2025-09-27 15:01:38The skiff bucked hard as it punched through Mars’ thin atmosphere, its patched engines screaming in protest. Tim Watt gritted his teeth, knuckles white on the controls. Jax clung to the side rail, cursing with every violent jolt.
Below them, the colony was already a sea of fire, the domes collapsing one by one under Syndicate bombardment. The sight stabbed through Tim’s chest sharper than any blade. He had nothing left there—no family, no home, not even ashes worth returning to.
Ahead, the night sky glittered with stars. Freedom. Escape. Maybe even answers.
“Engines won’t hold,” Jax shouted over the alarms. “We’ll burn out before we clear orbit!”
“They’ll hold,” Tim snapped, though he wasn’t sure if he believed it. The gauges wavered deep in the red. The skiff wasn’t built for spaceflight, just short hops across the desert. But turning back wasn’t an option.
Another tremor rattled the hull as plasma fire streaked past them, Syndicate drones cutting through the upper atmosphere in pursuit. One bolt grazed the wing, spinning the skiff sideways. Warning klaxons blared.
“Hang on!” Tim jerked the controls, righting the craft by instinct. His chest burned, the artifact’s pulse syncing with the engines as though willing them higher.
The stars grew sharper. The black curve of space opened above them.
“Come on, come on,” Tim muttered. His fingers tightened until his knuckles ached. The artifact throbbed hotter, veins glowing through his skin.
Then, with a teeth-rattling shudder, they broke free. Silence crashed in—heavy, suffocating. The skiff floated in the void, its engines gasping for fuel.
Jax let out a ragged laugh. “We made it. Bloody hell, Tim—we actually made it!”
Tim didn’t answer. His gaze stayed fixed on the stars ahead. Beautiful, endless, and utterly foreign. He had dreamed of leaving Mars since he was a boy, but not like this. Not chased, hunted, with blood still burning on the ground behind him.
A sharp ping snapped him back. The radar.
Red dots swarmed the screen—Syndicate interceptors, closing fast.
Jax’s smile vanished. “They’re not giving up.”
“No,” Tim said quietly. “They won’t stop until they have me.”
The artifact stirred inside him, whispering a single word: “Fight.”
Tim’s jaw clenched. Not yet. Not here. He had no idea what the power inside him could do—or how much it might destroy.
“Hold on,” he muttered, wrenching the controls. The skiff lurched, engines flaring weakly as he veered toward the asteroid belt glittering beyond Mars’ orbit. If they could lose the interceptors in the rocks, they might have a chance.
The comm crackled suddenly, a voice cutting through static.
“Unidentified vessel, this is the Nomad. You’re flying hot. Need assistance?”
Tim’s eyes widened. Another ship. Out here?
Jax grabbed the comm. “Yes! We’re under Syndicate pursuit. Any help would—”
The comm went dead, drowned out by another proximity alarm. The interceptors had locked weapons.
Tim cursed under his breath. The skiff jolted as a plasma bolt grazed the hull, sending sparks through the cockpit. Panels flickered, threatening to die.
The artifact surged hotter, light spilling from Tim’s veins, dancing across the console like living fire. For a heartbeat, the failing systems flickered back to life, stabilized by a force Tim didn’t understand.
He met Jax’s wide eyes. Neither of them spoke, but both knew the truth.
The Syndicate wasn’t after a scavenger.
They were after the thing inside him.
