Page 26 of Claimed By the War Brute
She nods. Eyes still wild. “I burned a message to silence.”
I nod slowly, feels like a prayer. “You did.”
We settle into autopilot. Silence returns, this time earned. Sweat clings to our skin; the smell of burnt circuitry drifts through the cabin. Our breaths sync.
We did this. Together. A quiet victory in a chaotic war—shielding her, carving time.
She leans on my shoulder, voice soft but fierce. “When he sends another squad, they’ll find empty space. Nothing but ghosts.”
I wrap an arm around her, scaled muscle cradling human curve. “Then he can look until he's blind,” I murmur.
She presses close, eyes glinting with dusk and fire. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Not without me,” I promise.
In that fuel-scented cockpit, with systems humming into sleep, I feel something like hope. We’re fugitives, but tonight we became hunters. We struck first. We saved her. We survived betrayal.
And somewhere beyond these dark corridors, Malmount’s empire begins to unravel.
CHAPTER 21
SYD
Telar-9 smells like betrayal—hot oil, sharp ozone, and lies layered thick like grime under fingernails. I tug my jacket’s collar higher, hiding the Alliance-merc patch—and the hidden blade Garrus stitched into the seam with surgical precision. We step off the ramp into Docking Bay C-13, the air pulsing with tension: smugglers trading in black-market meds, cyber-mod dealers with trembling hands, mercs in outdated armor strutting like they own the place.
Garrus is beside me, a living warhead, muscles coiled beneath those red-dusk scales. But tonight, I lead. I breathe in the rancid heat as heavy synth-bass pulses from holo-boards. The intel said the bounty-relay console is tucked in a dump called Spindleback—data-splice den in the underbelly of the ring. The perfect rat-nest. No one here asks questions—as long as you bleed quietly.
I nod at Garrus. He returns it with a half-smile. We move through the crowd in under ten minutes, walking past neon shots, illegal porn-spigots, eye-mod stalls with greasy cables. The chaos is our camouflage.
We step into Spindleback. Broken neon drips across rusty steel beams. The haze of vapor smoke makes the place glimmer in sickly reds and blues. My stomach tightens in anticipation. I stride to the back terminal, hands loose at my sides.
Garrus looms behind me, arms folded, eyes scanning. People part around us. They can smell the storm coming.
I slide into the cracked chair and start typing—not polite. Cocky. Brash. My fingers drop into the faulty console like they own it. The system is old, unstable—my kind of hack.
“Busy night, huh?” I murmur to stimulate the scanner.
Before I get a chance to probe deeper, a sudden hiss cuts through the din, louder than any bassline.
A tall figure steps out from the shadows: razor-shined boots, code-clean uniform, attitude dripping like cheap perfume. A corporate merc—top-tier. Paid by Malmount, I recognize it in the cruelty in his eyes.
He draws in a cold whisper: “I’d say good to see you, Sydney, but your father paid for your silence—not your rescue.”
My heart flips. I throw a flash cartridge from my boot—an explosive scarlet bloom, bright as a nova—to disorient him. I dive to the console. Ringing in the ears, blue sparks dancing across my vision, but I don’t hesitate.
Garrus lunges from behind the bar, roaring like some ancient demon. He slams into two mercs who bolt from behind plexi-screens. Splintered blood, torn armor—skin meets scale in a brutal ballet. The den erupts: curses, gunshots, the scream of pain.
I roll to the console, keys raining. I don’t have time for a full decrypt. I smash the emergency trigger, the force-purge searing the relay chip in a blast of cobalt flame. The console sparks, hissing out the signal like it's dying. One problem solved—dozens remain in ghost stations around the galaxy.
My shoulder ignites—burning hot pain. I cry out, but the fire helps ignite my adrenaline. Finger-surfs across patched circuits, relocating the kill code so the data remains shredded. Then I yank back and grab my blade.
The firefight escalates. Garrus shouts a guttural command, his claws shredding merc shields like paper. The den rocks as bodies slide across broken barstools. Bullets ping against stained metal walls. Someone whimpers—it echoes like a grudge.
We break out into the neon pavement. I'm bleeding, shaking. Garrus limps, claws stained crimson. The mercs? None are left standing. Silence crashes around us when we step outside.
My vision swims. I lean into a crate, pads of my fingers burning against rough wood. The adrenaline fizzles, replaced by blood pounding and fear that tastes like copper.
“That was the worst”—my voice is a gasp—“date I’ve ever been on.”
