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.
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Chapter 30: The Space Between Voices
The hologram wavered, caught between flicker and form. Blue light pulsed across the bridge in rhythmic waves, breathing life into the spectral outline of Korr.He didn’t move, not in the human sense. He vibrated — as though reality itself strained to contain him.Elara’s breath came slow.“Tim,” she whispered, “don’t engage.”But Tim was already staring back, eyes wide, lips parting.“He’s not broadcasting… he’s projecting.”Korr’s gaze turned to him — calm, deliberate. “You’ve grown stronger, Tim. The Rift bends for you now.”Tim’s fingers twitched at his side. The artifact, slotted into its containment ring, pulsed once, syncing with his heartbeat. “You’re inside my head,” he said evenly.“I’m beyond it,” Korr replied, voice smooth as water. “I see what you see. I feel what you fight to hide. The fear, the doubt. The guilt that you survived when others didn’t.”Elara’s hand hovered over the emergency override. “We can cut the power feed to the comm relays. It’ll destabilize his form
Chapter 29: Before the Storm
The hum of engines broke the silence first. Then came the flicker of emergency lights across the deck — cold blue washing over steel. The Horizon’s Edge was alive again, trembling like a living thing sensing danger.Elara stood at the center of it all, gaze fixed on the holomap. Dozens of red signals bloomed across the grid — ships that shouldn’t exist, signatures that defied known physics.“They’re aligning in formation,” Jax said, his voice tight. “Each one’s transmitting the same pulse frequency as Tim’s readings.”Kael leaned in closer. “He’s syncing them through the artifact. Like a hive.”Elara’s throat felt dry. “Then we cut the frequency before it reaches us.”Tim’s voice came from the corner — calm, steady, too steady. “You can’t. It’s not transmission anymore, it’s resonance. He’s using the Rift’s energy to bind them. Cut one signal, and he’ll rebuild it through me.”That silenced the room.Elara turned toward him. His outline looked frayed — faint threads of blue flickering
Chapter 28: What Wakes in the Dark
At first, there was only stillness.No sound. No light. Just the black, endless ocean between stars.Then the void rippled.Something vast stirred beyond the edge of perception — a distortion so faint it could’ve been mistaken for a trick of light. But it wasn’t. Space itself bent around it, warping gravity into spirals that hummed like distant thunder.A fragment of wreckage drifted past: a Syndicate beacon, long dead, its surface cracked and scorched from the Rift. As it floated closer, the beacon flared back to life for a single pulse. A signal—ancient, impossible, alive.And from the center of that pulse, Korr opened his eyes.---He was no longer flesh.No longer bound by bone, blood, or even time.The void clung to him like mist, his outline flickering between human form and a storm of data and energy. The artifact had not consumed him—it had rewritten him.The memory of pain was gone.The memory of defeat was gone.All that remained was the signal, humming through his veins.He
Chapter 27: The Silence That Follows
For the first time in days, the ship was quiet.No alarms, no tremors, no screaming metal tearing against the void—just the soft hum of the oxygen filters and the faint crackle of static from damaged speakers.Elara sat beside the med cot, watching the slow rise and fall of Tim’s chest. He was breathing evenly now, though his skin still shimmered with faint bioluminescent veins, pulsing softly in the dim light.She hadn’t moved in hours. Every time she tried to stand, something in her made her stay.Across the room, Jax was half-asleep against the bulkhead, arms crossed, muttering through his dreams. The medbay smelled of ozone and burned circuitry.When the silence finally broke, it was with Kael’s voice, low and hoarse from exhaustion. “What’s his status?”Elara didn’t look up. “Stable. Physically, at least.”Kael stepped closer, the weight of command etched into his every movement. He studied the monitors — all clear, except for one line of unreadable alien code flickering faintly
Chapter 26: Through the Signal
At first, there was no sound—only a pressure, heavy and endless, like the universe had drawn in a breath and refused to let it go.Tim floated in the glow, the ship fading away beneath him. Threads of data, memories, and alien light twisted through the dark, forming constellations that pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat.Then he heard it.A voice—his name—cut through the silence.“Tim Watt.”Korr’s voice. Low, resonant, and cold as steel.Tim turned toward the sound, but there was no body, no figure—only shifting outlines that flickered between human form and digital storm.“You should’ve stayed away from the gate,” the voice continued, echoing inside his skull. “Now you’re mine to unmake.”Tim clenched his fists. The currents of energy responded, bending and tightening around him like armor. “You lost the moment you tried to use the Starborn tech for yourself.”A chuckle rippled through the void. “And yet, here you are, drowning in it. You think you’ve mastered the link—but it’s fee
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
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