The transport’s descent accelerated, a dead spin now, throwing Jezra hard against a jagged console. A shard of reinforced plasteel tore at her arm, but the cold, thin ache barely registered. Gravity shrieked, then vanished, then slammed her back down with sickening force. The shuttle was a plummeting coffin, groaning as its hull buckled, the lower sectors of Mekara blooming into a blurry, neon-streaked target beneath them. “Ozan!” she yelled, scrambling across the tilting deck. The air crackled with failing systems, the scent of ozone and burning conduits thick in her throat. Ozan, still rigid from the stimulants, swayed like a monolith on a collapsing foundation. His enhanced eyes, no longer burning with controlled fury, were losing their focus, blurring at the edges. Tremors racked his massive frame, triggered not by the vessel's violent drop, but from within. His knees buckled. Slowly, impossibly, the man who had torn through Sabina’s guards like paper began to fold. His armored body hit the deck with a clang that echoed the ship’s death rattle. He tried to push himself up, a guttural sound tearing from his chest, but his arms gave out. His breathing became a shallow, rattling gasp, the black ichor from his wounds staining the metal deck. “No, you don’t get to check out yet, Vex,” Jezra snarled, ignoring the panic clawing at her. She knelt beside him, pressing a palm to his forehead. His skin felt like ice, his cellular structure finally giving way. The terrifying strength was gone, replaced by marrow-deep failure. His pulse thinned beneath her fingers. “Zekal!” she screamed into her comm-link, hoping the signal hadn't been shredded by the atmospheric re-entry. “Zekal, you worthless coil-rat, do you hear me?!” Static. Then, a ragged cough. “Jezra? You… you actually did it. You crashed the shuttle into an orbital comm-array, didn’t you? Heard the explosion from the Spire. My ledgers are clean, by the way. Cheers.” His voice carried weak mercenary smugness. “Shut your mouth, you maggot! We’re not in an comm-array, we’re in freefall! Sabina rigged the ship, and now Ozan’s collapsing. He’s got maybe thirty seconds before he’s just… mush.” She yanked Ozan’s head into her lap, trying to ignore the sticky warmth of his black blood. “You’re the best goddamn hacker in Mekara, Zekal. I need you to override this dropship’s autopilot, now!” “Override a Vex vessel with zero-point-five seconds to smash into the dirt? Are you insane? That’s a deep-system core hack, Jezra! Even I can’t do that without a direct neural link, or… or a bio-profile… wait.” There was a pause, then a sharp intake of breath. “Your signature, Jezra? You want me to sync the ship’s autopilot to *you*?” “Yes! And dump the trust funds to you. All of it. Every last cred.” The words tasted like ash, like a betrayal of everything she’d worked for, but Ozan’s life, and by extension, the baby’s, depended on it. “Do it, Zekal! I’ll send you the encryption keys now. Every last cred, you hear me? Just keep us from becoming paste!” “Every… every last cred? The entire Vex payout?” Zekal’s voice was suddenly much clearer, devoid of its previous weakness, a shark scenting blood. “That’s… that’s enough to buy a small asteroid, Jezra. You’re not messing with me, are you? You’ll actually sign over everything?” “Do I sound like I’m messing with you, you scavenging drone? The ground is coming fast! Do it, Zekal! NOW!” The ship gave another violent lurch, its internal lights winking out completely, plunging them into absolute darkness, save for the distant, distorted glow of the lower city. The collision claxon wailed, a deafening blast across the deck. “Alright, alright! Keys received. Stand by… Initiating scanner bypass… Commencing autopilot re-route… This is it, Jezra. Your life, your ship, your crash-landing.” A complex series of beeps and whirs filled her ear, then Zekal’s voice, strained. “I’m in! It’s all on you now, Jezra! You’ve got the stick!” Suddenly, with a sickening jolt, the freefall stopped. The ship righted itself, shuddering violently, but no longer plummeting. A faint, red holographic display shimmered into existence before her eyes, projected from her comm-link. It showed flight steering synched to her sub-cortex link. She felt the ship answer, a raw twitch extending through her nervous system. “Where are we going, Jezra?” Zekal asked, awe creeping through the static. “You’re still on a collision course, just… a steered one.” “The only place that can save him,” she gritted out, straining to pull the nose up, to guide the crippled vessel. She focused, channeling her panic into a desperate, razor-sharp intent. The neon haze resolved into familiar structures, impossibly tall, impossibly clean. The Vex Munitions medical hub, where she’d first crash-landed, where this whole nightmare began. The pristine, gleaming white building rushed toward them. She drove the hull downward with brutal intent. Metal shrieked, glass exploded, and the deck struck stone with a concussive shockwave that rattled her teeth. The ship tore through the outer wall, plowing through reinforced plasteel and shattered diagnostic suites, grinding to a halt deep inside the atrium among twisted bulkheads and glass shards. Sirens wailed, but not the self-destruct claxon. These were building alarms, shrill and piercing. Jezra coughed, spitting dust, ribs throbbing. Ozan was heavier now, a dead weight, his face a ghostly pale under the grime and blood. His breathing was almost imperceptible. “Zekal! I’m inside! Surgical pod! Get me the nearest surgical pod!” she gasped, her voice raw. The comm-link stayed silent, fried by the crash. Dragging Ozan across the tiled floor inch by inch, she hauled him toward a glowing blue archway down the east corridor. She hauled him onto the sterile examination table, forearms burning. The surgical unit hummed to life, robotic arms extending to scan Ozan’s failing form. Telemetry cascaded across the display. [DIAGNOSIS: TERMINAL CELLULAR DEGRADATION. STEM-CELL INFUSION MANDATORY.] Relief washed over her, short-lived. A red warning flashed. [ERROR: SUBJECT BIOMETRICS REJECTED. VITAL SIGNS BELOW THRESHOLD FOR PROCEDURE AUTHORIZATION.] “What? No! He needs the cure! Do it!” Jezra slammed her fist against the unit console. “He’s Ozan Vex! He owns this place!” The machine's synthesized tone stayed flat. [SUBJECT READINGS DO NOT MEET MINIMUM VITALITY THRESHOLD FOR OWNERSHIP VERIFICATION. SECONDARY CLEARANCE NEEDED.] “Alternative? What alternative?!” [TO INITIATE LIFE-SAVING STEM-CELL INFUSION FOR OZAN VEX, LEGAL DEEDING OF VEX MUNITIONS OWNERSHIP AND SUBJECT LIFE-RIGHTS TO AUTHORIZED INDIVIDUAL MANDATED.] Jezra stared at the glowing prompt, then down at Ozan’s graying face. To save him, the system demanded she assume full ownership of Vex Munitions—and total legal custody of his life.

Freefall