Three years of decay had turned the wastes into a graveyard of giants.
Ethan Moore ran across the ribcage of a long-dead sky-whale, its fossilized bones jutting from toxic sand .
His stride was a thunderous CLANK-HISS-CLANK,not flesh, but Geargrinder-bone prosthetics powered by the Perpetual Core humming in his thigh. Lena's finest work.
Behind him, the Level 5 Minotaur charged.
[BONE MARKET ENFORCER - LVL 5 "GOREFIST"].
Not flesh. Scrap-metal horns. Hydraulic hooves. Eyes glowing with captured human pain. Vultura's favorite tracker.
"LEFT, ETHAN!" Lena's voice crackled in his earpiece. She rode a jury-rigged sand-skimmer beside him, hair wild, welding goggles reflecting the twin suns.
Her right arm was now a multi-tool cannon grafted to her shoulder socket.
Ethan pivoted. Gorefist's horn slammed where he'd been, shattering ancient bone.
"Distraction ready, Trash King?" Kai's voice, tight with pain, echoed from ahead. He clung to a crumbling vertebrae fifty feet up, one leg dangling useless….recent plasma burn. Blood soaked his scav-cloak.
"Do it!" Ethan snarled.
Kai phased, a flicker of shadow, and reappeared on the Minotaur's back. His phase-dagger plunged into a neural port exposed by rust.
SKREEEEE! Gorefist bucked. Kai flew, crashing into a dune.
"NOW, LENA!"
Lena's cannon-arm whined. Not plasma. A sonic destabilizer tuned to decaying metal. The pulse hit Gorefist's knee joint.
CRUNCH. Hydraulics exploded. The Minotaur crashed forward, mired in sand and its own leaking oil.
Ethan didn't celebrate. He ran to Kai, hauling him up. "Status?"
"Leg's fried. Not the sexy kind." Kai grimaced, nodding at the satchel clutched to his chest.
"Got the payload though. Vultura's new 'Flesh Engine' schematics. Smells like… baby powder and desperation."
The satchel pulsed with sickly pink light. Ethan's Perpetual Core leg throbbed in sync—a warning.
[ENTROPY SYNTHESIS ALERT: BIO-ENTROPIC SIGNATURE DETECTED].
"Move!" Lena yelled. Sand-skimmer engines screamed. "That destabilizer bought seconds! Gorefist's pals are coming!"
On the horizon, three more skeletal Minotaur figures crested a dune, Vultura's bone-hand banner flapping on their chassis.
-
The "safe house" was a buried pre-System subway car, stinking of fungus and desperation. Lena welded the hatch shut as Kai collapsed onto a moldy seat, gasping.
"Mission success?" A voice rasped from the shadows.
Grudge emerged, older, scarred, his useless arm replaced by a crude piston-fist. He eyed Kai's satchel hungrily. "The schematics?"
"Got 'em," Kai wheezed, handing it over. "Vultura's turning kids into living batteries for that engine. Zara's… probably powering it right now." His voice cracked.
Grudge snatched the satchel. "Good. Real good." He didn't open it. He backed toward the car's far door—a rusted emergency exit Ethan hadn't noticed before.
Ethan's crowbar—now fused with veins of gold-scorch energy—hummed against his back. "Grudge?"
"Three years, Ethan," Grudge spat. "Three years hiding. Scraping. While you play god with that leg and Lena's toys. Mama Knox wouldn't hide. She'd fight."
"We are fighting!"Lena snapped, cannon-arm training on him. "Undermining Vultura! Saving kids!"
"Slowly! While Vultura gets stronger!" Grudge's piston-fist clenched. "These schematics? They're my ticket in. My bargain."
Realization dawned like ice in Ethan's gut. "You're joining her. Vultura."
"Surviving!" Grudge roared. "She's got an army! She's got stability! What do we have? A cripple, a thief, and a trash god who bleeds starlight!" He slammed his fist against the emergency door release.
Rusty gears shrieked. The door didn't open.
"Lena…" Ethan warned.
"Sabotaged it week one," Lena hissed, sonic cannon whining to full charge. "Drop the schematics, traitor."
Grudge laughed, a hollow sound. "You think I came alone?"
KRA-KOOM!
The ceiling caved in. Not rock. Acid. Vultura's signature weapon—bio-corrosive spray from bone-mounted cannons.
Two emaciated figures, their spines fused to insectoid mechanical carriers, dropped through the melting metal. [FLESH-DRONE - LVL 3].
"Take the schematics!" Grudge bellowed, throwing the satchel to a drone. "Kill the rest!"
Chaos erupted. Acid sprayed. Lena's sonic blast tore one drone apart, but the corrosive spray hit her cannon-arm. Metal sizzled. She screamed.
Kai phased, tackling the second drone—but his burned leg gave out. They crashed.
Ethan moved. Not toward Grudge. Toward the drone clutching the satchel.
His bone-leg pumped, Perpetual Core surging. [ENTROPY: 62%]. Crowbar in hand, he swung…
Grudge's piston-fist intercepted.
