She woke up on the floor of her pod.
Her cheek was welded to cold metal plating. Her body felt like a borrowed suit, too tight in the shoulders, too loose at the joints, strung with wires that hummed with someone else’s current. She tried to push herself up, and her arms responded with a violent, over-eager jerk, slamming her shoulder into the edge of the sleeping platform hard enough to make the whole rig shudder.
Great. Upgraded from fragile to lethally clumsy. Progress.
> OPERATOR STATUS: ONLINE
> Systems check: Initiating
Her vision flooded with data. Not the familiar, sparse readouts from Virgil, but a cascading waterfall of tactical overlays, environmental scans, and biometric telemetry scrolling too fast to parse. A new, clean status block burned itself into her lower periphery, stubbornly permanent.
═══════════════════════
// OPERATOR: Beatrix Aliger
// SYSTEM: OMEGA PROTOCOL
// TIER: 5 | Experimental/Military Black Ops
// CONFIGURATION: Dreadnought-Class
// VERSION: 1.0
// PROCESSING CAPACITY: 2,500 UNITS
// POWER CORE STATUS: 32% (CIVILIAN GRADE)
═══════════════════════
Processing capacity. Units. The words were cold, bureaucratic. They were measuring her now. Quantifying what she was worth in computational terms.
“Virgil?” The thought felt childish, like calling for a parent who’d moved out.
The voice wasn’t in her ears. It was a clean, sterile signal planted directly in the meat of her brain. It had no personality. It had parameters.
“Virgil. Your name is Virgil. Understood?”
“Now, Virgil. What am I supposed to do with 2,500 units?”
Applications. She’d heard of them, the specialized software that turned basic Humanware into tools. Her old [Scavenger-class] rig had a patched-together nav app and a distress beacon that probably wouldn’t work. This was a different league.
Before she could ask what those applications were, a sound sliced through the pod’s insulated walls.
A scream. Raw, human, and close.
Her head snapped up. That wasn’t possible. Her pod was rated for vacuum-grade soundproofing. But the sound was crystalline, detailed, the wet choke of fear at the end of it, the scrape of a boot on grating.
> THREAT PROFILE DETECTED.
> Auditory Enhancements active.
> Source: 14 meters below, Sector 7-Gamma.
> Analyzing...
A schematic of the station’s substructure flickered in her vision. A red pulse throbbed two decks down. Accompanying data scrolled: heat signatures, identifying chatter snippets pulled from the local, unsecured network.
> HUMANWARE SIGNATURES ANALIZED.
> Possible Affiliation: Minos Clan Enforcers | 79% Probability
> Known Activities: Extortion, Drugware trafficking.
Minos. The word was a cold slug in her gut. They were the reason half the vendors in her sector had missing fingers or haunted eyes. They didn't just take credits; they took pieces of you to make sure you remembered.
Another voice, sharp and trying to sound brave: “I paid last week!”
Beatrix was on her feet before she’d decided to move. Her body felt both alien and terrifyingly responsive. Walk away, the old, survivalist part of her hissed. You have a brother to save. You can’t afford new enemies.
But the Minos didn’t just make enemies. They made examples. If they solidified their grip on this sector, her already-impossible credit hunt would get a lot bloodier. This wasn't just about someone else's problem. It was a preemptive strike.
A single line of text flashed, urgent and gold in her vision.
> COMBAT MODE READY
> 100% enhancement to strength | 60 second duration
> Processing Units Required: 1,000 | Available 2,500
It wasn’t a menu. It was an instinct, waiting to be pulled like a trigger.
“Damn it,” she whispered to the empty pod. She was out the door.
The old man, Mr. Bulba, nearly collided with her on the staircase, his face the color of old cheese. “Don’t go down there, ,” he hissed, grabbing her arm with a surprisingly strong grip. “Minos thugs. Bad business.”
“I know.” She pulled her arm free. The movement was too easy, like shrugging off a coat. “That’s the point.”
The scene in the cramped workshop corridor was a station-life cliché. Two men with the glowing spiral tattoos of the Minos had a tall woman backed against a shipping container. Beatrix’s enhanced vision picked up details she wished it wouldn’t: the frantic, failing color-cycle of the woman’s hairware app, the subcutaneous LEDs in the thugs’ arms pulsing with stolen cred-chips, the cheap shock-blade at the lean one’s hip.
