The silence that followed Jayden’s decree didn't just hang…it suffocated.Four hundred thousand corporate lords stared up at the high gallery, their neural implants whining under the strain of absolute, total bankruptcy. Golden HUD alerts spammed their vision in a blood-red haze: ACCOUNT BALANCE: 0.00 CREDITS. ASSETS LIQUIDATED. REAL ESTATE REVOKED."My money..." Director Vane shrieked, clawing at his golden-masked colleague. "My off-world accounts! He took everything! Kill him! Somebody fucking kill him!"Below, sprawled on the obsidian tiles among shattered crystal and spilled stellar-wine, Marcus Thorne’s trembling fingers touched his bruised knees. The shock in his bloodshot eyes curdled, turning in a split second into a toxic, unhinged venom."You cocky, arrogant little gutter-cunt," Marcus spat, his voice rattling through his vocal synthesizer.Jayden sneered, raising his glass for another slow sip. "Still barking, Marcus? You don't have a single credit left to pay a guard…""I

The dark-matter thrusters hummed in the depths of the Goliath-Class hull, a rhythmic, bone-deep pulse that rattled the shattered glass of Deck Zero. Jayden sat slumped against a cracked bulkhead on the bridge platform, his chest heaving as superheated purple plasma hissed off his exposed flesh. The bio-plasmic virus Marcus had injected was mostly purged, but the lingering nanite burns felt like boiling lead beneath his skin.[ SYSTEM ALERT: HEALTH RECOVERY AT 58% ][ NEURAL MATRIX RE-ALIGNMENT IN PROGRESS... ]Iris’s purring voice echoed softly in his mind, but Jayden barely heard her. He was staring at his left hand…his void-threaded, clawed fingers covered in a mixture of his own dark blood and Marcus Thorne’s black synthetic oil.A few feet away, Leo was crouched over a diagnostic panel, his trembling mechanic hands trying to stabilize the atmospheric scrubbers. The kid was terrified out of his mind, jumping every time the ship’s metal framing groaned under stress. Further down th

The heavy iron blast doors of the Goliath’s primary armory slammed shut with a metallic groan, locking Fiona inside the soundproof, dim compartment. The air in here smelled like gun oil, hot hydraulics, and cold lithium.She leaned her back against the reinforced steel, her head falling back with a dull thud. Her chest heaved against her cracked, blood-stained breastplate. Every muscle in her body ached, but the physical pain was nothing compared to the sickening, tangled horror clawing at the inside of her mind.Outside, Jayden was turning into a goddamn psycho. Inside her own skin, Fiona was falling apart at the seams.With a shaky, grease-covered hand, she reached behind her neck and unlatched the heavy cervical seals of her armor. The plates hissed, releasing a cloud of cooling steam as she stripped the heavy chest piece off and let it drop to the steel floor with a loud clang. Beneath the armor, she wore only a thin, sweat-soaked black tank top. Her bare skin was covered in a mo

Jayden’s head rested in her lap. His breathing was ragged, wet, and shallow, each intake of air whistling through a cracked ribcage. The heavy Overclock rig fused to his spine hummed a low, dying frequency…completely neutralized by the bio-magnetic kill-switch Fiona had slammed into his heart.[ WARNING: NEURAL NETWORK INTEGRITY THREATENED, ] Iris’s synthesized voice echoed through the ceiling speakers, stripped of its previous smugness, glitching into a high-pitched static. [ FIONA-02 MATRIX HAS OVERRIDDEN PRIMARY AUDITORY PROTOCOLS. JAYDEN’S CORE SYSTEM TEMPERATURE IS DROPPING. REMOVE YOUR HANDS FROM HIS CHASSIS IMMEDIATELY. ]Fiona didn't look up at the camera dome. She simply lifted her left hand, her synthetic knuckles gleaming with fresh metallic blood, and pointed her index finger straight at the lens."Iris," Fiona whispered, her tone laced with a cold, terrifying calm that made the air in the corridor drop three degrees. "If you open your digital mouth again before I reach th

The iron smell of Marcus Thorne’s blood was still warm on Jayden’s skin when the ship’s primary comm-array began to scream.Not a siren high-pitched, digital shriek that vibrated straight through the steel deck and into the marrow of Jayden’s bones."Fuck," Jayden wheezed, his vision swimming in pools of static and red glare. He dropped to one knee, coughing up a dark, sludge that burned like battery acid. The plasma hole in his left shoulder was cauterized shut, but the meat around it was black, charred, and reeked of ruined flesh. "Fiona… the console. Shut that damn alarm up before the whole sector hears it."Fiona didn't move to the console. Instead, she stood over Marcus’s headless, disemboweled corpse, slowly dragging her tongue along the flat edge of her chain-blade to lick away a streak of dark oil and gore. Her violet eyes burned with a sickening, raw hunger as she looked down at Jayden."Let it shriek, baby," she purred, her voice dripping with sadistic delight. She walked ov