14. Rhykor #2
"Twelve hours ago, I intercepted a logistics transfer between a senior quartermaster division and a civilian shipping contractor operating out of Sector Four.
" She uncrosses her arms. "The manifest lists standard military surplus, including decommissioned relay components, outdated navigation hardware, obsolete communication units.
Routine equipment disposal, the sort of paperwork that passes through oversight committees and disappears. "
"And?"
"The equipment on that manifest matches the corruption signatures from the sector-mapping data I pulled from your team's analysis.
" She taps the data chip. "Most of the relays, navigation units, and communication arrays on this list carry dormant Legion code embedded in the firmware.
Someone inside Kraaj high command has been funneling infected technology into civilian infrastructure through black-market redistribution channels, and the transfer documentation carries a senior leadership cipher I've seen on classified operations before. "
The armory feels smaller. The air thickens with the heat shimmering from me as the implications crystallize.
"Someone in command is feeding Legion into the districts."
"Into human districts." Nysera's correction is precise and unequivocal.
"The infected components on this manifest were routed to sectors with majority human populations.
The Kraaj military zones and the officer residential compounds are all clean.
All equipped with legitimate, uncompromised hardware.
" She picks up the data chip and turns it between her fingers.
"This is targeted destabilization, Rhykor.
Whoever is behind this wants Legion outbreaks to justify containment purges and permanent military control over the outer districts.
And the dead humans in those sectors become evidence supporting the argument that the frontier populations are too dangerous and too infected to save. "
"Can you trace the authorization chain?"
"The cipher is only partially exposed because it is intentionally obscured, routed through three separate command divisions before reaching the quartermaster's office, which suggests that whoever ordered this knows exactly how to bury their tracks inside military bureaucracy.
Her mouth turns into a hard line as she continues, “This cipher pattern is senior, and because it originates from the top of the southeastern regional command, there are only a handful of officers with the clearance to authorize transfers at this level.”
I gape at the data chip. My hands burn against the weapons bench, and when I lift them, molten imprints smolder in the steel.
I think about the refugees I carried to the bunker. The memory of the old man's trembling hand haunts me. That little girl nuzzled her face against my chest because the seven-foot alien was somehow less frightening than the machines tearing her neighborhood apart.
Those machines were put there. They were calculated and systematic, funneled through the very military command structure I served for years.
This was the identical chain of authority I obeyed when I was twenty-two and signing clearance orders for frontier settlements.
I had been indoctrinated by the same ideology that taught me obedience was loyalty, destruction equated to strength, and human lives were acceptable costs in the math of occupation.
"How far up does this go?" I demand, even though she's already told me—senior, very senior, the top of the regional command.
"Far enough that exposing it will bring enemies down on you that make the district gangs look like children fighting over scraps.
" Nysera slides the data chip across the bench.
"I'm giving you this because the alternative is burying it inside an intelligence report that gets classified and destroyed before it reaches anyone with the authority to act on it.
You're the only commander in the outer districts with enough influence and enough reason to do something with this information. "
"You're risking your career."
"I'm risking my life." The distinction sits heavy in the armory air.
"I've spent twelve years inside Kraaj intelligence watching men use classified channels to murder civilians and call it strategy, and I'm tired of pretending the uniform makes it acceptable.
" She meets my eyes with that sharp, incisive precision I remember from a different lifetime.
"Whatever is happening with you and the human medic, it made you dangerous, and whoever authorized this understands that and uses it. "
She leaves as she arrived, silent and lethal, her security detail falling into step behind her as the east access seals shut.
I remain standing in the armory holding a data chip that proves the chain of command I swore my life to has been engineering the deaths of the very civilians I've spent three months trying to protect.
The weight of it grinds against my appendages alongside the heat, and the anger building in my blood runs deeper than survival. This is about justice.
The day refuses to stop breaking. Four hours after Nysera leaves, a distress call tears through the compound frequency.
The attack is located in Sector Nine's eastern residential block, which is a housing cluster a couple of miles south of the compound.
Infected maintenance droids have breached the perimeter wall and are attacking evacuation corridors while families flee toward the southern checkpoint.
The transmission is fragmented, choked with static and the distant percussion of collapsing infrastructure.
Cassia's voice threads through the noise on the open channel, calm and unwavering, directing civilians toward secondary exit routes while someone screams in the background.
Going to Sector Nine placed her right where infected droids are tearing through residential blocks.
Naturally, following her instincts drove her there.
The woman who commanded me to stay away three days ago possesses a reckless drive; she hears a distress signal from a human neighborhood and abandons self-preservation to ensure the survival of others.
I am airborne before Dessik finishes relaying the coordinates for the four-mile flight.
The compound falls away beneath my wings as I bank hard toward the smoke column rising from Sector Nine.
Three crew members follow on foot through the street-level routes, but I cover the distance much faster from the air.
The sustained flight stretches my healing membrane painfully, and every downward stroke sends a sharp spike of agony radiating down my spine.
But the pull within me is a tidal force, an alignment of intent that renders my physical limits irrelevant and draws me forward regardless of the cost. I rapidly drop altitude as the burning residential block comes into view.
The housing cluster collapses, and the walls buckle inward as vicious maintenance droids swarm the eastern evacuation corridor where civilians funnel through a narrow gap.
I spot her immediately.
Cassia crouches behind a sundered wall section near the corridor entrance, med-pack open on the ground beside her, hands working furiously on a child's leg wound while Junia drags two more civilians around the corner.
A maintenance droid the size of a cargo loader lurches toward the wall, its optical array flickering with the distinctive red corruption pattern of Legion infection.
Noticing the threat, Cassia shoves the child toward Junia before reaching for the pulse pistol strapped under her jacket.
I hit the droid before she clears the holster.
The impact drives us both into the pavement—me and two tons of subverted steel—and I pour heat through my palms until the machine's chassis melts inward and the optical array goes dark.
Two more droids converge from the eastern approach.
I tear through them with bare hands, superheated claws shredding armor plating, the energy output searing through my forearms in waves that leave the air rippling.
"Rhykor!" Junia's shout cuts through the chaos. "Behind you?—"
I spin in time to catch a construction bot's hydraulic arm before it connects with my skull.
The impact reverberates through my shoulders, and I wrench the arm free from the chassis and use it to crush the bot's central processing unit.
Metal screams and sparks cascade across the flooded street. I turn back toward Cassia.
She's on her feet, pulling a bleeding woman toward the corridor entrance, and a section of the residential wall above her shifts—stressed beyond capacity by the structural damage, with tons of concrete and rebar beginning to separate from the frame.
I cover the distance in three strides. My arm locks around her waist, and I wrench her sideways as the wall separates from the frame.
Concrete and rebar crash into the pavement where she stood half a second ago, and a chunk of debris catches the side of her head on its way down, spinning her into my chest. Dust billows outward in a choking wave.
I curl my wings around her and drag us both behind the nearest intact wall section while rubble cascades across the corridor entrance.
She's on my chest. Her chest heaves against the fabric of her jacket in a rapid, terrified rhythm that proves she is still alive.
A cut splits the skin above her left eyebrow where the debris caught her—shallow but bleeding freely, head wounds always proving a point.
Her right side is already darkening where she struck my plating, and she winces when she probes her fingers along her flank, but her breathing sounds clear and her pupils track evenly when I tilt her face toward the light.
"I'm fine," she insists, and I ignore her completely.