The cold was entirely new to him.
For three thousand years, Zeviel’s armored skin had been impervious to the vacuum of deep space, the searing heat of dying suns, and the crushing pressure of gas giants. He had walked through oceans of fire without breaking a sweat.
But right now, trudging up the steep, ash-covered incline of the mountain, his teeth were actually chattering.
He pulled the dark collar of his coat up higher, shielding his neck from the howling wind. The purple toxic snow clung to his silver hair. Every breath he took felt like inhaling crushed glass. His lungs burned, protesting the heavy, poisonous air of the terraformed planet.
Zeviel stopped next to the burnt husk of an overturned car. He leaned against the rusted metal, panting heavily. He wiped a streak of frozen blood from his bruised side where the drop-pod had crashed.
So this is what it feels like to be human, Zeviel thought, a dark, self-deprecating smirk touching his lips. It’s miserable.
He looked out over the valley below. Through the swirling violet fog, he could see the shattered ruins of human civilization. Crumbling skyscrapers. Highways buried in ash. The sky was permanently stained the color of a fresh bruise.
This was his empire’s doing. The terraforming spores were designed to choke out native ecosystems and prepare the planet for his species’ arrival. To the Vanguard Prince, it had always been a simple, clean, bureaucratic process. A planetary reset.
But standing in the dirt, feeling the agonizing bite of the wind, Zeviel realized what a true nightmare this world was.
His golden eyes slowly lifted toward the peak of the mountain, hidden behind the storm clouds.
She was up there. "Green Eyes."
The realization hit him like a physical blow. She hadn’t just lived through this apocalypse. She had fought through it while pregnant with his child. While he was sitting on an obsidian throne lightyears away, completely ignorant, she was down here breathing toxic ash and fighting monsters. And she hadn’t just survived, she had conquered. She had built an impenetrable titanium fortress on the highest peak to keep his son warm, fed, and safe.
A fierce, burning wave of respect washed over him. It was a terrifying, beautiful kind of awe.
You really are a queen, Zeviel thought, his chest tightening. I don’t deserve you. But I am coming anyway.
He pushed himself off the rusted car, ignoring the ache in his human legs.
A low, wet snarl echoed through the dead trees.
Zeviel froze. His enhanced hearing caught the crunch of ash behind him. The sound of heavy, mutated claws scraping against the frozen rocks.
He slowly turned around.
Creeping out of the purple fog were four Spore-Hounds. They were massive, their skin peeled back to reveal glowing violet muscles. Saliva dripped from their jagged, bone-plated jaws. They fanned out, surrounding him in a coordinated hunting circle.
Normally, Zeviel wouldn’t have even stopped walking. A single, bored thought would have crushed them into dust.
But he was a vessel now. He was ten percent.
Zeviel let out a slow breath. He reached down and wrapped his bare hand around a heavy, jagged piece of steel rebar protruding from the wrecked car. He snapped it off with a sharp yank. The metal was freezing, and the rough edges cut into his palm, but he barely noticed.
"Come on, then," Zeviel murmured, his golden eyes flaring with a dangerous, predatory light.
The largest hound lunged. It crossed the distance in a fraction of a second, its jaws snapping open to tear out Zeviel’s throat.
Zeviel didn’t flinch. His human body was weak, but his reflexes were still Vanguard. He sidestepped the leaping beast with fluid, terrifying grace. As the hound flew past him, Zeviel drove the steel rebar straight up through its ribs, piercing its mutant heart.
Black blood erupted over his coat. The hound hit the ground dead.
The other three attacked at once.
Zeviel spun, swinging the heavy rebar like a baseball bat. He shattered the skull of the second hound with a sickening crunch. But the third hound dropped low, its jaws clamping down on Zeviel’s left forearm.
CRUNCH.
Pain, hot, blinding, and absolute, shot up Zeviel’s arm. The hound’s bone-teeth pierced his jacket and sank into his human flesh.
Zeviel let out a furious roar. He dropped the rebar and grabbed the mutant’s snout with his free hand. He squeezed. Even at ten percent capacity, his grip was a hydraulic press. The hound whimpered as its snout was crushed, forcing its jaws open.
Before it could pull away, Zeviel kicked it squarely in the chest, sending it flying backward into a tree.
The fourth hound was already in the air, aiming for his back.
Zeviel didn’t have time to turn. He threw his hand out backward and focused his mind.
Stop.
His golden eyes burned. A wave of telekinetic force slammed into the leaping hound, freezing it in mid-air for a split second. The mental strain was agonizing. Zeviel felt a warm trickle of blood run down his nose as his human brain struggled to channel the cosmic energy.
He ripped his hand downward.
The invisible force slammed the suspended hound into the frozen earth with the weight of a falling anvil. The ground cracked. The hound’s spine shattered instantly.
