"Suppressing fire!" Rendi barked, his voice carrying the unnatural, razor-sharp resonance that always made Sari’s spine tingle. He didn't wait for an acknowledgment. With a violent shove of his thighs, he launched himself off the buckled metal frame of the stalled delivery truck, his combat boots clearing the burning perimeter of spilled diesel by inches before landing squarely on the fractured, grease-slicked asphalt of the elevated highway ramp.Across the tarmac, behind a crude barricade fashioned from oil drums and razor wire, a half-dozen heavily armed men in mismatched tactical gear scrambled to adjust their aim. Their leader, a broad-shouldered brute with a crude scar slashing across his throat, yelled something incoherent, his finger tightening on the trigger of an assault rifle.Rendi didn't dodge. He didn't need to. His HUD flashed a brilliant, blinding crimson as his reflexes—pushed to absolute human limits by the relentless progression of the System—predicted the incoming

"Watch your footing, everyone. The ground here isn't as stable as it looks," Rendi warned, his voice cutting cleanly through the thick, humid air of the overgrown estate as he crouched down to inspect a suspicious patch of disturbed earth near the rusted iron gates.Sari stepped past him, her boots sinking half an inch into the damp, moss-covered soil, her eyes scanning the shadowy treeline that loomed menacingly over the abandoned plantation house. "It's quiet. Too quiet. Even the crickets stopped chirping the second we turned onto this access road.""That's because something bigger is sharing the space with us," Adit muttered, his fingers tightly gripping the strap of his equipment bag as he cast a nervous glance toward the looming, vine-choked silhouette of the main colonial-style mansion. "Did you hear that snap a second ago? It wasn't a twig. That sounded like a snapped bone.""It was a dry branch, Adit, not a skeleton coming to eat you," Rendi snapped back, though his own eyes f

"Bastion Hill," Captain Hartono announced, slamming his heavy hand down onto the scarred wooden hood of the lead transport truck with a dull, echoing thud that startled a flock of dark birds from the canopy overhead. "This is it. The end of the line for the convoy, and the beginning of something permanent."Rendi narrowed his eyes, sweeping his gaze across the sprawling, overgrown acreage of the abandoned tea plantation that sloped upward toward a dilapidated colonial mansion. The air here was noticeably thinner, carrying the crisp, earthy scent of damp loam and wild vegetation instead of the choking, sulfurous smog of the burning city they had left behind. "It’s defensible, I'll give you that," Rendi conceded, his fingers rhythmically tapping against the iron pipe resting casually across his shoulder. "High ground, natural bottlenecks on the access roads, and enough open land to establish a kill zone if anyone decides to follow us up from the lowlands. But it’s going to take a hell o

"Keep that trowel away from the northern slope, Sari," Rendi said, his voice dropping an octave as he stepped over a tangled row of overgrown tea bushes. "Unless you want our first agricultural harvest to be interrupted by whoever is currently borrowing our view."Sari stopped digging, the metal blade of her trowel halting an inch above a cluster of thick, tuberous roots. She straightened her back, wiping a streak of dark topsoil across her cheek with the back of her wrist, and squinted up through the hazy morning mist toward the upper ridge of Bastion Hill. "Borrowing our view? What are you talking about, Rendi? Did another stray mutt wander down from the highlands, or are you just hearing phantom notifications again?""Neither," Rendi muttered, crouching low beside a moss-covered stone retaining wall. He pointed a calloused finger toward the jagged crest of the neighboring ridge, where the dense canopy of tropical hardwoods parted just enough to reveal a jagged outcrop of gray slate

"That spotter isn't just looking at our view, Captain," Rendi said, his eyes narrowing as he watched the rhythmic flash on the distant ridge fade into the gray morning mist. "They're marking firing lanes. Which means whoever sent them already knows we're here, and they aren't planning on dropping by with a welcome basket of homegrown tea leaves."Captain Hartono let out a sharp, cynical breath, his weather-beaten hand instinctively resting on the grip of the sidearm holstered at his hip. "Well, that completely ruins our peaceful agrarian fantasy, doesn't it? Three days of hauling rations through the jungle, patching up refugees, and setting up perimeter alarms, only to find out we parked our new sanctuary right in the backyard of some regional warlord.""It's not just a warlord," Adit chimed in, jogging up the winding gravel path from the lower terrace with an old hand-crank radio clutched tightly in his left hand and a pair of greasy field glasses dangling from his neck by a frayed s