Watch your pace, Fia.

  I’m moving as fast as I can, I snap back through the line, my grip tightening on the hilt of my sword. It’s one and a half meters of dark metal—straight, sharp, with angular facets etched along its edges.

  The soldier ahead barely has time to raise his rifle. I lunge forward, my blade a blur, catching the reflection of my Phalanx in his visor—sleek, angular armor, matte-black with gold-trimmed plating. A maroon mantle drapes over my right shoulder. My bulwark shield hangs from the other. The terrifying silhouette of a Praetorian.

  Blood spatters the wall. His scream cuts off as my blade drives through his chest. I twist it, feel his ribs crack, then shove him off. He collapses in a heap.

  My skates—micro-thrusters lining my suit’s thighs and lower back—hum as I glide past his body into the next squad. My shield’s already up, deflecting incoming fire as I twist and slide between them.

  Even with their faces hidden behind armor, I can tell they’re nervous. They know what I am. They know what’s coming. They fear me.

  “Too slow,” I mutter. My shield absorbs their fire, the deep grooves across its surface glowing with each impact. At the last second, I twist—blade flashing.

  The first soldier’s neck splits open. Blood sprays across the corridor. I pivot on my skates, momentum carrying me into the next. My blade slices through his armor and into him like he’s nothing. The Phalanx makes me faster. Stronger. Deadlier.

  A part of me almost feels bad.

  I surge down the corridor. The last soldier aims his energy rifle in desperation. My skates ignite, launching me sideways. His shot barely misses. Before he can adjust, I’m already on him—my bulwark slams into his chest with a brutal crack. His ribs buckle. Before he hits the ground, my sword slips into the seam in his armor. Blood drips from the matte blade as I pull it free.

  How much farther? I ask through the line, voice cold. Detached.

  No response.

  Mara? I press.

  I’m here, she says. The line crackles. Connection’s getting weaker. Good sign. Means you’re almost at the bridge.

  Still straight?

  I’ll mark it.

  My optics flicker, recalibrate. A glowing marker appears just beyond the next turn.

  Things still quiet on your end? I ask, gliding through the winding hall, sword ready in my grip.

  Jammer’s still uncompromised, Mara replies, the connection steadying a bit. The Revenant is still trying to hail the surface and its sister frigates, but nothing has gotten out. Yet. Still, this is going smoother than I expected.

  They never thought one of their own Praetorians would turn on them, I say, smirking behind my faceplate. These ships are built to repel outside threats. But I’m a ghost inside their walls.

  Don’t get cocky, Mara chides.

  Her voice in my ear is grounding. She’s the only one who understands why this has to be done. It’s comforting—knowing someone’s with me, even if she’s lightyears away.

  The marker pulses ahead. I round the corner. At the corridor’s end stands a thick alloy door, its overlapping plates interlocked. The marker lies beyond. But how to get through?

  I step closer, running my gloved hand over the cold metal.

  Well, no choice. I reach for the Seraph slung across my back—

  Something slams into me from behind, hurling me into the door. It dents. I try to stand—then a grip like iron yanks me backward. I hit the floor, sparks skidding from my bulwark as I scrape across the ground. My sword clatters meters away.

  I look up, optics sharpening instantly. Another Praetorian stands before me—his Phalanx predatory with its angular, jagged plates. He’s a mirror image of me—another machine of war. Shit. This wasn’t in the plan.

  “Killjoy,” he says, his deep voice distorted through the speakers. “Care to explain yourself?”

  My eyes widen. He knows my alias.

  “Nothing to say?” the Praetorian asks, registering my silence.

  Status? Mara’s voice cuts through the line, concern flickering.

  Not good. Another Praetorian.

  Confirmed, she replies, steady as always. No time for mercy, Fia. End it.

  Right. I roll, reaching for my sword, gripping the hilt tight as I push to my feet. The Phalanx’s micromotors make the movement easy. He’s already lunging—blade flashing. I block with my shield, the impact vibrating through my arm, then swing for his midsection.

  He twists. A near miss. Our blades clash again—sparks hissing as steel grinds steel. He’s strong. But I’m faster. I slam my shield into his chestplate, staggering him. I thrust forward, driving my blade into his side, but the segmented armor holds.

  Phalanx plating is hard to pierce, even against another Praetorian.

  He grunts, swinging wide, but I’m already moving. My skates fire as I slide beneath the arc, my sword slicing upward in an uppercut that catches his arm. The strike dents—but doesn’t cut. The Praetorian stumbles back, armor damaged, but he’s not done. He grabs the Caster from his hip and levels it at me, the hand-held railgun charging with a high-pitched whine.

  I kick off, skating sideways as he fires. The projectile—an oversized tungsten rod lined with copper rings—blasts through the corridor, obliterating the wall behind me. Terrifying. But I’ve come too far to hesitate now.

