The Extraction Point

The squad leader racked the bolt of his rifle, stepping toward Kaelen. “Tough break, tin-man.”

Kaelen lay in the growing pool of his own blood. The betrayal was a physical weight, crushing his chest. He had let his guard down. He had trusted the warmth. He had made it personal.

Never again.

His cybernetic hand twitched, reaching into the hidden compartment of his tactical belt. His fingers closed around the cold glass of an illegal, military-grade combat stim. It was a dead-man's cocktail. It would redline his heart, override all pain receptors, and grant him five minutes of god-like adrenaline before his cardiovascular system catastrophically ruptured.

He drove the injector into his thigh and hit the plunger.

The world turned a blinding, violent red.

Kaelen moved faster than human biology allowed. He didn't reach for his dropped rifle; he lunged upward, his cybernetic hand driving straight through the squad leader’s armored chest plate, crushing his sternum.

Before the body hit the floor, Kaelen ripped the mercenary’s sidearm from its holster. He spun, firing three perfectly calculated shots. The remaining three mercenaries dropped, their visors shattered, brains painted across the rusting walls of the bunker.

Silence returned, broken only by Kaelen’s violently hammering heart.

He was a dead man walking. The stim was tearing his veins apart. Blood poured relentlessly from the hole in his side. But he had one objective left.

He dragged himself out of the bunker, stepping into the howling, acidic winds of Zone 4. The Extraction Point.

Fifty yards away, at the edge of a massive, sheer cliff, a sleek, unmarked syndicate shuttle was spooling its thrusters. Elara was standing on the boarding ramp, the wind whipping her hair, her hand resting protectively over the biometric drive.

Kaelen dropped to his stomach in the ash. His vision was tunneling, the edges blurring into black. His mechanical arm was failing, the servos sparking from the kinetic shock.

He pulled the sniper attachment from his belt, slotting it onto the barrel of the mercenary’s salvaged kinetic rifle. He rested the barrel on a rock, lining up the crosshairs.

He found Elara in the scope. The crosshairs rested perfectly over the center of her chest. Over the drive.

* Pull the trigger,* his mind screamed.

He commanded his finger to close. He commanded the muscle to contract.

But his biological body was entirely broken. The stim was failing. His heart stuttered, missing a beat, then two. A massive, agonizing wave of cold washed over him, far worse than the neurotoxin, worse than the winter of Tartarus-9.

His hand went entirely numb. The rifle slipped from his grasp, clattering uselessly against the stones.

Through the fading red haze of his optical implant, Kaelen watched Elara turn. She looked out across the ash dunes. For a second, he thought she might be looking for him. But she only smiled, turned her back, and walked up the ramp.

The shuttle doors sealed.

Kaelen lay in the toxic ash, his cheek pressed against the freezing dirt. He couldn't move. He couldn't breathe. The ground shook violently beneath him as the shuttle’s main thrusters ignited.

He lay there, utterly defeated, completely alone, and listened to the roar of her ship escaping into orbit, carrying the death of millions into the stars.

The roar faded, replaced only by the endless, howling wind of Tartarus-9, as Kaelen closed his eyes for the final time.