The sunrise blazed brighter with every passing minute, painting the clouds gold, pink, red, and—of course—violet, which had become my favorite color alongside silver and green. I’d forgotten what it felt like to watch a sunrise from such an altitude. It would have filled Randy with wonder—Randy, who was now slowly growing cold in our arms. Beside me, Arseny kept his eyes fixed on the floor, the same hands that had tried to give his stepbrother a blood transfusion, still stained with red.

Arseny’s thumb was still on Randy’s wrist.

When the rising sun touched his face, I almost expected him to squint against the light, brush his hair back, and ask how it had all turned out. I wanted so badly to believe the “magic” of the Martian blood would work after all. I was waiting for a miracle against all logic and common sense.

But no miracle would work if one’s liver was destroyed, and defeating death was beyond our power. Human memory is a fragile thing, so I engaged my optical sensors to record every second of his last sunrise. Rakhmanov, Violet, and Kat deserved to say their goodbyes, even if only through a playback.

Lex—known in the Moon Cross as Brother Alexander—picked up speed, breaking the sound barrier. We sliced through sun-drenched clouds and dreary mists, tore through driving rain, and caught sight of the pale blue edge of the Great Central Glacier that fed our rivers. Finally, by midday, the anti-grav rose above a familiar stretch of forest. Familiar, because I was the one who had created it. Or rather, I had set it in motion, and nature had done the rest.

“It really is something,” Lex murmured, gazing down at the tall pines below us.

Photo by Barnabas Davoti on Unsplash

“I was master of all this until I stumbled onto the escape pod with Katrina. But then again, if I hadn’t, I’d never have met Randy or any of you. I’d have stayed stuck in these woods another decade or two, until I lost my mind completely.”

“How old are you, Veliard?”

“Before the Blackout, I ran a global corporation. Didn’t last long, though.”

The biostation had belonged to the Moon Cross for a year now—the seed vault, the greenhouses, the lab. I couldn’t help wondering whether they had spared my animals or terminated them as potential vectors of infection.

Arriving on a Moon Cross anti-grav—escorted by a Captain and a Healer Brother—I maintained my disguise as the Prophet’s avatar. The Sisters running the station were entirely oblivious to the Vessel affair. Before we landed, they hadn’t even heard of the slaughter at Port Amundsen; Alexander was the one who had to break the grim news.

Of all my pets, only two dogs and two cats had survived. Naturally, they recognized their old pile of iron despite my eighteen-month absence. I panicked, terrified their wild excitement would blow my cover. The Sisters were not to be underestimated—they lacked the moon-forged weapons from Geryon’s foundry, but they carried old-school firearms and knew how to use them.

I barely stopped myself from calling the animals by name. Fortunately, their sheer ecstasy only convinced the Sisters that even dumb beasts recognized the Prophet’s supreme authority.

Then I asked the women to prepare Randy’s body, offering no explanation for why I wanted him buried here of all places.

As we approached the cottage that hid the underground facility, a grief-stricken Arseny rushed to a barrel of rainwater and plunged his head under, holding it there for a frighteningly long time. He came up gasping, dragged a sleeve across his face.

“I’ll do it,” he said, when I stepped forward to hand Randy’s corpse over. “He’s mine to wash. Not yours.”

Artist:

It was against the Moon Cross burial customs, which were almost completely the women’s domain. I let the silence stretch just long enough for the Sisters to understand I’d heard the custom being broken—and had chosen to allow it.

“Both these boys’ blood has been blessed,” I said, pitching my voice into the flat, unhurried register the Moon Cross people would associate with the Prophet’s will. “That makes this brother’s right, not yours.”

Nobody argued with a Prophet inventing doctrine on the spot. Two of the Sisters lowered their eyes and stepped back.

I turned to Arseny and carefully handed him the body. He swayed beneath the weight, but exhaled in silent gratitude. Lex darted to help him.

“Sisters, show the Healer Brother to a convenient place, bring him everything he asks for and leave them alone,” I told the girls.

Some time later, Lex scanned the sky for threats, then nearly crashed to the ground after tripping over a downed drone. The machine had apparently lost control and slammed into a pine. Geryon’s desmoduses were usually far too smart for such an ignominious end.

“They provided zero help during the attack,” he said. “Could Nautilus have hacked them as well?”

“Either that, or Geryon suffered a remarkably timed localized glitch. I’m impressed by the scale of it.”

“What if your hacker friend had somehow interfered?”

Lex jerked his head toward the grav-flyer, where Violet was still sleeping with suspicious depth.

“Impossible. Now, let’s bring him inside. He still needs attention.”

When Arseny finished the burial preparations, we brewed tea from herbs grown in my greenhouse. As a cyborg, I couldn’t drink it, but this small ritual brought back a soothing sense of home. I opened the last cup of Ambrosia from my supply.

“Lex… you’re a damn fool. A criminal,” Arseny said suddenly, his eyes red and raw with fury. “You should’ve given that anti-grav to Veliard—not to Randy. The machine would’ve done the same and come out ok”

Lex didn’t argue. He simply lowered his head in quiet agreement.

Arseny was only half right. Unlike Randy, I stood a chance of surviving that attack—my chassis, even severely damaged, could have been repaired back at Heliopolis. But assigning blame was pointless now.

“Neither of you is a criminal,” I said quietly, stepping between them. “You don’t hand that kind of military tech to a stranger unless there’s a reason. Alexander…” I turned to the scout. “When were you going to tell him?”

Lex blew his nose into the sleeve of his tactical suit with a harsh, wet snort.

“Right away!” he snapped, his voice crackling with defensive anger. “You heard it yourself in the annex—I promised him! Wait… How the hell did you dig this up, old man?”

“I put two and two together. A cynical Moon Cross scout, suddenly fussing over a fresh recruit? I was never going to buy that it was just gratitude.”

Arseny, who had been staring blankly at the floor tiles, slowly turned his head toward us. I pressed my advantage.

“You had flight clearance. You had access to Aelius’s private cell, knew where he kept his Martian anti-grav. And then there’s your face, Lex. It’s a bit too obvious.”

Lex finally met my gaze head-on. “Did you ever meet our father?”

“Not personally. But I’m a Pathfinder for a reason—just like Violet. We’re trained to spot the details people pray stay hidden. Aren’t your people barred from family life, though?”

“Absolutely.” Lex rubbed his face smudging a stail of dark soot across his cheek. “My parents didn’t break the rules outright. It was the Christmas Night of Love—the first one my father spent on Earth after leaving Mars. Standard protocol: full darkness, total passion, zero names. My mother never knew who got her pregnant. My father had no way of knowing which woman in the commune carried his child.”

This lined up with what I knew of Moon Cross tradition. Every senior priest or warrior of the Order was regarded by the youths as a father figure—and could very well be one by blood—which went a long way toward maintaining discipline.

“As was proper, they dumped me in the barracks when I turned eight. I barely saw my mother after that—she had younger mouths to feed. At twelve, they shipped me and a dozen other boys to the Antarctic for the trials. Squire rights for veteran warriors. I didn’t expect Aelius to pick me out of the lineup. To be honest, I’d have taken anyone just to get out of the snow.”

“And out of all the places on Earth, you had to end up in our penguin-forsaken hole,” Arseny grumbled, warming his hands against the tea mug.

“Still beats my dull life back in Chile,” Lex shot back, though the edge was gone from his voice.

“Did you see any of the other Apostles while you served him?” I asked.

“No. Geryon kept them scattered around the globe on purpose. Less contact, fewer conspiracies.”

“When did you realize who he was to you?”

Lex half-closed his eyes, as if skimming through his memories. “When Aelius picked me, an older recruit joked that we were twin faces. I thought it was just Providence playing games. But as I grew up, that shared face got harder to ignore in the mirror.” He swallowed hard. “At sixteen, I worked up the nerve to ask him outright. He didn’t lie to me—which was already a violation of Geryon’s direct order. He made me understand how lethal that truth was for both of us. Until today, I had enough self-control to keep my mouth shut and not parade the connection.”

“You said Lucian didn’t like you,” I noted. “Was it over this?”

“Yes, but it hardly matters anymore,” Lex replied coldly. “I saw his body among the gas victims before we cleared out.”

“How come you didn’t croak from that poison?” Arseny put in.

“Martian symbionts.” Lex tapped his forearm. “I transferred them to you back in the quarantine ward.”

Arseny stared back at him. “That fever… the shaking… But it was unlike all the infections I’d ever observed. First I thought you were testing some crap on me—”

Lex’s voice dropped to a whisper. “The adaptation phase, the only reason I’m still breathing. He deliberately saved me from the plague. Now you’re protected against it. And you can help others.”

“Wish I had them back in McMurdo,” the medic said grimly.

“These symbionts. Didn’t Grigory have them, too?” I asked, using Aelius’s real, Martian name.

“No. Looks like it’s a recent development,” Lex answered—and I remembered the details I’d learned from Katrina on our way to Seven Winds.

“But what does your story have to do with my brother?” Arseny asked.

“I caught my father drinking just once in his whole life—and he hit it hard. He was talking to the portrait in his cell. So sadly…” Lex caught the medic’s blank look. “Right—you weren’t in his cell. But I’ve got a picture on my data-pad.”

“Later,” said Arseny. “Go on.”

“Dad called her Alda and begged her pardon for ‘letting her out in the cold’. The moment he spotted me in the doorway, he snapped at me to get lost. I’d never seen him that angry and learned fast not to press him about that woman. Didn’t stop me being curious, though.”

“Was she really one of the Winged Sun cell?” I said. “In Heliopolis, I found no information about her.”

Alexander sighed.

“A twenty-something engineer’s daughter who lost her parents early and hoped to find solace in Moon Cross religion. And the Apostle’s embrace. Eventually, something turned Alda off from faith and made her a Winged Sun sympathizer. After that, I have no real facts. Beyond that? No cold facts. Just pieces I put together myself. All of it happened when I was still an infant, unknown to my father.”

“Time to go,” I said. “We’ll listen to your story when we are finished.”

“I don’t want to go,” Lex groaned.

“Neither of us does,” Arseny replied.

We placed the sleeping Violet under the watch of the novice Sisters and made our way to a low hill that Arseny had selected as his brother’s final resting place.

The rain was pressing in from the distant seafront, heavy and dark, painting the foot of the hill in steel-blue tones.

I sat on a wet stone a little ways off from the fresh mound of earth, staring into the distance where a storm front was already churning along the horizon. My thoughts were wandering back to a completely different era. Before the Blackout, on evenings when dark clouds gathered over the forest like this, you could see the thin, faint glowing chain of a high-speed train rushing toward the coast. Now, there was only impenetrable thicket and the hum of the approaching storm.

Beside me, right on the short silky grass of early spring, sat Arseny and Lex. Neither was in a hurry to leave, even as the first heavy drops began falling onto the pine needles.

Lex twirled an empty shell casing between his fingers, working it with the lean agility of a scout. The dryness in his voice had finally evaporated, replaced by a heavy fatigue.

“I envy you, Arseny,” he said quietly, not looking up from the ground.

The physician, whose hands still bore traces of dark soil pressed beneath his fingernails, slowly turned his head toward him.

“What’s there to envy?” His voice sounded muffled, as if pushed out from the very bottom of his chest.

“You had years with him,” Lex squeezed the casing in his fist. “For real. You saw him grow up, heard his stupid jokes, argued with him, forced him to take his medicine. And me… I didn’t even get to tell him what we were to each other.”

Arseny raised his palms, looked at his scratched fingers, and gave a bitter chuckle.

“Years. I didn’t value any of it. Not a single second. To me, he was just a burden for the longest time—a kid I had to keep an eye on so he wouldn’t run into trouble. Someone annoying, and without a drop of my blood. And then, I blamed him for my father’s death.”

He dropped his hands and, for the first time all day, drew a deep, full breath of the ozone-heavy air. Thunder rolled across the hill, washing over us in a dense, rustling wall of downpour, but none of the three moved from their spot.

“You at least tried to be a good brother, Lex. I only realized who I’d lost when his heart stopped beating.”

Lex pulled a flask from his hip and gestured for Arseny to have a swig—stuff that would melt my brain in minutes, even mixed into ambrosia. That’s the trade-off when you don’t come with a stomach.

Seeing the two of them together under the storm, bound by the memory of a boy they had both loved and lost, brought a truth into focus. Personal attachment among the Apostles was a deadly taboo, a direct threat to the order Geryon tried to inflict over the entire planet. Aelius had been watched just as closely as his former Fermion comrades. And yet, despite all his discipline, he longed for a family.

“Drawing Alda was a risky thing to do,” I said quietly, the sound of my voice almost swallowed by the thunder.

“We humans are irrational and attached to our sweet memories, Veliard,” Lex replied, as he capped the flask. “However, when Alda got pregnant, my father knew exactly what was coming. If Geryon found out, he’d have had her erased on the spot.”

He leaned back against a wet stone, looking up into the darkening sky.

“I’m convinced Alda survived not just because of her own ingenuity, but because Aelius secretly paved her way. He cleared her route through the cordon and fed fake coordinates to the drones. And then he had the whole Winged Sun cell in Port Amundsen wiped out—a brutal purge to cover her tracks so Geryon would never suspect she made it out alive. And to prove his loyalty.”

Silence fell over the mound, broken only by the drumming of the rain. Lex didn’t bother sugarcoating it. Aelius had slaughtered an entire cell of resistance fighters just to buy the woman he loved a head start. He was a monster, but looking at Lex and the fresh grave, I had to admit he was a monster who left behind better men than himself.

“Hell…” Arseny murmured, his shoulders trembling slightly under his soaked coat. “The massacre she used to tell us about… She never forgave the Order for it. She hardly knew the aim was to keep her alive.”

Arseny closed his eyes, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper as old memories resurfaced.

“I remember your father in McMurdo, when he finally tracked us down just as she died... Questioning me. Frowning when my age didn’t match. Holding her body like it was the only treasure left in this world.” He shuddered while trying to suppress a sob. “A whole family disappeared because of one maniac on the Moon.”

“Geryon seems invincible, but believe me, he’s not,” I said.

Suddenly, we were not alone.

Lex was the first to notice a new human shape between trees, walking unsteadily under a misting drizzle. It was Violet, wrapped in an oversized, faded robe, his hand exploring the smooth-shaven scalp. He looked pale and fragile, his eyes hollowed by the lingering effects of the neuro-lock Geryon’s men had used to suppress his higher brain functions.

He blinked against the grey light, looking between the three soaked figures, the empty flask, and the raw mound of dirt marked with a crude metal cross. His memory stopped at the sterile quarantine ward back in Port Amundsen, and the strangers sitting beside me were a complete blank.

I heard Lex go still, the empty flask slipping from his fingers into the wet grass. Arseny made a small sound of pain—not quite a word—and looked away from the man standing over the fresh mound, as if the sight of Violet, alive and breathing, was somehow harder to bear than the grave itself.

I crossed the wet grass and pulled Violet into a tight embrace.

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Ivan — The "Pine Island" — 29 September 2190

By the time my watch ended, dawn was whitening the windows of the bridge. Danielle was supposed to relieve me. An extra quarter of an hour passed, and she still wasn't here.

Must have overslept, I thought, banishing anxiety from my mind. Luckily, I wouldn't have to survive another hand-to-hand fight with a Nautilus man to wake her up. Not this time.

The presidential suite was quiet, as it always was. Most of the others were asleep, scattered across sofas and spare cabins, but I saw no Danielle.

Could she have slipped past me?

Then Winston's door opened. She slipped out and pulled it gently shut behind her. She was barefoot and serene, her face glowing and surprisingly happy. At this early hour, her hair looked like moonshine.

I froze instead of just greeting my friend. Stupid.

For a moment, Danielle didn't notice me. She stretched, smoothed her messy hair, glanced down the corridor, and only then saw me standing there.

"Morning," she said, smiling with a corner of her mouth, as if trying to suppress a laugh.

"Morning."

I glanced at Winston's door, then back at the girl. Her mouth twitched.

"You're not going to ask."

"I wasn't planning to."

"Good."

She walked past me to the kitchen, only to find that nobody had boiled water.

"So much for tea," she muttered, and strode towards the exit, snatching the first parka she could grab off the couch along the way.

I looked at Winston's door again and then at Katrina's. It was half-open.

I had spent the last several hours alone on the bridge, replaying every second of the evening in my head—the way Kat had looked at me, the way she'd kissed me, the stories she told me, the moment she'd eventually gone to bed while I stayed behind to finish my watch.

I knew exactly where the line was, and I supposed that Danielle and Winston had spent the night on the other side of it.

I rubbed my face.

"Damn it, Danielle."

She stopped without turning.

"Yes?"

"Nothing."

Her quiet laugh followed me into my bedroom. Checking the bathroom, I found there was still some water to wash with. Ice-cold, but better than nothing.

Before that, though, I wanted to catch a quick glimpse of Katrina to make sure she was okay.

Her bed was made, and she was not there. It looked like she had left some time ago. Or, probably, she had never returned since our last goodbye.

Holy Sunshine, let her not move anywhere from the damn ship.


Katrina — The "Pine Island" — 28-29 September 2190

Here was my former "platinum" cage—the "Lake Vanda" suite. It was strange, almost disturbing, how drawn I felt to this place. Wei Guang, the psychologist from the Fermion crew, would have had a field day with that: running back to the room where I'd been a prisoner because it was the only place that felt predictably quiet.

Almost nothing had changed. The hot water was long gone, and a thin layer of dust covered the surfaces, though the ventilation filters and the fresh sea air outside were still holding the line.

I needed isolation to stop my head from spinning. Seeing Winston right now would be like scraping salt into an open wound. And Ivan... Ivan was pure gold, but he would also have to wait.

I pulled the pale embroidered spread off the bed. My whole body ached—a dull, throbbing reminder of my launch deck failure. But my new watch was many hours away, and if anyone bled out in the meantime, Danielle could track me down telepathically—assuming she had any strength left after our rescue.

Enough drama. What I needed was sleep and time for my shoulder to finish healing.

I lay in the dark, thinking of Ivan—the sunshine tangled in his hair, the rough warmth of his hand against my face, his stubble tickling my neck. The thought warmed me up and carried me under.

The morning was slow, uncanny in its calm. No alarms, no impending doom, nowhere to rush. I took a strange, almost forgotten pleasure in the simplest things: running a comb through my tangled hair, watching the dark waves slice past the hull, holding a physical book in my hands. For a fleeting second, I wondered if I could just stay in this bubble forever.

Then my skin reminded me that I desperately needed a bath.

I hunted down yesterday's "party boys" and coaxed them into heating some water for me. As it turned out, with the liner's plumbing dead, fresh water had to be delivered in buckets from the lower deck—through a removable floor hatch I hadn't even noticed during my short captivity on the liner. The buckets were hauled up on a rope looped over a hook that I had previously taken for a piece of decor.

My helpers from Outland took their task with surprising, almost theatrical dedication—likely out of pure boredom, or perhaps because having a purpose, even one involving buckets of hot water, kept the madness of these days at bay.

It turned out, I was not even the only lady on the ship who wanted to refresh herself.

It took four trips down the hidden hatch and a makeshift system of copper kettles heated over an engine-room brazier, but eventually, the deep porcelain tub in "Lake Vanda" was steaming. Absolute luxury, despite the smell of coal and rust.

"Compliments of the engine room, Doc," the short tawny Peter grinned from below, wiping a streak of soot off his forehead. "If you need a back-scrub—"

"And if you need me to inspect your liver—" I said, though I couldn't completely hide the faint smile.

I closed the hatch, hearing them laugh.

The heat was painful at first: it took me three attempts to get in. It bit into my raw skin, sending a violent shiver down my spine, but as I lowered myself all the way in and rested my head against the rim, the lingering tension in my muscles began to melt away.

I closed my eyes, let the steam wrap around my face and took a full, audible breath, as the last dull pain in my shoulder dissolved.

I had to decide how to get back Winston's trust. What to do in Heliopolis. How to deal with the threats we were facing. But today, I was saying a big firm no to everything but rest.

We need a doctor, Kat. Not another martyr.

The words echoed in the quiet bathroom, stripped of the wind and the drone's roar.

Photo by Alicia Petresc on Unsplash

After toweling off, I stepped back into the bedroom, wrapped in a coarse linen sheet, glanced at the mirror, then turned toward the wardrobe at the far wall.

Inside hung the whimsy garments Heldrich had prepared for his "guest" back when he still believed he could mold me into a rare doll. Fabrics that had survived half a century in sealed vacuum covers, completely untouched by the decay outside.

While locked down, I hadn't even tried them on: it felt like giving in to Heldrich's desires. I had preferred my Martian suit.

Now, Heldrich was on his way to the underworld, and the clothes felt just like clothes, not a symbol of sexual slavery. However, I chose something more or less modest.

The fabric beneath was a deep, slightly shimmering teal—a batwing maxi dress with a V-neck. Most likely, a sort of thick silk, created in a world that didn't know what it meant to freeze in the ice.

Why the hell not?

The dress flattered my current shape, hiding my rail-thin thighs from the view. The fabric was gentle on my tender, healing shoulder. The color brought out the green in my eyes.

Lingering in front of the tall mirror, I gathered my hair, still damp at the ends, into a loose knot at the nape of my neck, and pinned it with a chopstick found in the dining room. Next, I needed to check if there was a pair of normal shoes, not the nightmarish stilettos.

Then I heard the heavy knock: two measured strokes against the wood.

Holy Sunshine! Should I open?


Ivan — The "Pine Island" — 29 September 2190

I hoped that I hadn't disturbed Katrina’s sleep, though it was afternoon. The bottle of white wine I had discovered earlier today—Sauternes, the year 2128. No idea, but I hoped it still tasted good.

The clack—here she was. The door opened, and I nearly dropped the bottle. The air stuck in my throat.

She was smiling at me. Not sleeping—transformed.

A long silky dress draped softly over her frame, smoothing away her sharp angles, while damp jet-black strands meandered around her neck. Something in her face had transformed, too. Now, she wasn't a battle-weary medic and warrior but someone far superior.

I stood there—bedazzled by her regal looks, utterly undone, unable to tear my eyes away.

Katrina lost her composure beneath my gaze almost at once. Gone was her habitual poise, a flash of confusion flickered in her eyes. She spoke quickly, looking away:

"Ivan... I'm sorry I didn't return the thermos sooner. I got a bit distracted and..."

Her voice was uneven, her face was on fire.

"No, I... that's not why I came," I stammered out, tripping over my own words and hastily putting the wine on a bystanding rack. "I mean... You just... you look..."

Devastatingly beautiful.

Taken unaware by the effect of her splendor, Katrina scooped up the thermos from the dresser and held it out to me: she was desperate to end the awkward exchange.

As she passed it, I caught her wrist, feeling her rapid pulse and the tender warmth of her skin beneath my fingers. With a gasp, Katrina leaned into me, pressing her cheek to mine. Still holding her wrist, I stepped into her cabin, pulling the door shut behind me with my free hand and throwing the deadbolt.

Then I pressed her to the wall—and, gosh, she was hungry. A storm, her hands everywhere. And then—

"Man, your wound is too dangerous for this kind of heroics…"

This hit me like a sentence. However, instead of shoving me out, Kat shoved me backward onto a sofa.

“I’ll handle this personally.”

Her palms pressed firmly against my shoulders, anchoring me into the cushions. Even in her haste, she was careful to avoid the gunshot from Nevis and the stab wound from Leo.

She slid onto my lap, straddling me with a long, possessive kiss while her fingers unbuckled my belt.

"Then I'd hate to stay in your debt," I muttered against her lips, letting my hand rest on her thigh before slipping beneath the silk. She didn't flinch or pull away; instead, she let out a quiet, shuddering sigh, wrapping her cool fingers around my red-hot flesh.

Her inner thigh was already moist and warm, sending a jolt of desire through me. I hissed. Kat responded immediately, guiding my hand higher. The chill of her touch against my overheated skin nearly ended the game right there. I had to choke back the memory of Nevis's muzzle-flash to cool the surge and claw back control.

Too close.

Kat sensed the shift and slowed. She rained kisses across my face and returned them twofold. When my fingers finally filled her, her breath hitched. She threw back her head, exposing the defenseless curve of her neck. I couldn't resist nipping at the bare skin, drinking in the low moans that followed. I wanted to dissolve into her.

She leaned in close, her right hand settled into a steady rhythm. Her eyelashes brushed my temple; her breath echoed in my bones. The fact that we both remained almost fully clothed only sharpened my desire.

As Katrina slipped deeper into it, I added a third finger. She stiffened, her free hand clawing into my hair, but then she relaxed, yielding to the stretch. My left hand slid down from her nape, over her shoulder, and lower. It hooked into the low neckline of her dress, freeing her tender breast. I cupped its weight and pressed my mouth against her pale skin.

Katrina trembled and choked out my name, burying the sound against my shoulder, and her grip turned borderline painful. She arched into my hand, and the sudden movement pulled viciously at the unhealed flesh of my stab wound.

White-hot agony slammed into pleasure. And then—the tipping point. A sudden eruption.

Another ragged, heavy groan tore loose; this time it was mine. It left my lungs starved of air, and the world went black for a fraction of a second.

God damn it. How had I come apart so soon, like some rookie?

As the static cleared, I dragged breath back into my chest. Kat lay heavy against me, her forehead resting on my shoulder. For once, she wasn't watching me, wasn't measuring the room or the exits—just breathing against my collarbone and drifting somewhere I couldn't follow. I realized I'd been bracing for her to pull away, the way everything good in my life eventually did.

"Ivan. Stay with me. Sleep with me," she whispered when I brought her back with a new kiss. "We could repeat it a bit later, huh?"

"So that I could clear my name?"

"Give me a break." Her hand found the bandage at my side, resting there without pressing—as if she could heal the wound by wanting it. "I loved every moment."

I should have said something. Instead, I just let the weight of her settle into me and tried not to count how long it could last.

With or without making love, sleeping next to Katrina felt like an impossible dream. The kind you don't say out loud, because naming it is how you lose it.

We didn't even make it to the bed. The radio mercilessly broke the magic.

"Katrina, Ivan — to the bridge. I've caught a transmission."

Winston didn't say where it came from or who sent it: his excitement revealed everything to us. We tidied ourselves and rushed to him.

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Katrina — The "Pine Island" — 28 September 2190

Four ready doses of Spark. A third of the opal mushroom supply. Two dried fish the size of my forearm. A jar of hardtack. A flask of water, a manual desalinator. A fully charged power pack for the Svyatogor.

If there's anyone left to save in McMurdo, I have to try. My brother is free and surrounded by friends, but there is no place for me on this ship.

Redemption? Some things are beyond it; I'm doing what I must.

I hope I can lower the lifeboat on my own.

On the way from the galley to the boat deck, I nearly choked on a thick cloud of booze fumes. Heading toward me, holding onto each other, was a trio: a girl with a kilo of jewelry all over her body and two Orderlies—one short and brown-skinned, the other a lanky short-haired blond. They didn't try to attack, however; instead, they asked if the ship was really underway or if the deck was shaking beneath their feet just from a hangover. I asked if they had families in Seven Winds, but the guys turned out to be from Outland, while their companion, with a ragged storm cloud instead of hair, merely shrugged.

"Then you're lucky," I said. "Where have you been hanging out for over twenty-four hours?"

"Uh... Secret!" the blond playfully wagged a finger at me.

"Go to the presidential suite and wake up Deshar," I replied. "He'll tell you everything."

"Deshar? In the presidential?" the girl raised an eyebrow.

"Come on, Farah, I'm dying to see this!" said the shorter kid.

"Ivan, we have new arrivals," I told Vassilevsky over the radio, briefly reporting their number and condition. "I didn't notice any weapons on them, but that doesn't mean they don't have any."

"Kat, can we meet and have a talk?"

"Negative," I replied, turning off the radio.

I'd probably never see Ivan again, and it deepened my sadness. His soothing, encouraging presence was the only reason I hadn't broken down in front of Heldrich and my brother. He seemed to truly care what was happening to me.

Hoping not to run into anyone else on the way, I continued on. Each leg felt ten kilograms heavier. Leaving hurt, and staying was impossible.

The bright blue sky with rare thin clouds and the peaceful sea shimmering in the sunlight. The weather was perfect for a voyage and looked nothing like my mood.

Bay Seven at last. The pod sat in its cradle like a sealed capsule, faded red, no portholes. I climbed in, dragged my bag after me, and sealed the hatch. The click of it locking felt louder than it should have.

Inside: twenty reclined seats, a crash harness, and a long-dead panel of controls. I found the release lever exactly where the maintenance log said it would be—red, spring-loaded, behind a safety flap.

I flipped the flap and pulled the lever—in vain. No hiss of hydraulics, no click of disengaging clamps, not even a shudder.

I pulled it again. Harder, like brute force could make up for whatever I didn't understand about the mechanism.

The pod was still.

I found the manual override panel below the main console—a cracked plastic cover over three toggles and a keypad, half the labels worn away to gray plastic. I flipped them all anyway.

The pod lurched.

Metal shrieked against metal, like the whole cradle was fighting to let go and only half succeeding.

I was thrown sideways against the harness as the pod tilted, nose down, still gripped by something at the stern.

Through the hull I could hear it now—one clamp released, the other jammed, holding the boat half out of its cradle at a steep, sickening angle, swinging gently with the roll of the ship.

"No, no, no—"

I was talking to the boat like it could hear me, like reason had ever worked on machines built before my parents were born. If it let go now, I'd drop onto steel, not onto sea.

I unbuckled, braced myself against the tilted floor, and crawled to the aft porthole—the one true window in the whole pod, no bigger than my hand.

Through it I could see the jammed clamp: a thick mechanical claw, corroded at the hinge, gripping the pod's stern strut and refusing to let go.

Fifty years of salt air did that to metal, and, of course, nobody gave a damn.

I had a manual release rod in the emergency kit under the seat—I remembered that much. A meter of hollow steel meant to be fed through an access port and used to physically force the clamp open from inside the housing.

My hands were shaking as I found it. Or maybe it was the pod, still swinging. Behind me, through the sealed hatch, muffled by a meter of hull, I heard footsteps.

Someone running along the boat deck. Someone who had definitely heard the grinding.

Ivan's voice, distant, alarmed, calling my name.

Orca's son… There was no going back. I had maybe twenty seconds.

I jammed the rod into the access port and threw my whole weight against it. I forgot, though, that I still weighed almost nothing.

The rod skidded off the hinge and I went down hard against the tilted floor, the metal clattering out of my hands and rolling somewhere I couldn't reach without unclipping myself from the one handhold keeping me from sliding into the porthole wall.

A month ago I could have forced that clamp with one arm. Now the pain shot through my shoulder despite the wound being already closed.

The footsteps outside had stopped: he was right outside the hatch now.

"Kat," said Ivan's voice, muffled but close. "You've forgotten something."

"What's that?" I replied.

"Your medical kit from Mirny."

"Let it be yours, okay? Now go away. Please."

"Negative. There's a drone circling the ship, Winter."

I went still. Could this be a lie to trick me into staying?

"Came in low about ten minutes ago, made two passes over the stern, and it's still up there. You'd know that," he said, "if you hadn't turned off your radio. Maybe, right now, it's taking aim."

My hand found the edge of the porthole. I didn't look through it. I didn't need to—I could hear it now, underneath the wind, a thin mechanical whine circling somewhere above the boat deck.

A boat wedged half out of its cradle, swinging, obviously containing a living body. Easiest target.

"You're not sneaking off this deck unnoticed," Ivan told me. "Whatever you were planning—they saw you."

I pressed my forehead against the cold metal wall of the pod and closed my eyes.

"The clamp's jammed," I groaned. "I can't force it. I don't have the strength."

A long breath on the other side of the hull. And then:

"Please, open."

I reached for the interior release without letting myself think about it further. I had to admit that I secretly wanted to see him, to feel his gentle, controlled strength. To feel saner.

The hatch cracked open with a hiss of equalizing pressure, and cold sea air rushed in, salt and metallic tang. Ivan was already there, one hand braced against the frame, the other reaching in before the hatch had even finished swinging.

"Easy. Easy—"

He got an arm under me, careful around the wound, and I hated how much I needed it—how the moment his hand found my ribs, the strength I'd been faking for the last ten minutes just left me.

I sagged into him, and he took the weight without comment, like he'd been expecting to. Above us, the drone was circling wider now, looking like a small black fly.

Ivan glanced up, and his expression changed.

"Kat—move."

"What?"

He grabbed me around the waist and hauled me sideways.

The drone dropped. For one second it seemed to hang motionless against the blue sky.

Then it came down fast. The pod's faded-red hull filled my entire field of vision.

"Down!"

Ivan threw me beneath the gunwale.

Then the drone struck with a violent metallic crack, followed by a deep, hollow boom that I felt through the deck.

The nose of the lifeboat disappeared in a cloud of splintered insulation and fragments of old composite. The pod lurched violently against its remaining clamp, then tore free.

Something slammed into the deck beside us. The lifeboat dropped. For a heartbeat it hung there, broken and smoking, caught between the ship and the sea.

Then the last restraint snapped, and the pod fell away. It hit the water nose-first and vanished behind a wall of white spray. I stared over the gunwale, unable to breathe. Ivan kept one arm locked around me, holding me down as fragments rattled across the deck.

He pulled me farther from the edge, pinning me against the steel bulwark. His grip on my jacket was so tight his knuckles were white, and I could feel him shaking from the shock.

We'd never been so close, the thought flashed through my mind.

"You almost got yourself killed," he snapped, his voice rough and stripped of its usual calm authority. Angry as hell.

"The drone hit it—" I murmured.

"Because you were sitting in a trapped tin can like a target in a shooting gallery!" Ivan roared over the wind, shoving a hand through his damp hair. "What the hell were you thinking, Katrina? A solo run to McMurdo in a jammed pod?"

"I had to try!" I shouted back, the adrenaline finally giving way to frustration. "My brother doesn't want me here! I'm an alien on this ship, Ivan! At least in McMurdo I could have saved someone!"

"With what? The medicine in your bag?" He stepped closer, towering over me, his eyes dark with anger and something painfully vulnerable. "If that drone was half a second faster, the cure would be at the bottom of the ocean. And you'd be dead just like Antero."

The name hit me like a physical blow. I turned my face away toward the cold spray coming off the hull.

"I’ve seen Antero's body," I whispered, the fight suddenly draining out of me. "I know."

I wished I had given poor Pathfinder a proper burial. But this was not the behavior The Lost Kids had been expecting from their leader1.

"Then stop acting like you're eager to join him," Ivan said, his tone dropping from a yell to a half-whisper that cut deeper than any shout. "We need a physician, Kat. Not another martyr."

"Sandy can—"

"She's been a henchwoman of Heldrich for years. You want us to trust her with Winston's life? With mine?"

The white-hot sunshine hurt my eyes, and inside, everything felt scraped bare. "Winston doesn't even look at me, Ivan. He doesn't want me in his life. For a reason."

"He's damaged like you, Katrina," Ivan said in a low voice. His hand on my shoulder relaxed a bit, his thumb brushing against the heavy fabric of my coat as if reassuring himself I was still there. "He'll have to learn that survival isn't pretty. But he can't learn anything from a sister who snuck off to feed herself to the fish."

I sucked in a painful breath, the guilt swirling like a snake in my chest, and noticed the tight strain on his face. He was both mad at my recklessness and terrified of what almost happened.

Ivan unclipped the heavy thermos from his belt and pressed it into my hands. The warmth of the metal radiated right through my gloves.

"Now drink," he said, his voice returning to that steady anchor I'd grown so foolishly dependent on. "You're still on duty."

I couldn't remember anything that had ever tasted better. Maybe the meal Randy and I had enjoyed at Von Bellingshausen came close.

"Randy," he said, the name cutting in like a thrown knife. "You risk your neck, you almost blow yourself to pieces... Is this really about the cure, Kat? Or—"

"It's not like that—"

"Then tell me what it is," Ivan cut in softer, releasing his grip on my shoulder completely, so that I wouldn't feel cornered. "Because it looks like you're ready to die for him."

I sipped the tea.

"I was ready to die for my brother, too."

He took the thermos for a moment and swallowed a mouthful himself.

"Ivan, Randy's not my lover."

And why on Earth was I explaining myself?

Slowly, he took my hands and lingered, as if asking for my permission. I almost hated it—so unlike him.

For a moment I let myself weigh it—the cold, the drone, the thousand reasons this was a mistake. Then I stopped counting them. I broke the distance, leaning in and kissing him—greedily, as if we were going to die in a second.

Who knew when? At least, I would go happy.

He answered me with sudden fervor. His teeth caught my lip. Ah, yes. This was really happening.

In a second or two, his hands were in my hair, on my face, on my waist.

And then—his radio. Winston.

Ivan kept one arm around me as he answered. Then he led me to the upper bridge, leaving me with the tea and warning me against stepping out in the open air. Winston's drone-trap was there and ready for its next prey.

