A metallic click echoed through the throne room, followed by the whirring hum of Kresten’s mech. Its weapons array locked onto Cenza with cold, humming menace. Her earlier triumph curdled into a bitter ash in her mouth. This wasn’t a partnership; it was a prelude to her end. “The Alpha blood is secured,” Kresten’s voice, filtered through the mech's comms, was devoid of any warmth. “Our truce, Cenza, was conditional. You served your purpose.” The mech's arm, thick with armored plating, extended, not to strike, but to reveal a concealed compartment in its forearm. From within, it deployed a compact, intricate device. It was a scaled-down version of the drain blueprint Cenza had seen in Kresten’s penthouse, its core burning with a sickly green illumination. Cables, fine as spider silk yet clearly engineered for immense stress, writhed from its base. “Get her.” Kresten’s command was sharp. Two of his private guards, clad in sleek, dark armor, stepped out from behind the chassis and advanced on Cenza with practiced precision. They carried what looked like heavy-duty restraints, humming faintly. Cenza snarled, dark tendrils of power already coiling around her fists, but the sheer number of terrified shifters pressing in on her, desperate to avoid Kresten’s mech, made movement difficult. The guards moved fast, trained to suppress supernatural resistance. Before she could unleash a focused blast, thick, duranium clamps snapped around her wrists, followed by a second pair around her ankles. They tightened with an uncomfortable pressure, humming with a dampening field that immediately dulled the keen edge of her magic. “A portable extraction unit,” Kresten explained, his voice flat as the guards dragged her toward the rig. “Far more efficient than waiting for you to return to my estate. Especially now that your little bone-fox has pilfered one of my stabilization cores.” Snare, who had been perched on Cenza’s shoulder, let out a low growl, a rumble of rattling bone. He watched the enforcers with an unblinking, feral intensity, his newly integrated core pulsing faintly within his ribcage. Bile surged in Cenza's throat as the guards hoisted her, bolting her wrists to the metal chassis. The cables snaked towards her, thin needles extending from their tips, seeking veins with predatory intelligence. “You said the bond was biological,” Cenza spat, her voice tight with fury as the first needle pierced her skin, a cold invasion that struck her forearm with raw, searing agony. “An expedient lie,” Kresten stated, the mech’s head tilting slightly, as if observing a fascinating specimen. “The ‘fated bond’ you experienced was nothing more than a synthetic parasite, engineered by my syndicate. It was designed to latch onto the Sunken Anvil’s vessel, to track its movements, and to provide a consistent, if agonizing, conduit for extraction. Biological bonds are messy, Cenza. This… this is pure, engineered efficiency.” Another needle pierced her neck, and a searing heat spread through her veins. Her vision blurred at the edges, the world swaying. The artifact's magic, the very power that sustained her, writhed within her, screaming in protest as it was forcibly drawn toward the intake valve. “It’s also designed to kill you once the extraction is complete,” Kresten added, a cruel, final flourish to his confession. “A failsafe. We can’t have rogue vessels walking around, now can we?” Bramus, who had been huddled on the floor with his pack, listening to Kresten’s cold pronouncements, suddenly surged to his feet. His face was a mask of utter horror, not just for his own imminent demise, but for Cenza’s. His eyes, fixed on her bleeding black eyes and the draining apparatus, seemed to finally clear, seeing the full, brutal extent of Kresten’s inhumanity. “You… you monster!” Bramus roared, a pathetic, desperate attempt at an Alpha's fury. He moved with a clumsiness born of panic, throwing himself towards Kresten's mech, his hands forming claws, ready to tear into the metal that encased the human. Kresten didn't even flinch. The mech's arm barely moved, unleashing a focused kinetic pulse that struck Bramus squarely in the chest. The Alpha was lifted off his feet, flung across the throne room with the sickening crack of breaking bones, crashing into a pillar. He crumpled to the floor, barely conscious, blood trickling from his lips. His pack whimpered, clutching each other, too terrified to move. “Pathetic,” Kresten scoffed. “Always so predictable, shifters. A last, futile gasp.” The apparatus whined, a high-pitched screech that resonated deep in Cenza’s bones. The pain intensified, an internal rending as the artifact's magic was ripped from her very essence. Her vision swam as the glare from the console flared blindingly bright. Black blood, now almost pure liquid night, streamed from her eyes, down her cheeks, and onto the metallic restraints. Snare, his bone-form unnervingly still, had been watching. Unnoticed by Kresten or the guards, he detached from Cenza’s shoulder, a wraith of rattling bone. With an agility that belied his construct, he scaled the harvester unit, his claws finding purchase on the intricate latticework of its casing. He moved with purpose, a small, yet deadly, shadow against the core's harsh luminescence. He reached the top, a tiny sentinel hovering over the central conduit, the pulse of the dynamo thrumming beneath his paws. In his jaws, clutched tightly, was the capped syringe Cenza had used moments before. The vial, filled with Bramus's rich, crimson Alpha blood, pulsed with a faint, almost imperceptible light. Snare paused for a moment, his hollow eye sockets fixed on the unit's heart, then, with a decisive flick of his head, he dropped the vial. The glass shattered on impact, directly into the exposed synthetic matrix. Bramus's blood, thick with Alpha essence, mingled with the draining magical power, and the rig shrieked, sparking a catastrophic chain reaction.

Synthetic Parasite