The map of Vesta outpost glowed on the holo-table like a wound.

  Sections of it blinked red—comms tower, med annex, south wall—each tagged with the same cold word:

  NO SIGNAL.

  Argos stood at the head of the table, one hand braced on the edge, the other—a massive mechanical limb—humming quietly as its internal cores cycled.

  “Last transmission?” he asked.

  “Three hours ago,” Orrin answered from the console. “Short burst, then nothing. No static, no scramble. Just… cut.”

  Whren folded her arms, faint red glasses sliding down her nose. “Feels like someone yanked the cord instead of it snapping.”

  Nera watched the flickering red markers, jaw tight. Vesta shouldn’t have gone dark that fast. Not after the last run.

  Not after Anvi.

  Aaron stepped up beside the table, hauler keys clicking between his fingers. “We’re burning daylight. Unit Seven’s ready.”

  Roy leaned against the wall, arms crossed, trying and failing to keep the tension out of his voice. “If we go now, we make it before the next spore front rolls in.”

  Riven stood a little apart, helmet already sealed, rifle slung. Karauro sat on a locker trunk behind them, helmet in his lap, eyes dull but focused.

  Argos’s gaze swept over them. “This is recon and rescue,” he said. “If there’s anything left to pull out, you pull it. If there’s nothing, you get proof and you come back. You are not there to die heroic.”

  Karauros fingers tightened on the helmet.

  "Do we burn the place if only Grievers are inside?" Karauro asked suddenly.

  Roy shot him a sideways look. Aaron’s expression sharpened.

  Nera pronounced his name with a touch of tenderness, but there was enough bite in her voice.

  “Karauro—”

  He didn’t look at her.

  Argos didn’t comment on the line, but something in his eye hardened. “Aaron, Riven, Roy—you’re recording. His helmet doesn’t carry feed. I want angles on everything.”

  “Illene, Maverick,” Nera said, scanning the room. “You’re with me on monitor. We track them the whole way.”

  Whren exhaled. “I’ll keep triage ready. Just in case ‘come back alive’ ends up optional again.”

  Aaron clapped Karauro on the shoulder. “Gear up. We move.”

  The hauler engines rumbled to life below.

  Nera watched them leave from the balcony—Aaron in the driver’s seat, Riven already checking his scope, Roy banging a fist on the side hatch in a half-joking, half-nervous rhythm. Karauro paused at the ramp, glanced once toward the Spine shield, then pulled his helmet on and vanished inside.

  The gates opened.

  The ruins swallowed them.

  Vesta

  The outpost wasn’t just quiet. Flames crackled around it, no one was on site."

  Through the comms, Aaron murmured, "Something about this feels off."

  From Aaron’s cam, Vesta’s walls emerged from the fog like jagged teeth. One tower had caved in, with beams and plates jutting at odd angles, giving it a distorted appearance. The shields were down, with frame-lines still crackling as if something had pierced them.

  “Looks like a Griever chewed its way inside and choked halfway,” Roy muttered over open comms.

  “Stay sharp,” Aaron said. “Riven, high eyes. Rat, on me.”

  In the Spine control room, a dozen screens showed the scene from different angles—Aaron’s chest cam, Roy’s shoulder feed, Rivens elevated ed scope. Nera stood with her hands braced on the console, Argos behind her, Whren off to one side, Illene and Maverick flanking the bank of monitors.

  “South gate’s open,” Orrin said, fiddling with zoom. “No bodies. No movement.”

  “That’s worse,” Whren murmured.

  They slipped through the broken gate. Inside the yard, crates lay spilled, a loader vehicle flipped on its side. Ichor streaked the concrete in long black arcs, like something had been dragged.

  “Harun?” Aaron called. “Jhett? Anyone?”

  Only wind answered.

  Roy’s feed swung past a half-crushed barricade. “This feels… off. Like everything got up and left mid-sentence.”

  “Grievers don’t leave things neat,” Riven said from a nearby lift, rifle sweeping. “They don’t turn the lights off after a massacre.”

  “Focus,” Aaron said. “We start with the med annex. Harun would’ve pushed survivors there.”

  Roy stumbled upon a familiar half-torso, a hand gripping a door handle, eyes wide with terror. "Jhett..." his voice trembled with grief.

  There was no sign of response on Karauros' visor, his form frozen and statue-like, teeth clenched; Nera caught it via his comms.

  Nera’s fingers dug into the console lip as the cams moved through Vesta’s corridors. Red stains. Smeared handprints. Bullet gouges in the walls. No bodies.

  “Where are they?” Illene whispered.

  “Either taken,” Whren said, voice flat, “or moved.”

  They reached the med annex.

