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Reading
11 d, 4 h
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My wrists are bare. The heavy, magnetic cuffs that held me to the execution post are gone. The cold plasteel against my spine is gone. I am sitting on the edge of a bed, and the hands resting on my knees are calloused, scarred, and undeniably human. They are my own hands. I suck in a ragged breath, the metallic tang of the station’s recycled air filling my lungs. I am Silas Quill again. I look up. The execution yard has vanished. I am sealed inside a pristine, hexagonal observation room. The walls are…-
22.3 K • Completed
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The interrogation chair hums with a low, predatory frequency that vibrates through the soles of my heavy combat boots. I am Commander Ares-17. I stand in the center of Interrogation Bay 4, my hands clasped loosely behind my back, perfectly at ease. The air in the bay is scrubbed clean, heavily chilled, and smells faintly of industrial antiseptic. Silas Quill is strapped into the chair. Heavy plasteel restraints lock his wrists, ankles, and throat in place. The bruises from his arrest yesterday have…
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22.3 K • Completed
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The heat of his skin against mine is a localized gravity well, pulling the shattered pieces of my panic into a single, agonizingly sharp focal point. For three seconds, we exist outside the Dominion’s jurisdiction. The heavy blast doors of the quarantine cell are sealed. The observation gallery is dark. Ares’s forehead rests against mine, his breath ragged, his engineered heart hammering against my chest through the thick composite plating of his armor. I can feel the phantom echo of the shock baton…
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22.3 K • Completed
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The world outside Carriage 0-0-Alpha has ceased to be a blizzard. It is a solid wall of obliterating white. I pull myself up from the freezing steel floor of the ghost car’s airlock, my muscles screaming in protest. Every nerve ending is fried, still sparking with the phantom aftershocks of the climax Adrienne forced into my bloodstream. My clothes cling to me, damp with sweat that is rapidly turning to ice in the sub-zero draft. Through the small, reinforced porthole of the exterior door, I can barely…-
20.7 K • Completed
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I am no longer one body. I am four hundred and twelve. The moment the Winter Crown recognizes my biometric signature, the boundaries of my skull simply cease to exist. The monolithic black cylinder in the center of the carriage emits a blinding, high-frequency pulse of emerald light. It strikes the glowing map of nanite pathways exposed on my chest, and the master bio-transmitter bypasses my conscious will entirely, plugging my nervous system into the Empire's vast, sleeping network. I feel the blood…
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20.7 K • Completed
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The carriage smells like copper and burnt ozone. I pull myself up from the bloody grating, the pain in my chest radiating outward in jagged, agonizing waves. My rebel coat is soaked through. My left shoulder throbs where the phantom shrapnel wound tore open, mirroring the violent damage I just pulled out of Adrienne’s nervous system. "Serrin." The Rebel General’s voice crackles again from the carriage speakers, harsh and demanding over the roar of the blizzard outside. “Confirm status of…
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20.7 K • Completed
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For five years, the only constant in my life has been the violent, mechanical roar of steel wheels grinding against frozen tracks. It was the heartbeat of the Boreal Empire, a relentless percussion of conquest and survival that vibrated through the marrow of my bones every hour of every day. Now, there is only the silence. It is absolute. Profound. A heavy, suffocating blanket of quiet that presses against the thick armor plating of the ghost car. I open my eyes. The emergency lighting in the airlock…
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20.7 K • Completed
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Blue Glacier Gorge, Six Minutes Before Impact The woman I am here to kill saves a soldier directly beneath my rifle. Through the thermal scope, Captain Adrienne Sol is a white-gold figure kneeling on the roof of the Boreal armored train. The leviathan tears across Blue Glacier Gorge at two hundred kilometers per hour, black carriages hammering over a bridge no sane engineer would have built. Wind claws streams of snow from the roof. The abyss on either side glows radioactive blue. Adrienne ignores all…
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20.7 K • Completed
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I exhale the blizzard and squeeze the trigger. The rifle kicks against my shoulder, a familiar, punishing jolt that grounds me in the chaos of the storm. From the muzzle, the Kinetic Echo round streaks out, a needle of searing green light slicing through the whiteout. I track the trajectory through the thermal scope. The wind over the Blue Glacier Gorge is a howling physical force, threatening to rip the heavy coat from my back, but the math is perfect. The geometry never lies. Three hundred yards down…
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20.7 K • Completed
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The scent of sterile iodine shatters against the phantom taste of copper in my mouth. I am on my knees on the polished silver grating of the medical carriage, my right hand still pressed desperately over the hole in my chest. The heavy steel doors to the gangway slide open with a pressurized hiss, letting in a brief, howling gust of the Arctic blizzard before snapping shut. Two Loyalist soldiers drag the rebel sniper into my sanctuary. They throw her roughly onto the deck. The impact of her knees…
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20.7 K • Completed
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