Chapter 42 – The Edge of Control

Fenrir didn't remember when his systems started to scream. Somewhere between the crunch of metal beneath his feet and the white-noise shriek of the strain's voice through his skull, something in him had unlatched.

But that wasn't when he truly broke.

That moment came earlier—days earlier—when Elira had first started avoiding his eyes.

He had always thought of himself as stable. Grounded. The anchor when the others wavered. But since their return from the sublevels… since that meeting with him… something in her had changed. Her touch was colder. Her silences longer. She looked at him like she had already buried something between them and was trying not to dig it back up.

And worst of all—she wouldn't talk to him.

Not really.

She was still kind. Still smiled. But her voice was cautious, measured. Like she was constantly calculating what could and could not be said. The wall between them had thickened, word by word.

And then there was that meeting in the sublevel. The Scientist speaking from shadows, manipulating every exchange, orchestrating outcomes like a god behind glass. Fenrir had watched Elira speak to him with a fluency that made Fenrir feel like an outsider in his own partnership.

He had stood there—silent, confused, helpless—as secrets passed through tones and half-truths. It wasn't just that he didn't understand.

It was that he wasn't meant to.

And now, this.

He stood in the shattered corridor, face to face with the twisted abomination of what had once been a servitor. The viral strain pulsed beneath the fractured plating, leaking corrupted code and malice from its every joint.

It didn't speak this time. It lunged.

Faster than him.

Stronger than him.

But not more desperate.

Not more furious.

Fenrir's left arm was torn from its socket in the first clash, a spray of synthetic blood arcing behind him. He hit the ground hard, rolled, ignored the error codes flashing in his vision. The servitor loomed above him, its head rotating in twitching intervals, voice modulator glitching.

"You are an echo of a failed god—"

Fenrir drove his fist into its jaw.

The blow barely registered. It countered with a strike to his leg. Bone snapped. Synthetic tendons split. But Fenrir didn't stop. Couldn't stop.

He needed this.

He needed to break something that made sense to break.

With a roar that was more pain than sound, he dragged himself upright and hurled both his body and his will into the strain. They crashed into the floor together, the impact shattering tiles, cracking concrete. His vision flickered red—damage report, low power, system failures piling up—but he kept swinging.

He beat it back with broken fists.

He clawed at its shell with torn fingers.

He ripped at it with raw rage and something deeper—something betrayed.

And when it stopped moving—when the spasms of corrupted code ceased—he kept going. Pounding. Burying. Grinding the enemy into the earth, as if he could bury every unanswered question with it.

Finally, silence.

The echo of his own ragged breath.

Fenrir collapsed beside the remains, half-buried in wreckage, systems dimming.

But in that moment—bleeding sparks, missing limbs, heart racing with synthetic adrenaline—he felt more alive than he had in weeks.

Not because he had won.

But because he had chosen.

And that was something no one—not Elira, not the Scientist, not even the system—could take from him.