2.28.41 (continued)
She wasn’t from around here, that armor. It looked ancient, defeated, but serviceable depending on where you were from. Not all civilizations out there had been touched by the Systems Alliance, and I suspected her people were one of them. It shouldn’t have mattered. It didn’t matter.
Something else was there, not around her, within her. Beneath the composure, the stillness, the emotionless lock of those emerald eyes on mine. A single faint scream. Long, agonizing, drawn out. A woman’s crying plea, or a banshee’s call. I knew that sound. I knew it the way you know a smell from a place you’ve tried to forget. Cold. Familiar in a way I didn’t want it to be. In a way that made me want to step forward and step back at the same time.
It couldn’t be the same thing. It wasn’t possible. Too much was happening too fast and I needed to stop—I needed to not be thinking about this right now.
As she came within striking range, she lunged at me with a powerful upwards swing of her worn sword. I stopped and brought my blade in defense, blocking her attack. She had more force behind the blow than I had anticipated, but I knew this fight was going to be over quickly. With the block, I jumped backward, knelt down, then stepped forward and started a thrust that should have ended the encounter... But before I could land the fatal stroke, her weight shifted, I felt her hand close around my wrist and pull me to my side. The grip, her claws dug painfully into my arm as she held me there for a second. Taking advantage of the hold on my sword being weakened, she smashed her fist against my sword hand, knocked the blade out of my grasp and onto the steel floor below. Her stature alone outclassed mine, her strength stronger, and she clearly wasn’t as slow as her size would suggest. Still holding my wrist in a death grip, she quickly stepped back, pivoting, and flung me away, but I was able to catch myself and land on my feet a bit away from her. I turned around with nothing but empty hands.
My mind raced. Hardly anyone had ever disarmed me with pure martial skill. Advanced tech, Templar gifts, sure, but this was different. Raw, practiced, and faster than I could process. And though I'd used more advanced technology or harnessed my other abilities to defeat teams of armed soldiers in times past, it had been months since I had been here and had never needed them since.
She abruptly threw the sword aside as I faced her. It clanged against the metal floor and reverberated around the room. She took a step back, shifting slightly into it with one leg and her eyes fixed on me. Her calm composed presence transformed into a snarling scowl laced with an underlying eagerness that matched her large feline deportment that was all too familiar... Bloodtiger. Leaning forward ever so slightly, she reached back to her side, hooking her arm like she was about to deliver a strong underhand pitch.
An ancient spark ignited deep within me, setting my gut ablaze. This wasn’t the harmless pirate or rogue mercenary I’d pegged her for. Her arm drew back, and violet motes of power flickered into existence in the stale cargo-hold air, swirling into a pulsing orb that flared between her fingers.
“Don’t even,” I snarled, feet planting wide. My red-and-white fur bristled, old energies I’d locked away for months clamoring at the edges of my mind. I’d sworn off my own gifts—too dangerous, too likely to unleash the darker side I’d spent all my time here on Tier burying. But necessity calls. This was about to become life or death. In all my years with the Systems Alliance—and under Sun Jin’s ruthless puppeteering—I’d only sparred with a few of our kind. She was a Templar. Tonight, I was face to face with my equal.
Our eyes met: hers a razor-bright emerald blade, daring me to guess her secrets. What arcane paths had she walked? What cosmic currents did she command to mete out her brand of justice? Show me now.
She snarled back, then underhand-pitched the crackling violet sphere across the floor. It shrieked like a wounded beast, gouging a trench through steel plating, an inferno raging in its wake. My muscles recoiled with reflexive dread—then snapped into action. In one fluid motion I swept my sword arm overhead, yanked the sheathed katana from across my back, and unleashed a ferocious downward arc. The blade met the plasma-like orb with a high-pitched crack, bisecting it in a thunderous blast that tore a jagged hole in the bulkhead, spewing searing energy across the deck like molten wrath.
I inhaled the metallic tang of scorched steel and readjusted my sight. I raised the katana into a classic ready stance, blade tip resting in the air right between us. Her lips curled in an amused, almost reverent smile—still in complete control, eager for the next strike.
“You,” she said. First words. “How did you do that?”
“Just like you,” I answered quietly.
“Just like you.” She let the words settle in the air between us, tasting them, then shivered—a single, involuntary tremor that moved through her like a current.
I kept my eyes on her. Something was happening.
“I can feel it. What is this?” Her eyelids dropped shut. Her arms hung loose at her sides. She tilted her chin up slowly, tendons pulling taut in her throat, and let out a low groan that seemed to come from somewhere deep and involuntary.
