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Chapter 36 - Chapter 36: The Bait and the Trap

Jax heard them long before he saw them. The whir of their silenced repulsors, the click of their advanced targeting systems. They moved with a chilling synchronicity, a pack of machines with a single mind. He stood his ground in a vast, cavernous station, the old platform littered with the skeletons of dead trains.

He was the bait, and the trap was his own body.

The first hunter emerged from a tunnel, its armored form sleek and insect-like. It raised its weapon, a magnetic railgun. Jax didn't flinch. He let out another roar, this one filled with pure, defiant rage.

The shot never came. From a side conduit, a plasma bolt seared through the darkness, striking the hunter in its shoulder joint. It spun, its systems whirring in confusion.

Anya dropped from a gantry above, landing between two more hunters, her vibro-blade already slicing through a weapon's barrel. "You called, brother?" she yelled, a fierce grin on her face.

The Aethel-Arms team adapted instantly, their formation shifting to encircle them both. They were outnumbered and outgunned.

Then, the lights in the station flickered and died, plunging the cavern into absolute blackness. The hunters' thermal vision flared to life, but it was useless against the sudden, overwhelming burst of multi-spectral static that flooded their displays.

In the darkness, Kaelen moved. Guided by his HUD, which painted the world in the ghostly green of seismic echoes, he was the only one who could see. He didn't fight. He guided. A sharp vibration to Anya's left warned her of a hunter's lunge. A pattern of flickering lights on Jax's display showed an opening in their line.

He was the silent conductor of a deadly dance. Jax and Anya, moving on his unseen cues, became a whirlwind of destruction. Jax tore through armor with his claws, while Anya disabled them with precise, brutal efficiency.

The trap had been sprung, but not on Jax. It was on Aethel-Arms. In the absolute silence of the dark, the blind audio-savant was their greatest weapon.

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