?The scout ship screamed as it bit into the dense, pressurized gases of the Trench. The cockpit was a vibrating cage of red warnings and the smell of scorched wiring. Willis felt the gravity clawing at his chest, pinning him into the co-pilot’s seat, but his focus was entirely on the man at the rear of the cabin.

  ?Captain Vane’s kinetic rifle was a dark, steady line in the flickering light. Despite the ship’s violent bucking, the Ranger’s aim didn't waver. The gash on his forehead leaked a slow trail of crimson that ran into his eye, but he didn't blink.

  ?"Vane, put it down!" Lyra shouted over the roar of the descending hull. Her hands were a blur across the flight controls, trying to stabilize their plummet. "We hit the ground at this speed and there won't be enough of the boy left to infect a petri dish anyway!"

  ?"He is the catalyst," Vane’s voice was a low, grating rasp that cut through the mechanical screaming of the engines. "Every world I’ve seen fall started with a Weaver who thought they were special. I'm not here to save him, Lyra. I'm here to save what's left of the sector."

  ?Willis looked down the barrel of the rifle. He didn't see a villain. He saw a man who had been hollowed out by duty, a piece of old-world hardware trying to solve a new-world problem. Willis reached out, his fingers brushing the console. He didn't look for a thread of power. He looked for the thread of the ship’s internal artificial intelligence.

  ?[System Link: Scout Ship 'Swift-Stitch' - Diagnostic Mode]

  [Integrity: 18%]

  [Life Support: Failing]

  ?

  ?Willis let go of his resonance. He allowed the silver lines on his skin to dim until they were nothing more than faint, grey scars. He relaxed his muscles, letting his head slump against the headrest.

  ?"If you're going to pull the trigger, do it before the pressure crushes the hull," Willis said, his voice quiet. "Because if we die, Marcus Thorne wins by default. He's the one who reported me. He's the one who wanted me in Oversight hands."

  ?Vane’s finger twitched on the trigger. "He told me you were building a void-factory at the hospital."

  ?"He was the one building it, Vane," Willis countered. "I broke his gate. I wrecked his forge. Why do you think he’s working with the Gilded now? He needs their resources to build a new one."

  ?The ship suddenly lurched as the first layer of the Trench’s cloud-sea hit the windshield. The view outside turned from the dark bronze of the sky to a thick, churning soup of toxic emerald gas. The pressure alarms changed from a chirp to a continuous, high-pitched wail.

  ?"Hull failure in thirty seconds!" Lyra yelled. "I need more power to the stabilizers or we’re going to pancake!"

  ?Vane looked from Willis to the screaming alarms. The cold certainty in his eye wavered. He was a Ranger, and his primary directive was the protection of the sector’s infrastructure. A crashing ship in the Trench was a localized disaster he couldn't ignore.

  ?"Fix the stabilizers, kid," Vane growled, lowering the rifle but not stowing it. "If we survive the landing, we talk. If you try to weave anything but the ship's engines, I'll put a slug through your heart before we hit the rocks."

  ?Willis didn't waste a second. He leaned forward, his hands diving into the open maintenance panel beneath the console. He didn't use a skill. He used his bare fingers to grab the blue fiber-optic cables that acted as the ship's nervous system.

  ?He didn't have much mana left, but he didn't need much. He just needed to bypass the Oversight’s safety throttles. He wove a small, tight loop between the auxiliary battery and the stabilizer-array.

  ?[Mana: 20/250]

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  [Status: Emergency Overclock]

  ?The ship groaned, a sound like giant sheets of metal being torn in half, as the stabilizers flared with a desperate, blue light. The plummet slowed from a terminal drop to a controlled glide.

  ?"I've got it!" Lyra shouted, pulling back on the flight yoke.

  ?The ship leveled out, skimming the top of the jagged obsidian spires that rose from the floor of the Trench like the teeth of a buried beast. The emerald fog was so thick here that the ship’s headlights only penetrated a few dozen feet.

  ?"Watch out!" Willis yelled.

  ?A massive, rusted crane arm erupted from the fog directly in their path. It was a relic of the old mining operations, a skeletal limb of iron that had been abandoned decades ago. Lyra banked hard to the left, the wing of the scout ship clipping the crane with a shower of sparks and the scream of shearing metal.

  ?The scout ship spun out of control, the tail-fin snapping off. They skipped across the surface of a black, oily lake before slamming into the base of a massive, derelict processing plant.