CRUNCH.
The blow shattered Ethan's reinforced ribs.
[HP: 110/250 → 65/250].
He flew back, crashing into Lena.
"Pathetic!" Grudge loomed over them, acid rain sizzling on his shoulders. "Vultura's right. You cling to weakness. Even your power's borrowed!" He raised his fist for the killing strike….
ZZZRT!
A plasma bolt took Grudge in the chest. Not from Lena. Not from Kai.
From the emergency exit.
It slid open, revealing not wasteland, but a sterile, white-lit corridor. Standing there, clad in sleek Solar Legion scout armor, face hidden behind a mirrored visor, was a familiar figure.
[SELENE - S-RANK CRYOLANCER - LVL 52]
"Hello, trash," her voice, digitally distorted but dripping venom, echoed in the ruined car. "Miss me?"
Selene didn't enter. She leveled her plasma rifle….not at Ethan, but at the Flesh-Drone scrambling away with Vultura's schematics.
FWOOM.
The drone vaporized. The satchel fell, unharmed, into the acid pool.
"My intel suggested Vultura was developing dimensional breaching tech,"Selene stated, stepping carefully over the threshold.
Her visor scanned Ethan's glowing leg, Lena's sizzling arm, Kai's bloody form. "Tsk. Still collecting broken things, I see."
"What do you want, Selene?"Ethan coughed, blood on his lips. Crowbar humming, ready. Three years ago, she'd been his nightmare. Now? His leg could probably outrun her. Maybe.
"The same thing I always wanted," she said, rifle shifting to point at Ethan's chest. "You. Contained. Or dissected." cold smile touched her voice.
"But circumstances change. Aris Thorne is returning."
The name hit like a physical blow. "Impossible. The vortex…."
"Nothing is impossible for a Solar Sovereign!" Selene snapped.
"His energy signature is bleeding back into reality. Weak. Scattered. But growing. And when he fully returns…" She gestured at the acid-eaten ceiling. "…he'll scour this world clean of the rot you spread. Starting with your little junkyard kingdom."
"Get to the point, ice witch,"Lena spat, cradling her damaged arm.
"Point is, anomaly," Selene's rifle didn't waver, "I need leverage. Something precious to bait Thorne's trap. And Vultura? She has something I want. Something you want too."
She nudged the satchel in the acid with her boot. The fleshy schematics pulsed.
"A living sample of her Flesh-Engine's core. A child… named Zara."
Kai froze. His eyes, wide with horror, locked on Selene. "No… She's alive? Vultura has her hooked to that thing?!"
"Alive? Technically." Selene's voice held no pity. "Conscious? Doubtful. Useful? Absolutely. Her bio-entropic signature is unique. Perfect bait."
"You want us to help you kidnap Kai's sister?!" Ethan growled, Perpetual Core flaring in his leg.
"I want her extracted," Selene corrected. "Alive. Intact. You get your reunion. I get my bait. And together, we lure Aris Thorne into a trap he can't escape."
She lowered her rifle slightly. "Or I call a Solar Strike on this coordinates right now. Turn your precious subway car into glass."
A hologram flared from her wrist. A countdown.
[SOLAR ORBITAL STRIKE - LOCKED: T-MINUS 10 MINUTES]
"Choose, trash. Help me catch a god… or become ash with your friends."
Kai stared at Selene, tears cutting paths through the grime on his face. Lena clutched her damaged arm, eyes calculating the odds of disabling Selene before the strike hit.
Ethan's mind raced.
- Save Zara? Deliver her to Selene as bait for Aris?
- Refuse? Die now, leaving Zara trapped in Vultura's nightmare engine?
- Fight Selene? Risk the orbital strike vaporizing them all?
The crowbar vibrated on his back, resonating with the Perpetual Core's hum.
[ENTROPY SYNTHESIS: ARIS THORNE SIGNATURE DETECTED - APPROACHING RE-ENTRY]. The vision hit him…brief, brutal:
Aris Thorne, no longer golden perfection, but a cracked statue wreathed in green-gold fire, screaming silently in the void. Hungry. Enraged.
Selene's visor reflected the countdown. [T-MINUS 7:42].
"Tick-tock, trash god," she whispered. "Does the rat's sister die with you… or live as bait?"
Kai met Ethan's eyes. Raw agony. Helpless hope.
Ethan's bone-leg CLANKED as he took a step forward. Not towards Selene. Towards the acid pool. Towards the pulsing satchel holding Zara's fate.
His hand closed around the dripping, fleshy schematics. Bio-entropic energy surged up his arm, fighting his Entropy, burning like poisoned sunlight.
"Where," Ethan rasped, the schematics squirming in his grip like a live thing, "do we find Vultura's engine?"
Selene's mirrored visor hid her smile, but satisfaction dripped from her voice.
"Welcome to the hunt, trash. Let's go kill a god."
The countdown blinked.
[T-MINUS 6:15].
Somewhere in the Bone Market, deep within a throbbing engine , Zara opened eyes that glowed with captured starlight, and screamed.