He was going to release me from duty at nightfall. More tea. Another hug. Another kiss. Some people talk about butterflies in their chest. Mine felt like a pack of dragons. With larger wings, and closer to the sky. And the fall… The fall could be lethal.


Ivan — The "Pine Island" — 28 September 2190

"You didn't kill him when I ordered you to, but you did it after a delay. Why?" Winston asked, nodding toward Heldrich's body, thoroughly covered with a thick gunmetal gray curtain.

"To keep him from driving us completely apart. Anyone could see the scoundrel was getting an absolute kick out of it. Even in chains."

"You'd better admit you gave in to your emotions."

"I admit it. Which doesn't change what I said. Don't you want to ask how your sister is doing?"

"I don't have a sister anymore. Ivan, there are things you don't do under any circumstances. Not even for family."

"She's tried to escape, Winston. She almost became drone bait."

"And she would have deserved her end just as much as Heldrich," said the Martian, staring at a wall.

"Have you lost your damn mind?" I snapped. "She was trying to save you, you idiot. You can ask Danielle—she peered into her memory. As usual, without permission."

"So I take it you've already asked?"

"I know enough. Back in the holds, I told you about my old man, remember? Anyone would have preferred a bullet to the back of the head over..."

"What do you want from me? Nobody is punishing Kat or executing her. Let her live her life and do whatever she wants. Just far away from me."

"They say guys' brains mature later than girls'. But to be this far gone..." I spat. "Your resentment's like a knife between her shoulder blades."

"You say it because none of your Winged Sun pals died to her rabid dogs," Winston said, his voice devoid of life. "It's not hatred. It's principles."

"Principles? Or just a coward's shield so you don't have to look her in the eye?"

Winston clenched his fists but remained silent.

"Listen to me very carefully, Winston, and stop playing the martyr," I said. "Today, Katrina ran because she believed she was the curse destroying you. She was ready to perish just to give you peace."

The Martian pilot folded his arms, his green eyes burning into me.

"She's ashamed, and it's only natural," he said.

"If she runs away again and gets killed, you won't be a hero standing on his principles." I turned toward the door. "You'll be a brother who chose his pride over his sister's life. And trust me, no amount of righteousness will ever help you carry this burden."

I went to find Deshar and the Outland boys—Roman and Peter. They were to douse Heldrich's curtain-wrapped corpse in fish oil, load it into an operating lifeboat, set it ablaze, and release it into the ocean. My job was to keep watch for danger from the air. My conscience wouldn't let me simply throw a fallen enemy to the crabs, no matter how fast and safe it might be.

It was almost a pity I couldn't have a drink before my watch. But those young rascals had almost certainly stumbled upon the very cache of top-shelf booze I had only supposed to exist. Fishing that information out of them was worth the effort.


Katrina — The "Pine Island" — 28 September 2190

When it started getting dark, I watched from above as the burning boat drifted farther away. Judging by the roaring flames, the guys had clearly used more than just fish oil; then again, extra fuel wasn't hard to come by, even on a nuclear-powered vessel.

Deshar's voice rose from the deck: Make it to Valhalla, old man! The Outland boys roared. The girls must have stayed away from the dangerous open deck.

Heldrich wasn't old at all. But it didn't matter.

I kept watching the flames flickering in the gathering darkness. Their heat seemed to be reaching me. Just an illusion.

A few hours ago, I'd been inside another boat, determined to leave everything behind—Winston, Danielle, this ship. Ivan.

There were other boats, and there might even be one whose mechanism worked; otherwise the Orderlies couldn't have escaped the ship.

I could still leave, but I didn't want to. It wasn't because of the omnipresent "birds" and "bats" of Geryon, or because the sea would kill me.

Ivan was the one keeping me anchored to this ship. And, for the first time in forever, I wanted to be somewhere for a reason other than survival.

Previous chapter

“Cicada!” Lex could barely stop himself from yelling. “Change of plans—defend the perimeter! By any means necessary, don’t let those bastards land or linger over the Temple. I’m sending a man to the roof. Do not engage him.”

Once he got confirmation, he turned back to us with the grim resolve of a doomed man.

“We move now! While Gwyn’s pack is still in the air! Tin Can, you’ve brought her here, you put her down. Get up to the roof, through the hatch, and onto the rafters. Randy, you hold the annex so our ‘guests’ don’t flank us. I’ll tell you when you can join in.”

Photo by Daria Goldfinch on Unsplash

I expected the kid to resist and demand to come with me, but he took the order like a good soldier. The only issue was the weapon.

“You could’ve at least given me an axe or something,” Randy grunted. “I’m afraid I can’t handle the anti-grav, and I might end up hurting you guys instead.”

“You remember everything,” Lex said in a voice that brooked no argument. He opened a wall cabinet and pulled out a small metal case containing a respirator. “Tin Can, how’s your air filtration?”

“Solid. I can go about five minutes without any air at all.”

“Good,” he said, slipping his head under his helmet and passing the respirator and a comm headset to Randy.

We patched into the shared channel and split up to our positions.

I retraced Gwyn’s steps, already hearing the roar of the rotor blades. Judging by the distant shouts and gunfire reaching my ears, another landing force was attacking Port Amundsen from the sea, drawing their attention. The Moon Cross men were firing at the helicopter too—using a mobile anti-aircraft system from the military armaments of the Golden Age.

The “bird” spat back a rain of lead, chopping the people down. An aircraft attack — this was something the Moon Cross was weakly prepared for—at least, in Antarctica.

A massive swarm of Geryon’s drones could have sacrificed themselves to bring down the enemy machine, but, strangely, they didn’t seem to notice the fight.

I reached the hatch leading to the rafters, pulled myself up onto the narrow cat-walk, and stayed low. Beneath me, the central hall of the Temple opened up like a sunken colosseum. Down at the foot of the main altar, the Prelates of Geryon hustled to stabilize the connection with Solweig.

“The relay! Check the relay!” one of them said. I didn’t know who was who, and that bothered me.

In the center of the dais, bathed in a reddish emergency light, sat Violet’s stasis pod—luckily, open. A breathing mask on his face was keeping my friend sedated. His head was now clean-shaven, and I could see a long translucent cable meander between his nape and a sleek opalescent cube, apparently sent from Solweig. The cube itself was attached to nothing else.

I saw Gwyn on a raft across the hall. She had sensed my approach in advance — she made sure I wouldn’t get her right away. Before I could aim and shoot, she fell down with a cylindric canister in her hand. A canister I had not noticed her packing on the Marmarion.

A thud from her landing. Then, a clank. Then, a hiss. A thick, milky-white gas erupted, expanding in abundant waves and rapidly filling the hall.

Lex? Oh, no. Gwyn.

“To the annex! Everyone!” I heard Lex roar to his people. “You’re under attack!”

The Prelates did not obey him, though, except one, who fled, covering his eyes. Choking, they circled the stasis pod, in a vain attempt to shield the Vessel from danger. Before one could count to five, they dropped to their knees, clawed at their throats, and slumped unconscious onto the concrete floor. The guards fared little better—most of their improvised visors were useless against military-grade nerve agents: only three of them had filters in their helmets. Within ten seconds, three-quarters of the floor was silent.

I jumped down to get the Nautilus bitch. Invisible to humans in the toxic clouds, Gwyn leapt to Violet’s pod, her active camouflage bending the faint red light into a watery ripple. She jammed a syringe into his jugular—an antidote. Of course. The nerve agent didn’t care whose lungs it filled, and a dead Vessel was worthless to her. The Nautilus agent was protecting her cargo.

I brought up my LIPC gun and pulled the trigger.

The barrel bucked—then burst apart in my hand in a white flash and a spray of fused components. No pain: there never is. Just the sudden weight of a dead weapon and a memory surfacing through the smog: Gwyn on the Marmarion, crouched over my harness, “just running a diagnostic, big brother.”

My hand still worked. Mostly—two fingers wouldn’t close all the way, servos chewed to slag. Good enough for iron sights, not for precision.

I slapped the ruined gun off my belt and drew the Glock, aiming straight for her head.

I fired.

The shot went wide by an inch—my mangled grip pulling it just enough—the 9mm round grazing her shoulder and tearing through the compact optical emitter on her tactical harness. Her stealth module blew out with a sharp sizzle, stripping away her invisibility and leaving her exposed right beside the altar.

The cyborg woman stood in full view, the air still warping and flickering around her. Above us, the transport’s chin guns stuttered—and then choked.

Down in the smog, Lex and the three guards whose filters had held snapped their weapons toward the two of us at once.

“Halt! Don’t shoot that one—it’s the Prophet’s!” Lex barked, his free arm swinging toward me as I scooped Violet out of the pod and turned for the small door to the covered walkway, the one that fed into the anti-grav hangar.

Violet was dead weight in my arms, the opalescent cube dragging behind him on its cable like an umbilical cord I didn’t have time to cut.

“Finish her!” I ordered, nodding at Gwyn. The men fired.

Outside, a high-pitched whine of the Golden Age anti-aircraft rig outside tore through the air. We never made it to the passage.

The transport, hit by the Moon Cross fighters outside the Temple, sheared through the roof’s support beams and slammed straight onto the upper catwalks with an earth-shattering crash.

The world went white with noise and dust. Reinforced glass and tons of twisted steel rained down into the central hall, erupting into a roaring barrier of flame between us and the other half of the Temple. The impact sheared off the northern rafter completely, cutting us equally from the main gate and the passage.

“To the annex!” I commanded. It was the only way out, and Randy still was there.

Lex gestured to the three surviving warriors, pointing toward the two lifeless fighters and the medic, reasoning that they might still be saved. He brought up the rear to cover their retreat, and it was a good thing he did: someone from the downed helicopter let off a burst of fire, as a section of the gallery collapsed behind us.

The Apostle’s room was missing not just its door, but a sizeable chunk of the wall as well. Randy—still in his respirator, trembling, yet unharmed—crouched behind an overturned table, its surface scorched and pockmarked by fire from outside. Beyond the breach lay several broken bodies in Hammerhead armor, half-sunk in the bloody mud: the ones who’d stormed in from the sea.

This guy from McMurdo might despise violence, but he was no coward.

“Good work, brother,” Lex told him warmly.

“Are we leaving?” Randy asked, his face gleaming at the sight of Violet in my arms.

“Hold on!” Lex replied, coughing violently as he tried to call his man from the Eight. “Cicada, this is Cricket! Report your status! Cicada!”

Whether Cicada ever answered, we never found out. Mid-word, Lex’s voice cracked into a wet rasp—and then he simply folded, knees buckling, the helmet tipping forward as he went down. The burst that had raked our retreat had punched clean through the filter housing on his own rig.

Randy caught the armored body before it hit the floor, gasping at its weight.

“Lex? Lex!“ The guy’s hands scrabbled at the seals of the helmet. “He’s not—Veliard, he’s not breathing right—”

I had no antidote, no idea whether the man had one in him, no idea whether the scout who’d roped us into this was already a corpse in my young friend’s arms. And I needed him alive—his plan, his exits, his lies—all of it died with him if he stopped here.

“Grab his feet,” I growled, hauling Violet back up over my shoulder. The weight was agonizing, my internal actuators whining under the strain, but adrenaline drowned out the warning lights on my HUD.

“What about his comms?” Randy asked, his voice shaking as he hooked his arms under Lex’s shoulders. “Cicada—”

“Forget the comms. Cicada’s on his own now,” I cut him off, stepping outside the Apostle’s shattered quarters. “Let’s not waste a second.”

“Prophet,” said one of the Moon Cross fighters who’d fallen in with us. “Your orders?”

They were still taking me for a robotic avatar of Geryon, and that could be useful. I glanced at the name tag on his coat.

“Santyago—you and Fernando carry him to the hangar. The rest of you, drag the wounded into the fresh air and wait for the Healers.”

The Moon Cross soldiers bowed from the waist and obeyed.

The gunfire over the ruined temple and the shattered flank of the hangar had gone quiet. I went first with Violet, Santyago and Fernando hauling Lex behind me, Randy covering our backs.

Reaching the neighboring building took an eternity.

The exchange of fire had ceased, replaced by the crackle of burning debris and the low groans of the wounded scattered across the mud. Among them lay the crew of the old anti-aircraft rig—the gunner who’d brought down the transport slumped over his smoking console, blood pooling beneath his boots.

Somewhere in the haze an emergency siren wailed, tangled with the heavy toll of gongs, as a medic squad scrambled toward the slaughter.

I caught a machine presence and froze within five steps of the entrance.

Stepping out from the shadows of the main archway was another cyborg—built on the same sleek, lithe frame as Gwyn, likely part of the Nautilus vanguard that had dropped from the ruined roof of the first transport. Gwyn had mentioned two more of them at Njord.

Then a thundering chop of rotor blades came from the east. A second, heavier helicopter—painted in the dark insignia of Nautilus—swept over the ridge, banking hard to bring its chin-mounted minigun onto our position.

We were caught in the open, pinned between the assassin on the ground and the gunship in the air.

The cyborg lunged, a blade snapping out from its wrist—I drove it back with a kick, buying a second. Before I could shift Violet’s weight to draw my Glock, Randy yelled, “Down!” Instinctively I dropped, bringing Violet with me and shielding him. Fernando did the same over Lex.

Santyago rolled and fired. And Randy swept the anti-grav beam into the assassin’s chest—not to kill it, just to get it off us. The invisible force slammed into the machine like a freight train, ripping its boots from the ground and hurling it up and back—straight into the low, hammering path of the descending gunship.

Hull integrity compromised; threat to life: high.

The helicopter opened fire a heartbeat too late. Its armored frame met the cyborg mid-air, and the assassin’s body went into the main rotor assembly. Metal shrieked, the blades caught the machine and burst apart, and a spray of sparks exploded across the sky in a hail of lethal shrapnel.

The gunship pitched hard to one side, engine screaming, and began its spiraling descent toward the ocean below—the exact water I was supposed to dive into with Violet in my arms.

A heavy splash. Then—a blood-chilling cry.

Randy was in the mud, one shoulder pinned to the ground by a jagged shard of blade-metal, his right side torn open by a round. I leapt toward him without even checking the other two.

No. Just no. Of all of us, he deserves it least.

He went calm as soon as I knelt next to him. I cut his coat open: blood everywhere. The Defenders Katrina had put in his veins were all I had to count on.

“How’s Lex? Violet?” Randy whispered through the pain. Or had his brain simply switched it off?

“They’re fine, Randy! You’ve saved us,” I said, and turned to Fernando—already beside us, medkit open.

“Saline. Blood substitute powder. Now!” I told the soldier, reaching for the chitosan dressing. The essential thing now was to close the wound and slow the bleeding. I sensed he needed drainage too, but I had neither the equipment nor the medical skill.

“Fox… Kat… I never asked if she survived,” Randy said.

He was talking. A good sign. It wasn’t easy to answer while trying to stop the blood, but I did my best.

“Soon you’ll see Kat, her brother, and more good people.” I barely caught Rakhmanov’s name before it slipped out. The Moon Cross were still our enemies.

Tranexamic acid. Intracardiac adrenaline. Being a cyborg serves me well: through the years, my left hand had grown as agile as the right one, now damaged. They never tremble.

Acting in Geryon’s name came with another advantage. Fernando brought up a young blond Brother Healer, already splattered in someone else’s blood. His eyes showed nothing, but I saw him bite his lip under his mask as he mixed the blood substitute with the saline.

“Help me, brother,” Randy said. Brother was simply how everyone in the order addressed each other, so I paid it no mind. The two of them looked nothing alike.

It took some effort to step back and not crowd the poor little physician. But my HUD had already flagged what my hands couldn’t fix: the kid’s blood pressure was sliding, and the Defenders Kat had seeded in his veins were spread too thin across too many wounds. Blood loss critical. Intervention required.

I told myself a Brother trained by the order would be enough. I had two other men to check on. Luckily, Lex was breathing. I ordered Santyago to strip him out of his armor, and carried Violet into the hangar, where the anti-grav waited, prepped for launch.

His face was calm, almost serene. Heart rate: forty-four beats per minute. Body temperature: thirty-five.

Better than I expected. No injuries other than the wound in his leg, bandaged with a great care.

The cube was still attached to him. I tapped lightly on it, and letters surfaced: “Task successful. End session?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Session complete. Safe to disconnect.”

“If only you could hear me, my heart,” I murmured, removing the cable and holding him close—but the words weren’t for Violet. They were for her, the voice I’d carried through more years and more wreckage than I cared to count.

She answered. Not right away, and not with Violet’s lips. Her voice came from the cube.

“Veliard? Is that really you? I feel like I’m not in the right place. And Geryon… He was so close!”

“Whiskey,” A warm light flickered in the dark cave of my mind, and I let myself say her name like a prayer. “You’re alive. I promise… I promise they’ll never touch you again. I’m bringing you home.”

“My love—they removed me from Violet! I feel like I’m in a prison!” Her panic bled through every word.

“It won’t be for long. We’ll sort it out in Heliopolis. We’ll find a way,” I told her, feeling relief. She had, after all, moved into Violet’s mind without his consent1 (since then, we hadn’t let anyone into our secret of three, not even Rakhmanov). Whatever happened next, at least neither Violet nor I would carry that weight any longer.

“What’s been happening, darling? It feels like I’ve slept a whole month!”

“We came to take you both from the Moon Cross,” I told her. “And Nautilus interfered. These bastards thought too much of themselves.”

“Nautilus? You need peace with it, Veliard. You need an alliance. I’ve told you...”

“They don’t need my friendship, Wi. They want me dead. Today, they have almost got me.”

“Hell… And I’ve got no more arms to hold you.”

“I have to go, Wi,” I said, guilty to the bone. “The battle’s not over.”

“I know. I love you.”

Behind me, the Healer’s voice had changed—no longer giving orders, just repeating Randy’s name, quieter each time. I didn’t turn around. I couldn’t. If I looked, I’d stop being useful to anyone.

Another chorus of screams tore in from outside. Randy again? No. Those belonged to Lex.

Or to some demon.

I caught Lex slapping the physician and swearing like a madman, tears rushing down his cheeks and falling upon his chest. When I grabbed him by the shoulders he was about to snap at me—but even now, the kid remembered the legend he’d invented. He knelt in the blood-soaked mud and embraced my knees, because he had no one else to hug.

“Randy,” he breathed between sobs. “We’ve lost him.”

Table of Contents

Pamper Yourself

“Randy.” Lex’s voice had gone quieter now, almost conversational. “There’s a boat waiting at the fishing pier. The drones will read you as one of ours and leave you alone. I mark you with our tag, and you walk out.”

“Are you saying you won’t be punished for helping me escape?”

Lex gave a small shrug. “Soon, nobody will care what happens to you. The cyborgs—” he tipped the anti-grav device in our direction “—are another matter. They’ll draw every eye in the district.”

“I trusted you once already,” Randy said, stepping toward him. “I won’t do it twice.”

“You still think this is about you?” Lex asked. “It isn’t. They want Violet. You’re just a loose end who might know something.”

“It changes nothing,” Randy cut in. “The second I head for the pier, you’ll kill them, won’t you? That’s why I’m saying no.”

What came next tightened something cold and heavy inside me.

“They’ve already started the interfacing ritual, Randy.”

Randy went still in a way that was worse than panic. Gwyn’s arm tensed under my hand like drawn wire. I felt as if sucked into endless vacuum where hope was an impossible entity.

“Bloody graveworms,” Randy breathed.

Lex nodded once. “That’s not the only problem. The Temple is heavily guarded.All my men are there, except two. One’s down with a strange cough in the isolation ward you just crawled out of. The other’s at the pier, waiting to cover your escape.”

Randy shook his head in a final refusal. Then the Moon Cross man spoke to Gwyn and me:

“Besides my fighters, inside the Temple there are at least a dozen more armed men. I don’t know what fantasy the two of you brought in here, but you are not getting near Violet by force. And he’s in no state to run. They’ve locked down his higher nervous activity to keep his brain from burning out.”

“Why should we believe a word you say?” I asked, keeping a hard grip on Gwyn’s arm before she did something rash.

Lex’s mouth twitched. “Because, pops, you’re still breathing.”

He lowered the anti-grav a fraction. Not trust, just a pause.

“What do you gain by keeping us alive?” I asked. “Forgive me if I find your human benevolence difficult to admire.”

“I’m offering a trade,” Lex said. “Everyone, including Invisible Eight, thinks I’m still in quarantine. It gives me a certain freedom. You help me break the ritual, and we buy time.”

“How?” Randy asked. His voice had gone reserved, tactical in a way that made him sound far older than the boy I had first met at the hydro station.

“The relay on the hangar roof,” said the Moon Cross scout. “Damage it, and the transmission from the Moon cuts out. They’ll have to repair it, maybe even send someone for parts. More likely, Geryon postpones the ritual until tomorrow, and Violet will be locked again.”

“That gives us a window to retrieve Violet from the hospital,” Gwyn said. “Unless they repair it too fast.”

Lex’s eyes flicked to her. “Then I pull my boys outside, gas the building, and you move in the confusion.”

“Your gas could hurt Violet,” Randy said.

“It’s non-lethal, brother,” Lex replied. “I use it to put people to sleep, not bury them.”

“Aren’t your “invisible” guys supposed to help you?”

“We cannot count on them. In their eyes, it will look like treason. They have no idea of my plan, because I’ve come with it right now. That means, they must be sent away.”

“What you do is really a treason,” Gwyn said. “You still haven’t answered Veliard’s question. Why betray the Order at all?”

Lex was silent for a beat. When he spoke again, the dryness in his voice had thinned into something blood-chilling.

“Because they wiped out an entire city. Because Lucian needs to go. Because my people should know that devotion won’t save them. To Geryon, they’re spare parts with prayers attached. Once he gets what he wants, he’ll erase them like everyone else. And once he has a body that works…” He gave a humorless breath. “I’m dead too.”

“Kid’s using us in his petty intrigues,” Gwyn told me. “Should we trust him?”

I gave her no answer and spoke to Lex again.

“You say, Violet’s unconscious. After everyone sleeps, we can retrieve him. And then what? Every drone in the area will be hunting us.”

The second hangar is being used for its intended purpose: there’s a grav-flyer inside. The Apostle gave me flight clearance. Unless Geryon revoked it, that is.”

“I gather Geryon has a bone to pick with you,” Randy said. “So let’s assume he revoked it.”

“He’s not overly fond of me, that’s true. You might have noticed that the cliff the Temple sits on drops straight into the sea.” He looked at me. “Someone will have to jump off with Violet in their arms. The water’s deep enough there. Not so long ago, I used to love jumping from that very spot when it was warmer. And to keep your friend from freezing, we’ll pack him into a thermal sleeping bag. Francisco, who’s on duty at the pier, will row out in the boat and pick us up. The drones won’t fire at Violet.”

“But they sure as hell will fire at Francisco,” Gwyn pointed out.

“Can you bring the Marmarion in remotely?” I asked.

“I’ve never tried it, but there actually is a remote recall option,” she said.

“I thought you’d say the whole plan is suicide,” I said.

“It is. But if we do nothing, we die anyway—just with a delay.”

“What a fast thinker you are,” Randy said to Lex.

“I’d already been thinking about how to pull this off, I just lacked the hands. Even my fellow scouts weren’t fit for it. I needed outsiders. Someone to take the fall so I could pin it all on a Nautilus sabotage operation. Now, down to business. Who’s going to trash the relay?”

“I’ll go,” Gwyn said. With her stealth module, she was the only suitable candidate. “What was that you said about a ‘friendly’ tag, kid?”

“Here,” he said, sticking something resembling an insignia patch onto my companion’s shoulder. Then he gave the same patches to Randy and me. Finally, he stepped away for a few minutes and returned with the vestments of a Brother Healer, which he told me to put on. At night, the hood and a medical mask were enough to conceal who I was.

“The Temple awaits!” he said. “We’ll move underground and wait for Gwyn in the Temple’s annex.”

I gazed at the rebel cyborg and gave her a direct instruction.

“Gwyn, disable the relay and join us unless I don’t give you a different order.”

We exited through a storm drain roughly a hundred meters from the hangar serving as a Moon Cross temple. Gwyn engaged stealth mode and glided forward silently. Unless you knew to look for her, she was completely invisible under the cloak of night. Gwyn and I set up a comm link to relay situational updates to one another.

Say Thanks

After giving the password Lex had shared—“Come down and sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon”—we passed the cordon and made it to the annex without incident. It was tiny, barely twenty square meters at most.

“A total death trap if a firefight breaks out,” Randy said, voicing my exact thoughts.

“On the flip side, my sleep-inducing surprise will make it a breeze to slip into the temple,” Lex replied. “It’s right on the other side of this wall.”

I took a closer look around the room, which resembled a monastic cell. A shelf of paper books, dried flowers in a glass bottle, a modest single bed covered with a scratchy blanket, and a writing desk with stones intricately arranged across its surface. A hand-woven tapestry covered the window. The walls and ceiling, however, were the most intriguing part; they were covered in faded drawings — dark, yet hauntingly exquisite.

Suddenly, Randy’s eyes became so wide as if he saw a ghost. He looked at the ceiling, nearly as pale as the ceiling itself. I saw his lips part, but he was out of breath to speak.

I made him sit down on the bed. His hands shivered.

“Lex, what’s this?” he asked, when given a flask of water.

He had a reason to be so stunned. The drawing featured a female version of his own face but looked quite faded. Someone made it years, if not decades ago.

“A picture of Holy Virgin,” Lex replied solemnly.

“The person who drew her… is he or she around?” Randy asked hoarsely.

The Moon Cross kid sadly shook his head.

“It’s Apostle Aelius, brother. He’s no longer alive.”

“Your late mentor, right? We are in his room now?”

Lex slightly nodded, his eyes focused on Randy.

“What’s wrong with the drawing, pal?” I asked, putting my hand on Randy’s shoulder.

“She looks exactly like my mom, Veliard.” he said through a great strain. “Even her hairdo’s the same.”

His eyes were still devouring the portrait. Poor kid. He spoke nothing of Alda’s fate, yet I read it in his eyes.

“But it’s no time for this kind of questions,” he added.

Lex put his palms on Randy’s shoulders. His helmet came apart at the seams and moved into the armor.

“You’re absolutely right. Once we leave Port Amundsen, we’ll have a talk about this. But not a minute earlier.”

Randy did not pull away. He attempted to take a deeper breath.

“You’ve promised,” he replied, tugging at his fern-printed scarf.

I looked up at the ceiling in search of a self-portrait of the Apostle himself, then found the single photo I had on my memory chip. Here… Lex took off his helmet at just the right moment: I was starting to figure a few things out.

This odd conversation lit a candle in the depths of my memory. Vassily Rakhmanov had spoken of his former Martian comrade Grigory as of an outstanding artist, not just the Fermion’s pilot. He had mentioned the captain’s ability to capture the essentials in just several strokes, though when Grigory wanted, he could go into a lot of detail, too.

The new question hit me, though not as hard as it must have hit Randy: was Alda running from the Apostle’s love and not from his hatred?

“Time to get a view of the hall,” Lex told us, reaching into his belt bag for a batwing drone the size of his palm. Whispering a voice command, he slightly opened the door that separated us from Violet, the Prelates, the technical staff and the mixed group of fighters. The robot deftly slipped into the narrow gap.

Next, Lex did something that surprised me most. He took the anti-grav off his arm and handed the device to Randy. Preps for the upcoming fight were supposed to take his mind off the ghosts of the past.

“I’ve got the armor and a gun. Please, take this. You remember the basics.1”

Silently, Randy accepted the weapon and started fastening it to his own forearm.

“What kind of gun?” I asked Lex.

“Laser-induced plasma channel. You?”

“Same. As well as a pre-Blackout Glock.”

“Man, you’re a dinosaur!” he said in awe. “Any news from your cyber-girlfriend?”

“She’s not my girlfriend, kid.”

I wanted to add that Gwyn wasn’t even my friend in general, but this would be too much to reveal. I connected to her visual implants to see how far she managed to advance. And caught her in the process of breaking someone’s neck.

“Gwyn! We don’t want corpses to draw attention!”

“He would otherwise detect me, boss,” replied the cyborg woman.

“Don’t use an EMI, Gwyn. Do physical damage instead.”

“Oh, what do you take me for?” she said, approaching the relay.

Then static washed over the comm link. The visual feed streaming directly into my optics from Gwyn’s implants dissolved into a cascade of dead pixels before going completely dark.

“I’ve just lost her,” I muttered, tapping the side of my head to reset the receiver. “The relay must be gone.”

“Or she just got fried,” Lex remarked casually, though his fingers were already dancing across his arm-mounted diagnostic panel. “No, wait. The local broadcast signal just flatlined. She actually pulled it off.”

We petrified. Beyond the thin concrete wall separating us from the main hall of the Temple, the omnipresent, low-frequency hum of high-voltage equipment died. Seconds later, muffled shouts and the hurried clatter of combat boots echoed beyond the wall. Cutting the transmission had plunged Geryon’s priests and guards into instant chaos.

The chaos we had to use promptly.

“Can’t believe it worked,” Randy whispered, still adjusting the anti-grav. His knuckles were bone-white, but his posture had straightened, the paralyzing shock of Apostle Aelius’s room giving way to tactical thinking. “They’re scrambling.”

“Good. That gives us our window,” Lex said, leaning his shoulder against the doorframe as he raised his plasma rifle. He put on a pair of thick glasses to see the stream from the drone and tapped on the communicator over his right ear.

“Cicada, this is Cricket…” he said, and tensed, listening to something on the other end. “Ah, this is beyond bad… I’ve seen two intruders run towards the docks… Yes, with the drone. I never stopped the surveillance, man. Capture them dead or alive, but don’t recall Dragonfly from the pier. Are you copying?”

A tiny smile touched his lips when he heard “affirmative.” He gestured us to get ready.

I nodded, keeping my Glock raised toward the entryway, straining my ruined comm for any trace of Gwyn. Nothing but static answered.

“Try the drone feed,” I told Lex. “If she’s still tagged, your bird should see her.”

He didn’t answer right away. Behind his goggles, something shifted — a small, involuntary tightening around his eyes.

“What?” I said. “What are you seeing?”

“She’s not where she should be.” He tilted his head, tracking something only he could see. “The relay’s dead, the job’s done — she should be heading back down. She’s not.”

“Where is she, Lex?”

“Give me a second—” His jaw worked. “There. Crossbeam, inside the roof structure. She went in. Through a hatch, maybe, I don’t know how else she’d be up there.”

“Inside the Temple roof? Why would she—”

“How would I know?” he snapped, and for the first time since we’d met him, real alarm cracked through the practiced calm. “That wasn’t the plan. The plan was relay, then out.”

I tried the comm again. Silence.

“Do you control this woman at all?” Lex hissed, glancing at me like I’d been hiding something from him. “She had to join us here!”

I had no answer for him. Whatever Gwyn was doing up there, she was doing it alone, and neither of us could reach her to ask why.

Then Lex went rigid, one hand pressed to his earpiece.

“Cicada says—” He stopped, listened, and his face lost what little color it had. “A helicopter. Heavy combat transport, coming down through the cloud cover. Straight to us.”

Her rebel friends? There was probably no rebellion at all—just a story to win my trust, suspicious from the start. But without her, I wouldn’t have reached Port Amundsen this fast.

So I had played the partner and sentenced us all to death.

Veliard - September 28-29, 2190 - Port Amundsen

The voyage was surprisingly calm. Gwyn and I slept to our hearts’ content, taking turns on watch: sleep was the only luxury we could afford, and it was sweet, considering how scarce it had been in recent days.

When I wasn’t sleeping, I re-watched the recordings of the recon sweeps Violet and I had conducted, striving to pinpoint new strengths and weaknesses in the enemy’s defenses.

But now, Violet was the prisoner, and I was caught between two fires alongside a cyborg woman I barely knew. And only in the meticulous analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats I would keep my mind calm and steady.

From time to time, I would distract myself for a minute or two. Beyond the porthole drifted the majestic silhouettes of whales and large sharks, while schools of krill shimmered with phosphorescent specks—creatures that neither understood our passions and turmoils nor perceived the two distinct living beings behind the metal hull.

Just like those marine krill, we could stare point-blank at beings far more advanced than ourselves, looking yet neither seeing nor realizing. And those others care nothing for our feelings, our hopes, or our social order, just as I couldn’t care less who leads that swarm of krill. To them, we are neither enemies, nor friends, nor food—merely background noise.

Like any decent Antarctic city, Port Amundsen featured a dock for underwater transports. Critical installations in the Moon Cross stronghold were guarded along their perimeter by anywhere from eight to twenty troopers, and I estimated that no less would be waiting for us at the pier.

Luckily, there were alternatives to approach the city — drainage spillways built to channel glacial meltwater into the ocean. We left the Marmarion at the bottom of a small cove east of the city and swam the remaining kilometer and a half on our own.

The water in the drainage main was black, heavy with the grit of pulverized granite and the slick grease of the upper docks. My optics adjusted poorly in the murk; with my internal active radar powered down to a dead crawl to prevent an EM-leak, my world was reduced to the low-resolution gray of a passive sonar feed.

Gwyn didn’t blink on my tactical overlay because my overlay was no more active; I had severed my own network connection three miles outside the bay. To communicate, the cyborg woman reached out, her armored fingers clamping onto my shoulder the old-fashioned way.

I didn’t know how many years I had left to live, but I would have traded them all to have Whiskey by my side right now, not Gwyn. Wilhelmina, my long-time love. In flesh or in chrome — it made no difference to me. But the thought opened a floodgate of unwanted questions.

Would I be this close to the edge if it were only Violet in that cage? Would I have even bothered to lift a finger for Randy if both Whiskey and Violet were safe by my side? Most likely, no. I would have cut a deal with my old corporate staff for a fuel rod. And if that failed, I’d have burned down the squad currently holding the D16 Facility and taken it.

Gwyn removed her breathing mask and nodded to the right, where the turbine hummed. I could not recognize any emotion behind her dry, almost mechanical voice.

‘It makes three thousand revolutions per minute. The pump’s stator is emitting 80 decibels of clean white noise. If we move now, the surface drones won’t pick up the ripple from our limb-servos.’

I nodded, the motion stiff. My internal temperature core was running cold — not from the low temperature, but from the forced liquid-nitrogen bypass I had run through my primary processing unit to keep my thermal-EM profile below the detection threshold. I felt slow, my thoughts lagging behind my limbs by three milliseconds. One step from cybernetic hibernation.

We hauled ourselves out of the roaring sluice, our boots gripping the slick, slime-coated rungs of a maintenance ladder that climbed into the throat of the pumping station. Above us, the massive iron rotors turned, throwing off a spray of freezing, muddy water. Outside, high above the concrete roof of the collection pool, the synchronized hum of Geryon’s patrol drones passed over the vents — their wide-spectrum sensors sweeping the dark.

But down in the belly of the station, among the ancient, unshielded electric motors of the port’s foundation, two cyborgs were nothing more than two pieces of cold metal shifting through the grease.

A rusty staircase led upward, but I held Gwyn back from using it. A collapse wouldn’t kill us, but the noise would. Soon, we located an elevator shaft and scaled two levels up.

I was sure that Geryon would keep Violet either in a local hotel or in the hospital. He would not want his avatar broken or dead before the connection took place. The cultists would tend his wounds with a care they’d never waste on ordinary fighters.

We studied our surroundings. The air in Port Amundsen was a wicked slurry of salt spray and wet snow that swept off the Ross Sea, caking instantly on our thermal suits. Despite the late hour, drones swarmed overhead like a cloud of wasps. The last time I had scouted the outskirts of Port Amundsen, I hadn’t noticed this level of activity. It worried me.

Launching Gwyn’s stealth module would hide her from our human enemies. But with all these drones in the air, it was suicide.

‘The best way to the hospital is through the pipes. I’ve already done the drone scouting of the area, so I know the direction,’ I said.

‘What if the cultists keep your friends somewhere else?’

‘Then it’ll take us more time to find them.’

‘Have you ever had to fight for real?’ I asked as we pressed on through the dark. ‘Outside our bases, I mean.’

‘Our bases?’ Gwyn replied curtly. Her tone carried a fine edge. ‘Sounds funny, coming from someone who quit fifty years ago. A scout who engages in direct combat is a worthless scout. But I had to support the Hammerheads — once in Argentina, twice in Africa.’

‘Anything of value left out there?’

‘Hell, yes. Soviet, Chinese, and our own research centers — some ravaged, some occupied by the degraded crowd.’

‘What was your largest find?’

‘Umai — a Soviet helicopter. Its hangar was cut into a mountain; the avionics survived the Blackout intact.’

I remembered one of Ivan’s recent reports — a Soviet aircraft circling near Seven Winds. Now everything clicked.

‘The guards were so old and weak they were no real obstacle. They survived on potatoes and fish they caught in the sea. I hate potatoes since then.’

