[KARIN'S POV]
The command deck was pure chaos—tactical feeds screaming red alerts from every sector, casualty reports climbing into the thousands, infection vectors spreading like digital cancer across my holographic displays. But chaos was where I thrived. Chaos had patterns if you looked hard enough, and I'd spent a lifetime learning to see them.
"Scourge, I need eastern wall reinforcements redirected to sectors seven through twelve," I barked into the comm, fingers dancing across haptic controls with surgical precision. "Baron Varn's plague-soldiers are moving in wave formations—they're trying to overwhelm through sheer numbers, but there's a pattern. Every third wave has rot-priests embedded. That's your kill priority."
My analysis was working overtime, processing thousands of data points simultaneously—troop movements, infection spread rates, defensive position failures, ammunition expenditure, even the fucking wind direction affecting plague-spore dispersal. Peak human cognition pushed to its absolute limit, every synapse firing in perfect synchronization.
"They're not random," I muttered, watching the holographic battlefield unfold in three dimensions around me. "Varn's coordinating through hive-mind, but hive-minds have central processing bottlenecks. If I can identify the command nodes..."
My personal AI assistant linked to the fortress systems—highlighted clusters of soldiers moving with slightly better coordination than the mindless plague-carriers. There. Command nodes embedded in the chaos, probably enhanced plague-priests serving as signal boosters for Varn's trait.
"All artillery units," I commanded, voice cutting through the comm chatter like a scalpel through flesh. "Target coordinates uploading now. Fire on my mark—three, two, one, mark."
Plasma mortars screamed through the night sky, their trajectories calculated down to the centimeter. I'd factored wind speed, gravity distortion from nearby trait-users, even the thermal updrafts from burning buildings. Each shell found its target with mathematical certainty—command nodes erupting in brilliant explosions that vaporised the coordination hubs.
The effect was immediate and devastating. Thousands of plague-soldiers suddenly lost cohesion, their movements becoming disjointed and confused as the hive-mind fractured. They stumbled over their own dead, crashed into each other, turned on one another in mindless confusion.
"That's fifteen hundred enemy casualties from six shells," I said with clinical satisfaction, already calculating the next move. "Ammunition efficiency: ninety-four percent. Acceptable losses: minimal. Varn's command structure: compromised."
But even as I orchestrated carnage from my perch, I knew this was just buying time. Varn had forty thousand soldiers, and I'd just killed a fraction. We needed more than tactics—we needed miracles.
[SCOURGE'S POV]
The eastern wall was drowning in bodies—literally thousands of plague-soldiers climbing over their own dead like insects swarming a corpse. My invisible slashes carved through them in waves, but for every ten I killed, twenty more took their place.
Karin's voice crackled through my comm. "Scourge, eastern approach has a concentration of approximately three thousand soldiers massing for a coordinated push. They're forming a battering ram formation with rot-priests at the core. If they breach—"
"They won't," I growled, feeling something deep inside my chest beginning to pulse. Not my heart. Something older. Darker.
The Shadow Weaver mythic core.
Kaiser had returned it to me after killing Killmonger—that backstabbing fuck who'd stolen it from my personal hoard years ago. Most people didn't even know I had it implanted. The invisible slashes and brute strength were dangerous enough to keep most threats at bay. But the Shadow Weaver? That was the ace that made me a kingpin worth fearing.
I could feel the implant responding to my will, the mythic core pulsing with power as it activated. Shadows around me began responding—not just absence of light, but living darkness, sentient void that hungered for flesh and blood. The core resonated with every shadow cast by the burning buildings, every dark corner where light feared to tread.
"Karin," I said quietly into the comm. "Tell everyone on the eastern approach to fall back. Right fucking now."
"Scourge, what are you—"
"DO IT!"
I heard her relay the command, watched through the smoke as my remaining fighters scrambled away from the loading dock area, leaving me alone facing three thousand plague-soldiers packed so tightly together they looked like a single malformed creature.
Perfect.
I planted my feet, spread my arms wide, and released the Shadow Weaver's power.
Darkness erupted from the mythic core implanted in my chest like a tidal wave of liquid night, spreading across the ground faster than the eye could track. But this wasn't normal shadow—it was alive, writhing and twisting with predatory intelligence, reaching for the massed soldiers with thousands of grasping tendrils.
The plague-soldiers didn't even have time to scream.