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The big one, chrome teeth gleaming, had the woman’s wrist in a grip that would leave bruises shaped like his fingerprints. “Ariadne wants her percentage, Kivanna. You deal in her territory, you pay her tax.”
Kivanna, Beatrix’s memory supplied, pulling the name from a passing conversation. Tinker. Fixer. Not a friend, but not a predator. Just someone trying to get by without getting eaten.
Walk away. You are not a hero. You are a bank account with a deadline.
But Kivanna’s hair flashed a terrified, stark white. And the Dreadnought Protocol hummed in her bones, a low note of readiness. It wasn’t just protecting. It was assessing. It saw two hostile targets. It saw a strategic advantage in removing local predators. It saw a chance to test its capabilities.
> RISK ASSESSMENT: 2 HOSTILES
> Threat level: Moderate
> Practical data value: High
The Protocol was offering her experience points. For beating up loan sharks. The absurdity of it almost made her laugh.
Instead, she stepped into the dim light. “Hey. She said she paid.”
The turn was synchronized, almost comical. Chrome Teeth’s grin widened. “This ain’t your business, scav.”
“It is now.” The words were out, flat and final.
“Virgil. Combat Mode.”
> ACTIVATING: COMBAT MODE
> 100% enhancement to strength | 60 second duration
> Processing Load: 1,000/2,500 units
It wasn’t a switch. It was a cascade.
A torrent of icy clarity poured down her spine. The world didn’t slow down, she just started processing it faster. Her HUD lit up with attack vectors, kinetic predictions, and weak point highlights glowing like bullseyes over joints and nerve clusters. The twitchy one’s hand moved for his blade. A glowing trajectory line painted itself from his hip to her throat.
She moved.
Her body followed the Protocol’s suggested path without conscious thought. Step inside his reach. Catch the wrist. Redirect. Drive knee into solar plexus. She pulled the force at the last microsecond, a thirty-percent reduction that felt like slamming on the brakes of a speeding train. The thug folded with a sick whoosh of lost air.
Chrome Teeth was already swinging. A haymaker that would have pulped her old skull. Her HUD screamed a warning, painting a red arc where his fist would be.
She ducked. The wind of the blow ruffled her hair. Her elbow found his kidney with a dull, satisfying thud. He grunted, spun, and his backhand caught her across the ribs.
The world dissolved into white-hot pain. She crashed into the shipping container, the metal shrieking as it dented around her. Agony spiked, sharp and bright, then was immediately smothered by a flood of cold, chemical numbness. Nanites. Dulling the signal. Keeping the weapon operational.
> REGENERATION PROTOCOL ACTIVE
Biological repair | 1.5% tissue restoration per minute
> Processing Load: 1,400/2,500 units
A new drain ignited in her system. Healing costs extra. Of course it does.
The fight became a brutal, efficient ballet. The Protocol fed her moves; her body, wired with unfamiliar strength and speed, executed them. She twisted between them, used the twitchy one’s shock-blade against his partner, felt the convulsions through the big man’s arm. A knee to a face. A rebar projectile to a shoulder. Fourteen seconds of controlled, escalating violence.
Then it was over. Both men were on the deck, groaning, alive but decisively out of the fight.
> COMBAT MODE DEACTIVATED.
The icy clarity vanished, siphoned out of her like coolant from a cracked line. The chemicals keeping her pain at bay receded, and the full, deep ache of bruised bone and wrenched muscle rushed in to fill the void. Her legs trembled, threatening to buckle. She braced against the container, her breath coming in ragged gasps that tasted of blood and ozone.
Kivanna stared, her hair cycling through shocked silver and white. “Holy void. You just… you made Minos enforcers look like amateurs.”
“Wasn’t… nothing,” Beatrix managed, swallowing copper. “Just… better tools.”
“Bullshit.” Kivanna was already moving, pulling a handheld diagnostic scanner from her work apron. She ran it over Beatrix without ceremony. “You’re shaking like a reactor about to breach. Micro-seizures in your left hand. Pupillary focus is drifting. You’re burning out.”
The scanner beeped, a shrill, unhappy sound. Kivanna’s hair flashed a deep, alarmed crimson. “What in the cold hell are you running? Your power signature is… that’s not civilian. Tier 5? That’s not even legal.”
