They heard it before they saw it.
A low thrumming—steady, rising, mechanical—rolled across the mountains like thunder that had lost its patience. It didn't echo. It vibrated, a deep, gut-stirring pulse that made the very stones underfoot tremble. Lana paused mid-step, her head tilting toward the sky. The others froze too, every sense sharpened, every breath caught. The sound didn't belong to the world around them. It wasn't wind. It wasn't storm. It was engineered. And it was closing in.
Nyx was the first to react. Her fingers raced across her screen, decoding data at impossible speeds. Her voice, when it came, was quiet but urgent. "That's Widow-Class."
Jason pivoted, rifle already half-raised, scanning the horizon. "You're absolutely sure?"
"I'd stake every circuit I've ever built," Nyx muttered. "It's a Skirmisher model. Fully autonomous. Semi-sentient. Anti-flesh ordinance. Built to track Queen signals like bloodhounds track wounded prey."
Kieran's jaw clenched, his claws halfway free, eyes narrowing toward the growing vibration in the air. "Then it's not coming here by accident."
Nyx nodded, her gaze flicking to Lana. "It's coming for her."
The air turned metallic—sharp with static, dry like a desert storm. A scent like scorched copper and engine oil filled their lungs, and the sky grew heavy. Then the fog parted.
The Widow-Class Skirmisher descended from the clouds with the grace of a predator and the fury of a war god. It was enormous—thirty feet of armor and violence, shaped like something part beetle, part fighter jet, part nightmare. Its segmented wings beat in blurred arcs, generating frequencies sharp enough to rupture bone. Black alloy fused with pale-bone struts ran down its sides, and its face—if it had one—was a cracked plate of sensors and glass-like panels. From beneath it, long-fingered limbs dangled like spears waiting to be loosed.
Jason muttered a curse. "That's not surveillance. That's an execution order."
The Widow was not built for reconnaissance. It was born from the late years of Veliora's empire—when her control began to crack, and her fragments started to think for themselves. The Widow-Class was never meant to protect. It was designed to sever. A war machine programmed to erase deviance from the Queen's code, to track rogue signatures and eliminate them with mathematical precision. Veliora had made it herself, one of her last conscious designs before she began to splinter. It hunted not for prey, but for purity.
And now it hunted Lana.
The wind screamed as the machine dipped low over the canyon, its vibration splitting the rocks. The group scattered as the Widow fired its first attack—a distortion pulse that didn't burn but shoved. Air became wall. The ground split. Jason flew back ten feet, skidding across stone. Nyx dropped flat, shielding her tablet. Kieran threw himself in front of Lana, claws out, absorbing the brunt of the shock.
"We have to ground it!" Jason shouted from behind a boulder.
Lana looked to the rusted out relay tower still standing nearby, skeletal and crooked. "Get me up there."
Kieran moved in front of her. "You can't take that thing alone."
She locked eyes with him. "I'm not asking."
He hesitated a second too long. Then she was running, boots pounding against the dry ground, the tower swaying in the wind as she ascended. The metal groaned beneath her, but it held. Kieran followed, every muscle ready to break apart if the structure collapsed.
Below, Jason reloaded his rifle with shaking hands. "One EMP round. That's all I've got."
Nyx adjusted her gear, voice tight. "Give me two minutes. I'll blind it long enough for your shot to count."
Above, Lana climbed to the top of the tower. The height didn't matter. The wind didn't matter. She could feel it now—how the machine reached for her like a forgotten promise, how it resonated with something buried deep in her chest. She braced herself against the railing, the heat from the Widow rising like breath from a furnace. The scent of ash, static, and ancient metal surrounded her. It was like standing at the edge of a volcano that knew her name.
Her hands trembled. But not from fear.
She opened her mind.
The signal responded. It pulsed within her like a second heartbeat. Her skin flushed gold, her eyes catching the stormlight, twin beacons of remembered power. The Queen's legacy wasn't something she had inherited. It had always been hers. She was not chosen. She *was* the choosing.
And suddenly she wasn't afraid of what she'd become.
This wasn't about running. It wasn't even about surviving. It was about ownership. It was about legacy.
Below, Nyx shouted. "She's speaking in code!"
Jason squinted through the dust. "What?"
"She's using Queen-tier frequencies! The machine hears her!"
Lana whispered into the wind—not a word, not a language, but a frequency buried so deep in her that it made the air quake.
The Widow shuddered in mid-air. Its wings sputtered. Its sensors flickered like eyes blinking in confusion.
"Take the shot!" Nyx screamed.
Jason fired.
The EMP round flew true, embedding in the Widow's side with a flash of white-blue electricity. The creature let out a soundless scream and spiraled downward, crashing into the cliffside. Dust exploded into the sky. Shrapnel screamed against stone. One of the wings sheared off completely, embedding in the earth like a blade.
Lana didn't wait. She half-jumped, half-slid down the tower. Kieran caught her as she landed, cradling her briefly before she stood on her own.
Together, they walked toward the wreckage.
The Widow twitched, struggling to rise. Sparks flew from its torso. Its chest-plate hissed. Panels split.
Lana stepped forward.
The machine's sensors found her, and for a moment it looked ready to rise and attack again. But she raised her hand and whispered another code, this time with certainty. Her signal didn't pulse. It commanded.
The Widow paused. Its wings drooped. The light in its core dimmed.
Then it lowered its head.
Jason stared. "You've got to be kidding me."
Nyx approached slowly. "It's submitting. She didn't beat it. She *overwrote* it."
Kieran reached for Lana's hand. "What does that make you?"
Lana didn't answer right away. Her eyes remained on the machine. "It makes me the thing it was built to destroy... and the only one it still recognizes."
The sky had gone still.
Clouds paused. The air hung heavy.
And somewhere in the earth, deeper than even the Widow knew to look, something else stirred. Something that had once known the Queen's voice—and remembered it now in Lana's breath.
The next move was hers.