Chapter Five: The Whispering Core

  Tartarus was a graveyard of forgotten metal and bitter winds, but underground, in the hollowed-out remains of a mining colony, humanity burned on like a dying fire refusing to go out. Weeks had passed since Rizer and Elias were pulled from the wreckage of their pod. Time didn’t heal here, it sharpened.

  Rizer woke each day to the same blaring horn: 0500 hours, training drills. No sunrise. No birds. Just cold stone walls and the heavy echo of feet. He barely slept, his body sore and mind on fire. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Kiera’s last breath "survive" and the pod sealing shut, the tail ripping from her body like a grotesque root.

  Elias, for his part, barely spoke.

  He stayed in their small bunk space, fingers moving endlessly over folded scraps of fabric or wire, making strange shapes. Paper wasn’t easy to come by. But he’d improvise. One day it was melted plastic wrappers; another, thin scraps of gauze. When Rizer asked what he was doing, Elias only mumbled, “Ships.”

  Training on Tartarus wasn’t optional. Survivors were split into teams, rotated every few days. Tired or not, if you didn’t pull your weight, you didn’t eat. Rizer learned quickly. How to gut an Odryix with a plasma stave. How to duck low beneath their claws. How to aim for the slits beneath their armour where the veins ran thick and dark.

  The drills were brutal. The officers colder.

  But what made Tartarus dangerous wasn’t just the Odryix.

  It was the whispers.

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  “You know who they are, don’t you?” someone murmured once behind Rizer. “The older one doesn’t bleed right. Saw it myself when he split his hand, blood’s almost black.”

  “They say the younger one made a panel short-circuit by touching it.”

  “Psionics. Like the old stories.”

  It spread like rot in wet wood.

  Some called them lucky. Others cursed their names under breath. A few looked at them with awe. Most with fear. Rizer didn’t care. He just wanted to survive. For Elias. For Kiera. For the memory of pancakes and the Sky Tree.

  Then came the first raid.

  The alarm hit like a punch to the gut, sirens and flashing red strips along the ceiling. Everyone grabbed what they had. Elias clung to his paper figure. Rizer grabbed a stun-rifle and shoved his brother behind the wall shielding the command terminal.

  The enemy burst in through a side shaft, a scout team of five Odryix. Fast. Gleaming. Covered in bone-colored armour and screaming in their hideous, high-pitched tongue.

  This time, Rizer didn’t freeze.

  He fired clean, three bursts to the lead invader’s face. Saw it crumple. He ducked under a claw, spun the rifle, jabbed it like a staff. He’d trained for this. He’d bled for this.

  One got through.

  It lunged toward Elias, Rizer screamed, only for the creature to stop mid-pounce, convulsing. Its body twitched violently, steam hissing from its armoured skin.

  Elias was on his knees, hands to his ears, eyes glowing faintly.

  When the creature collapsed, smoke curling from its mouth, no one said a word. Not for a long while.

  That night, Commander Kairu called Rizer into the war room. Dim lights. A map of Earth’s remaining continents flickering above.

  “You and your brother are not ordinary,” she said.

  Rizer stared back, jaw tight. “We didn’t ask to be.”

  “No. But you may be what saves us.”

  She handed him a new wristband, slimmer, sleeker, coded with high-clearance access.

  “You’re moving up,” she said. “You’ll lead a squad in a few weeks. And your brother, he’ll be trained carefully. He’s... connected. To the core of something ancient. Something the Odryix fear.”

  Rizer didn’t nod. Didn’t thank her. He just said, “Then train us fast. We don’t have time.”

  Because even as the ground beneath Tartarus rumbled with enemy motion, Rizer knew the real war hadn’t started yet.

  And this time, humanity wouldn’t just run.

  They’d rise.