“Civilians?”

  Alina Ludwig's comms channel erupted, she screamed with terror and disbelief "Civs? Why are they here? Why the hell would there be civilians?!" Her voice tore through the static, frayed at the edges.

  She hadn't seen them. Not in the thermal feed. Not in the visual sweep. Her mind scrambled backward through the last hour, past the aftershock that had rattled the , past the blood dripping into her eyes when she'd slammed her head against the console. Past the moment she'd lost the first drone, then Drone Four.

  . The fucking that had glitched out during the aftershock when the electromagnetic anomalies saturated the rainforest's dielectric field. She'd only gotten seventy percent coverage of the compound. The rest—she'd forgotten, entirely. She remembered the thermal signatures that she had seen, and she, in her hyperfocus on the singular goal of rescuing Flora and killing the capitalist (Hellwraiths) scums, conveniently labeled these signatures as rad-rats—

  Her gut twisted like a stripped servo. .

  "Civilians confirmed in sector seven-eight," she barked into the comms, her blistered fingers jamming the transmit button. "Chen, do you copy? There are noncombat—"

  The channel dissolved into static.

  Chen's HUD flickered, the chemical haze in his system distorting the thermal overlay. Through the settling dust and smoke, shapes moved in the ruined corridor ahead. His combat AI tagged them automatically:

  [Thermal anomaly detected.]

  [Probability: hostile combatant - 81%.]

  [Target assist active.]

  In his vision, they were soldiers again. Imperial troops in their olive-drab uniforms. One carried something—a pistol, scavenged from the ruins. His HUD highlighted the heat signature of the weapon as primary threat.

  . The word echoed in his skull, sharp as broken glass. .

  His finger tightened on the trigger. The capacitor whined, charging for another killing pulse. The world narrowed to the targeting reticle, red and hungry.

  "Chen! Civilians!" Alina's voice cut through the static, distorted but urgent. ""

  Something about civilians. His targeting reticle pulsed red. The hallucination clung to him like a second skin, the ghosts of the past screaming in his ears.

  Then—a flicker. A child's face in the smoke. Not a soldier. A child. Then, his mother's voice, from four centuries dead.

  "Feng, remember what you are born with."

  Reality crashed over him like ice water.

  "NO!" The word ripped from his throat as he wrenched the carbine upward, fighting his armor's targeting assist. The phantoms fractured. His visions flickered between civilian thermal signatures and the phantom soldiers of his past. The Adamantine plates groaned in protest as his muscles strained against the armor's fire-control system. He fights his own armor and equipment—which he previously, wrongfully operated under his hallucinated state—that tries to fire at the civilian family. The armor’s servos shrieked, almost in . And with a formidable act of will, he succeeded.

  He had jammed the barrel upward.

  The shot fired——but not at the civilians. The blue-white plasma flew wild, the explosion hit a critical support column Chen had noticed earlier, its structural integrity already compromised by his rampage and the aftershock.

  For a heartbeat, nothing happened.

  Then the world came down.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  Concrete groaned. Metal screamed. The ceiling of the warehouse complex surrendered to gravity with a deafening roar. Dust billowed upward like a physical entity, swallowing everything in its path. Rubble rained down in a cascade of broken rebar and shattered concrete, burying the civilians, the remaining Hellwraiths, and the corridor where Chen had stood.

  Inside the , Alina watched the feeds dissolve into static as the structure collapsed. Her hands flew over the console, activating external sensors, thermal imaging, anything to see through the dust cloud. She found two heat signatures amidst the ruin—Chen and Flora, their power armor protecting them from the worst of the collapse. The civilian signatures were gone, buried under tons of debris.

  "MOVE!" she screamed into the comms. "Both of you, move NOW!"

  Chen pushed himself up through the rubble, his armor coated in grey dust that made him look like a statue risen from the grave. His HUD was flickering, damaged by the impact. He saw Flora first—her A-3 'Saturnus' armor gleaming through the settling dust, already moving toward the buried civilians.

