Mars Time: 03:14, February 19, 2295

  Poison Dragon Flute Motel, Sector 9, Dragon District, Xing Hong

  The Genbu ground to a halt fifty meters from the motel's entrance.

  Through the viewport, Sigrun saw what remained of the Poison Dragon Flute. The building's outer walls were still recognizable—eight stories of cheap concrete and cheaper promises, the kind of place that charged by the hour and asked no questions. Her favorite spot whenever she needed to work as a Leased Lily in this part of the city.

  But something had grown over it.

  Organic matter pulsed along the walls in arterial ridges, dark against the structure's pale surface. Fenris corruption. The dragon motifs carved into the entrance pillars were half-swallowed by the growth, their painted scales now slick with something that glistened wetly in the distant firelight.

  Then she remembered.

  Steam curling from the shower. Xin's hands, clumsy but gentle. Your body... it's impressive. The way he'd looked at her like she was something precious, not a transaction. The kiss that wasn't supposed to happen. I love you, Sigrun.

  And then the ceiling exploding, Batu descending—

  Her hand tightened on the viewport rail until her knuckles went white.

  Not now. Not here.

  "You there, engineer." Haylen's voice cut through. The Sergeant was already at the rear hatch, checking her Kowloon-7's action bolt. "What's the make and model of that Nucleus Watch?"

  "ZenFusion Data Solutions variant." Xin looked up from the driver's seat, H?kon perched on his shoulder. "I use it for navigation. And hacking, back when I still had daytime employment."

  "Right then. You and the Diabolisk are with the ground team. We'll need your Watch interface for tactical coordination inside."

  "Understood."

  "Three Constables stay with the Genbu. The rest follow." Haylen keyed her comm. "Wang, you have command of the vehicle. Anything tries to breach, you drive. Don't wait for us."

  "Aye, Sergeant."

  The rear hatch banged open.

  Heat rolled in, carrying the smell of smoke and something sweeter underneath. Something wrong. Sigrun's nostrils flared. She'd smelled Radi-Mon musk before—the copper-and-rot stench of Bone Fiends, the acrid bile of Skuggrs. This was different. Floral, almost. Like rotting orchids left too long in stagnant water.

  "Pheromones." Marcus moved up beside her, his Titanium Shield raised. "That Elder Draug's here, right enough. Zori preserve us."

  Sigrun's hand found Járn at her belt. The Thermal Axe's familiar weight steadied her. "Then we kill her fast."

  They moved.

  Seven Constables in black composite armor fanned out behind Haylen, Shock Katanas unsheathed and crackling with blue energy. Sigrun took point with Marcus at her flank. Jabari fell in beside Xin, his Kinetic Crossbow Oya already loaded.

  "Motel full of monsters." Jabari kept his voice low. "And here I was hoping for room service."

  "Save the jokes, Griot." Haylen's tone brooked no argument.

  "Jokes are all I've got, Sergeant. Left my optimism in the last burning building."

  The entrance corridor was worse than the exterior. Organic matter coated the walls in thick ridges, pulsing with a slow rhythm like something breathing. What lights remained functional flickered overhead, casting everything in sickly red. The carpet squelched underfoot—wet sounds that made Sigrun think of stepping on tongues.

  Her Nucleus Watch pinged softly:

  [FEMALE DRAUG PHEROMONE CONCENTRATION: ELEVATED]

  [RECOMMENDATION: MINIMIZE EXPOSURE TIME]

  She ignored it. They all did.

  Thirty meters in, the corridor opened into what had been the motel's lobby. Reception desk buried under organic growth. Elevator doors fused shut with membranous tissue. Stairs leading up, their railings wrapped in something that looked disturbingly like intestines.

  And waiting for them, emerging from the shadows with a predator's patience—

  Batu Arnesen.

  The Draug was massive. Nearly two meters of biomechanical horror, his mottled brown flesh stretched over bulging muscle and sinew. Mandible-like structures framed a face that was more insect than human now, with red eyes that glowed faintly in the dim light. But something of the man he'd been remained in his posture—the precise stance of a trained fencer, weight balanced, ready to move in any direction.