  The main doors hung open, one twisted off its hinges. Inside, cabinets were overturned, beds empty, equipment scattered. A gurney lay on its side, restraints unfastened and dangling.

  “Nothing,” Roy said, breathing shallow. “This place is stripped.”

  Karauro moved ahead of Aaron, boots crunching glass. He paused near the center of the ward, staring at a patch of floor where tiles had buckled upward.

  “Hole there,” he said. “Watch your step.”

  Riven’s scope zoomed. “Looks like something tore straight through the subfloor. Big something.”

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Drain access,” Aaron said grimly. “Mites come through drains. Rippers follow where the mites open blood.”

  Karauro wasn’t looking at the hole.

  His visor tilted toward the far corner, where a chunk of ceiling had collapsed, burying a line of beds and cabinets.

  Something pale stuck out from under a slab of broken wall.

  “Roy,” he said. “Light.”

  Roy swung his shoulder lamp, beam catching on skin, dirt, and a hand reaching out from under the rubble. The fingers were smeared with ash and dried blood.

  A twisted loop of wire glimmered on the ring finger, holding a cloudy shard that caught the light with a familiar dull shine.

  Neras brow arched.

  Karauro’s feed wasn’t on-screen, but Aaron’s caught the angle of his helmet as it tilted. For a moment, he didn’t move.

  “Kid,” Aaron said cautiously. “Karauro. Don’t touch—”

  Karauro stepped forward, like he didn’t hear him.

  In the med annex, Roy grabbed his arm. “Rauro. Wait. We don’t know what’s under—”

  Karauro stood beside the rubble. His glove trembled as he reached toward the outstretched hand.

  His breath panted loudly.

  The footage showed Roys reaching out for Karauro again, and the boy's shoulders suddenly went rigid.

  “Anvi,” he breathed.

  The control room went dead silent.

  Nera’s nails bit into her palm. On-screen, Aaron’s cam caught the tense line of Karauro’s shoulders, the way his whole body seemed to hollow out around that one small, stubborn ring.

  The floor shuddered.

  “Movement,” Riven snapped. “Under the annex. Big.”

  The tremor rolled through the building, dust raining from the ceiling.

  Roy yanked at Karauro’s arm. “We have to move—”

  Karauro didn’t get the chance to argue.

  The ground directly beneath him bucked like something enormous had shrugged. The slab of wall surged up, flipped. An invisible force slammed up from the hole, hurling Karauro backward into a support beam.

  His body hit with a crack that made several people in the control room flinch.

  “Karauro!” Aaron’s voice snapped sharp. “Report!”

  No answer.

  Roy slid across the floor, crashing into debris before scrambling to the boy’s side. His helmet-feed jolted, showing Karauro’s visor spiderwebbed with fractures, blood starting to trickle from a cut at his hairline.

  “I’ve got him!” Roy shouted. “Helmet’s compromised—he’s breathing.”

  The floor split.

  Something pushed its way up through the med annex, tearing it open like paper.

  It was Ripper-shaped, but wrong.

  Plates of metal and bone twisted along its spine, jutting in jagged blades. Its chest bulged with fused faces, half-formed mouths opening and closing soundlessly between patches of armored hide. Ichor coursed in thick, pulsing tubes under skin that looked half-melted.

  Where its eyes should have been, a crown of shifting plates parted and closed over a cluster of glowing cores, their light sickly and uneven. Voices seemed to vibrate inside the speakers as it rose—a layered, fractured moan, like different throats trying to scream the same word at once and failing.

  On one of its plates, just above the torn remains of what might have been a shoulder, a familiar face flickered in and out of view—eyes glazed, mouth half-open.

  Anvi.

  "Is that someone he recognizes?" Nera pondered, her heart tightening.

  Whren swore softly beside her. Argos’s metal hand creaked as his fingers clenched.

  The Altered Ripper dragged itself fully into view, its bulk collapsing what was left of the annex. The hand with the ring vanished under falling concrete.

  Karauro staggered upright, He ripped off his damaged helmet and mask, fastening them to his armor's belt. Blood trickled down his face, and his hair hung in messy strands.

  He saw the faces.

  He saw hers.

  Shoulders loosened.

  Something went out in his eyes.

  Then his fist clenched.

  Roy's video feed shifted to Karauro before returning to the Ripper. In that moment, Whren observed something glowing in Karauro's eyes. She shook her head gently.

  It has to be the glow of the flames surrounding them, Whren thought to herself.

  “Kid don't!" Aaron barked

  Karauro spat blood, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand,and gazed straight at the Ripper, then snarled into the open channel:

  “Fuck you!”

  It startled a few of them while they were focused on the data displayed on the monitors.

  He broke into a sprint.

  “Rauro!” Roy’s voice cracked, half panic, half rage. “Wait for us!”