  ?The impact threw Willis forward, his head hitting the edge of the console. Everything went black for a moment, the world dissolving into a haze of white noise and the taste of copper.

  ?When he opened his eyes, the cockpit was filled with thick, acrid smoke. The only light came from the flickering red emergency lamps. Lyra was slumped over the controls, a deep cut on her arm bleeding onto the deck.

  ?Willis looked toward the back. Vane was gone. The rear hatch had been torn open by the impact, and the emerald fog was already pouring into the cabin.

  ?"Lyra? Lyra, wake up," Willis coughed, shaking her shoulder.

  ?She groaned, her eyes fluttering open. "Did we... did we win?"

  ?"We survived," Willis said, helping her unbuckle. "But Vane is out there. And the Syndicate won't be far behind."

  ?He helped her out of the wreckage. They stepped onto the ground of the Trench, which was composed of a spongy, black fungus that hissed as their boots touched it. The air was heavy and hot, smelling of rot and industrial chemicals.

  ?Towering above them were the ruins of the Old World—massive factories and processing plants that had been swallowed by the earth during the first phase of the System’s arrival. This was the graveyard of the sector, a place where the logic-core was weak and the rules of the Game were distorted.

  ?"We need to find the Neural Underground's outpost," Lyra whispered, leaning on Willis. "It’s hidden in the ventilation shafts of the main refinery. If we can get there, we can signal my people."

  ?"We aren't going anywhere yet," Willis said, his hand reaching for the handle of his fire axe.

  ?He looked into the green fog. A series of red lights was moving toward them—not the sapphire eyes of drones, but the glowing sensors of Syndicate hunters. And among them was a larger, heavier footstep that made the black fungus vibrate.

  ?"You really don't know when to quit, do you?" a voice boomed through the fog.

  ?Jax stepped into the light of the burning scout ship. He looked even worse than before. His iron chassis was scorched, and his face-plating was a jagged mess of broken glass and exposed wires. He was carrying a massive, rotating chain-gun where his left pincer used to be.

  ?Behind him stood a group of five hunters, their suits covered in the mud and grime of the Trench. But they weren't the only ones there.

  ?From the top of a nearby shipping container, a woman dropped down. She was dressed in sleek, black tactical gear, and her skin was a pale, bluish-grey. She didn't carry a gun. She carried a pair of long, curved blades that shimmered with a sickly, purple poison.

  ?[Antagonist Detected: Malice, the Syndicate Assassin - Level 18]

  [Status: Bounty Hunter]

  ?"Jax, you're making too much noise," Malice said, her voice a sharp, cold edge. "The Oversight will be back in ten minutes if you keep shouting."

  ?"I don't care about the Oversight!" Jax snarled, the barrels of his chain-gun beginning to spin with a high-pitched whine. "I want the Weaver!"

  ?Willis stood his ground, his blue eyes narrowing as he calculated his remaining mana. He looked at Lyra, then at the approaching hunters, and then at the dark, yawning maw of the refinery entrance behind him.

  ?"Lyra, when I say go, run for the vent," Willis whispered.

  ?"What about you?"

  ?"I'm going to give them exactly what they want," Willis said.

  ?He didn't raise his axe. He raised his hands, and the silver lines on his skin began to glow with a dark, abyssal light. He didn't call upon the starlight. He called upon the void-logic he had absorbed in the Spire.

  ?The black fungus at his feet began to wither and turn to ash. The emerald fog around him was sucked into his palms, forming a sphere of absolute, lightless energy.

  ?"Come and get me!" Willis shouted.

  ?Jax let out a roar and opened fire, the chain-gun spitting a stream of lead that tore through the fog. At the same moment, Malice blurred into motion, her purple blades aimed at Willis's neck.

  ?Willis didn't dodge. He slammed his hands into the ground.

  ?A wave of black entropy erupted from the impact, turning the area between the two groups into a collapsing sinkhole of raw data. The hunters screamed as they were pulled into the void, and even Jax’s heavy chassis began to tilt as the ground vanished beneath him.

  ?"Go!" Willis yelled to Lyra.

  ?They sprinted toward the refinery entrance, the sound of Jax's chain-gun and Malice's frustrated hisses echoing behind them in the dark.

  ?But as they reached the threshold, a cold, heavy barrel was pressed against the back of Willis’s head.

  ?"I told you," Vane’s voice whispered from the shadows of the doorway. "Anything but the engines."