Shadow tendrils punched through bodies like spears made of midnight, impaling dozens at a time before ripping them apart from the inside out. The darkness consumed them—not just killing, but unmaking, dissolving flesh and bone into nothing, feeding on their very existence to grow stronger and hungrier.
A rot-priest tried to release his plague-payload. The shadows wrapped around him like a cocoon, squeezing until he imploded with a wet crunch, his viral vectors absorbed into the darkness before they could spread.
Soldiers tried to run. The shadows caught them, dragged them screaming into the void, their bodies disappearing into living darkness that left nothing behind—no blood, no bones, no evidence they'd ever existed.
The Shadow Weaver sang through the implant, drunk on carnage, feeding on the mass death it was causing. I could feel every kill, taste every extinguished life as the shadows spread like plague in reverse, consuming Varn's army wholesale.
Three thousand soldiers. Gone in under thirty seconds.
When the shadows finally receded back into the mythic core, the eastern approach was empty—just scorched ground and the lingering scent of ozone. Not a single corpse remained. The darkness had eaten everything.
I dropped to one knee, breathing hard. The Shadow Weaver mythic core took a toll—it fed on enemy lives but also drained my own vitality. Using it at that scale left me feeling hollow, depleted, like I'd aged ten years in half a minute.
But it was worth it.
Karin's voice came through, awed and terrified in equal measure. "Scourge... what the fuck was that?"
"Insurance," I rasped, pushing myself back to my feet. "Tell Kane and Hawk—eastern approach is clear. Varn's army just lost a quarter of its strength."
Through the smoke, I could see the remaining plague-soldiers hesitating, their hive-mind connection fracturing further as fear—real, instinctive, primal fear—began overriding Varn's commands.
Good. Let them be afraid.
[KANE'S POV]
The west wall civilian sectors were a nightmare painted in screams and fire. Children crying, mothers clutching infants, elderly stumbling over debris as plague-soldiers poured through breaches like infected water through a broken dam. This wasn't war—it was slaughter waiting to happen.
"EVERYONE BACK!" I roared, my voice amplified by armour systems to carry over the chaos. "Get to the reinforced bunkers! MOVE!"
A rot-priest lunged toward a group of kids—couldn't have been older than ten, eyes wide with terror that no child should ever have to know. I intercepted with plasma axe raised, bisecting the fucker vertically before he could release his plague-payload. The cauterized halves fell away cleanly, smoking but not spraying infection.
But there were dozens more behind him, hundreds, maybe thousands flooding through the breach like a living tide of disease and death. My Unbeatable trait hummed beneath my skin, that core of absolute refusal to lose that had carried me through decades of impossible fights. But even unbeatable had limits when facing biological warfare designed to turn victory into spreading infection.
Think, Kane. There's always an angle. Always a weak point.
Then I saw it—the breach itself, the structural weakness in the wall where Varn's forces had concentrated their assault. Not a random choice. They'd targeted the load-bearing sections, areas where a catastrophic collapse could seal the opening but also kill everyone nearby if done wrong.
But if done right...
"All non-combatants, evacuate through the south tunnels!" I commanded, already moving toward the breach. "Fighters, give them covering fire and then fall back! I'm bringing down the house!"
My armor's systems ran calculations, highlighting stress points in the damaged wall structure. I'd need precision—too much force and the entire section would collapse inward, crushing civilians. Too little and the breach would remain open for Varn's endless plague-soldiers.
But precision was exactly what my nuclear-focused trait specialized in.
See, most people thought "nuclear" meant big dumb explosions that vaporized everything in a radius measured in city blocks. Amateurs. True nuclear manipulation was about controlled detonations—directing force along specific vectors, concentrating destructive power into surgical strikes that could level a building while leaving the one next door standing.
I planted both hands against the wall's internal support structure, feeling the concrete and rebar beneath my palms, sensing the molecular bonds holding everything together through my trait's enhanced awareness. Then I pushed—not with physical strength, but with focused nuclear energy channeled directly into the structural weak points.
The effect was spectacular. Micro-detonations rippled through the wall in cascading sequence, each explosion perfectly timed and directed to collapse the breach outward rather than inward. Thousands of tons of reinforced concrete and twisted metal folded like a steel curtain, crushing hundreds of plague-soldiers beneath its weight while sealing the opening completely.
The shockwave knocked me back ten feet, armor's cooling systems screaming as they vented excess heat from the nuclear manipulation. But when the dust cleared, the breach was gone—replaced by an impenetrable wall of rubble that would take Varn's forces hours to clear.
