The meeting point was a shattered temple at the edge of the Crater Rifts. Towering ribs of stone protruded from the earth like the remains of some ancient god. The ground was poked with scorch marks and sizzling droughts.
Upon entering the temple, Keve scanned the perimeter as tension hummed under his skin. He was excited but he could not help shake that uneasy feeling brimming from the pit of his stomach. Behind him, the fighting crew followed with Darga carrying the crystal for the handoff. 1 crate, 1 crystal, 1 million credits in encrypted vouchers and their entire crews changed lives.
The other members of the crew were patrolling the area outside the temple. They had been waiting for the black marketers for the past 10 minutes. Keve just shook of the uneasy feeling, his excitement of a changed life, blurred his senses that this could be a trap.
"Boy, go out and try connecting with a comm." Darga rasped slowly.
Keve nodded and left with the comm to connect. The temple was made of Mako crystals, they prevented any signals to be received.
But when he stepped into the open, ice ran through his veins. His breath caught and chills surged up his spine and evaporated into steam at his ears.
The crew outside… were gone.
Slaughtered.
In front of his eyes Telo's dead laid cold, her mouth and eyes left still in shock as blood seeped from her shot head, her dead eyes looking straight towards Keve.
"Behind you!" Teema screamed from a distant before a snap from a plasma took her out.
Too late. A bolt of plasma cracked through the night, Keve crouched in terror as he covered himself with his hands in a futile attempt.
Shaking he waited for the plasma bolt to turn him into dust but it never came as a familiar scream tore through the void, Darga took the shot that was meant for him.
Darga's old figure laid heaving as the bolt shredded his arm off his shoulder.
"I-I figured something was wrong...", Darga groaned with pain, as his severed arm thudded against the stone with a sickening plop, painting it red.
Keve spun instinctively to run, but slammed into the man wielding the plasma gun, knocking him flat. But it wasn’t a stranger. It was someone far worse. It was someone who was one of their own.
Mace.
One of their own.
Keve's mind raced, unable to make a sense of this betrayal.
A face he knew better than most. One of the original crew. One he has known since childhood and now a traitor.
"Sorry, boys," Mace sneered, leveling his blaster at the crate. "The Council pays better."
Above them, black-armored figures began to dropping from the cliffs like steel fangs.
Intergalactic Peace Enforcers.
Their eyes glowed cold as they wielded lances pulsing with EMP current. Keve's chest tightened upon seeing their weapons. He was scared, he didn't have any weapon and he did not have any courage either to stand up against the IPE.
"Scatter!" Keve yelled at the crew members coming out of the temple and their world fell into chaos.
Screams tore through the temple as Plasma recoiled off stone and bone alike. Within minutes, Keve's crew had turned into dust and fire. He bolted towards Darga, who now laid near his death. Tapping his head twice with his fingers - a peace sign in Orvak and strapped the crate against his chest and made a run.
His feet pounded over the shattered altar steps and debris of his crew and broken statutes alike. Behind him, Darga’s scream split through the air as he jumped in front of the Plasma pulse directed at Keve.
Now Darga laid pinned with blood pooling from beneath him as Mace stood above him, his blaster aimed straight at his head.
Keve turned and saw Darga struggling and for one heartbeat, Keve paused.
Crack! Mace smiled at Keve as he unloaded a plasma bolt into Darga's head, frying him dead. Unable to move from the shock, he slapped himself twice as tears flowed down his stinging eyes and made a run for his life.
His steps clapped with hurry from the temple’s guts to the stone-dark hollows of a now dead faith but he didn’t make it far before something thudded in the air above him with a metallic hiss.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
An EMP net dropped like a serpent from orbit just as Keve took a leap above the dried temple pond.
It hit him mid-leap, slamming him into a fractured altar, cracking his ribs under the force.
His vision flashed white. Then black. and then his limbs went limp. His dazed eyes stared ahead as steel cuffs snapped shut around his wrists. Soon, a cold collar followed sealing onto his throat, locking with a hiss.
"SUBJECT #10004," a voice intoned. Not human and totally not merciful.
