11. Natalie's Resolve

The safehouse was a tomb of shadows, its walls lined with peeling propaganda posters from a decade-old purge. Natalie's glaive glinted in the flickering light of a dying lumen-moss bulb, its edge whispering promises of violence. She crouched beside a rusted ventilation duct, listening to the hum of the smog purifier—a sound she'd rigged to mask footsteps. Her fingers brushed the scar on her ribs, still tender from the Seraphim's blade. "Hope is heresy," he'd hissed. Tonight, she'd make heresy her anthem.

They came at midnight.

The first Iron Verdict crashed through the skylight in a hail of glass and holy fire, his warhammer crackling with storm runes. Natalie was already moving—a dagger hurled at his throat, a pivot behind the support beam. The hammer struck where she'd stood, discharging lightning that fused the floorboards into charcoal.

"Stealth Brawler," the Verdict sneered, his voice modulator buzzing like an angry hornet. He ripped the dagger from his armor's neck joint, black ichor oozing from the wound. "Tier 3 theatrics. Cute."

Natalie didn't waste breath replying. She danced—glaive hooking a ceiling chain to swing over his retaliatory swipe, boots slamming into his backplate to vault toward the second Verdict breaching the door. This one wielded twin electrified flails, their spiked heads screaming through the air.

Clang.

Her glaive intercepted one flail, the impact numbing her wrists. The other whipped toward her ribs—until she yanked a tripwire with her teeth. The ceiling collapsed, burying the Verdict in smoldering plaster.

"One."

The second Iron Verdict's flails crackled with chain lightning, a signature of the Stormbrand subclass. Natalie pivoted, her glaive's crescent blade hooking the flail's chain. She yanked hard, leveraging the Verdict's momentum to slam him into a tripwire. The wire snapped, releasing a pendulum of acid vials. The Verdict's scream was cut short as his visor melted, flesh sizzling beneath. Natalie didn't linger—she'd seen what Stormbrands could do when cornered. Their death throes often triggered voltaic surges, and she'd rather not become charcoal.

The third Verdict, a silent Phantomstrike variant, materialized from a veil of smog—a Tier 3 ability that mimicked Stealth Brawlers. His serrated hammer grazed her hip, tearing through kevlar like parchment. Natalie tasted blood, her own. Too slow. She feigned a stumble, baiting him closer. When he swung for her skull, she dropped, sweeping his legs. His helmet struck the floor, dislodging a hidden vial of holy napalm. The ensuing firestorm crisped the air, but not before Natalie drove her glaive through his throat.

The third Verdict entered silently. Natalie smelled him first—holy oil and burnt hair. His hammer was smaller, serrated, designed for surgical brutality. He lunged, and the world narrowed to the deadly ballet of edge and arc.

Glaive met hammer in a shower of sparks.

"You're slower than your file suggested," the Verdict taunted, pressing closer. His visor reflected her snarling face. "Did the smog rot your reflexes?"

"No." She spat in his eye slit. "Just my patience."

As he recoiled, she twisted, leveraging her glaive's hook to disarm him. The hammer clattered away. Her follow-up slash opened his gut, spilling coils of intestine that steamed in the cold.

"Two."

The wall exploded.

---

Juggernaut.

Tier 4. Eight feet of reinforced ceramite and heresy. Natalie's traps—acid grenades, razor nets—sloughed off its armor like rain. It wielded no weapon. It was the weapon.

She ducked its first punch; the shockwave shattered her remaining daggers in their wall sheaths. The second strike crumpled the steel support beam like foil. Natalie rolled, glaive scoring a shallow groove across its thigh. Useless.

The Juggernaut's ceramite boots crushed the floorboards, each step triggering tremors designed to destabilize opponents—a hallmark of the Earthshaker subclass. Natalie's ribs screamed as she rolled beneath its punch, the shockwave scattering her daggers. She lunged for the neural port, but the Juggernaut's counter was textbook: a backhanded swipe that sent her crashing into a support beam. Wood splintered. Georg's face flashed in her mind—his grin as he taught her to disarm a Verdict. "Always cheat," he'd said.

