The rusted skeleton of the pre-Collapse warehouse loomed against the bruised purple sky like a fossilized beast. Chen Feng crouched on an adjacent rooftop, the Adamantine plates of his armor hissed and ground against corroded sheet metal, the servos whining with each micro-adjustment of his weight. His gloved fingers flexed, testing the tremor that had taken root in his hands. The double dose of pills had stabilized his focus but introduced new variables—fine motor control degradation, peripheral vision narrowing, a cold sweat beading beneath his helmet despite the jungle's oppressive heat.

  "Thermal shows two guards on the roof access ladder," Alina's voice crackled through his helmet speakers, sharp with the residual static of damaged comms. "One sleeping. The other pacing in a seven-meter arc. Pattern repeats every twenty-three seconds."

  Chen gave a single, shallow breath through his vox-grille—acknowledgment enough. His breathing was a low tide in his ears, the chemical barrier in his veins holding back the static in his mind. He counted the seconds, watching the pacing guard's heat signature through his HUD. At sixteen seconds, he moved.

  The rooftop ladder was a rickety contraption of salvaged rebar and chain, groaning under his armored weight. Each rung vibrated through his gloves like a plucked wire. Halfway up, his left hand spasmed. Adamantine-clad fingers scraped against metal, drawing sparks. He froze, heart hammering against his ribs, waiting for the shout of discovery.

  Silence.

  He forced his breathing into the measured rhythm drilled into him over four hundred years ago—inhale for four, hold for seven, exhale for eight. By the time he reached the roof access hatch, his hands were steady again, the chemical flood in his bloodstream reasserting control.

  The hatch shrieked open with the tortured sound of stressed alloy, a noise that cut through the jungle's white noise like a blade. The sound deafening in the stillness. Chen slipped through like smoke, rolling to his feet on a catwalk slick with decades of grime and condensation. Below, the warehouse sprawled in fractured sections, its skeletal girders groaning in the wind. Emergency torches cast flickering shadows that twisted across the concrete floor like grasping fingers.

  "Two hostiles directly beneath you," Alina whispered in his ear. "Ten meters east of your position. They're arguing about rations."

  Chen flattened himself against the catwalk railing, peering down. The light was poor, but the enhanced optics in his helmet painted the scene in shades of thermal blue and heat-red. Two Hellwraiths hunched over a makeshift table, their faces hidden behind scavenged respirators, hands gesturing wildly. Their voices carried up through the broken planks beneath him.

  "—nutrient paste is rotten again! I'm not eating that chemical shit!"

  "Shut your hole. We're lucky to have anything left after Malus forced us to ran! So much things just discarded back in the trees—"

  Chen's jaw tightened behind his faceplate as he forced himself not to shake, not to tremble again. He crept forward, the catwalk groaning beneath his boots. The tremor in his right hand returned, subtle but persistent.

  His HUD highlighted structural weak points—cracked beams, rusted supports, sections where the earthquake had split concrete like rotten fruit. Malus's men had reinforced some of the worst damage with cables and timber props, but the entire structure felt like a house of cards.

  Movement caught his eye. In the center of the main chamber, a cage hung from a chain bolted to the ceiling. Even in the poor light, Flora's pale face was unmistakable. She sat slumped against the bars, her uniform torn at the shoulders, skin flushed an unnatural crimson. One of the Hellwraiths below pointed toward her cage with a crude gesture.

  "—worthless angel's sick. Malus is shitting himself over it. Says Teodulo won't pay for damaged merchandise."

  Chen's optics zoomed in automatically. Flora's breathing was shallow but rhythmic. Her skin showed the telltale flush of radiation sickness, but her pupils—when she lifted her head—remained perfectly clear. A chill cut through the chemical haze in Chen's mind.

  A tactical assessment scrolled across his HUD: [Subject F. W. exhibits symptoms inconsistent with ambient radiation levels. Probability of tactical deception: 87.4%. Recommended action: Observe and exploit.]

  He shifted position, the catwalk emitting a sharp beneath his boot. Below, one of the arguing Hellwraiths paused mid-rant, head tilting upward.

  "Did you hear that?"

  "Probably just another aftershock. This whole fucking place is coming apart."

  Chen held his breath. When the Hellwraiths resumed their argument, he continued his silent advance along the catwalk, angling toward a staircase that descended to the main level.

  Inside the , Alina Ludwig hunched over her console, sweat tracing paths through the grime on her neck. The vehicle lurked in a copse of phosphorescent fungi two kilometers west of the Hellwraith camp, its hull draped in hastily assembled camouflage of vines and broken tree limbs. On her displays, three Rabe drones hovered at varying altitudes, their feeds painting a tactical map of the enemy position.