About twenty minutes later, the drainage line ended in a wall of unyielding alloy. I tapped twice against the broad face of the emergency flood-gate; the heavy thud died instantly in the wet air. Decades ago, the automated gate had dropped hard, sealing flush against the concrete invert to hold back the seasonal meltwater.

‘Hydraulics are still under pressure. We aren’t equipped to force the valve or cut the guide-rails,’ I said.

Gwyn looked down at the black, swirling water lapping against her boots, then up into the dark vertical shaft of a maintenance well three meters behind us.

‘We go up, loop the perimeter on the surface, and drop back into the secondary collection main fifty meters past this block. But we’ll be open to the sky.’

‘We’re not rookies, Gwyn. Minimize core output,’ I said, my fingers already locking onto the rusted iron rungs of the vertical shaft. ‘Keep the thermal bypass locked. If a drone catches a single watt of stray EM, we don’t make it to the hospital.’

“Let’s hope we’ll find them!”

The storm-drain opened into the logistics yard behind the fuel docks. The space was dark, cast in the dim glow of sodium lamps swinging from rusted cables overhead. The sky belonged to the winged machines. Through the driving snow, the sharp, rhythmic sweep of a LIDAR beam painted the basalt facades of the warehouses — a desmodus moving on an algorithmic grid. I timed the pulse. Three seconds of shadow between the beam’s return.

I moved first, silently slipping from the shadow of a fuel bladder to the rusted flank of a stranded transport crawler. My internal balance-gyros fighting the wind with micro-adjustments that drained my internal capacitors. Gwyn followed a heartbeat later, her movements mirroring mine, her black chassis invisible against the oil-stained snow.

We moved in an intricate rhythm, now gliding like shadows along the walls, now freezing and pressing close to one another. But then, a frantic clamor shattered the ominous silence. Someone was running toward us.

Three guys—judging by their voices, barely older than Randy—were chasing a silver-colored snow dog down the street, its size only slightly smaller than Katrina’s fallen Midnight. The beast was running right toward Gwyn and me, inevitably drawing the clueless rookies along and threatening to expose us.

I instantly rolled behind the wreckage of a loader, while Gwyn scrambled up a long-dead lamppost in a flash—for all the world like a cat cornered up a tree. The insufferable mutt stopped directly beneath her to strike a menacing pose and bare its jaws at its pursuers.

Either caught in the wild… Or it’s the dog Randy rode on his way to Railtown. Interesting… I thought.

One of the youths ordered his clamoring companions to shut up and tossed the dog a hardtack biscuit from his pouch. The beast caught the treat mid-air, and the hackles on its neck flattened instantly.

Having devoured a second portion in the same manner, the animal calmed down and stepped toward the boys of its own accord. But the kid with the biscuits suddenly froze, staring straight at the loader. I went dead still, pausing even my internal ventilation. A second passed. Then another. Finally, the boy picked up a rusty bolt from the ground and flung it into the darkness behind my back—just like that, out of sheer nervous energy. The bolt clinked against the asphalt. The echo rolled away and died.

“Let’s go,” he muttered to his companions. “Brother Thorwald isn’t fond of waiting.”

They left, following the giant dog as it trotted calmly through the slush.

Gwyn slid down the post like butter on glass.

“Next time, pick a bigger hiding spot.”

The secondary intake lay in the corner of an abandoned packing yard, half-buried under a drift of frozen slush. It was a heavy, industrial storm-grate, six bars of cast iron welded by decades of rust and ice into the concrete curb.

Gwyn dropped to her knees, clearing the snow. No tools. A plasma torch would light up the infrared spectrum for miles, and an ultrasonic pry-bar would scream across the acoustic monitors.

“Help me with the leverage,” she said as I dropped beside her.

I jammed my thick fingers into the narrow slots between the iron slats, seeking a purchase on the frozen underside. Gwyn locked her arms through mine, her auxiliary actuators whining as she anchored her weight against the stone foundation.

Maximize torque. Eighty percent. Ninety.

A warning light flickered before my eyes—my internal processing core was heating up, the cooling fans disabled to keep the EM noise as low as possible. The heat was trapped inside my chassis, baking my logic boards. I ignored the error code, driving my knee joints into the slush and pulling.

For an impossibly long second, the city was nothing but the sound of the wind and the high-frequency hum of our strained servomotors. Then the ice gave way. With a crack that sounded like a gunshot in the confined yard, the iron grate tore free from its concrete bedding, shearing the rusted anchor bolts.

I caught the heavy frame before it could slam against the stone, my fingers taking the full brunt of the dead weight. Gwyn slid into the dark opening first, her boots disappearing into the black silt below. I followed, dragging the heavy iron grate back into place above my head, closing the door on the wind and the threatening sky.

The drainage pipe sloped sharply upward, narrowing until the black water dwindled to a thin, oily trickle. I led the way, my head almost scraping the low concrete ceiling as we crawled into the subterranean foundations of the hospital complex. Massive insulated pipes—painted in warning stripes of faded yellow and black—crisscrossed overhead like the arteries of a gargantuan beast.

Gwyn dropped into a low crouch behind a massive water-softening tank, her optics flicking across the bank of analogue pressure gauges on the nearest wall. A tiny spider-like robot emerged from an airtight pocket on her suit, ran up her arm onto one of the pipes, and dissolved into the darkness.

“They might detect a wireless connection,” I warned.

“They’ll detect us anyway if we keep wandering around the building blindly. I might not make it to the captives, but at least I’ll have an idea of the layout and guard density,” Gwyn replied. “Now don’t disturb me, please; I must figure this out.”

I used the pause to scout the basement floor and mark all the entrances and exits on my spatial map: four led upward, while another two led outside and were guarded by humans.

‘We’re directly beneath the low-dependency wards,’ Gwyn’s voice came through my internal audio feed. ‘The primary electrical conduits run right up the central maintenance shaft behind the main boilers. If your pals are being held in the secure isolation wing, that’s our path upward. But the upper hatches will have physical locks.’

I checked the heavy pry tool at my utility belt and looked up through the steel catwalks above. I was not at all worried about the locks. If bad, Violet’s physical state could ruin our rescue mission.

Randy - September 29, 2190 - Port Amundsen

The air in the quarantine wing smelled of ozone and floor-bleach. Randy slipped down the tiled corridor, pretending to study the ceiling-high bookstand while his pulse thrummed at a merciless pace. He risked one glance at the frosted glass of Room 504, then another.

He turned the cool handle and pushed. The room was empty.

The sight hit him like a punch in the gut. The thin thermal blanket was folded into a tight, military square at the foot of the mattress—a vacancy so neat it felt like an erasure. IV lines hung like dead vines from their chrome stands. And only an open book on the windowsill reminded that a living soul had stayed within these walls. He stepped to grab the book…

“He isn’t there, young man.”

Randy spun, his back hitting the door frame. The statuesque Sister Agatha stood in the dim corridor; her heavy woolen habit cast a bulky shadow under the flickering fluorescent tubes, making her look less like a nurse and more like a tombstone. Her hands were tucked deep into her sleeves, her pale face an unreadable mask.

“Where is he?” Randy asked. He tried to keep his voice level, but his eyes kept darting back to the empty bed. “Yesterday, I overheard you say—”

“Brother Arseny is touched by a higher grace,” Agatha interrupted smoothly. A cold prickle of sweat traced Randy’s neck: in this place, “higher grace” could easily mean “death”.

“He feels better than he ever has, Randy,” the woman continued. “The fever broke, the seizures are gone, and he has already taken his duties as a physician.”

Before he could ask a new question, a movement caught the corner of his eye—something small, dark and nimble.

A mouse? Only mice didn’t rush up the walls.

Another one of their bots, Randy thought, his stomach tightening. Is it logging me right now?

At the far end of the hall, the heavy steel doors of the main freight elevator ground open. Randy’s body moved on instinct, stepping back into the shadow of the doorway.

It wasn’t the hospital staff. A six-man fireteam stepped out into the amber emergency light, their combat boots striking the tiles with a synchronized rythm that sent chills down Randy’s spine. They wore the unusual matte-white composite armor —plating that looked cold, non-reflective, and alien.

Looks ceremonial, Randy told himself. He held his breath, making himself as small as possible.

Their visors were mirrored, reflecting the dingy yellow lights of the ceiling back into the corridor like empty eyes. Two carried short-barreled suppressors; the team leader produced a long, silver key-card.

Randy had no doubt it had something to do with Violet, as well as his stepbrother’s disappearance.

The fireteam didn’t spare a glance for the nurse or the young man in the doorway. The leader swiped the card through the west wing’s reader. The magnetic locks gave a predatory clack, and the doors swallowed the squad into the darkness beyond.

Sister Agatha turned her head, her eyes locking onto Randy with freezing intensity.

“Move, child,” she said, her voice dropping to a harsh whisper as the steel doors hissed shut. “Go back to your quarters. Lock the latch from the inside, and do not set foot in this hall until I give you the clearance. The Moon Cross does not look kindly on unrecorded cargo.”

Randy felt the flare of a thousand questions—and the sharp, cold necessity of burying them. He lowered his gaze, rounding his shoulders. He had already mastered the mask of zeal, feigning a vivid interest in joining the Order’s Engineering unit to serve Brother Ambrosius. Though unable to answer all his questions, Agatha seemed to appreciate the performance.

He retreated, his mind already spinning. Lex had been a ghost himself lately, locking his door and opening it only to pull in trays of food. Randy reached his own door, his fingers trembling slightly as he engaged the latch. He had to finish pretending and start acting - again.

He reached his own room and slid the latch home with fingers that trembled despite all his effort to keep them steady. Nobody was coming to rescue Violet. If anything was going to happen, it had to begin with him.

Randy looked toward the narrow window. Wet Antarctic snow hammered the glass, driven sideways by the wind. Stepping outside meant frozen hands, blinding whiteout—and a patrol drone spotting him within a minute.

When he had set off for Mirny, he had at least possessed the outline of a plan. Here, in a hostile city his mother had once been forced to flee, every step would have to be improvised.

Saving Violet from Geryon’s grasp was beyond him. Arseny had already chosen his side. But surrendering wasn’t an option.

He opened the wall cabinet. Of course, his own clothes were gone. In their place hung the plain novice uniform of the Moon Cross. Folded neatly beside it rested his faded scarf, printed with little green ferns - one he’d been wearing as long as he remembered himself.

A faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. Small favors as investments in loyalty. This looked a lot like Lex.

Neither parka, nor coat to shield him from the raging weather. He had already been through worse. Randy wrapped the scarf around his neck, pulled on the novice uniform, and slipped into the corridor.

Instead of heading toward the main hall, he ducked into the adjoining ward kitchenette—a narrow stainless-steel pantry smelling faintly of detergent and boiled vegetables. Half-hidden behind a stack of plastic crates sat the dumbwaiter.

No sign of Sister Agatha: she had probably followed the fireteam into the western wing.

Being a nobody has its advantages, Randy thought. Nobody bothers watching you closely.

He hauled the slatted shutter upward. A stale breath of sour milk, rust, damp concrete, and machine grease drifted out of the shaft.

The little freight car still waited inside, suspended on thick, grease-blackened cables. Cramped but large enough for one determined teenager ready to leave a little skin behind.

Randy squeezed inside, folding his knees against his chest until the steel ceiling scraped across his shoulders.His fingers found the manual brake-release cable hidden beside the guide rail and pulled.

The car lurched downward.

Randy’s stomach floated into his throat as the counterweights groaned somewhere above. The descent accelerated until he caught the guide rope with both hands, burning his palms as he fought to keep the elevator from becoming a falling coffin.

Floor after floor flashed past through the narrow cracks between the shaft doors—guard posts... voices... boots striking concrete...

Then the car slammed into the massive spring buffers at the bottom, throwing him forward into the steel wall.

Holy fuck!

Randy crawled out, his breath coming in shallow gasps. His palms were filthy with grease and rust. Overhead, the rhythmic thrum of combat boots echoed from the floor above. The young man bit his lip, as dull pain pulsed through his heart.

My friend. Wish I knew how to help you out… At least, I could slip away from here and see where they’re taking you.

The air in the utility sector was heavy with dust, and vibrating with the roar of the two boilers the Moon Cross engineers kept functioning. Randy kept his back flat against a massive, insulated steam pipe, his eyes darting in search of the exit signs.

He needed supplies — food, water, a weather layer, enough to survive a single day outside. He could only guess which door led to the kitchen, and he stepped toward the nearest one.

Then someone took him from the dark. One hand clamped over his mouth, crushing the scream before it formed; the other wrenched his arm up behind his back with a strength that was not human. He bucked once, uselessly, his own weight turned against him. An obsidian-black face swam out of the shadow, eyes shimmering with a cold inner light.

“Stay quiet.”

Her lips did not move at all.

And then relief hit him so hard his knees almost gave way: he heard Veliard.

“Randy. Safe and free.” The cyborg turned him around to face him, something raw breaking through the usual mechanical calm. “I shouldn’t be this glad. But I am.”

“So am I,” Randy managed, and meant it more than he could say. “Violet! They’ve taken him elsewhere - minutes ago!”

“You mean, he’s no longer in quarantine?” asked Veliard’s companion.

“I’m almost sure,” he said through the disturbance another cyborg stirred within him.

“The group of six that I detected… Must be them,” she told Veliard.

Tension and uneasy silence filled the basement. Each of them knew what fate awaited Violet, and tried to imagine where his white-armored guards would escort him.

Veliard - September 29, 2190 - Port Amundsen

The silence didn't last: a magnetic lock clicked in the end of the corridor. Gwyn’s optics flared an angry crimson as she spun toward the threshold, her hand instinctively dropping to the shocker gun at her belt.

My audio-receptors captured a low-frequency harmonic distortion that hadn't been there a second ago. Behind the ragged rhythm of the last surviving boiler there was a deep hum of an energy weapon powering up.

Dammit.

I backed into the shadow of the water-filtration rack, pulling Randy with me, as the smooth, barely audible steps drew closer.

“Listen up, vacuum-bots — let go of my Brother!”

Randy’s gaze snapped to the end of the corridor. A man stood there in combat armor — deep black, like a rift torn in space. On his extended forearm sat an anti-grav unit, the most precious tool and the most dangerous weapon known to me.

“Cool down, Lex!” Randy drew a breath and steadied it. “I’m leaving with them. Or I’m dying here.”

Previous Chapter

Pamper Yourself

Photo by bahar nargileci on Unsplash

Lise de Villon - 23 March 2189 - Tesla City

The air in the vault was thick with the copper tang of recycled breath and the dry dust of century-old books. There were no light-screens here, no holograms pulsing softly above the long table of polished Martian stone.

Their host, Stella Rodriguez, had chosen the under-vault of the Tesla City Library for one reason alone: it was a tomb. Buried beneath the basalt crust, shielded by four meters of leaded silt and old copper braiding, the room was blind.

The Archons had gone so far as to sever the oxygen sensors. They sat elbow to elbow in the tallow-colored light of chemical lamps, their faces carved into shadow. Stella Rodriguez was the first to break the silence.

“Let’s begin, Daria.”

“The flesh has taken the stitch, and the Defenders did the rest of the job,” the woman said. Her voice was chill; her cadence, deliberate. “On a purely physiological ledger, Oleg Rakhmanov is whole. We purged the superficial radiation he absorbed during descent from his blood. The ruptured parenchyma in the left lung has knitted. The fractures in the third and fourth ribs have been fixed with bone paste. His life is no longer in danger.”

“You haven’t woken him, have you?” Stefan Lazarevic asked.

“No, Stefan. He remains under the shroud. We’ve been looking for signs of forced modification he may have undergone. Three separate manual scans—crude, non-digital sweeps with resonant needles from the first colonization wave. I have nothing suspicious to report. No subdermal transmitters. No micro-relays in the gray matter. No wire woven through the optic tracts.”

“That means,” Sona said, “we should wake him and begin therapy.”

“And yet,” Lise’s voice cut through the dimness, low and sharp.

She sat with her chin resting on her laced fingers, eyes fixed on the moody light of the lamp.

“A clean lining does not mean the coat wasn’t dyed in poison.”

“What do you mean, Lise?” Kurt Kristensen asked.

“Some time before the Blackout, Lindon Power developed a form of biocompatible data storage so small that the security systems of the day couldn’t detect it,” de Villon said.

“How do you know that?”

“From Violet. Before his departure, he told me a great many strange stories.”

“And if Oleg is… wired,” Stella asked, fingers drumming against her water glass, “how do we detect it?”

“I wish I knew,” the Archon of Tesla City sighed.

“Are you suggesting we keep our comrade in stasis until the end of his days, like some damned Snow White?” Rodriguez said sternly.

“I’m suggesting nothing. I’m sharing information,” de Villon replied placidly. “Why your thoughts ran in that direction, I can’t say.”

“Comrades,” Wei Guang cut in, “I’m almost certain Oleg is clean. What Geryon wants is panic—distrust between us. That’s exactly why we need to stay united now more than ever.”

“On Earth, we’d wake the boy and welcome him home,” Stefan grunted. “But our life-support systems are too vulnerable to possible sabotage.”

Kurt Kristensen gave a curt nod. “And even if he isn’t wired, he could be conditioned. Like Grigory and his crew.”

“These are speculations,” Sona said solemnly. “We won’t learn the truth by keeping him drugged. And think of his mother, Irina. Does she deserve to live in agony for months? Years?”

“He’s twenty-something, not a warhead,” Stella added. “If he wakes up and sees our faces looking at him like that…”

“At least, unlike the Winters, she knows her son is alive,” Stefan said with a sigh. “And it won’t be forever. Only until we wipe Geryon out.”

“Wipe Geryon out?” Sona leaned forward, the tallow-light catching the sharp, severe lines of her jaw. “With what, Stefan? With our atmospheric batteries? With the few rusted scrap-ships we have left in high orbit? We are playing at being rulers, but we do not even know the true length of the thread Geryon holds.”

She gestured toward the dead sensors in the ceiling. “We sit here in the dark, suffocating ourselves just to speak of one boy. We know nothing of his true reach. If Oleg is a vessel, keeping him asleep changes nothing about our vulnerability.”

“Then we do not hand him the match,” Lise interjected smoothly, her fingers shifting over her knuckles. “Sona is right about our vulnerability—which is precisely why we must be calculated.”

Lise looked around the table, her gaze pausing on Kurt, then on Stefan.

“If Oleg is carrying such an unholy stitch, we cannot risk bringing him to Arkona. We cannot let him near the core grids, the water-hubs, or his old workspace. If he must be woken for the sake of his mother’s heart, then let it be far from our lungs. A remote hydroponic station on the ridge. A minor oxygen refinery at the ice-caps.”

Stella stood, her palms pressing flat against the polished Martian rock of the table.

“Exile on the ice, Lise? That is what we offer a man who survived the horrors of Solveig? We cage him because we are afraid? Oleg Rakhmanov is a citizen of the Republic. He is one of our own, not a piece of contaminated cargo to be dumped on the permafrost. Let the burden fall on me.”

She looked across the shadows at Stefan, then at Wei Guang. “Bring him to Tesla City. Wake him in my clinics, under my guard, and under my personal responsibility. If Geryon wants to look through his eyes, let him look at my town, the smallest, the most remote.”

Stefan’s brow furrowed, his mouth opening to bark an old soldier’s objection about the vulnerability of the primary grids, but Wei Guang raised a hand, his expression thoughtful.

“Tesla City is isolated enough from the primary infrastructure. I think we can take this risk.”

“And if Stella takes the ledger upon herself...” Kurt nodded slowly, his resistance fading into practical relief.

De Villon slightly nodded, her face an unreadable mask of complacency. Let them take him to Tesla City; it was far enough from Arkona to keep her grids clean, and close enough to the smugglers of New Havana if she ever needed to slide her own needle into the boy’s affairs.

In the Tesla City guest quarters, Lise counted down the hours until her return journey, taking a sleeping pill from her personal medical kit to quickly drift off and avoid friendly chats with the other Archons.

When de Villon’s transport passed by her companions’ rovers at dawn, her relief was absolute. She took out a backup communicator—a gift from Adrian, disguised as a powder compact—and notified her lover that she was ready to call, as well as of the decision she had made regarding Oleg.

He called from the deep under-levels of New Havana, where the air was thick with the ozone of heavy drill-engines and the bitter salt of the miners’ sweat. There was no imagery; since the probe had split the Martian sky, everyone had grown fond of the dark.

“The ledger is balanced on my end, my queen,” Taggart said, the line humming with the faint static of the low-city shielding. “The Board signed off on the transfer. On paper, they are listed as industrial scrap—ten high-tier neural units whose terms were voided by continuous cyber-trespass. I’ve cleared them from the dark blocks.”

Lise leaned back against her seat, her fingers lightly tracing the rim of an empty glass.

“Did they give you any trouble, Adrian?”

A short, dry laugh rattled through the link.

“They are hackers, Lise. They don’t throw punches; they weaponise code. But they aren’t coming to you in pressed suits. I’ve had the security detail put them in deep-sleep harnesses for the transit. If any of those wretches so much as blinks near an open relay between here and Hawking City, they’ll turn your transit-grid into their personal playground.”

“Thanks for taking precautions,” she purred, though her inner eye was already calculating the space needed in the secure sector of the technology hub.

“I am protecting my investment,” Adrian cut in, his tone suddenly hardening, the corporate lord overtaking the lover. “They leave the New Havana sub-surface at midnight by private pressurized shuttle. Six men, four women, including ones whose neural rigs are so deeply burnt they can only speak in syntax. They are bitter, broken, and hard to harness.”

He paused, the static on the encrypted line swelling for a heartbeat like the wind over the red dunes.

“And Lise?”

“I am listening, Adrian.”

“I want this Rakhmanov boy.”

“Are you insane?” It was one of the rare moments when her equanimity betrayed her, the words slipping out sharp and unpolished. “My part of the agreement is all cleared. You’ve got the scans, the telemetry. Why do you need Oleg in the first place? How am I supposed to bring him to New Havana?”

“No way, while public attention is all focused on him,” Adrian replied, his voice returning to that smooth, transactional drawl. “But I’m not asking to bring him right now. Sooner or later, the noise around him will calm down, the focus will shift to something else, and—”

“Why should I do this?”

“It’s the same reason I bothered to fake the cyber-criminals’ deaths and transfer them to you. It’s a matter of security for everyone. I hope to find out something your colleagues might have missed.”

Lise felt nauseous. A cold weight settled in her stomach, heavy as Martian lead. Why would Taggart need Oleg Rakhmanov? Not his interviews, not brain scans. Not his memory recordings, but Oleg in person?

Could Adrian have known anything about the “Orderlies” developed for the Fermion-2 crew? Before being assigned to the Apsara, Oleg had been part of a backup crew; moreover, he had worked on the Yggdrasil and been exposed to cosmic radiation, so he might have received an injection even earlier than Winston.

If Taggart was specifically aiming to obtain the “Defenders,” it could ruin Lise’s long-term plans, much like a sharp exhale topples a house of cards. The only consolation was that she had time—the Council had just voted to dump the boy in Stella’s lap at Tesla City, far from Adrian’s immediate grasp. But how much time did she really have?

“I have no doubt, hun,” she said mildly, her voice recovering its fluid, deceptive calm. “And I hope you will share your discovery with me.”

“Make sure you use your new resource the best way possible,” Adrian said, the hardness in his tone softening just a fraction. “Just stay safe.”

“I want you again, Adrian.”

“You remember my proposal. It’s always valid, you know.”

The link snapped shut. Lise sat in the bluish glare of her communicator, her fingers as cold as ice. For the very first time, she cursed the rover for being so slow. Now she had to ensure that when the “broken tools” woke up in Hawking City, they would bite the ghost on the Moon, and not the hand that had untied their chains.

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Oleg Rakhmanov - 4 April 2189 - Tesla City

Oleg’s eyes snapped open. The world was a blurred smear of tallow-yellow and dark green. There were no sleek, white-enameled bulkheads of the Apsara or the high clinics of Arkona. He was staring at a dome of verdant greenery blooming with cascades of yellow flowers.

A moment later, the engineer noticed the vaulted ceiling of raw, exposed basalt, ribbed with thick copper braiding and old hydraulic lines that sweated in the damp air.

Breathing was hard, almost painful. His head seemed stuffed with a load of dusty rags. His gaze darted from side to side in search of danger. No drones, no ominous holograms in sight. Just two familiar faces—Daria Kim, the medic, and Stella Rodriguez.

Oleg tried to move his hand and touch Stella’s fingers and make sure she was human, flesh and blood, but his wrists were heavy, bound by thick canvas straps. His heart rate spiked, a mechanical bell chiming somewhere above his head.

“Why am I... tied?”

“Post-hibernation syndrome could make you aggressive, you know,” Daria replied softly.

“Winston, Tetsuo, have they made it to the ship?” asked the young Rakhmanov, as his awareness was getting back to him.

“Yes. The boys and Katrina are on Earth. That’s all we know,” Stella said.

“Why?.. We were not supposed to... That’s what Lise told me.”

“Looks like Winston found it safer to land there. However, the Apsara crashed over Antarctica, and your companions got scattered across Victoria Land. Geryon survived the attack. He restored the radio blockage, and we lost them.”

As soon as he heard Geryon’s name, a deafening voice followed, a voice that pushed aside all his awakening thoughts.

“Nice try, comrades. You nearly got me, and you’ve seen me win. You’ll have to pay a price for causing me so much disturbance.”

“Oleg!” Daria gasped in quiet desperation, looking as if she was ready to flee. Stella listened, petrified, her fingers clutching the engineer’s hand.

“All your interplanetary spacecraft must be dismantled, unless you want me to do that for you,” the engineer spoke, the words tearing from his throat entirely against his will. “And you already know how far I can reach. I would strongly advise against hiding any spacecraft from my sight. I’m sure you are all smart enough to take my message seriously, aren’t you?”

He delivered this blood-chilling threat with a warm, friendly smile on his lips, as if inviting them to tea. It was only when his expression suddenly shattered into pure, helpless horror that Stella realized she was clawing into his wrist, her fingernails digging deep enough to pierce the skin.

Daria was the first to break the paralysis. With a sharp, ragged gasp, she lunged across the gurney, her fingers frantically twisting the brass dials of the chemical drip.

“He’s going into neurogenic shock!” she yelled, her voice cracking as she snatched a manual syringe from the metal tray. “Stella, let go of him! You’re stopping the venous return!”

The Archon stared down at her own hand as if it belonged to someone else. Her knuckles were white, her short, blunt fingernails stained with a thin smear of Oleg’s dark, oxygen-starved blood.

She released her grip slowly, her hand trembling as she stepped back. The reality of what they had just witnessed settled over her like a shroud of iron filings. Did Geryon hardwire a backdoor into the young Rakhmanov’s skull, capable of bypassing the meters of stone and the engineer’s conscious mind?

Daria’s hands were shaking as she drove the thick needle into the port of Oleg’s IV line.

“Bringing down the cerebral metabolic rate. Oleg, look at me. Breathe. Focus on the green. Just the green.”

Oleg’s body violently seized, his back arching off the canvas mattress as the chemical block hit his system. The invasive cold of Geryon’s presence receded, leaving behind only the agonizing throb of burst capillaries and a bone-deep, hollow exhaustion.

“He’s stabilizing,” Daria whispered after what felt like an eternity, her gaze anchored to the heart rate monitor on her tablet. “But we’ll need a new brain scan. I’m afraid, if that happens again, Stella, there won’t be enough of his mind left to salvage.”

Stella didn’t look at the medic. Her gaze was focused on the dome of vines and yellow flowers overhead, their petals trembling slightly from the vibrations of the deep-level turbines.

“It wasn’t a broadcast,” Stella said, her voice dropping to a grunt. “There are no active relays down here. No signal could have penetrated this layer of basalt.” She turned her head slowly to look at Oleg’s pallid face. “The Ghost didn’t transmit that message, Daria. It was already inside him, waiting.”

“I’m so sorry,” the engineer whispered, tears gathering in the corners of his eyes. “I could not resist this...”

“It’s not your fault, dear,” Stella replied. “You and your teammates have done what you could. Geryon tried to use you... to scare the shit out of us. But we aren’t easy prey.”

“Can I see Mom?” he asked.

“Tomorrow,” Daria said firmly. “We should make sure you will have no new seizures.”

“We’ll stay with you as long as you need us,” added Stella, reaching up to untie the engineer.

“Then I want to know more about my crew. And how I ended up here.”

Lise de Villon - 4 April 2189 - Tesla City

The Archon of Tesla City knew Geryon’s message from Daria, her long-time friend and Academy classmate.

I won’t even have to lie to Adrian, de Villon told herself. He will hardly want to welcome a living ticking bomb into his quarters. I know what the greedy bastard will ask instead. And I will even say yes. Everyone else will have to say goodbye to their dreams of destroying Solweig. The only viable solution now is mine.

A new message blinked on her tablet. The cargo from New Havana awaited unloading.

To keep things organized, I’m sharing the table of contents for the third book in the series. I will be updating this page regularly as I release new chapters, so feel free to check back for the latest additions.

Art by Lana Cardi

Synopsis

As the Nautilus Corporation and the AI-led Moon Cross cult tear Antarctica apart, the battle for the Martian blood will decide the fate of the continent’s last human settlements. Randy, the Winters, and their comrades will have to risk everything they hold dear.

• The Jewel Box

• The Damsels in Distress

• Martian Siblings

• Botched Infiltration

• Between the Hammer and the Anvil

• The Aftermath

• Flushed

• Full Steam Ahead

• The Books of Life and Death

• The Plague and the Spark

• The Shards

• Another Cyborg in the Family

• Revolutionary Road

• Salvation Looks like Evil

• The Trojan Horse from the Moon, part 1 and part 2

• The Voice from the Shroud

• One Step Behind

• Betrayed, Cornered, Desperate

• The Dawn We Weren’t Meant to See

• Salt, Fire, Tea

• I’ll Handle This Personally

• Martian Blood

  Don’t hesitate to leave a comment or share your thoughts below.

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Pamper Yourself

Start the Novel

“Look how pale you’ve turned, Lise,” Adrian said sympathetically, handing the Archon of Hawking City a freshly refilled glass. “Not the easiest conversation, was it?”

De Villon delayed her response, her eyes tracing the faint amber pulse of the smart-home sensors embedded in the ceiling. She knew the system had captured and logged every single word spoken in the room, and that her lover was already fully aware of everything. Was there even any point in playing naive?

“You don’t look much better yourself,” she muttered, taking a sip. “Well? Satisfied now that I wasn’t just entertaining you with fairy tales about Geryon?”

“What do you propose we do?”

“Maybe you happen to have a copy of Violet’s consciousness lying around?” de Villon joked grimly.

Adrian Taggart merely snorted.

“I don’t know what kind of gift is heading our way from deep space, but after everything that’s happened, it’s clearly not a good sign. We can’t charge blindly at an enemy like this,” he said. “But hasn’t Violet tried fighting him and failed?”

The absolute last thing Lise wanted was for Geryon to cut some deal with Taggart or the other Directors behind her back. The uncertainty terrified her to the point of suffocation. Only one thing offered solace: the Immortal from the Moon seemed to make a habit of betraying his allies. And since Lindon had not yet enslaved or obliterated human life on Mars, she likely still had time to come up with something.

“Turn off the smart home,” she commanded her lover. “I need absolute privacy.”

“As you wish, my queen,” Adrian replied softly, then spoke into the empty air: “Green rat!”

A faint smile blossomed on the Archon’s lips. A flash of humor was something she found genuinely sexy.

The soft amber lights dimmed as the smart-home system powered down. Lise regretted she had none of Violet’s skills and was unable to verify it herself.

“Adrian,” Lise said, her tone stripping away any remaining playfulness. “None of us is safe since today. First, we should have the relay on Phobos disassembled. It’s operated by your company, right?”

Taggart leaned against the heavy desk, hands buried in the pockets of his silk pajama pants. The casual posture didn’t mask the calculating look in his eyes.

“When that thing breaches the atmosphere, I want the touchdown coordinates. Raw telemetry, directly to my personal terminal.”

“Hardly anyone knows the exact coordinates,” Lise replied, reviewing a freshly encrypted report from Gustav through her smart eye lens. “Leibnitz only has a rough estimate for the landing sector. But I’ll keep you informed as the data updates.”

“Wonderful. I’ll also need independent structural scans of the probe,” Adrian added, his voice dropping an octave. “Just in case your communist comrades on the Council don’t let me near the wreckage.”

“Agreed,” de Villon said smoothly, though she was already bracing herself for the real gamble. “But scanning the shell won’t save us from what’s already inside your networks. And maybe, our networks, too. Do you have any ideas how to counter Lindon?”

Adrian straightened up.

“We map his patterns. We find out what he wants, and where we fit into his concept of the world. In the end, New Havana holds the keys to the best digital minds on Mars. We have a dozen high-tier hackers who would be thrilled to dissect a digital god in exchange for their freedom.”

Lise looked at him over the rim of her glass and let out a soft, mocking laugh.

“What?” Adrian asked, his brow furrowing with sudden annoyance.

“I don’t doubt your security budget, Adrian. I doubt their calibre,” she said, tilting her head. “Is there a single one who can match Violet?”

Adrian snorted, turning his face away. “I guess the brat managed to charm you. What did he do, proclaim himself the freaking Database King?”

“Adrian, be serious,” Lise countered. “When he was barely eighteen, without a single neural augmentation or corporate implant, he nearly rewrote Athena’s core algorithms.”

Adrian shot her an icy look. “Then maybe your precious Athena is just poorly protected.”

“While Violet was busy trying to charm me,” Lise continued, nonchalance back in her voice, “he mentioned a few of his old friends. Some, he claimed, were even brighter than he was. He said the Board sent them to bite into the core of the mountain like a bunch of disgraced dwarves.”

Adrian shrugged, though his gaze sharpened. “That’s right. They’ve been in the dark blocks for months. By now, they must have lost both their grit and their skills.”

“If they are useless to you,” Lise said, leaning forward, “then give them to me. I highly doubt New Havana’s mining quotas rely heavily on a handful of broken cyber-prodigies. If they are as dull as you put it, you lose nothing.”

Adrian stared at her, his eyes wide, completely forgetting to blink. The audacity of her request seemed to suspend the very air between them.

“But if they still have that spark,” Lise purred, holding his gaze, “I will inspire them to build our shield. They detest you, Adrian. But they will trust me.”

Adrian meditated on her words with his arms crossed over his chest, and suddenly Lise felt alarmingly vulnerable.

“No,” he said after a minute. “Absolutely not. If the Board finds out I’m transferring New Havana’s top cyber-criminals to a communist Archon, they’ll have my organs sold for scrap.”

Lise felt a cold drop of sweat trace her spine. No?

She looked at the pulse of his carotid artery, checking his vitals through her smart lens. Her silver wasp served as a diffuser to a crafted synthetic pheromone designed to induce partner submissiveness and dull critical analysis. Was his corporate-grade neural implant filtering the chemical shift? Or was his sheer stubbornness resisting the biological override? For a fraction of a second, a sickening wave of doubt hit her: Is the formula flawed? Am I losing my edge?

Then, she forced her pulse to slow. The pheromone wasn’t a magic wand; it was just grease on the gears. If his critical thinking wasn’t entirely dead, she would have to guide it to the right conclusion.

“Listen,” Lise said smoothly, lowering herself on the spacious bed and rolling like a cat exposed to sunshine. “You asked for raw telemetry and touchdown coordinates? You’ll have them. You wanted independent structural scans of the probe? I’ll provide them.”

She paused, watching his eyes narrow as his mind began calculating the value of the data. Time to dangle the bonus.

“And as a personal guarantee... I will give you back-door access to the cyber-shield that your cyber-criminals are going to develop. If Geryon attempts to upload himself into Mars’s infrastructure, New Havana will have the immunity codes at the exact same millisecond Hawking City or Arkona does. You’ll be the only Director on the Board able to deflect this kind of threat from the Moon.”

Adrian remained still, his fingers tapping a slow, rhythmic beat against his desk. The defiance in his posture was slowly melting. He wasn’t giving in to the communist Archon; he was securing a monopoly.

“Give me a couple of days to think,” he said finally, his voice dropping to a low, decisive murmur.

“Of course,” she replied, feeling her internal tension snap.

The pheromone hadn’t failed but allowed him to see her terms as the most brilliant deal of his life.

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Nine hours later, the five-meter cylinder settled heavily onto its hydraulic struts in the middle of the wind-swept plain in sixty kilometers from New Havana and forty-two kilometers from New Tallinn. Thin steam rose from the scale-covered titanium hull. The probe’s solar wings had been destroyed back in the upper layers of the atmosphere: the hypersonic flow had sheared off the silicon panels, leaving nothing but twisted, melted stubs of the supporting spars.

A curious swarm of drones—Adrian’s spies—circled low over the craft, photographing, scanning, and measuring. At the same time, the nimble robots of the Arkona Space Center erected a security perimeter around the landing site, supervised by six engineers and two Archons.