  In his hand, a curved katana that seemed grown rather than forged, its edge glistening with some dark secretion.

  "Sergeant Shih." His voice was clinical. Detached. "You've improved your stance since I last saw you."

  Haylen had gone rigid beside Sigrun. Her rifle trembled in her grip. "Lord Batu."

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  "How I miss the days when people addressed me so." Batu's head tilted, mandibles clicking softly. "Have you considered my offering from our last encounter?"

  "I have, Lord." Haylen's reply came out strangled. "And no. I won't join the Fenris Horde."

  "A pity. You would've made a fine Draug."

  Four Constables moved without waiting for orders, spreading to surround him. Professional. Coordinated. Exactly what their training demanded.

  Batu moved faster.

  The first died before his Shock Katana cleared its sheath—Batu's blade opened his throat in a spray of arterial red. The second managed a swing, electricity crackling, but Batu was already past him, that biomechanical katana punching through his back and out through his sternum. The third and fourth died together: one bisected at the waist, organs spilling across the corrupted carpet; the other losing his head to a backhand slash so fast Sigrun barely tracked it.

  Four bodies hit the floor.

  Three seconds. Maybe less.

  "Bloody hell—" one of the surviving Constables breathed.

  "Oh no you don't." Sigrun was already moving, Járn coming off her belt with a familiar whump as the thermal core ignited. Quantum-blue fire cast her face in sharp relief.

  Batu turned to meet her.

  Their blades connected with a sound like thunder. The impact traveled up Sigrun's arms, jarring her shoulders, rattling her teeth. She pushed back, pivoted, came in low with a slash aimed at his legs. He parried with contemptuous ease. She pressed. He gave ground—but only because he chose to.

  "Sigrun Fjeld." His voice remained calm even as they traded blows, steel ringing against thermal edge. "You waste time delaying the inevitable. Primarch Skarn has waited eleven years for you."

  "Then he can keep waiting."

  She launched into him. Járn carved a burning arc toward his neck. He deflected, countered, his blade whisking past her face close enough that she felt the wind of its passage on her cheek. She dropped low, swept at his legs, missed as he stepped back with economy of motion.

  They were evenly matched. He had Draug enhancement and a fencer's precision. She had eleven years of survival instinct and raw, brutal strength honed by desperation.

  But neither could finish the other.

  Across the lobby, Marcus's Zephyrium Sword flared with golden light.

  "Lux Caecans!"

  The blinding flash illuminated something descending from the ceiling. Something beautiful and terrible, moving on four limbs like a great pale spider. Platinum hair cascading in waves. Amber eyes burning with malevolent intelligence. Naked flesh carved from moonlit marble—alabaster skin stretched over inhuman muscle, horns curving gracefully from her forehead, those disturbing thorns where her nipples should have been.

  Ysolde H?ggsson landed between Marcus and Sigrun's fight with predatory grace.

  "The Covenant Stalwart." Her voice was honey poured over broken glass. "Still resisting me, pet. How delightful."

  Marcus's Titanium Shield came up. His jaw was clenched, muscles in his neck standing out like cables as he fought against something Sigrun couldn't see. The pheromones. They were flooding the air now, that rotting-orchid sweetness intensifying until it coated the back of her throat.

  "Get behind me, you lot!" Marcus shouted.

  Ysolde circled him, unhurried. Her amber eyes tracked his movements with something like appreciation—a gourmand examining a particularly fine cut of meat. "I would so enjoy letting you fertilize my eggs—before squeezing your balls dry!"

  "Zori burns the wicked." Marcus advanced, sword high, shield steady. "And tonight, I'm the flame!"

  They clashed. Marcus's blade met Ysolde's claws with a shriek of metal on chitin. He pushed her back, keeping his shield between them when she tried to circle. She laughed—a sound like bone chimes—and came at him again.

  Testing him. Playing with him.

  Behind them, Jabari's Kinetic Crossbow fired.