  She'd launched the fourth drone thirty minutes ago—a high-altitude recon bird meant to scan the entire compound. But something was wrong with its feed. Static flickered across the screen, the thermal imaging glitching in and out like a dying heartbeat.

  "Chen," she whispered into the comms, keeping her voice low even though she was alone. "I'm losing visual on Drone Four. Electromagnetic interference is spiking. It's like the whole forest is charged with static since the earthquake."

  No response. Chen was in silent mode, conserving power and avoiding detection.

  Alina clenched her blistered fist, the pain a welcome anchor against the storm in her mind.

  She slammed the thought down. Discipline. Protocol. The mission.

  Her fingers danced across the console, recalibrating the remaining drones' frequencies. On the main display, the warehouse layout filled in piece by piece—a jigsaw puzzle of violence and desperation. She'd gotten about seventy percent coverage when the world lurched.

  [Warning: Seismic activity in progress. Richter scale: 7.6. Brace for impact mode active.]

  The aftershock hit.

  Alina's head snapped forward, slamming against the console. Blood bloomed across her vision. Outside, the jungle canopy rippled like a disturbed pond. The

  groaned, its damaged chassis protesting the movement.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  When she lifted her head, blinking away stars, Drone Four's feed was gone——replaced by a dead signal icon blinking with cold finality.

  "Shit." She slammed her fist against the console, then forced herself to breathe. She recalibrated the remaining drones, their feeds flickering back to life.

  The surveillance only provided seventy percent detailed coverage. Alina was trained to search for the rest, but in her singular focus on Chen’s safety, she diverted her attention. . She told herself.

  Save Flora, get the hell out of this place. That was their only goal.

  Chen froze as the aftershock ripped through the warehouse. The catwalk beneath him bucked like a living thing, bolts screaming in their housings. Dust and debris rained from the ceiling, stinging his eyes even through the helmet's filters. Somewhere below, metal shrieked as a support beam sheared.

  He pressed himself flat against the catwalk, waiting for the tremors to subside. When the groaning structure finally settled, he continued his descent, moving with the cautious deliberation of a man traversing a minefield.

  The main level was worse than the upper floors—cracks spiderwebbed across the concrete, pooling with the ever-present acidic rainwater that seeped through the shattered roof. He kept to the shadows, his armored boots silent on the wet floor.

  Movement to his right. A lone Hellwraith guard leaned against a concrete pillar, his back to Chen, fiddling with a jury-rigged radio. His helmet was off, revealing a shaved head scarred with ritual tattoos—a coiled serpent eating its own tail.

  Chen didn't hesitate. He covered the distance in three silent strides, his left arm snaking around the guard's throat while his right hand clamped over the man's mouth. The guard's eyes widened in terror behind his respirator mask.

  "Make a sound," Chen whispered, his voice flat and metallic through the vox-grille. "And I'll break your neck before you can blink."

  The guard nodded frantically. Chen dragged him into a recessed doorway, slamming him against the concrete with enough force to rattle his teeth.

  "Talk," Chen ordered, his grip tightening. "Camp layout. Weak points. Where they're keeping my friend."

  The Hellwraith's words tumbled out in a panicked rush. "Malus—he's got her in the main cage. The big one. He—he wants to bargain with Teodulo. Says she's worth ten times the others. There's a secondary entrance on the north side, past the generator. And—" he swallowed hard. "The support beams. The quake damaged them bad. We've been patching with cable and timber, but the whole east wall is ready to come down."

  Chen absorbed the information, his tactical mind slotting each piece into place. "The prisoners. The New Terra, where is she?"

  The guard flinched. "That is a ‘she’?"

  "Where are they keeping her?"

  "In the main storage room. North side. In a cage suspended in the mid-air, you can’t miss it. Malus and his kill-squad overwatch the scene from the office room across the main chamber."

  .

  Chen felt a wave of dizziness washing over his mind. The Hellwraith guard was still talking, his words fading in and out as Chen's vision narrowed. He chugged a dose too large, the chemical is blurring his senses.

  "—just meatbags to them. Throw a baby at a New Terran, and they'll drop their weapons every time. It's like they're programmed to—"

  Something snapped in Chen.

  He slammed the guard's head against the concrete pillar. Once. Twice. The third impact silenced him permanently.

  Chen stood over the body, breathing heavily. The chemical numbness in his veins was fraying, replaced by a cold, crystalline fury.

  The thought was there, sharp and clear. Then gone, replaced by a deeper understanding:

  "Good call," Alina's voice came through his helmet, startling him. "I saw the whole thing on Drone Two's feed."

  Chen blinked. "You're watching?"