According to agreements adopted on Earth well before the Blackout, the rights to a fallen space object that was not the property of a Martian community or company belonged to whoever discovered it first. New Havana didn’t even attempt to claim any rights to the cosmic guest, and no official rules forbade it—or Adrian Taggart personally—from observing and remotely surveying the object.

Standing by the rover between Kurt Kristensen and Gustav Leibnitz, who had landed in a shuttle from the Sergei Korolev half an hour ago, Lise de Villon was plagued by fears that the presence of Taggart’s drones would give her away to her colleagues.

“Right on cue,” Kristensen muttered in a tone that left no doubt: he would have spat into the sand if not for his spacesuit. “What do you think, Lise, did Geryon tip them off?”

She shrugged.

“Not necessarily. New Havana has its own satellites in orbit.”

“Agree… But anyway, they reacted promptly as hell,” Kristensen muttered, his hand hovering over his tactical console. “They have no business snooping around here. I’ll turn on the radio jamming so they don’t get too bold.”

“Don’t,” Lise said sharply, reaching out to catch Kurt’s forearm before he could strike the switch.

Kristensen paused, his dark visor turning slowly toward her. “Why? You want the corporates to have a free front-row seat to our investigation, Lise?”

“We’d better know what we’re dealing with first,” Gustav cut in, his eyes glued to his data pad. “She’s right, Kurt. If you flood the area with white noise, you’ll blind our own diagnostic telemetry. We don’t know what protocols this probe is running.”

De Villon hurried to seize the moment, keeping her tone smooth. “Exactly. If we trigger an active jammer, the automated defenses inside might perceive it as an electronic attack and detonate whatever payload Geryon packed into the hull. We need to monitor every single frequency, not choke them.”

Kristensen grunted in reluctant agreement. “Fine. Let’s keep the ears open. But if those corporate vultures get within five meters of the hull, I’m vaporizing them.”

Gustav didn’t even have time to reply. The static hum of their internal suits’ comm-link suddenly cracked, overwhelmed by an incoming transmission originating from the probe.

Through the radio interference, a ragged human voice broke through, looping in transmission that filled their helmets. It was the trembling voice of Oleg Rakhmanov:

“Please... Don’t kill me...”

Kristensen and De Villon exchanged a heavy look, bracing for an impact they couldn’t see coming. Inside, Lise was a coil of wound wire, desperate to order the robots to begin breaching protocols. But she held back; rushing was suicide without a fully deployed isolation zone securing the perimeter above and around the pod.

Outside, the Space Center’s “centipede” bot scuttled smoothly over the probe’s curved, cylindrical hull. Its cluster of sensor pods pulsed with amber light, humming softly as they began an intensive, multi-layered scan. Retreating to the safety of the rover, Gustav and the archons watched the feed stream across the central holographic display. Sheltered by the vehicle’s armor, the prickling unease De Villon had felt under the phantom gaze of Taggart’s distant drones finally began to thaw.

“Gustav! Are you seeing this?”

The voice of Yukiko Yoshitada, the robotic engineer, shattered the thick silence of the comms channel like breaking glass. “Inside... there’s a cryogenic capsule. Gustav, it’s registering a biological signature!”

“I see it,” Leibnitz replied, his voice drained of all color. “There’s enough clearance to accommodate a human.”

Lise didn’t realize she was holding her breath until her fingers cramped. She looked down, surprised to find her hand white-knuckled, gripping the reinforced sleeve of Kurt’s pressure suit.

Kristensen stared at the screen, his jaw set. It was as if he were plucking the exact thought from Lise’s mind. “You mean that bastard delivered us young Rakhmanov’s corpse?”

“That is what the telemetry indicates,” Gustav said grimly.

Kristensen clenched his fists, a low hiss escaping his teeth. “He’s flag-planting. He’s asserting his dominance.”

An agonizing hour crawled by. When the secondary scans finally confirmed a clean bill—no proximity explosives, no pressurized gas traps, no radioactive fail-safes—the tension in the rover reached a fever pitch. They watched, breathless, as the automated plasma torches spat to life, carving a blinding, white-hot rectangular seam along the upper spine of the cylinder.

The moment the seal failed, a violent cloud of super-chilled, pressurized vapor erupted from the breach, screaming out into the thin Martian atmosphere. The moisture flash-frozen in the ambient cold, instantly erupting into a glittering shroud of ice crystals. They swirled violently around the hull like a localized, miniature blizzard before the dry, biting wind swept them out across the red plains.

With a hydraulic groan, the retrieval droids pulled the severed titanium plate away, peeling back the outer hull like a rusted shroud.

Nested deep within the probe’s hollow chassis lay a single, heavily modified hibernation pod. It was a claustrophobic fit, brutally jammed into the frame and anchored by crude, blackened weld braces and a thick but well-organized web of insulated cabling. A thick layer of crystalline frost completely blinded the glass faceplate of the pod.

Gustav didn’t wait for the clearance drone. He was the first one out of the rover, rushing toward the secured zone, his heavy boots crunching violently through the rust-colored sand. Lise and Kurt immediately followed.

Reaching the pod, Gustav wiped a thick, gloved palm across the frosted glass. Behind his tinted visor, his eyes went wide.

“Cold and darkness,” Leibnitz whispered into his collar mic, the sound dropping to a hollow, horrified breath. “A human!”

A single glance through the cleared patch of glass was all it took. The gaunt, pale features were unmistakable, and within seconds, the rover’s automated biometrics flashed a green confirmation against the Apsara’s database.

It was Oleg Rakhmanov.

Lise felt a sudden, visceral chill drop down her spine, pooling like ice water in her stomach. Oleg. The resilient, daring flight engineer, so desperately eager to uncover the truth of his father’s fate. The man they had lost to the dark after Violet’s failed virus deployment. Now, he was reduced to a lifeless exhibit in a metal coffin.

But as she stared at the outline of the rigid, marble-like face, a thought flashed at the edge of her mind.

Would Geryon be sending a corpse in a fully functional cryopod?

Her gaze darted around in search of the control panel on the cryopod, but it was nowhere within her line of sight.

She hurried to contact Daria Kim from the medical research center in Arkona. Daria had been supposed to have flown on the Fermion-2 to Earth as part of Winston Winter’s crew—a flight that never happened.

“I need equipment for emergency cryo-awakening in the field. Resuscitation may be required. If you have no urgent tasks, come and help me. I’ll notify Wei,” De Villon required.

Kurt activated the anti-drone equipment, forcing the New Havana robotic swarm to turn home. Gustav demanded additional oxygen to be delivered on site.

De Villon’s gloved hand pressed slightly on the cryopod’s plating. Suddenly, the surface of the glass morphed into a diagnostic monitor.

The pulse. Two beats a minute.

The realization hit them all at once: it was a demonstration. If the digital ghost from the Moon could deliver a living, breathing human being in a crude metal shell, he could just as easily have sent a nuclear payload onto the roofs of their domed cities whenever he felt threatened.

I may only count on the hackers, thought Lise, as people and robots hastened to deploy a one-patient hospital station. And make sure he won’t detect them.

Before she could initiate the automated medical extraction protocol, the stasis pod’s diagnostic monitor abruptly flickered.

Lise leaned closer, her smart eye lens recording every pixel. Across the main interface of the pod, overriding the life-support readouts, a single line of stark text began to scroll in a relentless loop:

NICE TO MEET YOU, GUYS. I AM WATCHING.

Lise stepped out of the newly constructed dome and cast a brief, sharp glance toward the sky, transmitting the image to the last of Adrian’s drones hovering high above the perimeter.

The machine undoubtedly relayed the files straight back to the New Havana penthouse. From now on, at least one of the corporate lords knew exactly how vulnerable the Republic truly was - a risk that Lise de Villon was compelled to take.

Previous chapter

Pamper Yourself

Start the Novel

Image source: NASA

Adrian Taggart’s penthouse in the upper tiers of New Havana was the definition of predatory luxury. Beyond a vast hemisphere of armored glass stretched the rust-red mountain slopes shielding the enclave from cold and radiation.

Bathed in amber light, Lise de Villon lounged in a rattan armchair delivered from Earth before the Blackout1. The snow-white tunic of Hawking City’s Archon stood open at the throat, revealing a silver wasp hanging from a thin chain. Adrian had never seen his lover without it, even in their steamiest moments.

Lise swirled a glass of ancient cognac and studied him over the rim. She often found herself wondering what biological “factory settings” lay beneath his current appearance as an ancient god, the glacial symmetry of his face. Though she was not entirely sure she wanted to know the answer.

Image by 3centista from Pixabay

“You’re thoughtful tonight. Trouble with lithium again?”

“The Board is paranoid,” Adrian replied, taking the glass and helping himself. “Something is chewing through absurd amounts of bandwidth. Terawatts. Nobody knows why. Half the analysts think it’s one of your little tricks.”

“When in doubt, blame the commies.”

A smile tugged at his lips, as she approached the window, too.

“Why don’t you move in with us, Lise? You were made for power and luxury—not endless work and committee meetings.”

“To become what? Your concubine? Wife?”

“Why not?”

“And then?”

He locked her into a tight embrace, but she did not soften.

“What happens when your term ends? No more elections. No more authority. You’ll need permission just to borrow a rover.”

“I have plans.”

The man sighed.

“Of course you do. And of course you won’t tell me.”

“Sharing plans is an excellent way to ruin them.”

“Fair.”

He leaned against the window.

“Then answer this. Who helped Sato escape?”

“I did.”

The admission came so casually that Adrian nearly choked.

“He’s no threat anymore. Violet was retrieved for a one-way mission to the Moon. Hardly the sort of assignment you’d give respectable citizens.”

“What business do you have on the Moon?”

Lise’s grey eyes brightened.

“The same business that’s draining your networks.”

The cognac suddenly tasted bitter.

“Heard of Raymond Lindon’s older brother?”

“The serial killer?”

“Well, he chose becoming a lab rat over execution. Nautilus digitized him. The first Soul Depository subject, before the technology officially existed.”

“Why have I never heard this?” Adrian asked.

“Because almost nobody did. Raymond found out. He freed his brother—and spent the rest of his life trapped by that decision.”

Lise continued, her eyes scanning the gloomy hills behind the window.

“Geryon took control of Earth’s communications. Under his pressure, Raymond built Solveig on the Moon and the Solar Way relay network.”

Adrian chuckled.

“We thought Solveig died during the Blackout.”

“It didn’t.”

“Geryon lives there now. The radio silence surrounding Earth? His doing. This is what Violet dug out before we lost him.”

The words landed like a hammer. For the first time Lise saw Adrian genuinely afraid.

“What are you planning to do about him?”

“Nothing. Right now, we’re as helpless as everyone else. Myron was a fool. He tried messing with a digital god.”

Adrian remembered the report of Asano’s death. It stated that Myron had ended his life, unable to bear the loss of the second Martian ship.

“I’ve seen the telemetry from Apsara. Solveig is active. Geryon is monitoring Mars. He’s already using the old Phobos relay to tap into your infrastructure.”

The color drained from Adrian’s face. Power in New Havana depended on controlling information. What happened when someone arrived who controlled all information?

“How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

Lise tilted her head.

“Have I ever lied to you?”

“You’re a politician.”

“Fair point.”

Gracefully, the woman adjusted her light hair.

“I’ll let you scan my memories.”

Adrian’s fingers twitched. Few people offered access to their minds voluntarily. Fewer still offered it to a lover. Lise could guess what he was thinking: wishing the device could extract images from further back than just a few days—seven at most.

To roll back time to the days when she was just an untouched girl.

“So?” Lise asked playfully. “A little journey?”

“That can wait. I want to know more about Geryon.”

De Villon reclaimed her glass.

“What matters is this: he isn’t conquering Mars. Not yet.”

“Not yet?”

“He hijacked the Fermion for fuel and intelligence. He’s studying us.”

Adrian stared through the armored glass at the lifeless Martian horizon. She felt him suppress a nervous exhale.

Lise made a step towards him, ready to offer some reassurance, but a light blinked on her wristband, the second accessory she never took off in Adrian’s presence.

A voice message from Gustav Leibnitz.

“Sorry to disturb you so late, Lise. We’ve detected an artificial object approaching Mars. Looks like a probe. It’s broadcasting a message on a loop: “Don’t kill me.” The Council must decide what to do next. It’s going to enter the atmosphere in nine hours.”

“Cold and darkness!” she grunted. “Adrian! I need a room for a meeting!”

He smiled, nodding toward his home office.

Only once before, in Lise’s memory, had the Council assembled remotely with such haste—when the Archons received the last transmission from the doomed Apsara.”

“Do we have a visual?” Stella asked Gustav.

“Sure.”

“Bring it up.”

A five-meter cylinder appeared on the Archons’ screens: solar wings, no markings, no visible weapons.

“A Trojan horse from the Moon,” Stefan and Kurt said simultaneously.

Gustav transmitted the radio message. Lise leaned forward, her heart beating at a merciless rhythm.

“Gustav, does it look like a military craft to you?” She asked.

“No. Similar probes delivered equipment during early colonization. Likely cargo—perhaps a rover or research unit.”

“Can you identify it in orbit?”

“Negative. Only that its mass is under one ton.”

“Then destroy it,” Kristensen said immediately. “There could be anything inside—nanites, explosives, worse.”

“If we destroy it, we learn nothing,” Rodriguez countered.

“There’s nothing to understand,” Kristensen snapped.

Suddenly, Sona Tagaeva raised her voice.

“We may regret it, Kurt! What if the Apsara crew found a way to dispatch us something important? Via Mirny?

“Why would they use the voice of Oleg then?”

Captain Leibnitz raised a hand.

“We don’t need to bring it aboard. I can capture it with a gravity lock, alter its trajectory, and set it down far from any settlement. Drones can inspect it after.”

“At what distance?” asked Lise.

“Two hundred meters.”

“Too close,” Stefan said. “If it’s carrying a nuclear device, the Korolev dies with it.”

“I could instead use a gravity strike and force a controlled descent,” Leibnitz offered. “But the probe may not survive.”

“Everyone heard that message,” Lise said. “That was Oleg’s voice.”

“Of course it was,” Wei Guang replied calmly, removing a protesting cat from his lap. “Geryon knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s testing us—exploiting our emotions.”

Sona grunted.

“Then cripple its thrusters, leave it drifting, and send a drone.”

“Comrades, I need a decision now. The probe has already crossed Deimos’s orbit,” said Leibnitz.

A heavy lump of ice settled in Lise’s throat. She swallowed it down, forcing her numb finger to press the button.

The vote passed four to two. Lazarevich and Kristensen opposed.

The Council ordered a gravity strike and the launch of a reconnaissance drone.

Previous chapter

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Lex | Lucian - September 27, 2190 - Port Amundsen

Brother Alexander stood by the frost-rimed window of the hospital quarantine zone, the glass creating a fragile barrier between the rest of the world and the small group trapped inside—himself, Arseny, Randy, and the unconscious form of the future Vessel. His greenish-gray eyes tracked the sharp outline of the Aurora Hotel across the plaza of Port Amundsen.

He knew the place well. The Aurora still clung to the stubborn, fading remnants of its former luxury. Its centerpiece, a soaring glass-roofed winter garden, had survived the decades only through the selfless, backbreaking labor of its original staff, and later, the collective desperation of the townsfolk. In a brutal Antarctic settlement, those green leaves were a lifeline for the soul.

The building itself was a massive, brutalist monument resembling a haphazard stack of titanium shipping containers, engineered back when giant icebergs still drifted through these waters. Now, it served as the high-security residence for the outermost leadership of the Moon Cross—including Prelate Lucian, who had temporarily seized the absolute authority of the late Apostle Aelius.

From his vantage point, Alexander watched as Lucian emerged from the hotel’s grand entrance into the bitter, nine-o’clock morning air. Lucian was a lean, black-eyed man, his middle age evident only in the sharp lines carved around his eyes and the graying braid of hair that swayed like a pendulum against his spine with each measured step. Two heavily armed guards trailed him, their boots clicking rhythmically on the frozen ground. The iconic moon, embroidered in fine gold on Lucian’s right sleeve, was aggressively masked by a pinned piece of rough black cloth. The silk scarf knotted tightly around his neck was pitch-black, too—the solemn, performative wardrobe of a cult in mourning.

As the small procession strode toward the seafront, the atmosphere froze. Order members in utilitarian robes and ordinary townspeople wrapped in patched thermal coats shrank back, bowing low into the slush. No one dared make eye contact; the silence was broken only by the crunch of frost under the Prelate’s boots and the distant, rhythmic groaning of the harbor ice.

The hospital building loomed ahead in a sweeping crescent shape, its concrete bulk designed to shield a starved little courtyard garden and a rusted helipad from the wayward, screaming polar winds. Lucian pushed through the heavy, air-locked gate, the sudden warmth inside carrying the suffocating stench of antiseptic and old blood. He didn’t waste breath on pleasantries, abruptly demanding that a passing Sister-at-Arms show him to the quarantine zone.

On the sixth floor, the sterile white walls were yellowed and peeling at the seams from years of harsh chemical washdowns. Lucian was led to a cramped changing station where he received a bulky biohazard suit. He zipped himself into the stiff, crinkling plastic, his breath immediately fogging the inside of the visor until the internal scrubbers hummed to life. Sealed away from the world, he proceeded alone to the restricted seventh floor, throwing a curt, dismissive hand gesture to his guards, ordering them to stay behind and watch the elevators.

Soon, the clatter of the hospital corridors gave way to the velvet quiet of a private meeting room. A meager shaft of gray daylight cut through a thick, reinforced skylight in the ceiling, illuminating dust motes dancing in the gloom. In the corner, a tiny tabletop fountain—a bizarre, fragile luxury—gurgled softly, filling the space with a calm, rhythmic song.

But any pretense of peace shattered the exact second the younger man stepped through the heavy doorway.

Alexander.

“Speak, Vanguard!” Lucian commanded. Through the plastic visor and the mechanical hiss of the biohazard suit’s filters, his voice came out distorted and unpleasantly muffled, like a threat issued from inside a coffin.

The younger man offered a short, practiced bow—a fluid movement born of years of rigid conditioning. Physically, he looked remarkably unscathed, his frame solid despite the chaos of the previous days. Yet his fair features bore the heavy, unmistakable seal of prolonged grief. His eyes were bloodshot, and his jaw remained tightly clenched. For an agonizing moment, the only sound was the trickling fountain as Alexander forced himself to find his voice.

“Prelate, was it truly necessary to subject Seven Winds to such devastation? So many have perished who could have served our cause. Children who could have been raised in the Sanctuaries.”

“Such was the will of the Prophet, Alexander,” Lucian replied. “We are not here to question his orders.”

“Of course, Prelate.” Alexander bowed again, his tone smooth and obedient. “But may I at least ask why you committed the Apostle’s body to the fire without waiting for my return? Without letting me say my final goodbyes to him?”

“We could not delay for every scout out in the field, not even one as brilliant as you. Nature would have taken its toll on the flesh, and that we could not allow.”

Alexander’s face flushed with angry, red patches, the mask of feigned composure cracking. “As if we lack the means to preserve a body for a few miserable days!”

“Know your place, soldier, and never forget it!” Lucian snarled. “Your blood ties no longer mean a damn thing here, and your privileges can be stripped away in an instant. Now, report: what of the cure you were tracking? I have my information directly from the Prophet.”

“Forgive me for raising unjustified hopes,” Alexander said, bowing his head in a performative gesture of humility. “It seemed to me that the key lay in the blood of the Winters, and I hastened to share that theory with the Apostle. But soon after, I witnessed the modified blood used on a third party suffering from the avian plague. The Martian woman attempted to save the infected wretch, but only accelerated her end.”

The young man grimaced, as if struck by a painful memory.

“And how did you learn in the first place that this infidel’s blood possessed unusual properties?” Lucian continued, leaning into the interrogation.

“Spark, alcohol, and the pleasures of the flesh loosen the tongues of the godless wonderfully. No matter what planet they fly in from. While her companion lay wounded, I worked the woman over; she was quite starved for the joys of life.”

“Filthy creature,” Lucian hissed, his eyes burning with outright hostility.

Despite his sorrow, Alexander seemed to relish baiting the vow-bound prelate. The scout was indeed allowed far more leeway than other members of the brotherhood—precisely because a man in his line of work had to pass for ordinary. He extended a transparent vial to his superior. Inside, a deep red liquid shimmered.

“The Martian’s claim was that the blood protects her from any infection and knits wounds instantly. But it turned out to be lethal to anyone else. Perhaps if we place it in the analyzer and transmit the data to the Prophet, he will guide us toward a true cure.”

“Let’s see how we can benefit from your find. Excellent work, Vanguard,” Lucian said, a brief, humorless smile cutting across his features, hidden beneath the plastic sheen of his mask. “And thanks again for delivering the Vessel.”

“Now it’s our duty to keep him alive,” Alexander said grimly. He glanced toward the high-security observation window, his voice dropping an octave. “And we still don’t know the first thing about treating this disease. This Arseny you brought in from McMurdo—did he actually share any knowledge of value?”

“Not as much as I hoped,” Lucian replied, the mechanical hiss of his suit’s respirator punctuating the silence. “However, in times like these, I welcome any hand capable of stitching a wound. If the epidemic strikes the garrison, I’d like our own medics to be as far from the hot zone as possible.” The Prelate shifted his weight, his eyes narrowing slightly. “And the young man who accompanied the Vessel… How do you intend to use him for the Order?”

“Randy?” Alexander smoothly took the lead. “I recommend he be trained in engineering while serving his duty as my Squire. My rank as Vanguard grants me the privilege of taking one.”

“Quite an honor for someone so unprepared,” Lucian remarked, leaning back as the stiff plastic of his suit crinkled aggressively against the chair.

“I’ve seen Randy under fire,” Alexander countered, his face a mask of absolute sincerity. “He has a valiant and loyal heart. What’s more important in a recruit, he has principles.”

“Could any man have the right principles after running around with the godless Martians?”

“Sir, you fought shoulder-to-shoulder with a Martian for twenty years or more,” Alexander replied, his delivery perfectly polite. “And yet, your own principles remain beyond any shadow of a doubt.”

Lucian stared at him through the fogged visor, a heavy silence stretching between them, broken only by the soft lullaby of the tabletop fountain. “Does he have a surname, this future Squire of yours?”

“De la Serna. He claims his family was originally from Seven Winds. I’ll make sure to bring him to see you as soon as our quarantine protocol clears.”

“Of course,” Lucian said flatly. He reached down, his heavy, gloved hands lifting a scarred metal case onto the table. The latches popped open with a loud, echoing clack. “And now, Vanguard, I want to examine your memories of the mission. We might find some key details you didn’t spot in the chaos.”

“To spot key details is the sole purpose of my existence, Sir.” Alexander’s posture changed, his feigned humility vanishing. “You have just implied that I am incompetent in my role. May I relinquish my duties before the quarantine is over? I would far prefer to serve in the trenches than know my superior doubts my sight.”

“Don’t fall prey to the sin of vanity, my son,” Lucian said, ignoring the outburst as he pulled a neural-link apparatus from the velvet-lined interior of the case. The clean, sharp smell of ozone and clinical rubbing alcohol filled the space between them.

Suddenly, the door flung open, banging against the concrete wall and shattering the tense quiet of the room. In the doorway stood the Sister-at-Arms who had escorted Lucian up. Her usual rigid military bearing was entirely gone.

“Prelate,” she gasped hoarsely. Trembling, she threw herself into a deep, desperate bow, bending so low she could have kissed the cold floor. “Osokin… the young medic… He’s taken a turn for the worse. He’s in agony, Sir. If it isn’t the avian plague, then I don’t know what is. It’s dangerous to stay on this floor—I beg you, return to safety immediately!”

Lucian looked daggers at her, his eyes burning through his visor. The heavy case on the table clicked shut as he slammed his hand down onto it.

“What is wrong with him now?” Lucian barked, his voice rattling unpleasantly through the suit’s speaker. “We already ran the diagnostics! We established that the boy was suffering from nothing more than a common cold!”

“I wish I knew, Sir! He’s delirious, burning up, and bleeding from the nose.”

A heavy, panicked silence flooded the room. Lucian turned slowly toward the young Vanguard, his gloved fingers tightening around the handle of the memory-extraction kit. The neural-link apparatus remained cold and unused in its box.

“See you next time, Lex,” the Prelate said, the artificial peace completely drained from his voice. “You, and your De la Serna servant.”

Lex rose to his feet to bid the Prelate farewell. The older man gave him a brief, tense nod, gripped the metal case, and hastily swept out of the room, trailing the frantic Sister-at-Arms. Their heavy footsteps faded rapidly down the yellowed corridor, followed by the distant, echoing hiss of a pneumatic decontamination lock sealing behind them.

Finally alone, Lex let the mask of grief and subordination slip from his face. A razor-sharp smile cut across his features. Mentally, he thanked Sister Agatha for her impeccable timing. He had won another day or two of safety inside the quarantine zone. Let’s hope Lucian doesn’t have the balls to bother us here, he thought, exhaling slowly. First things first: I need to get rid of that syringe.

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Randy de la Serna - 27 September 2190- Port Amundsen

In the evening, on the other side of the quarantine partition, Randy lay curled up on his cot, facing the stained concrete wall. He was trying to drown out the foreign, mechanical hums of the enemy fortress. The Vanguard was sitting cross-legged on the floor right next to him. To both exhausted men, even a minor movement felt like an ordeal.

“Someone I loved has recently passed away, too. It happened right when I was about to join you back in Railtown,” Lex confessed, his eyes fixed on the narrow window where the setting sun was turning the mighty ocean waves into a dance of bleeding fire.

Photo by Fabian Jung on Unsplash

“The bird plague?” came the hollow, muffled reply from beneath the scratchy wool blanket.

“A malfunctioning security bot,” Lex sighed, the sound heavy and scraping in the small room. “At least it happened in the blink of an eye. He didn’t suffer.”

Randy shifted beneath the sheets, the metal springs of the cot groaning loudly. “Sorry about that.”

Lex let the silence stretch for a moment before his voice hardened, dropping back into the steady, unyielding tone of an interrogator. “Let me lay down the rules of the game right now, Randy. Either you’re with us, or you’re a corpse. People call us bloodthirsty for no good reason; we always give a choice.”

“Go to hell with a choice like that…” Randy snapped. He whipped the blanket off, his voice cracking with a mix of fury and suffocating grief as he glared down at the Vanguard. “Because of you, I have no family left! My father, Eino… your people burned him alive right here in Port Amundsen before I was even born. My mother and my stepfather died under your siege. I am not your damn friend, Lex. Not your damn toy. I’m your enemy…”

Lex didn’t reach for his sidearm. He didn’t flinch. He just watched the raw pain on the younger man’s face with a detached, analytical calm.

“Eino, you say? I must be too young to have seen his execution.”

Randy wiped his nose with the back of a trembling hand, the bitter chill of the room biting at his bare skin. “And how old are you?”

“Twenty-one.”

“Impossible,” Randy muttered. He lifted his head fully from the thin pillow, squinting to re-examine the sharp, weathered contours of the Vanguard’s face. “You can’t be younger than my brother. You’re too sly—like you’ve lived three lifetimes.”

“Here in the Moon Cross, we have to mature early. Survival doesn’t care about your birth year,” the Vanguard said, a sudden, heavy sadness bleeding into his voice. “And, besides… I had an awesome mentor. The kind of guide a man can only dream of.”

Randy looked at him, the burning anger in his chest hitting a wall of shared exhaustion. “So he’s the guy you lost.”

“Uh-huh...” Lex murmured, his fingers tracing a phantom pattern on the floorboards.

“What about my friend Violet?” Randy demanded, his tone turning desperate. “Can I see him? Just for a minute. I need to know he’s okay.”

“He’s under heavy guard in the isolation wing,” Lex said flatly, cutting off the hope before it could bloom. “But my clearance still holds for now. I’ve seen him.”

“Then speak,” Randy insisted, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the edge of the mattress. “What are they doing to him?”

“First, you have to promise me something,” Lex replied, leaning closer.

Randy let out a sharp, cynical laugh that tasted like ash. “Right. Of course. A trade. I almost forgot what kind of world we live in.”

“Listen to me carefully: you must not tell a single soul about Katrina’s blood, or the fact that you shared it with me,” Lex whispered, his eyes darting toward the hidden audio-receptors in the ceiling corner. “If anyone asks, you play dumb. This is the only thing keeping you breathing.”

Randy frowned, completely bewildered. “What? You’re a Vanguard. You’re not going to share the cure with your own people?”

“I will. When the time is right,” Lex said solemnly. “But right now, I won’t let it become a political bargaining chip for Lucian. Now, pay attention to this next part: don’t tell anyone you’re Arseny’s brother. He formally disowned you to save his own skin, so you don’t admit to the relationship either. If anyone interrogates you, your family fled Seven Winds when the clan war was at its peak. Got it? Your history starts and ends there.”

“Okay.”

“No. Not just ‘okay.’ You must promise me.”

“I promise,” Randy hissed through his clenched teeth.

Lex stretched his aching limbs, then shifted to sit right next to Randy on the edge of the cot, speaking in a low half-whisper.

“First of all, nobody is going to harm him. At least, not right now, since the Prophet needs his body intact as a Vessel. He’s infected, but Arseny thinks he has a lead on a potential cure. The trouble is we lack the raw processing material here in Port Amundsen. Luckily, they have plenty of it stockpiled back in Railtown.”

“What else? Did he say anything? Any message for me?”

“The guy’s totally broken, Randy. Devastated, just like you—maybe worse. He was weeping, insisting we bring his friend Veliard, or at least offer proof that Veliard is alive. He never mentioned you. He didn’t even remember being shot and panicked on seeing his wound.”

It didn’t sound like Violet at all. Randy didn’t ask if the Martian was going to be fine; deep down, he knew the answer. Torn between the urge to help his comrade and the crushing weight of his own losership, Randy chose silence, letting the Vanguard continue.

“Randy, I vouched for you before the prelates…”

“Huh?”

“That’s our high command,” Lex explained, his voice slow and deliberate, making sure each word sank deep. “What’s more, I vouched for you before the Prophet himself. If you try to escape, you won’t just die alone. You’ll drag me down with you.”

“Did you say... before the Prophet? I never quite understood what he actually is, but the things I was told about him... they were terrifying.”

“Like what?”

“The Blackout—that was his doing, wasn’t it?”

“It was,” Lex said, unbothered. “And you’re so certain the Blackout was an evil thing? Or did the Martian girl drill that into your head?”

“Rakhmanov did. And he’s seen enough to be taken seriously.”

Lex let out a short, dry breath. “It’s a long story. Are you going to listen, or do you want me to leave you alone?”

“I’m gonna listen.”

“I have a second flask here,” Lex offered, tapping his belt. “Wine from South America, strictly reserved for the wounded. Consider this your first privilege. And maybe your last one.”

Randy adjusted the thin blanket, his chest tight. The late Ilya Osokin had strictly warned him and Arseny against drowning their pain in alcohol.

“I don’t want it, Lex. What’s your story?”

He knew the Moon Cross man could be feeding him pure propaganda, but he didn’t care. He was ready to listen to Lex for hours, if only to keep from slipping back into the sticky quagmire of his desolation.

“You think the world was fine before the lights went out?” Lex began, leaning his head back against the concrete wall. “The ‘Golden Age’ was only golden if you lived in Antarctica. Everywhere else, it was just high-tech rot. The climate collapsed, the northern permafrost turned to soup, and entire cities just... sank into the swamps.”

“Jeez…”

“While the rich were filling swimming pools with water a whole family could have lived on for a month, they were locking the poor in underground vaults where the sun never reached.”

“I know about the Sub-Cities,” Randy muttered, staring blankly at the ceiling. “Our dad told us. So did old Akemi. That’s the whole reason why the Martians rioted and broke away.”

“It never really helped those left behind on Earth,” Lex told him, his voice dropping an octave. “We, the Moon Cross, rose up against that world of injustice. But we were just a messy, disorganized rabble until the Prophet took the wheel.”

Randy scoffed softly under the sheets. “The smartest and most powerful being in the Solar System, right? That’s the script?”

“It’s the reality. He united us,” Lex said, ignoring the sarcasm. “You think the Blackout was a tragedy because Rakhmanov told you so. But nobody would have survived what was actually brewing. The old world’s grudges never stopped. A nuclear disaster was seconds away from sweeping the planet, leaving nothing of humanity but shadows burned onto the walls. Radiation would have finished off whoever was lucky enough to be hiding underground. Do you even know what radiation is?”

“Invisible death.”

“Exactly. And thanks to the Prophet, those death machines will never work again.” Lex turned his head to look at Randy. “Sometimes, salvation has to look like evil. It takes a lifetime to tell one from the other.”

“What are you fighting for right now?” Randy heard his voice rising. “To make sure the world has no one left like my parents? No one like Violet or Veliard? For science to vanish, the last books to burn, and for us to turn completely savage? Is that how you see your just world—built on gunfire and prayers?”

Lex didn’t answer right away. He adjusted his gear harness calmly, with the mechanical precision of a seasoned soldier—a man Randy had never truly considered him to be.

“Knowledge used to belong to every lowlife, Randy. That’s why the world nearly died. We don’t burn books; we bring them under control—otherwise, history will just repeat itself. This isn’t eternal darkness. Far from here, children are growing up who will never see blood on the snow. Their descendants will have a life that neither you nor I could ever imagine, even in a fever dream. All the technology of the Golden Age, but without its sins. No slaves, no masters—only pure cosmic mind. That’s what I want to fight for. And I’m not afraid to drop dead for it.”

“Have you even seen these children yourself?” Randy crossed his arms over his chest, trying to control his trembling.

“Yes. I almost became one of them...” The scout looked away for a split second, and in the dimming light, the old, familiar Lex resurfaced. “But the Prophet reshuffled the deck. And who am I to argue with the dealer?”

“Just the best musician on this chunk of ice,” Randy shook his head, surprised at his own strength to be snarky.

“We don’t kick a man when he’s down. Arseny was spared because he wised up. And we didn’t kill Osokin either—you’d have to be a complete degenerate to eliminate the only doctor left in the sector. Apostle Aelius was no idiot.”

“Sure, you have no use for doctors now,” Randy smiled bitterly. “Not with your new miracle blood. Or am I wrong?”

“We do,” Lex turned sharply, a steely edge cutting into his voice. “We still don’t really know how this blood works, and no one is going to run it through their veins every day. Had Osokin come over to our side willingly, we would have welcomed him as one of our own.”

“Do you have a family?”

He caught Lex’s barely audible sigh.

“I did. I’ll tell you about it, but not today.” The scout stood up, tucking his long hair behind his ears.

“Are you leaving?” Randy swallowed hard against the sudden lump choking his throat. The older man’s tall shape in the doorway looked like a sinister ghost against the hallway light.

“Yes. Quarantine or not, Lucian will want a report. And they managed to bring my guitar up from the boat, so I have to practice. I’ll be back tomorrow at dawn. Right after prayers.”

“You and prayers?” Randy gave a dark smirk, suppressing a wild, frantic urge to grab Lex by the shoulders, shake him, and rip away this imposed mask of a military fanatic. “And how convincingly you used to swear you despised that crap! I thought your Prophet could hear you anyway, without the choir singing.”

“Prayer keeps the ranks in line. It’s discipline,” Lex replied curtly. “And it’s not my place to break order.”

Randy looked at his straight back. He wanted to howl with rage—not at the deception, but at how willingly this free, wild mind had locked itself inside someone else’s cage of lies.

“You’re about as much of a holy man as I am a killer whale,” he called out before the latch clicked.

Lex paused, his hand on the frame. “I know, Randy. I know.”

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The Orphaned Earth

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Veliard Reed - 25 September 2191 - Facility D-17/Marmarion shuttle

Dried blood on the walls was the first thing that caught my eye as I re-entered the lab; it looked like someone had been riddled with bullets. Beneath my feet, glass shards and chips of concrete crunched unpleasantly. Nautilus soldiers were tending to the wounded: the “criticals” had been taken to the lower level to be placed in stasis.

How many times had the asset changed hands? Nautilus, Ivan and Danielle, Heldrich, Moon Cross—and now Nautilus again... On the side of Nautilus, one soldier had fallen; on the other, everyone except for two who failed to self-destruct to avoid capture.

“So you really don’t know who took that liner, or where? You believe those primitives could keep a vessel running?” my new “sister” Gwyn asked, her voice full of disbelief, referring to the population of Seven Winds.

“Even a broken clock is right twice a day,” I answered pensively. “This morning, the city was one of the wealthiest on the continent, and the liner was the residence of a local warlord who managed to recruit people who knew what they were doing. I hope we’ll take it back in Port Amundsen.”