"CHARGES: ARTIFACT THEFT. BLACK MARKET TRAFFICKING AND REBELLION CONSPIRACY."
Keve thrashed, resisting with his every nerve.
"Get your hands off me!" he screamed as his eyes darted in every direction, searching for an escape, for a glitch, for anything that could get him out, that could help him survive.
His resistance came to an end with the sting of a needle in his neck.
His scream was swallowed whole by the void as he was engulfed into darkness.
.
.
.
He woke up weightless.
As his vision flickered.
Gravity: zero
His body floated weightlessly in a glass cell. He looked outside, he wasn’t on Orvak anymore. Heck, He wasn’t even on any planet.
Outside his cell, space churned with molten gold and violent plasma winds. The sky spun, a glowing solar cyclone as his cell looked onto a O-Type star. The only thing preventing him from getting blinded was the Glass shield of his cell.
Welcome to Kiln 210— DYSON MODEL 9B
The words appeared on the glass shield in sharp white robotic looking script.
"F*ck me!", Keve whispered as he recalled what he knew about this place.
Kiln 210 was built around an O-Type star, It was a Dyson Sphere, used by the ancient generations to harvest energy for their colonies, it was now a prison housing 50,000 of the most dangerous criminals in the galaxy. Each cell was embedded into the inner columns of the Sphere, facing the star. It was a horrifying view.
There were no bars. No guards. Just surveillance drones, heat shields, and death waiting beneath.
No one escaped Kiln 210, heck no one even tried.
Keve floated in silence as his heartbeat echoed in his ears. His restraints were gone, but the prison didn’t need them. The sheer distance between cells, the searing radiation below and the AI watchdogs --Kiln was a monument of hopelessness.
And yet…Something shifted.
His vision flicked as a sharp pain ran through his head. UGH! he groaned holding his head tightly with his hands when a voice whispered in his head and words appeared in front of his eyes.
[SYSTEM BOOT: V1.0 INITIATED]
[Subject: Keve #10004]
[Designation: Rogue Candidate]
[System Link Established]
[Would you like to begin?]
[Y/N]
Keve blinked, his head still thumping with unidentifiable ache“What?”
Am I going insane?
Did they put some chip inside me?
Did they mess with my brain?
Countless questions ran through his mind.
This wasn’t normal. Nothing in prison was supposed to talk to you from inside your mind?!
But he’d heard stories—urban myths, really and Tales of rogue AIs, war-tech ghosts, systems that bonded to a user and never let go. But they were all myths.
This cannot be true?
A blinking cursor appeared in the space behind his eyes.
[Y] [N]
Keve wanting to test it further, without any hesitation moved the cursor with his mind, clicking on the last resort that will get him out of here.
[Y]
The pain hit like fire. His spine arched. His eyes burned. His nose drained and His ears drummed when a golden light exploded across his vision and code danced in front of it.
Schematics twisted through his brain, unfolding maps, theories, upgrades, and downloading locked potential.
[Ability Unlocked: Dimensional Blink — Lv. 1]
[Skill Tree Access Granted]
[Inventory: EMPTY]
His body convulsed as Sweat beaded in zero-Grav.
He gasped, panting, trembling in the glow and then the voice returned again.
[Your secret is safe. No signal trace detected.]
[Next Mission: ESCAPE THE DYSON PRISON]
[Reward: Freedom + 1 COSMIC SHARD]
[Failure: SOUL BURN PROTOCOL ENGAGED]
One cosmic shard? It's worth around 10 million encrypted vouchers? No way, No way.
Keve thought as he dreamed about the possibility of him escaping the prison and that too with a ticket to richness.
Keve floated there, breath ragged, limbs shaking. Phantom heat lingered in his chest, in his palms and in his eyes. He reached out instinctively and for a split second, space bent. A shimmer of light blinked in front of his hand, like a ripple on reality’s surface.
Dimensional Blink.
He had power now. Real power. Something not even the Council had planned for.
He was no longer just a prisoner. He was a variable.
And for the first time in his life… he wasn’t afraid.
He was ready.
