squirrel bingo card to win the game. Sighing internally, she continued to review her notifications.

  Skill gains condensed because someone can't be bothered to look at her notifications. Seriously, be better.

  +6 Leadership | Congratulations! The world has fractured. Hope is a scarce resource. But you stood your ground, made the hard calls, and others followed. You recognize what it takes to lead when everything else is failing.

  +5 Sword Combat | Congratulations! You've mastered the fine art of solving complex problems with pointy metal. Your sword is an extension of your will, and your will appears to be stab first, ask questions never.

  +5 Light Armor | Congratulations! You've discovered that armor works better when you actually wear it. Bold strategy. Let’s see if it pays off.

  +4 Dirty Fighting | Congratulations! You've demonstrated expert-level proficiency in opportunistic violence. Bonus points for aiming exactly where it hurts. The Simulation does not endorse groin-targeted warfare... unless it works.

  +2 Tactical Negotiation | Congratulations! You showed the ability to engage in high-stakes negotiations under combat conditions, securing short-term cooperation from hostile or unaffiliated forces. This skill reflects situational persuasion, threat assessment, and objective-focused dialogue during active operations.

  +1 Grenadier | Congratulations! You successfully deployed an explosive device during live combat, resulting in decisive damage to a high-threat target. This skill reflects tactical application of pre-existing or improvised ordnance under combat conditions.

  +1 Amphibious Movement | Congratulations! Look who finally figured out how to move underwater. For a naval officer, this feels... overdue.

  +1 Amphibious Combat | Congratulations! You engaged in close-quarters combat while submerged and lived to tell the tale. Swinging a sword underwater isn’t just dramatic. It’s difficult. Well done.

  The list was longer than she’d expected. She didn’t feel stronger, just sore and vaguely insulted.

  The comment for Light Armor earned a dry snort. Of course the Simulation had noticed it was her first time wearing any. Bold strategy, it had said. Let’s see if it pays off. Maybe it thought it was being funny. Maybe someone had written those message templates a thousand years ago, and the AI was just dragging them forward, word-for-word, without care for context.

  Or maybe it was paying attention.

  That thought sat uneasily with her. If the Simulation could recognize a pattern of behavior and adjusting commentary to match, what else was it tracking? What else was it learning about her?

  She scrolled back to the Amphibious Movement notice and frowned. Only a single point gained. No acknowledgment of prior experience. Before the reboot, she’d logged hundreds of hours in open water. Military certifications. Practical drills. The kind of training that didn’t vanish just because the world hit reset.

  Maybe it was a category distinction. Maybe the Simulation didn’t see swimming and fighting while underwater as the same skill set. She hadn’t just floated through the wreckage down there. She’d fought for her life in three dimensions, with a blade, in armor, while half-blind and weightless. Still, it felt wrong to be graded like she’d never swum a day in her life.

  She leaned back against the support beam nearby, still warm from all the steam released during the fight, and let her head rest there, just for a moment. The steel hummed faintly beneath her, the vibration of water pumps struggling deeper in the structure.

  No Simulation message had ever told her how close she’d come to dying. None of them congratulated her for surviving. But that +6 to Leadership sat heavier than the rest. Heavier than the swordplay, heavier than the explosion she’d jammed into Magnus’s control array. That one meant something.

  Leadership wasn’t just about barking orders or pointing at maps. It was about getting people to move when they didn’t want to, to fight when they were terrified, to keep going after too many reasons to stop. She had been building that skill for her entire career. Tactical Negotiation was different. She had earned that in the middle of a standoff with weapons drawn and time bleeding out. No sword could have talked those pirates into helping. She hadn’t won them over with charm. She gave them a reason to live and made sure they saw her as the path to it.

  The Simulation had noticed that too.

  And maybe that was what bothered her most. Not the attention itself, but the uncertainty. Was it watching her like a player tracked by a game engine? Or like a subject under evaluation? Whatever it was doing, she couldn’t stop it. But she could stay aware. She could lead.

  Pushing the thought aside, she moved on to the more exciting pair of notifications that followed the skill gains.

  Level up! Congratulations, you are now level seven. Go forth and defend the realms, mighty hunter. You receive one (1) stat point for Intelligence and may allocate one (1) additional stat point as desired.

  Level up! Congratulations, you are now level eight. Go forth and defend the realms, mighty hunter. You receive one (1) stat point for Charisma and may allocate one (1) additional stat point as desired.

