The metallic rasp of Commander Vordis’s voice echoed across the plating. Nyros didn’t flinch. Kymora tracked the ceiling baffles toward the sealed archive hatch. Her fingers locked on the receiver of her sidearm. “Archive Sector 4,” she muttered, the words sharp. “He knows we’re here. We’re locked in.” Nyros pushed himself off the bulkhead, flexing fingers still numb from the retracted spurs. “He knows *I’m* here. You’re just collateral. Main hatches seal first during containment alerts, leaving access shafts under drone sweep. Protocol twelve.” He flicked a smear of black coolant from his sleeve. “The waste of resources on this kind of manhunt is frankly insulting.” Kymora checked the weapon's charge counter. “Insulting? They’re going to dissect you. And me, if I’m with you.” She glanced at the ruined Nighthusk, then back to Nyros, her expression unreadable. “What’s the play, ‘Virek’?” “The play, Kymora, is to disappear into the largest, most chaotic event currently underway. Something that would overwhelm even the Directorate’s surveillance.” Nyros tilted his head, listening. Distant sirens, muffled by reinforced walls, were beginning to wail from deeper within the Spire. “And there’s only one thing chaotic enough, if my data on Stratos Spire’s typical Tuesday schedule is accurate. The Fortnightly Reclamation Drill.” Kymora tilted her helmet down. “The Beast Hunt? They throw cadets into the waste zones as live bait. It’s suicide.” “Exactly,” Nyros said. “Three hundred recruits, a cordon of handlers, and an influx of scrub predators. Directorate sensors do not track individual transponders when raw biomass crowds the lower grids.” He nodded toward an exhaust grate set high in the plating behind a stack of fried data-cores. “Vent four dumps straight into processing dock nine, right above the staging skiffs.” Without another word, Kymora holstered her weapon and began scaling the shelving units, her movements fluid and silent. Nyros watched, a flicker of something akin to admiration in his usually bored gaze. He followed at a more leisurely pace, using a system of interlocking conduits and ventilation grates. His enhanced agility, a residual effect of the Rending Claws, made the climb almost trivial. He just preferred not to exert himself. They emerged into a humming, bustling section of the Spire’s lower levels, a vast bay where armored drop-skiffs were docking. Trainees in issued sealed suits lined up beside the loading ramps, nudging carbines and harness clasps. Turbines whined against the damp floor grating while muttered prayers rattled down the files. Kymora slipped among the front-line vanguards, locking a spare pressurized visor into her collar. Nyros drifted toward the rear ranks, slotting between supply porters and field medics. The humid press of sixty sweating recruits made his head ache; an empty bunk would have served him far better. [DEPLOYMENT COMMENCING: RECLAMATION DRILL 7.3] [OBJECTIVE: CULL BIO-OVERPOPULATION. RETURN WITH VERIFIED SPECIMENS.] [WARNING: FATALITY RATE ESTIMATED AT 18.7%.] The ventral cargo ramp dropped with a pneumatic hiss, admitting the dull sulfur glare of the wastes. The air, even through the filtered visors, tasted of ozone and decaying biomass. The vehicle dropped, jolting them as it landed amidst a field of petrified skeletal trees and jagged, toxic rock formations. Hexapedal horrors scuttled across distant slag heaps. “Fan out! Maintain Quadrant Delta!” a tutor’s voice boomed over the comms, amplified by the skiff’s speakers. “Remember your training! Strikers lead, Tamers lure, Medics support!” Nyros rolled his eyes. *Lure*. He was supposed to be a distraction. His designated quadrant was a stretch of razor-sharp fungal growths, teeming with smaller, scuttling arthropod-Fiends called Skitter-Mites. He let out a soft groan. Cardio. And now navigating biological hazards. He lagged twenty paces behind the squad, boots dragging over basalt rubble. Fifty meters ahead, Kymora fired ionizing slugs into an approaching cluster of armored Grawlers. Nyros, meanwhile, found himself near a group of nervous Tamers attempting to ensnare a particularly aggressive Skitter-Mite with basic capture nets. His internal chronometer ticked. He just needed to survive the drill, get back, and then plot his next move to find Zorus. A shrill acoustic pulse cut through the engine hum, too steady to be the screech of a wild scavenger. It wasn’t a distress signal. It was a command. Nyros paused on a ridge. Four figures wearing instructor rig peeled away from the outer perimeter