The four-eyed invader crouched low behind the jagged remains of a shattered colony transport, the warped metal pressing against his shoulder as he steadied himself. His lower eyes squinted against the acrid smoke rising from the wreckage—thick, cloying, and full of the stench of charred flesh. The smell clung to his throat, seeping through his breathing filters. It had lingered since the landing, saturating the air with reminders of weak prey and profitable chaos.

  His upper eyes flicked across the battlefield, tracing the jagged lines of prefab structures torn open like old wounds. Scattered bodies lay sprawled in the dirt, some crumpled in unnatural angles, others half-buried beneath twisted debris. The colony should have been soft, easy prey—frail bodies, no resistance worth speaking of, and enough wealth to offset any minor losses. That was the promise.

  And yet.

  He clicked his teeth, sharp and impatient, the sound grating like a blade drawn against stone. His fire team shifted uneasily nearby, their movements too tense, too measured. They felt it too now—something wasn’t right. The losses were too many. The humans resisted, yes, but it wasn’t the desperate, sloppy defense of prey cornered in their nests. No, this was deliberate. Calculated.

  “Yorga, status?” Ravishan hissed into his comm-link, his voice cutting low and hard through the static.

  Nothing.

  The static’s hiss crawled under his skin, worming into his thoughts. Interference again, or worse, another dead squad. The thought soured in his mind, cold and bitter.

  “Ravishan,” one of his squadmates spoke, low and clipped, his nostrils flaring in restrained unease. “Movement. Ahead.”

  The barrel of the Batarian’s rifle tilted forward, indicating a shadow slipping between the prefab ruins. Ravishan’s upper eyes focused first, locking onto the shape—a lean, human figure darting through the haze of smoke. The human moved with quick, unsteady steps, their form smeared with dirt and soot. No uniform. No markings. Just torn clothing clinging to skin streaked with grime.

  His lower eyes tracked the object in the human’s hands—a device too small for the light it emitted. It glowed with unnatural brightness, flickering like a captured flame.

  “Fire,” Ravishan ordered, his voice steady, commanding.

  The rifles spat blue bursts, bright and sharp against the gray haze.

  Too late.

  The figure was gone, disappearing behind a half-collapsed structure before the shots reached their mark.

  The device flared, its glow intensifying until it burned white-hot against the smoke.

  A hiss filled the air, high-pitched and growing sharper, like pressure building in a confined space.

  Ravishan’s eyes widened instinctively, a pulse of unease rippling down his spine. "What is that?"

  His squad shifted, weapons raised, not against the question but against the wrongness of it all—how the device's light seemed to eat through the smoke itself, how the air grew sharp with a taste his mouthparts couldn't process.

  Then, the ground erupted.

  Flames roared upward in a blinding surge, liquid fire spilling forward like a living thing, twisting and devouring everything in its path.

  Ravishan leapt back, his lower eyes catching the flicker of failing barriers as the fire struck one of his squadmates head-on.

  The Batarian didn’t even have time to scream.

  Armor melted to flesh in an instant, barriers flaring uselessly before collapsing under the fire’s relentless force.

  Ravishan’s teeth clicked shut, a sharp, involuntary snap of shock. Barriers weren’t supposed to fail like that. Not against colony weapons. Not against anything these humans should have had.

  “What was that?” he muttered again, his voice barely audible over the crackle of flames and the sharp, acrid stench of burning flesh.

  – o – o – o – o – o – o – o –?

  Across the square, Ralak’s four eyes tracked the broken fire team with a precision that bordered on disdain. Upper eyes scanned the haze—smeared with smoke, sharp with burning alloys—while the lower set focused on the squad. Their movement was disgraceful, uneven, like wounded prey scattering from a butcher’s knife. One limped, his barrier sparking faintly at the edges. Another clutched a weapon, the stock splintered, grip shattered, mouthparts twitching as he fought to form words over the comms.

  Tools.

  Ralak didn’t blink. The sound of the word crawled under his skin like an insult.

  “Tools?”

  His voice cut through the comm static like a blade, low and bitter.

  “Yes, Commander. A—a colonist, using scavenged equip—”

  “Unacceptable,” he snapped, already turning toward his tactical display. His claws twitched against the console, tension bleeding into each deliberate movement.

  The human’s path burned bright on the screen: erratic, jagged, impossible to predict. This wasn’t strategy; it was ferocity. Not resistance—an infestation.

  One human.

  Juvenile.

  Ralak’s eyes widened slightly, his gauntlet tightening around the edge of the display.

  A pup. Defying them?

  Toothless creatures had no business snarling.

  His lieutenant shifted at his side, the younger Batarian’s mouthparts tightening with unease. He didn’t speak. Didn’t dare.