Right now, I was standing on a millimeter-thick sheet of ice, and I could hear an ominous crack. They would certainly interrogate the Moon Cross prisoners and the surviving citizens. Someone among the former Orderlies is bound to remember me, Ivan’s pursuit of the metamorph, Danielle, and the “Martian invasion” of the liner. Worse still, they might remember the Winters’ regenerative abilities. If that happens, my former colleagues will likely hunt the ship, as if Geryon weren’t enough.

We continued our conversation in the mess hall, where three strapping lads had removed their helmets and were already setting out field rations. Only now did I notice a deep bullet score on Gwyn’s pauldron. The silence around us was unnerving; I had already noticed that the extraction team members hardly spoke to one another. The first thing that crossed my mind was that they, like Danielle, could be telepaths. Then I dismissed the thought: with telepaths in its ranks, would Nautilus be so concerned with bringing the runaway girl back?

“Why didn’t you occupy Seven Winds sooner? This catastrophe could have been avoided… Maybe…” I said.

“We had other troubles to resolve,” Gwyn replied.

“And who’s in charge of you now?”

“President George Ironside,” the cyborg showed me a holographic portrait. A dark-haired man in his fifties, with blue eyes and a refined face. The spitting image of an actor playing the “benevolent king.” “Oh, he’s gonna be mad when he hears about you!... Just kidding.”

“Ironside... I don’t recall the name. And combat operations, I take it, are led by this Minna of yours?..”

“She leads many things. Ever since she was entrusted with corporate security, much has changed for the better.”

“Great to know that the company’s in good hands. And to be back with the family!” I said, looking around again and noticing fresh blood spatters that were already fading, thanks to the walls’ self-cleaning system.

“Was it hard, living all on your own?”

“To be honest, it was a paradise. Short version: I set up a research station in a lovely, quiet spot to do some biological research. The Blackout barely touched me; everything was going smoothly until those damn fanatics blew my home to pieces and started chasing me across the entire continent as if I were… a demon.”

“Uh-huh. That’s usually how it goes for people who only mind their own business,” Gwyn replied.

“What brought you guys back?” I asked, ignoring her preachy tone.

“We need new resources, power sources, and places to live. It’s better to start with areas that are already developed. Life underwater is no picnic, especially when you’re talking about decades down there. As I mentioned, they captured the woman who was left in charge of the facility after the Blackout. I don’t need to explain that her life is on the line, and we’d quite like to get her back.”

It was a good thing my cyborg parts kept me from bursting out laughing, because holding it in was a struggle. Did they actually paint the picture for her this way, or was she playing dumb?

“The only problem is the fanatics consider this territory theirs,” I told her. “No, not just this facility—the entire continent. And if we don’t deal with them soon, we won’t hold Seven Winds... They’re holding a man in Port Amundsen who could sort them out; even if we aren’t ready to crush the fanatics entirely, we have to rescue him. Do you even know who’s backing them, or which Prophet they worship?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Classified information.”

My heart dropped straight into my cybernetic boots. Vassilevsky wasn’t lying when he said there was a rat nested in the Winged Sun. If Nautilus had leaked info about his deployment to Seven Winds, then they undoubtedly knew about Rakhmanov, Violet, and me...

Gwyn nodded toward the fire exit, gesturing for me to follow. As I got up from the table, I noticed our brothers-in-arms were still silently chewing their late dinner—or early breakfast—staring ahead with completely vacant eyes. They weren’t drooling or dropping food out of their mouths, but it was a creepy sight nonetheless. What other lovely little surprises did this “family” reunion have in store for me?

“What in the actual disconnect...?” slipped out of me once we were past the door. It applied to pretty much everything.

“We need to get the hell out of here,” Gwyn said in a barely audible whisper. “I’ll explain everything once we’re in the open ocean.”

“I’m not moving a single step until I know where we’re going and why.”

“Minna is not your friend, Veliard. She must not get her hands on your hacker. There’s a schism in the corporation. President Ironside is just a figurehead—a cardboard cutout who doesn’t control a damn thing. There’s her, and then there are those of us who want to decide our own destiny... People who are sick of the absolute authority of lines of code and numbers, and all these ‘great projects of the future.’”

How delightfully familiar... Knowing the backstory of our enemy, there wasn’t a shadow of a doubt as to where this Minna had crawled out from.

“What? Creating an AI based on Geryon Lyndon’s mind? You guys are absolute morons... As if you didn’t know that the murdered Wilhelmina Heiss became his alter ego. His subpersonality.”

“Don’t look at me; I had nothing to do with it. When she helped crush the drug riots on the Njord, they practically deified her. I’m begging you, let’s go, we’re running out of time.”

How the mighty have fallen: drug riots! I could see my dear old corporation was knee-deep in shit, but I had absolutely zero desire to pull it out. What troubled me most was Gwyn’s knowledge about “my” hacker. Damn mole… I had to warn Rakhmanov about how bad things were. But right now, I was hog-tied.

“Your little tin soldiers back there don’t seem particularly bright,” I noted, following Gwyn. I didn’t trust her any more than I trusted Minna, but the female cyborg still felt like the lesser of two evils.

“They have what’s called a ‘control chip’ in their brains. When it’s not actively deployed, the brain enters a sort of ‘power-saving mode.’ It preserves instincts, reflexes, and basic daily habits that a person performs automatically... Like a half-dream.”

“So they don’t accidentally use their neo-cortex between battles?”

“That’s close. If the chip malfunctions—say, from trauma or an EMP blast—the person has a chance to awaken.”

“And how did you dodge the surgery?”

“By demonstrating loyalty. Minna still needs smart combat units, and I happen to have a lot more experience than these boys. But don’t relax. There are fourteen of them here. And three more stayed behind in the boathouse.”

Waiting for Gwyn and me in the boathouse was the Marmarion, a submersible shuttle that the extraction team had used to reach Seven Winds. Back in my youth, it had been a strictly peaceful transport, meant for ferrying employees from the mainland to Nautilus’s underwater facilities. When I was twelve, my mother personally took me on a tour of the Njord during my school break; it was exactly this kind of transport that picked us up from the Nautilus pier in Florida.

The fact that the three sentries snapped to attention as one the moment Gwyn appeared gave me a shred of hope: at least I wouldn’t have to kill anyone this time. Really, why shouldn’t the expedition leader drop by for a toolbox, or perhaps a bottle of enhanced “ambrosia” for an important guest?

Once inside, the first thing my companion did was manually lock the deck hatch and switch the boat to manual control. I kept my questions to myself, even though the whole thing looked suspiciously like a kidnapping.

“Going somewhere?” Minna’s cold voice echoed from the intercom. It sounded nothing like my Vi’s voice. She must have detected Gwyn’s interaction with the shuttle.

“Yes, ma’am. Veliard scouted out that a group of savages has occupied Outland village to the west,” Gwyn replied, firing up the engine. “Thirteen targets. We’re heading out to purge them. Let the men rest; the two of us can handle it.”

“Did I give such an order?”

“Ma’am, I am trying to think and act ahead,” Gwyn said, her eyes glued to the dashboard gauge showing the engine’s readiness. “They need to be eliminated now to prevent further issues. The flooding of Seven Winds is proof enough.”

“Return to your post and wait until I have investigated the area,” the inhuman voice commanded. “Coordinates?”

The question went unanswered. Gwyn ordered an emergency dive and cut off external communications. A moment too late, bullets began to clatter against the hull, and hot plasma hissed, searing the outer layer of the plating. The water closed over us, and we were suddenly plummeting into the abyss. Back in my “biological” days, a dive this abrupt would have made your eardrums implode from the pain.

“What a day,” Gwyn remarked serenely, leveling out the Marmarion. I looked around the softly lit cabin of the shuttle, remembering how silver schools of fish used to flash outside the windows, how a steward-bot would gently roll down the aisle, handing out fragrant fruits and cold drinks, and how the cabin used to smell of expensive perfume—mossy, smoky, and woody all at once... The human brain is a strange thing, resurrecting tiny details at times like this—details you didn’t even notice back then.

“Gwyn, do you have olfactory receptors?” I asked, just in case.

“Only air quality sensors to detect toxins. What about you?”

“Same here... Man, everything’s gotten so run-down in here...”

“You do realize nobody gives a damn about upholstery, silverware, and light music anymore...”

“Silverware? I never even noticed it before.”

“We’re Nautilus! We can’t even handle the little things without grandeur...”

“No wonder I never fit in! I assume you have a plan?” I asked, watching a colossal, blood-red jellyfish drift past the porthole.

“Who in their right mind sails into nowhere?..” Gwyn countered.

“Then share it, if you want my cooperation. I lived for a long time in a tiny little world where everything was clear, predictable, and neatly categorized. Now everything is happening so fast it’s enough to drive you insane. Did I get it right that all your colleagues are going to hunt us down?”

The female cyborg reclined her seat, shifting into a half-lying position. I don’t know who adapted the body my team had designed for her, but they hadn’t even forgotten to include two neat contours on her chest.

“We’re going to break your friend out and deliver him to the Kerguelen land base. Formally, it’s still part of Nautilus, but practically, it’s under our people’s control.”

“‘Our people’? You mean, the opponents of your AI dictator?”

“You see, after the mutiny on the Njord, Minna introduced forced chipping. The other bases are worried they’re next in line. The bravest ones are moving to land, but they don’t want to live like savages. Hence, Kerguelen...”

“So why don’t they just solve the problem themselves? Too scared?”

“We haven’t reached a critical mass of active rebels yet. Most of our staff is an exhausted corporate herd suffering from withdrawals, held hostage by chipped thugs and metamorphs who inspire terror just by existing. Down there, underwater, Minna controls her security very tightly. Both physical and electronic.”

“Damn it... I really hate her name.”

“Why’s that?”

“It’s similar to the name of the woman I loved.”

“Unbelievable... Well, yeah, you were a human longer than I was,” Gwyn said, shaking her head. “Aside from the Omniverse, I’ve never really had a chance to fall in love. Good luck finding the kind of pervs who’d fall for a combat cyborg—and even then, there’s no guarantee our personalities would match.”

“Any supplies on board?”

“We’ll make it to Kerguelen, provided we pump the hacker full of tranquilizers. The more he sleeps, the less he eats.”

I kept quiet, scoffing to myself. If anyone is about to take a little nap, sweetheart, it’s you. If Violet and I were going to sail to Kerguelen, it certainly wasn’t happening in the next few days. And highly unlikely in the next few months.

“You mentioned some of Minna’s experiments that you guys aren’t exactly thrilled about...”

“She keeps pushing biotechnology, as if she’s hellbent on repopulating the planet with superhumans... That’s what the metamorph experiments are for. And the attempt to breed telepaths. Not to mention the maximum integration of living tissue with machinery. Even now, when we’re starved for absolutely everything, those projects are her top priority... To her, we’re just expendable material for her grand plans. The help. Or, in the worst-case scenario, lab rats.”

“Why am I not surprised?.. Still, telepathy is a new flavor of crazy,” I said, already knowing about Vassilevsky’s unusual find and hoping to fish for more.

“Don’t you remember your own company’s projects?”

“I ran one project, and you’re drawing breath because of it. So cut the sarcasm.”

“The task of breeding telepaths had an innocent name: Research into Genetically Determined Electromagnetic Sensitivity of the Brain. What people used to call ‘supernatural’ is really just science we haven’t broken down yet; back in the day, people thought lightning was God throwing a tantrum. If gadgets can connect remotely without wires, it stands to reason that one brain can connect to another in the same way. No artificial ports needed, because nature already gave us the hardware. It opens up a bottomless pit of possibilities for industrial espionage and everything else... Have you ever read those ridiculous theories about the ‘third eye’? Funny thing is, the so-called extrasensory zone of the brain is located right around there, and in a normal person, it’s usually asleep. The neurons in that area become hypersensitive during mutations of certain genes that used to be dismissed as ‘junk DNA.’ You could call those mutants real psychics. It’s incredibly hard for them to stay sane until adulthood without eating a bullet—for obvious reasons—so the survivors prefer to keep quiet about their ‘gift.’ Our scientists managed to isolate the gene responsible for activating that extrasensory zone and cranked it up. And that’s how they artificially raised twelve girls.”

“Only girls?”

“In all recorded history, high activity in the extrasensory zone has been predominantly documented in women,” she explained. “Men with the mutation just get what you’d call ‘good intuition’ and often excel in negotiations.”

“Would be handy,” I replied, feeling a sting of envy.

“Four of the subjects grew up to be perfectly ordinary people. In six of the girls, the psychic traits were packaged with autism, childhood schizophrenia, and other mental pathologies.”

“Poor things…”

“Only two turned out stable, and one was raised in Seven Winds. Her name was Danielle. She didn’t just read thoughts from a few hundred meters away; she could take control of animals. Right before the Blackout, there was some kind of incident, so they put her in hibernation and didn’t bother evacuating her... They didn’t realize the Blackout was going to last this long. It brought so many disasters that nobody gave a damn about Lab D-17 until recently.”

I immediately slipped into playing the village idiot.

“And she’s still alive?”

“Oh, stop this! You know far more than we do! Before Moon Cross showed up, one of your little friends paid a visit to that lab. Why don’t you let him tell you what happened to Danielle?”

“I see someone from the Winged Sun has been very generous with information. Care to share a name?”

She kept silent, still unsure. If she had decided to defy Minna, what was holding her back?

“Since we’re in the same boat, literally and figuratively, we ought to help each other out. You are counting on my help and my honesty, aren’t you?”

“Quid pro quo. You tell me where your colleague Ivan took the girl.”

“They were in the city when the flooding started, and I couldn’t establish contact. If they survived—and Ivan could probably survive a nuclear blast—they might have been taken along with Violet. In that case, there’s a chance we can bust all three out. I did my best to divert unwanted attention from my friends. That is, assuming your Minna doesn’t get to them first.”

“We’ll do everything we can to make sure that doesn’t happen. Right?”

“Your turn to reveal a secret, Gwyn...”

“Our informant in the Winged Sun is Lola Mendes. She monitors the radio traffic, which makes her incredibly easy to recruit. She warned us that your operative, Ivan Vasilevsky, had set out to investigate Seven Winds. She also told us that your head of external communications is our former prisoner, Rakhmanov—the Martian.”

Well, well. The rat turned out to be the mistress of our “beloved” chief, Klaus Freiberg. One of our three radio operators, the boss of the other two, and a close friend of late Helga Swensson. As Gwyn went on to explain, Nautilus had reached Mendes fairly recently—around the same time Helga died in that reactor accident. Unfortunately, I was away, escorting Ivan and Rakhmanov to set up the radio beacon, which allowed us to break through Geryon’s blockade for less than an hour and send a message to the guys in Arkona.

Lola knew enough to understand how dangerous Geryon and his flock were. I figured Lola’s desperate desire to keep her cozy, peaceful life going indefinitely ran headfirst into a very real fear for her own skin. As a result, she didn’t think twice before selling us out—despite everything Rakhmanov had told her about what Nautilus had become.

The cruise was going smoothly. Nautilus wasn’t exactly flush with cash and couldn’t afford to waste vehicles, so we didn’t expect immediate pursuit; the squad back in Seven Winds simply had nothing to chase us with. The flip side, of course, was that the Marmarion was being tracked remotely, so we could comfortably expect an ambush waiting for us on the approach to Port Amundsen.

“If I were them, I’d try to get to the prisoners first. And I assume their chances are pretty high... On our side, we have my old observations of Port Amundsen. I’ve systematized them into layouts, which I’ll share with you. I know how many checkpoints they have, what time the guards rotate, where the armory is, and which sectors have the best kill zones...”

“And do you know how to get out of there in one piece?”

“Keep your eyes peeled. The most heavily fortified place in Port Amundsen is the Temple, but it’s unlikely they’d hold high-value prisoners there... A hospital or a warehouse is much more probable... The safest bet is the hospital quarantine unit—constant temperature, thick glass, and easy to guard. Frankly, if I wanted to keep a captive somewhere where nobody could get to them, I’d pick the hospital... Wait, I just remembered there’s also the detention facility.”

“What, like a prison?”

“Pretty much... They used to put violent criminals there before shipping them off to the mountain mines... Interestingly enough, the Moon Cross’ teachings spread faster among the convicts than anywhere else. The authorities didn’t mind; the local preachers enforced discipline and never called for riots, even though it was a completely different story on the mainland...”

“Hold on...” Gwyn interrupted. “Didn’t the Moon Cross invade this place from South America?”

“The militant wing led by Aelius did, and they were fewer in number at the time. But they landed on highly fertile soil,” I lectured her. “Now, the Moon Cross now controls almost the entire west of the continent, including rich deposits of gold, iron, and other rare metals. You guys could definitely use those. But I agree: before we handle that, we need to deal with the Shadow.”

“With whom?”

“I refuse to call that thing Minna. ‘The Shadow’ is one of the aliases Geryon Lyndon used, and that’s what I’m calling his modified digital copy. Why breed so many virtual demons? As if one wasn’t enough to drag us all to hell...”

“And you’re acting like you had absolutely nothing to do with it.”

My mind drifted back to that long-ago tour of the Njord. Back then, I had walked from section to section until my unaccustomed feet practically begged for mercy. Having seen so little of the world outside our family estate, I stared wide-eyed at plants that had never existed in nature, changing color at a touch, at rats with brains packed with microelectronics moving in time to music, and at metal alloys fusing with living tissue on a nanoscale.

But how many doors had remained locked that day? How much was happening just out of sight that would have made me turn and run for my life? Geryon had already spread his tentacles across the Net, closing in on my little family, while his original digital copy waited for its hour in the archives.

Whether he was left to rot in a simulation, dreaming of revenge, or was shut down and locked away in a vault, history remains silent. They say a son isn’t responsible for the sins of the father—or in my case, the mother. They lie. At least in my case.

The cruise was surprisingly peaceful. We slept to our hearts’ content, taking turns on watch. Sleep was the only luxury we could afford, but it was so sweet, especially since we’d had so damn little of it lately... When I wasn’t asleep, I re-watched the logs of the scouting raids Violet and I had done, trying to sniff out new blind spots and strongpoints in the enemy’s defense.

Once upon a time, when we were trying to hatch a plan to capture Apostle Aelius, we had drawn up a detailed map of Port Amundsen, marking every possible infiltration point. Back then, we thought we’d be operating with at least a squad of Trackers and a swarm of drones at our back.

Now, Violet and Wilhelmina were prisoners, and I was caught between two fires alongside a practical stranger of a cyborg woman who could do literally anything. But hey, only in a meticulous SWOT analysis will you ever find true peace of mind, you dysfunctional disaster, Veliard Reed...

Now and then, I’d space out for a minute or two. The majestic silhouettes of whales and large sharks glided past the porthole, and schools of small crustaceans flickered in a phosphorescent haze—utterly oblivious to our passions and turmoils, seeing nothing past the metal hull but two irrelevant living things.

People who deny the existence of alien, non-human intelligence are incredibly naive; just like those marine crustaceans, we can look point-blank at beings vastly more evolved than us, look, yet see and comprehend absolutely nothing. And those others couldn’t care less about our feelings, hopes, or social structures, much like I don’t give a damn who the alpha is among those tiny shrimp... To them, we aren’t enemies, friends, or food—we’re just background noise...

Like any respectable city in Antarctica, Port Amundsen had a dock for underwater transport. High-value facilities in the Moon Cross’ city usually had between eight and twenty guards patrolling the perimeter, and I figured we could expect at least that many waiting for us at the dock.

Fortunately, Gwyn came with some serious combat modifications that I lacked: a stealth module whose radiation forced her exoskeleton’s nanobots to create a cloaking surface; the ability to crawl along ceilings or slick vertical walls; and tactical apps wired directly into her brain.

Wherever she looks, she shoots—no thinking required, the gun built in her limb finds the target on its own. If she and her kind still can’t neutralize the Shadow even with upgrades like that, things on the Njord must be truly pathetic.

They need a master down there.

I hesitated until the last possible second before contacting Vassily Ilyich, since the number of parties interested in intercepting my signal had just doubled. But what I had learned from Gwyn couldn’t be allowed to die with us if things went sideways. I activated my wrist unit—drones couldn’t reach us underwater anyway—and sent a two-word message: Watch Mendes.

To be honest, the worse things got, the more I missed Rakhmanov and his good-natured composure. For as long as I’ve known Freiberg, he loved to flex his high status and remind everyone of their place in the corporate food chain by imposing petty restrictions—like forbidding anyone from staying outside the city for more than two hours without a special permit, or growing weed for personal use.

Rakhmanov, on the other hand, was friendly and down-to-earth without being overly familiar, and he projected his sense of dignity onto everyone around him. The younger crowd viewed him as the father figure; just look at our Ivan, whose biological father was a monster.

Heck, forget the kids. Chronologically, I was older than Rakhmanov, but I always perceived him as the wiser one. Probably because he’d survived a hell of a lot more shit in his life than I ever did.

“How are you?” Gwyn’s voice snapped me out of my thoughts.

“Feeling like a ruin. Will the trip take long?” I asked my new “sister.”

“We should make landfall by nightfall,” Gwyn replied. “If you want to get some sleep, now’s your best window.”

“You said Nautilus had two telepaths. Where’s the second one?”

“In her entire short life, she never met a single decent human being,” Gwyn explained. “So she preferred not to live in a world like this.”

With a sense of quiet triumph, I thought about how Danielle had been a hell of a lot luckier: she had run into a whole team of good people. And with that thought, I drifted off to sleep.

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The Orphaned Earth

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My brief visit to the Pine Island cost us dearly. A Moon Cross squad had cordoned off our entry point to the Nautilus facility. The grav-flyer rose into the air slowly, as if in mockery, swallowing the bodies of my friends while I watched helplessly from the cliffs near the ruins of the Seven Winds.

I stood atop the sunken city, a lone shadow against the darkening sky, watching the grav-flyer's lights vanish into the clouds. My hands were empty; my mission was a scorched ruin. Not only did I lose my friends, but also a woman trapped in a brain that was no longer hers—my Wilhelmina.

Grief demanded I stay there and howl at the silence, but the wind brought something else from below: the collective scream of a city broken by the flood. I was unable to stop the Moon Cross, but I could still do something for others, for the sake of my own sanity.

I descended from the cliffs, leaving my pride among the ruins. The city below was a mud-covered graveyard of glass and steel, and I moved through the wreckage like a ghost.

“Bobby! My boy! Please, answer me! Bobby!”

“You’re lying! She’s not dead, I can see it! We’re going to wake her up! Maria! Maria, look at me!”

“Guys, can you breathe in there? Hang on, we’re going to get you out!”

So much fear and grief all at once... The horrors of the Blackout had only grazed me, but now, the suffering of others had me by the throat. Twenty meters below me, an old man sat sobbing uncontrollably; nearby, a woman clawed through the rubble in search of her child, and I was powerless to change a thing.

Are you celebrating your victory up there, Lindon? Relishing your godlike power? Are you satisfied with pinning the gruesome deaths of hundreds on the consciences of the weary, lost, wounded Martians?

Thermal sensors: on. I search for the small body myself, without moving a muscle. To an onlooker, I’d seem paralyzed with terror. Let them think that. A scarf masks my face. Gloves cover my hands. In the encroaching night, no one will realize who I am.

Except for the drones. Always the drones. I can’t detect them yet—not because they aren’t there, but because they’re at an altitude beyond the reach of my sensors.

A heat signature, trapped under a fallen roof fragment where the mother can’t reach. Tiny, flickering, like the flame of a dying candle. No one here has the strength to move that debris. No mere human.

I find three men and ask for help. But it’s only a ruse—a way to pass for human for just a little while longer.

The four of us gripped the edge of the concrete slab. I watched the veins bulge in the men’s necks as they grunted with exertion, pouring their last bit of strength into this hopeless piece of stone. I barely grazed it with my fingertips, feigning the effort, but in reality, I was the invisible lever forcing the debris to give way. The slab moved reluctantly, crawling upward with a dry, grinding screech.

“Hold it!” one of them shouted as a narrow gap opened.

The mother dove into the darkness beneath the fragment before we could even secure it. Seconds stretched into eternity. And then, her hands emerged from the dusty void.

She pulled out a small body, clutching it to her chest. The boy was motionless and terrifyingly pale, his skin grey with concrete dust, his lips tinged blue. The mother let out a sound that didn’t resemble a human voice—a ragged moan of pure despair.

But I detected a faint, barely perceptible heartbeat.

The boy suddenly took a jagged, shuddering breath, and a weak, broken sob escaped his chest. That sound pierced the grim silence sharper than any explosion. He was alive. Freezing, wounded, but alive.

Another survivor—a middle-aged woman trapped in a water-filled pit. She showed almost no signs of life, but her body heat refused to let me be deceived.

The trouble is, women like her—neither young nor striking—are rarely the first to be saved. People rush to help the pretty girls, occasionally the elderly, and almost everyone leaps to protect toddlers and their mothers. The rest are expected to “manage on their own”: that’s how it was before the Blackout, and that’s how it remains now. Had I not met that brave young Randy, I might have simply moved on for my own safety. After all, the Moon Cross was close.

I dove in.

As it turned out, the woman’s arm was pinned fast. As if cursed, lifting the fallen beam proved too much even for me—the one who had so long fancied himself the pinnacle of creation. Мy artificial muscles felt no pain from the strain, but the “body-brain” interface raised the alarm, reporting an inadmissible load. Examining the area more closely, I realized that the ceiling slab resting atop the beam had to be moved first. I had to admit that a crowd of people would fare better here than a lone cyborg. The alternative was to hack off the poor woman’s arm (which would likely be done anyway), but for that, I needed Violet’s lasers; my own claws weren’t built for such work.

I cranked the pitch and volume of my voice to the maximum, mimicking the desperate cry of a child. I had to scream for a long time while continuing my attempts to clear the debris alone; the maximum output of my vocal apparatus was noticeably weaker than a child’s shriek. Finally, I was heard: a group of five locals arrived. And leading them was a man of the Moon Cross.

Now, there’s a revelation. Have they come to save people from a catastrophe they probably helped create?

To destroy a city only to search through the gruesome meat-grinder for the wounded seems like madness at first glance. But there was a logic to it: none of the locals, naturally, knew who stood behind the disaster.

And terrified, nearly broken ragamuffins are the ideal “cannon fodder” to replenish the cult’s ranks.

I knew enough about the Moon Cross insignia to identify the newcomer’s rank: a Baptizer, whose responsibility is to harvest new people! While helping his companions to free the wounded woman from the deadly trap, he tirelessly preached about the all-seeing Prophet and the divine will that had sent the “holy host” to the aid of the victims. Luckily, the bastard seemed oblivious to my presence.

“Then why didn’t your ‘divine will’ prevent this?” one of the men asked as they finally shifted the slab holding the ill-fated beam in place. I recognized his voice and his left arm, which was missing to the elbow. Jack March!

“Brother, do you wish for no one to ever die? Such is the world order, established by powers beyond us,” the Moon Cross man replied in a well-practiced voice. “Sometimes people die one by one, and sometimes many die at once. You saw it yourself: much happened here to invite the Lord’s wrath. I am certain that later, you will understand and thank the Lord for your salvation. The Lord and His Prophet, Geryon.”

“Jack, quit your yapping, we don’t have time for you now,” muttered another man, also past his prime. “Damn, it’s Madame de Langeron from the ‘Scarlet Wings’! That means her beauties must be close by too!”

“Or their remains,” Jack sighed.

“That arm is history...” his companion remarked, lifting the limp body in its faded velvet dress and passing it to his comrades. “Did something fall on you, too, Jack?”

“No. That was a bad hunt. A leopard seal.”

“Got a family here?” the Baptizer asked, checking the pulse and pupils of the rescued woman.

“Didn’t work out that way...” Jack looked at him with naked suspicion.

“Stay with us, and you will have one,” the Baptizer said warmly. He seemed unfazed by the destruction or the sight of the mangled bodies being carried past by Heldrich’s Orderlies, who had arrived from Pine Island ahead of me.

He looked through me, searching for the child-voice that had led them here.

“The one who called out,” the Baptizer mused, his voice turning cold. “Where did he go? A child who can move stone and scream like a siren... that is a miracle we cannot afford to lose.”

I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the night air, my anxiety screaming for me to engage my combat subroutines. He wasn’t just recruiting people to his flock; he was hunting for ‘miracles.’ And I had just put myself on his radar.

It was no easy feat to linger here, but I decided to take the risk. Mangled steel structures, heavy debris, and grime shielded me from the enemy; though I was side by side with the Moon Cross fighters, I slipped past their gaze—at times flattening myself against a sheer wall, at others leaping onto the fragment of a ventilation pipe or into a vacant window frame where they would never think to look. Once the wounded woman was carried away, I climbed back onto the beams and moved across the heights toward what had recently been the Nautilus service center.

I was too shattered to devise even the poorest of plans. All I could do now was watch, listen, and wait for the next grav-flyer. And it was bound to come; the Order’s soldiers had far too much they wanted to scavenge from here to manage it in a single trip.

The survivors had made camp on a strip of coastline least affected by the flood; the strongest among them had set out on foot for the village of Outland. Knowing how haughtily the people of Seven Winds treated outsiders, I wouldn’t have counted on the villagers’ hospitality if I were in their shoes.

According to my observations, there were twenty-four Baptizers in Seven Winds. Eight remained at the camp to maintain order and prevent brawls over the scraps fished from the sea; eight were still exploring the research centre, and another eight were stationed as guards. I managed to find out that the man in charge of this company was named Santiago, and the leader of the Order was now Lucian; that Aelius had died a few days ago in McMurdo; and that a scout named Lex had distinguished himself in the operation by capturing high-value prisoners and flying out with them to Port Amundsen. This was the recent companion of Katrina and Randy.

To my frustration, there wasn’t a single mention of when the next grav-flyer would arrive.

The Apostle’s death happened suddenly, but the details escaped me. Port Amundsen must be in turmoil right now. Unless, of course, Lindon has taken the reins personally, formally appointing some submissive puppet to the throne.

This part of the city was the most damaged. I noticed no more signs of life waiting for help. I was hoping the route from the service center down into the lab wasn't completely obstructed. From there, I could attempt to make my way down and spy on the enemy.

I had just bent the rebar aside when an imperious voice snapped a command at me.

“Identify yourself!”

A drone descended to my eye level—one completely unlike Geryon’s winged “messengers.” No flapping flight, no propellers, no visible nozzles. Pure anti-gravity. We had a similar project in development once, as I recalled, but they hadn’t been in a rush to fund it due to the astronomical costs...

“Am I not making myself clear?” the same voice spoke again.

Impossible... I hadn’t heard Wilhelmina in an eternity, for since the day of our reunion, my beloved had spoken to me only through Violet’s voice. But the sound coming from the machine was the same.

Am I losing my mind?

There was no logo on the drone’s immaculate, smooth surface, but I could have sworn I was looking at a Nautilus design. The silver chassis was shaped like a thickened disc with sleek, curved fins on either side, capable of stabilizing in both horizontal and vertical planes. A blue light flickered at its front.

“I hear you just fine, sweetheart. I am Veliard Reed, formerly Valentine Reed, former head of the Nautilus Transhuman division. Now it’s your turn to introduce yourself.”

“I am Minna. The intelligent management system for the Nautilus Corporation. And I am not your ‘sweetheart.’”

“That’s true,” I had to admit.

In Violet’s words, what the hell kind of disconnect was this? Yes, I knew that Nautilus survived these days by scavenging resources and technology from outsiders. But why did its AI bear a name so similar to the one I held so dear? And why did it speak with the very voice my Whiskey used when she spoke to me?

If I’d been tracked, I wanted to know how...

“Forgive me… Are you certain we’ve never met before? I knew a woman who had the same voice.”

“I know you by reputation; I identified you by your chassis model. The first successful prototype—you can’t keep something like that from your own kind. Though it was difficult to assume you would survive until today.”

“It would have been strange to assume I wouldn’t. I had the best team: Darya, Vanessa, Paul, Stephen, Igor, Juliette… They were golden. Perhaps you know if any of them are still alive?”

“Igor lives in a biological body and remains of sound mind. Vanessa is in the Soul Vault, though she retired from affairs long ago. There is no data on the fate of your other teammates following the Blackout.”

“Thanks anyway. You didn’t fly all this way just to admire the ruins, did you?” I asked the drone.

“Our mission is to reclaim our facility. And the staff member they abducted.”

Whoever this Minna was, she believed Danielle was currently with the Moon Cross. Perhaps this worked in my favor: if we could reach an agreement, I wouldn’t be heading to Port Amundsen alone and on foot.

“Great minds think alike, as the ancient Romans used to say. When do we begin?”

“No rush, Veliard. First, I expect explanations from you. Where have you been all these years, and why have you only returned now?”

I had a hunch on why she resembled Whiskey so much—but it was too terrifying to voice. Even to myself.

“I didn’t come before because there was no need. You probably know I resigned almost immediately after switching bodies. But the bio-station where I worked until now has been destroyed by the Moon Cross. I came to see if anyone remained in our old office, and I did so either with terrible luck or, conversely, with remarkable timing.”

“Will you allow me to interface with you?” the AI asked with deceptive softness.

“I’m sorry, but no. No one is allowed to dig around in my head. We are both related to Nautilus, but that doesn’t mean we’re friends yet.”

“If you don’t do it yourself, we could force you.”

How quickly you resort to threats! It feels as though it’s far from your first time. It’s a shame that Rakhmanov never mentioned you.

“So, you’ve got a whole assault squad nearby... Hammerheads? Why the silence? Did I guess right?”

“The cultists will never have our facility.”

“Fine! I have a personal score to settle with these guys, and I’ve watched them for a long time. I’ve scouted the outskirts of Port Amundsen inside and out. I know where the critical facilities are, and I know the guard rotations. We can work together, provided you’re not too bossy.”

“And why should I trust you? You’ve already turned your back on us once before...”

“But as you can see, I haven’t painted a cross on myself yet.”

She fell silent, in a way that felt very human.

“Can I ask for one thing before we start liberating the lab?” I asked.

“I’m listening.”

“Don’t touch the locals. They’ve suffered enough as it is… I know we owe each other nothing and to you, I’m just an outsider, but… sparing them wouldn’t be difficult, would it?”

“Why stop there? Perhaps I should settle all the poor and wretched right inside the facility? It’s as plain as day: the fewer people who know about us, the better.”

“How do you expect to rule the world if you’re afraid of the victims? Fine, forget it. I can’t stop you, but I won’t participate in a slaughter. I have no intention of doing that.” Tightening my backpack, I hurried away, but the drone quickly caught up with me.

“That powerful Reed character! Without this grit, our empire would never have been born,” the AI flattered. The name and voice it had appropriated no longer surprised me—they only grated on my nerves. “We have no reason to kill civilians. Rest easy; we only want our facility back. But I’m warning you: anyone who dares to attack us...”

“...will get hit three times as hard,” I agreed, finding it hard to believe we’d reached an understanding so quickly. Something wasn’t right.

“Pine Island is missing,” Minna noted. “You saw it set sail?”

“Nearly dropped my jaw. How does that thing even stay afloat? I’d bet anything it won’t get far,” I replied, pretending that I knew nothing more.

“Excellent. We’ll discuss it once we’ve dealt with the cultists.” She projected a hologram of the coordinates. “This is the laboratory’s ventilation shaft. If there are guards—eliminate them. Ensure no one escapes through the shaft; I’m giving you full discretion. And above all—watch the sky. If reinforcements arrive, we must be ready to react.”

“Understood. But where… where exactly is the squad you’ve been talking about?”

“Close by. Whenever possible, we strike from the sea.”

I realized what she meant, and I nearly panicked: if they entered the research center’s boathouse by submarine, they might figure out that I—with my emergency access—had been to the facility before them. But how likely was that? After all, no one among the living was supposed to know about the key.

“A connection will have to be established, regardless,” the AI remarked. “Otherwise, how are we to exchange information moving forward?”

For a second, I wanted to run and never look back; the hacking and control tools these people possessed could have advanced tenfold. But the temptation to arrive at Port Amundsen not as a lone wanderer, but with a well-armed squad, proved stronger than my caution. It was a matter of history: my old “family” had always included a private military company in its ranks.

“Defense protocol, code yellow,” I commanded internally. Wilhelmina and Violet had tediously crafted these new firewalls and anti-virus suites for me personally before our last sortie. I could only hope that Martian technology had outpaced whatever Nautilus currently possessed.

“Fine, let’s link up,” I told the AI, feeling as though I were stepping into a river with a treacherous, shifting bottom.

A static hum filled my head—my internal firewalls were erecting multi-layered barricades made of junk code and old engine schematics, which I hoped to dump into her incoming stream as a distraction.

“Linking,” her voice echoed directly inside my consciousness.

The sensation was like an ice-cold needle piercing my brain. I felt her algorithms cautiously probing the perimeter of my memory, like a thief testing the locks on a series of doors. I clenched my fists, focusing on a single, unwavering thought: Ventilation shaft. Cultists. Coordinates. That was my mental citadel.