wire. They moved with rhythmic pacing, drawing heavy pulse carbines fitted with muzzle suppressors. Capacitors on their barrels whined at combat charge. They were heading directly for Nyros. “Target confirmed,” one of them rasped over an unfiltered comm channel, loud enough for Nyros to hear. “The anomaly is isolated. Execute.” Nyros sighed. He truly hated being predictable. He dipped sideways as a red particle beam boiled a shelf of lichen into gray vapor. “Of course,” he muttered. “Zorus wouldn’t let a good crisis go to waste. He’s pushing me.” He moved, not with panic, but with irritation. Forced cardio, now a forced ambush. The indignity of it all. The hit team advanced in an interlocking sweep. One of them, a bulky figure, lunged, a vibro-blade humming at Nyros’s throat. He ducked, the blade slicing air where his head had been, and then erupted. Obsidian ridges burst from his knuckles, shearing through reinforced polymer weave like wet gauze. The man cried out, stumbling back. Kymora, having dispatched her Grawlers, registered the shift in the battle, her head turning sharply. She saw Nyros surrounded, saw the non-standard weapons. “Ambush—” she began over the tactical link before white noise drowned the channel. “He doesn’t want me dead, not yet,” Nyros stated, parrying another vibro-blade with a wrist-flick that sent the assassin off balance. “He wants me cornered. Wants the anomaly to *manifest*. He’s testing me for Vordis.” The setup carried the tutor's methodical signature: not an execution for the Directorate, but a stress test designed to force the anomaly into plain sight. A dull, icy annoyance settled behind Nyros’s ribs. The sheer bother of physical exertion grated on him far more than the threat of a bullet. He scanned the battleground, observing the assassins, the scattered cadets, the distant Geno-Fiends. At the wounded attacker's hip hung an acoustic canister meant to bait apex scavengers. High-frequency, indiscriminate. He lashed out again, a blur of motion, tearing a gap in the assassin’s side, not to kill, but to disable. As the man staggered, Nyros snatched the lure from his belt. It was still active, emitting a barely audible whine. He didn't need to understand its full operational parameters. He just needed to point it. And he knew exactly where to point it. “You want to push me?” Nyros snarled, his voice a low growl through the comms. “Fine. But you’re going to regret making me run.” He didn't aim the lure at the assassins directly. Instead, he angled it towards a massive, hulking formation in the distance – the planetary shield generator, a colossal crystalline dome protecting Onyx-7 from the worst of the toxic atmosphere. He adjusted the frequency with a flick of his thumb, twisting the dial to its highest, most aggressive setting. A high-pitched, guttural roar echoed back from the wasteland. Not from one Geno-Fiend, but from dozens. Hundreds. An undulating wave of biomass rose from the horizon. Massive, multi-ton Terrashells, their hides like moving fortresses, lumbered forward. Agile Stinger-Lacerators, their venomous tails whipping, sprinted alongside. A surging mass of clawed bio-freaks, yanked by the tuned distress screech, poured down the scrub ridges. The assassins froze, their attention torn between Nyros and the stampede. Recruits broke across the basin, dropping nets and battery packs in their scramble for the skiffs. Kymora stared, her mouth slightly agape behind her visor, as the horde bore down. The sheer destructive force of the oncoming stampede was unimaginable. It wasn’t just a localized culling anymore. It was an apocalyptic charge. [WARNING: ENVIRONMENTAL STABILITY THREAT IMMINENT.] Above the trench line, the translucent canopy of the shield grid flickered violently. The sound was like a thousand thunderclaps, a deafening rupture that tore through the air. The vast crystalline dome, designed to withstand atmospheric bombardment, began to fracture under the combined sonic assault and the sheer impact of the redirected monsters. Jagged lines of energy snaked across its surface, then it began to buckle, groaning. A section of the shield, directly above the unfolding chaos, imploded, sending a shower of glowing crystal shards into the toxic air. The sky, once a sickly orange, now revealed a sliver of the true, unholy blackness beyond. Through the newly formed void, a gargantuan, luminescent orb, pulsing with an inner light, slowly became visible. A single, colossal eye, the size of a landing craft, peered through the shattered dome.

Live Bait