Page 20 of Claimed By the War Brute
Fingers poised, I swirl salvaged circuits across a hacked encryption bay. My pulse taps a melody beneath my skin—a distant riff from Syfer Station long buried in memory. Yet now it’s sharper, stalking, predatory. My fingers dance across the keys as I hum. I'm not just breaking in; I'm composing.
I use a defunct subspace frequency from a trust-fund account—one of Dad’s old routing channels from the Centuries War. He used it to ship arms in plain sight while civilians cheered. It's poetic that I intercept it now.
Garrus drifts behind me, a silent observer. His presence is a heavy bass note—still, dark, formidable. I can feel him in the room before I hear his boots.
The encrypted loop lights up my screen. I route it through Alliance and Coalition uplinks. I taste victory like burnt metal on my tongue.
I take a breath,posture taut, voice steady. “My name is Sydney Malmount,” I say, recording live. Iris cameras blur in neon windows—my face raw, eyes bright. I taste acetone on my breath.
“My father refused to ransom me.” My voice trembles just enough. “He tried to have me silenced.” A grim curve on my lips. “But I’m not going quietly. I’m not his product. I’m not his problem.”
Tapping keys to encrypt, I layer evidence—Vortaxian ship logs, audio from their barracks, the smuggled weapon ledger: tech he sold to both sides, ceasing none. Not an apology. Not contrition. My eyes burn with more than rebellion. They reflect years of resentment.
“You should’ve been afraid,” I finish. Then I hit transmit.
The ship’s lights dim for a moment—a blackout ripple across the broken console. When power kicks back, confirmation rings in my headset: uplink accepted. No static. No corporate filter. It’s out, and it’s permanent.
“Happy birthday, Dad,” I whisper, lips thinning. My teeth grind. Joy’s twisted.
The quiet returns, but something in the atmosphere has shifted—charged, wild. Garrus leans against the bulkhead behind me, arms crossed, golden eyes hard to read. I can feel his gaze drilling into my skull, measuring, testing.
“That message... that was a declaration of war,” he finally says.
His low voice cuts through the stillness. I keep my back to him. My knuckles itch against the keyboard.
“Good,” I shrug, turning now to face him. Blue and red uplink indicators pulse behind my shoulder. “Maybe this time, someone will actually fight for something.” I step away, tugging the neural band free with a soft pop.
He studies me, and I see that burn in his eyes—intensity sharpened by something more personal. “You’ve got steel in you,” he says.
I smirk, wry and defiant. “And you’ve got too many muscles.” My joke dies in the air, and for a moment, we’re suspended together in something fierce and fracturing.
Then I ask the question that haunts my bones: “What now?”
He glances at the nav console. Its coordinates blink softly in dark: The Drift, fuel, weapons, allies. “Now we wait.” The silence is heavy with unspoken threats. He shifts. “And when he comes looking…” He cracks his knuckles with a low snap. “We hit back. And this time, we strike first.”
I tracemy fingers across the console’s cracked surface. Power flows in bursts, tiny static pulses echoing in my fingertips. The words settle in my mind like prophecy: We strike first.
The weight of what I’ve done presses in. Information is power. I just shredded every corporate shield he ever built. Every Alliance envoy, every militia—orphaned field—will have my message now. It’s not revenge. It’s revolution.
“Let him come,” I murmur, voice steady, resolve burning. “I’m not hiding anymore.”
I see surprise flicker across Garrus’s jaw—the realization that I’m not broken. Not victim. Not pawn. I meet his gaze. He nods,slowly, deliberately. And in that nod, I feel solidarity at the cells of my spine.
I lean forward, tapping in coordinates to reroute uplinks—secure relays, encrypted caches, networked black-market nodes. Each click is a stake in the ground. “We move when we touch orbit of The Drift. We refuel, rearm, network.” I pause, inhale. “Then we weaponize all of this.”
He steps into the glow of the console. Knuckles brush over mine—a moment of quiet alliance. I feel heat flare at skin meeting scaled armor. “Together,” I whisper.
He breathes—a deep grumble—and presses down a forearm over my hand. “Together,” he mirrors. His voice gravel softens just enough to betray pride.
The world outside might burn; inside this ship, we’re forging something new.
I breathe slow. Code, fear, resolve, and hope swirl in my chest. I load diary logs, black box streams, pathing routes to neutral systems, the coordinates for hidden caches. The rusted ship hums in agreement. I taste fear again—sweet, tangy, alive.
Garrus leans over, voice soft. “When he lands that team... they’ll find us.”
I nod, loading next layer: counteroffensive overlays, hit zones, backdoors into his corporate servers. “Yeah. Let him come.”
He glances at me, head tilted. “You wanna record a happy-face message about that too?”
