Burning Server Blood

War smelled like burning servers and cheap champagne.

Lana stood amidst the ruins of Lab 1, Nyx unconscious in her arms, Kieran swaying beside her. On the shattered terminal screens, the fallout of her data dump played in real time:

SCREEN 1: Tokyo Stock Exchange. Vanir Genetics stock plummeting. Ticker symbol VGEN flashing blood-red.

SCREEN 2: Lysander Vex fleeing Noctis Tower through a mob of shareholders. His white suit torn, "MONSTER" scar glowing crimson as he snarled at cameras.

SCREEN 3: Headline: NOCTIS CEO EXPOSED AS BLACK-MARKET DNA KINGPIN! GOVERNMENT RAID IMMINENT!

BOOM!

The reinforced lab door buckled inward. Dust rained from the ceiling.

"Three minutes is up, big sister!" Specter's voice shrieked through the intercom. "Alden's here! And he's PISSED!"

Director Alden stepped through the smoke.

He wasn't armored. He wore a tailored charcoal suit, polished oxfords crunching on glass. Bald head gleaming under emergency lights, neural implant pulsing cobalt. In his hand: a slim silver device humming like a trapped wasp – the neutron dampener.

"Miss Carter," he said, voice devoid of inflection. "You've cost me billions. Hand over the Omega Asset. I'll make your death efficient."

Behind him, Eclipse troopers fanned out, weapons trained.

Kieran bared his teeth, a growl building – but he staggered, poison still leaching his strength. Jason slumped against a console, chest bleeding freely.

Lana tightened her grip on Nyx. "You want her?" She smiled, gold flickering in her eyes. "Come take her from the woman who broke your empire."

---

Alden didn't flinch. He raised the dampener. "Neural frequency: Omega Sub-harmonic."

A high-pitched whine stabbed into Lana's skull. Nyx screamed in her sleep – a silent, psychic burst that shattered the remaining screens. Troopers clutched their helmets, howling.

"NOW!" Specter's voice hissed.

Vents exploded overhead. Not troopers – conduit pipes, spewing boiling steam and choking chemical fog. The lab plunged into a white, scalding haze.

"Move!" Kieran roared, shoving Lana towards a rear service hatch Jason had pried open.

Chaos erupted.

Troopers fired blind into the fog. Energy bolts sizzled past Lana's ear. She stumbled, Nyx a dead weight. Kieran moved like a phantom – weakened but lethal. A trooper's neck snapped with a wet crack; another was flung screaming into a sparking console.

Alden remained eerily calm, dampener humming. "Thermal sweep. Find the child."

Lana reached the hatch. Jason tumbled through after her. Kieran turned to follow –

THWACK!

A neural baton slammed into his back. He crashed to his knees, electricity arcing over his furred spine. Alden stood over him, dampener pressed to Kieran's temple.

"The Alpha comes with me," Alden stated. "Leverage."

"NO!" Lana lunged back through the hatch.

A figure dropped from the ceiling.

Specter.

She landed between Alden and Kieran, claws extended, dripping a viscous black fluid – Dragonclaw venom? Her red eyes burned in the fog. "Wrong move, Director."

"Asset SC-06," Alden said, unimpressed. "Stand down or be decommissioned."

Specter grinned, all teeth. "Try it."

Lana didn't wait. She grabbed Kieran's arm, hauling him towards the hatch as Specter launched herself at Alden. The clash was brutal – Specter's feral speed against Alden's neural-enhanced precision. Venom met dampener in a shower of sparks.

"Go!" Specter screamed, blocking a baton strike meant for Lana's head. "He wants the kid, not me!"

Lana dragged Kieran through the hatch. Jason slammed it shut, welding it crude with a plasma torch from Evelyn's toolkit.

The last thing Lana saw: Specter raking her claws down Alden's face, drawing first blood. His roar of fury echoed through the metal.

---

They staggered through a dripping utility tunnel. Nyx stirred weakly.

"Specter…" Kieran panted, leaning heavily on Lana. "Why?"

"Chaos is her oxygen," Jason coughed, clutching his chest wound. "Alden controlling everything? Boring. This?" He gestured back towards the muffled explosions. "This is fun for her."

Lana's stolen Eclipse comm crackled:

"—REPEAT, ALL UNITS CONVERGE ON SECTOR 9! VANIR LAB IN VIENNA IS UNDER ATTACK BY SHAREHOLDER RIOTERS! DNA VAULTS BREACHED—" "—LYSON RESIGNED! NOCTIS BOARD VOTING TO DISSOLVE—" "—UN CONFIRMS GENE WEAPONS TRIBUNAL. DIRECTOR ALDEN SUMMONED—"

"You did it, Lana," Jason whispered, awed and terrified. "You burned it all down."

Lana felt no triumph. Only cold purpose. "Where now? They'll track us."

Jason tapped his temple. "Evelyn's last gift. Coordinates to a Fenrir Brotherhood outpost. Abandoned. Off-grid. Deep in the Rockies."

Kieran stiffened. "Fenrir? They'd skin us alive."

"Not if they're dead," Jason said grimly. "Eclipse purged them months ago. It's a tomb… but a safe one."

A low whimper came from Lana's arms. Nyx's eyes fluttered open – not black anymore, but a deep, unsettling violet. She touched Lana's cheek.

"Mother… the First One dreams of fire."

Lana's blood ran cold. "What?"

Nyx's tiny fingers traced patterns in the air. "He's angry. You woke him up."