  “We’ve seen this before,” Ralak muttered, his voice flat, measured. Elysium, Torfan, the Shepard scourge. He didn’t say the names, of course, the wound fresh even still and the humiliation too ever-present. “Humans, soft as they are, fight like cornered beasts when pressed. Desperate. Reckless.” His upper eyes tracked the lieutenant’s face, watching for the smallest hint of doubt.

  The explosion hit mid-sentence.

  Short, sharp—too close. The ground bucked beneath their boots, the square filling with heat and noise. Ralak’s upper eyes snapped to the source, smoke blooming upward like a fist. His tactical display crackled, red markers blinking out one by one.

  “Fireteam Six, report.”

  Silence.

  “Fireteam Six, respond.”

  The comms hissed with static, bursts of garbled screams filtering through before cutting off completely.

  “Trap—!”

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  “—They’re gone—”

  Ralak straightened, shoulders rigid, claws curling into the console. The lieutenant spoke, his voice barely a whisper.

  “Commander. We need to—”

  “No.” Ralak’s lower eyes narrowed on the display, his upper pair fixed on the square. His pulse slowed, steady, cold.

  "This is not resistance," he said, his tone dropping. His upper eyes fixed on the tactical display while his lower pair watched his men flinch. "It's slaughter."

  – o – o – o – o – o – o – o –?

  The raider staggered through the gas, each step dragging against the thick green haze that seemed to pulse with its own heartbeat. His filters whined, a high desperate sound that matched his own breathing, as caustic fingers clawed deeper into his lungs with each inhale. Lower eyes blurred with tears, upper set darting frantically for shapes—anything beyond the choking fog. Every breath scraped raw, a needle dragging down his throat.

  The rifle fire pulled him forward—a thread of sound cutting through the murk. Squadmates. They were close. Had to be. His teeth clicked nervously, a sharp, unconscious tic.

  Movement.

  His upper eyes caught the shadow first, slicing through the haze like a blade. Thin. Human. Too fast. His fingers twitched toward the trigger, instincts screaming for him to fire, but the figure struck before the thought could finish.

  Light.

  Searing white flashed from the human’s hand, a slash of heat and brilliance. His rifle split in two, the halves clattering to the ground as his barrier fizzled out. He stumbled back, chest heaving, claws scrabbling for the backup pistol at his side.

  “Wha—”

  The word shattered under the weight of the blow. Something sharp and burning slammed into his chest, punching through armor, through muscle. His nostrils flared in shock, lower eyes flicking downward. The blade glowed jagged and ugly, its light carving the air like teeth.

  The human stood close—too close. Wide eyes burned behind streaks of soot and blood, lips curled into a grin that didn’t reach anywhere human.

  His breath caught, claws twitching at the edges of the blade still buried in his chest.

  Then it moved.

  A flick of the human’s wrist, and the weapon tore free. The pain hit first, sharp and overwhelming, followed by the wet rush of blood spilling over his armor.

  He fell.

  – o – o – o – o – o – o – o –?

  Narak’s upper eyes narrowed against the swirling haze of dust, his lower set focusing on the faint heat shimmer still clinging to the ground. Beneath his claws, the dirt was scorched, brittle enough to crumble under the weight of his step. Unacceptable. This should have been effortless—a simple harvest, a soft colony begging to be picked apart. Instead, the comms crackled with garbled screams, chaos snapping through his chain of command.

  Weakness.

  The slavers at his back muttered in low, uneasy clicks, mouthparts moving as though trying to taste the shifting air. Narak’s own flared wide with irritation. “Discipline,” he hissed, cutting through their unease like a knife. “You speak like prey.”

  They fell silent, though their steps betrayed hesitation. His lower eyes scanned the carnage ahead, flicking between glimmers of metal warped beyond recognition and craters still radiating heat. The stench was worse here—a pungent mixture of burning alloys and cooking flesh. Narak breathed it deep, forcing the bile back.

  One of his raiders stopped short, pointing at the walls of a prefab unit. Long, jagged scars marred its surface, their edges blackened.

  “This…” the raider’s voice faltered. “What tool—”

  “Tools don’t fight,” Narak snapped. “Keep moving or die here.”

  A sharp crack split the air, followed by the unmistakable shriek of stressed metal tearing apart. Instinctively, Narak crouched low, his upper eyes locking onto movement ahead. A shadow flitted between broken structures, too fast to be human yet unmistakably one of them.

  “Alone,” he muttered, more to himself than his squad.

  “Then it dies alone,” another Batarian growled, raising his rifle.

  Narak let the remark hang unanswered. They spread out across the square, scentparts twitching, their barriers humming faintly in sync. But as they moved, the air thickened. A low mist rolled at their feet, stinging his throat with its caustic bite.

  His barriers pulsed, flickered—struggling against a force he couldn’t see.