  Some of the crew had figured out how the system handled health scaling. Strength and constitution were the levers. Constitution gave you raw resilience, strength buffered that with impact resistance and made you hit harder. Simple enough when you broke it down, but it hadn’t been obvious until the more game-brained crew members started comparing combat data and scraping the help files tucked away in the Simulation’s submenus.

  She still didn’t trust it.

  Kade’s class awarded two automatic stat points, one for each level gained into intelligence and charisma. That much was locked. The other two were hers to assign. She hesitated.

  Every encounter since the start of the cataclysm had been a mess of overlapping threats involving close quarters, open water, fire, steam, sabotage. None of it was clean. All of it hurt. The way forward wasn’t getting safer. And she didn’t have the luxury of staying on the sidelines.

  Durability mattered now but so did raw hitting capability. Not just in theory or doctrine, but in survival. Quickly deciding, she placed both remaining points into strength. It wasn’t finesse, but she needed to hit harder and stay standing longer when things inevitably went sideways. End of the world or not, she still had people to protect.

  The Simulation accepted the allocation with the usual flicker of confirmation. No commentary. No judgment.

  Name: Sarah Kade

  Class: Corsair

  Level: 8

  Health: 340/340

  Mana: 200/200

  Stats

  Strength: 9

  Dexterity: 7

  Intelligence: 10

  Constitution: 7

  Charisma: 8 (9)

  Abilities

  Against the Tide

  Blade Whirl

  Command Presence

  Deck Fighter

  Riposte of the Kraken

  Stormwall Stance

  Skills

  Amphibious Combat: 1

  Amphibious Movement: 1

  Dirty Fighting: 11

  Grenadier: 1

  Leadership: 15 (16)

  Light Armor: 5

  Ocean Craft: 8

  Ocean Navigation: 6

  Sailing: 8

  Stealth: 1

  Sword Combat: 14

  Tactical Negotiation: 2

  The Simulation menu shifted as Kade sorted the various data. She’d stared at this interface more times than she could count, but it still felt like trying to read a combat manual written by someone who’d never seen a battlefield. The numbers were clean, the formatting precise, but the logic behind it didn’t always match the reality on the ground.

  She scrolled through her skill list, reorganizing the entries alphabetically just to impose some order. A habit, not a necessity. Half the abilities made sense. The other half felt like answers to questions no one had thought to ask.

  She paused.

  Riposte of the Kraken.

  The name hovered there, fresh and unfamiliar. Definitely new. It hadn’t been there before Block Island.

  She tapped into the description, eyes narrowing as she skimmed the details. A reactive strike triggered off a parried blow, optimized for single-target disruption, with a surge of water-infused force. That explained the 'Kraken' part, at least.

  Riposte of the Kraken

  When you successfully parry a melee attack, you may activate this ability to launch a retaliatory strike. The counterattack deals additional water-infused damage, scaling with your Intelligence. The strike channels aquatic force, disrupting balance and opening your opponent’s guard.

  Damage Bonus: +10% per 5 points of Intelligence

  Cost: 10 Mana

  Type: Reactive, Single Target

  She was about to make a comment about wrangling sea monsters with swordsmanship when the floor gave a low, sick groan beneath her boots. Then the klaxons hit.

  The sound punched through the chamber, a rising mechanical howl that cut across every voice and thought. Red strobes flickered to life overhead. The vibration hit next, rolling up through the decking like something alive had just started breathing underneath them.

  A mechanical voice crackled from unseen speakers, clipped and cold.

  "CRITICAL ALERT. PRIMARY ENFORCER OFFLINE. CONTROL CORE INTEGRITY COMPROMISED. INITIATING FACILITY PURGE PROTOCOL. ALL PERSONNEL EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY. SELF-DESTRUCT SEQUENCE ACTIVATED."

  Somewhere behind her, one pirate swore.

  Kade didn’t hesitate. "And the penny drops."

  Far off, something detonated. The wall behind a console vented heat and smoke. A warning ripple passed through the floor, like pressure looking for a weak point to rupture.

  She shut down the interface and spun back toward the group standing near her. "We move now. Grab anyone who’s down and make for the exit point. Lawson, get your Marines moving."

  "On it."

  "Briggs, take rear security. Keep them tight. I don’t want a single straggler."

  "Yes, Ma'am!"

  The pirates had gone from cocky to pale-faced in under ten seconds. One of them turned toward Kade like he was about to argue with her, giving orders. She cut him off with a look.

  "You want to live, move!"

  The room exploded into motion.

  Over on Patreon, we’re about ten chapters ahead, which means everything left in Book One and eight chapters into Book Two are already live.