The command room was completely dark and entirely silent.Captain Vance sat on the floor. He held his knees against his chest. He was crying softly. The tears left wet lines on his dirty face. He had just watched Commander Oliver say the words, "We lost."The Genesis Key was gone. A monster that looked like a man had stolen it from the deepest vault under the city.Commander Oliver stood by his desk. He did not move for a long time. He stared at the black computer screen. His face was like a stone mask. His hands were flat on the wooden desk.In a normal man, this silence was the sound of a broken heart. In Oliver, it was the sound of a machine rebooting."Vance," Oliver said. His voice was not loud, but it cut through the dark room like a sharp knife.Vance slowly looked up. His eyes were red. "Sir? What is the point? They have the Key. You said we lost.""I was wrong," Oliver said simply. He did not apologize. He just stated a fact. "A game of chess is not over until the King is dea

Squad Nine fired blindly into the dark trees. Their heavy lasers hit a massive army of Wraithborn that was sneaking up in perfect silence. The monsters screamed and burned."General Thorne," Oliver said, spinning around in the blue light. He looked at the map of Delta-9. "The enemy ships are trying to land on your east pole. Move your plasma shields from the west to the east.""But the west will be totally open!" Thorne argued."There is nothing in the west but ghosts," Oliver said. "Move the shields. Two seconds."Thorne moved the shields. A massive laser blast from space hit the exact spot where the shields appeared. The human base was saved.Oliver was a machine of perfect logic. He was a god of war standing in a room of light.Captain Vance watched him with his mouth open. Vance could not believe what he was seeing.Oliver was predicting every single move the humanoid monster made. When the monster tried to flank, Oliver was already there. When the monster tried to hide, Oliver dr

Far away, at Outpost 9, the world was ending.The air was freezing cold. It smelled like burnt metal and rotten blood. A thick, dark purple fog rolled through the streets of the small mining town.Captain Ren stood on top of a metal watchtower. She was a tough woman with short blonde hair and a long scar across her cheek. She held a heavy plasma rifle. Her adaptive armor was covered in black ash."Keep firing!" Ren screamed at her soldiers.Down in the muddy courtyard, twenty of her soldiers were shooting wildly into the purple fog. The bright blue lasers cut through the mist.But it was useless.A massive Wraithborn monster, shaped like a giant wolf made of hard black smoke, leaped out of thin air. It didn't run across the yard. It simply materialized. Its red glowing eyes burned in the dark. Its sharp claws ripped through three soldiers in one second.SCREEECH!The monster roared. Before Ren could shoot it, the monster stepped backward into the purple fog and vanished completely."W

The command room was bathed in a ghostly blue light.The giant 3D hologram filled the center of the room. It showed the entire planet of Sigma-12. But the planet was no longer in normal space. It was floating inside the Rift. The sky in the hologram was a wild ocean of purple clouds and gold lightning.Commander Oliver stood in the middle of the blue light. He did not blink. He stared at the new nightmare on the map.High above the ruined desert of Outpost 9, a giant black shape hovered in the air. It was the Iron Star. It was the same human spaceship that Oliver had destroyed just hours ago to kill the enemy Brain.But it was no longer a human ship. The Wraithborn had caught the broken pieces in the Rift. They had glued the metal back together with dark magic. Thick, glowing purple veins crawled across the black metal like fat snakes. The ship was alive. It was a ghost ship, infected by the monsters."Boss," Billy’s voice trembled from the video screen. The young hacker was sweating

Jax gritted his teeth. He hated the cold way Oliver talked about their lives. "An acceptable loss," Jax muttered. But he obeyed."Grab the Anchors!" Jax ordered his strongest men. "Point them at the sky! Overload the cores!"The soldiers turned the heavy boxes upward. They flipped the red emergency switches on the side. The boxes began to scream with a high-pitched whine. The metal turned glowing white."They are going to blow!" a soldier cried."Hold on to something!" Ren yelled, grabbing a heavy rock."Three. Two. One." Oliver counted perfectly. "Release."The soldiers let go of the triggers.A massive, invisible pillar of kinetic energy shot straight up from the ground. The force was so strong it pushed the soldiers deep into the snow. Jax felt his ribs crack. Kael was thrown backward ten feet. The purple snow was blasted away in a huge circle.The invisible pillar of force hit the bottom of the black ghost ship in the sky.CRUNCH.The loud sound of breaking magic echoed across the