  Then it emerged.

  Thin. Weak. Human.

  Its skin was streaked with grime and soot, clothes clinging to its frame in shredded strips. Yet its steps were deliberate, its movements too sharp for something so fragile. The human’s hand gripped a device spewing erratic bursts of light, its glow jagged and wrong.

  Its eyes caught his—wild, unbroken.

  Nonsense.

  Nonsense that tightened in his chest.

  “What are you?” Narak growled, his mouth pulling wide in a sneer.

  The human didn’t answer. It moved, faster than expected, and the device in its hand erupted. Liquid fire spewed forward, clinging to barriers like oil. One of his raiders screamed as the flames tore through, armor peeling back, his body collapsing in molten ruin.

  Narak snarled and fired. His rifle spat bright bursts, tracking the human as it twisted sideways, each motion deliberate. The air fractured again as another explosion erupted, this time to his left—a shockwave that hurled two more raiders into jagged metal ruins.

  “It uses no weapons!” one of his men barked, his voice frantic and high.

  Narak turned on him, his glare cutting cold. “Then our men have died to nothing.”

  – o – o – o – o – o – o – o –?

  Ralak’s nostrils flared with distaste as he studied the smoldering remains of the latest fire team. Their bodies were broken, seared in places where armor had failed, the plating melted into charred flesh. Faint black lines crawled across the ground around them, twisting and spiraling in unnatural patterns.

  Signs of the human’s weapons.

  Not mere destruction. Dissection.

  The stench of cooked meat mingled with the acrid bite of overheated barriers, and the sharp tang clung to the air like an insult.

  "Commander," his lieutenant’s voice cut low, tight with restraint. "This... this isn’t right."

  Ralak’s upper eyes stayed fixed on the path ahead, while his lower pair swept the ruins. The human’s trail was obvious—like a wound slashed across the colony’s surface. Debris crushed to fine powder. Structures ripped apart and reshaped into crude, deliberate instruments of war.

  Ralak shifted his stance, claws flexing against the worn grip of his rifle.

  "Most humans flail. They react," he said, his tone flat, unshaken. "But some?" He gestured to the wreckage with a sharp twist of his hand. "Some plan. We find it. We remove it. That is all."

  The others tensed at his words, their barriers flickering briefly as weapons repositioned, eyes darting. No one challenged him. They knew better.

  The group moved forward, slower now, rifles up, each step deliberate. No one wanted to repeat what had happened to Squad Eight—or Ten.

  The whine of overworked machinery broke through the uneasy silence, followed by a crackling hum.

  Ralak’s lower eyes snapped to a glint in the rubble—just in time to see the launcher embedded in the wall jerk forward, its mechanism firing.

  He snarled, yanking a soldier back, but not fast enough.

  The spike struck true, punching through barrier and flesh alike. The soldier gasped, eyes going wide in shock, before the force drove him into the wall with a sickening crunch. His limbs twitched, barrier sparking uselessly, before going still.

  "Cover!" Ralak roared, his team scattering for shelter.

  The human’s laughter rippled through the smoke, thin and fractured. It was no battle cry. Not intimidation. It mocked them—a predator toying with prey already tangled in the snare.

  "Commander." A soldier’s voice cracked, the fear unmistakable. "Is this—"

  "Quiet," Ralak barked, the single word cutting through the haze like a blade.

  A shadow darted ahead—thin, unarmored, erratic in its movements. Too fast, too deliberate. The human was there, clutching something that pulsed with molten light, its glow spilling jagged shadows across the ruins.

  Another flare, and the weapon erupted.

  The blast caught a soldier mid-stride, flames engulfing him, barrier useless as he crumpled into the dirt.

  Ralak gritted his teeth, rage boiling beneath his cold exterior. Tools. The human used tools. Wasteful, self-consuming. Yet each one worked.

  His gauntlet clenched tighter around his rifle.

  This ends now.

  His upper eyes locked on the figure as it darted between cover. His lower pair scanned for the trap—there had to be one. Always another snare, another edge.

  There.

  The human’s hand slammed against a device lodged in the rubble, and Ralak’s realization came too late.

  The ground bucked beneath him, the force ripping through the air like a scream. Kinetic energy surged outward in a wave, sending his squad sprawling.

  Ralak's body hit the ground hard, pain lancing through his neck and side as he landed in a way he could only describe as wrong. His upper eyes caught the tactical display shattering, its red markers blinking out like dying stars, while his lower pair fixed on the approaching human—on how it moved like something that had shed its weakness along with its fear. Its expression was raw, exhausted, yet its grin burned with something cold. He knew it then, that the two-eyes saw them as little more than animals.

  The world blurred as he understood: they had never been the hunters at all. This is slaughter, was Ralak’s last thought as the darkness closed in.