  I land hard, immediately lunging again. My sword arcs toward his neck. He blocks—our blades screeching against each other. I bash his sword aside with my shield and thrust low, angling precisely between the segmented plates.

  The blade punches through. I twist laterally, carving outward—cleaving armor and flesh from the inside. He stumbles, blood pouring from the gash. Exposed circuitry flickers. The fight’s over. But I don’t give him the chance to recover. I slam him into the door with my shield. It dents, holds. Looks like I’ll need the Seraph after all.

  “Sorry about this,” I mutter, stepping back. I doubt he hears.

  I pull the launcher from my back, hoisting it over my shoulder.

  I squeeze the trigger.

  The Seraph bucks. A swarm of micro-missiles erupts from the launcher, streaking forward in perfect formation. The impact is devastating—a blinding flash, a deafening roar. Fire and shrapnel rip the corridor apart, the shockwave shaking everything around me.

  Beautiful. Shame it’s single-use.

  I drop the launcher and charge. My thrusters fire again, momentum slamming me shoulder-first into the weakened door.

  It crumples. I crash through.

  Praetorian down, I report, rising amid the rubble. I’m at the bridge.

  The space is massive—arching upward into shadows. At the far end, a viewport dominates the room, Earth glowing against the void. War frigates drift closer—silent predators circling the Revenant. They know something’s wrong. Around me, navigators sit in tiered, semicircular rows surrounding the central platform, their bodies rigid, wired by black cables snaking from their skulls like veins, fusing them into the vessel’s neural core. Their eyes are vacant, lost in streams of data, unaware of my presence.

  But the others do. Officers. Specialists. Guards. All not wired in. They see me. Two hundred and fifty kilograms of ashen, bloodied armor, the best humanity has to offer. Their faces go pale. They know what I’ve done. They’ve been watching me tear the Revenant apart through the ship’s cameras. I don’t blame them for their fear.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  At the platform’s center, the captain stands frozen at the command terminal—his hands hovering uselessly above the interface, shoulders rigid with disbelief. He stares at me. The traitorous Praetorian. For a second—he doesn’t move.

  “Don’t do it,” I whisper, but he can’t hear me.

  Then his hand reaches for the console. Before his fingers even brush it, I draw the Caster from my hip and fire. It recoils hard, tungsten rod exploding instantly through his skull with a sickening crack. His head snaps back, a red mist splatters the viewport behind him. He drops like a puppet, strings cut.

  Gasps ripple through the room. I pay them no mind as I step over the body and make my way to the console. They have weapons, but they won’t use them. No sane person would take on a Praetorian with the equipment they have here. The fight is won. But not the mission.

  My breath fogs the inside of my helmet, condensation beading along the one-way visor. I grab the hardline cable from the Revenant’s main console and plug it into the Phalanx’s neuroport attachment at the base of the neck.

  Click.

  My matrix floods with data.

  Connection established, Mara says. She’s in.

  While Mara works away, I become increasingly aware of the Revenant’s systems in my neural matrix. I’m wired in now, the ship pulsing through my nerves. It’s not a feeling I’m used to. Hardlines are rarely—if ever—used by Praetorians, but they still have the hardware just in case. The engineer who made that design choice is about to regret it.

  Report, Captain. What is the status of Fia Praera? Has she been terminated?

  A private line. Directed at the bridge.

  Are you compromised?

  I ignore it, letting the question hang unanswered in the void. There’s nothing I could say that would buy me more time. The captain’s dead. They’ll figure it out soon enough.

  We prime? I ask after a long silence from Mara. She’s deep in the Revenant’s systems, planting a bug, giving me access to the genesis cannons. Only three ships in the Sovereignty’s fleet carry them. And only one of them is stationed in perpetual orbit over Elysium.

  The Revenant.

  Just a few more seconds, she replies, voice steady. Security’s as we expected. No surprises.

  Good to hear. And the bug?

  Silence.

  Mara?

  It’s planted, she answers after a beat. We’re primed and set. Needs physical confirmation.

  A red button flickers to life under a transparent hatch on the panel.

  This is it. Everything has led to this moment.

  Last chance to turn back, Mara says. This’ll send humanity to the brink.

  Farewell to The Worlds, is my only response.

  Farewell to The Worlds, Mara echoes.

  I flip the hatch open and press the button.

  Confirmed.

  The Revenant’s systems surge through the hardline into my neuroport—raw, overwhelming. Genesis cannons. Pulse batteries. Missile arrays. They’re all mine now. Every weapon primes—waiting for a thought. And I give it.

  With one command, I become destruction. I lock onto the war frigates encircling the Revenant. One by one, they light up in my neural matrix like stars caught in flame. Hundreds. Thousands. Crawling like ants.

  Burn.

