Chapter 41
BELLA
Kage is breathing, but barely. His chest rises and falls in slow, mechanical intervals, like someone else is puppeting his lungs.
His skin’s too pale, his body limp in the sled as I drag him out of the sanctum.
The EMP fried every neural path in him—he bought us five minutes, maybe a miracle—but now he’s stuck in a body that hasn’t rebooted yet.
“Don’t you dare die on me,” I mutter, my voice shaking as I shove the hover-sled into motion. “You did your hero thing. You saved her. Now wake the hell up.”
Natalie stirs in my arms, her face wet, streaked with smoke and tears. She’s got one arm wrapped tight around my neck and the other clinging to a stuffed toy that didn’t exist until two minutes ago. It must’ve printed in the sphere—a fail-safe or a final cruelty.
The station is screaming.
Sirens wail overhead, red light pulsing through the curved halls like veins pumping fire. I know the EMP didn’t just knock out Nulegion. It triggered a containment cascade. Every system on this godsdamned station is rerouting, rebooting, recalibrating to contain the breach.
Me. Kage. Natalie. We’re the breach.
I find a crawlspace beneath a corroded vent shaft and squeeze Natalie in, wrapping her in an emergency cloak and a neural dampener. Her lip trembles.
“Stay here. No sound. No light. If anything that doesn’t smell like Mom shows up—you bite it. Understand?”
She nods. Barely.
I kiss her forehead and slam the hatch closed before I can change my mind. Then I whip around, grab the sled, and start moving.
The corridor's full of whispering walls. Not metaphorical either—literal whispering. The station is talking to itself, syncing cyber-prayers and ritual algorithms. The air smells like metal and singed skin. I run with Kage’s unconscious weight dragging behind me, gun hot in my palm.
One cultist rounds the corner. I shoot her in the throat. Two more drop from the ceiling—I take one through the temple, the other in the gut. The hallway blooms with circuitry-rich blood and scorched wiring.
I don’t flinch. I can’t.
This isn’t panic anymore. It’s precision. Cold, deliberate. A mother on a mission.
But somewhere along the fourth hall, I hear her.
“Mom.”
It’s barely a whisper. I glance back.
Natalie’s crawling out from the vent, trembling.
Her skin is... moving.
I freeze. Her veins shimmer with silver, crawling under the skin like mercury vines. Her eyes blink wrong. Too slow. Too in sync.
“Natalie,” I whisper, racing to her and dropping to my knees. “No. No, baby, not again.”
She shakes in my arms. “It’s still there. Inside. It’s whispering again.”
My chest splits open. Not literally, but damn if it doesn’t feel like it. I smooth her hair back. Her scalp’s burning. Her breath stinks of metal.
“Don’t let it back in,” I whisper. “You fight, okay? You hold on. You are not a vessel. You are you.”
“But I’m scared.”
“I know,” I murmur. “Me too. But fear doesn’t get to win today.”
I scoop her up, slam her against my hip, and tear down the last hall with Kage’s sled scraping sparks behind me.
We reach the ship. It’s a rusted scrapyard shuttle barely holding together—half duct tape, half hope. I slam the hatch closed, drop the blast seals, and lay them both down—Kage on the med cot, Natalie in a biostatic field.
I don’t get to cry. I don’t even breathe.
I move.
I open the old lab compartment. It stinks of stale protein rations and oxidized copper. But it has what I need: injectors, neural interface lines, containment fluid. The EMP Kage used hit external systems—but Natalie needs something that’ll go inside.
Her bloodstream. Her nervous system.
I rig the charge. Micro-dosed nanite disruption, modified for child-compatible physiology.
But that’s not the only problem. Nulegion isn’t just in her blood.
It’s in her mind.
And if I just blast it... I risk blowing her consciousness with it.
So I make a choice.
I reach for the micro-conversion serum.
It was outlawed for a reason—meant for combat interlinking, neural-to-neural warfare. You inject it, sync to the target's brainwaves, and fight from the inside. No armor. No weapons. Just will.
I prep the needle, glance at Kage’s inert face.
“You saved me,” I whisper, and my voice catches. “Now it’s my turn.”
I jab the needle into my neck.
The world fractures.