Chapter 24
RHEA
Ripley’s sitting on the floor, cross-legged, tongue between her teeth in fierce concentration, her little fingers smudged with marker ink.
The lights overhead flicker with that faint yellow tint, the one I’ve come to associate with too many lies and too little sleep.
But here, now, in this quiet patch of reclaimed normal, she’s just a kid with a blank sheet and an imagination that hasn’t yet been drowned by fear.
I crouch beside her, watching. She doesn’t even glance up.
“What’re you drawing, bug?”
She hums to herself, like she’s too focused to answer. Her curls are a mess, tangled from sleep and stress and whatever chaos her body has internalized from the last week of running. I reach to smooth one strand behind her ear, and she leans into my hand instinctively.
Then she lifts the pad.
It’s us.
Me. Valtron. Her.
All holding these enormous plasma swords that glow with neon color, slicing through what looks like a hundred tiny robots with mean faces and stupid little hats. There’s a sun overhead with a smile. She’s drawn herself taller than both of us, with sparkles around her feet.
“See?” she says proudly. “We’re heroes.”
I don’t cry.
I don’t.
But my throat knots up so tight I have to look away for a second. Just one second.
Valtron walks in then, towel around his neck, chest still glistening with sweat from training. He sees the picture, and something in his face changes—softens, like metal melted under warmth. He kneels, takes the drawing from her small hands like it’s priceless, and walks to his locker.
Without a word, he tapes it up inside the door.
That same door that’s been opened to patch wounds, to prep for battle, to bury fear in the name of survival. Now it holds a crayon reminder of why we’re still fighting.
I cross the room.
He looks up just in time to see me reach for him.
And when I kiss him, it’s not soft or tentative. It’s everything. Every promise, every broken moment made whole. It’s war and peace, rage and surrender. His hands find my waist. Mine knot in his shirt.
“I love you,” I breathe into his skin.
He doesn’t say it back.
He doesn’t need to.
The next morning, the world ends again.
I’m halfway through reviewing the spread algorithm for the second data crystal—trying to map out who got what and how fast it’s propagating—when my pad pings.
No sender.
No header.
Just a single holo.
It opens automatically, despite every firewall I’ve embedded.
It’s Ripley’s daycare.
The one I pulled her from.
But this isn’t a memory file.
It’s live feed.
And there’s a red reticle pulsing over the door.
Pulsing.
Pulsing.
Target acquired.
My hand goes ice-cold. My vision tunnels. There’s a scream stuck somewhere in my lungs but I can’t find the air to push it out.
Valtron sees my face before he sees the screen.
“What is it?”
I hand it to him. My fingers won’t close around the pad.
He looks.
One second.
Two.
Then he’s gone.
No shirt. No weapons. Just raw fury, legs already pounding toward the arena floor like a war god reborn.
Varn thinks this is a game?
He’s about to learn what happens when you threaten a gladiator’s pack.
You don’t get a warning.
You get wiped off the map.
There’s a moment—one sliver of silence—when the entire arena is holding its breath.
It’s just after the lights dim but before the announcers speak. Just after the crowd quiets down but before the drums of spectacle begin their first thunder. It’s the inhale before the storm. And in that breath, that still, fragile heartbeat—I feel it.
Power.
I’m sitting in the arena’s old broadcast room.
It smells like ozone and fried wires and too many years of recycled sweat.
The chair creaks under me every time I shift.
I’ve tapped into systems I wasn’t meant to touch—hooked neural bypasses and ghost-fed override keys through hacked vendor nodes just to hijack a feed that usually runs on death.
Today, though, it’ll run on truth.
The Solstice Clash is supposed to be the biggest bloodbath of the season. Full crowd. High stakes. Prime-time broadcast to every star sector aligned with the Combine. Fifty million viewers minimum.
Valtron’s in the ring.
I’ve got ten seconds until his mark.
Ripley is safe. Hidden deep in a bunker Kaelor secured, behind enough coded doors and armed guards to make a prison warden blush.
My hand hovers over the trigger line.
Valtron’s voice crackles in my earpiece. “Ready?”
“Always.”
He breathes out slow. “See you on the other side, Hart.”
The crowd screams as the lights blaze white.
And then Valtron walks out.
No fanfare. No music.
Just him.
No helmet. No weapon. No theatrics.
Just a man stepping into the center of a coliseum with the ghosts of a hundred murdered fighters in his eyes.
I hit the feed.
The crowd goes still. It’s subtle at first—confusion threading through the stands. Whispers ripple, the way lightning crawls under skin before it cracks the sky.
Then Valtron raises his voice. Not to shout. Not to perform. But to tell the truth.
“You’ve been cheering for slaughter,” he says. “Now learn the names of the dead.”
The arena screens flash black.
Then the first file opens.
A face.
A name.
A story.
And then another.
And another.
I send them all—one after the other—looping through every system I can hijack. The names scroll like a war memorial, each paired with combat footage, final scans, unrecovered bodies, missing payouts.
Each one stamped with the Combine’s silent seal.