  Pulse batteries fire first—thousands of energy beams slice the void, carving into hulls, severing armor, splitting ships in two. Explosions ripple out, silent and slow in the vacuum, debris scattering like ashes. Then come the missiles—a storm of fire and metal. Hulls split open like eggs. Bodies, machines—everything—spills into frozen space.

  The hails start. Frantic. Furious.

  Revenant! Cease fire! a voice demands—one captain, sharp with disbelief.

  More follow. A dozen, a hundred. Screams. Pleas. Rage.

  I hear them all in the back of my mind.

  But I ignore them.

  The ships are dying.

  The planet is burning.

  And I am silent.

  “No time for mercy,” I murmur—whether aloud or not, I can’t tell.

  The Revenant is the pinnacle of warship engineering. The crown jewel of Elysium. It orbits above like a fortress, a guardian. A myth. Its platforms are layered—concentric rings of defense and death. Pulse batteries. Orbital cannons. Missile silos. All shielded, all integrated. Since its construction, Earth’s people have looked to it in awe and thought, “What could threaten such a thing?”

  Nothing.

  And that belief... is exactly what will undo them.

  A chain reaction erupts as one frigate’s engine goes nuclear—a fireball blooming in the dark. Another shatters, fragments spiraling through nearby vessels. Molten slag flies in every direction. Ships crack. Break. Detonate.

  It’s beautiful. And yet that firestorm is swallowing thousands I can’t see. But sacrifices must be made. I knew the cost.

  Safe hardline connection time exceeded. You’re now running in uptime, Mara warns. Five minutes until you feel the effects of uptime necrosis. Ten till brain death. Make pace.

  Understood.

  I prime the genesis-class orbital cannons, aiming them down—straight at Earth’s capital. Straight at Elysium. The targeting systems lock onto the fusion reactor hidden beneath the capital, buried deep under soil and concrete. At least... that’s where it should be, according to Mara’s coordinates. The cannons spool. Energy builds. The hum resonates. Below, Elysium glows—a jewel against Earth’s night side, still unaware of what’s coming.

  A pang of something sharp cuts through me—bitterness. Sorrow. Regret.

  Elysium was my home. Once.

  I fire.

  White beams lance through the atmosphere—clean, precise, deadly. They hit the reactor. And for a heartbeat, there’s silence. A fragile pause, as if the world’s holding its breath. Then—

  The reactor erupts. Earth screams. Elysium is torn apart from below, ripped up like a weed by its roots. The ground shatters. Buildings collapse. Foundations fracture. The core of the city implodes, then explodes—a cycle of destruction that rips outward in rings of death. The shockwave spreads. Entire sectors vanish. Dust and metal scatter into the air, vaporized before reaching the atmosphere’s edge.

  I watch, eyes cold.

  And that’s Elysium, Mara says, emotionless. Onto the next.

  Pain spikes in my skull. The neuroport pulses. I grit my teeth, fighting through the haze that’s starting to creep in at the edges of my vision. Uptime’s wearing on me. The longer I stay connected, the more my brain feels like it’s unraveling—neurons frying, synapses misfiring. But I don’t disconnect. Not yet. There’s still Hyperion.

  Engine protocols? I manage to ask.

  Already on it, Mara responds, voice distant. There. You have access.

  I push further into the ship’s core systems, forcing more power through the fusion reactors. The ship trembles violently, metal groaning under the strain as it begins its descent, pulled by the gravity of the Earth below. The Revenant’s engines are overloading, the core swelling with fusion energy it can’t contain.

  We begin to fall.

  I think alarms and warnings are blaring around me, but it’s hard to tell. I feel more present in the Revenant’s systems now than my body. Focusing on my physical form, I find it feels heavy, like every movement is delayed by a second, every thought dragging through static. My heart pounds in my chest, my breathing ragged. I taste blood—I’m biting the inside of my cheek without realizing it.

  I see it now, growing larger through the Revenant’s visual scanners as it descends, falling faster with every second. I feel the ship breaking apart around me, pieces tearing away in the upper atmosphere, but the core stays intact—burning brighter, hotter, closer to the alloy’s melting point.

  My vision dims, a dark haze creeping in, my heartbeat thudding slower, each beat harder to feel.

  Stay with me, Fia, Mara says, her voice finally carrying some feeling—compassion, warm and tender. It’s her way of sending me off. She knows I’m dying. And she knows I’m too far gone to physically unlink myself. We’re almost there. We’re almost through.

  I try to respond, but nothing comes.

  Fia?

  Mara? I try again. How long have I been in uptime?

  Eleven minutes, she says. One minute past the average lethal limit. But we’re almost done. Just hold on a bit longer. I’ll handle the rest. Just… just see it through.

  I can’t feel my body.

  Can’t hear the words.

  The last thing I see is Hyperion—its towers cast in shadow, caught beneath the Revenant’s fall. And in the depths of my fading mind, I feel the impact as the frigate hits the city—engines finally going nuclear.

  And I smile.

  Farewell to The Worlds.