Fire In The Blood

Chapter 35 – Fire in the Blood

We waited in the dark.

Somewhere beyond the dense wall of asteroid rock, the Ring ships circled, searching. A predator's sweep—methodical, cold, patient. The Sparrowhawk floated silent, hidden in the veins of a long-dead mining cluster. Its hull, battered and scorched, was barely holding.

Inside, none of us spoke at first.

Mira's hands were still on the controls, knuckles white from gripping too tight. Allan and Anna hovered near the emergency power modulator, ready to cut systems if another scan passed close. Orin watched Lys Ander like a hawk, pulse rifle humming low with a hot charge.

I sat at the center, Lys just across from me, her wrists cuffed to the wall rail.

"Tell me everything," I said.

She tilted her head, calm as ever. "You already saw enough. They have your signal now. Not just a fragment—your patterns, your instincts, your thresholds. What you fear. What you sacrifice."

"You said the first generation was active."

"Yes. Deployed. Field-tested in controlled skirmishes. Most don't even know they're fighting war-bent soldiers."

Mira turned from the cockpit, her voice sharper than steel. "And the people in the tanks? The ones you wired up like ghosts?"

"Failed tests. Too much personality left behind. Emotions are the enemy of command structures. You of all people know that, Kael."

I stood slowly. "I also know what it means to lose yourself piece by piece. You turned people into meat puppets."

She didn't deny it. Just looked at me like I was a case study. "And yet you came here. Because part of you knows we're right."

Allan took a step forward, eyes blazing. "He came here to burn this down."

"Then he failed," Lys said. "The facility was just a decoy. The real project—Generation Two—is mobile. Already beyond the Aethran fringe."

She leaned in, voice low. "And if you're smart, you'll let it go. Because what's coming next doesn't need your name. It already has your nature."

I felt the cold in my chest settle deeper.

Mira turned her chair around fully. "We can't sit here forever. They'll sweep this sector again. We need to move."

I nodded. "We run quiet. Dead drift until we hit nav range. Then Seris."

Anna gave a bitter laugh. "She's going to love this."

We powered up the engines slowly, not enough to light the sky, just enough to guide the Sparrowhawk out of hiding. The debris thinned after two hours of silent flight. No pursuit. No sign we'd been seen.

When Seris answered our hail, her voice was clipped. "You were supposed to scout, not bring me a war."

"We brought you intel," I said. "And someone who can help us stop it."

By the time we docked with The Pyre, I had replayed the lab in my head a hundred times. The tanks. The faces. The code streams.

I'd seen worse in the old wars. But this felt different.

This time, the ghosts wore my skin.

Seris met us in the hangar. Mira walked beside me, silent but unreadable. Anna stayed close to Lys, blaster in hand.

"Tell me it was worth the risk," Seris said.

I handed her the data drive. "See for yourself."

She walked us straight to the war room. The moment the drive loaded, the holo-map shifted. Names, trajectories, prototype schematics. Neural architecture overlays. At the center: Kael Riven. My own brain, rendered in hard lines and code.

Seris's face darkened. "They built a goddamn army off of you."

"No," I said. "They built one off of what they thought I was."

Allan leaned on the console. "Where are they heading?"

Seris tapped a blinking star system. "Drift Sector. Unclaimed. No government, no comm relays. Perfect staging ground."

Mira crossed her arms. "So they want a ghost war."

"They want a clean one," Seris replied. "Untraceable. Deny everything while the galaxy changes shape."

She turned to me. "And you still want to fight?"

I met her eyes. "If I don't, they win twice."

Silence. Then Seris nodded once.

"You have my fleet. Three carriers. I'll contact the old networks. If we're doing this, we do it loud."

Mira let out a slow breath. "So what's the play?"

I looked at the map, at the shape of the enemy, and felt the fire start to build again in my chest.

"We take the fight to them. We find Generation Two. And we shut it down ,before they forget what it means to be human.