  "You think I'd let you go in there alone while doped to the gills? I needed to know you were still... you."

  A pause. Then, so quiet he almost missed it:

  "I expected you to condemn me for executing a surrendering enemy."

  "No," Alina's voice was flat, stripped of all emotion. "And I think you need to kill them all. For me."

  Something in her tone—beneath the flatness—made Chen's blood run cold. But the pills were burning through his system, and the moment slipped away like sand through fingers.

  The main chamber was chaos.

  Malus paced before Flora's cage like a caged predator himself, barking orders at his men. "I don't care how you do it! Get a signal to Saint Aurora! Teodulo has med-bays that can save her! If she dies before we make the exchange, I'll feed your entrails to the rad-wolves one meter at a time!"

  Flora sat with her back against the bars, eyes half-closed, skin glowing with unnatural heat. Chen watched from a shadowed walkway ten meters above, the Adamantine plates of his armor making him part of the darkness.

  One of Malus's lieutenants—a hulking brute with a hydraulic claw for a left hand—approached the cage. He kicked it hard, the metal clanging like a funeral bell.

  "Still playing dead, angel?" he sneered. "Malus says you're sick, I say you are faking. We open the cage and find out." He grabbed the lock, rattling it. "Maybe you New Terrans aren't as tough as they say. Maybe you're just like the rest of us—soft. Weak."

  Flora didn't open her eyes. Her breathing remained shallow, rhythmic.

  The lieutenant laughed, a harsh, grating sound. He turned to his comrades, spreading his arms wide. "Ha! If all you New Terrans are like this, we can just capture all of you by tossing meatbags at you! Ha!"

  The other Hellwraiths joined in, their laughter echoing off the concrete walls. One of them mimed throwing a baby, making exaggerated cooing sounds that dissolved into wet, phlegmy laughter—the kind that came from throats lined with decades of rad-dust.

  Chen's hands tightened on his weapon, the tremor forgotten. The pieces clicked together with sickening clarity.

  “… Alina, see any civilians in the compound?”

  “Negative.” Alina spoke over the comms, her voice laced with statics, cold and absolute, “I only see capitalist criminals and feral rats here. Safety off.”

  Chen produced a habitual nod. He looked down at the Hellwraiths, rage boiled through the chemical barrier in his veins, white-hot and pure. His vision tunneled, the edges dissolving into static. For a heartbeat, the shadows around him deepened, thickening into liquid darkness. Within those shadows, something moved—shapes with too many limbs, too many eyes, watching, waiting. Their presence was a pressure against his skull, a whisper in a language he almost remembered.

  "—machine-guy is out there," one of the Hellwraiths below was saying. "Ares's whole crew gone. Vorlag's team vanished. Malus is scared. We all are."

  "Shut up," the lieutenant snapped. "Malus has a plan. He always has a plan."

  “… at least we need to tell Malus that Vorlag is missing and Ares’s entire gang has been wiped-out? He might need to adjust his approach, just my opinion—” A voice, younger and terrified, rang.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake! You go ahead and tell him. Want me to get killed or something?”

  Chen blinked. The shadows had receded—the only watchers were the two drones hovering silently above the warehouse.

  The clinical diagnosis formed automatically. But deep down, in a place the pills couldn't reach, he knew it was more than that. Something was watching. Something that had seen him long before the Scavengers ever had.

  Below, Malus finally noticed the commotion around Flora's cage. He strode over, backhanding the lieutenant so hard the man stumbled back, blood streaming from his split lip.

  "Touch the merchandise again," Malus snarled, his voice low and dangerous, "and I'll remove that claw and make you eat it. It’s worth more to us alive than dead. Remember that."

  He turned to Flora, his expression shifting to something almost like concern. "You're going to live, angel. I promise you that. Teodulo has doctors. Medicines. Things you've never even dreamed of."

  Flora opened her eyes. For just a second, they met Chen's through the bars. Her gaze was clear, focused. In that instant, Chen knew with absolute certainty:

  Then her eyes fluttered shut again, her body slumping against the bars as if exhausted.

  Malus straightened, turning to address his men. "We move at first light. Load everything onto the trucks. We're taking the angel to Saint Aurora whether she lives or dies. And if anyone gets in our way—" he drew his sidearm, a heavy-caliber stub pistol with a barrel worn smooth from use. "—they join the dead."

  Above them, Chen Feng shifted position, the Adamantine plates of his armor clicking softly in the shadows. The chemical numbness was gone, burned away by fury. His hands were steady now, his mind clear.

  He sighted down the barrel of his Type-95k, the targeting reticule settling on the back of Malus's skull. His finger tightened on the trigger.