Chapter 20
SANTIAGO
Emotion ripped through Santi.
His fists clenched.
Fury scorched his blood even as the shriek of the blast doors sounded through the cavernous space.
The corridor behind the XO exploded in light and boots as Kaal, Boaz, Zev, and a unit of armored Signet guards swept into the chamber.
Their ion-rifles locked forward in unison, shoulder cannons unfolding like silent predators.
Overhead, a swarm of recon and combat bots hovered in offensive formation, laser sights converging on the prisoners.
Varnok didn’t flinch.
The madman grinned.
He raised a lazy hand.
‘You could fire,’ he sneered, his utterance projected through the air, calm as sin, ‘but you may want to ask your XO what my daughter is holding.’
All eyes shifted as Soleil elevated her hand, showing off the bomb in her grasp.
What was nestled in her palm was no bluff.
Santi turned to the Signet crew and lifted a hand. ‘Stand down!’
The squad hesitated.
Zev’s jaw flexed, his rifle twitching.
Kaal cursed but slowed his roll as the others froze behind him
‘One wrong move, and everyone in this chamber will paint the walls,’ Santi growled.
He twisted to Soleil.
To the woman who loved to nestle in his arms until she fell asleep with a smile still soft on her lips.
The soul he felt fated to.
The woman whose laughter haunted his memory day and night.
He dropped his voice so only she caught it.
‘What about what we shared?’ His timbre cracked despite the steel in his spine. ‘Was I just a mission to you?’
She gazed at him with a sad, beautiful, fokkin’ expression on her face.
‘Like I said, my love,’ she murmured, ‘I don’t have a choice.’
‘You could’ve shared this with me. Fokk, Soleil. I would’ve helped you.’
‘Nada. It might have killed us both.’
She tapped the rippling nanite cuff on her wrist, and a holo rose from it.
It flickered, then bloomed into full screen.
A face peered out at him.
A smug, slick-faced man who resembled Varnok grinned into the chamber like a venomous god.
His eyes swung to his Gage.
‘Told ya, Varnok. With Scarletta’s help, we’d make it happen.’
His malicious eyes slitted to Santi. ‘We finally meet Santiago Alvarro. My name is Vern Gage. You never knew what you were keeping warm in your bed. Pretty, isn’t she? Shame and a bitch finding out she was never yours to start with.’
Santi’s vision blurred with white-hot rage.
He wanted to drive his fist through the holo, atomizing every particle.
Miral, he whispered through his neural node, his jaw clenched so tight it hurt, trace the comms. Vern’s signal. Now.
Already on it, Miral snapped back. The residual spike’s real-time; he’s somewhere close, masked, piggybacking the Sombra’s radio bands. I’m isolating. If you can get five seconds of disruption, I can override the link.
I need those moments, he said, his voice a quiet storm. Or I lose her.
Reaching into her bag, Soleil pulled out a cross-chest commando-grade belt.
He recognized the tech as military-issue, high-command tier.
His gut clenched.
She handed it to Varnok.
‘So fokkin’ proud of you, Scarletta, only you would have pulled this off,’ Varnok rasped, fastening the belt with practiced ease.
He tapped a hidden button on the buckle.
The belt hissed, releasing a cloud of metallic vapor.
Crimson micro-filaments stitched across his frame, encasing him in burnished armor with crimson node-lights pulsing like veins.
Anti-grav boots sibilated beneath him, the HUD helm locking into place with a serpent’s whisper.
The bomb still pulsed in Soleil’s hands.
Santi stared at it and her, frozen.
He’d fought in the outer rings, capturing Rift Wights and void-eaters.
Nothing, not even death, had prepared him for meeting the woman he thought was the love of his life, then having her twisted into a weapon against him.
While she reigned as queen of her own damnation.
He lifted his hands, so she would see he meant no harm.
‘Mi sol,’ he rasped, voice desperate, cracking with emotion. ‘It doesn’t have to be this way.’
Her eyes, those fokkin’ perfect eyes, glowed from behind the mask, awash in regret and power.
‘It’s the only way,’ she whispered.
‘Vern’s been in my head for years now, controlling, commanding, and monitoring me. There’s no freedom, Santi. There’s only obey, or die.’
Her voice cracked, but her fingers spasmed.
Santi caught it, the tremor, a flicker of hesitation, the twitch beneath her eye, the change in her breath pattern.
She wasn’t just talking to him.
She was receiving a command.
‘Nada,’ he grated, but it was too late.
Her spine arched.
