Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 144277 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 721(@200wpm)___ 577(@250wpm)___ 481(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 144277 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 721(@200wpm)___ 577(@250wpm)___ 481(@300wpm)
Heat rises up inside me, burning rage.
Unspooled her.
Calm down, Tyse. Breathe. She’s fine. She gave you spark less than ten minutes ago. Whatever they did, it didn’t work.
OK. I’m good. I’m calm. But this one here, he’s not gettin’ away. Even if he didn’t have my gear, he’s got seconds left in this life.
I step out in to the dim light of the tunnel, purposefully letting my boots scuff on the ground so he hears me.
With a whimper, he turns.
“Hello, puppet. Whatcha got there?” The Versi—still updating— sits in my thigh pocket. I’m gonna get my hands on this one. After what he’s done, he deserves a more personal exit from this world.
His face warps into something meant to be a smile, but comes off more like a partial paralysis. “You’re the puppet!” He screams, words echoing down the dark, wet tunnels. “You! Not Luther! You’re a monster! All monsters, ‘cept for Luther!”
I blow out a breath, kinda speechless. It’s sad, really.
“Don’t look at me,” he snarls. “Nothing to see! Luther is nothing to look at!”
I don’t bother taunting him. It’s not worth it. “I’m gonna kill you now and take my gear. Would you like to… run? Or something? Or should I just get on with it?”
Luther doesn’t run. Doesn’t scream. Just tilts his head and gives me a crooked, yellow-toothed smile like this is all some inside joke only he understands. “We unspooled her good, didn’t we?” he hisses. “Cracked her open like a cherry. All that spark, drip-drip-dripping out—”
I move. No hesitation. My hand closes around his throat mid-sentence, slamming him into the tunnel wall so hard the wet pipes above rattle.
He claws at me. Gasps. Eyes bulging.
I squeeze harder.
No words. No mercy.
Just pressure until his eyes go glassy and blood vessels burst.
Then I let him drop. Like trash.
I pull out the Versi—78%—shoulder my rucks, and move deeper in to the tunnels.
Fuck the augments, I’ve got a laser-focus on Epsilon now.
One more kill, then we’re out.
The further in I go, the quieter it gets. No more claws on steel. No ragged breathing in the dark. Just silence—tight, coiled, waiting. When the tunnels widen, pipework gives way to polished walls, flickering with low emergency light. Factory core. Lab zone. I know the stink of it—burned metal, chemicals, blood that’s gone stale in the vents.
He’s close.
Not hiding. Waiting.
Good.
Let him wait.
I check the Versi. 93%.
Not enough to relax. More than enough to kill a god.
I keep moving.
A four-way intersection ahead. I’ve just barely processed this when the air shifts. I don’t see him—I feel him. Static behind my eyes. Stench of rot all around me.
Then—movement.
From the side. Fast. Too fast.
I twist, raise the Versi—but I’m not fast enough. Something stabs into my side. It doesn’t feel like a blade. It feels… wet. A fleshy puncture. Like a wasp the size of a man has jabbed me with a syringe full of fire. My ribs explode in pain. Nerve endings ignite. And then comes the injection.
Oh fuck.
Whatever’s inside me—it’s moving. Twisting. Unfurling like a living thread, crawling beneath my skin. I can feel it burrowing—trying to hook into something. To find a home. Rewire my threads. Rewrite my DNA. Like it wants to take me over.
My data display flickers. Glitches. A stream of corrupted characters floods the screen like infected code trying to worm its way into my neural pathways.
Myra. Jast. Stepan and Kirt. Infected. Writhing in pain. Screaming—beggin’ me to kill them!
Epsilon steps out of the shadows, smiling. Burned and melted, skin sloughing off like wax, eyes gleaming red. “You’re not special,” he rasps. “You’re a container. Let’s see what happens when we fill you with me.”
A beep. A flash on the data display. The corrupted stream halts. One word pops up in clean, glowing cyan-blue:
PHASETETHER: ONLINE.
Let’s fuckin’ go.
Most people, when presented with a problem set such as this one, would panic. It’s normal. Natural. But I’m not even people at this point. I don’t really believe in panic. Not since I had to shoot my team in the head to save their souls.
So… yeah. I blow out a breath—lookin’ Epsilon straight into those demon-red eyes—and smile. Then I raise the fully-updated Versi and blow him into another dimension.
PhaseTether: Because dead is too easy. WARNING! Highly unstable! Side effects may include spontaneous howling, spatial screaming, and cosmic regret!”
The warped air smooths over, like the Corrupted God was never here.
I glance down at my wound, fingers pressing into my skin—which is lighting up green and orange in the surrounding area. It’s not a deep wound. Barely bleeding. And that wriggling I felt a few seconds ago is subsiding now. The pain fading. It’s a psyop—that’s what this is. A war-stunt. Make the soldier question his own body long enough to break the mission.
My inner voice scoffs. You’re insane. You’re Luther-level crazy if you think this injection was meant to scare, not scar.