Then I felt it—a ripple moving through me, outward from my sternum, like the rings that spread from a stone breaking the surface of still water. Faint. Rhythmic. Hers. I stiffened. This was not something done to me by a blade or a fist. This reached inside, past muscle and bone, past anything I had a word for. I had never felt anything like it.
“There is something inside of you.” Her voice dropped to just above a whisper. “The darkness. From the other place.” A slow exhale through parted lips. “It’s so strong in you. It has taken hold—and yet you are still pushing back against it.” Her eyes opened and found mine, and the look in them was not quite hunger, not quite reverence, but something uncomfortably close to both. “You’re right. Just like me.” She leaned forward a fraction and pressed her fist against her chest, over her heart, and the groan she let out was raw and unguarded. “But you’re different. You’re not just another one of his pawns.”
My grip tightened. What did she know? How much?
“It’s taken me over too.” The fist pressed harder, knuckles whitening against her sternum. “I can feel it—cold, and dark, and slow, like a hand closing around something it means to keep.” A short, quiet laugh escaped her, humorless and private. “And I’m still not sure if I hate it.” She let the silence hold for a moment. “I’ve been alone out here a long time. It’s something, finally meeting another one touched by his power.”
I lowered my sword an inch. Then raised it again. She could be lying. She had every reason to lie—I was armed, she was trying to get inside my head, and I had no reason to trust a word out of her mouth. But the tremor that had moved through her when our energies met—that wasn’t performance. I knew what that felt like from the inside.
“What’s your name,” she asked, but the way her lips catch on the word made it a dare, not a question.
My eyes stay locked on hers. I can’t look away, even though I want to. “Forza… Ninetails.” I give her the truth, because lying to someone like this would be like lying to a mirror. “You?”
She tiped her head, gave me a look I would call coy if it wasn’t so wolfish. “Kiara… Quall, prin—” and she almost said princess, I know she did, but she bit it off. There was an old royalty to her, a way she holds herself like the only real crown is the hunger in her eyes. It makes me feel both smaller.
But her words smear together in my mind. None of it matters, not really, not compared to the question that’s been keeping me up at night, that’s been driving my body through these endless drills and my mind through a forest of knives every time I try to sleep: “Where did this darkness come from?” It comes out sharper than I want, all the control I’ve been holding onto snapped like a dry twig. “It wasn’t always there. It’s only been a few months and it’s getting worse and I…“ I couldn’t finish, because I could hear the growl in my own throat, feel the spit in my mouth like I’m about to bite. It’s feral and ugly, and I hate it, and I hate that she sees it.
I forced myself to start over, lower my voice. “You have this too? How long?”
She didn’t blink, didn’t flinch. Just stands there, arms loose, like she’s waiting for me to make the next move. “You already know where this came from. You know his name.” The way she said it, like a priest reciting a taboo, made my skin crawl.
“…Jethro.” Our voices overlap, perfect unison, a liturgical echo. The sound hangs between us like smoke. My left hand twitches. I remember the way a cold glass felt recently, the way Shiinx’s fur brushed against my cheek. I remember watching my own hand as it crushed a bird’s neck last month in a split moment where I had lost control during a daydream, the way the bones gave quietly, like green sticks underfoot. I know the voice she’s talking about. I know it intimately.
There was another long pause, and Kiara shook her head. For an instant, I see something in her face. She dropped into a stance that was neither martial nor predatory, but ceremonial, like a temple ritual about to go wrong. She starts closing the distance, slow and deliberate. The blade in her hand is gone, but her hands are claws now, fingers bent at odd angles, trembling with restrained force.
“I don’t know how you’ve been able to resist,” she said, and her voice wobbles just a little, like she’s not sure if she wants to laugh or scream. “But I’ll help you find your way, Forza.”
Shiinx told me when she found me, I was an animal. She says I was naked, hunting and eating wildlife raw. But here is Kiara. Months, maybe years, into her own infection. Her voice is steady, her motions precise, her words a surgeon’s scalpel. How was she so much more in control? Maybe it’s because she let go sooner. Maybe it’s because she never tried to be anything but the monster she became. Maybe it’s just that I’m still pretending this isn’t going to consume me. I see the way her pupils dilate, tracking every breath I take. I see the hungry glint, the razor-edge of self-destruction in her posture. Maybe this is what I’ll look like in six months.