  Karauro didn’t.

  He charged straight at the Altered Ripper, glove humming as he dragged one hand along the floor. Metal screamed as a length of bent support beam ripped free, skidding toward him. He caught it one-handed, momentum barely slowing.

  The creature’s claw descended, big enough to crush him outright.

  He ducked under the swing, pivoted, and brought the beam up in a brutal arc, smashing into the joint of its wrist. Bone and plate cracked; ichor sprayed in dark ribbons.

  In the control room, Ilene flinched. “He’s going to get himself killed—”

  “Watch,” Argos said, voice low.

  The Ripper reeled, its fused faces shrieking in a chorus of mismatched tones.

  Karauro didn’t retreat.

  He ran up its arm.

  Boots pounded over ragged plates. As he climbed, he fired his rifle point-blank into the cluster where its eyes should have been, each shot punching through layers of flesh and armor.

  The rifle clicked empty.

  Without breaking movement, he slung it away, ripped his knife from its sheath, and jammed it into the nearest eye-socket, stabbing again and again until black ichor gushed out in thick streams.

  “Karauro, get clear!” Aaron shouted. “We can’t cover you there—”

  He didn’t respond.

  He tore a grenade from his belt, yanked the pin with his teeth, and rammed it into the ruined eye-socket. One vicious kick drove it deeper.

  Then he pushed off, scrambling higher using his knife as a climbing hook, jamming it into plates, hauling himself toward the thing’s upper crown.

  In the control room, one of the junior leaders whispered, “That’s not training. That’s—”

  “Snap,” Whren said tightly. “That’s a snap.”

  Below, Aaron and Roy opened fire on the creature’s legs, trying to pull its attention. Riven took position on a half-collapsed gantry, scope locking onto gaps in the armor.

  “Core cluster, upper chest,” Riven said. “One’s already cracked. This thing’s been hit before.”

  “Not hard enough,” Aaron growled.

  The grenade in the eye-socket detonated.

  The blast ripped half the crown away in a spray of bone and metal. The Ripper screeched, reeling, its fused faces splitting and reforming in agony.

  Karauro clung to a spine blade, teeth gritted, the shockwave buffeting him. Ichor splattered onto his face, freezing cold where it touched, but he didn’t let go.

  Greiver mites writhed out of the exposed wound on its back—pale things with too many legs and quivering stinger-tails. They launched themselves at him in a chittering wave.

  He met them bare-handed.

  The glove flared bright blue as he caught the first mite mid-air and crushed it with a pulse, its body snapping wetly. Another sank its stinger into his shoulder plate. He grabbed it by the tail, swung it like a flail, smashing it into the others, ichor spraying as their bodies cracked.

  In the control room, Maverick let out a low, disbelieving whistle. “He’s using them as weapons.”

  Karauro’s breathing came in harsh rasps through Roy’s proximity mic.

  One by one, the mites broke, leaking ichor that steamed against his suit. He threw the last one away, then start carving, knife flashing as he stabbed and kicked, using their dying bodies as meat shields against stray stingers until none were left wriggling.

  “Riven,” Argos said. “You see an opening?”

  “Back core,” Riven answered. “He’s almost on top of it.”

  The Ripper bucked, thrashing like a wounded serpent. Karauro jammed the knife into a plate and hung on as the world spun, his body flung sideways. Below, Aaron cursed and dove for cover as a stray limb smashed a column to rubble.

  “Karauro!” Roy shouted, firing up into the underbelly. “If you die, I’m not explaining that to Nera!”

  A broken laugh crackled across the comm.

  “What a stupid insult, commander,” Karauro muttered, voice frayed at the edges. “How do you kill something that’s already dead?”

  His words leaked through Aaron and Roy’s mics into the command room.

  Nera’s throat tightened.

  “Don’t worry,” he added, breath hitching. “I said I’d make it pay. Didn’t say I’d die with it. Not planning to let some ugly Griever be the last thing I see.”

  He wrenched his knife free, slammed his boot against one of the creature’s spikes, and launched himself toward the open wound on its back.

  A gap glowed there—one core half-exposed, ichor pulsing around it, light flickering frantic.

  Karauro hit the wound hard, sliding. His glove latched onto one of the Ripper’s own back spikes. With a roar, he ripped it free. Flesh tore. Bone screamed.

  He drove the spike down into the glowing mass.

  The Ripper shrieked, staggering.

  “Riven!” Aaron yelled. “Now!”

  Up on the broken gantry, Riven exhaled, the sound steady as stone.

  He fired.

  The shot speared through the gap, hitting the exposed core dead center.

  On-screen, light exploded outward from the wound, like a dying heartbeat punching against its cage.