With a pulse of scarlet light, her neural node lit up behind her ear.
The signal fired through her nervous system like lightning in blood. Her body convulsed, then steadied, straightening with a terrible grace.
Without warning, she shifted.
Before his eyes, Soleil transformed into a creature of myth.
A lycan, but unlike any he’d ever seen.
Her bones shimmered and cracked, her limbs lengthening, her face stretching into a lupine mask of spectral power.
Glowing burgundy fur unfurled across her form like silk spun from firelight, each hair gleaming like molten rubies under pressure.
Her paws struck the ground, heavy with ethereal resonance, as luminous claws with flickering crimson light extended from them.
A mane of aether blazed from her shoulders to her spine, and over her eyes, a mask.
It too was scarlet, armored, and laced with the twin sigils of the Red Skulls.
‘Behold The Red Queen,’ Vern jeered.
Soleil stood before him, massive and terrible in her beauty, spectral light bleeding from her fur like mist.
The vermilion radiance pulsed in time with her heartbeat, syncing with the flickering bomb in her hand and the prison’s electromagnetic locks.
Santi’s breath locked in his throat.
Every protective instinct in him detonated.
Her scent, gods, her musk, hit him like a solar flare. Amber, crushed starfruit, and jasmine. His woman. His fated. His mate.
He ached to go to her. To pull her from that cursed form. To mark her in return.
But she wasn’t his in that moment.
She belonged to them.
Santi’s heart fractured in his chest as The Red Queen’s crimson aether flared bright, licking the edges of the prison walls like spectral fire.
Varnok stood beside her, armored and gloating, his grin a blade sharpened on betrayal.
In Soleil’s paw, the bomb thrummed. Pulsing in time with his heartbeat.
Nada.
The denial ripped through him like a shattering wave of thunder.
He didn’t hesitate.
He shifted.
With a roar that rattled the girders of the ship’s inner hull, Santi let go of his human form and summoned the beast that dwelled in his blood.
The transition was violent, magnificent.
His skin split with radiant force, bones elongating, muscles spiraling outward in coils of molten strength.
Amethyst fire coursed over his limbs, followed by threads of gold that raced across his shoulders like lightning traced by a god’s own hand.
His eyes ignited into twin suns, brilliant violet-sapphire, glowing with the full might of his ancient Signet power.
A mane of storm light burst down his spine as translucent energy shimmered and vanished, leaving only trails of aureate light in their wake.
His complete form towered, colossal and spectral, his fur composed of living starlight and void-thread.
Every claw gleamed like an arc-forged blade. Each breath steamed with divine wrath.
He bounded forward in three blinding lunges, ether warping and enveloping his stride.
But she moved faster.
With a flick of her wrist, The Red Queen unleashed the device.
It tumbled through the air, radiant with modulated heat, and struck the inner barrier of the prison with a solid thunk.
The bone-deep resonance was final, almost like a dirge drum.
A high-pitched hum followed, rising and cycling through vibrational frequencies until the wall around it began to shimmer.
With a crack, fracture lines split outward in a spiderweb of glowing weakness.
Santi snarled, a terrible, soul-tearing sound, as he attempted to launch himself between the detonation to come and his woman, trying to shield her, to stop what was already unraveling.
Santi’s body was a blur of distortion.
Shields pulsed, encircling him, humming with plasma charge. He sprinted toward her, his woman, knowing he might be too late.
The hull cracked apart.
The light flickered along its seams. A shrill modulation whined into the air.
Santi’s heart plummeted. ‘Take cover!’ he roared, voice like thunder. ‘If you can get the fokk out of here, move!’
The Signet team scattered.
Zev dove to the safety of a reinforced meta-shield.
Kaal shoved two younger guards behind a thick support beam. Boaz dragged a shaken Signet security officer out through the nearest hatch.
Warning klaxons screamed overhead, red strobes flashing like blood across the smoke-hazed chamber.
The incendiary bomb pulsed once, twice, then detonated.
A deafening, concussive blast tore through the prison, rupturing the fortified alloy wall with a scream of shearing metal.
The explosion sent gouts of fire and plasma out in a blinding arc, rippling through the structure.
The hull fractured outward like a cracked shell, vacuum rushing in with a vengeful roar.
A howling wind of debris, fumes, and flickering flame filled the air.
Walls buckled. Support beams folded. The gravity field destabilized and collapsed.
Then came the cold.
A brutal, ripping silence swallowed everything as the room vented into space.