---

The Fenrir outpost was carved into a mountain's heart – a grim fortress of blackened timber and wolf skulls. Dust lay thick on rough-hewn tables holding moldering maps marked with territorial claims. The air stank of old blood and pine resin.

Jason collapsed onto a fur-strewn bunk, face grey with pain. Kieran sank beside a cold hearth, inspecting his wound. The black veins had receded, but weakness clung to him.

Lana laid Nyx on a clean fur. The child stared at the ceiling, violet eyes unfocused, humming a discordant tune – Evelyn's lullaby, twisted.

"What did she mean, 'woke him up'?" Kieran asked, voice gravelly.

"The First Shifter," Lana said, recalling the horrors beneath the Blood Accord chamber. "The thing the Accord contained. Nyx thinks the data leak… disturbed it."

Jason groaned as Lana cleaned his chest wound. "How? It's locked under a mile of rock!"

"Information is a kind of energy," Lana murmured, remembering Evelyn's theories. "Maybe broadcasting its existence… called to it."

THUMP.

The sound came from deep within the mountain.

THUMP-THUMP.

Like a massive heartbeat.

Nyx sat bolt upright. "He's hungry."

Suddenly, the comm crackled – not Eclipse frequencies. A new voice, sharp, ancient, female:

"Lana Carter. You have stirred the hornet's nest… and spilled my honey."

A hologram flickered above the comm – a woman of impossible elegance. Black hair coiled with jade pins, eyes like chips of glacial ice. She wore a robe of iridescent scales that seemed to move.

Lady Ryoko. Dragonclaw's Matriarch. Evelyn's lost sister.

"Aunt Ryoko?" Lana breathed, stunned.

"The data leak was… inelegant," Ryoko said, her voice like silk over knives. "But effective. You have Alden scrambling. Lysander exposed. The Blood Accord in tatters. My sister's daughter, indeed."

"What do you want?" Kieran growled.

"The child," Ryoko said simply. "Nyx. Her power is raw. Unstable. Dragonclaw can refine it. Protect her from Alden… and the First One's hunger."

Nyx hissed, violet eyes narrowing. "Bad scales! Lies!"

Ryoko's hologram smiled faintly. "Perceptive child. Very well. Truth: Nyx's power could stabilize my failing immortality. A fair trade, yes? Sanctuary for salvation?"

"Never," Lana spat.

"Then you leave me no choice," Ryoko sighed. "I have gifted your location to Director Alden. A… peace offering. Expect company within the hour."

Her image vanished.

The thump-thump from the mountain grew louder.

---

Panic was a luxury Lana couldn't afford. Alden was coming. Dragonclaw wanted Nyx. The First Shifter stirred beneath the world. And Kieran could barely stand.

She looked at the moldering Fenrir maps. One depicted the outpost in detail – including a tunnel marked: "King's Grave – Sealed."

"Jason. The King's Grave. Where?"

He pointed weakly to a massive, rune-carved stone blocking a rear passage. "Tomb of Gunnar Fenrir's father. Sealed after the Eclipse purge. Booby-trapped. Suicide to open."

"Perfect," Lana said. She turned to Kieran. "Can you shift? Even a little?"

He grimaced, flexing his claws. "Barely. Why?"

"We're giving Alden a welcome present."

Working frantically, they laid their trap. Lana used Evelyn's toolkit to jury-rig the Fenrir's old security system – pressure plates linked to sonic emitters. Jason, bleeding but determined, deciphered the runes on the tomb seal. Kieran, drawing on the dregs of his strength, clawed weak points into the stone.

Nyx watched, humming. She traced symbols in the dust – matching the ones Jason struggled with. "Grandmother showed me," she whispered. "Keys of bone."

Following Nyx's whispered instructions, Jason twisted runes. The massive stone slid aside with a grating groan, revealing a dark crypt. The air that rushed out was frigid, smelling of old ice and iron.

Inside, on a stone bier, lay the mummified remains of a massive Fenrir Alpha, clad in tattered furs, a rusted crown of antlers on his skull.

"Now we bait the hook," Lana said, placing Nyx's discarded blanket just inside the crypt entrance.

The comm crackled. Alden's voice, icy calm:

"Surrender the Omega Asset, Carter. Or I will peel the flesh from your Alpha's bones while you watch."

He was at the gates.

---

They hid in the shadows of the main hall as Eclipse troopers breached the outer doors. Alden strode in, face bandaged where Specter had clawed him, dampener humming.

He saw the open crypt. The blanket.

"Predictable," he sneered. He gestured. Two troopers advanced into the crypt.

Lana held her breath.

SCREEEEEEE!

The sonic emitters erupted. Not targeting troopers – targeting the stone ceiling of the crypt.

The ancient rock, weakened by Kieran's claws and the sonic assault, fractured. With a roar like a dying god, the ceiling collapsed, burying the troopers and Alden's path in tons of rubble.

Dust billowed. Alden staggered back, coughing, fury contorting his features.

From the shadows, Lana met his gaze. She raised the Eclipse comm, knowing he'd hear.

"Director Alden?" she said, her voice cold gold. "Your stock just crashed. Your assets are buried. You're not a king here."

She crushed the comm under her boot.

"You're the rat in the tomb."

As Alden's enraged bellow echoed through the ruins, Nyx nestled against Lana, whispering words that chilled her to the soul:

"The First One likes the noise, Mother. He says… we're the fire that wakes the world."