Bozkar didn’t move. He couldn’t. Fendur’s grin stretched wider, a grotesque mockery through the visor, the plasma-cannon humming, a low, predatory growl aimed at Neyza. The choice, sharp as a shiv, sliced through the microseconds. Save the Chasm, or save the woman who had somehow become his only reason to breathe. The cold arithmetic of his former life offered no solace; the decision was made before his conscious mind could even process it.
“Neyza!” he shouted, raw sound tearing up his throat. He lunged forward, throwing his mass directly into the trajectory, boots skidding across cracked lab tiles. His ruined bionic arm, still smoking from earlier sparks, struck a discarded console. He wasn’t fast enough. Fendur’s finger twitched.
The plasma projector discharged. A blinding azure bolt erupted, a spear of pure incineration. It wasn't aimed at Neyza. It wasn't aimed at the arcane core. Fendur, with a last-second, spiteful pivot, had aimed for the ground directly between Bozkar and Neyza. The shot vaporized a swathe of reinforced plasteel, throwing a wall of superheated dust and shrapnel into the air, deafening and blinding. The concussion flung Bozkar off his feet, skidding him through acrid grit and glass.
Before he could recover, Fendur was on him, a lumbering, augmented titan. The riot-gear, scavenged from Tartarus’s deepest armory, hummed with borrowed power. A heavy boot stomped down on Bozkar’s chest, pinning him. The visor-hidden eyes glinted. “Look at you, Bozkar. A broken man. Always so pragmatic, so focused on the target. Now, you leap for a ghost, a memory of a grudge you can’t even hold onto.” Fendur’s voice, amplified by the suit’s comms, was a distorted snarl.
Bozkar choked, the impact of the boot stealing his air. Through the haze, Neyza scrambled for her fallen enforcer rifle, fingers snatching the grip. She was a fury, a whirlwind of bruised resolve. But Fendur had already drawn a new weapon. A jagged steel edge sprang from Fendur's gauntlet, humming with faint static.
“The syndicate’s vengeance,” Fendur snarled, pressing the blade’s tip against Bozkar’s neck, “is absolute. It won’t be diluted by your pathetic sentimentality. Yaldor’s blood must pay for what he did, and you… you’re just collateral. A tool that broke.”
“He saved us all,” Bozkar rasped, spitting blood. “From *your* plague.”
Fendur laughed, a sharp, metallic sound. “A necessary sacrifice. A cleansing fire. And you, Bozkar, were supposed to fan the flames. Instead, you found a pretty trinket and forgot your purpose.” He twisted the blade, the edge drawing a thin, crimson line on Bozkar’s skin.
Neyza fired. A rapid burst from her rifle. The rifle rounds ricocheted off Fendur’s riot-gear in bright bursts, doing little more than jarring his balance. Fendur snarled, turning his head, and Bozkar seized the opening. His good arm shot out, snagging a loose data cable from the ruined console and yanking. The console, already unstable, toppled, showering Fendur with sparks and minor electrical discharges.
Fendur staggered back, briefly disoriented, giving Bozkar enough room to roll. He scrambled to his feet, pulling a compact EMP from his belt, his mind racing. Neyza covered him, laying down suppressive fire, forcing Fendur to raise his free arm, the thermal-cannon, to deflect the shots. The room dissolved into strobe-lit chaos—plasma burning air, rounds bouncing off plate, metal groaning while facility sirens shrilled their final purge sequence.
Bozkar flicked the EMP’s switch. A localized electromagnetic pulse burst outward, instantly neutralizing Fendur’s wrist edge. The glow died instantly. Fendur hissed in fury, but his chassis resisted the surge. He lunged with jarring speed, the unpowered spike still lethal as a cleaver.
Bozkar saw it coming. He had seconds. He had planned this, envisioned it in the cold calculation of his past life. He couldn’t outfight Fendur in that heavy gear. But he could outwit him. He could use Fendur’s arrogance against him. Bozkar slipped a palm-sized explosive from his boot lining, its pin already released.
Fendur’s charge was a blur. The blade, heavy and unpowered, still sliced through the air with devastating force. Bozkar didn’t dodge. He locked his joints, committing to the collision. He let the impact take him. The gauntlet blade drove under his ribs, cold alloy scraping rib bone. Air tore out of him as vision tunneled into gray, but his fist gripped the ordnance tight.
Fendur's face, inches from his own, was a mask of triumphant fury. “Fool,” he hissed, twisting the blade deeper. “Always so predictable.”
“Not always,” Bozkar grunted, the words a bloody whisper. With his last reserves of strength, he pushed himself closer, impaling himself further onto the blade. He jammed the munition into a torn seam in Fendur’s chest plate, right into the exposed wiring loom.
Fendur stiffened behind his faceplate. His breath caught as his fingers struck the primed shell. A choked curse broke from the comm as he tried to rip himself free.
But it was too late. Bozkar gripped his wrist, holding him, forcing the grenade into place. “For Neyza,” Bozkar spat through red froth.
The charge blew. Not with a clean burst, but a muffled, concussive *thump* that echoed through the lab, followed by a sickening sound of rending metal and flesh. Fendur’s riot-gear, designed to withstand external blasts, was not proof against an internal explosion. The chest plate ruptured outwards in a shower of shrapnel and dark ichor. The suit’s arcane core overloaded, sparking violently, then went dark. Fendur went rigid, his body convulsing once, twice, a dying marionette, before collapsing, a ruined, smoking husk of steel and gore.
Bozkar crashed down beside the wreckage, the steel shank dragging through his torn flank. He hit the plasteel floor with a sickening thud, the weapon finally tearing free, leaving a gaping, gushing wound. Facility klaxons shrieked at maximum gain. Overhead vents vented orange superheat, warping the partition panels like damp paper. The very air shimmered, growing thick with the scent of ozone and burning materials.
He tasted copper and bile. His vision swam, growing dark around the edges. Neyza was there, kneeling beside him, her face a mask of terror and grief, her hands hovering, unsure where to touch the ruin he had become. He felt a phantom warmth, her tears, hot on his cheek. He had saved her. He had saved *her*.
He forced his chin up toward her, crimson emergency beacons flashing across her features. A weak, sarcastic smile, a relic of his former self, touched his lips. “Leave me,” he whispered, his voice barely audible above the roar of the impending inferno. “I am already dead.”