Behind me, the evacuating civilians stared in awed silence. A little girl—couldn't have been more than six—looked up at me with wide eyes.
"you are my?" she whispered.
I knelt down to her level, offering what I hoped was a reassuring smile beneath my scarred face. "Really, kid. i thought you said oh no mumma i'm scared of him; mocking her. get moving—your parents are waiting in the bunker."
As I watched them file away to safety, Karin's voice crackled through my comm. "Kane, that was beautiful. You just saved three thousand civilians and eliminated approximately two thousand enemy combatants with one move. But we've got a problem—Baron Varn himself just entered the fortress. Medical bay. Hawk and Tara are alone with Kaiser."
My blood turned to ice. "Fuck i'm on my way."
[TARA'S POV]
Baron Varn looked like death wearing a meat suit—greenish skin splitting to reveal rotting muscle beneath, eyes yellowed with disease, breath that smelled like corpses left in the sun for weeks. Fifteen elite plague-carriers stood behind him, their bodies swollen with viral payloads that would detonate on proximity.
He was staring at me like I was a bug he was deciding whether to crush or study.
"Stand aside, child," he rasped, voice barely human anymore. "This doesn't concern you. I'll make it quick. Painless. You can even keep the body when I'm done extracting his traits."
My resurrection flames burned brighter around my small body, hot enough that the medical bay's temperature sensors were screaming warnings. But I wasn't backing down. I'd watched Kaiser save me from those filths, watched him sacrifice his neural rig so I could live, watched him care for me like a family.
"No," I said, voice trembling but firm. "You leave. Now. Or I'll do to you what I did to your priest."
He laughed—wet, bubbling, the sound of lungs half-filled with rot. "Little girl playing like god. Do you even understand what you're holding? That power will consume you long before you master it."
Clara? I called out through our neural link, feeling her presence in my mind like a warm hand on my shoulder. I need help. I can't fight him alone.
You're not alone, Tara, Clara's synthesized voice replied with unexpected warmth. I'll guide you. Trust your instincts and follow my tactical overlays. Remember—you have power nullification. That's your key advantage.
Varn gestured, and his elite guards moved forward with synchronized precision, their bloated bodies ready to explode and turn the medical bay into a plague-vector breeding ground.
Now, Tara! Activate power nullification!
I didn't know exactly how to do it—the trait was still so new, still raw and uncontrolled. But I reached deep inside myself, feeling for that part of my mythic-tier power that could resist and nullify other abilities, and pulled.
Golden light exploded from my core, washing over the medical bay in a wave of pure negation. The elite guards stumbled, their plague-traits suddenly gone—the swelling in their bodies deflating like punctured balloons, the infectious fog dissipating into nothing. They were just normal soldiers now, confused and terrified.
Varn's eyes went wide with genuine shock. "Impossible! You—you're nullifying my trait? Damn Brat—"
That's when he moved, faster than someone so diseased should be capable of, his rotting hand lashing out in a backhanded slap that caught me across the face with devastating force.
I flew backward, crashing into medical equipment with bone-jarring impact. Pain exploded across my cheek, and I felt the rot trying to take hold—infection vectors flooding into my bloodstream through the point of contact, attempting to rewrite my biology from the inside out.
Regeneration trait, activate! Clara commanded urgently. Purge the infection before it spreads!
My body responded automatically, golden healing light flooding through my veins like liquid fire. The rot-trait fought back, trying to establish footholds in my cells, but my mythic-tier regeneration was stronger. Faster. More absolute. Within seconds, the infection was gone, purged completely, my cheek healing over without even a scar.
I pushed myself up, wiping blood from my mouth, and glared at Varn with fury that felt far too old for my small body. "That all you got, you rotting piece of shit?"
Good, Tara, Clara encouraged. Now—combat protocol Alpha. I'll feed you tactical data directly. Move when I say move, strike when I say strike. We're going to dance.
Varn snarled and charged, his remaining strength boosted by desperation and disease. But Clara was already in my head, feeding me tactical overlays faster than conscious thought.
Left! Now!
I teleported three feet left, avoiding his grasping hands by inches. Before he could recover, Clara highlighted a weak point—exposed ribs where his rot-trait had eaten through his own flesh.
Strike there! Resurrection flames, focused beam!
I thrust my small hand forward, and golden fire erupted in a concentrated lance that punched through Varn's exposed ribs, cauterizing rotted flesh and making him scream—a sound like tearing metal and dying animals.