There’s a sound from the corridor, something shifting, something metallic, but neither of us look away. The world outside could burn and we would still be locked here.
My grip tightened on the sword. She notices, and her eyes flicker with something like joy.
“You’re not going to kill me,” she said,
“No,” I agree, “but I don’t have to lose to you, either.”
She advances again, a half-step at a time, not threatening but inevitable. She wants me to attack first. She wants me to lose control.
“I can help you,” she murmured. “You don’t have to be afraid.”
“You don’t know me,” I snapped back.
“Yes, I do. I know what it’s like to wake up every morning and feel the thing inside you getting stronger. I know what it’s like to see your reflection and wonder when it’ll start talking back.” She pauses, and I see for the first time that she’s shaking, just a little, just in the fingertips. “That’s why you’re here, Forza. Because you’re running out of time, and you know it.”
I wanted to tell her to fuck off, to go back to whatever pit she crawled out of, but I can’t. Because she’s right. Because if we trade places, I might be the one with my claws out and the sick smile, hunting for myself in someone else’s eyes.
Each bare footfall rang against the cold steel like a slow drumbeat. With every step she took toward me, something surfaced—a flash of the living room, dark and slick, the broken shapes of animals, my own laughter echoing back at me from somewhere I didn’t recognize. I swallowed hard. The screaming. The wet sound of it. The way it hadn’t bothered me at all. I could still taste it, if I let myself. I didn’t let myself. What cruel mirror is this?
My mind reels with doubt. Before I can steady myself, she’s there—so close—knocking my blade aside as I lunge. The shock of her forearm slamming into my chest sends me skidding across the cold metal floor. I taste blood at the back of my throat and hear my other sword clatter away. Dazed, I roll to a stop, my back burning against the smooth surface. Fingers trembling, I reach for the knife strapped to my belt.
“Come with me, Forza,” she purrs, her arms opening to their sides invitingly. “We could do such wonderful, horrible things together.”
My chest tightens. Part of me aches to believe her, that together we could unlock the darkness I’ve only glimpsed in nightmares. It’s the only thing that ever made me feel unstoppable. My heart pounds as hope flares. Maybe this is my chance to master that raw power - but this dangerous chain of thoughts opened a door, just for a moment, and something clawed its way through. His wet forehead pressed to mine, black teeth dripping blood and spite. His voice, rough with rage: “Go back to sleep!” I shudder, coming back to my senses.
“Fuck,” I gasp, eyes snapping open. Panic surges. I can’t let him take me again.
“What do you say, Forza? What have you found here? What is keeping you back? I’ve lost everything, and now this is all I’ve got left.”
Her words echo in my ears as my fist tightens around the knife’s hilt. Every instinct screams to yield but another, quieter voice warns me she’s not herself, that this path only leads to ruin.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I mutter, voice low but trembling. “You’re not in control. I can see it.” I stay pressed to the floor, bracing for her next move.
Her laughter is cold. “If that’s your answer, so be it!” In an instant, she lunges, springing into the air again with furious speed.
Fear and defiance collide in my chest. “I won’t let you drag me back there!” I roar, scrambling aside. With trembling certainty, I flick the knife from my grip into the air, then roll away just as she hurtles down upon me.
She hit the ground hard, catching herself on her hands and knees. A groan tore out of her. Blood was already soaking through from the chest wound, dark and fast. The knife had gone in just below the ribs.
I closed the distance carefully and dropped to one knee beside her. “Kiara.” I didn’t have anything else. Before I could register what she was doing, her supporting hand began dragging itself toward the handle. I got my hand there first, wedging it between hers and the hilt. “What are you doing? You want to bleed out?” She turned her eyes on me, and the heat in them was still there, still furious. I couldn’t tell if she was still fighting me or fighting something else entirely.
I let out a guttural sigh and ducked my chin. “How the hell did we end up here? Whose sick game is this?”
Her hand, the one I’d just blocked, slithered around to snatch my wrist, her claws gouging crescent craters through my fur again. The pain punched the air clean out of me, my throat locking around nothing. She yanked me forward with terrifying ease, muscles rippling like steel cables, then with a savage tug she wrenched the blade from her own chest. A geyser of dark scarlet arced across the floor, splattering between us. More blood followed, my blood, as the cold steel tip burrowed into my abdomen. We were locked in deadly stalemate: her grip clamped my wrist, my fingers locked on hers, and the knife quivered against my skin.
