Page 16 of Ravaged By the Reaper
Cute.
I plant one boot into the floor, slam the point of Bloodfont’s hook between the seams, andpull. Screeching metal peels like skin. Sparks fly. My muscles rip through the pain, bone spurs biting into my own armor as I strain—rip,tear,break.
The door crashes inward. Alarms redouble, now flashing evacuation tones.
The floor vibrates beneath me—drones.
A squad of skittering defense units drops from ceiling rails. Gleaming black shells, jointed legs, barrel-like plasma mouths. They hiss in tandem, targeting arrays glowing.
“Pathetic toys.”
I rush them.
Two fire. Blue bolts slash across my shoulder and thigh, searing flesh. I don’t care. Ineedher. I spin Bloodfont in an arc—metal whines against metal—CLANG. One drone splits in half, sparking viscera of cables.
I leap onto the second, slamming the scythe down through its top plating, yanking free a mess of wires. Its legs twitch. I stomp once, crush the chassis.
The third gets a shot off—point-blank into my side. Pain flares like a sunburst. I snarl, grabbing its leg mid-lunge, then swing it like a club into the wall. It shatters. Bits scatter like broken teeth.
I pant—clawed hands smoking, armor cracked. My body screams to stop.
But Idon’t stop.
She’s screaming too.
Her pain—it’s laced into the very air now, thick and wet and shaking the walls around me.
Another bulkhead looms. This one is thicker, reinforced. “Secure Containment,” the text reads, in Coalition dialect. Final level.
I slam both fists into the panel. Nothing.
I roar, voice raw, primal. My claws gouge into the steel. I stab Bloodfont into the edge and wrench it downward. Sparks rain like fireflies. I drag the hook across the seam, sawing metal from the wall itself.
My breath is fire now. My pulse deafens me. My vision swims, not from pain, butrage.
Somewhere on the other side of this wall—she screams.
It’s not just pain. It’s terror.
And that sound—thatscream—is mine now. Branded into the deepest part of me.
“I’m coming!” I bellow, punching the wall.
“I swear on the Void, they’ll all die for this!”
Her name—whatever it is—rises in my throat like thunder, shapeless, wild. I shout it anyway.
“YOU!”
The hallway floods with emergency locks. Red lights. The floor panels lift, trying to trap me.
Too slow.
I leap the trap, slamming my fist into the wall-mounted override console. Sparks spray across my cheek. The machine hisses, and the bulkhead stutters.
Through the crack, I hear it again—her cry. Softer now. Strained. But there.
I rip the scythe free and prepare to kill whoever touches her.
