Plasma detonated against chitinous jawbone. The impact reverberated through Xiraza’s arms, jarring bone down to her ribs as the Void-Eater’s snout snapped sideways, its EMP blast discharging harmlessly into the shattered tarmac.
She gave the scorch mark no second glance.
Twisting in midair, she kicked off the brute's lower mandible, hit the hood of the Obsidian Hound with a metallic thud, and rolled backward through the busted windshield. Her boots jammed onto the transmission hump. With one clawed swing, Chitter spat an arc of yellow current into the steering column’s exposed auxiliary coils.
"Drive!" Xiraza yelled.
Khyren wasted no words. With his uninjured arm, he dragged the transfer case into reverse. The six heavy tires caught purchase on crushed stone, spinning twin geysers of gravel as the rig tore away from the breached ramparts. The monster shrieked, dozens of mutated stalkers surging out from the fog behind it, lured by the roar of the Hound's combustion thruster.
"You absolute maniac," Khyren muttered, his teeth stained crimson. His left arm hung loose, fingers dripping onto the torn upholstery. "You punched an apex predator with your bare knuckles."
"The plating was magnetised," she snapped, voice tight. "It was going to arc. Swap seats before you bleed out on the throttle."
She waited for no nod. Snatching the wheel, she hauled him bodily across the central partition. He groaned, the sharp intake of air harsh between his teeth, but settled into the bucket seat on the passenger side. She slammed the pedal flat, aiming the chassis toward the jagged wasteland of the Jagged Trench. If the horde followed the rig's thermal bloom, the capital’s inner sectors might have time to bring their barrier grids back online.
Through the shattered front glass, the toxic wind tore at her raven hair. Chitter dug three pairs of clawed paws into her upper harness, chittering frantic clicks as green radar blips painted the perimeter of their central map.
They were keeping pace. Too well.
"They aren't fanning out," Xiraza muttered, checking the rearview camera. Her knuckles whitened on the rubber grip. "Wild packs fan out to encircle. These things are locked onto our exhaust pipe."
Her mind wrenched back three years. Cold basalt. Green slime dripping from stalactites in the deep cavern where she had contracted the infection that ended her legendary frontline career. Velza had held the radio handset that day. Velza had sworn the extraction shuttle was delayed by storm clouds, forcing Xiraza to hold the cave entrance for eleven hours while venom pooled in her flesh.
It had never been bad weather.
Velza had mapped that cave. Velza had chosen the patrol grid. The vial Velza had emptied into her veins afterward had been no cure—it had been an incubator.
Bile rose behind her teeth, acrid and scalding. She had credited that woman with saving her life, had bought her high-end lab suites, had let her handle the logistics for every hunt.
"Xiraza."
Khyren’s voice cracked through the drone of the turbine. She glanced sideways. The cockpit was dim, lit only by amber hazard lights and the red glare of engine temperature warnings. His silver irises caught the faint reflection of the instrument panel. Sweat matted his fringe to his forehead, and his leather duster was soaked through at the ribcage.
"Keep your eyes on the road, Hunter Vex. Or don't. We're probably dead in twenty minutes anyway."
"Shut up," she barked, flicking the high beams on to cut through the alkali dust. "Nobody is dying. I took fifty-one percent of Tyren Aegis, and I am not flipping this rig into a ditch."
"Always the company," he murmured, coughing softly. "Always the armor. You know, back at the academy... before Jorik smiled his way into your perimeter... you dropped me during the third-tier selection spar. Swept my leg. Put your knee on my sternum and told me my footwork was embarrassing."
"It was embarrassing. You leaned on your heels."
"I spent six months fixing that footwork," he said, leaning his head back against the steel headrest. A faint, crooked smirk touched his mouth, despite the gray pallor of his skin. "Just so I could get you back in the ring. So you'd look at me for longer than three seconds without that bored look on your face."
Xiraza froze. Her foot twitched on the accelerator, and the heavy chassis swerved hard left, spraying silt over a row of boulder outcroppings. She yanked the wheel back, her cheeks burning instantly hot beneath the grime and gunpowder.
"What are you talking about?" she stammered, entirely unable to handle the blunt force of his tone. She could face three hundred razor-fangs without a blink, but this—this casual, bloody sincerity—made her want to jump back out into the dirt. "You contested my guild contracts for three consecutive cycles. You stole the Iron Basin bounty from my strike team!"
"Because you wouldn't take my calls otherwise," he replied simply. His gaze held steady. It was steady, unapologetic, and completely stripped of his usual boardroom arrogance. "I've been in love with you since we were nineteen, Xiraza. I hated watching you let that soft-spined coward drain your credit accounts while he preened for news cameras. I hated watching you blind to what he was."
"Khyren—"
"Don't get all defensive and prissy. I’m bleeding onto your floor mats, give me some leeway."
Pulse-noise roared in her temples, loud enough to drown the diesel hum. She gripped the wheel until the seams dug into her palms, desperately staring at the empty, barren horizon. "You... you don't say things like that in the middle of a tactical retreat. It's wildly unprofessional."
"We're past professional, darling."
Chitter let out an urgent, piercing screech. The volt-vixen scrambled down Xiraza’s tactical vest, planting two paws on her right shoulder blade and snapping sparks toward the nape of her neck. The creature bared its needles, growling at Xiraza's own body.
"What is it?" Khyren straightened, his lazy smirk evaporating. He reached for the diagnostic scanner on the dash, dragging the sensor wand across Xiraza's back.
The console chirped a rapid, rhythmic cadence. High-frequency RF pulse. 14.8 gigahertz.
"It's not your Scourge-Rot," Khyren said, his voice dropping into hard, flat anger. "It’s a tracker. A sub-dermal beacon."
Xiraza reached back with one hand, fingers brushing the tender lump beneath her skin, just below her right clavicle. It sat precisely where Velza had plunged that supposed booster needle in the clinic before triggering the fortress seal.
Velza hadn't just tried to paralyze her. She had tagged her like cattle for the slaughter.
"That's how the Void-Eater found the gate," Xiraza whispered, the realization striking with venomous clarity. "That's how they're running our heading. We aren't leading them away. They are following me."
The chassis shuddered as a concussive shockwave rocked the ground behind them. The radar screen turned solid red. The vanguard beasts were closing the distance—less than five hundred meters and closing fast. If the signal stayed active, the swarm would overrun the rig before they could reach the narrow bottlenecks of the Jagged Trench.
There was no pulse-scalpel. No sterile drape. No local anesthetic.
"Take the wheel," Xiraza commanded. The bashful flush vanished from her features, replaced by ice.
"Xiraza, what are you—"
"Grab the damned wheel, Khyren!"
He seized the rim with his right hand, bracing his boots to hold their line on the salt flats. Xiraza let go, reached down to her tactical boot, and drew her standard six-inch titanium trench blade.
The edge gleamed cold in the hazard lights.
She hooked her fingers into the collar of her skinsuit, ripping the synthetic weave down to expose the swollen, purplish puncture mark above her breast. Chitter watched her with round, luminous eyes, trembling but holding position.
"No field kit," Khyren said, veins standing out on his forearms. "You'll sever an artery. Wait until we reach the canyon caves—"
"They reach us in two minutes if I wait," she cut in. She angled the tip of the blade against the inflamed flesh.
Xiraza locked her teeth, took a single breath, and drove the steel into her own flesh.