Shawn Rose had seen battlefield arrogance. He'd seen warlords, omnic zealots, god AI and even supposed peacekeepers who thought their titles shielded them from death. But none of them rivaled Amrita Nadari.
She sat in the boardroom like a queen over a crumbling empire, sipping corporate-grade tea as footage from the slums flickered on-screen showing wreckage, riots, and emergency shelters packed with coughing civilians.
"This is unfortunate," she said, dabbing her lip with a silk cloth. "But manageable. We frame the attack as a fringe rebellion, rogue tech extremists reacting to Vishkar's urban revitalization efforts. You and your team? Heroes caught in the crossfire. It sells."
Shawn didn't blink. "Someone fired two missiles at your dropship and sent armed omnics after you. That wasn't random. Someone knew where you'd be and when."
Amrita arched a brow. "Then what are you still waiting here for? Find them. Quietly."
Shawn gathered his core team in the same forgotten sublevel. The air buzzed with tension and quiet purpose. S3bastian handed over the latest decoded telemetry. "We got a weak trace on the override command. Same signature as the drones that hit us. Origin point triangulates to Sector Nine. An abandoned textile complex."
"What's more worrying," said Spencer, "is the secondary data embedded in the stream. It wasn't just omnic override code. It was signal-based hard light calibration protocols. Extremely advanced. Definitely Vishkar origin."
Leslie's eyes narrowed. "Hard light? They're weaponizing the same tech Vishkar uses for construction?"
Virginia nodded. "But it's unstable. You'd need a secure key fragment to stabilize hard light at that scale and those are under lock inside the tower."
Shawn exhaled slowly. "Unless someone plans to take one. And kill Amrita to get it."
The next morning, the Thorns left under the guise of slum relief. They were to provide civilian medical aid. They had trauma kits and food drops. It was the perfect cover.
Which is what they initially did. The people accepted it with hardened gazes and no gratitude as they believed them to be the source of their issues. Or at least they were cooperating with the source. Eventually, they had the time to slip away, looking to do their original plan.
The factory ruins were cold and quiet. But they weren't empty.
Inside, a series of modified omnics stood idle, each rigged with unstable hard light nodes bolted to their chests. Makeshift projection rigs covered the walls. A central control hub scavenged, repurposed, but laced with Vishkar-grade techs, ran a boot sequence as the Thorns approached.
It became apparent to Shawn that his earlier thought about Anubis collaborating with someone here might have been incorrect. Whoever was doing this, had the tech no how to reprogram destroyed omnics and repurpose this to their own bidding. ANd it was someone who had ties with the Vishkar corporation, along with a vendetta.
Then a voice echoed from the shadows.
"I thought you'd come sooner."
An older man stepped from behind a slanted beam of half-formed light. His skin was pale, sickly, laced with wire ports. One eye shimmered unnaturally, a hard light graft fused to his optic nerve.
"Shawn Rose," he said, smiling faintly. "The experiment that bled into legend."
Shawn didn't move. "I take it that you're the mastermind behind our recent inconveniences? You fired on a civilian dropship. You tried to kill a woman under my protection. You killed dozens in the process."
He waved a hand. "Sacrifices. Calculated. Necessary. Amrita Nadari is the last keyholder. Her death opens the archive. It gives me control of the original Vishkar hard light protocols."
"And who are you that you'd have such blatant disregard for lives?" Dwanye asked.
He bows, "Kastur Iyer. At your service."
Virginia flinched. "The key? The one locked in Vishkar's central AI vault? You're trying to override the lightweave systems?"
"Not override," Kastur said. "Claim. But I'm missing a component. I thought maybe I could brute-force it, but then…" He looked at Shawn like a man seeing prophecy. "Then you appeared. And the data changed."
Shawn's fists clenched. "What are you talking about?"
"You see, there's a little secret that Vishkar Corporation likes to hide. Hard- light isn't compatible with everyone. It requires a constant neural feedback loop. The constructs are stabilized by microsecond adjustments based on the user's muscle impulses, bioelectric signals, and ocular focus.
I'm barely able to maintain anything serious for more than two minutes. I had all but given up hope. Then I saw how fast your healing was. A little push from my omnic soldiers and your blood was at the scene.
You're the variable. Your body hums with something raw. A compound that bends biology without rejection. Your drug that you have coursing through your veins is perfect. It binds with neural pathways, enhances without collapse. I recognized the feedback signature the moment your people stepped into the sector."
Kastur stepped closer.
"You don't realize what you've made. Your drug isn't just enhancement. It's synthesis. Your blood, Rose, was the final thread I need to stabilize hard light without corporate keys. With it, I don't need Amrita's core anymore. I just need her dead. And you… opened the door yourself."
The omnics powered on.
Six.
Ten.
Twelve.
Each one shimmered with unstable light constructs—blades, shields, crude cannons all flickering in and out of form. The ground pulsed with energy.
Shawn drew his blade. "Thorns. Contain the room. Don't let him escape."
S3bastian launched a plasma burst at the ceiling, collapsing a beam and scattering the first wave of omnics.
"Containment protocols it is!" he shouted.
Spencer and Leslie flanked the sides, unloading rounds into approaching drones. With Shawn's training and enhanced bioelectricity along with Blackline, they were above the average soldiers. But these constructs weren't normal.
Kastur activated a projection rig on the wall, forming a half-dome of glowing hexagonal light around himself. He moved inside it like a dancer through a dream, light flowing with every step.
"You can't kill me," he whispered. "You made me."
Shawn charged. Hard light weapons shot toward him. One grazed his side, cutting through his armor like glass. Pain lanced through his ribs, but he kept going. His sword cracked through the outer shell of a construct and buried deep into Kastur's barrier. The energy shuddered but didn't break.
Kastur smirked. "Your blood is the bridge. Your pain is the path. Let me take it. Let me use it."
Shawn growled, twisting his blade. "Over my dead body."
The omnics were getting to be a bit too much to handle, so S3bastian made a call. Grabbing everyone that was close by, he threw EMP grenades into the air, throwing everyone back out of the way. The grenades detonated, unaffecting the omnics while they had the barriers, but the grenades broke the fragile ceiling.
It collapsed on all the omnics along with Shawn and Kastur but broke all barriers. Shawns katana buried itself into Kastur's side, who gasped as he felt the pain of it. The team recovered, finishing off all the omnics before they could recover as well.
The man collapsed, gasping but grinning.
"You didn't stop anything," Kastur whispered. "I already triggered the uplink. My backup is syncing with Vishkar's sublayer. My blood will rot… but yours? I left instructions. They'll come for it. The future isn't corporate. It's light-bound."
Then he passed out.
Return to the Tower
Shawn carried Kastur's unconscious body himself into Vishkar's private medbay. They didn't ask questions.
In his report, he wrote:
"Subject: Kastur Iyer. Suspected hard light insurgent. Attempted assassination of VIP. Captured alive. No further threat. No mention of alternative motives."
He left out the part where Kastur had discovered traces of Blackline in his blood. Where he believed his blood was the key to unlocking a new world.
Because if that part got out…
Everyone would want a piece of him.