  “This isn’t a recovery,” Argos said, jaw set. “We end it. Prepare the wall cannons.”

  “Already cycling,” Orrin said, hands flying over controls. “We’ll need the target pinned.”

  As if he’d heard, Karauro yanked another spike free, teeth bared. Blood trickled hot down his face, mixing with ichor.

  He dropped, sliding along the monster’s side, catching himself on a lower plate. His boots hit the ground near its right forelimb.

  The Altered Ripper tried to drag itself toward Vesta’s gate—toward the open ruin beyond, toward Spine’s direction in the far distance.

  Karauro planted his feet, the way Riven taught him at the range, but heavier—runner’s stance, weight coiled.

  He ripped off his rebreather and tossed the cracked helmet aside, its strap swinging behind him.

  Then he ran.

  Nera moved.

  She sprinted along the command balcony to the viewing slit in the wall, needing to see with her own eye instead of the cameras. The shields outside shimmered, cannons aligning, cores humming.

  On-screen and through the slit, the same image:

  Karauro, small next to the Altered Ripper, sprinting straight at its dragging hand.

  He slid under another claw, sparks erupting as it scraped the floor, then jammed the spike into the already-torn joint, driving it down until the limb pinned itself into shattered concrete.

  “Hands free,” Orrin said. “We’ve got a clear line.”

  Karauro flipped a switch on the glove.

  MAX–DANGER.

  He pulled his helmet and mask back on.

  Even over the external mics, Nera heard the thin, shaky laugh.

  “This is gonna hurt,” he said.

  He ripped a third spike from the monster’s side. Flesh came with it, tearing open the wound wider, core light flaring like it might burst from its own skin.

  “Alright,” he shouted, voice raw. “I'll bridge these beams, take the shot when I say so!”

  He drove the spike into the core cluster with everything he had left, over and over again. Bending it to connect another one.

  The Ripper let out a piercing shriek, frozen in place. It thrashed around , rolling as he jumped off.

  "Fry it!"

  He only made it halfway clear.

  On the wall, Argos thrust his mechanical arm forward. “FIRE!”

  Spine's laser cannons unleashed white-hot energy lances through the slotted shield, zeroing in on the Altered Ripper's damaged back. The energy surged through Karauros's makeshift conduit, intensifying the impact.

  The beams tore into the exposed core and embedded themselves in the jagged spikes.

  For a heartbeat, everything held.

  Then the world blew apart.

  The Ripper’s torso erupted in a blinding eruption of light and shredded flesh. The explosion tore through the med annex ruins, spreading in a furious halo—shockwave ripping beds, walls, and debris into airborne shrapnel.

  “Shield surge!” someone yelled. “Brace!”

  In the control room, the image went white.

  The tower shook. Dust rained from the ceiling. Nera slammed a hand against the reinforced glass as the shockwave hit the outer wall, reverberating through the fortress bones.

  “Recover the feeds!” Argos snapped. “Now!”

  Static filled the screens.

  One by one, the cams flickered back—shaky, full of dust, audio a chorus of ringing ears and distant groans.

  What remained of the Altered Ripper lay in a scorched heap, plates still twitching as cores finally died, light guttering out.

  No sign of Karauro.

  “Find him,” Nera said, voice low and lethal. “Now.”

  On Aaron’s feed, the dust shifted. A small armored shape tumbled across broken ground, slammed into a collapsed wall, then disappeared into the rolling smoke.

  Roy’s cam caught just a half-second of it—Karauro mid-flight, helmet already gone, hair slicked back by blood, eyes wide and strangely calm.

  The shockwave caught Roy a moment later, knocking his feed sideways.

  Nera didn’t feel the vibration under her feet.

  Her world had narrowed to that last burned-in frame.

  Karauro.

  Flying into the blast.

  Then gone.

  She swallowed hard. Her cybernetic eye adj usted, zooming, searching the ruins beyond the cannons’ smoking arcs.

  “Don’t you dare,” she whispered at the empty smoke. “Don’t you dare be done.”

  No answer came.

  On the screens, Aaron’s voice broke through the ringing.

  “Roy, Riven—check the blast radius! Find the boy! He’s out there somewhere!”

  Whren already had a med crew moving.

  Argos’s metal hand lowered slowly from the glass.

  Nera stayed where she was, fingers still pressed white against the viewport, staring into t he cloud of dust and ash where the Altered Ripper had died and where, somewhere underneath it all, Karauro had fallen.

  Out past the ruined annex, something shifted again in the haze.

  They couldn’t see it clearly.

  Not yet.

  But whatever rose back up would not be the same boy who’d left Spine with fog in his eyes and a crooked ring burning faintly in his memory.

  The ruins had finally collected their due.