The abandoned algae vats hummed with a residual energy, their curved glass surfaces still faintly glowing from the Red Rock’s circadian pulse. Rachel ran a fingertip along the cool, slick surface, watching the amber light ripple through the nutrient-depleted fluid like thinned blood. The air in the hydroponics lab was thick with the earthy scent of damp soil and the sweet, decaying smell of failed harvests.Three days had passed since the Rake ambush. Three cycles of the city’s artificial twilight—each dimming of the cavern’s vast, mineral veins sending !Guruseb’s shadow stretching longer against her quarters’ door. She could always sense him there, a sentinel of silent protection. The heat of his body warped the recycled air currents, and the rhythmic scrape of his whetstone along his spear synced with the city’s deep, subterranean heartbeat. It was a constant reminder of the pact they had made and the unspoken weight of his vigil.The hydroponics lab breathed around her, a living, sy

The hangar was alive with noise — not the celebratory kind, but the raw, metallic chaos of a city tearing itself open to bleed one last chance into the void.Repulsor carts screeched along the basalt floor, technicians shouting over the wail of alarms as they loaded missile crates, cryo-charges, and breather masks onto waiting shuttles. Plasma welders hissed against torn hull plating. The stench of scorched metal, moss-wine, and human sweat pressed thick in the air.Above it all, the Red Rock veins pulsed in irregular rhythms, as if the planet itself was holding its breath.Rachel stood near the observation rail, one hand clamped around her glowing arm, the other on the railing to steady herself. She could feel the ghost signal thrumming stronger with every cycle. Somewhere out there, Nancy’s echo — or Nancy herself — was calling. The line between the two had blurred until she could no longer tell if it was her friend’s soul or just the hive baiting them deeper.!Guruseb was at her si

The wind howled across the Mahikeng plain like a dying animal, thick with the acrid stench of ozone and something worse—the metallic tang of old blood baked into the dust. The moon hung limp in the sky, a jaundiced sickle in the bruised twilight, its feeble light catching on the jagged edges of their makeshift comms tower. A Frankenstein's monster of car batteries and scavenged radio parts, its exposed wires hissed and spat like a cornered serpent with every gust.Click.Whir.Silence.The young woman's fingers danced across the cracked console, her nails blackened with soot and desperation. "Horizon's Edge," she whispered into the dead air, her voice raw from days of screaming into the void. "This is Survivor Group Sigma. Do you copy?"Static.Always static.Behind her, a man with hollow cheeks and hollower eyes tightened a final wire, his knuckles splitting against the metal. Blood welled, black in the dim light. He didn't seem to notice.Then—A sound.Not from the radio.From the

“Nancy just tried to kill her,” I said, my voice hollow in the stunned silence. “Or the thing wearing her skin did.”Anya’s face was grim. “Assimilation is not possession. It is a merging. Nancy is in there, but she is a prisoner in a fortress made of her own mind.”The implications crashed down on me. This changed everything.“So what do we do?” Rachel whispered, wiping the blood from her face. The green veins in her arm pulsed erratically. “We can’t just leave her. We can’t.”“We do what must be done,” !Guruseb’s voice cut through the tension. All eyes turned to him. “This woman is a weapon pointed at us. Her suffering is a tragedy. Her continued existence is a strategic catastrophe. The mission was to break the hive. This,” he gestured at the screen, “is part of the hive.”“She is his wife,” Rachel said, her voice breaking as she defended the ghost of the woman I loved.“And my home is dust!” Ka!ri’s voice cracked like a whip, startling everyone. She turned, and the raw, unvarnishe

The silence before the mission was heavier than any gunmetal. We sat in the shuttle with weapons stripped and reassembled, packs checked, the Stonebreaker locked inside its shockproof case. No one spoke. There was nothing left to say that hadn’t already been spoken a dozen times in whispers, or carried in the weight of each other’s eyes.I had been on suicide runs before. This one felt different—not because of the odds, but because of the faces around me. There is a cruelty to having something to lose at the end of the world.Rachel was the first to break. She looked up, her glowing veins pulsing faintly in the dim cabin light.“!Guruseb,” she said. Just his name. The syllables landed like a stone dropped in still water. He looked at her, expression unreadable, and she jerked her chin toward the rear of the shuttle.They stepped away, though there was no privacy in a coffin with wings. I turned slightly, pretending to busy myself with the rifle’s receiver, though I listened. We all di