DATE: 01/05/501 PC

  LOCATION: Sector 7 "The Shattered Thicket"

  The adrenaline that had fueled Zel’s lightning-fast strikes was a treacherous friend; the moment it began to recede, the world grew terrifyingly loud.

  Zel stumbled through a cluster of pulsating violet ferns, his breath coming in ragged, shallow hitches. The internal HUD of his MBS flickered—red warnings for "Pressure Loss" and "Minor Atmospheric Contamination" danced across his vision. In the simulation chambers of Bastion Gamma, these warnings were just data points. Out here, with the green, mana-thick fog licking at the tear in his shoulder, they felt like a death sentence.

  I’m going to crystallize. My lungs... they’re going to turn to glass.

  He felt a spike of pure, unadulterated panic. He was an "Elite," a Red-Affinity Hunter, yet he found himself frantically clawing at the wound in his shoulder as if he could manually seal the torn synthetic latex. The suit, however, was tougher than his nerves. Despite the sparks and the jagged cut, the MBS’s secondary layers had constricted around the injury, forming a temporary, pressurized seal. The Red Core in his chest continued to hum, its steady vibration a reminder that the heart of his power was still beating.

  But the silence of the Thicket was worse than the warnings.

  Every snap of a mana-mutated twig sounded like an Elven bowstring. Every shift of the emerald mist felt like a cloaked Harpy preparing to dive. For the first time in his life, Azazel Nightgaze didn't feel like a predator; he felt like a beacon of glowing red meat, screaming for attention in a forest full of things that hated him.

  They’re watching me. The Orcs, the Goblins... they know I’m leaking.

  He checked his sidearm, his fingers trembling slightly—a motion he would have been embarrassed by just an hour ago. He was a "womanizer," a "loose cannon," a "natural talent," but he was also twenty-two years old and facing the reality that he was a very small light in a very large, dark world.

  Then, through a break in the heavy canopy, he saw it.

  At the edge of a rusted, pre-cataclysm highway overpass, three silhouettes were crouched behind a barrier of salvaged steel. The dull, utilitarian lights of their Manatech Gas Masks flickered in the gloom—low-grade, steady, and human.

  "Sarge! I see him! Red signature at ten o'clock!"

  Sara’s voice, filtered through the tinny speaker of her MGM, was the most beautiful thing Zel had ever heard.

  He saw Little Jim stand up, the heavy server rack still strapped to his back, raising a massive hand in a signal. Mac was leaning against a pylon, his arm bandaged but his rifle—though cracked—pointed firmly toward the trees behind Zel.

  The sight of the "non-MBS" personnel, the very people Zel had flippantly told to "keep up," acted like a cooling agent on his scorched nerves. They were still there. They hadn't abandoned him.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  His pace shifted. The frantic, stumbling run smoothed out back into a rhythmic, albeit pained, stride. He forced the tremor out of his hands and adjusted the weight of the White Shard in his pouch. The flippant mask didn't quite settle back onto his face yet, but the paralyzing fear began to recede into a dull, manageable ache.

  He wasn't alone in the green hell anymore.

  "About time," Zel muttered to himself, his voice cracking slightly before he regained his composure. "I was starting to think I’d have to find a new squad to carry my trophies."

  He crested the hill, heading toward the waiting lights of Squad 4.

  DATE: 01/05/501 PC

  LOCATION: Sector 7 "The Shattered Thicket" to Bastion Gamma

  As Zel limped into the perimeter of the highway overpass, the relief was so sharp it almost made his knees buckle. Squad 4 didn't look like a welcoming committee; they looked like survivors of a wreck. Sara was pale, her shoulder crudely patched with manatech sealant, while Mac leaned heavily on a piece of rusted rebar, his face grim behind the glass of his MGM.

  "You’re late, kid," Mac growled, though the relief in his eyes was unmistakable. He scanned the jagged, blood-soaked tear in Zel’s shoulder and the sparking mana-veins of the suit. "Look at you. You look like a piece of scrap Jim would pick up."

  Zel let out a dry, rattling laugh. He slumped against the barrier next to Mac, the pressurized synthetic latex of his suit hissing as it struggled to maintain the internal atmosphere.

  "The Elf... had an opinion about my career choices," Zel wheezed. He reached into his belt pouch and produced the glowing White Shard. The pure, orderly light seemed alien in the muddy darkness. "But I won the argument."

  Mac stared at the shard, then back at the wound. "That injury... it went through the plating, through the latex, and deep into the meat. If that were any of us in these masks, we’d have been dead three times over before the blood even hit the ground. Probably more."

  Zel looked down at his gloved hand, still trembling. The flippant smirk he usually wore was replaced by a hollow stare. "Everyone calls us 'Elites,' Sarge. Like the MBS makes us gods. But out there? It doesn't make us immortal. It just gives us a slightly higher fighting chance in their home court. Without the suit... we're just meat. With it... we're just meat in a very expensive can."

  The veteran scavenger went quiet, nodding slowly. It was the first time he’d seen the "High-Grade Recruit" act like a man instead of a weapon.

  "Sara, one last scan," Mac ordered. "Is that wraith still on us?"

  Sara swept her radar in a frantic 360-degree arc. "Nothing. The mana signature in the area is stabilizing. Whatever he was doing to shroud himself, it died with him. We’re clear to the gate."

  "Then we move. Jim, take the lead. Zel, stay in the center. If you collapse, Jim’s carrying you and the server."

  The trek back to the Bastion was a blur of emerald fog and mechanical footsteps. As the massive, shimmering wall of the Gamma Dome finally loomed out of the mist, Zel found himself lost in thought. He had the shard. They had the server. By all accounts, the mission was a resounding success—a "miracle run" for a first-timer.

  But as the airlock hissed and the decontamination sprays began to wash the green filth and elven blood off his suit, Zel didn't feel like a hero. He looked at Sara clutching her wounded arm, and Mac’s tired, hunched shoulders. For the first time, the "Womanizer of Gamma" realized that the greatest success wasn't the loot or the heart—it was the fact that the number of people who left the airlock was the same number that came back.

  We’re alive, he thought, the sterile air of the city finally filling his lungs. That’s the only victory that matters.

  Zel didn't go to the infirmary first, despite the stinging pain in his shoulder. He grabbed the White Shard and the mission log, heading straight for the upper levels of the Command Spire.

  He had a report to file, and the look on Commander Elena Blightsorrow’s face when she saw a "perfect" recruit covered in his own blood was something he didn't want to miss.