Chapter 17: Breaking Point

  The screams had barely faded from the outer halls when the emergency doors sealed with a hydraulic slam. Red strobes spun across the walls of the Gaia-9 command deck. Sirens wailed. The smell of burning circuits and scorched flesh clung to the air like rot.

  Rizer stood near the shattered window of the upper platform, his fists clenched so tight his knuckles split. His ears rang with the memory of that traitor’s voice, the bastard who called himself loyal while rerouting Gaia-9’s defense codes to the Odryix.

  He didn’t even know the man’s real name.

  Below, medics scrambled across the wreckage, pulling bodies from debris and dragging the wounded toward the triage dome. But it was Elias, kneeling motionless at the center of it all, that held Rizer’s stare.

  The boy’s shirt was soaked in blood, but it wasn’t his. His glowing eyes had dimmed, just barely. The last Odryix attacker—one of Ankura’s hybrids—lay split open, spine cracked like a lightning-struck tree.

  No one dared go near Elias. Not yet.

  Commander Marsh approached cautiously. “We have to move them—your brother and the others. There’s another wave incoming.”

  “They weren’t here to destroy us,” Rizer growled. “They were here to see if I’d snap.”

  Marsh's face twitched. “You nearly did.”

  Rizer turned, eyes black with fury. “That traitor, he was in our war room, he knew our pods, our launch codes. Who gave him that clearance?”

  The silence said everything.

  Gaia-9 had cracks. Big ones.

  Below deck, the survivors gathered what they could. Panic pulsed through the halls like a second heartbeat. No one knew if the next assault would be Odryix tech, or betrayal again from within.

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  Rizer descended the stairs slowly. His boots crunched on glass and blood. Elias didn’t move when Rizer dropped beside him.

  “She trusted me,” Elias whispered.

  Rizer’s brow furrowed. “Who?”

  Elias looked up, his voice breaking. “Yuri.”

  The medic. Barely nineteen. She’d shielded Elias when the traitor fired through the blast chamber. Her body had been found curled over his.

  Elias’ hands trembled. One still held a glowing bracelet.

  Rizer placed a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “She made a choice. You don’t waste it.”

  “She saw what I did… and she still, still helped me. Even though I’m—” His words cracked, and something behind his eyes sparked dangerously bright.

  “You’re not a monster,” Rizer said. “You’re our chance.”

  They were interrupted by a voice from the intercom: “Urgent—Commander Rae of the Earth resistance has broken silence. She’s requesting a live link.”

  All eyes turned to the command console. Rizer rose and sprinted toward it. Adelpha Rae, the elusive leader of Earth’s hidden rebellion, hadn’t contacted Gaia-9 in over six months.

  Her face flickered onto the screen, worn, grim, her gray hair tied back tight. Behind her, the dim lights of an underground city pulsed like heartbeat veins in stone.

  “We’ve got three weeks at most,” she said without preamble. “My engineers intercepted a signal. Ankura’s building a pulse bomb. It doesn’t just kill, it disables the psionics. Every one of you.”

  Rizer felt his breath stop.

  “And it’s not just a test,” she continued. “They plan to drop it where they think your strongest fighters are hiding. That means Tartarus. That means Elias. That means you.”

  Another voice entered the call, a rasping male with a Gaia-9 badge. One of their own governors. “What you’re saying isn’t verified. We’ll need more data”

  “I’ve seen the bodies!” Rae snapped. “And I’ve lost 73 people confirming this. The next time you hesitate, there might not be a resistance left.”

  She turned directly to Rizer. “You’re not just a weapon, kid. You’re a target. You want to win this? Then come underground. Join me. I’ll show you how to take the war straight into Ankura’s rotted heart.”

  The line cut.

  Everyone stared at Rizer.

  Marsh spoke first. “She’s asking you to leave Gaia-9. Abandon your command.”

  Rizer looked down at his trembling hand, still stained with Yuri’s blood. He could feel something shifting inside him. The pain, the power, the burden. His psionics were growing faster than he could train them. And Elias… was changing too.

  He looked back at the chaos, The shattered halls, the half-dead soldiers, the silence in Elias’ stare.

  “No,” Rizer said.

  “I’m not abandoning anything.”

  His voice hardened into steel.

  “But I am going underground."