The striker lever snapped back. Daris, still mid-air, twisted his body, pressing Senna hard against his front. The micro-kinetic shrapnel from the released spoon tore through the air, carving white trails an instant before the blast. He heard Senna cough as he braced his frame over hers, shielding her from the initial spray. Then the world became a deafening concussive wave. An orange-white sun bloomed in the shaft above, incinerating the Elite System-Paladins where they stood. Their chrome armor melted, then vaporized, the sound a wet hiss swallowed by the roaring expansion. The force hurled Daris and Senna downward for a moment, then, with a violent, jarring thud, it launched them back upwards. The transport cabin bucked and screamed around them, safety clamps snapping under the thermal shockwave as the burst catapulted the cage straight up the conduit. [SYSTEM ALERT: ANOMALY DETECTED. PROBABILITY OVERRIDE 99.99%. UNEXPECTED ASCENSION.] [PROBABILITY MANIPULATION: CLASS GAMBLER. REGISTERED THREAT LEVEL: CRITICAL.] Metal shrieked. Sparks showered. Daris tightened his hold on Senna, bracing himself as the car rattled like a dice cup, accelerating into the blackness of the Spire’s upper shaft. She coughed, shaking her head against his chest. “Daris... what did you do?” Her voice was thin, strained. “Gambled,” he grunted, his throat raw from the shockwave. “Life for a liftoff. Apex Algorithm hates a contradiction.” The ascent was brutal. They rocketed past maintenance decks, blurring into streaks of light. The air grew thinner, the rumble of the straining metal the only sound. Then, a new noise cut through it: a high-pitched, whining hum, followed by the distant crunch of stressed alloys. [SERVER INTEGRITY COMPROMISED. HUNTER-VIRUS DEPLOYMENT: OMEGA-CLASS 'VOID-SPAWN'.] [GRAVITY INVERSION PROTOCOL: ENGAGED.] From the deepening gloom above, grotesque shapes descended. They looked like massive, twisted manta rays, their bodies a shimmering, obsidian black, outlined by sickly green bio-luminescence. They detached from the Spire's inner walls, their wing-like fins beating with silent, devastating power. As they drew closer, Daris could see the jagged, crystalline claws at the tips of their fins, tearing at the reinforced steel around them. One slammed into the lift housing with an iron boom. The outer panel crumpled inward like tin foil. The air was sucked out, replaced by the frigid vacuum of the upper stratosphere. Daris felt Senna’s grip on his harness tighten, her knuckles white. Another Void-Spawn tore a chunk from the ceiling, its gravitational field reversing the debris, sending shards of metal raining *upwards* into the abyss. “Hold on!” Daris yelled, but the words were stolen by the rushing wind. The cabin broke apart around them. The deck buckled beneath their boots, then sheared away into the updraft. Daris reacted instantly, shoving Senna toward the last solid lip of floor—a bent steel ledge. He lunged after her, but a third creature sheared past, its gravitational wake tearing the last support spar from the housing. The vortex tore Senna from the ledge. She screamed, a sound instantly muted by the vacuum, her body twisting helplessly as she was flung outward, into the endless blackness of the atmospheric abyss. Daris lunged across the empty gap, throwing his reach into the howling drop. His vision narrowed to her rapidly receding form, her dark hair streaming, her hand outstretched in a silent plea. Fingertips struck coated weave. He clamped down hard on the wrist seam of her combat glove. He locked his grip, swinging his weight until his ribs cracked against a bent rail. A metal strut, now flimsy and groaning under his weight, was all that anchored him. He dangled, one hand clamped to the strut, the other gripping Senna’s wrist. Her body swung freely, a pendulum against the backdrop of Neo-Krov’s distant, glittering grid. She was suspended above the yawning chasm, hundreds of kilometers of empty air between her and the ground. Above them, the Void-Spawn circled, their green bio-luminescence casting an alien glow on their struggle. Lethal energy erupted from their bellies, emerald beams cutting through the dark and slicing the last remnants of the cabin. One beam scorched the strut just inches from Daris’s hand. He gritted his teeth, shifting his weight, the metal groaning a protest. Senna looked up through her scratched visor, wind buffeting her collar. “You... you can’t hold me,” she whispered through the comms, her voice ragged with strain. “Let go. Save yourself. The mission...” “Shut up,” Daris bit out, teeth clicking against the drag of the slipstream. The steel of the strut bit into his palm, his grip already failing. His knuckles were bone-white. The passive logic of his HUD blinked—*calculated survival threshold: sever tether*. But the words died before they could form. He held the seam. Tila was waiting in the lower ward, and Senna was still breathing. He locked eyes with her, muscles trembling against the tear of gravity. Her fingers tightened around his forearm, matching his grip. “Hold on, then,” she gasped, her voice steadier, a new resolve hardening her expression. “Get us in.” Daris checked the shaft walls, reading the vents through the turbulence. The Void-Spawn pressed their attack, their laser beams carving fiery paths through the void. He saw a faint, shimmering outline high above – the Spire’s main atmospheric processing vent. A risk. A massive, suicidal risk. But it was their only way in. “On three,” he grunted. “One. Two...” Just as a Void-Spawn swooped low, its gravitational field threatening to rip his arm from its socket, Daris kicked off the strut. He swung Senna like a human projectile, arcing them both towards the shimmering vent. The impact was deafening, a violent explosion of metal and tortured air. They smashed through the maintenance hatch with bone-jarring force, tumbling into a narrow, dark conduit. They slid down the exhaust chute, tumbling hard onto a circular dais. Heavy ozone coated Daris's tongue as the metal structure vibrated beneath them. But it wasn't a room filled with gleaming servers or intricate data conduits. It was a vast, cavernous space, pulsating with a sickening green light. In the center, connected to every wall, every conduit, every power nexus by thousands of glowing, parasitic wires, was a body. A human body, stretched and distorted, its skin a mottled grey, its limbs impossibly long and twisted. Its chest cavity was ripped open, revealing a churning vortex of pure mana, the source of the entire Apex Algorithm’s power. Its face, frozen in an eternal, silent scream, was horribly familiar. It was Daris’s face. Older. Mutated. Agonizingly alive.

Russian Roulette