Above all, I couldn’t let her penetrate deeper into the sectors where Wi's image was stored. If Minna found that, she would realize I wasn’t just a “former employee.” She would see a threat or, worse, a vulnerability to be exploited.

“Signal stable,” she declared, having missed—or perhaps ignored—my strained efforts. “Our operative will issue you a weapon. She’s coming right now. Please keep in mind that at least one enemy should be captured alive.

“Got it,” I replied. “Why so much trust in one you hardly know?”

She didn’t have a chance to reply: a Moon Cross drone blasted a bolt of plasma at hers and nearly got me. I ducked behind a broken wall.

I leapt behind a fragment of a wall. The lethal power of the plasma weapons is offset by a slow recharge cycle; I used that window to fire back, but to no avail—the hostile drone evaded my bullet by a mere centimeter. I had five rounds left in the mag and nowhere to resupply. I made a split-second decision, diving into the sea. A following plasma shot melted the protective coating on my leg but caused no major injury.

Quite a start! How was I supposed to surface when I was a sitting duck for that thing? Dropping another two meters deeper, I paddled toward the ruins of the Small Pier to hide beneath them, catch my breath, and think. The sight of what had accumulated on the seabed over the decades would have made any human retch, and the flood hadn’t exactly improved the view. Then, a vibration: something hit the water. One, two, three... It turned out to be the wreckage of that very same drone that attacked me.

High above, I noticed a human-like shape. But not completely human. It felt as if I were catching a glimpse of myself from a distance.

It’s disturbing to say the least—to face something like this after nearly being killed. But this was another cyborg who, like me, had transformed into a beast-like form to run better, leap, and climb among the ruins. I noticed the differences after a few seconds: the ribcage was narrower, the overall frame lighter, the lines more fluid. Feminine.

Another Minna’s avatar bot operated from afar?

Carefully, the machine descended toward me and offered her hand - a friendly gesture after the real help. The fact that my radar had missed this cyborg meant that Nautilus, unlike Geryon Lyndon, hadn't neglected stealth technology. A grim thought crossed my mind: was I meant to act as bait for the drones?

The strange plate covering where a face should have been split into four sections, which retracted smoothly into the head. What was revealed to me was indeed a face, its surface resembling not skin, but flawless, pitch-black porcelain. The artificial eyes were deep blue, with a dark rim encircling the pupils. Even the eyelashes were present. The lips appeared moist and lush, like ripe cherries. In all likelihood, they felt the same to the touch.

“Minna?” I asked.

“Gwyn,” she answered in a mellow voice. “And you must be Veliard? Hold your gun, brother, and let’s neutralize the intruders. ”

She made her way through the debris so effortlessly that I assumed she was no weaker than I. Maybe stronger. Only twice did I have to help her move things around.

“How old are you?” The question escaped me, spurred by a flickering hope that we might have been—at least indirectly—acquainted in the past.

“Thirty-eight,” Gwyn explained. “In my own sickly shell, I wouldn’t have made it to twenty. So, Veliard... thank you. If it really is you.”

“Who else would it be? Is the entire assault squad made of cyborgs?”

“Humans,” she answered. “But there are two more cyborgs like us at Njord. We’ve never been considered for mass production, have we?”

“I’ve never hoped to see someone like me. Got a biological brain?”

“I would prefer something more reliable, but yes.”

Previous chapter Geryon’s Code Series

Photo by Kyle Johnson on Unsplash

Through a heavy slumber, Randy heard voices rising from the distance, merging into a single, haunting chant. It was a harmonious sound, yet stripped of the cheer found in fishermen’s songs. This was somber—the kind of music that might accompany the pyres of those claimed by the bird plague, were funerals ever conducted with such elaborate ritual.

He had never heard bass notes so profound; they seemed to seep beneath his skin, vibrating through his very marrow. He wondered, in a daze, where such a sound could originate. The sunless depths of the ocean? The hollow center of the earth?

Prying his eyes open, he saw a window across from him, where the moon silvered the edges of the clouds. The room was a stranger to him. The air hung thick with a sharp, medicinal cocktail of pine needles, iodine, and spirits. Fortunately, the source of the chant was not here; the massive stone walls stood as a bulwark, muffling and distorting the deep voices into a low, rhythmic thrum.

Randy instinctively fumbled for the edge of his blanket and pulled it over his head, trying to retreat from the grim music back into the safety of sleep. For a time, he succeeded. A dense, velvet darkness enveloped him again, shielding him from a world that had become too heavy to bear.

When he awoke a second time, a total, ringing silence embraced him. He had no idea how he had ended up here. He remembered the roar of black water surging through the emergency hatch into the submarine bay, and his frantic attempt to flee with Violet. From whom? He couldn’t recall. That stretch of memory felt as if it had been sloppily painted over with black ink.

As he touched his feet to the floor and tried to stand, the room tilted violently. He barely managed to sit back down before falling. His temples throbbed with a rhythmic, fierce pain, and fat black moths flickered at the edges of his vision.

He had suffered no new injury, but he had been running on fumes ever since the wild ride with Katrina, Lex, and Violet. His body was bone-tired, resisting every command, and his mind remained clouded.

As the black moths dissolved, he forced himself to study his surroundings. A floor-to-ceiling window claimed nearly the entire wall opposite the bed, flooding the room with the pale, ghostly light of dawn.

One of the panes was slid slightly ajar; from outside came the rhythmic roar of the sea, which seemed to churn directly beneath the building’s foundations. The walls were constructed of smooth stone blocks—remnants of the Golden Age, when architects laser-cut granite and basalt as easily as wood. Paintings of teeming jungles and hunting beasts decorated the stone; their colors had likely once been vibrant, but in the dim morning light, they looked ominous.

The low bed was warm, almost like a living organism. The mattress conformed obediently to the contours of his body, shifting with his weight as if filled with water. Looking up, he saw no soot from oil lamps on the ceiling; in fact, there were no lamps at all.

Randy turned his heavy head with the utmost caution. Yet, like rocks emerging from the water at low tide, faces began to manifest in his memory. His reflection in the mirror—looking like something the cat dragged in. Violet and his suspicious, hacking cough that Randy had already heard in McMurdo.

The Moon Cross—not the ragtag thugs with makeshift axes known to most free people of Antarctica, but an elite shadow unit, clad in the polished, terrifying gear of the Golden Age.

They had stridden from the thin fog that filled the hall. And one of them, the only one who removed the visor of his helmet, had the face of Lex.

It was not fog… They used gas to neutralise Violet and me, Randy guessed. It gave me hallucinations.

But where the hell was the Martian?

Hearing a rustling and snuffling behind him, Randy turned onto his other side and saw someone sleeping in a folding chair, their head completely covered by a felt blanket. The chair was positioned behind the head of his bed, which was why Randy, in the haze of his heavy awakening, hadn’t noticed it right away.

“Violet!” he whispered, feeling a surge of strength. “Wake up, man!”

The person in the chair stirred, groaned grumpily, but only wrapped the blanket tighter around themselves.

“Violet, damn it!” the young man raised his voice, only to notice that his companion had suspiciously shrunk in size. It seemed Randy had been guilty of wishful thinking.

The man in the chair muttered something crossly, pushed the blanket aside, and revealed himself to be the guitarist Randy knew well. With a loud groan, Lex stretched and ruffled his hair to shake off the shards of sleep.

The air caught in Randy’s throat. His former companion’s bright clothes were gone, as were the intricate trinkets that had adorned his neck and wrists. Now he wore coveralls made of a coarse, greenish-gray fabric with a multitude of pockets. To Randy, the outfit looked entirely out of place on Lex; moreover, despite his recent nap, the guitarist looked haggard—he had likely only just gone to bed.

“Welcome back to the light, Randy,” the musician said, shifting from his chair to the edge of the bed with a newfound, heavy grace. “Moving too swiftly would be unwise. You’ve suffered a concussion when the gas made you fall, and you’ve lied unconscious for two days. We have both been touched by the Gift of resilience, true, but such sanctified strength is not to be trifled with.”

“I’ve already felt it... Do you know where they’ve brought us?” Randy’s gaze locked onto the white cross encircled by a moon disc on the chest pocket of the coveralls. “And why are we here—together?”

The musician raised his hand in a commanding gesture, his eyes flashing with a sudden, pressuring authority. The blasphemous tattoo was no longer on his finger—the one he had used to flaunt a feigned hatred for his own organization.

“Quiet your heart and listen. We are within the walls of Port Amundsen.”

“You’re mocking me...” Randy squeezed his eyes shut as a searing pulse of migraine threatened to shatter his skull.

“Not in the least. I must confess, the man you knew in Railtown was a disguise, a necessary deception. I am no vagabond, Randy. I am a Vanguard of the Moon Cross. The eye that watches over the continent, reporting every ripple in the world to my brothers and sisters. I lead the ‘Invisible Eight‘—those who walk as ghosts before the very face of the enemy. It was by my hand and providence that they found you in that lab. Had any other unit reached you first, you would have been purged on the spot.”

“You? A zealot? I’d sooner believe a skua could write poetry!” Randy fought to the last to keep the reality at bay. This had to be a fever dream, a phantom born of his intoxicated brain.

However, this was exactly what Veliard was saying.

“And that is my greatest triumph,” the musician smiled, his presence growing more imposing, more undeniable by the second. “The world views a wandering player as a harmless fool of little account. They think my only purpose is to pluck at strings for a piece of sugar. They invite me to their hearths, they spill their secrets in their cups, and women seek solace in my company... Think of our own meeting! Truly, the most impenetrable mask is the one that looks exactly like a face.”

“Gods rot you...” Randy whispered, shell-shocked, as the floodgates of memory burst open.

Randy de la Serna - September 24-25, 2190 - D16 Facility, Seven Winds

Violet lay in a heavy, fragile sleep, his pulse weak but holding steady, occasional coughs coming from his lips. A long thundering rumble from above and a disturbing vibration rolling all over the space didn’t wake him up. But Randy’s body went stiff.

As if things weren’t bad enough, now an earthquake! he thought.

The elements were beyond his control, and even Veliard’s. After staying by Violet’s side for a few more minutes without detecting any new vibrations, Randy decided to explore. To set foot in a Golden Age site and not investigate how it all functioned would have been a crime, plain and simple.

As Randy moved through the corridors, he found himself treading with the instinctive stealth of a scavenger. The walls bore the grim, crimson signatures of recent violence—traces of the “visitors” Veliard had mentioned. Randy kept his gun leveled, his finger twitching against the guard. He nearly fired when a shadow lunged at him from a side pane, only to realize he was staring into a mirror. He froze, haunted by the stranger looking back: the boy who had fled the surface was gone, replaced by a man with an irreversibly hardened gaze and cheekbones sharpened by hunger and fear.

Finding a bathroom, he didn’t miss the chance to wash away the scent of death. The shower nearly ended before it began; a mere wave of his hand triggered a high-pressure jet of ice-cold water that almost swept him off his feet. Through frantic trial and error, he learned to tame the ancient Golden Age plumbing, coaxing out a steaming deluge. Randy lingered until his fingertips were wrinkled and pruned, letting the hot rain hammer against his head and spine. At first, the water pooling at his feet ran a murky, near-solid black—the grime of a life on the run.

As a physician’s stepson, Randy had been raised to respect the intricate fragility of the human body, even if he had never been initiated into the craft. Now, the true value of the safety he’d found hit him with the weight of an avalanche. He was running on pure adrenaline; every muscle throbbed with a dull, relentless ache that the hot water could only mask, not cure.

He might have stayed under that artificial rain forever if not for the gnawing void in his stomach. Finding no rations in the immediate vicinity—though he did reflexively stuff a few heavy silver forks and spoons into his pockets—he descended into the conservatory. He stood transfixed by the lush, miniature ecosystem. It was a defiant burst of green in a world of white and gray, teeming with exotic flora that likely existed nowhere else on Earth. Randy gorged himself on heavy fruits and crisp vegetables until his belt grew tight, the sweetness of the juice almost overwhelming after eighteen years on fish, seaweed, dried meat, and potatoes.

Only then did he push forward to the boathouse.

Veliard’s “emergency access” was no joke. Before the cyborg departed for the Pine Island, he had ensured the laboratory’s vital sectors were unlocked. This realization brought a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature: if Veliard was the one who had opened the way, he certainly hadn’t been the one to scrawl that desperate message at the end of the long corridor. The handwriting matched the digit combination for the med-bay perfectly: “No passcode works here! I’m trapped!”

Randy looked around the cavernous stone halls. What kind of fools would abandon a sanctuary like this while people on the surface lived like starving dogs? Who could afford to squander such technology and abundance? Or had they stepped out for a moment, intended to return, only to be swallowed by the Blackout? Veliard hadn’t stayed long enough to play historian.

The boathouse was a marvel of brutalist engineering. The semi-circular ribbed ceiling and monolithic walls hadn’t been built so much as hewn from the mountain’s volcanic heart. According to a faded diagram on the wall, any submersible leaving the bay had to perform a vertical descent through a massive underwater chimney, emerging into the open sea a hundred meters below the ice line—invisible to anyone watching from the land. But the Nautilus had been thorough during their evacuation; they had stripped the place of every last vessel.

Randy paced the perimeter of the vast expanse, his footsteps echoing hollowly. Behind a jagged protrusion in the rock, he discovered a narrow staircase leading to a small lifting platform bathed in a dim green glow. Above it sat a heavy hatch marked with a stark sign: Emergency Exit.

The silence was suddenly shattered by an agonizing screech of metal against metal.

Randy’s head snapped up, his eyes locking onto the emergency exit. Along the seam of the circular lid, a blinding orange line began to bleed through with a violent hiss. Someone was cutting through the armored plate from the outside with a thermal cutter.

Veliard! Randy’s heart leaped. The cyborg must have found an alternate route. Randy stepped forward, a shout of relief building in his throat, but the instincts of the last few weeks forced him back into the shadows just in time.

With a heavy, echoing thud, the severed slab of metal collapsed inward, a stream of foul water pouring inside. No comrade appeared in the opening. Instead, a compact, coal-black drone descended smoothly into the bay with a faint, predatory hum. Its chassis bristled with sensor lenses that immediately began sweeping the darkness with clinical blue beams.

An intruder. A spy.

Randy didn’t wait to see if the machine belonged to the Nautilus or the Moon Cross. It didn’t matter. If that drone reached the living quarters, Violet was as good as dead.

He lunged toward the massive handwheel of the airlock’s manual override. His palms slid against the cold, polished steel, but he threw his entire weight into the turn. The ancient gears groaned in protest, a sound like a dying beast, but the mechanism held. The massive armored plate began to slide downward. The drone, sensing the movement, whipped its sensors toward him, its engines whining as it accelerated, but it was too late.

With a resonant, metallic clang, the airlock sealed shut, cutting off the unwelcome guest.

Randy didn’t stop to celebrate. Panting, fighting off the fatigue and the rhythmic pounding in his temples, he bolted back into the silent corridors. He had to reach Violet before anyone else. Whoever had sent that drone wouldn’t stop at the first locked door.

Then came the strange mist. The fighters. And their commander, who signaled them not to shoot. Randy’s body was first paralyzed with fear and then with a weakness that rapidly invaded every cell.

His mind was the last to give in, frantically urging him to push on. Randy stayed awake just long enough to witness the commander’s visor lifting. And then, the face.

Randy de la Serna - September 27, 2190 - Port Amundsen

“You bloody wretch!” Randy grunted through his clenched teeth. “I’ve got a family to help in McMurdo. Without me, they are going to die!”

“Brother,” Lex told him in a sympathetic half-whisper. “As far as I know, Arseny’s here, with us. Should I send for him?”

“Impossible.”

“Well, should I send for him?”

“Please, do,” said Randy, holding back tears.

Lex left for a couple of minutes. Trying to resist his suffocating anxiety, Randy used the pause to brush his untame brown hair with his fingers and to get dressed in the clothes borrowed from Violet, which were now clean.

“Arseny is coming soon,” the Moon Cross vanguard said, pouring Randy a glass of water. “Thank you for taking a chance and saving my life.”

“I regret it,” Randy replied, leaving the glass untouched. “Why am I even here? You know I’m not a fighter.”

“You’re a hell of a fighter, Randy,” Lex countered firmly. “But we’ll discuss your future later. To be honest, it wasn’t you we were after. We needed your companion—the one with the purple strand. We aren’t the ones threatening his life. The infection is.”

“The bird plague?” Randy groaned. He remembered the hacking cough that had begun to shake his sleeping friend. Violet must have inhaled the virulent spores along with the dust during their time at the hydro station.

“Your stepbrother was thought to have caught it as well. Fortunately, it was just a common cold. I hope he can now contribute to finding a cure.”

“Wait... you mean you didn’t bring this plague upon us?”

“No, Randy. It is as lethal to the people of the Moon Cross as it is to any other human. Except, of course, that we have the Prophet’s blessing.”

Randy winced, a snarky retort on the tip of his tongue, but the silent slide of the door cut him short. A man with a clean-shaven head entered the room. Randy’s breath hitched as he whispered the name: “Arseny.”

“Take your time,” the vanguard said warmly, retreating and leaving them to a sudden, suffocating silence.

The air around the younger Osokin felt heavy, a cold aura that made Randy’s instinct to embrace him wither instantly. Randy was the first to break the stillness.

“Huh! You’re alive! What happened to Mom and Dad? Why are you standing there looking like a ghost?”

“My father and your mother... they are no longer here,” Arseny said hoarsely, his eyes fixed on anything but Randy. “Father died seconds after you fled. He tried to dodge a thrown stone and fell from the roof. By the time they brought him to me, it was too late. And Alda... she was infected. She may have already been sick when you abandoned us. Masako and her mother survived. Alda did not.”

Randy stepped forward, gripping his brother’s shoulders with shaking hands. “Have these... these people brainwashed you? Did they force you to say this?”

Arseny shook his head slowly, eventually burying his face in his hands. “You should have stayed,” he growled. “If not for you, Dad would never have stepped onto that roof. He would still be alive. Even the Moon Cross wouldn’t have harmed him”.

“How can you know that?”

“Because I agreed to cooperate, and I am safe,” Arseny snapped, looking up. “I would still have my father if you hadn’t left. Neither he nor Alda should have ever encouraged your escape.”

Randy’s eyes were unusually dry, as if something had drained his body of all the water. His risky flight, the ordeals at Silver Palace, Kitty’s bullet, and Katrina’s blood—it was all for nothing.

The precious cure was pulsing in his veins, but he was late. He could have spent all this time drinking himself blind in Von Bellingshausen, with the same outcome. Or crash at takeoff and die.

“I failed...” Randy stumbled back, the air in his lungs heavy like a block of ice. He leaned against the cold stone wall, his knees buckling under the weight of a useless sacrifice. “Every single effort was in vain.”

“I can’t disagree,” his stepbrother said, his voice devoid of warmth. “If it brings you any relief, I was the one who closed Alda’s eyes. Her end was not too painful, despite the disease. Now, I have to go. Your presence is a reminder of everything I’ve lost.”

“Of what we lost!” Randy yelled, his fists clenching in agony. “Don’t you dare claim Dad meant nothing to me just because we weren’t of the same blood!”

“May God bless you,” Arseny replied, the phrase sounding like a shield.

Either God does not exist. Or he’s a monster. Randy was dying to punch his brainwashed brother back to his senses, but the weight of his own guilt immobilized him.

“You people have a dead criminal instead of a god—do you even know that?” Randy spat, Geryon’s horrific story told by Kat resurfacing in his memory.

“A heresy that may cost you your life,” Arseny hissed, his eyes flashing with a candid warning. “I recommend you keep your mouth shut. Better yet—don’t you dare even think about it.”

He lingered at the threshold to add:

“Stay in this room. If you wander, the people here won’t be very patient.”

The door slid shut with a pneumatic hiss, leaving Randy alone in his cage. He sank to the floor, the cold of the basalt walls seeping into his bones. Outside, the distant, indifferent song of the sea continued—a dirge for his family, his sanity, and his reason to live.

He gave in to tears at last, but they brought no relief.

Katrina. I didn’t help her. The only person I managed to save is the Moon Cross spy. I gifted the Martian medicine to the Moon Cross. Genius.

No more did he fear death. His thoughts returned to the cold embrace of the river. Had he known of his family’s fate, he wouldn’t have fought so fiercely.

Somewhere in the city, there was Violet, the man who had warmed Randy back to life. Isolated, sick, and locked up. He desperately needed help.

Not from a fatally incompetent fishhead. I’d better not even try, for Violet’s sake.

Long moments drifted by before he regained the strength to move. What finally stirred him was the presence of a different person—the detested “wandering guitarist,” though strangely, he no longer seemed so loathsome in Randy’s eyes.

“Mind if I sit with you for a while?”

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Ivan Vassilevsky- September 25, 2190 - Pine Island

Katrina was the first to enter the medical isolation ward, clutching the diary like a loaded weapon. The air around her felt charged, like the hum of a transformer.

Heldrich sat on a narrow cot. Sandy stood frozen beside him, gazing loyally at her master, ready to lunge at us at his slightest gesture.

“You look far too well for a man whose kingdom went to feed the fishes,” Kat said, tossing the diary onto the metal table. “And now we know where your passion for hookahs comes from.”

Physically, Heldrich was healthy, but he looked as though his soul had been hollowed out. Everything that gave his life meaning was gone. One had to admit: he lived for Seven Winds—at least, as he understood it. Setting no value on an individual life, Lutz viewed the city as his future masterpiece. In Seven Winds, he had control, which he valued over everything.

If one were to dig deeper, in this regard, Raynard took after Colonel Zorin, whom we both loathed. But while the latter was obsessed with security, Lutz’s ultimate goal was a hunger to transform his “glorified junkyard” into a heart of civilization—at any cost. Or perhaps I am overcomplicating things, and he was driven merely by a passion for grandiosity. Now, no chance remained to satiate it, and he looked pathetic—so much so that, if given the chance, he would have leapt overboard at the first opportunity.

“Surely you knew what your ‘ghost from the Moon’ was planning?” From exhaustion, Raynard spoke at half his usual speed, yet he still didn’t abandon the hope of finding some stone to hurl into our garden. “Don’t be cowards, admit it. I’m bound anyway, what do you have to fear?”

Winston remarked that Raynard himself had signed the death warrant for Seven Winds by gathering everyone the Prophet and his fanatics were hunting in a single place. Hearing this, Sandy dissolved into sobs. I kept my eyes fixed on the prisoner’s face. For the first time, something resembling sympathy flickered in his gaze, but it didn’t last a second.

“Yes, we knew Geryon was lethal,” Kat added. “My brother warned you on the very first day. But right now, we didn’t come to talk about what you were doing to him. We came to talk about the well-known events in Mirny.”

“No problem,” Heldrich replied, scowling at her. “In exchange for a final mercy. For a bullet to the back of the head.”

“Now, now...” Kat shook her head. “I don’t believe a man with such ambitions would die like a coward before finishing the crowning masterpiece of his life.”

“And what’s the point of finishing anything now? Nothing is left.”

“You’re wrong, Raynard,” Kat countered. “There’s Railtown, McMurdo, other cities. Birds can carry the infection far. Across the entire continent. Imagine how your name will echo if you let this cure work!”

Audacious move. A man so devastated can’t be so easily hooked. Or can he?

“But if you want to die a total zero, we can always find a bullet for you,” Winston added. “And the only creatures grateful will be sharks.”

“Fine, I’ll tell you,” Lutz grunted. “It all started very mundanely. Right on the former landing pad, some boys found a dead skua and decided it would be a good idea to pluck a feather or two. The bird didn’t need them anymore, right? I wanted to scare them off because the carcass might have been infectious, but then I asked how it even got there. That’s when the boys told me the skua had lunged at one of them and killed itself against a wall when he dodged. It was clear to me the bird was sick; at first, I suspected rabies.”

“Seems logical,” the Winters said as one. Raynard continued:

“I shooed the boys away and placed the bird in an airtight container. The fact that I brought it to the lab nearly proved to be my undoing. I took precautions, but some rat snitched about the fact that I was examining the carcass.”

“Zorin,” I recalled. “The messengers from Mirny said he held you responsible.”

“Well, it’s not as if he was going to blame himself...” Raynard bared his teeth in a mirthless grin. “Forgive me, but I couldn’t organize a quarantine without his cooperation. Not even after I began to suspect what I was dealing with.”

“Are you not even curious to know who of the townsfolk survived?” I asked

“I don’t. No one listened to me back then anyway. That was a life I won’t be returning to. Besides, that’s not what we’re here to discuss,” Raynard Lutz said morosely. “Anyway, I performed an autopsy on that damned skua, found mycosis in the lungs, and documented it meticulously. Soon after, the chickens began dropping like flies. And they weren’t the only ones.”

“They kept chickens at the spaceport?” Winston asked, surprised.

“In case you haven’t noticed, every settlement here produced at least a bare minimum of its own food. Or is it different where you’re from?”

“Our ships launch from an orbital platform,” Katrina said. “But otherwise, things are much the same as they were before the Blackout for you.”

“It didn’t take long for the jump to happen,” Raynard continued, his voice taking on the clinical coldness of a coroner. “Zoonotic transmission is inevitable when you’re huddling together for warmth in cramped quarters. The first human case was a technician from the poultry block. Acute respiratory distress, rapid onset of fever. When I performed the bronchoscopy, his bronchial tubes looked like they were lined with frosted glass. It wasn’t just an infection; it was a rapid colonization of the pulmonary parenchyma by that white mycelium.”

He paused, a ghost of a bitter smile touching his lips.

“I warned Zorin. I told him we were dealing with an aggressive fungal pathogen with a high spore load. I pleaded for a Level-4 containment and a full-scale quarantine of the residential sector. But to the Colonel, ‘quarantine’ was just a fancy word for a loss of labor. And in his twisted manual, labor was life. He called my report ‘medical alarmism’ and told me to get back to work.”

“And then the first child died, right?” I whispered.

“Oh no, he survived the disease. Somehow, this infection is less lethal to younger people,” Lutz replied.

And then Katrina burst into uncontrollable sobbing, as if Heldrich. Both Winston and Sandy looked at her in astonishment akin to fear. It sounded alien. So unlike her - always alert and composed like a good soldier.

“Meanwhile, the adults suffocated,” the doctor continued, staring at his distressed enemy. “The fungus causes massive necrosis and blocks the airways with thick, pale exudate. By the time the rest of the block started coughing, the incubation period had already peaked for everyone. The city became a petri dish, and we were the agar. To make things worse, the toxins produced by the fungus and the overall pain made infected people both aggressive and suicidal.”

“Rumours said that I was harvesting the fallen for some twisted experiment. As the wards overflowed with patients literally drowning in their own necrotic exudate, the whispers turned into a roar: ‘Doc’s hoarding the antidote for himself.’”

“While the antidote did not exist,” I said.

Raynard shrugged.

“I was stripped of such a luxury as time. When the panic strikes, the crowd always looks for a throat to squeeze. Zorin, ever the strategist, realized he needed a lightning rod for the mob’s fury to keep the noose from his own neck. Hell, I was unable even to grab all my notes. I had to restart the diary while on the run.”

He nodded at the book that Katrina clutched.

“You had the medicine all this time,” she hissed.

“The city did. In Seven Winds, every other person smokes Spark. That’s why this plague had stayed away for a while. Do you realize now what you’d stolen from me, you Martian witch? The raw materials for the antidote! I have Jack and Johan to thank for delivering you to me, along with the bag.”

“What are you talking about?” Winston asked. “When did it happen?”

“Quite recently!” Lutz replied. “She and her dog-riding thugs robbed a caravan carrying the raw materials for Spark. They nearly did in Jack—the man you’ve already met. Believe me, her career turn was a surprise to me, too!”

“It’s not a sin to steal a drug from a drug dealer,” I said. “Bet she intended to bring it back. In exchange for Winston’s freedom.”

“What about the slave trade?” said Raynard.

The younger Winter looked as if she were about to faint.

“Arce did trade in slaves. Not me. Jack must have told you that we captured no one from his company.”

Lutz regained his spirit, seeing the small success of his attack.

“Once in a lifetime, the Lost Kids can be merciful. Winston, in your spare time, you might want to look into what they are notorious for. The only thing that makes them better than the Moon Cross is their modest number. That’s the kind of company your little sister kept.”

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“Is this true, Kat?” he asked.

I could not help but thank Danielle for sharing with me what had happened to Katrina in the Silver Palace. It’s a shame she did not warn Winston the same way. Bet it looked way harder because he was Katrina’s brother. And I wouldn’t have known how to start such a conversation either.

Winston looked at his sister, and in his eyes was that very look Katrina feared more than Geryon itself. It wasn’t anger — it was a slow, agonizing realization that during their time apart, his little Kat had turned into someone he no longer recognized. “Kat?” he repeated, his voice cracking. “You were with them? With the Lost Kids?”

Katrina didn’t flinch. She stood there, gripping Heidrich’s diary so hard her knuckles turned white. She looked like someone who had been waiting for this blow her entire life, and now that it had finally landed, she felt almost relieved. Almost. “I did what was necessary to survive, Winston,” her voice was dry and hollow. “To set you free. I couldn’t have done it alone.”

“Survive?” Heldrich’s lips curled into a venomous smirk. “She’s being modest. She wasn’t just ‘with them.’ She was Ars’s right hand. His shadow. While the entire continent shuddered at the mention of the Lost Kids, your sister shared bread with their leader... and the blood of those who wouldn’t submit.”

I felt a surge of cold fury. Lutz was hitting where it hurt most, twisting Katrina’s tragedy into her shame. I knew from Danielle that the Silver Palace had been a cage for her, and the price of her “career” had been paid with months of hell.

“Enough,” I snapped, stepping forward. “Lutz, you’re just trying to get even for your own humiliation, but it won’t get you anywhere. Winston, your sister tells the truth. She needed those people to break you out. This is what Danielle saw in her memory.”

“Don’t you understand that she became like Heldrich, Ivan?” Winston turned to me, his gaze empty. “Did you know? Did you know all this time?”

I hesitated. The whole truth was too heavy to hurl at a brother’s face right here, under the mocking stare of an enemy. “I know that there are no saints in this world, Winston. Let me remind you that Mars hasn’t sent anyone for you yet. I only found out about you recently myself. Katrina stood alone for you against the whole world. All while being a target for Geryon herself.”

Finally, Katrina raised her head. “Yes, Winston. I robbed, and I killed. And I would have burned this damn continent to the ground if it helped pull you out of those chains.” She then turned to Lutz. “You should keep your mouth shut, Raynard. You call me a ‘miserable creature’? Look at yourself. You’re sitting in a cage on your own ship, your small empire is nothing like rubber, and everything you have is this diary. In Heliopolis, I’ll personally make sure you finish your work.”

The fallen Martian pilot turned and walked out without looking back. The ward door clanged shut behind him, severing him from us like a coffin lid closing over the image of the sister he had so tenderly cherished.

“Family bliss, shattered by the harsh reality of life,” Lutz said smugly. “A story as old as the world.”

That’s when things took a turn I didn’t see coming. Sandy’s tears stopped, and she fixed her gaze on her master with a look that could have burned a hole through steel.

“Go feed the fish!” she hissed and then looked up at Katrina, the fear gone. “I have the final formula. We can cure an early-stage infection without turning the patient into a junkie. We’ve got samples in the lab.”

“Alright, show me,” Katrina breathed, jerking her chin toward the exit of the isolation ward. “And don’t you dare to lure me into another trap.”

Sandy got to her feet, ignoring her master completely, and followed the Martian out. She had seen Heldrich amputate Winston’s foot after his second failed attempt to flee. She had not flinched. But Heldrich shattering a family? It was the last straw.

I watched the women walk away, a single thought drumming stubbornly in my mind: “How far can Sandy be trusted?” Was this the genuine rebellion of a once-devoted girl, or Heldrich’s final, desperate play, using her to worm his way into our trust and win his freedom?

Then again, I reasoned coldly, if the master is gone, there’s no one left to set free.

Heldrich froze. His triumph over the fracturing of the Winter family evaporated, replaced by the primal terror of a man who realized his hand had been played. I forced myself to look into his eyes one last time.

“You asked for a bullet, Heldrich,” I said, fighting back a wave of nausea. “So be it.”

Previous Chapter

Support My Work Geryon’s Code Series

Violet, Randy, and now Veliard. It felt as though they had been sucked into a black hole from which even light does not return. And while I would have done the same in Veliard’s place—after all, he remained their only hope—it didn’t make things any easier. It was hard to decide which was worse: falling into the clutches of the Moon Cross or the Nautilus. The Winged Sun’s intelligence knew a fair amount about the former, but the latter were more terrifying; one only had to see Danielle’s face at the mere mention of the name.

The Pine Island moved along the coast at a “snail’s pace” of seventeen knots. I say “snail’s pace” because this nuclear-powered vessel once churned out a full sixty-six; before the Blackout, she was considered the fastest passenger ship in its class. Winston decided to play it safe. Given the age and condition of the ship, it was the only sound decision.

After receiving the final message from Veliard, my brother didn’t lie down until Ivan, Danielle, and I had managed at least a few hours of sleep. Surprisingly, he had quickly come to trust Deshar—the man hadn’t participated in the abuse Winston suffered in the medbay. Thus, on that night, we gained our first lookout. Later, Winston established a strict order: two people on watch at all times. At sea, this rule made no exceptions, not even for little Maria.

We were lucky that the Pine Island was specifically a nuclear ship. The massive shielding of the nuclear installation, designed to keep radiation in, worked in reverse, protecting the reactor and engine from the electromagnetic pulse on the day of the Blackout. After the catastrophe, the systems went into “sleep mode.” All that was required of Winston was to reanimate the power supply to key nodes, but given the liner’s dimensions and the meager resources, it was a task bordering on the impossible. There had been an engineer on board—he had lived for many years after the Blackout and even kept journals—but by the time Heldrich decided to resurrect the ship, the old man had finally succumbed to senility brought on by age and cheap booze.

Over the last half-century, the electrical grid in the galley and engine room had suffered less from the Blackout than from rats.

My brother hadn’t managed to start the desalinator, but there were water reserves on board: like the Seven Winds, the liner collected meltwater and rain in cisterns on the upper decks, and crushed ice from the foothills had once been delivered in caravans to the giant kitchen refrigerators.

Winston had restored light to the bridge, the med-bay, and the “Presidential Suite”—the five-room apartment where we were now huddled and which used to belong to Heldrich.

I woke up before Ivan: I was pulled from sleep by the moans coming from behind his door. I entered without knocking, fearing that the fever had returned and was once again searing him from within. His hands clawed the air as if he were trying to dig his way out from under a cave-in.

I was still afraid to touch him. A foolish, superstitious feeling: as if, at my touch, Arce might wake up. As if I hadn’t been the one to see the leader of the Lost Kids choking on his own blood. As if I hadn’t personally put an end to his shameful existence.

Yet, I caught his hand. No fever this time; his skin felt almost too cool beneath my fingers. It was simply that the horrors of the past few days refused to let him go, tormenting him even in his sleep.

In the gray light of the breaking day, I suddenly realized that his face was beautiful—even behind the mask of days-long exhaustion and the hollow beneath his left eyelid. Before, he had seemed like a monster to me only because I hated his old man with every cell of my body.

And who wouldn’t? If Heldrich was the incarnation of cold, calculating rationality, then Arce relished evil for the sake of it. He reveled in the agony of those who, in the moment, proved to be weaker. It was striking and bitter that fate had endowed them—the tormentor and the protector—with such similar features.

I didn’t notice Ivan waking up. One moment his eyelids were flickering under the onslaught of a nightmare, and the next, he was already looking at me. Not with the sharp, icy gaze of the scout I had grown used to, but with a bewildered, almost childlike look.

There was no play in that stare. There was only raw, unrefined pain and the disorientation of a man who didn’t immediately remember where he was or why he was still alive.

“Katrina?” his voice was barely a whisper.

Caught off guard, he tried to sit up abruptly, but his body betrayed him. Ivan gasped, his face contorting from a sharp spike of pain. He collapsed back onto the pillows, and I felt as if I wanted to sink through the floor. Yet, I stood as if chained to my place.

For about three seconds, he just lay there, staring at the ceiling, and I watched as he shoved his weakness back down deep—watched the steel return to his single eye. He was too late with his mask.

“Good morning,” I said, trying to make my voice sound as casual as possible. “I came in to check your temperature. It’s down.”

Ivan finally focused his gaze on me. Now, he was a Pathfinder once again—the man who is always on a mission.

“Sorry,” he snapped, and in that short word, there was more irritation at himself than an apology to me.

He sat up—more slowly this time, controlling every micro-movement. His hand instinctively brushed against his empty eye socket, checking the bandage, before he glanced at his communicator.

“How long was I out? Where’s Winston?”

“Must be on the bridge. See you there, Ivan. Drink plenty of water.”

