I spent the entire night relearning how to walk.It was 3:00 AM. My dorm room was dark, lit only by the streetlights filtering through the blinds. Tal was snoring softly in his bunk, muttering something about card tricks in his sleep.I stood in front of the full-length mirror on the back of the door.Step. Pivot. Shift weight.I watched myself. My natural instinct was to lead with my left shoulder—a defensive habit from using the Apostate Bracer. My weight naturally settled on the balls of my feet, ready to spring. That was the Knight’s stance. That was the stance Commander Vane was hunting.I needed to break it.I took a roll of duct tape from my tool bag. I wrapped it tight around my left knee, restricting the joint just enough to be annoying. Then, I took a small, sharp pebble from the potted plant on the windowsill and shoved it into my left boot, right under the heel.I took a step.Wince.I favored my right leg immediately. My shoulder slumped. The fluid grace of the Knight was

The ride back to the Academy was a blur of gray rain and silence.I sat in the corner of the transport crawler, gripping my knee. The vibration of the engine traveled up through the floor grates, rattling my teeth, but I barely felt it.All I could feel was the echo.Brother.The word wasn't fading. It was ringing in my skull like a struck bell. It hadn't been spoken with vocal cords; it had been a psychic transmission, a frequency that bypassed my ears and went straight to the Apostate Drive embedded in my arm.My left arm was twitching under my jacket. The black fibers were agitated, writhing beneath the skin like worms trying to escape wet earth. They sensed him. The other one. The Violet Knight."You're shaking, Royce," Commander Vane said.I snapped my head up. She was watching me, her face illuminated by the pale blue light of the dashboard."Shock, I think," I stammered, leaning into the lie. "I've never seen a Void-Stalker up close before. And my foot...""Pain is a good teach

The lab was never truly dark. Even at 0300, the ambient glow from the Aethelgard Chassis painted the walls in sickly hues of pulsating orange.I was on "Sanitation Duty." It was the perfect cover. No one questions a janitor with a mop bucket and a spray bottle, even in a top-secret research facility.I pushed my cart across the hangar floor, the wheels squeaking rhythmically. My destination was the gantry. My objective was the cockpit.I had to get that shard back.Professor Kael was still in his office, a glass box suspended above the lab floor. I could see his silhouette hunched over a bank of monitors, frantically typing. He hadn't gone home. He was obsessed with the data from Sylvia’s failure, trying to find the "noise" that had disrupted the sync. If he decided to strip the pilot’s seat for a physical inspection before I got there, I was dead.I reached the base of the mech. I parked the cleaning cart."Just cleaning the vomit," I muttered to no one, grabbing a rag and a bottle o

The silence that followed the battle was heavier than the gunfire. It was a suffocating, wet blanket of shock that settled over the Perimeter Outpost.Rain hissed against the cooling armor of the Aethelgard Chassis. The steam rising from the machine didn't smell like water vapor anymore; it smelled like burnt sugar and rotten meat."Get the pilot out," Commander Vane ordered. Her voice was flat, the kind of calm that comes right before a scream.I scrambled up the slick, mud-coated ladder. The hatch was already popped, but it was jammed halfway. The metal around the rim was warped, bubbling as if touched by strong acid."Drake?" I called out, peering into the gloom of the cockpit.There was no answer. Just a wet, ragged sound. Hhhuh... hhhuh...I braced my good foot against the hull and heaved on the hatch. The servos whined, protesting, but the metal gave way with a screech. The interior lights were dead. The only illumination came from the console, which was flickering with a chaoti

The interior of the Armored Personnel Carrier (APC) smelled of stale sweat, gun oil, and the lingering, metallic scent of fear. The vibration of the engine rattled my teeth, but it was nothing compared to the buzzing in my arm. The Apostate Drive was agitated, reacting to the proximity of the Zodiac like a compass needle spinning near a magnet.I sat on the hard metal bench, my knees bouncing nervously. Opposite me, a squad of elite Rangers sat in stony silence, their faces illuminated by the red tactical lights of the cabin. They looked at me—the janitor with the melted glove and the limp—like I was a bad joke that Commander Vane had insisted on telling.Vane herself sat at the head of the cabin, staring at a holographic map projecting from the floor. The map was a mess of static and red warning icons."We lost the thermal signature twenty miles back," Vane said, her voice cutting through the engine drone. "The target went cold. Literally. It stopped emitting heat.""It's stealth mod