"Fuck your metrics," she growled, leaping onto its back. Her glaive's tip found the neural port at its neck—

Crack.

The Juggernaut's elbow snapped her ribs. She flew into the remnants of her workbench, agony blooming like ink in water. The glaive slipped from her fingers.

"Pathetic," rumbled the Juggernaut. It raised a fist to pulp her skull—

Bang.

A bullet kissed its left eye lens.

Talin Sniper.

The shot came from three blocks away. Natalie knew the sound—a .50 caliber hymn sung by the Monarch's best long-range killers. She crawled behind the toppled fridge as the Juggernaut staggered, its optic feed scrambled.

Click. Whir.

The sniper's second round punched through the safehouse wall, grazing Natalie's shoulder. She hissed. Talins didn't miss. This was sport.

"Come out, little ghost," the sniper's voice crooned through the Juggernaut's external speakers. "We'll make it quick."

The Talin's voice slithered through the Juggernaut's speakers, laced with neuro-disruptors meant to induce panic. Natalie's vision blurred, her grip on the glaive faltering. "You're a ledger entry, ghost. Let me balance the books." The sniper's third shot ricocheted off her boot, a near-miss designed to paralyze. Talins were artists of despair, their bullets calibrated to maim before killing.

Natalie fumbled for her glaive. Broken finger. Maybe two.

Click. Whir.

The third bullet shattered her cover. Shrapnel peppered her legs.

"Last offer."

Natalie lunged—not at the Juggernaut, but at the wall. Her remaining dagger sank into the smog-purifier unit. Overload protocols triggered.

The explosion blew out the eastern wall.

Smog swallowed her as she tumbled into the alley. Broken ribs. Dislocated shoulder. The sniper's laser sight painted her heart.

At least I took two, she thought, tasting blood. Georg would've—

The shot never came.

Reality twisted.

The Iron Verdicts froze mid-swing, their hammers encased in sudden crystal. The Juggernaut's roar choked to silence as void-static flooded its neural ports. Three blocks away, the Talin Sniper's rifle melted, molten alloy fusing her gloves to flesh.

Natalie blinked. A figure stood over her, silhouetted in emerald flames that smelled nothing like Devon's Void-magic—this reeked of Scholar alchemy, of sanctified oils and forged ledgers.

"Up, girl." The voice buzzed with artificial harmonics. A Red Scholar's trademark cadence. "This isn't your grave."

Devon's Void-static manifested as emerald flames—a perfect mimicry of Red Scholar pyromancy. The scent of forged ledgers and sacramental oils flooded the alley, an olfactory ruse to baffle Inquisition forensics. As he hauled Natalie upright, she glimpsed the holographic sigils on his disguise—flawless replicas of Scholar clan markings.

Natalie's vision cleared just enough to see the "Scholar's" hand—translucent, crackling with barely contained Void-energy beneath its holographic disguise.

Devon.

He yanked her upright. Pain flared, then numbness as Void-static flooded her veins.

"Play along," he whispered, his true voice bleeding through.

The Scholar illusion raised its arms. "By the Monarch's grace, this one is mine."

Fire erupted—real fire, stolen from a refinery's core. When it cleared, Natalie and her savior were gone.

They materialized in a derelict chapel, the same one where Claire had been baptized. Natalie collapsed against a pew, coughing blood.

"Why the theatrics?" she rasped.

Devon's form flickered, the Scholar disguise dissolving to reveal his static-charged void. "The Inquisition expects Red Scholar betrayal. Let them find the 'evidence'." He tossed her a Talin-stone. Footage of the Scholar-rescue looped—a flawless forgery.

Natalie stared at her glaive, abandoned in the safehouse. "I had them."

"You had nothing." Devon's void-eye pulsed. "That squad was a test. The Inquisition was on their way to take you away."

He smiled, all teeth. "Ask Claire."

In the derelict chapel, Natalie prodded her dislocated shoulder, biting back a curse. Devon hovered near the altar, his form flickering like a corrupted lumen-film. "The Talin's rifle had a tracer," he said, tossing her a shard of molten alloy. "The Inquisition will find it embedded in a Red Scholar's sigil. A gift from their 'ally'."