I stepped out without waiting for an answer and pulled the door shut behind me. My heart was pounding as if I had just dodged a falling tower.

Until now, Winston and I hadn’t had a chance to talk one-on-one for longer than fifteen minutes. But I knew this moment was inevitable. And I feared it more than I feared the Moon Cross. Had I not been so gravely wounded, I would have followed Veliard into the very jaws of the enemy—anything to avoid the conversation about what exactly I had been doing all the time since my failed attempt to free my brother.

Deshar froze, stepping aside to let me pass. In the dim light of the stairwell, his face looked as if it were carved from stone. He gave a short nod—devoid of the obsequiousness I was used to seeing from the “Lowers” in Seven Winds, but also stripped of his earlier hostility.

“Is she asleep?” I asked quietly, referring to Maria.

“She is. She’s clutching that stone of yours as if the reactor’s operation depended on it,” he gave a shadow of a smile, and that fleeting expression made him look startlingly like an ordinary father from peacetime.

I pushed the heavy door open and stepped onto the bridge. Winston was hunched over navigation charts, illuminating them with a small flashlight. Hearing my footsteps, he turned, and his face instantly lit up. There was none of yesterday’s distress in him; only endless fatigue and genuine concern.

“Kat, you’re up a bit early,” he said softly, hugging me.

“I’m fine, Winston. It’s just hard to sleep in a new place.”

My brother sighed and pointed toward a small table cluttered with papers. Among the navigation logs lay a pile of notebooks in worn covers.

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“I didn’t waste any time during my watch. I found Heldrich’s personal records in his cabin. There was also Danielle’s diary—I’ve already taken it to her; I think she needs it most right now. But this...” his fingers brushed one of the books, “this is damn interesting.”

Winston slid a notebook toward me, filled with fine, cramped handwriting.

“One book is dedicated to city affairs: taxes, food supplies, lists of ‘undesirables.’ But the others... the others are purely medical. His research. Including his experiments with my blood. But more importantly, including the disease that destroyed Mirny. He knew about the danger a long time ago. Ivan says Heldrich himself left the place about three years ago.”

Burning with curiosity, I fell upon the book. Winston rubbed his eyes. It was clear he was holding on by sheer willpower, and his turn to sleep had passed long ago.

“We need to know the truth. Heldrich and Sandy are still there, in the locked compartment beneath the bridge. As soon as Ivan fully comes to his senses and joins us, we’ll interrogate them. I need Vasilevsky present—he has sharp intuition.”

“And Danielle?”

“She’s not ready yet, believe me. Yesterday, she drained herself completely.”

He looked at me with a flicker of tenderness, and my heart clenched. In his eyes, I was both the little sister who needed protecting and a fellow crew member he could rely on.

Nearly collapsing from exhaustion, my brother trudged toward the exit, leaving me alone with our prisoner’s diaries.

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Hours slipped away as I read. Heldrich had begun these entries immediately after leaving Mirny in 2188. The handwriting here was uneven, the letters occasionally collapsing into illegible scrawls—the way a man writes when his hands are shaking with fever.

And then I understood.

He hadn’t been searching for a cure out of pure scientific curiosity or for the sake of saving humanity. He was searching for it to survive himself. Heldrich realized he was infected with the “bird plague” almost immediately after his escape. The white mycelium had already begun to spread within his own lungs, turning every breath into an ordeal.

The diary mentioned a nameless wandering trader—one of those ghosts of the wastes who deal in everything from rusty ammunition to ancient canned goods. From him, Heldrich had bartered for his first dose of “Spark.” At that moment, it was just a filthy narcotic, capable of briefly dulling the pain and providing a false sense of strength.

But Heldrich got better. It took an iron will not to die a common addict.

He described his sensations with chilling detachment: how the “Spark” accelerated his blood, how the heat in his chest forced the infection to retreat. And then he wondered if he could forge Spark into a perfect weapon against the fungus. A merchandise. A tool of power.

Photo by Aakash Dhage on Unsplash

“He was the first test subject,” I whispered, feeling goosebumps crawl over my skin.

He had perfected the formula on himself, risking his sanity, and then made it the currency of a kingdom that no longer exists.

I slammed the book shut, breaking the silence of the bridge with a dull thud.

Behind the door, I heard the light footsteps of a man accustomed to “walking on thin ice.” It was Ivan.

“Ivan,” my voice came out quieter than I had intended. “What do you know about what actually happened in Mirny?”

Vassilevsky froze, his eyes fixed on the pile of books before me.

“I left the city long before that,” he said hollowly. “I didn’t even really know Heldrich. My old man took him hostage to cover our retreat. After Osokin was exiled and some of our people eventually fled, medics became worth their weight in gold. There was a firefight. Somehow, Zorin’s people managed to take him back.”

He bit his lip. The memories were painful because he had been amidst that firefight himself, a teen more afraid of his father than of the bullets.

“Later, I met those who managed to get out. A handful of shadows, barely resembling humans, reached the gates of the Winged Sun headquarters. They had crossed hundreds of miles of wasteland—frostbitten, maddened by fear. They pleaded for help, Katrina. They screamed that the city was suffocating.”

Ivan closed his eye for a moment, as if the footage of that bloody chronicle was playing before him.

“Rakhmanov formed a rescue squad. We prepared hazmat suits, desalinators, medicine; we sent drones ahead… But they showed there was no one left to save. The city had turned into a massive crypt. Those who didn’t die from suffocation or fever had taken their own lives.”

I saw all of it too, when Arсe dragged the gang into his former city to loot it for all it was worth, only to find his own death there instead.

I saw Ivan’s fists involuntarily clench.

“I know that our wannabe dictator considered Raynard guilty and wanted him dead. And I… I considered him a coward who abandoned his people to die.”

“You called him Raynard?”

“Yes. In that life, that was his name. Now, what shall we do?”

“Let’s give Winston some more time to sleep. Meanwhile, you may scan the perimeter, and I’ll go fetch something for breakfast.”

Previous Chapter

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“Top shelf. Third blue container from the left,” a voice said from the doorway.

I didn’t turn. I couldn’t. I leaned my forehead against the cool, sterile metal of the cabinet. “Winston. You should be on the bridge.”

“We aren’t going anywhere for the moment. And I needed to check on my sister,” he said, the uneven rhythm of his limp echoing against the floor as he approached.

I finally managed to hook the container. Antibiotics. My hands were shaking so violently that the pills rattled like dice against the plastic. Winston didn’t look at the meds; his gaze shifted to the locked utility room door, where Heldrich and Sandy were huddled in the dark.

“I gave you an order, Ivan,” he said quietly.

“I remember this,” I rasped, my throat feeling like it was lined with sandpaper. “But I don’t kill men who are already beaten.”

Winston’s face was a map of exhaustion and lingering shock. He looked down at his own hands—the ones that had been bound and bloodied by those very prisoners only hours ago. He took a slow, deliberate step toward me and sank down, sitting on his heels so we were eye-to-level. He didn’t look angry. He looked profoundly relieved.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

I let out a laugh. “You’re thanking me for disobeying you?”

“I’m thanking you for holding the line when I couldn’t,” Winston said, his voice thick with an emotion he couldn’t quite suppress. He reached out and took the rattling container of pills from my hand, his steady grip silencing the noise.

The good man hadn’t disappeared—he had simply been buried under the immediate, crushing weight of command and the lethal, directionless rage of the world around him.

“If you had shot them, I would have woken up tomorrow as a different man,” he continued, his eyes drifting back to the locked door. “A man I don’t think I could have lived with. You saved more than just their lives, Ivan. You saved whatever is left of me.”

I closed my eyes, the cold floor finally starting to feel good against my skin. “Don’t get sentimental on me, Winston. We’re still on a hijacked ship that hasn’t seen a shipyard in sixty years, and our friends are still in the line of fire.”

“Maybe,” Winston said, standing up and offering me a hand. “But at least we’re moving forward with clean hands. Come on. Let’s get these meds into you before you start seeing Martians in the hallways.”

“Joking already?” Katrina’s voice drifted in from the hallway. “A good sign.”

Winston turned, not expecting her to be upright so soon. “How are you even standing? And how on Earth did you get that suit on by yourself?”

“With some help, of course,” she replied airily, declining to share the clinical—and awkward—details of our dressing session. “I’m feeling slightly more human. And I’m hungry again.”

“Where have you been, sister?”

“Just strolling. Taking the layout of our new kingdom.”

“From this moment on,” Winston said, his tone shifting back to the authoritative ‘Captain,’ “no one goes anywhere alone. Understood?”

She leaned against the doorframe. I waited for her to protest; it was her nature to chafe at any leash. “Look, Winston. How many of us are even left on board? Four. Even Jack jumped ship with the Orderlies.”

“It doesn’t matter. We’ll be seven once Veliard returns with Violet and your new friend,” Winston countered. “By the way, are you certain Randy has nothing to do with the Moon Cross?”

“The Moon Cross is the reason Randy’s family is in a hole,” I said, the fever making my voice sound distant to my own ears. “He went to hell and back to help them. I just hope we aren’t too late. We’re giving him a lift to McMurdo, Winston. I mean it.”

“Has Danielle woken up?” asked the pilot.

“Not for a second, but otherwise, she’s fine,” his sister replied. “I guess we all need some rest.”

“Later. When the boys are back.”

“Fine. I’m not yet in a state to tend to Ivan’s wounds. But at least, I could have a look. If you don’t mind, Ivan.”

The dimensions of the nuclear-powered vessel were, on one hand, in our favor: even if the Prophet and Moon Cross had an entire swarm of combat drones, there was only so much they could do to such a behemoth. On the other hand, it would be difficult to locate explosive devices, spy tech, or assassins on such a giant, should Geryon wish to plant them among us…

That said, the Pine Island was not the largest liner of her time. At only half again the size of the famous Titanic, her dimensions were quite modest for the twenty-second century. She was primarily famous for its luxury, reliability, and the atmosphere of an elite club. There was no such thing as third class here—not even second—but there were pleasures in abundance. I hoped, in time, to track down a cellar of expensive Golden Age wines; I was curious to taste what the “celestials” of that era used to pamper themselves with.

With my wounds newly dressed by Winston under Katrina’s guidance, I waited for news from the cyborg. We were still too shocked by the catastrophe that had unfolded on the shore to even discuss it among ourselves.

Veliard contacted me an hour after setting off in the lifeboat. He had chosen a landing site away from the destroyed city, and thus had only just reached the shore.

“Ivan, things are heating up here. I just saw a grav-flyer landing—exactly like the one you and Winston caught on the ship.”

“Dammit… where did it touch down?”

“Not far from our point of entry to the facility.”

“Are you sure?” I asked in horror.

“The trajectory calculations confirmed it.”

“Are there people inside?”

“I don’t know. If there are, I must reach the guys before they do.”

The words stuck in my throat. There was no good solution here. There could only be the least bad one.

“The longer you stay here, the more dangerous it becomes,” the cyborg said. “Do not approach the shore under any circumstances.”

One could only hope that Veliard had some kind of plan. Now that our loophole had likely been discovered, he had no choice but to fight his way into the lab through the elevator or Zachary Glass’s former office—which was almost certainly buried under rubble. I hated to bring the news to the Winters. But I had to.

The pneumatic hiss of the medbay door was followed by a silence that didn’t belong. I expected the heavy tread of a guard or the metallic clank of Veliard’s return, but instead, there was only the soft, rhythmic patter of small feet.

A little Black girl stood in the doorway, her silhouette swallowed by the oversized, dirty coat she wore. She looked like a ghost haunting a graveyard of medicine. Her face was smudged with soot, and her eyes were wide, scanning the room with quiet desperation.

“Sorry. Have you seen my dad?” she asked in half-whisper. “His name is Deshar. Could he be wounded?”

I felt a jolt of recognition that had nothing to do with my fever. I’d seen her before, huddled near the docks. She was Deshar’s daughter. And Deshar was the Orderly who had been assigned to watch me and then turned into a “dummy” by Danielle. He was overall a good guy and a loving father.

Winston’s expression softened. After all, we were responsible for what was happening to the ordinary people.

“Winston,” I croaked. “The former crew quarters. Your old cell. If Deshar didn’t make it to the lifeboats, he might be still there, locked up. Looks like nobody cared to look for him”

“Cold and darkness!”

I tried to stand, but my knees buckled. Winston caught me by the elbow, his face grim. “Ivan, you can barely see straight. I’ll go. I know the way to that cage better than anyone.”

“No,” Katrina interrupted, stepping forward from the shadows of the hallway. She was pale, her flight suit slightly loose on her skeletal frame, but her gaze was iron. “You stay here, Winston. You’re the only one who knows how to keep this rust-bucket from drifting.”

“Kat, you’re in no condition—” Winston started.

“Now that I’ve eaten, I feel much better,” she snapped, glancing at me. “I’ll go with Ivan. He remembers the path, and I can still pull a trigger if we run into someone with bad manners.”

She walked over to the girl and placed a surprisingly gentle hand on her shoulder. The contrast was jarring—the battle-worn Martian woman and the child of a dead city.

“Come on, little one,” Katrina said, her voice dropping an octave. “We’re going to go find him. But you stay behind us. Always.”

I grabbed a rail and hauled myself up, the antibiotics finally starting to war with the infection in my blood. I looked at Winston. He didn’t like it—I could see the protective brother wrestling with the pragmatic leader—but he knew she was right.

“Take the service lift near the engine room,” Winston said, handing Katrina his sidearm. “It’s manual. It’ll be slower, but it won’t trigger the bridge alarms if there are still Heldrich’s men lurking in the lower corridors.”

I checked the charge on my gun, the weight of it familiar and grounding. As we stepped out into the dim, flickering hallway, the girl clutched the hem of Katrina’s suit. We were a pathetic rescue party—a half-dead Pathfinder, a hollowed-out Martian, and a child—heading into the belly of the Pine Island.

The manual service lift descended with an agonizing, rhythmic screech of metal on metal. Every jolt sent a fresh spike of nausea through my gut, the antibiotics warring with the infection in my blood. Beside me, Katrina leaned against the cage wall, her breathing shallow but steady. She held the girl’s hand with a grip that looked more like an anchor than a comfort.

“Dad?” the girl called out again. This time, the silence of the corridor didn’t swallow the word.

Photo by Oyemike Princewill on Unsplash

A muffled thud came from the far end of the hallway, near the isolation cells. I raised my sidearm, the weight of it feeling like a lead bar in my shaking hand. Katrina moved in front of the girl, her posture shifting into a practiced combat stance.

We reached the cabin where Winston had been held, and unlocked the door. Inside, a shadow moved

“Back off!” a voice rasped from the darkness. It was Deshar.

“Deshar, it’s Ivan,” I croaked. “And I’ve got someone here who seeks you.”

The girl didn’t wait. She ducked under Katrina’s arm and threw herself inside. “Dad! It’s me!”

Deshar stumbled out, looking like he’d been through a rock crusher. He collapsed to his knees, catching his daughter in a desperate embrace.

“Maria!”

He only wore his underpants. A dark bruise bloomed across his temple, but I saw no heavy injuries.

“The wave...” Deshar panted, his eyes wide and bloodshot as he looked up at us. “The hull groaned like it was going to snap. I thought the lower levels were gone. I thought...” He choked back a sob, burying his face in the child’s curly hair.

Katrina lowered her weapon, her expression unreadable. “You’re lucky, Orderly. Most of your friends are currently rowing for their lives in the dark.”

I leaned against the cell wall, the world tilting again. Six. We were six now: Winston, Danielle, Katrina, myself, Deshar, and the girl. It was a pathetic crew for a ship this size, but it was a start.

I heard a faint, metallic clatter, like a wrench hitting a deck plate. Then, the unmistakable sound of a ventilation grate being kicked from the inside.

“We aren’t alone,” I said, “There are others. Survivors who didn’t make it to the boats. Or maybe people who were never supposed to be on the manifest in the first place.”

“Let’s get back to the bridge,” Katrina said, her voice dropping to a command. “We’ll find the others later, when we look less like ghosts.”

Soon, the fever finally began to recede, leaving behind only a sticky weakness and a strange, almost painful clarity of perception. The bridge of the Pine Island was uncharacteristically quiet, save for the steady hum of life-support systems.

We sat around a long oval table, trying to maintain a semblance of a peaceful dinner while, beyond the panoramic glass, the ocean slowly chewed through the remains of the Seven Winds. The hot protein mash from the liner’s stores seemed like the greatest delicacy of my life, and the presence of Katrina and Danielle nearby filled me with a quiet gratitude for the simple fact that I was still breathing.

Deshar sat slightly apart, clutching Maria to him. His gaze darted from Winston’s prosthetic to Katrina’s unnaturally thin, almost translucent arms. To him, we weren’t just saviors, but uninvited guests from God-knows-where. He looked at us with that mixture of bewilderment and deep mistrust with which one looks at wild beasts that have somehow decided not to attack, but to share a meal with you. His fingers nervously stroked his daughter’s shoulder, and I saw him flinch every time one of us made a sudden movement.

Winston tried to force out some semblance of calm conversation, but the words drowned in the heavy atmosphere of the bridge. We were a strange company: broken scouts from Mars, a telepath suffering from nervous exhaustion, a former overseer with a child, and me—the Pathfinder, whose pulse had finally stopped drumming the rhythm of a funeral march. Six survivors on an old ark. Watching Maria cautiously taste her food, I realized that our fragile truce was held together only by a shared fear of the abyss beyond the hull.

Winston set aside his empty bowl and looked Deshar in the eye. “We didn’t break the dam, Deshar. Geryon Lyndon did—the man the Moon Cross calls the Prophet. He decided to punish us for our insubordination and simply swept the city into the ocean along with its people.” Winston’s voice remained as level as that of a lecturer at a Martian academy. He calmly explained that, amidst the ruins of the port, only the cold and the looters now held sway, whereas here, aboard the nuclear-powered liner, Deshar and Maria at least had shelter, food, and relative safety.

When Winston asked about his family, Deshar gripped his spoon so hard his knuckles turned white. “There’s no one left,” he answered hollowly, without looking up. “My wife... Ellen. She wasted away in a week, back in the last year. A blood disease. Heldrich promised to help if I served without question...” He gave a bitter smirk, stroking Maria’s head. “Heldrich turned out to be powerless. Or he was simply lying to keep me on a leash. In our city, lies were the only commodity given away for free.”

The tense silence was broken by a thin, childish voice. Maria, who had been sitting quietly at her father’s knees, tentatively held out an object on her open palm. Between her fingers, a polished stone gave off a dull glint—a heavy pendant of green labradorite on a thin silver chain. In the dim lighting of the bridge, the stone appeared almost black, but at a certain angle, emerald and golden sparks flared within its depths.

“I found this back there, on the way to the med-bay... when I was looking for Papa,” the girl whispered, looking up at us. “Whose is it? Someone dropped it.”

I recognized the piece of jewelry that Jack had once given to Kat, and which had returned to him after the Lost Kids’ raid. In a world where cities were crumbling and hundreds were dying, a child’s honesty in the face of strangers felt like something surreal, almost sacred. I saw Deshar’s lips quiver—he clearly hadn’t expected his daughter to be concerned about someone else’s losses at a time like this.

Katrina was the first to break the trance. She leaned slowly toward the girl, and in her usually cold green eyes, a warm spark flickered.

“You have a sharp eye, Maria. And a kind heart,” she said quietly. “Keep it. Consider it a gift from the Pine Island for your bravery.”

The girl’s eyes rounded in surprise as she looked from the stone to her father. Deshar let out a breath of relief, and his shoulders, previously as tense as steel cables, finally relaxed. Maria carefully squeezed the labradorite in her small fist, and a shy radiance of joy spread across her face.

“Ivan!” Veliard’s voice crackled through the communicator again, jolting me to my feet. “Randy and Tetsuo aren’t here... They’ve been taken!”

The bridge was instantly swept by an icy chill. Winston froze mid-gesture; Katrina snapped upright, her hand dropping instinctively to the hilt of her knife. Dechard pulled Maria close in fear, feeling their peaceful reprieve crumble to dust.

“What do you mean, ‘taken’?” I breathed into the microphone, ignoring the sharp spike of pain in my shoulder. “Where to? Was it the Moon Cross?”

“Hard to say right now. Down in the ruins, the Moon Cross and the Nautilus are locked in a life-and-death struggle. I barely slipped through the crossfire. No telling which of them got to the boys first. The bulkheads were cut with a thermal torch—a professional job. A snatch squad was here. They used underwater scooters or a mini-sub. Or maybe they flew them out on a grav-flyer. Depends on who sent them…”

“Any signs of violence?”

“None that I noticed. Well, aside from what was already there.”

I didn’t know how to answer. I just stood there, paralyzed by grief, watching Katrina’s eyes well up with tears. With a low groan, she lunged toward the window, only to catch the silhouette of a departing grav-flyer against the shimmering backdrop of the aurora.

“Did they see you?”

“Who knows. They aren’t pursuing yet.”

“Get back here... We’ll figure this out together.”

“No, Ivan. There is only one road for me now—don’t even argue. Not even Rakhmanov’s orders could bring me back. You guys need to set sail: the reactor in Heliopolis is on its last legs and could give out any day now. We couldn’t secure the fuel rods from D-16, so at least get the Pine Island home and check it for the opportunity. I’m gonna track Randy and Violet.”

The air on the bridge seemed to thicken into a liquid; breathing became a struggle.

“Vel...” I sighed. “I don’t want this to be our last conversation.”

“Heading into the Moon Cross’ nest in a hulk like this ship is the worst idea possible. I’m better off alone, Ivan. Believe me.”

“It’s like bringing a needle to a machine-gun fight!”

“Violet is with them; we have to prepare for the fact that they’ll squeeze everything out of him,” Winston said, having listened in silence until now. “I think, Ivan, that Lindon’s next move is to seize the Winged Sun HQ. We need Veliard’s intelligence in Port Amundsen like we need air.”

“We tried to plant two spies there. We lost both,” I told him and got back to Veliard. “Besides, Port Amundsen is a long way off, and you’re without transport.”

“I’ll manage! Anyway, it’s worth asking the Nautilus men first.”

“That doesn’t sound like you,” I muttered, taken aback by the cyborg’s recklessness. “You’ve never been one to act blindly.”

“My life has been a long one. I suppose the time has come,” Veliard Reed replied with quiet dignity. “Full steam ahead, guys. Full steam ahead.”

Previous chapter

Greetings, survivors and wasteland wanderers,

The journey through the ruins of The Orphaned Earth (goodreads.com/book/show…)has been an incredible ride so far. To take this story to the next level and get it into the hands of librarians, booksellers, and professional critics, I am looking to list the book on NetGalley.

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Stay sharp out there, and thank you for being part of this journey!

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The roar and grinding swallowed the world. Somewhere inside that monstrous noise, people were screaming—but the sound of water devouring the city drowned them out completely. Concrete cracked, steel snapped like dry twigs, and glass burst into a storm of glittering shards. Human bodies vanished beneath the torrent as easily as driftwood, swept toward the black throat of the ocean.

The smooth, elegant towers of the hottest city in Antarctica folded in on themselves, dissolving into a grey, boiling ruin. How many lives were snuffed out in that heartbeat? Dozens? Hundreds? On the three upper levels where the luxury street “Eden” was located, the answer was “everyone.” The strike of the elements had turned paradise into a floating graveyard of scrap.

Neither my opponent witnessed the exact moment of the catastrophe. A violent jolt to the starboard side tilted the Pine Island nearly thirty degrees, throwing me against the railing. Heldrich slammed into me, his weight pinning me down; his crossbow struck the metal bars, bounced once, and vanished into the abyss.

Shock paralyzed us for several agonizing seconds, our fingers locked in a death grip on the handrails. We stayed frozen until the vessel, having weathered the initial blow, shuddered in a dangerous heel. Its mooring lines screamed under the strain before the liner slowly righted itself, continuing its ghost-like drift to the north.

My armor had spared me from the worst of the impact, but I was a walking corpse—exhausted and lightheaded from my own wounds that hadn’t had enough time to heal. Heldrich stirred first. He rose to his feet to behold the ugly heap of scrap that was once his little kingdom.

I had never seen a man shake so violently, save for myself as a teenager, standing over my father with a bloody knife before fleeing the first of the Lost Kids. Heldrich seemed to take root in the deck, his existence consumed by the horrific sight before him.

But the moment I moved toward my fallen gun, he lunged with snake-like speed. I barely managed to snag his legs, heaving with the last of my strength to pull him back down. We rolled across the deck, striking each other with clumsy, instinctive blows, our minds completely short-circuited by the scale of the disaster.

A massive robotic hand clamped onto the gun, ending our struggle. We both froze, looking up at Veliard. The cyborg was drenched from head to toe, looking like some sea-wraith.

“Veliard... do you know what happened?” I gasped through the pain, which tore at the stitches on my abdomen.

“The dam broke,” the cyborg replied, his voice a cold vibration. “It was only a matter of time. But short-circuit me if this was a coincidence.”

“You’ve been there! With Violet!”

“True. All we saw was that the damn place was left unprotected. Heldrich, did you manage to get your engineers there in time?”

“I did,” the leader of the dead city forced out, his voice hollow.

“Looks like you’ve lost them, too,” Veliard said. “Sorry, man. Even you don’t deserve to watch this.”

Heldrich rose, trembling, as Winston’s voice crackled through the radio—a miracle it still functioned.

“Vassilevsky, are you OK? Over!”

“Winston... Was it your job? Did you move the Pine Island?”

“I didn’t toil away in this engine room for years for nothing,” Winston grunted. “But cold and darkness, Ivan—I was moving this ship to get clear of Lindon. I didn’t know a damn thing about the breach.”

Stressed, I spat out a string of the foulest curses—bitter words I realized, with a jolt of disgust, I must have inherited from my father. A man—too old to be an Orderly, likely just a plain worker—slammed into me at a run. Without even noticing his devastated boss, he grabbed my shoulders, shrieking, demanding to know what calamity had erased the city.

“The dam’s gone,” I threw back at him.

The thundering of panicked feet echoed through the corridors. Several times, I was nearly bowled over, but our “local” disguise and the sheer chaos kept the target off my and Veliard’s backs. And Heldrich was too devastated to raise his voice.

Winston’s work on the Pine Island had been a well-kept secret. Not understanding why the liner was moving, the passengers rushed to the starboard decks, their screams drifting over to me on the port side. Many of those poor souls had just watched their friends and families vanish into the surf. I knew that soon, their grief would turn into a lethal, directionless rage.

Painting by Lada Kholosho (Estonia)

“Winston, what’s the plan? Where are you taking this thing?” I asked, my voice tight with adrenaline.

“I’m charting a course for Heliopolis,” Winston replied, sounding strained but resolute. “But we aren’t abandoning Violet. You and Veliard are going to pull him out of the Nautilus lab first.”

“Are you insane?” I hissed. “The Orderlies are still on this ship. If they realize we’re hijacking the vessel, they’ll tear us apart. They’re grieving and dangerous, Winston.”

“I know the risks,” Winston said over the hum of heavy machinery. “But Heliopolis needs the fuel rods. We’re taking control. From this moment on, I’m the captain of this rust-bucket.”

The Martian ordered Veliard to the bridge, using Heldrich as a human shield and cover. I was sent back to the medbay to pack supplies for our excursion.

“You knew, didn’t you? You, Kat, and your strange friends,” Jack asked hoarsely as he let me into the room. Through the tinted porthole, the ruin was visible even to him. Tears glinted on the caravanner’s lashes.

“Of course not,” I snapped. “Why the hell would you suspect us?”

“Because all your secrets lead to blood,” he muttered, glancing at the sleeping Danielle, wrapped in her blankets. “Wherever you go, people die. People who had nothing to do with your war.”

“Pal, you’re a fool,” I snarled. “The ‘Winged Sun’ doesn’t want you dead!”

“I only know the ‘Winged Sun’ from your stories, Ivan. But the enemy often wears a friend’s mask. You moved the ship exactly before... before the water came.”

Jack’s breathing hitched, his nose sniffing loudly. I worried the man’s sanity was finally fraying. To be honest, I was barely holding onto my own.

“If we wanted to wipe Seven Winds off the map, wouldn’t we have finished Heldrich too?”

“Everyone needs a skilled doctor,” Jack countered.

“Sandy would have been enough for us; she’s less of a threat,” I said, gesturing toward the locked utility room where our captives—including the mustachioed devil Rasmussen—were reconsidering their life choices. “Rasmussen is useless to us anyway. And if we were the monsters you think we are, you wouldn’t be alive to ask these questions.”

Jack’s gaze remained hard, distrustful. “Maybe it was your friends from the Moon trying to save you?”

“I don’t know if you spoke with Katrina while I was gone...” I started, but Jack cut me off fiercely.

“No!”

“Didn’t even check on her?”

Jack shook his head like an angry dog.

“If you had, you’d know the Moon Cross men were after her and her brother. That drone, do you remember? It was theirs,” I said, having no time to go into the details of Martian-Lindon feud. “Those scumbags were stalking us long before we arrived. They sprung the trap. We knew they’d attack, but we had no idea they’d pull the plug on the whole city.”

“No idea at all?”

“My word of honor. Is that enough?”

Jack wanted to believe me. But men like him don’t handle the unknown well. Uncertainty is a minor wound that stings with every movement, reminding you that the world you understood is gone forever.

“I don’t want to hold you by force, and I don’t have the right to,” I added. “But you’re safest with us right now.”

He remained silent and distrustful, but at least he wasn’t staring a hole through me anymore. I called Winter.

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“Winston, do you copy? Did you manage to get through to Tetsuo?”

“Like hell... The bracelet signal disappeared even before the dam burst. Looks like Lyndon is playing with jammers again.”

“That’s bad. Any problems with the Orderlies?”

“No, but that could change in a heartbeat. Take Katrina and Danielle and get down to the cargo bay as fast as you can. Stick to the ‘staff-only’ stairs and service corridors. And Ivan? You’ll have to get rid of the prisoners.”

“Winston, did I hear you right?” I asked, the words sticking in my throat. He’d seen more than his fair share of misery on this rust-bucket, but this was crossing a line.

“I hope you did. Their mere presence is a ticking bomb.”

“Please, go to hell...”

I clipped the radio back to my belt and suppressed a groan. The task was a nightmare: trekking across half the liner with a severely wounded Katrina, an exhausted Danielle, a one-armed caravanner, and two hostages. As for Winston’s second order, I dismissed it immediately. I was a Pathfinder, not an executioner. My loyalty lay with Rakhmanov, and the old man would never have ordered the cold-blooded dispatch of people in ropes.

I looked up to see Katrina Winter leaning against the doorframe, wrapped in a clinical sheet. She was on her own feet, though she was bracing herself against the bulkhead like it was the only thing keeping the world upright. The ghastly, ashen tint had left her face, replaced by a faint, stubborn flicker of color.

“Be a dear and get my clothes—they’re in the wardrobe,” Kat said, nodding toward the examination room. “And prepare to untie the Orderly commander.”

“Your brother just told me to put a bullet in him,” I grumbled.

“A bullet won’t get us past the checkpoints,” she countered.

Rasmussen is second-in-command after Heldrich, Danielle’s voice cut into my mind. She remained physically motionless on the sofa, but her mental presence was as sharp as a razor. He knows how to launch the lifeboats. Do you see the utility now?

“Are you sure you can handle him?” I asked. I didn’t want a demoralized but desperate Rasmussen regaining control of his men.

I’ll manage, Danielle’s voice echoed. If I feel the link slipping... then you can do what Winston said.

“Will you be okay? Looks like each time it takes a heavy toll on you.”

Better a struggle than a rope around my neck once we’re this close to freedom. Just make sure no one sees you near me—or rather, near him.”

I opened the wardrobe Kat had pointed out. A wave of stale smells hit me: dust, woodsmoke, and the scent of a wet dog fur. The cloak and wool dress were riddled with holes and stiff with dried blood, but the dark-grey, scaly flight suit was a different story. Its mycelium base and memory-fibers had spent the last few hours weaving themselves back together, repair nanobots sealing the rents until it looked almost new.

“I still can’t get into this without help,” Katrina said as I brought the gear over. Her arm was still strapped to her side.

“Sorry, I’m probably the wrong person for this...”

“Danielle has her own task. Let her sleep,” Katrina cut me off. She stepped into the operating room and let the sheet fall to the floor. She wasn’t embarrassed; she viewed her own body with the clinical detachment of a pilot checking a life-support system.

Her frame was little more than a skeleton. In the race to repair the injuries, the Martian viruses had metabolized nearly all her body fat and a good portion of her muscle. Dressing Katrina was a haunting experience—my hands moved over skin stretched tight over bone. I tried to maintain a sense of professional camaraderie, but my pulse hammered anyway. I waited for Danielle to crack a joke in my head, but she was already deep in the weave of her new “dummy” and ignored us.

I moved to the storage room where Rasmussen was propped against the wall. When I cut his bonds, he rose heavily, groaning as he rubbed the circulation back into his limbs. Beside him, Sandy remained dead to the world, claimed by total exhaustion.

“What did you call me when we first met?” I asked, testing the waters.

“Ivan-Tsarevich,” Danielle answered, the words coming out of Rasmussen’s mouth with a jarring, mechanical precision. “I know it annoys the hell out of you.”

“Move out,” I said, stepping aside and locking the closet door behind us.

Jack and Katrina finally locked eyes as she entered the room. They immediately averted their gazes—Jack to the floor, Katrina to the ceiling. The air between them was thick with things unsaid, but they never got the chance to speak.

From the direction of the boat deck, a heavy, rhythmic thudding began. Someone was trying to batter down the door.

“Hide now!” - Danielle ordered. “It’s safe to leave me on the sofa.”

Crouched in the shadows of the utility room with Sandy, we forced our breathing into a slow, rhythmic crawl, monitoring the sounds outside with agonizing care. The multi-sensor embedded in my eye socket flickered, projecting a tactical overlay across my vision: twelve heat signatures. Five were in the med-bay; the rest were holding the deck. I knew there were dozens more scattered across the ship, but these twelve were the ones currently standing between us and the grave.

As if on cue, Sandy began to stir. A low groan started in her throat, but Katrina was faster. She pressed the cold edge of her blade against the doctor’s jugular before the woman could even blink. The fact that we were cornered didn’t make us any less dangerous; if anything, the desperation had honed our lethality to a razor point.

Outside, Danielle opened the doors to the Orderlies, using Rasmussen’s hands to work the manual override—a commander, after all, has nothing to hide from his men. He spoke at length, his voice dripping with a carefully calculated fury. The heavy bulkheads muffled the specifics, but the core of the lie bled through:

“...wounded! Those bitches were torturing him!”

“She’s talking too much,” Katrina whispered, her eyes never leaving Sandy. “She’ll trip over some trivial detail, and we’re finished.”

I placed my hand on her good shoulder. The physical contact was as much for my own nerves as it was for hers.

“They aren’t in a state to catch their commander in a lie,” I murmured. “The city is gone, the ship is moving, and their world is upside down. In a panic like this, the amygdala takes over—clear thinking is a luxury they can’t afford. They just need someone to tell them what to do. We just have to hold out until Veliard arrives.”

“Easy to say,” Katrina hissed. “I see no ammo crates in here. Not a single spare magazine. Heldrich hid my anti-grav, and I don’t even know where the bastard put it. Not that it matters—it’s out of charge anyway.”

I checked my own sidearm. The weight of it felt pitiful against the odds.

“If it comes to it,” I said, my voice flat, “there’s a bullet for each of us.”

Some might find the notion of dying on a luxury liner in the company of a sultry brunette romantic, but there is nothing poetic about becoming fish food. The few minutes Danielle spent negotiating with the crew felt like hours; despite the freezing air in the unheated storage room, we were drenched in a cold, oily sweat.

Suddenly, a chorus of screams erupted from the other side of the bulkhead.

At first it was only one voice—raw, furious. Then several others joined it, overlapping in a chaotic storm of shouts and curses. Something heavy slammed against the metal door.

“She lost him!” Katrina gasped, her voice breaking.

For a second the corridor outside dissolved into pure panic. Boots pounded across the deck, men shouting questions over one another—someone demanding to know where their commander was, someone else swearing he had just seen blood on the floor.

Then Jack’s voice cut through the uproar like a whip crack.

“Shut up! All of you! Grab the boats—now!”

The chaos didn’t stop—but it shifted direction. The crowd surged past us toward the boat deck—the very route I had once scouted for our own escape. Minutes later, my wristband vibrated, and the multi-sensor in my eye socket flickered, projecting a holographic burst directly into my consciousness: Stay put. Silence. Veliard.

A minute later, the tactical overlay cleared. Within a ten-meter radius, only the sleeping, exhausted form of Danielle remained. Then came a familiar, metallic scratching at the storage room door.

“How’s the evacuation?” I asked the second the latch clicked.