  "Corridor's getting crowded!" The Griot loosed bolt after bolt into the darkness where pale shapes were massing. Bone Fiends. Dozens of them, pouring from side passages like maggots from a wound. "Xin, Sergeant, care to keep us company?"

  Xin raised his 10mm Magnum, face pale but steady. H?kon's scales had shifted to anxious brown, his small claws digging into Xin's jacket.

  Haylen finally moved. Whatever paralysis had gripped her snapped as training took over. Her rifle came up, and she started firing in controlled bursts, each shot finding its mark.

  "Constables, with me! Hold that bloody corridor!"

  The three surviving Constables formed on her, Shock Katanas crackling. Bone Fiends fell, skulls splitting, bodies convulsing. More replaced them.

  Sigrun pressed her attack on Batu. Thrust, parry, pivot, slash. He matched her blow for blow, that curved blade of his deflecting Járn's thermal edge with mechanical precision.

  "Typical Nordling technique," he observed, blocking a strike aimed at his throat. "Much reliance on strength. On rage. But rage makes you sloppy—"

  She didn't let him finish. Raising her axe-arm high, Sigrun shouted the incantation.

  "Valfall!"

  The psionically-enhanced strike came down like divine judgment. Járn blazed brighter, her arm moving in an arc that should have been impossible to parry.

  The blow connected with Batu's blade and drove him back three steps. His guard wavered. His stance broke.

  For one moment, she had him.

  Then Ysolde moved.

  The Elder Draug disengaged from Marcus, scuttling along the wall like a beautiful nightmare, her limbs finding purchase in the organic growth. She positioned herself above Sigrun—claws digging into the pulsing matter that coated the ceiling—and spread her legs wide.

  "Fr? úr skureinum mínum!"

  It came pouring from her vagina.

  White. Glistening. Thick ropes of something organic erupting from between Ysolde's thighs, spraying across the lobby in viscous streams. The substance hit the walls, the floor, spreading with unnatural speed, tendrils reaching, seeking, hunting.

  Sigrun tried to dodge.

  Too slow.

  The goo caught her mid-swing. It wrapped around her arms first, then her torso, then her legs—warm and adhesive, tightening with every struggle. The more she fought, the more it clung, molding itself to her curves through the fabric of her trench coat and turtleneck.

  "The Web of Seeds," Ysolde's voice drifted down from above, dripping with satisfaction. "The animal side of you wants to surrender, Princess. Let it."

  Sigrun tried to amp up Járn's thermal core. If she could burn through—but the goo was already climbing her wrists, her hands, coating her fingers. If she ignited it now, she'd cook herself alive.

  Then the smell hit her.

  Alkaline. Sharp. Like bleach and chlorine and ammonia mixed with something organic, something musky and male that made her sinuses burn and her head swim. The smell of a hundred men's seed, preserved and weaponized.

  She took a breath to shout for help and immediately regretted it.

  Her Nucleus Watch screamed warnings:

  [ALIEN PHEROMONE EXPOSURE: CRITICAL]

  [USER LIBIDO 6+: SEVERELY AFFECTED]

  [COGNITIVE IMPAIRMENT IMMINENT]

  [EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY]

  The world went soft at the edges.

  Warm. Everything was so warm. The goo wasn't restraining her. It was embracing her. Holding her.

  The alkaline smell wasn't unpleasant anymore. It was...nice. Exciting. Familiar, almost, like something she'd been missing without knowing it. Her heart pounded. Her skin flushed hot beneath her clothes, nipples hardening against the fabric, heat pooling between her thighs.

  Batu approached, his blade lowered.

  Something emerged from between his legs. A monstrous appendage, thick and segmented, glistening with fluid. It stood rigid, pulsing slightly with each step he took.

  "Would you like to go home now, Princess?"

  Yes, her body screamed. Yes yes yes—

  "Yes..." The word slipped out before she could stop it. Her tongue darted across her lips, tasting that alkaline sweetness. Why was she fighting? She should surrender. Let him take her. Let him—

  "Come grab me..." Her voice didn't sound like her own. Breathy. Desperate. "Take me home... come inside me..."