Nova's ice-blue eyes narrowed, her perfect, full lips pressing into a hard, dangerous line.

  She didn't speak. She didn't even turn around. She merely twitched a finger.

  Jack hadn't even realized what was happening.

  A miniature mechanical arm on the workbench suddenly spun, and a razor-thin cutting laser instantly pierced the alloy floor right beside Jack's foot.

  Zzzzt—! The smoking pinhole was mere millimeters from Jack's boot, executed with surgical precision.

  This wasn't a warning shot. It was a calculated, absolute, and terrifying display of power.

  Jack looked down at the tiny hole, still glowing red, and then looked up at Nova.

  Her finger remained suspended in the air, like a conductor who had just finished a note.

  Jack's entire body shook like a startled mound of jelly. "A joke! Just a rotten joke!" he babbled, waving his hands frantically. "It's a masterpiece! You are the avatar of Athena, the Queen! Really!"

  Nova's rage seemed to cool, replaced by the arrogance familiar to geniuses. She tossed the pistol back onto the workbench, the clatter making Jack flinch violently. "Consider that a lesson, fatty," she said, turning toward the 3D virtual projection. "Also, for your education, it isn't a single 'metal.' It is an 'Adaptive Morphing System.'"

  In the blue glow of the projection, she pulled up a blueprint that made Jack's mechanic soul weep.

  "The key isn't some magical plant we stumbled upon. It's the product of 'Project Persephone': a synthetic bacterium designed from scratch by my team. We cultivate it in massive bioreactors on sub-level nine. It's the only thing that can synthesize the organic-metallic precursor slurry we need. A p-B11 fusion core powers the whole damn thing."

  "Teacher Thorne discovered the electromagnetic properties of this slurry." A fanatic passion for her work burned in Nova's eyes. "And I designed how to weaponize it." She pointed to the complex diagram. "The mech's internal skeleton is this slurry, constrained within a force field to form a 'liquid topology framework.' It's a non-Newtonian fluid. It can change shape. But on its own... It's soft."

  Jack's mind, sharpened by years of jury-rigging on the battlefield, instantly put it together. "So the hardness doesn't come from the skeleton," he gasped. "It comes from the armor. They are two separate systems."

  "Correct," a dry voice came from behind them. It was Thorne. "His engineering intuition is sharp. Show him the plating, Nova."

  A flicker of approval crossed Nova's face. She pulled up another file.

  "The shell is a Silicon Carbide-Stanene composite. Before morphing, micro-nuclear batteries divert all energy to initiate high-energy electrolysis. This causes the armor to atomize at a nanoscale level, sucking it back into a magnetic tank. This process creates a massive heat spill; that's why you see the vents open. Once the skeleton finishes reshaping, the atomized material is electroplated back onto the framework. The result is a shell with a tensile strength four times that of any traditional alloy."

  It wasn't magic. It was a symphony of god-tier engineering.

  But Jack, looking at the blueprints, saw the flaw. The cost.

  "The energy consumption must be astronomical," he murmured. "And the heat... You can't vent that much thermal energy instantly. There has to be a delay."

  Nova's triumphant sneer returned, this time with a hint of challenge. "A sixty-second heat venting and cooling cycle after every transformation. For a whole minute, we are an expensive, very hot target."

  Thorne patted Jack on the shoulder. "Now you understand. Nova, give him the full file."

  Jack read the data greedily, but when he reached the final line written in striking crimson text, his blood ran cold: Class S Classified, Terran Federation. Accessing this constitutes a binding life-long non-disclosure agreement.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  "Two years," Thorne's voice sounded like a prison door slamming shut. "You will be here for a minimum of two years. Get used to it."

  Jack realized he wasn't a convict. He had become a prisoner of knowledge, shackled to this underground labyrinth by the secrets he now held.

  He thought he had escaped the battlefield. Instead, he had just walked from one hell into another.

  The difference was: You could run from hell on the front lines. You couldn't run from this one.

  Because you knew too much.

  The grand war didn't care about Jack's personal hell. It continued to grind on, a beast devouring stars. The Draconian Imperium was expanding its advantage on Epsilon Prime, its ground forces slicing the planet into isolated pockets of resistance.

  One day, the lab's science program was taken over by a mandatory emergency broadcast. A special address from President Valerius of the Terran Federation.

  A documentary played on the screen.