Behind you!
I spun, teleporting backward as two elite guards—no longer swollen with plague but still dangerous—lunged with combat knives. They collided with each other instead, stumbling in confusion.
Nullification pulse, wide area!
I released another wave of power nullification, and this time I felt it more clearly—could sense the traits in everyone around me like distinct signatures, and I turned them off like flipping switches. The elite guards' enhanced strength vanished. Their combat augments went dead. They were just normal humans now, facing a child backed by the most advanced AI in the fortress.
Clara's voice was steady, reassuring, guiding me through every move like a dance instructor. Teleport to Kaiser's bedside. Defensive position. Hawk's about to wake up.
I blinked across space, reappearing beside Kaiser's unconscious form, golden flames wreathing my body like protective armor. Varn was stumbling toward us, bleeding from a dozen wounds, his elite guards scattered and powerless.
And that's when Hawk stirred.
[HAWK'S POV]
Pain. That was the first thing I registered—ribs screaming, head pounding, Oracle-Eye flickering like it couldn't decide whether to reboot or give up entirely. I'd been down for maybe two minutes, knocked out by the shockwave from Tara's earlier power burst, but apparently that was two minutes too fucking long.
The medical bay was a warzone. Tara stood over Kaiser's bed like a tiny guardian angel carved from fire and fury, her golden flames painting the walls in shifting light. Baron Varn—looking like a walking corpse convention—was stumbling toward them, bleeding and desperate. His elite guards lay scattered across the floor, some dead, others groaning in pain.
And me? I'd been lying on the ground like a useless sack of meat while a child fought my battles.
Fuck. That.
I pushed myself up, ignoring the screaming protests from every nerve ending, and assessed the situation through Oracle-Eye's tactical overlay. Varn: heavily damaged but still dangerous. Elite guards: neutralized but could recover. Tara: holding defensive position but exhausted. Kaiser: still unconscious and vulnerable.
And me? I was done being treated like some fucking side character in someone else's story.
You know what really pisses me off? Not the injuries. Not the betrayal, not the lies, not even Kaiser being an emotionally constipated trait-thief with a hero complex. What pisses me off is when people—when anyone—looks at me standing next to Kaiser and thinks I'm just the girl who rides shotgun. The pretty face. The backup. The goddamn side character who gets knocked out while the real heroes do the work.
Fuck that .
I stood fully, bones cracking back into place through sheer willpower, and something awakened inside me—not breaking, but igniting.
Oracle-Eye flared to life with intensity I'd never felt before, tactical overlays exploding across my vision in cascading layers of data. Combat predictions. Threat assessments. Weak points highlighted in glowing red. But it wasn't just Oracle-Eye activating. It was everything. All my traits, flooding through my system simultaneously like floodgates opening.
Overdrive converted every ounce of pain, every injury, every moment of suffering I'd endured into pure, crystallized power. The agony from Varn's earlier attack, the broken ribs, the concussion, the infection I'd fought off—all of it became fuel burning white-hot in my veins. I could feel my muscles strengthening, my speed increasing, every injury turning into ammunition for violence.
Feral Lock wasn't active yet, but I could feel it humming beneath my skin, ready to mark any target whose blood I tasted. Once locked, they'd never escape me. Never hide. I'd hunt them to the ends of the earth.
Razor Pulse awakened along my arms, blade-like extensions beginning to shimmer just beneath my skin, ready to project cutting edges from any part of my body. I could turn myself into a walking arsenal of blades.
Hellskin converted the pain flooding my system into something else—that sick, twisted pleasure that made combat addictive, that turned every injury into fuel for both power and arousal. The broken ribs sang. The concussion pulsed. It all felt good.
Gravemaul enhanced my physical strikes, ready to turn every punch and kick into impacts that could shatter bone and pulverize organs.
Kaiser's sword leaned against the wall where he'd left it before the fight with Kane—just a regular blade, But in my hands, with all my traits singing through my veins? It didn't need any magic.
"Tara," I said quietly, my voice carrying absolute authority despite the carnage around us. "Close your eyes, kid. This is gonna get messy."
Then I moved.
Overdrive mode turned the world into slow-motion clarity. Oracle-Eye tracked every target simultaneously—fifteen elite guards in various states of recovery, Baron Varn still stumbling toward Kaiser, even the fucking dust particles floating through the air. I could see it all, process it all, react to it all.