Pain exploded through me. I curled backward onto my butt and slammed my foot into her gut, a frantic shove, but she didn’t budge. Rising onto her knees, she dragged the blade free again, still holding my wrist. Helplessness crashed over me. What was I supposed to do!
With a wild roar she lunged, her knees crushing into my chest, pinning me to the ground. My vision blurred; breath rattled free in my throat. She poised the blade above me, ready to plunge. Instinct flared. I threw my free hand upward, wrapping around the blade. The metal bit through flesh with a wet pop, fire lancing up my palm, but I clamped down, refusing to give up this slender thread of hope.
She snarled, sacrificed my other arm’s hold to gain leverage, and both our hands scrambled over the knife. Her grip slammed heavy; mine caught the edge, slicing deep. We teetered, knife poised over the new wound in my gut.
Her breath was ragged now, each exhale a crack in her strength. “Breathe… child,” she rasped, voice raw as crushed gravel. She was bleeding out, iron and sweat staining her clothes. “Head down… go to sleep.”
I forced myself to resist, teeth grinding, eyes squeezed shut against the world’s burning light. A single thought pierced the haze: I’d been here before. The same torture chamber of my mind, the same twisted scenario. Except back then the tables had been turned in my favor. Once, no one could stop me. My power had been boundless; my orange-glowing Varunium Steel swords, once used by Kaisara herself, had felt as though they could slice through the very fabric of space and time. Clad in Sun Jin’s advanced prototype armor, I’d been untouchable. Now I stood stripped of every advantage, vulnerable as a newborn child, though at least the drugs could no longer ravage my mind.
Caisteal: where it all happened, a planet of grasslands ice, and scattered wooden cottage farming villages. In one of those village homes I’d crouched over a soldier’s broken body, his uniform once a symbol of authority. The stench of sweat and fear still clung to my nostrils. My knife… cold and unforgiving… had plunged deep into his thigh. He screamed, joints shaking as he struggled beneath me, but my grip was iron. Then, with a swift flick of my wrist, I drew my sword and drove it down into his chest. I closed my eyes, imagined the blade cleaving his heart, and when I opened them again his glare was vacant, life seeping out in a dark, oily stain across the floorboards.
Around us, bodies, militiamen, soldiers, women and children who’d taken shelter, lay twisted in death. Every weapon aimed at me had been met with savage precision; every threat eradicated. Even the innocents hadn’t survived. In that moment there’d been no distinction, only the relentless urge to kill. And then something fractured inside me. The drug cocktail they’d forced into my veins lost its hold. I… woke up. Slumped atop a corpse, tears mingling with blood and the coarse tufts of my fur. I… I scanned the room, still dizzy, but awake enough to see, to comprehend, and feel.
Back then, under Sun Jin’s manipulations, I’d been almost “normal.” My pelt had been muted yellow and white, not the mottled crimson-and-umber that now stained every strand. The beast, Jethro, was not yet here. I had not yet become one of his Bloodtigers, but the Sun Jin Empire had laid the groundwork. They gave me the memories of these horrid events that would one day be Jethro’s fuel. Kiara had told me she felt the same infection, that we were both victims of the dark force. I still didn’t recall the moment Jethro was born inside me, but I knew the empire had started the chain of events for when he was awake awaken, chaining me to his bloodlust.
I heard the door splinter, and it exploded inward as two Sun Jin troopers charged in, rifles raised and trained on my heaving form. Behind me, the room’s walls dripped with the aftermath of my slaughter. My vision blurred with guilt and pain as I lifted my head to face them. Before I could muster any form of helpless defense, their tranquilizer darts sank into my flesh. First the clang of metal on wood in that lonely cabin, then the searing stab of my knife in Kiara’s hands piercing my stomach. My hand flew to the wound, warm blood trickling between my fingers, the taste of iron sharp on my tongue. I tried to stifle a moan, but agony ripped through me, and I realized I was dying.
I refuse to die. Not like this. Not here. I made my decision - I released the blade, letting it plunge deeper into my gut. Fire lanced through my veins, but I needed both hands free; raw strength against her was suicide. Heart pounding, I clenched a fist and smashed upward into her throat. Muscle gave way with a sickening crack, her howl rattling the air as she lurched backward, taking the knife with her, a splash of blood flying from my stomach. Seizing the moment, I jerked my pinned leg loose, drove my knee into the torn wound in her chest, and felt hot blood spurt against my thigh.