Zeviel dropped to one knee, gasping for air.
The clearing went dead silent. The four mutants were dead.
He looked down at his left arm. The sleeve of his coat was shredded. Deep, jagged puncture wounds leaked bright, crimson human blood onto the snow.
He stared at his own blood for a long moment. It didn’t scare him. It thrilled him. It grounded him to this world. He was earning his path to her door.
Zeviel ripped a strip of fabric from the hem of his coat and tightly bound his bleeding arm, tying it off with his teeth. He wiped the blood from his nose, picked up his steel rebar, and started walking up the mountain again.
Inside the Ark, the atmosphere was suffocatingly tense.
Catrin was sitting at the massive marble island in her kitchen, slowly stirring a cup of tea she wasn’t drinking. It had been twelve hours since the alien warship vanished from the radar. Twelve hours of total blackout. No alarms, no external lights, no loud noises.
Graves was standing guard by the hallway. Quinn was asleep on the couch, her rifle resting on her chest.
The elevator doors slid open with a soft ding.
Elias walked into the kitchen. He looked worse than usual. His safety goggles were hanging around his neck, and his hands were covered in grease.
"Boss," Elias said, keeping his voice to a hushed whisper. "We have a massive problem."
Catrin set her spoon down. Her green eyes locked onto her engineer. "I don’t like problems, Elias. Tell me you fixed whatever is broken."
"I can’t fix it from the inside," Elias sighed, rubbing his tired face. "It’s the water filtration system. When that mutated bear charged the gates yesterday, the ground tremors fractured the primary external intake pipe."
"We have internal water reserves," Catrin pointed out quietly. "We can recycle."
"For drinking, yes," Elias agreed. "But not for the hydroponics bay. The crops require a massive, constant flow. The external pipe is completely jammed with frozen ash. If we don’t clear the valve and patch the fracture, the crops die in three days."
Catrin’s jaw tightened. The hydroponics bay was her lifeblood. It was how she explained the constant influx of fresh food to the mercenaries without revealing her infinite spatial dimension. If the crops died, her cover story died with them. Her entire power structure inside the Ark relied on them believing she was farming the food.
"Where is the fracture?" Catrin asked, a cold knot forming in her stomach.
"That’s the bad news," Elias grimaced. "It’s outside the barricade. About a hundred yards down the main mountain road. Near the ravine."
Catrin looked toward the armored windows. It was pitch black outside. The purple fog was swirling violently.
The alien ship was out there, somewhere, waiting. And now, she had to step out from under her titanium roof and expose herself to the sky.
"Jax!" Catrin called out sharply.
The Commander stepped out of the stairwell a moment later, looking alert. "Yes, Boss?"
"We have a dead external water pipe," Catrin said. "I need to go outside the gates to patch it."
Jax looked at her like she had lost her mind. "Outside? Boss, absolutely not. It’s suicide out there right now. The storm is peaking, the visibility is literally zero, and we don’t know if that cloaked warship is still watching us!"
"If we don’t fix the pipes, the hydroponics bay dies, and we starve in a month," Catrin lied smoothly. "I have the bypass codes for the manual override. I have to be the one to do it."
"Then we wait," Jax argued, stepping closer to the island, his protective instincts flaring. "We have three days. We wait for the storm to break. If you go out there right now, in the dark, my men won’t be able to cover you from the wall. You’ll be walking blind into a mutant feeding ground."
Catrin stared at her Commander. He was right. Stepping out into a category-five spore storm while an alien threat was hovering above them was reckless. She had a son to think about.
"Fine," Catrin conceded, letting out a frustrated breath. "We don’t go right now. But we start prepping immediately. We go at first light tomorrow. The fog is usually thinnest around 0600 hours."
Jax nodded, visibly relieved. "I’ll pick my two best trench fighters to escort you. Quinn will be on the roof with thermal optics. We’ll get you to the pipe, you do your magic, and we pull you back inside in under ten minutes."
"Make sure their gear is perfectly quiet," Catrin ordered. "No heavy armor clanking. I don’t want anything hearing us."
"You got it, Boss," Jax saluted, turning to head down to the barracks. "I’ll brief the men."
Elias looked at her, chewing on his bottom lip. "I’m sorry, Catrin. If I could bypass it from the servers, I would."
"It’s not your fault, Elias. Go get some sleep. You look like a zombie," she said softly.
Once Elias was gone, Catrin stood alone in the dark kitchen. The silence of the Ark was suffocating.
She walked over to the armored window and pressed her hand against the cold glass. She had built this place so she would never have to step foot in the ash again. She had built it to be untouchable.
But tomorrow morning, the titanium doors were going to open.
Just ten minutes, Catrin told herself, trying to slow her racing heart. In and out. Nothing will happen.