The hangar doors groaned open like the jaws of some ancient beast, swallowing the battered Valkyrie whole. Its scorched plating hissed with residual heat, and the whine of its gravitic engines gave way to silence.
Inside, the squad sat like ghosts.
Vendral hadn't let go of Jex's bloodied and cracked helmet the whole ride back. He clutched it tight, resting it on his lap like a fragile relic, the bloodstained visor cracked and dark. No one told him to stop. No one had the heart.
Marik was pacing. Not the usual twitchy, talkative pacing, but a quiet, restless loop around the hangar wall, eyes darting, muttering something no one could hear.
Vecht stood ramrod still by the open ramp, hands clenched behind his back, watching the hangar crew scramble in. He didn't bark orders. Didn't speak. Just... stared at the hangar doors as if expecting another body to come through.
Rorke sat on a crate, elbows on knees, head in hands. His rifle leaned against the wall beside him, still slick with gore from the crawlies they'd fought. His helmet sat forgotten on the floor.
"He should've made it," he muttered finally, voice raw. "He was right behind me."
Vendral didn't look up. "He bought us time."
"No," Rorke snapped, looking up, eyes bloodshot. "He didn't buy us shit. He got left behind to be slaughtered like a dog. There's a difference."
Vecht turned slowly. His voice was calm, but hollow. "He made a choice. That's what soldiers do."
Rorke stood. "You think that makes it easier? You think any of this fucking makes sense?" He jabbed a finger toward the doors. "We left him. And Jex. We didn't come back with our squad we came back with scraps."
Vendral stood too, slow and heavy. He looked Rorke in the eyes. "I watched Jex bleed out on my shoulder. I'm the one who had to carry him."
Silence.
Vecht finally moved from the ramp, stepping into the hangar proper. His boots echoed loud in the stillness.
"We send the footage, we log the tags, and we prep for debrief. We don't break. Not now."
Marik finally spoke up, voice hoarse. "What if he's not dead?"
Everyone turned.
"What if they took him? Like the others. You saw what they did to that platoon."
No one said a word.
"They don't just kill. They study. They twist. You think they'll just shoot him in the head and leave it at that? You know they won't."
Vendral's grip on the helmet tightened.
"They'll turn him into something," Marik whispered. "That's what they do."
Vecht's jaw tensed. "Enough."
"No," Rorke said quietly. "He's right. If the Upyr have him… it's not over."
He turned to Vecht. "Then what do we do?"
The squad leader looked at them, really looked. One less body than before. One ghost already behind them, and one maybe being built into something else.
"We get answers," he said. "We either find him or get revenge for him."
Cuts to the MC
The restraints clicked shut around my chest with a hiss of hydraulic intent. Cables coiled like serpents across my spine, anchoring me into the obsidian coffin that was my drop pod.
Above me, the hatch iris creaked closed, sealing out the surgical white of the hangar.
Inside, there was no light.
Just pulses and data-streams fed into my skull, whispering details in binary:
TARGET: COALITION BATTALION, 743RD REGIMENT.
LOCATION: MOUNTAIN REDOUBT, GRID 77-K.
STATUS: FORTIFIED.
OBJECTIVE: CLEANSE.
The Blackthorn Cortex began to warm behind my skull. I didn't remember orders. I received them, absorbed them into the marrow of my thoughts like instinct.
My breath was slow. Too slow.
I had no need for oxygen anymore. Not in the same way.
Nanites crawled just beneath the surface of my skin, whispering in a language I didn't understand but obeyed. My arms ached, not of pain, but in anticipation. They wanted to become the blade again.
Descent in T-minus 30.
The pod lurched, snapped into position under the orbital rail. My body slammed backward, magnet-locked to the interior cradle. The steel vibrated, and I felt the song of gravity's betrayal as the launch sequence began.
I was not afraid, the nanites have made it so I am incapable of fear.
Fear had been eaten. Alongside guilt. Alongside memory.
T-minus 5.
Outside, a dozen other pods slammed into firing positions, regular soldiers, armor-clad and hopeful. They didn't know what was in my pod. They didn't know what I had become.
I was not their brother-in-arms anymore.
Launch.
The pod screamed down from the sky, tearing through cloud cover like a falling blade. The friction ignited the shell, turning the atmosphere around me into a howling inferno.
Inside, the Blackthorn Cortex cooled my thoughts. I saw the fortress. I saw every body in it. The battalion scattered across defensive lines, mortars mounted, artillery prepped. They thought they were ready.
They were statistics. Already filed away in my task protocol. Already dead.
IMPACT IMMINENT.
I braced. Not because I needed to. But because something inside me still remembered how to flinch.
Then… IMPACT.
The pod didn't land. It detonated downward, an explosion of kinetic fury that cratered the launch zone. The locking restraints blew apart.
The hatch blew off, then the autoinjectors deployed and pumped stims directly into my brainstem.
And it was go-time.
Steam hissed from my back. My eyes scanned the world in colorless overlays—enemy tags, line-of-sight vectors, threat tiers. The first soldier to see me raised his rifle.
Too slow.
My arm twisted black liquid spilled forth, nanomachines screaming into shape, coalescing into a sabre. It slid from my wrist like a blade being born from thought.
I moved.
One stroke.
The soldier fell, his head split from eye level.
A second stroke three more split open, blood and viscera painting the walls like a signature.
Then the alarm klaxons sounded.
Too late.
I ran. No, I glided. Bone and carbon and algorithm moved in perfect concert. Every angle of attack is already calculated. Every motion is optimized for efficiency.
The Upyr had sent me to slaughter a battalion.
And I would.
Not because I resisted.
Not because I remembered.
Because I understood.
I was not a man.
I was the will of the Upyr made flesh.
I was the knife in their hand, the silence after the scream, the algorithm of death given muscle and mandate.
There was no grief. No conflict.
Only function.
Only target.
Only the mission.