Page 11 of Ravaged By the Reaper
“This—” he says softly, “is progress.”
I swallow back the rest of my sanity. My lungs feel stolen. The world tilts and I collapse back, limp. The walls vanish. I don’t know how long I’ve been held at the brink, balancing on memory’s fractured edge.
But I feel it still. The promise of him defying the wreckage. The tether.
I hang on.
Between the scraping agony and the echoing void in my head, a spark: somethingnewflickers through the haze.
Gray metal dissolves, pain pulses, and suddenly—there he is.
A warrior made of nightmares and fury, drenched in crimson. Not a man. A force.
He detonates through the guards like they’re straw dummies—bones exploding, plasma sprays, his roar tears through the static ringing in my ears. I don’t recognize him, but every molecule of me responds. My breath catches on broken bone air.
He grips a curved blade chained to his hand, slashing through armor like it’s nothing—like butter on hot iron. Blood arcs in silver droplets, suspended in the strobe of overhead lights and red alarms. It's violent and unearthly—and impossible. Not a memory. A vision. Or hallucination. Or a warning.
My throat goes dry. My skin burns with heat echoing inside me.
The octopus thing flickers. Tendrils retreat for a heartbeat, as if scared. The creature pulses and twitches, like it's seen something itknows.
That tiny hesitation tells me it's not just technology. It’s afraid.
I jerk my head toward the wall. Malem's shadow is still there, calm as ice. His face is impassive, but his fingers twitch in the air. He's watched the flicker too, but he's not acknowledging it. Like he’s training me to break…and panics at the shatter.
My mouth tastes like ash and adrenaline. I swallow.
“Was that…” I croak.
Malem’s eyes narrow. He steps forward, gaze cold. “A glitch.”
“No.” My voice is louder. “Not a glitch.”
The creature quivers, half-detached. The room thuds with the pulse of quiet alarms. I can smell ozone, metal, betrayal.
“Explain what just happened,” I manage, head resting against the table, heart pounding its own brutal rhythm.
He tilts his head. For the first time, his expression thaws, indecipherable. “It’s adaptation. The extractor is reading more than memory. Things… current.”
I stare. My pulse flutters. Hope slams into me like a hammer.
“You mean… it recognized something? Not from me?”
He brushes a strand of hair off my temple—too gentle for comfort. “Something is targeting you.”
All the training, the grace, the armor in my bones—it shatters. Dread cracks me, low and fierce. If they’re targetingme… someone’s coming. Someone who cares. Someone whoseesme beyond the Companion mask.
My breath catches again. I breathe through numb lips. “Is that... good?”
He doesn’t step away. His dark eyes flick to the extractor, then back to me. "That depends on who's coming."
The image of him—him, the red beast— is etched on the retina of my mind. He wasn’t there before. My mind didn’t conjure him.
He’s real. And he's coming.
I don’t know how…but something deep inside me knows.
I open my eyes. My voice is a whisper: “I need to believe that.”