  The background of the entire film was mostly a monotonous black, save for the bright, arterial red of blood. It was a montage of raw, uncensored footage from fallen colonies. Jack watched, a cold, familiar nausea churning in his stomach.

  His nose filled with the phantom scent of blood; he saw hollow, lifeless eyes and the shredded wreckage of mechs.

  His throat tightened, his skin prickled, and the hairs on his arms stood up. He trembled, unable to suppress the shivering of his legs.

  His legs inched backward, wanting to look away, veins bulging on his hands. Every image reminded him that he was a coward who only knew how to run; every nerve in his flesh reminded him: Forget them... forget.

  With a creak, he collapsed into the chair behind him. His legs could no longer support his massive bulk.

  By now, beads of sweat were rolling down his cheeks. He blankly raised a trembling hand to wipe them away.

  Inadvertently, Jack glanced at Nova.

  She stood straight, her knuckles white. This genius, who could bend physics to her will, was staring at the screen with the wide, uncomprehending eyes of a child seeing true ugliness for the first time. In her perfect, logically consistent universe, there was no equation to explain this random, filthy chaos. She looked terrified. She looked... fragile. My colonist blood, my obesity, my fear—this is why I can survive in this chaos, while her machine cannot.

  The broadcast content changed. The somber voice of an announcer spoke over a star map, laying out a strategic nightmare. The exit and entry points of the Vega Cluster's dark matter nodes were being guarded by the Imperium's Hive Fleet, like brutal dragons from a movie.

  Traversing a wormhole meant total nakedness. For a full fifteen minutes after jumping out of a dark matter node, a ship's shields would be completely disabled. The first ships through would be lambs to the slaughter, their only purpose to die openly.

  A brief montage followed—minutes of committee recordings and stamped memos. Proposals to use derelict freighters and unmanned barges equipped with remote missile pods guided by probes for decoy operations were submitted and then shelved. A final note flashed: "Insufficient morale value. Material loss unacceptable." Then the stamp: REJECTED.

  A question hung in the silent laboratory: Who would be those lambs?

  The narrator answered it. "The men and women of the Orion Guard gave the answer."

  The faces of the fleet soldiers forced to retreat from the Epsilon system appeared on the screen. The locals. The ones whose homes were burning. Their eye sockets were sunken with grief and rage.

  "It is our right," a grim-faced captain said to the camera. "What we lost, we will take back with our own hands."

  Their ships, refitted and rearmed, charged one by one into the black ink blot of the other side's entrance—a volunteer fleet on a suicide mission. The broadcast ended with the face of President Valerius, etched with cold fury.

  "Blood for blood."

  That night, Jack stayed in his corner, trying to immerse himself in the familiar mechanical structure of a diagnostic tool. The lab door hissed open.

  It was Nova.

  She had taken off her white coat, wearing only a black tank top and dark cargo pants. Her toned shoulders and arms glistened slightly under the sterile lights; her pale skin seemed to almost glow against the cobalt blue shell of the "Phantom." She walked up to her creation, resting a hand on its cold blue plating.

  "Hey, fatty," she said, her voice quiet and husky.

  "Hmm?"

  "Out there," she began, her gaze fixed on the machine, staring at its fatal flaw. "Is it... is it really like that?"

  Jack stopped his work. He turned around and looked at her—this beautiful, brilliant, and terrifying woman who built gods and monsters yet possessed a sixty-second window of vulnerability.

  For the first time in his life, he didn't see the genius or the goddess, but the frightened girl hiding behind them.

  He licked his dry lips. Since meeting her for the first time, what he felt was neither fear nor lust.

  He felt a strange and unwelcome sting of pity.

  "No," he said, his voice flat and honest. "It's worse than that."

  Nova turned her head to look at him.

  "In a vacuum," Jack continued, "blood boils instantly and then freezes, turning into a pink mist."

  He stared into Nova's eyes, perfect as glaciers.

  "Your beautiful blue eyes would bulge out, your neck would swell rapidly, and before you could even make a sound, the air in your lungs would tear you apart from the inside."

  He paused. "That isn't heroism."

  Nova's blue eyes lost some of their luster, her voice very soft: "That's a sacrifice, right?"

  Jack didn't answer.

  Because they both knew the answer.

  Those rushing toward the Vega Cluster;

  Those whose homes were burning;

  They were not heroes.

  They were offerings to Ares.

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