Chapter 36
JAV
Iwake up to the smell of sterilizer and copper.
The medbay light above me pulses blue—too soft, too rhythmic, like it’s trying to trick my brain into calm. It doesn’t work. Pain rolls in hard the moment I twitch. Ribs. Shoulder. Something in my thigh feels wrong.
“Don’t sit up,” a voice says.
I do it anyway.
Garkin appears at the foot of the bed like a ghost, arms crossed, face grim. His coat’s stained with soot and something darker.
“You shouldn’t be awake,” he says.
I swing my legs off the cot, grimacing through the grinding protest of muscles and bone. “I’m not dead. That’s what matters.”
He doesn’t crack a joke. That’s when I know.
“What happened?” I ask.
He hesitates.
“Garkin.”
“The strike worked,” he says finally. “League stronghold’s gutted. They lost their command hub. Tilkan’s dead. Their channels are chaos.”
“But?” I say.
He looks away. That’s answer enough.
“What?” I repeat.
“They took her,” he says. “And the kid.”
My chest goes still.
“Say that again,” I whisper.
“Kairo’s compad pinged us an hour after you blacked out. She came looking for you. Found the safehouse empty. Then… she vanished. And her kid—Ben—he wasn’t in the apartment when we checked. Backpack on the floor. Door wide open.”
Something inside me breaks. Not cracks—shatters. Splinters into something sharp.
“The League?” I ask.
He nods. “Message came through right after. Said it plain—‘You chose wrong. Now he bleeds for it.’”
Silence drops between us.
It’s thick. Electric.
I stand slowly. Every joint screams. My vision swims. Doesn’t matter.
“Don’t do this,” Garkin says. “You’re not ready.”
I walk past him.
“Jav—”
“They touched my mate,” I say, voice quiet, flat. “They stole my son.”
His breath catches.
I push open the door.
The locker room is freezing. Metal floor plates sting bare feet. The lockers are old, dented, names scrawled in ten different languages, some long dead. Mine is the last one in the back. Still locked. Still humming with old blood.
I key it open.
The armor’s there—war black, matte finish, Redscale insignia worn smooth from too many battles. I brush my fingers along the chestplate. The old war markings are still there. Etched deep. A language of loss.
My hands move automatically—buckles, seals, synaptic gel. The rig hisses as it syncs to my biometrics. Pressure clamps. Neural ports light up. My breath slows as the system pings awake. It remembers me.
It remembers what I am.
I catch my reflection in the broken mirror across the room. What stares back isn’t Mr. Kuraken. Not the charming schoolteacher. Not the fool trying to wear peace like a borrowed suit.
I'm Jav Kuraken.
Warlord. Enforcer. Son of ruin.
And for the first time in months—I let him surface.
Garkin storms in. “You’re out of your mind.”
I keep strapping on gear. “Yup.”
“You just got cleared off a field table an hour ago. You got three fractured ribs, a torn quad, and mild neuroshock.”
“I’ve gone in with worse.”
“This isn’t a mission—it’s a death wish.”
I slide the plasma holster into place. The click is final.
He grips my arm. “You think Kairo would want this?”
My eyes meet his.
“This isn’t about what she wants,” I say, voice low. “It’s about what they did.”
He swears under his breath. “You walk in there solo, they’ll use her and the boy as bait. You’ll die before you even reach them.”
“Maybe,” I say. “But not before I take every last one of those bastards with me.”
He steps back like I slapped him. The silence between us is thick with history. I see it in his face—the old fear. The memories of the man I used to be.
He thinks I’m gone again.
Maybe I am.
He reaches into his coat and pulls out a comms chip.
“Encrypted channel,” he mutters, dropping it in my palm. “Our drone picked up a thermal surge on the League’s fallback base. Off the Trenell ridge. Deep tunnel. Heavily shielded.”
“Good,” I say.
“Jav…” His voice cracks.
I look at him.
He nods, just once. “Burn them all.”
As I step into the dropship, rain slicks the armor plating. The storm’s getting heavier. The sky flashes with lightning behind the clouds.
I lift my head, breathe in the charge of it.
Somewhere in this hellhole, my son is waiting.
And someone’s going to pay for making him afraid.