Before she could recover, I launched myself toward my straight sword lying just out of reach. Time stretched and snapped. I dove, snatched the hilt in one hand, planted the other, and flipped back to my feet, facing away, just as I planned. With a second somersault, I heaved the sword behind me like a spear. The steel shaped an arc and buried itself in Kiara’s thigh, bursting through the other side. She thundered in agony, her leg buckling beneath her so hard she collapsed onto her chest.
Gasping, I steadied myself across the room. My vision swam with pain and adrenaline, a rush I hadn’t felt in months. Warmth flooded my senses as I pressed my other hand against my stomach wounds.
Kiara rolled to her side and clawed at my thrown sword’s hilt, dragging her blood-slick fingers across cold metal. But my hand slammed onto it too, and with a single brutal tug, I wrenched the steel from her quivering leg. She sagged to the floor, crimson blossom spreading around her, each breath a harsh rasp.
“Down, kitty,” I snarled, stepping backward to keep her in sight, collecting my second sword. I wiped the spray of blood from my face, savoring the heat of her fury. She tried to rise but her bruised throat and wounds betrayed her. Her body pitched forward, chest hitting the ground with a thud.
“You better kill me,” she growled, every word a tremor of pain. “You’ll wish you had.”
The laugh came out wrong, more like a bark, and I tasted blood at the back of my throat. “Maybe, but not until I learn what twisted your mind.” Coughing blood, I knelt beside Rafaya’s motionless body. Her face, frozen in shock, met my eyes. I pressed a hand to her shoulder and whispered a silent regret.
Rising, I drew trembling breaths and swept the battle-scarred room with a guttural sigh. Then I stepped toward the cursed doorway where this nightmare started. In its looming shadow, Kiara’s claws gouged steel as she tried to pull herself towards me, fury burning in her eyes as curses tore from her throat.
What a disaster. Blood everywhere, the metallic taste of it thick in the air, mixing with the chemical haze of fried circuits and charred insulation. I stagger to my feet, clutching my side, the wound already gummy with half-clotted blood and sticky bits of my own fur. The floor is slick beneath my boots, made treacherous by the carnage Kiara and I have left behind. The room bears the record of our battle: gouges from claws, swaths of arterial spatter, glistening flecks of bone and tissue. The only thing louder than my gasping breath is the silence of the dead. Chambers’ and Rafaya’s bodies lie where they fell, no time for an elegy now, no time to even close their eyes. I recalled checking on her before I left, a final glimpse of Rafaya’s open, staring gaze and felt a twitch of regret, then forced my attention back to my escape.
Sun Jin Imperial recovery teams would be here any minute. Protocol demanded I extract with all due speed, but my hands are shaking so hard I could barely grip the side to hold back the bleeding. There was nothing I could do about the bodies. There was no point in hiding them, no time to concoct a story or erase the evidence. Maybe it’s better this way. Let Sun Jin know exactly what they’re up against. With Kiara probably also attempting a lifesaving recovery of her own, they’d have a nice surprise when they arrive.
This was supposed to be simple recon. A civilian hauler. No opposition. So where did she come from? The only thing that made sense was that she’d engineered the crash herself. This was an ambush. A trap. And I’d walked right into it. Was it just to feed the hunger? Or was I the target all along?
Survive. My boots hit raw dirt and I sucked in a breath that tasted like smoke and copper. Behind me, something in the wreckage groaned and shifted. I didn’t look back. Tree line. Get to the tree line. My hand was still pressed hard against my side, blood seeping warm and steady between my fingers as I forced myself into a run, each footfall a controlled decision against the pull of my wounds. Thermal imaging. If they had it, I was already dead. I ran anyway.
—
The metallic clangs resonated throughout the wreckage of the broken vessel, reverberating in an ominous cacophony of terror as four Sun Jin Imperial soldiers descended from above. Their flashlights guided their rifles as they took measured steps down the corridors of destruction, until they rounded a corner and beheld her.
She stood before them; her blonde hair matted in blood and sweat, her fur coated in crimson and dripping onto a growing pool of blood beneath her feet, her balled left fist crashing against the bulkhead once more while she held tight onto her longsword glinting under the light, its temper a reflection of hers. Her eyes - green, unblinking - found the face of the lead soldier and stayed there. Their orders rang out, overlapping one another, ordering her to kneel, ordering her to identify herself, but she remained standing tall without flinching. Her eyes stared from behind the loose hair hanging in front of her face. Her breathing was steady through her flaring nostrils; her pupils narrowing in defiance. Another slam of her fist against the metal. And another. And another.
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