I crossed twenty feet in three steps, Overdrive-enhanced speed making me a blur. The first guard didn't even register my approach before Kaiser's sword—just steel and sharp edge, nothing more—bisected him diagonally from shoulder to hip. Oracle-Eye had shown me the exact angle, the precise weakness in his armor. He fell in two pieces, and I was already gone.
One.
The second guard turned, mouth opening to shout warning. I was already there, sword driving up through his jaw and into his brain with surgical accuracy. Oracle-Eye's tactical overlay never missed vital points. Blood sprayed, and I tasted it on my lips—Feral Lock activating automatically, marking him, though he'd be dead in seconds anyway.
Two.
Third and fourth came at me together, thinking teamwork would save them. Adorable. Oracle-Eye calculated their attack vectors, showed me the dozen different ways to counter. I chose violence—Razor Pulse extended from my free hand, blade-like projections erupting from my knuckles. I ducked under their synchronized strikes and drove the bone-blades through both their throats simultaneously while my sword opened their bellies. Blood and organs spilled. Hellskin turned their death throes into pleasure signals that made me grin.
Three. Four.
Fifth through eighth tried to coordinate a pincer attack. Oracle-Eye calculated their trajectories before they'd even finished moving, combat predictions painting their paths in glowing lines across my vision. I waited with Overdrive-enhanced perception stretching seconds into minutes, patient as death itself.
When all four aligned perfectly, I struck.
The sword carved through them in a spinning arc that Oracle-Eye had calculated for maximum efficiency. Four strikes, four throats opened, four bodies falling before the first one hit the ground. Gravemaul enhanced each strike, turning simple cuts into devastating impacts that crushed windpipes and shattered vertebrae.
Five. Six. Seven. Eight.
The remaining seven guards actually tried to run. Smart. But Overdrive mode made me faster than fear, my enhanced speed letting me catch them in sequence.
I caught them with blade work so precise it looked choreographed but was pure calculated murder. Oracle-Eye guided every strike. Gravemaul turned each sword thrust into a bone-shattering impact. Razor Pulse extended blades from my off-hand to finish anyone the sword missed. Hellskin sang with pleasure at every injury they managed to land—a grazing cut here, a glancing blow there—all of it feeding back into Overdrive as fuel for more violence.
Ninth's heart through his ribs. Tenth's throat opened. Eleventh's head taken clean off with a Gravemaul-enhanced strike. Twelfth's spine severed. Thirteenth disemboweled, his organs spilling out. Fourteenth split from crown to groin. Fifteenth caught at the door, Razor Pulse blades punching through his back to shred his lungs and heart in one motion.
Nine through fifteen.
Total elapsed time: eight seconds.
The medical bay was silent except for my controlled breathing and the wet sounds of bodies finishing their dying. No magic. No special powers from the weapon. Just me, my traits, and a piece of sharpened steel that had done exactly what I needed it to do.
Overdrive was still singing through me, converting pain into power. Oracle-Eye scanned for remaining threats.
And I hadn't even broken a sweat.
[BARON VARN'S POV]
I watched in mounting horror as this woman—this Hawk—slaughtered fifteen of my best soldiers in less time than it took to process what was happening. She moved like violence made flesh, like death had learned to dance, like every nightmare I'd ever had about facing an Apex specialist came true simultaneously.
The sword in her hand—just ordinary steel, no enhancements, no traits—obeyed her as readily as if it were a living extension of her will. But it was her powers making the difference. The bone-blades extending from her off-hand. The devastating impact force behind every strike. The way she moved faster and stronger with every injury. She wasn't just fighting—she was enjoying it, grinning through blood-spattered features like combat was foreplay.
She rolled her shoulders, and I heard bones popping back into place, muscles realigning themselves through sheer determination. "See, here's the thing about Overdrive mode, Varn. The more pain I'm in? The stronger I get. And you hitting that kid—hurting Tara while I was down—that really pissed me off."
I tried to activate my rot-trait, to spread infection, to do something—but Tara's nullification pulse had stripped me bare of my primary abilities.
But not all of them.
I still had one card left to play. The trait I'd been saving, The one that would turn this entire situation on its head.
Rotting Field.
I felt it activate deep in my core, spreading outward in a wave of infectious command. Not just disease—control. Every body my rot-trait had touched, every soldier who'd been infected even temporarily, every person in this fortress who'd fought off my plague and thought they'd won—they were all connected to me through microscopic spores embedded in their cells.