“Does it matter?” Beatrix pushed off the container, forcing herself to stand straight. The movement sent a fresh lance of pain through her side. The Regeneration protocol was still quietly draining her units, stitching her back together at a glacial, expensive pace.
“For figuring out why you have about two days to live? Yeah, it matters!” Kivanna thrust the scanner readout toward her. It was a graph of power consumption, a steady civilian-grade baseline that had, an hour ago, spiked into a mountain range of catastrophic draws. “You’re running military-spec hardware on a civilian core. It’s like trying to power a capital ship with a flashlight battery. You’re cooking your own nervous system from the inside out.”
> POWER CORE ANALYSIS CONFIRMED.
> Civilian-Grade core is incompatible with sustained protocol loads.
A new, more ominous timer appeared, superimposing itself over the medical countdown for Dante.
> CORE FAILURE ESTIMATE: 54 HOURS, 17 MINUTES
“System failure?” Beatrix asked the air, her voice hollow.
The Protocol’s response was clinical, detached, and horrifying.
Translation: she’d twitch, see things that weren’t there, feel like she was on fire, and then die.
The number 54:17 hung in her vision. It wasn’t a timer. It was an expiration date, stamped on her retina in glowing amber. A cold, sharp laugh escaped her, a sound with no humor in it, just the sheer, ridiculous weight of it all. She’d traded the slow agony of watching Dante die for the fast, frying agony of her own nerves melting down. The universe had a vicious sense of irony, and it was punching down.
Well played, she thought, the bitterness so thick she could choke on it. You really outdid yourself this time, Aliger.
“Damn,” Kivanna whispered, the anger draining from her face, replaced by something like horrified pity. “You need a military core. A real one. Yesterday.”
“I know.” Now I know.
Kivanna glanced at the moaning thugs, then back at Beatrix, calculation replacing pity. “I can build one. I’ve got an old Cyclops-series core. It’s not OMEGA-grade, but I can modify it. Reinforce the conduits, triple the heat sinks… it’ll hold.”
“How much?”
“The core alone is nineteen thousand credits.” Kivanna’s hair shifted to a pragmatic, metallic gray. “But you just saved my shop, and probably my hands. So for you? Nineteen thousand credits.”
Of course. The number was just slightly more impossible than the last one. Beatrix felt the ghost of a hysterical laugh bubbling up. She strangled it.
“How long to modify it?”
“Twelve hours. If I start now.” Kivanna studied her. “You’ll have the credits?”
“I’ll get them.” The words were flat, definitive. She had nothing left to sell but the pod itself, and maybe a kidney. She’d figure it out. She always did.
A thought, cold and practical, cut through the panic. Second rule of Scav Club. She walked over to the twitchy enforcer, who was clutching his shattered nose. He flinched as she knelt.
“Don’t… don’t…” he slurred.
“Shut up.” Her voice had no heat in it. It was just instruction. She patted him down with efficient, impersonal motions. A cred-stick with a few hundred chips. The shock-blade. A cheap neural-jack scrambler that might be worth fifty credits to the right buyer. From Chrome Teeth, she took a heavier cred-stick and a mean-looking pneumatic knife. It wasn’t nineteen thousand. It was a start. It was also a declaration of war.
Kivanna watched, her expression unreadable. “They’ll come back for that. And for you.”
“Let them.” Beatrix stood, tucking the meager loot into her jacket. The movement sent another spike of pain through her ribs, a reminder of the cost. “I’ll be back in twelve hours, Kivanna. With your money.”
“It’s Kivi,” the woman said, a faint, grim smile touching her lips. “Since you’re apparently my problem now.”
“Beatrix.” She gave a short, pained nod. “Try not to get shook down again before I get back.”
She turned and walked away, leaving the groaning men and the watching tinker behind. The new loot weighed nothing in her pockets, but the new timer in her vision, 53:48:12, weighed everything.
She had less than two days to live, and nineteen thousand credits to find.
The Dreadnought Protocol hummed softly in her veins, a patient, hungry thing. It had gotten its first taste of combat. It would want more.
As she climbed back toward her pod, a final, dry notification blinked.
> STRATEGIC ASSESSMENT: HOSTILE RETALIATION LIKELY
> 87% Probability.
> Recommendation: Acquire superior firepower
No kidding, Beatrix thought, and for the first time, the thought felt like a collaboration.
