Dust tasted of copper and burnt plastic.
Underneath the rubble of Sector Gamma, a low hum vibrated through the floorboards, rattling Lavidacus’s teeth.
Jax was gone.
Only a pile of fine, glittering blue ash remained where his scout partner had stood a second ago.
Lavidacus pressed his spine flat against the rusted chassis of a giant mainframe computer, his lungs burning as he held his breath.
Squeezing his eyes shut, he forced his racing heartbeat down, counting the seconds between his shallow inhalations.
Cold sweat beaded on his forehead, mixing with the dark grime of the wasteland.
A low, vibrating whistle echoed through the dark corridor, a sound that made his stomach twist into a tight knot.
They had come to this forgotten sector looking for a spark-core, a rare piece of pre-collapse tech that could stabilize Lavidacus’s flickering soul.
Jax had found it first, holding up the vacuum tube with a triumphant grin.
Then, the ceiling had buckled.
A single thread of shimmering, violet light had descended like a spider’s silk.
Jax didn’t even have time to scream.
Instantaneous destruction followed as the light touched his shoulder, his flesh, clothes, and the metal around him dissolving into that terrible, silent blue ash.
Lavidacus had watched it happen in a fraction of a second, his body freezing as his partner's eyes went wide and then simply ceased to exist.
Nothing remained of the man who had shared his rations just an hour ago.
Grief tried to pierce through his shock, but Lavidacus ruthlessly crushed it.
He needed to survive, and survival meant total, absolute focus.
This was Sector Gamma, or what was left of it after the third wave of the extra-dimensional invasion.
Ruin lay everywhere, a graveyard of ancient 1980s technology cluttering the year 3096.
Flickering green monochrome monitors cast eerie, sickly light against the cracked concrete walls.
Heavy copper cables hung from the ceiling like dead vines, dripping stagnant water onto the debris below.
People called this the future, but to Lavidacus, it was just a slow, grinding execution of the human race.
When the Dimensional Weavers first breached the spatial barrier, their anomalous fields instantly fried every advanced quantum processor on the planet.
Humanity had to regress to survive, digging up ancient silicon, robust analog circuits, and heavy magnetic tapes that could withstand the spatial distortions.
Years of scavenging this junk had taught him how to survive, trading vacuum tubes for nutrient paste.
Lavidacus gripped his weapon, a heavy, modified slug-thrower, until his knuckles turned bone-white.
Anguish and terror wanted to claw their way out of his throat, but he swallowed them down.
Instead, a cold, crystalline fury settled deep within his chest, freezing his emotions into a sharp tool.
Memories of his sister’s face flashed behind his eyelids, another soul lost to the eternal war because he hadn't been strong enough.
Losing Jax was just another log on the fire, another brutal reminder of his own pathetic weakness.
He swore, right then, that he would never let himself be helpless again, no matter the cost to his remaining humanity.
Suddenly, the temperature in the room plummeted, turning his breath into white plumes of mist.
Violet light, shimmering and cold, bled through the cracks of the mainframe chassis.
A translucent ribbon of energy drifted into his line of sight, twisting like an eel in water.
Instinct screamed at him to run, but his legs remained locked in place until the perfect microsecond.
Lavidacus threw himself sideways, diving over a pile of discarded floppy disks and plastic casings.
Behind him, the heavy iron chassis of the mainframe vanished without a sound.
No noise accompanied the destruction, just a soft, sickening pop as the solid metal was dissolved into a handful of glittering blue ash.
His breath hitched in his throat as he rolled to his feet behind a stack of rusted metal desks.
Another hum rattled the floorboards, closer this time.
Lavidacus pressed his back harder against the metal desks, his eyes scanning the pitch-black warehouse.
Shadows stretched and distorted as the violet glow grew brighter, illuminating the towering rows of steel shelves.
Rows of ancient plastic keyboards, heavy CRT monitors, and reels of magnetic tape sat on the shelves like silent spectators.
A sudden, sharp pop echoed from the left.
Concrete dust poured down in a thick curtain, blinding him.
Through the gray haze, a second tendril of violet energy snaked toward his hiding spot.
It moved with a terrifying, jerky motion, snapping from one point in space to another without covering the distance between.
Lavidacus knew he couldn't dodge this with normal human reflexes.
He had no choice.
Mentally, he reached deep into his chest, tapping the cold, sleeping ember of his soul-core.
A faint, blue holographic screen flashed in his mind’s eye.
He didn't hesitate, slamming his mental focus onto the command to activate his multiplier.
Instantly, his soul-core flared with a violent, white-hot light.
Every nerve ending screamed in protest as his perception of time stretched, slowing the falling dust motes to a crawl.
Slow-motion dust particles drifted in the air, illuminated by the shifting violet light.
His muscles tightened to the point of tearing as the ten-fold physical enhancement kicked in.
Lavidacus launched himself forward, pushing off the concrete floor with enough force to crack the stone.
Violent acceleration whipped the air against his face, tearing his skin and forcing his eyes to water.
Behind him, the stack of metal desks dissolved into blue ash, the tendril missing his heels by a mere fraction of an inch.
He crashed onto the hard floor several yards away, tumbling through a pile of shattered plastic casings.
Pain exploded in his shoulder and ribs, a dull, throbbing ache that told him he had pushed his unrefined body too far.
He forced himself to rise, his limbs trembling under the backlash of the enhancement.
His holographic screen in his mind flickered and faded, leaving him gasping for air.
Using the enhancement even for a few seconds had drained nearly half of his meager soul-force.
Physical limitations held him back; his body was too weak, too impure to handle the raw power of the multiplier.
He needed to refine his body, to forge his soul into something stronger, if he ever wanted to use the true potential of his cheat.
But first, he had to survive the next five minutes.
Sliding his hand down to his waist, he felt the heavy, blocky shape of his soul-forge activator.
Deep within his chest, his soul-core flickered like a dying candle.
It was a weak, unrefined spark, barely enough to register on any standard military gauge.
Yet, nested deep inside that spark was his secret weapon—the 10000x Enhancement interface.
Right now, his low rank limited the system to a mere ten-fold multiplier.
Ten times physical refinement was still a massive burden.
Each moment he drew upon the power, his veins felt like they were filled with liquid fire, threatening to tear his muscles from his bones.
For now, he had to rely on his physical wits and his salvage.
Heavy dial-knobs on his hip unit rattled as he adjusted the frequency.
Clicking the power switch, he activated his improvised signal jammer, a device cobbled together from an old personal cassette player and a vacuum tube.
Red LED bulbs on the jammer's interface flickered weakly, struggling to stay lit against the heavy interference.
This jammer was his only shield, a piece of retrofitted tech meant to mimic the spatial frequency of the Weavers.
Outside his makeshift shelter, the air hissed.
It sounded like water hitting a white-hot skillet.
Slowly, the Whisper Weaver drifted through the ruins, its body a cluster of shifting geometric planes.
Every step it took—or rather, every spatial jump it made—distorted the reality around it.
Lavidacus stared at the small analog dial on his wrist, his eyes burning.
If the frequency held, the creature would pass right by him, blind to his life signature.
A harsh spark suddenly spat from the jammer's casing, stinging his knuckles.
Smell of ozone and burning copper wire filled his nostrils.
As the Whisper Weaver phases through the cracked wall, its form solidifying, Lavidacus realizes his rusty 1980s-era signal jammer, cobbled together from salvaged parts, has failed, leaving him completely exposed and without a single escape route.