The absolute freezing cold of the Time Wraith grip vanished entirely, violently replaced by the suffocating heat of a humid, stormy night. Finnian hit the ground hard. He did not land on the metallic grating of Earth-Forty-Two, nor did he feel the soft soil of Greyfenwood. He crashed face-first into a pool of thick, foul-smelling mud.He gasped, spitting out dirty water. The agonizing, fatal wound in his stomach was still there, but the bleeding had inexplicably stopped. The cosmic void and the shifting colors were gone. He pushed himself up onto his hands and knees, squinting through the torrential rain.He was kneeling in the center of a makeshift military training camp, surrounded by high, rusted barbed-wire fences and ancient watchtowers. The air reeked of wet earth, ozone, and something deeply familiar.A heavy pair of leather combat boots stepped directly into his line of sight, splashing muddy water into his face.Finnian slowly looked up. The man

The heat in Finnian OConnell blood was not the burning agony of a plasma wound or the toxic sting of nerve gas. It was a dense, suffocating, and absolute fire of pure biological lust. The air inside this illusory Whispering Grove was impossibly thick. Every breath Finnian drew filled his lungs with pink, glowing spores that bypassed his rational thought and injected a potent, neuro-chemical aphrodisiac directly into his brainstem. His heart hammered against his ribs in a heavy, primal rhythm. The agonizing wound in his stomach and his mutilated left hand suddenly felt completely numb, replaced entirely by an undeniable, desperate craving for physical release. Standing just a few feet away, the Succubus of the Verdant Core smiled. She was a creature forged from the absolute extreme of human temptation. Her luminescent, pearl-white skin glowed softly in the damp shadows of the ancient trees. The living vines and glowing orchids that loosely wrapped around her torso shifted and pulsed

The red targeting laser of the automated patrol drone painted a solid, glowing dot directly over Finnian OConnell bleeding heart. Lethal suppression engaged. Target Alpha must be neutralized, the drone synthetic voice blared, slicing through the heavy, freezing rain of the corrupted forest. Finnian did not have the luxury of shock. The realization that he had lost five years of his life to the temporal distortion of the Void was a crushing psychological blow, but the twin rotary cannons spinning up on the underbelly of the drone were a much more immediate problem. He threw his broken, battered body to the left just as the sky ripped open with weapons fire. BRRRRRRRRTTT. A hail of blue plasma bolts tore through the muddy ground where he had been standing a microsecond before. The mud flash-boiled, exploding into geysers of scalding steam and flying rock. Finnian rolled through the wet dirt, clutching his gaping stomach wound with his uninjured right hand. His dead iron gauntlet d

The confined space of the root cellar erupted into blinding blue light.The three Iron Fang Jaegers pulled the triggers of their heavy plasma repeaters simultaneously. In a wide-open field, the sheer volume of fire would have vaporized a tank. But in the narrow, concrete stairwell, their bulky black chromium armor worked against them, bottlenecking their firing angles.Finnian OConnell did not dive for cover. He became the projectile.Using the impossible, explosive strength of his biomechanical right leg, Finnian launched himself diagonally off the cellar wall. The plasma bolts scorched the concrete exactly where he had been standing a millisecond prior, filling the air with suffocating, superheated dust.He crashed directly into the chest of the leading Jaeger before the armored giant could adjust his aim."Get out of my house!" Finnian roared.He did not swing the rusted iron crowbar at the impenetrable chest plate. He jammed the curved, clawed end of the iron bar directly into the

The freezing rain of Greyfenwood battered against Finnian OConnell bare, scarred chest. He stood perfectly still in the knee-deep mud, entirely illuminated by the blinding white searchlights of the hovering Iron Fang Gunships. Fifty red targeting lasers danced across his face and torso, painting him as the most wanted target on the dying planet. Behind him, huddled in the dark entrance of the smuggling tunnel, Elena held Leo tightly against her chest. The heavy pump-action shotgun in her hands was shaking. She knew the reality of their situation. A single man, no matter how skilled or magically enhanced, could not fight an entire squadron of ten-foot-tall Apex Jaegers and walk away breathing. "I will not ask again, OConnell," the robotic, booming voice of the lead Jaeger echoed across the desolate, ruined forest. The massive black chromium mech took a heavy step forward, raising a rotary plasma cannon the size of a tree trunk. "Surrender the child. Submit to the authority of Supreme