Santi was pulled outward with Soleil and Varnok tumbling just ahead of him into the star-flecked dark.
They spun in the direction of a sleek getaway ship docked on the hull.
It was unobtrusive in profile, matte black, and marked with scarcely visible crimson ridges along its spine.
Its angled wings curved forward like talons, and its engines hummed with untraceable frequency. The docking hatch yawned open, and light spilled like a trap set to spring.
Soleil grabbed Varnok mid-spin and they boosted toward the vessel.
Santi’s spectral shift surged through him with a searing blaze, elongating his body and stretching his limbs.
His eyes ignited gold behind the wolf’s mask of fury.
His wraith form rushed, streaming through the vacuum like a dark comet, with claws reaching out.
He caught Varnok by the arm and dug in.
Varnok roared, slamming his other hand toward the XO, letting out a series of curses, threats, and frothing madness as he hit out.
Santi ducked, muscles coiled and efficient, and retaliated with a brutal knee that caved part of Varnok’s torso armor plating.
Sparks erupted like a firework detonation, showering across the floating wreckage.
‘Why won’t you fokkin’ die?’ Varnok snarled, his lycan spirit twitching beneath his scorched flesh-like mask.
Santi’s mouth curled with that sardonic edge only he could wear in the face of death. ‘I belong to the stars until they implode. Neither shall I.’
He twisted, seizing Varnok by the collar of his suit, and hurled him.
The Red Skull patriarch crashed into a drifting chunk of rogue armor plating, fracturing it like brittle glass.
But Varnok wasn’t done.
The older man rose from the rubble, burning, damaged, still furious.
Half his helmet hung like molten slag, one eye sparking, the other blazing with vengeance. He tore an inbuilt laser weapon from a cavity in his forearm and aimed.
He fired.
The blast struck Santi’s left shoulder and ripped into the right side of his face like a comet kiss.
The force hurled the Signet warrior backward.
It did little to stop him.
Santi growled, his body glowing with raw nucleic power, war-forged and divine, in arcs of violet and gold lightning spiraling out like radiant veins of vengeance.
He turned his face back to Varnok, his spectral sapphire-violet eyes twin, glowing and on fire.
‘Had enough?’ he said, voice like gravel wrapped in fire.
He launched forward.
His fists smashed into Varnok’s synth-enhanced chest plate with earth-shattering force, blow after blow like meteor strikes against a crumbling moon.
Varnok reeled, coughing sparks, half his chest caved in, but still, he struck back, laser crackling as he fired again.
Santi twisted mid-space, absorbing the impact with a snarl, spinning with it, using its force.
He kicked off a floating girder, springing through the air like a predator.
He collided with Varnok like a battering ram.
He was about to end the pirate when the enemy ship’s twin turret rail guns locked onto him.
Rounds fired in punishing, streaking bursts.
Live ammo whistled around him, shredding bits of debris, grazing his ethereal form with searing heat.
One hit too close, and his spectral form flickered. Another slammed into his shield dead-on.
Santi snarled, trying to hold on, but he was forced to release Varnok or be ripped apart.
He darted back, narrowly avoiding a direct strike.
He twisted through zero-gravity with brutal precision, catching himself on a shattered strut from the prison’s remains.
Inside the ship, Soleil shifted in and out of her red spectral wolf form, pulling her father in by the chest strap, her eyes never leaving Santi.
Behind her scarlet mask, her gaze locked with his, shimmering with tears, a silent stream of regret and farewell.
Behind him shifted an older, more wraith-like lycan, who sifted for a moment to reveal Vern’s face.
With a wave from the sneering twisted lycan, the hatch closed.
Santi lunged again, rifle drawn, but the ship’s engines ignited with a roar-less flame, and it blasted into motion.
He fired twice, the lasers catching on the rear shields, flaring but doing nada to stop it.
Miral, an unknown ship, just launched off The Sombra’s hull. Fokkin’ track it.
The Synth AI voice came through Santi’s neural channel, fast and laced with urgency.
I’ve managed to deploy a drone to fling a tracker onto it to give us its trajectory.
‘Don’t lose sight of it!’ Santi growled.
Followed by a louder, roaring, guttural: ‘FOKK!’
His violet-gold eyes burned as the rogue craft disappeared into a vortex that swelled up ahead, bright as a blade drawn through starlight.
The vessel twisted into slipstream, its form elongating, then vanishing in a breathless whip of distortion.
Santi hovered in space, chest heaving in rage, alone in the frozen dark.
She was gone.