  "No," he whispered, the word a physical pain in his throat. "No, no, no—"

  Flora didn't move as the dust settled. Her sensors registered two small heat signatures fading to cold. A soft chime in her helmet.

  [Vital signs: terminated. Subject #01, adult male. Cause of termination: blunt force trauma. Subject #02, adult female. Cause of termination: blunt force trauma…]

  Her hand, usually so precise, fumbled with the release catches on her gauntlets as she lifted the small bundles. Blood seeped through the rags onto her armor. She stared at the crimson streaks on her white plating. Something inside her fractured with an almost audible click.

  She looked up at Chen. Her face was a mask of ash and blood. Her voice, when it came, was flat and precise—the analytical tone she used for tactical reports, stripped of all emotional modulation.

  "You murdered them." A pause. The words hung in the toxic air. "Murderer."

  Chen's hands shook violently inside his armor. He wanted to argue—to explain the hallucinations, the drug haze, the faulty intel. But the first words died in his throat. What defense could he offer against the truth?

  "There... there weren't supposed to be civilians," he finally managed, his voice raw. "Intel said repurposed storage facility. Alina didn't mention—" He stopped, the realization hitting him like a physical blow. "I asked her if there’s any! She didn't see them. The drones, she must had missed them on the drone feeds—" He was catatonic, unable to finish. "Why were they there?"

  "Chen! Flora!" Alina's voice cracked over the comms, stripped of all protocol. "Move! Erebus's main force is inbound—ETA ninety seconds!"

  Chen looked at Flora. She was still staring at the blood on her armor, the small bundles forgotten at her feet. He reached for her shoulder. She flinched away as if burned.

  "Flora," he said, the name thick on his tongue. "We have to go."

  She didn't look at him. Her voice was calm, flat. "Do not talk to me, murderer."

  The ground trembled. Not an aftershock this time. Engines. Heavy vehicles approaching through the ruined jungle.

  "NINETY SECONDS!" Alina screamed again. "I'M COMING IN!"

  The “Red Vulture” burst through the remaining wall of the warehouse, its damaged hull scraping against concrete as it skidded to a halt in the settling dust. Alina stood in the commander's cupola, her face streaked with soot and blood, one hand gripping the hatch rim, the other holding a spare Lp-95k carbine.

  "Get in! NOW!"

  Flora moved first, a machine obeying protocol. She climbed aboard with mechanical precision, her white armor now painted with ash and crimson streaks. She didn't look at Chen as she passed.

  Chen hesitated. He looked back at the rubble, at the small bundles half-buried under concrete. His ghosts had demanded blood payment. The living had paid.

  "CHEN!" Alina's voice cut through his grief. "MOVE YOUR ANCIENT ASS!"

  He climbed aboard, the Adamantine plates of his armor scraping against the vehicle's frame. As he settled into the infantry compartment, he caught a glimpse of Flora through the connecting hatch. She sat rigid in the technical station, her hands steady on the console despite the tremors running through her frame. Her helmet was off, revealing the pale perfection of her face. Her ice-blue eyes were dry, but something in them was broken.

  Alina dropped into the commander's seat, slamming the transmission into drive. "Strap in," she barked. "This is gonna get rough."

  The

  lurched forward, its damaged anti-grav whining in protest as it tore through the ruins. Behind them, the warehouse complex continued to collapse, sending up plumes of dust that caught the first rays of dawn.

  As they burst through the treeline into the open jungle, the rising sun painted the sky in hues of blood and fire. It illuminated the burning ruin behind them, casting long shadows that reached for the fleeing vehicle like grasping fingers.

  Chen watched the rear display. The last thing he saw before the jungle swallowed the compound was the rising sun glinting off something small and metallic amid the rubble. A child's toy, perhaps. Or just another piece of worthless scrap in this broken world.

  His hands wouldn't stop shaking.

  Inside the vehicle, Flora's voice came over the internal comms, flat and precise: "I will need to file a post-action report. With details."

  Alina didn't respond. Her knuckles were white on the control yokes, her eyes fixed on the path ahead. Chen stared at the armored ceiling; the ghosts are all out.

  They do not stop.