Valtron’s voice fills the arena like a prophecy.
“They said they were warriors. They said they fell in glory. But they were tools. Commodities. Waste.”
His voice tightens.
“They were my friends.”
In the control room, my hands are trembling.
Because it’s working.
The crowd doesn’t riot.
They don’t boo.
They listen.
And then—
They roar.
Not for blood.
For justice.
Valtron looks up. His face is lit by the pulsing red emergency lights that start to flicker across the upper walls.
Varn’s activated lockdown.
Too late.
Too damn late.
The arena doors slam shut. From the gates, armored mercs pour in, weapons drawn, stunners humming. Panic skitters across the outer stands. I hear the security protocols trying to fight me for control.
Valtron doesn’t move.
Not until the first merc raises his rifle.
Then he’s gone.
Exploding into motion.
He’s a weapon forged in fire and betrayal, moving with precision and rage. He takes the first merc down with a knee to the gut and a forearm to the faceplate. The man crumples.
And then the others charge.
They don’t see the other fighters at first.
But I do.
From every tunnel, every gate, every shadowed corner, they come—armor-clad, faces set like stone, fury burning in their eyes.
Korra.
Marrek.
Vela.
Jax.
Dozens of them, moving like a single beast broken free from its cage.
They descend on the mercs like wrath itself.
Screams fill the comms channel.
Sparks rain from shattered weapons. Bodies hit the floor, stunned or broken. The crowd doesn’t run.
They cheer.
I lock the feeds on Valtron, watching as he fights with brutal grace. No wasted motion. No mercy.
This isn’t about showmanship.
This is revolution.
This is vengeance.
And me?
I sit here, teeth gritted, fingers dancing over controls, launching every file I have left, every encrypted fragment of Combine corruption, every hidden detail Quinn died to uncover.
The truth is out.
The arena belongs to us now.
The corridor smells like burnt wiring and desperation.
I’ve got Ripley wrapped in a hooded cloak three sizes too big, clutched tight to my chest as I half-carry, half-drag her toward the evac port Kaelor mapped for us.
Every step feels like I’m walking through a war I’m not allowed to see yet.
My boots echo down the metal walkway. Alarms scream overhead, red lights pulsing like a heartbeat too close to flatlining.
Ripley clings to me without a word. Her face is pressed into my shoulder. She’s trembling. I kiss the top of her head as I move, fast, faster, faster still.
“Almost there, bug. Almost out.”
I tell myself that. Not her. She’s already braver than I ever was.
The door to the outer corridor hisses open—and there’s Leena Dray, exactly where she said she’d be.
She looks the same. Still sharp as shattered glass. Coat flaring around her in a wind that doesn’t exist, plasma pistol at her hip, and a look on her face like she’s already ten moves ahead of whatever hell just opened in the arena.
“You’re not safe here,” she says, stepping forward. Her eyes flick to Ripley. “None of you are.”
I nod, out of breath. “I know.”
She reaches out for Ripley, gentle, careful. “I’ll get her out.”
I hesitate.
Ripley lifts her head.
“Mama?”
God. That word.
I drop to my knees, pulling the hood back so I can look her in the eye. Her lip quivers. Her eyes are wide. I’ve never seen her this afraid.
And she’s seen too much already.
“Listen to me, storm,” I whisper, brushing her hair back. “You’re going with Auntie Leena, just for a little while. She’s gonna take you somewhere safe. Where the bad people can’t find you.”
Ripley clutches my jacket. “But what about you?”
I lean in and kiss her cheek. “I’ve got something to finish.”
She starts to cry. I hold her tighter.
“I don’t wanna go,” she hiccups.
“I know.” My throat burns. “But I need you to be brave. Can you do that for me?”
She nods, barely.
I kiss her forehead one last time. “Be brave, little storm.”
Leena takes her hand.
Ripley watches me the whole way to the skimmer.
And then she’s gone.
I run back toward the fire.
The floor shakes under my feet—distant detonations rattling steel bones. Screams echo from the coliseum. Security klaxons whine and fail as my viruses eat through their cores.
I pass fallen mercs. Some groaning. Some still.
The hallway to the ring is smeared with blood. The kind of blood that smells too hot, too coppery.
I press forward anyway.
Valtron needs me.
He’s still standing when I reach the viewing edge.
Barely.
He’s bleeding from a gash across his ribs. Limping. His left gauntlet sparking. He’s surrounded by bodies. Not all of them mercs.
But his eyes are on the far gate.
The one that opens now with a hiss of sealed metal and the thunder of mechanical footsteps.
Drayxon Varn walks through in powered armor so thick it looks like a mobile fortress. Plasma cannons on both shoulders. Reinforced plating down his arms. His face half-hidden under a tactical HUD visor that gleams with targeting data.
“You should’ve died in the blackout zone,” he sneers. His voice is amplified, mechanical, booming across the arena.
Valtron straightens. Spits blood.
“You should’ve stayed dead.”
Varn raises a fist—and the ring becomes a battlefield.
And I’m already moving.