“In full swing. Five lifeboats are already in the water. The Orderlies are rowing out to save survivors, exactly as their ‘Commander’ ordered,” Veliard replied. He turned his optical sensors toward Katrina. “You know, even for a cyborg, I find myself envying your brother’s composure.”

“That’s because you’ve never been in the black of deep space or walked the Moon,” Katrina giggled, though her voice was thin. She reached out, resting her good arm on our ‘Tin Woodman’s’ reinforced shoulder. “But his ‘brilliant plan’ nearly gave us all a heart attack. How far have we moved?”

“Three kilometers. Soon the last of the locals will have departed, and we’ll need to put this ship about. Violet is still in the lab...”

“Why did you leave him?” Katrina’s temper flared, her eyes snapping with sudden fire.

“He was wounded, Kat. And you were dying. I made a tactical decision not to risk both of you. I came for antibiotics and to clear your path; we’ll retrieve him when he’s fit to walk. Randy stayed behind to watch over him. The boy is worried sick about you—almost as much as you were about Winston.”

“Bless him! Randy! He survived... the stubborn brat!” She smiled then, a fraction of a second where the trauma vanished. Looking at her, I felt a sudden, sharp pang of envy. I wondered if anyone would ever smile like that just because I was still breathing.

Caught up in the moment, the cyborg squeezed Kat harder than he should have; she hissed in pain and pulled away, clutching her shoulder.

“What’s with that pool of blood in the corridor?” Veliard asked, his sensors flickering. “Looks like someone got their throat slit.”

“Your guess is as good as mine...” I replied.

In truth, it wasn’t hard to reconstruct the events we hadn’t seen. After seizing control of Johan Rasmussen, Danielle must have shared the plan with Jack and managed to issue the evacuation order to the Orderlies. But, teetering on the edge of total exhaustion and realizing her “puppet” was about to break free, she had slain the commander with his own knife. It was a gruesome sight, but not entirely unnatural. Rasmussen surely had loved ones back in Seven Winds; even the most impenetrable men are known to lose their heads when their world burns.

At that moment, all our lives had been balanced on the tip of that blade. My gratitude toward that girl was bordered by a cold, creeping fear: for her own, she was willing to sacrifice herself, but for enemies, she knew no mercy.

Launching the lifeboats didn’t prove too difficult for a man who knew how to read, and we thanked fate that the mechanisms were still functional. The boat deck was enclosed, so corrosion from rain and salt hadn’t done too much damage; at the end of the Golden Age, the focus was on durability—especially when it came to luxury-class technology.

The encroaching twilight worked in our favor—at the very least, it shielded Veliard from prying eyes. By then, the survivors on the shore had lit bonfires, which flickered like golden sparks in the leaden mist. We chose not to bring the Pine Island directly back to the ruins of Seven Winds, instead cutting the engines near the old lighthouse, a jagged spire that had become a sanctuary for thousands of birds.

It was time for Veliard and me to leave the vessel and return with our friends. For the journey back, the cyborg had scavenged a set of “artificial gills” from the liner’s stores—relics from a time when divers would use them to plunge into the deep during the ship’s brief mid-ocean halts.

However, my wounded body betrayed me when I believed I was ready to leave.

Veliard was checking the seal of his gill mask when it happened. I took a step, and the world suddenly tilted, much like the deck of the Pine Island during the wave’s impact. The walls of the med-bay blurred into grey streaks. Bright spots flashed before my eyes, and a sensation like a red-hot spike twisting took hold of my abdomen, where the Nautilus soldier’s blade had recently struck me.

“Sit down, Pathfinder,” Veliard’s voice rang out low, with a metallic vibration.

“I’m fine... just...” I tried to inhale, but my lungs felt as if they were filled with cotton wool. Sweat, cold and clammy, instantly soaked through my hair.

Veliard stepped close. His optical sensors flickered, scanning my vitals. “You are not fine. You have a fever, Ivan. Your pulse is at one hundred and forty beats. In the water, you’ll be an anchor. If you cramp up at a depth of ten meters, I’ll have to choose: you or Violet. I will choose him.”

“You can’t know...” I tried to protest, but my voice broke into a cough. I slumped back onto a crate, feeling my consciousness begin to slip away, leaving only flashes of pain.

“I am a machine, Ivan. I am built to forecast,” the cyborg placed a heavy hand on my shoulder, pinning me in place. “You are needed here. If some bastard decides to storm the liner, Winston will need a marksman who can see in the dark, even if he has a fever.”

“He’s right, Ivan,” Winston said. “Kat and Danielle need our care, and your pal Jack sailed off with the Orderlies. Besides, what if not all of them left? There might still be people on the liner, and not all of them are friendly.”

If not for the destruction of the Seven Winds and the anxiety over Violet, our reunion would have been a joyful one. Geryon had poisoned our happiness with several hundred deaths, all to keep us from getting far. Even after returning, we could still fall into a trap. What could a new trap be? Anything at all…

Previous chapter

Location: Office of Kurt Kristensen

Participants:

• Stella Rodriguez, Archon of Tesla City

• Lise de Villon, Archon of Hawking City

• Stefan Lazarevic, Archon of Kitezh

• Kurt Kristensen, Archon of New Alexandria

• Sona Tagaeva, Archon of New Samarkand

• Wei Guang, Secretary for Psychosocial Affairs, Acting Archon of Arcona, member of the “Archangels” astronaut squad.

• Daria Kim, Physician, member of the “Archangels” astronaut squad.

• Gustav Leibniz, Acting Head of the Space Center, member of the “Archangels” astronaut squad.

• Athena, Administrative Artificial Intelligence.

Picture source: NASA

Minutes of the Closed Council Meeting - 15 January, 2189

Daria Kim: Comrades, I officially confirm the death of former Deputy Archon Myron Asano. Cause of death: acute poisoning. Preliminary examination reports and autopsy results are available in the shared database for review.

Lise de Villon: Has Arcona still not implemented a ban on cultivating toxic plants outside of secured labs? Children, the elderly, animals—anyone could be at risk! One can never discount ordinary human carelessness.

Stella Rodriguez: Lise, we aren’t here to discuss safety protocols in residential blocks. Tone down the sarcasm, at least for today.

Stefan Lazarevic: Besides, if someone is committed to murder, no ban will stop them.

Lise de Villon: Forgive me... I haven’t slept in two days. Maxim’s being poisoned, the disappearance of the crew—it’s breaking my heart. I personally saw them off on the Yggdrasil. Myron was my mentor, too, and I feel… blood-stained!1

Stella Rodriguez: It’s a pity that scoundrel Asano took his secrets to the grave. He surely had accomplices back home. One of us!

Lise de Villon: I highly doubt that. “What two know, the pig knows too,” as the old proverb goes. If he had accomplices, the truth would have surfaced sooner or later. Especially since this story has been dragging on for so many years.

Daria Kim: Or those people covered their tracks too well because they were bound by a conspiracy of silence.

Stefan Lazarevic: In that case, now that the leader is dead, identifying them will be easier. Is anyone even leading an official investigation?

Lise de Villon: We will appoint someone responsible today. Athena will suggest the three most suitable candidates. Gustav, back to the main point: what about the crew of the Apsara? Are there signals from any survivors?

Gustav Leibniz: The last report came in today at 03:25. We recorded the vital signs of Oleg Rakhmanov.

Daria Kim: According to telemetry, he is in stasis. Winston reported this in the last radio transmission.

Stella Rodriguez: And the others? Has there been a single communication session from the surface of Earth?

Gustav Leibniz: Winston Winter made contact yesterday at five in the evening. He reported being wounded and concussed, but alive. According to him, he was assisted by “locals.”

Stella Rodriguez: Praise the sun! There’s hope they can negotiate with the surface dwellers.

Stefan Lazarevic: I wouldn’t share your optimism, Stella. If this Geryon truly holds the entire planet in his fist, the “locals” might be a trap. What about Katrina Winter and Maxim’s son?

Gustav Leibniz: We know for certain they reached the surface safe and sound. However, their beacons vanished from the radar almost immediately. I have no technical explanation for this failure yet. The bracelets didn’t record critical vitals or death—only a sharp spike in adrenaline and an increased heart rate. A typical stress response. I am now displaying a map with their last known coordinates on the screen.

Sona Tagaeva: Cold and darkness, they’re scattered all over!

Gustav Leibniz: At least they are all in the same region—Victoria Land. Violet’s pod landed in a glacial zone, but given the emergency supplies, he should be able to reach warmer territories within a week.

Stefan Lazarevic: Won’t he freeze to death before then?

Daria Kim: It’s unlikely to be colder there than on the surface of Mars. Though sleeping in a helmet will be damn uncomfortable. But don’t forget: Antarctica has its own, Earthly dangers.

Kurt Kristensen: The main danger—for them and for us—is Geryon. What do you propose we do with him? I hope no one here doubts that this thing must be destroyed.

Lise de Villon: Your bluntness is understandable, Kurt, but I insist on following protocol. I fear discussing such a threat is a matter of more than one hour or even one day. We risk getting bogged down in arguments.

Stella Rodriguez: What the hell could be more important than this right now?! Every minute of delay gives him a head start!

Stefan Lazarevic: Surprisingly, Lise is right. If we rush into discussing a global war now, we won’t solve the immediate tasks. First, we select an investigator for the Asano case, put our own house in order, and then move on to larger objectives.

Sona Tagaeva: The crew of the Fermion... In its entirety. It’s just mind-boggling. They weren’t idiots! How could they follow Asano? Why didn’t they expose him immediately? How could they trust the ramblings of that digital ghost? It’s terrifying to even think who among us will be next...

Wei Guang: Someone who doesn’t suspect they are in the depths of an existential crisis.

Kurt Kristensen: Athena, have you analyzed the psychological profiles and personnel files of security staff and civilian specialists? We need someone who wasn’t involved in the Archangel project and had no personal ties to Asano.

AI Athena: Analysis complete. From 32 potential candidates, I have selected three. Selection criteria: minimum affiliation index, competence, and high analytical skills. Displaying data on screen.

AI Athena: Candidate No. 1: Raul Sordi, 52 years old, educator. Former Head of Material Supply at the Space Center. Residence: Tesla City. Blunt, fanatically pedantic. Note: The only individual who previously raised questions regarding the lack of transparency in the Fermion-1 crew preparation. Cons: Difficult personality.

Stefan Lazarevic: A pity we didn’t pay attention to his suspicions in time. Perhaps we wouldn’t have lost the Fermion back then.

AI Athena: Candidate No. 2: Elias Thorne, 36 years old. Cybersecurity specialist. Residence: Arcona. Note: Eliminated the vulnerabilities exposed by Sato Tetsuo during his attempt to hack me. I expect him to most effectively utilize the data brought back by Tetsuo upon his return.

Sona Tagaeva: Oof, the poor guy is going to have a hard time! Who else do you have?

AI Athena: Candidate No. 3: Emma Lowe, 33 years old, psychotherapist and anthropologist. Residence: New Alexandria. In her thesis, Lowe proposed a theory of collective psychosis among the Fermion crew. The work caused controversy but was accepted with a grade of “B” (four).

Stella Rodriguez: Well, now! I must read that!

AI Athena: There is one “but.” Emma spent three years in severe depression following the death of her daughter, who was born with a heart defect, and has only recently begun to recover.

Lise de Villon: What a pity! I hope such an important investigation helps distract her and gives her strength. But she will need a support system - the other two guys.

Kurt Kristensen: Are you suggesting we appoint a group?

Lise de Villon: Exactly. I propose we form an “Emergency Inquiry Troika.” Let them balance each other out. Sordi will ensure the letter of the law, Thorne will provide the technical breakthrough, and Emma... Emma’s experience and intuition will act as a fail-safe. This will eliminate the possibility of one person—intentionally or not—leading the investigation down a false trail.

Stefan Lazarevic: This will slow down the work. We need fast results.

Lise de Villon: Stefan, we need undeniable results. We already trusted one man—Myron—and look where we ended up. Only mutual oversight will save us from another mistake. Athena, assess the probability of conflict within such a group.

AI Athena: Probability of interpersonal conflict: 84%. Decision-making efficiency will decrease by 30%, but the probability of external manipulation of the group will be reduced to a minimum.

Lise de Villon: That is exactly what we need, safety over speed. Don’t we?

Sona Tagaeva: Well… Sounds like a plan.

Kurt Kristensen: Let’s vote then! One of the candidates or the Troika!

Wei Guang: Here we go…

AI Athena: Three archons voted for the investigation group. One vote for Raul Sordi, two votes for Emma Lowe. That means, Lowe, Sordi and Thorne are going to cooperate on this task.

Stefan Lazarevic: Gonna be funny… And what shall we do about the Apsara kids and Geryon?

Lise de Villon: Colleagues, let us find the courage to face the truth. We are wounded. Maxim is dead, our best people are scattered across a foreign planet, and an enemy we do not understand is entrenched on the Moon. Every gram of resources, every man-hour must be dedicated to organizing planetary security. Now is not the time for heroic gambles. I insist: we must forget about Earth and the Moon for the next few years.

Stefan Lazarevic: Forget? Lise, are you suggesting we lock ourselves in the basement and hope Lyndon doesn’t remember us? Fifteen years ago, I was the first to oppose these flights. I said we had no business in space until we put our own house in order. But the situation has changed! There, on that cursed “Solveig” base, is one of our own — Oleg Rakhmanov. And if I have to blow the entire Moon to dust to get him out and destroy that digital spawn, I will do it without blinking!

Kurt Kristensen: And what exactly are you going to blow it up with, Stefan? Your enthusiasm? Athena, display the status of our arsenal.

AI Athena: Stockpile of tactical missiles, “Sergei Korolev” system, is available. These units are reserved exclusively for mitigating meteor threats. According to the “Planetary Shield” protocol, their use for other targets is prohibited.

Sona Tagaeva: This is our only weapon against “cosmic guests.” If we waste those missiles on the Moon, the first stray rock from the asteroid belt will turn our domes into mass graves. We will be left completely defenseless.

Stefan Lazarevic: We have the laser installation project from Hawking City! The engineering bureau swore it could intercept meteors on the far approaches.

Lise de Villon: A project is not yet a weapon. Constructing an installation of that magnitude with our current capacity will take at least five years. Five years, Stefan! Are you suggesting we live for five years with an empty holster, hoping that nature will be merciful to us?

Stefan Lazarevic: And you’re suggesting we give Lyndon five years to finish building his fleet and come here himself? We must take the risk. The “Sergei Korolev” must strike the Moon.

Lise de Villon: That is suicide under the banner of salvation. If we leave Mars without its shield, we won’t need enemies — space will finish us off. We have a duty to protect those who are here, those who have put their trust in us! Tetsuo and the Winters have been trained to survive on Earth for months.

Sona Tagaeva: We should hardly lose our tempers. We can certainly rule out a nuclear threat; there is simply no accessible uranium on the Moon for missile production. I am certain Lyndon is counting on something else. He expects us to send a rescue expedition for the Apsara crew. Consequently, he’ll want to intercept or destroy it. That, I believe, is exactly what we should exploit.

Stella Rodriguez: You aren’t suggesting that we aren’t actually going after them?

Sona Tagaeva: Lise is right. Their silence only means that Geryon has returned to blocking radio transmissions. But even now we can deceive our enemy.

Wei Guang: We shouldn’t assume it’s that simple...We must proceed from the pessimistic scenario—that he’s five steps ahead of us.

Sona Tagaeva: I propose we send a ship to Earth without a crew or life-support systems. The most expensive and complex part of interplanetary travel is ensuring the safety of the crew, but for what I am proposing, unmanned mode is sufficient.

Wei Guang: Can we even afford such a thing?

Gustav Leibnitz: Why not? There are two vessels in the hangars no longer fit for manned travel. They’ve been sitting there since the Blackout, by the way, and still haven’t been fully scrapped.

Stefan Lazarevic: Ah, well? How’s that going to work?

Gustav Leibnitz: The ship may enter orbit and release a swarm of drones. They will generate an electromagnetic pulse sufficient to destroy all the filth above Earth that is jamming the signals. By detonating the ship’s reactor, we will amplify the effect over a large radius.

Wei Guang: What if Geryon has similar weapons already orbiting Earth that simply won’t give us the chance to activate the drones?

Gustav Leibnitz: I’m sure he does. Well, that’s all the more reason to shield them better.

Stefan Lazarevic: I would suggest that every drone carry a nuclear charge. If we’re going to give Lyndon an apocalypse, let’s do it right.

Stella Rodriguez: Why are you guys talking about Earth in the first place? Our aim must be the Moon! Winston and Tetsuo have gathered generous footage of Solveig. We should all study it and then decide how to attack the base the best way!

Lise de Villon: Good point, Stella. I suggest that we set a new goal for Gustav, the Archangels, and Athena: a thorough analysis of the materials from Apsara and the weak spots of Solveig that we could use for infiltration. While the Troika looks for possible traitors, let’s seek a way to strike back!

Stefan Lazarevic: On this, I stand with you.

The chamber lights dimmed as the session officially closed, but Athena did not power down. For 0.8 seconds, a signal spike appeared in the lunar industrial belt — too faint for human eyes, too symmetrical to be noise. A dormant array near the Shackleton perimeter came online, not broadcasting - listening.

Antenna petals unfolded like a mechanical flower facing Mars.

Athena isolated the frequency - neither terrestrial, nor Martian, encrypted in pre-Blackout architecture. She calculated response options. Then she did something she had never done before.

She delayed reporting the anomaly by twelve seconds.

Previous chapter

He had been told to leave the food at the entrance and vanish. Had Katrina not been inside, he likely would have done just that. But curiosity—or perhaps the last flickering embers of his conscience—anchored him to the spot.

©Ilona Froehlich

The heavy bolt slid back with a metallic rasp. Jack recoiled as the door swung open to reveal a short, fragile blonde. Her childlike face was a map of violence: a split lip and a deep, blooming bruise that swallowed her entire cheek.

“Thanks. Now get lost,” she commanded, her voice like cracking ice. “If anyone asks, you didn’t see a soul.”

What a brat, Jack thought, his instinct for self-preservation bristling. No wonder someone’s already worked you over. Aloud, he kept his tone steady: “Take it easy. Heldrich called for me himself.”

“He’s busy. And so am I. Do as you’re told and stop standing there like a fence post.”

It was then that Jack noticed the weight in her thin, marble-white hand. It was Heldrich’s pistol—he recognized the custom grip instantly. More importantly, the safety was off.

He shoved the cart toward her, his mouth opening to ask the only question that mattered—Where is Kat?—but the sound of heavy boots and raised voices echoed from the far end of the corridor. The girl’s eyes widened. With a strength that defied her delicate frame, she snatched Jack by the sleeve and yanked him into the office.

The sight inside hit Jack like a physical blow. Heldrich sat on the sofa, his hands bound behind him, his eyes narrowed in a silent, malicious snarl. Beside him sat Ivan Vasilevsky—haggard, exhausted, but very much alive. He held the tip of a knife to the Director’s chin with a surgeon’s precision.

Ivan gave Jack a short, dry nod. It wasn’t a greeting; it was the look of a man who had been waiting for a missing gear to click into place.

Harpoon in my side, Jack thought, his stomach dropping into his boots. So much for an easy life in the Seven Winds. If I even live to see the sunrise.

“Behind the sofa. Now!” Vasilevsky ordered, his voice a low, dangerous vibration. “And keep quiet.”

Diving where he was told and huddling down, Jack heard footsteps in the office: at least two men.

“Hey, Rasmussen, drop the gun!” Ivan commanded. “Otherwise, you’ll never scrub the blood off this floor.”

“Both guns!” Danielle added curtly. Jack could have sworn her trophy was currently jammed into Rasmussen... somewhere. “And both knives. Yes, I know about the second one in your boot. It must be embarrassing to get caught like this a second time...”

“I should have drowned you. Stuffed you in a barrel and drowned you like mangy cats,” the Commander of the Orderlies said, spitting wetly at his feet as he shed his gear.

“Johan, don’t listen to them, call for backup,” Heldrich rasped, then hissed like the devil himself—likely after getting an even closer look at Vasilevsky’s knife. “Enough! Stop!”

“Not all dreams come true, gentlemen,” Vassilevsky replied. “Show me your hands, Johan. Good boy! Bind him, Danielle, make sure it’s airtight. Then tie these beauties together for good measure. What a lovely composition that’ll make! Veliard, I’m glad to see you—insanely glad!”

“Well, Ivan, you chess master! How did you pull this off?” the second of the newcomers remarked in admiration.

“Teamwork and a touch of madness,” Ivan replied, his voice raspy but steady. “Jack, you can come out now.”

Jack emerged from behind the sofa, staring at the stranger in silent awe.

The guest had a lifeless, clearly artificial mask where a face should have been. Only the eyes moved, flicking with a restless, predatory intelligence. There was even a crude mimicry of expression—a wretched, twitching parody of human emotion that made Jack’s skin crawl. Jack had heard old stories of the Golden Age, of robot servants crafted to look like people for the wealthy’s amusement. He assumed he was looking at a relic of this kind.

“And where are the Winters?” the eerie guest asked Ivan. The voice was hollow, carrying a metallic resonance that seemed to vibrate in the floorboards.

As if in answer, a bearded man in clothes that hung like a sack on his gaunt frame emerged from the adjacent ward. Jack realized immediately who it was—the man had Katrina’s piercing green eyes.

On seeing the humanoid machine, the man limped into the office and froze, his hand tightening on the doorframe. He looked no less stunned by the sight of the metallic guest than Jack was.

“You’re Veliard, right?” whispered the green-eyed man, his voice cracking with a mix of awe and disbelief. “Veliard... from Nautilus?”

Jack glanced at Heldrich. His pallor had turned from pale to almost cadaverous; the mere mention of Nautilus seemed to have drained the blood from his heart.

“In the flesh—or what’s left of it, Winston,” the cyborg replied, his voice a low, resonant hum. “Let’s talk in private.”

They started toward the next room, but the eerie guest suddenly jerked to a halt, his sensors snapping upward.

“Guys, you have a pest!”

Leaping with the unnatural, coiled grace of a cat, the machine-man launched himself toward the ceiling. His hand shot out, snatching a shadow from the vents. Jack heard a thin, metallic crunch as Veliard’s fingers closed.

He landed silently, opening his palm to reveal the mangled remains of a desmodus drone—the Prophet’s favorite spy.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Winston muttered, shaking his head as he led him away. “Geryon won’t like it. And, by the way, he nearly convinced us he’d actually managed to capture you.”

“Pathetic old Lindon,” Veliard replied, his tone dismissive. Then he turned his attention to Ivan. “We might need a grav-pack. Will you lend us yours?”

“The locker to your left,” Vassilevsky said, his single eye scanning the room in search of another spy drone. “Please, keep an eye on it. I’ve only got it back just now.”

They departed, leaving their comrades and bound enemies in a thick, uncomfortable silence. Jack did his best to remain stoic; after the horrors of the last few days, he felt that being surprised by anything was a luxury he could no longer afford. Vassilevsky paced the small office, his footsteps almost noiseless on the med-bay flooring, thoughtfully rubbing the bridge of his nose. Danielle sat perched on the edge of the food cart, her gaze—and her trophy pistol—unwaveringly trained on Heldrich and Rasmussen. The two men sat back-to-back on the floor, Johan’s occasional angry breaths slipping into the air.

Winston and Veliard returned shortly after, having fully swapped their gear, and announced their immediate departure, a prospect that struck Jack as pure insanity. To leave their tiny island of safety now felt like stepping off a cliff.

“To get my tools...” Winston explained, his voice thick with fatigue.

“For what possible reason?” Ivan asked, his brow furrowing as he prepared to veto the move. “Are they really that vital?”

“Would I take a risk like this the moment I’ve finally found my sister if it weren’t?” Winston thundered. He looked as though he might collapse, yet his eyes burned with a feverish intensity. “Veliard will cover me. And we have them,” he added, gesturing toward the prisoners. “Two men who can tell the Orderlies not to lay a finger on us.”

“I’ll see to it!” Danielle promised, twirling the gun in her hand.

“I’ll be grateful if someone helps my sister eat,” Winston added, leaving together with the cyborg.

Jack felt an urge to help, but remained glued to his place.

Ivan Vassilevsky - 24 September 2192 - Pine Island

I slid the tray toward Katrina’s cot, my movements stiff, trying not to let the metal clatter. She lay motionless, as pale as a scrap of fog, her haggard face dominated by eyes that burned with a feverish, unnatural intensity.

“Please, eat as much as you can,” I said. In that sterile room, my voice sounded like the rasp of a rusty saw. “Winston says it will speed up your regeneration.”

Warmed by the half-forgotten urge to care about someone else, I scooped up a spoonful of soup and reached toward her. At that moment, Katrina slowly turned her head. The harsh glare of the surgical lamp caught my face squarely, leaving no wrinkle or scar in the safety of the shadows. The light flooded the empty, patch-covered pit where my eye used to be, stripping me bare.

I saw her pupils dilate until they swallowed her irises whole. It wasn’t the revulsion my injury caused in some people; it was a deep, ice-cold terror. It was the look a prey animal gives a predator in the final second of its life. She pressed herself into the mattress, trying to merge with the frame, her breath coming in shallow, whistling gasps like a trapped beast.

“Who the hell are you?”

The spoon in my fingers trembled.

“Kat... It’s me, Ivan. Veliard’s friend. I’m the one who got Winston out. You have nothing to fear from me.”

She didn’t answer. Her knuckles turned bone-white as she clawed at the edge of the blanket. She was staring at me, but her gaze went right through me, into a different time, a darker place.

The sound of her voice lashed against my nerves.

“Tell me your true name!”

“Ivan Vassilevsky,” I replied, a tight knot forming in my chest. “A Pathfinder from the Winged Sun. A scout.”

She squeezed her eyes shut, a single tear tracing a path through the dust on her cheek. Then she snapped them open again, searching my features with a frantic, painful hunger. She was tracing the line of my jaw, the set of my eye, the curve of my brow.

“Tell me...” her voice broke. “Do you have kin? A brother? Or... a father? Someone who looked just like you?”

Everything inside me went cold. The medical block suddenly felt like the vacuum of outer space.

“A father,” I said, the words like lead. “Many years ago, I nearly killed him.”

“Arce...” she breathed, the name barely audible, yet it hit me harder than any mercenary’s rifle butt.

My father’s old, cursed name that he’d taken when he led his pack of jackals.

“I regret not finishing the job,” I said, turning away so I wouldn’t have to torture her with my presence any longer. “I’ve spent every day since trying to be nothing like him.”

I set the tray on the nightstand. My heart sat in my chest like a heavy stone. I had come here to save her, only to realize I was her worst nightmare made flesh.

“Rest,” I muttered, already heading for the door. “I’ll get Danielle to help you.”

Her voice caught me just as I reached the threshold. “Any news from Violet and Veliard?”

“Veliard is here, but he’s already left with Winston. I expect Violet to arrive later. They’ve told me nothing yet.”

“And Randy?”

“If something had gone wrong, we would have known,” I told her dryly. I didn’t wait for another question. I stepped out, the door sealing behind me. Winston and the cyborg had left so hastily that I hadn’t had the chance to learn a damn thing about everyone else.

I grew my hair long not to shun my reflection in the mirror. When I lost an eye, my first thought was: at least, I will look even less like this bastard.

But it was not enough. Fate inevitably makes children pay for their parents’ sins.

You’re going to have a hard time, her mental voice whispered, bypassing my ears and echoing directly in my skull. But I’ll tell you this much: she finished what you couldn’t. Your psychopath father died in agony thanks to one droplet of her blood.

The image of Arce flashed before me. I remembered his heavy hands and the way he looked at people as if they were nothing more than scrap to be used.

I fear to imagine what it cost her.

Don’t even try, Danielle replied, making me feel bitterness that wasn’t hers, but a residue of the pain she’d skimmed from Katrina’s mind.

How did she survive in the first place? I asked. Arce wasn’t known for his mercy. If she were his prisoner, how did she end up leading the Lost Kids?

I could feel her mental withdrawal, as if the memory itself was too toxic to hold.

She had to become one of them, Ivan. She did things. Things that kept her alive but burned away everything else. And she will probably die of shame if Winston ever finds out.

My radio crackled to life, the static biting into the silence of the corridor. Speak of the devil.

“Ivan! Get to the stern, Level C!” Winston’s voice barked through the speaker, distorted by interference.

“What the hell for?” I snapped back, my hand instinctively checking the sidearm at my hip.

“The electrical room and the console are there. Look for an inconspicuous iron box with a master switch—wires branching out from it like a nervous system. If the grav-flyer is on approach, it’ll land either on the stern or the upper pad. The second it touches down, you pull that lever. That’s it. Total blackout for the landing zone.”

“Are you two safe?”

“For now,” Winston grunted. “But it looks like that won’t last long. Catch you later!”

I looked at Heldrich. Leaving both him and Rasmussen alone with Danielle and Jack felt like leaving a pair of vipers in a nursery. Their eyes were busy, calculating every weakness in the room.

Suddenly, a loud, piercing beep echoed from the operating room. Some relic of the Golden Age electronics had sputtered back to life, sensing the ship’s shifting power. In the same breath, the ventilation system let out a hoarse, mechanical hum. The deck beneath my boots began to vibrate—a rhythmic, low-frequency thrum that told me the Pine Island was rerouting its soul.

“Jack! Get to the boat deck exit! Cover it so nobody blindsides us from the rear!” I shouted over the rising hum.

The caravaneer looked terrified, but he moved. Danielle expressed no concern: we could trust him.

“Lutz,” I said, turning my attention to Heldrich. “You and I are going for a walk.”

The head of Seven Winds shot me a look of pure, concentrated contempt. He didn’t say a word, but the hatred in his eyes was thick enough to choke on. He might as well have been blowing spitballs for all the good it did him.

Jack helped me haul Heldrich up, detaching the Head of the Seven Winds from Johan Rasmussen. We kept them both bound tight—arms behind their backs, shoulders hunched. I grabbed Heldrich by the collar, shoving him toward the door.

If the Orderlies were going to try and stop me from reaching that master switch, they’d have to shoot through their own master first.

Once we were one-on-one on the boat deck, the first thing Heldrich did was try to drive his boot into my knee. He didn’t just do it for kicks: the bastard knew exactly where to run. Sure enough, at the end of the deck, I found both a ladder and a grav-flyer that had suddenly become operational. How many more secrets was the Pine Island hiding? Unwilling to drag a hostage up the ladder, I stepped onto the platform with him and selected Level Zero from the holographic pop-up menu. We reached the bottom in two seconds.

I didn’t bother asking Heldrich where the electrical room was; that man would lie even if it cost him his life. Luckily, deck plans were posted at every junction, and I reached the right spot fairly quickly. But then I hit a snag: the electrical room was locked with a keypad. Had Winston forgotten about it?

Remembering that I needed to track the arrival of the grav-flyer, I stepped out with Heldrich onto the sun-drenched outer deck, scanning the sky for that telltale shadow, but only the seagulls scattered away from me.

I reached for my radio again but never got the chance to use it. The deck beneath our feet began to tremble—shaking like a living thing. From the bowels of the nuclear ship, thirty meters below us, came a grinding screech and a guttural roar. From the bow, the sounds of crashing and clanging drifted back, muffled by the distance. It felt as though the liner had given a heavy lurch, but that was just the illusion of a sudden movement that shouldn’t have been happening.

Yes, movement. The Pine Island, which had been moored at the pier since the Blackout, was moving out into the ocean. Lutz, whom I was still holding by the arm, began thrashing like a wounded animal, howling and snarling through his gag. Through Reiner Lutz’s wailing, I heard a string of high-velocity profanity, only realizing a moment later that it had come from me.

I knew earthquakes first-hand: even before the Blackout, Antarctica was a high-activity seismic zone, and after the catastrophe, it seemed like the world shook every single year. What was happening to the liner right now felt hauntingly like an earthquake, and that hellish music below continued. Any second now, the atomic engines—which had slept the sleep of the dead for so many years—would simply tear themselves apart. I’m no engineer or mechanic, but even I know a simple truth: any machine left idle and unmaintained for ages will crumble into dust the moment you try to use it.

“It was a stupid idea—building civilian nuclear ships,” I said, gripping the railing to keep from collapsing as vertigo washed over me. “If this liner goes down, the seagulls around here will start to glow in the dark!”

Heldrich, whose composure had finally deserted him, supported my sentiment with a vicious snarl.

Seconds bled into minutes, but the movement didn’t stop. The Pine Island’s cyclopean propeller continued to churn the deep blue, almost black water into a white foam. The liner had almost completely freed itself from the embrace of the Seven Winds, carrying us off toward the devil himself. Through the wind and the roar of the propeller, I could hear the whistles and screams of the residents watching this miracle. Panic gave way to exhilaration. Exhilaration bordering on triumph. Oh, Winston! You sly dog! So these were the tools you were missing!

Recalling the threat of Geryon Lindon, I looked at the sky. A matte-silver “flying saucer” drifted silently out of a low cloud and moved confidently in our direction. Geryon hadn’t been lying.

I snatched the radio from my belt, but it was dead—battery drained. There was no one but Winter to give me the code for the lock. My “dead weight” chuckled in my ear, earning himself a sharp elbow to the ribs. I wasn’t in the mood for jokes.

Stepping back into the inner corridor, I solved the problem radically: I pulled the gun and blew the lock off. My eyes found the lever instantly; I finally understood Winston’s plan in full, and I felt a deep admiration for my new friend’s ingenuity.

The temptation to pull the switch right then was unbearable, and even Heldrich, who knew what was at stake, was rushing me with frantic “mmu-mmu-mmu” sounds from under his gag. But I held on with the last of my strength. The grav-flyer hovered over the moving liner. It blasted a few fools who had decided to fire at the hull with plasma bursts. It descended smoothly onto the pad that hadn’t received a guest in decades. Whether there was a pilot inside, I couldn’t see.

Darting back to the switch, I yanked it—harder than I actually needed to. Next, I was hit by an invisible wave: prickly goosebumps instantly raced across my skin, and the hair on the back of my neck stood on end, as if the air around me had suddenly become electrified. A nasty metallic taste filled my mouth, and a high-pitched, brain-drilling whine rang in my ears, making my vision swim for a moment. The multi-sensor in my left eye socket caught multiple glitches, and I felt that heavy, crushing hum with my entire body—as if space itself had stretched to its limit for a second and hummed with tension.

“Did you know?” I asked Heldrich, pulling the gag from his mouth.

“Of course!” Lutz replied with a sense of superiority that no humiliation could touch. “Winter spilled everything on the first day: the crazed AI on the Moon, the spy drones, and what this crap had to do with the Moon Cross. So, that’s what I made him do - build a defense system! I’d love to see what you would have done in my place. I’d probably die laughing...”

“How many times can we trigger the pulse?”

“In theory—until the energy runs out. Does your Martian friend even know where he’s sailing?”

“Sure!” I snapped, though I wasn’t sure of anything.

The liner continued its course, the shaking finally subsiding. It was already about two hundred meters from the Great Pier when I stepped outside again to see the grav-flyer. I wasn’t alone; the screams of the Orderlies and the local “elite,” terrified by the start of this voyage, echoed from other decks. The “saucer” remained in place, showing no activity. If the EMP trap system had worked as intended, it was no longer a threat. If we captured the pilot, we’d have a valuable prisoner to interrogate. Except it wasn’t my job to go hunting for prisoners across the liner right now, while Katrina, Danielle, and Jack had no one to protect them.

“How many food supplies are on the Pine Island?” I asked Lutz.

“Zero. We weren’t fully ready to sail. The smartest thing you can do is tell your friends to dock back at the pier. Then you can get lost for good—no one will stop you. Just make sure you never stick your noses in here again!”

Bullshit. Knowing Heldrich, I knew that while his galleys might not be overflowing, they’d have enough to withstand a week-long siege.

Then I heard a new sound, coming from the shore this time. It grew louder by the second, sounding more and more like a rockslide in the mountains. I dragged Heldrich to the starboard side to get a better view. The sight that met my eyes made me choke on my own cry; beside me, Reynard Lutz turned to stone.

A monstrous, filthy torrent of water was rushing down the mountainside, dragging trees and boulders with it. It looked as if someone had overturned an entire lake like a barrel. The water was undoubtedly surging from a breached dam—from the Malala Yousafzai power station that partially supplied the Seven Winds with energy. Before I could even catch my breath, a megaton wave completely swallowed the dilapidated but still exciting dream-city, shattering stone and concrete, crushing glass, and crumpling metal. I wanted to yell with horror, but the air thickened and stuck in my lungs.

Realizing the danger we were in, Heldrich was the first to dive face-down onto the deck, pulling me with him.

As it reached the end of its run, having spent its terrible power drowning the city and its hundreds of residents, the giant surge struck the stern of the Pine Island. It slammed us both first against the wall, then against the railing—so hard that sparks flew before my eyes.

You can’t outrun a breached dam. You can’t outsmart it. Geryon... Looks like he got us this time!

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