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
Chapter 25: The Voice Between Worlds
The sound of Korr’s distorted voice still lingered in the air, crackling faintly through the intercom before fading into a silence that felt alive.Elara stood frozen. Her pulse thundered in her ears, her mind racing faster than she could breathe.Then she turned toward Tim.“What did you just say?”Tim didn’t answer immediately. His eyes stayed fixed on the console, the faint blue veins pulsing beneath his skin like lightning trapped under glass.“Tim,” she repeated, sharper this time. “You said that voice was Korr. That can’t be right.”He looked up slowly, his expression unreadable. “It’s him, Elara. I’d know that frequency anywhere.”Jax swore under his breath. “That’s impossible. Korr was on the Omen’s Reach. That ship’s been offline since—”“Since we blew it out of orbit,” Elara finished. Her voice was steady, but her hands trembled. “You told me there was nothing left of him.”“I thought there wasn’t,” Tim said quietly. “But he’s alive. Or something wearing his voice is.”Elara
Chapter 24: After the Light
Silence.Not the clean, peaceful kind that follows sleep, but a thick, humming stillness that pressed against the skin.Elara blinked, vision blurred by the ghost of the light that had swallowed everything. Her ears rang; her body felt weightless, as if gravity itself were reconsidering its duty.The deck beneath her tilted once, then steadied. The faint red of emergency lights flickered back to life, staining the corridors in crimson haze.“Tim?” Her voice cracked.No answer.She pushed herself upright, pain blooming across her shoulder. Every console around the bridge had gone dark; holographic panels hung frozen mid-display. A curl of smoke drifted from a ruptured conduit.Then she saw him.Tim lay a few meters away, motionless, his skin faintly luminous in the dark. The glow wasn’t like before—no longer confined to his veins but radiating through the air around him, a soft aura that bent the light itself.Elara crawled to him, heart hammering. “Tim! Wake up—come on!”Her fingers b
Chapter 23: The convergence
The hum of The Horizon’s Edge had changed.It was subtle — barely noticeable at first — but Elara heard it. She had spent enough years aboard this ship to know every sound it made, every vibration in its bones.Now, the rhythm was wrong.She stood in the control room, surrounded by flickering consoles. Systems glitched in and out, lights dimming, then flaring again in patterns that made no technical sense.“Diagnostics are looping,” Jax muttered, hammering commands into the main terminal. “It’s like the ship’s rewriting its own code.”Elara frowned. “Run a full system lockout. Power down the secondary grid.”“Already did. Twice. It reboots before I can—”A sharp crack split the air as one of the holoscreens overloaded, sending a cascade of sparks across the floor.Jax cursed and ducked back. “That’s new.”Elara stared at the display — symbols were burning across it now, faint glowing sigils that pulsed in perfect sync with the ship’s hum. They weren’t any language she knew.“What the
Chapter 22: The Fracture Within
The hum of The Horizon’s Edge was softer now — almost soothing, like a lullaby sung to a restless child. But beneath that calm, Elara felt something shifting, an unease that clung to the air.Days had passed since the encounter at the Rift. The bruises on the ship had begun to fade, but not the ones it left on her crew.Especially not on Tim.He had stopped sleeping, though he insisted he did. His hands trembled when he thought no one was watching, and the faint blue light beneath his skin had grown brighter, threading up his veins like living circuitry.At first, Elara told herself it was just residual energy. Trauma. Something that would fade with rest. But deep down, she knew better. The Rift had not just touched him — it had rewritten him.---She found him in the cargo bay, shirt half undone, sweat glistening along his shoulders as he struggled to lift a containment crate that should’ve weighed half a ton. The crate hovered, then dropped with a metallic thud that echoed through t
Chapter 21: The Shadow that Watches
The command bridge of The Omen’s Reach was a cathedral of steel and silence.No voices rose above the low hum of power coursing through its walls. No footsteps echoed on the obsidian floor without permission.Here, every breath belonged to Varyn Korr.He stood at the center dais, his uniform immaculate, his face carved in cold precision. Around him, the Rift’s holographic projection spun like a ghostly storm — its luminous core throbbing in slow, steady rhythm.Korr’s gaze was fixed on it. There was reverence in his stillness, but also calculation — the kind of measured obsession only a man who had seen gods die could carry.“The connection remains faint,” said Drav, his tone cautious. “But stable. Whatever link the boy shares with the artifact, it’s… self-sustaining.”Korr tilted his head slightly. “Self-sustaining,” he echoed. “Like a pulse.”Drav hesitated. “A pulse implies something alive, sir.”Korr turned slowly toward him, his eyes pale and unreadable. “Exactly.”He descended f
Chapter 20: Echos of Light
Silence settled across The Horizon’s Edge like dust after a storm.The hum of the ship’s engines was the only constant sound — a low, steady heartbeat in the void.Kael stood by the forward viewport, hands clasped behind his back. Beyond the reinforced glass stretched a blackness so deep it seemed to swallow the stars. He had seen war, mutinies, and the Syndicate’s cruelty — but this, this quiet aftermath, felt far heavier.Elara’s reflection joined his in the glass. She’d changed out of her bloodstained uniform, but exhaustion still clung to her like a shadow. “He’s stable,” she said softly. “Vitals are normalizing. Neural patterns… not so much.”Kael didn’t look at her. “He’s connected to that thing now.”She nodded. “In ways we can’t measure.”For a moment, neither spoke. The hum of distant machinery filled the space where words should have been. Finally, Elara broke the silence. “You think we did the right thing — saving him?”Kael exhaled slowly. “Right stopped mattering the mome
You may also like
Elta Project: Last Days Of Humanity
Zeleno Neih1.7K viewsThe 50: Post AI Apocalypse
ranmaro9.9K viewsBesieged (Book One): Rise of the Misfit
Chinjindu Ibeneme3.0K viewsTHE WILD KNIGHT
Feyonce8.5K viewsXENDA’S GAME (GUARDIANS OF THE INFINITE STONES)
Trevor.M.Muma1.9K viewsTHE WANDERER
Azmoth5.0K viewsThe man they couldn't Arrest
Dennis3.7K viewsJustice squad
Prince genius (ray)1.2K views