And now I pulled.
[HAWK'S POV]
I saw it the moment it happened—Varn's body going rigid, eyes rolling back in his head, greenish energy exploding from his core in a pulsing wave that made my skin crawl.
Then the screaming started.
Outside the medical bay, throughout the fortress, I heard soldiers crying out in agony. Not just Varn's plague-soldiers—our soldiers. People who'd fought off the infection. People who thought they were safe.
The Rotting Field was turning them.
Through the security feeds still displaying on the medical bay walls, I watched in horror as hundreds of Scourge's fighters began convulsing, their bodies responding to Varn's command. Skin taking on that telltale greenish tint. Eyes yellowing. Mouths frothing with infectious foam.
"You thought you'd won," Varn rasped, his voice strengthening as the trait fed him power from every converted host. "You thought killing my soldiers meant victory. But everyone you saved? Everyone who got infected and survived? They're mine now. All of them. My army just tripled in size."
Karin's voice exploded through the comms, barely controlled panic bleeding through. "Hawk! We've got mass conversions happening across all sectors! At least three thousand of our own people are turning! They're attacking from inside our defensive positions!"
Fuck.
Varn straightened, his body healing as he drew power from thousands of infected hosts spread throughout the fortress. The wounds Tara had inflicted closed over with fresh rotted flesh. His eyes blazed with zealous triumph.
"You can't kill me now," he laughed, the sound wet and bubbling but triumphant. "Kill me, and the Rotting Field collapses—everyone infected dies instantly, including all your precious soldiers. Keep me alive, and they serve me. Either way, I win."
I felt my jaw clench. Oracle-Eye was already processing the tactical situation, running scenarios, calculating odds. Every simulation came back with the same conclusion: we were fucked.
Unless.
My hand moved, Overdrive-enhanced speed letting me cross the medical bay and grab my sniper rifle in one fluid motion. Oracle-Eye painted targeting data across my vision as I brought the weapon up, settling the scope on a very specific target.
Baron Varn's crotch.
"Here's what's going to happen, you rotting piece of shit," I said, voice flat and cold as death itself. "You're going to release every single person you just infected. You're going to deactivate that Rotting Field trait right fucking now. And if you don't?"
I adjusted my aim fractionally, Oracle-Eye guiding the crosshairs to the exact center of his diseased dick.
"He makes a move, I cleave this pig's dick off," I announced loudly enough for the comm to pick up, making sure Kane, Scourge, Karin, and everyone listening understood the new rules of engagement. "And before you think I'm bluffing, Varn—ask yourself if you really want to spend the rest of your pathetic existence as a dickless plague ."
Varn's eyes went wide, his hand instinctively moving to protect his groin.
"Ah-ah," I warned, Oracle-Eye tracking even that micro-movement with perfect accuracy. "Hands where I can see them. No sudden moves. No trait activation. Just you, me, and the very real possibility that I turn you from a man into an anatomical tragedy."
The fortress had gone eerily quiet. Even the sounds of combat outside seemed to pause, as if the entire war was holding its breath to see how this standoff would resolve.
Tara's voice was tiny from beside Kaiser's bed. "Hawk? Did you just threaten to shoot off his—"
"Yes, Tara. Yes I did."
Kane's voice crackled through the comm, a mix of disbelief and grudging respect. "Hawk, that's... that's actually brilliant. Varn Stand the fuck down, or the nice lady makes you a eunuch."
Scourge's exhausted voice joined in. "I second that. Varn, I just vaporised three thousand of your soldiers with the Shadow Weaver. Don't make me crawl over there and help her with the castration."
Varn's face contorted with rage and humiliation, but I saw the fear in his yellowed eyes. The calculation. The realisation that I absolutely, positively would pull the trigger.
"This isn't over," he hissed, but his hands slowly rose into the air, palms open.
"No," I agreed, finger resting lightly on the trigger, crosshairs never wavering from their target. Oracle-Eye tracked his every micro-expression, ready to alert me if he even thought about activating a trait. "But it's paused. And that's good enough for now."
Behind me, Kaiser remained unconscious, breathing steady. Tara's golden flames flickered protectively around her small form, exhaustion clear but determination unwavering. And outside, through the hole in the ceiling, dawn was beginning to break over Scarpoint's ruins—orange and pink light painting the sky with the promise of a new day.
We'd survived the night.
Barely.
End Of Chapter