[JERRY -- POV]
The workshop hummed with the comfortable chaos of planning—holographic displays painting the air in electric blue, weapon schematics rotating lazily, the smell of fresh coffee mixing with gun oil and that particular ozone scent that came from high-grade tech being pushed to its limits.
I leaned back in my chair, tin-aug eyes whirring as they focused on the central display, and said the words that had been rattling around in my skull for the past three days:
"The Ghost of Tartarus."
The room went quiet. Even the ambient systems seemed to pause, waiting.
With a flourish that was definitely more dramatic than necessary—but fuck it, I'd earned my dramatic moments—I activated the surveillance footage. The hologram expanded, filling the center of the workshop with grainy security feed from Iron Fang territory, location marked as a weapons depot on Tartarus's eastern perimeter.
At first, nothing seemed unusual. Guards at their posts. Standard patrol patterns. The kind of boring security footage that made you wonder why anyone bothered recording it.
Then he appeared.
Just a figure walking through the frame—casual, unhurried, hands in pockets like he was taking a morning stroll through a park instead of infiltrating one of Rex the 3rd's most secure facilities. The image quality was shit, face obscured by shadows and interference, but the body language was unmistakable.
Kaiser.
And then the screaming started.
"Holy shit," Hawk breathed, leaning forward as the footage descended into absolute chaos.
Guards didn't just die—they went mad first. One soldier clawed at his own face, tearing flesh in strips as he shrieked about things crawling under his skin. Another opened fire on his squadmates, emptying his clip with wild abandon before turning the weapon on himself. A third simply ran, smashing through a window and plummeting three stories to the concrete below, his scream cutting off with a wet crunch.
All while the figure kept walking. Never stopping. Never even looking back.
"What the fuck did we just watch?" Kane asked, his usual stone-faced expression showing the barest crack of disturbed interest.
I grinned, cycling through additional footage—different angles, different time stamps, but the same result. Panic. Madness. Self-inflicted violence spreading through Rex's forces like a contagion.
"That," I said with undisguised pride, "is the Ghost of Tartarus making its debut. Kaiser plus one very special toxin, courtesy of an old friend who shall remain nameless because—" I paused for effect. "—he's super fucking dead now."
"Dead?" Tara's small voice carried a note of concern.
"Poisoned by his own creation, ironically enough," I confirmed, pulling up a separate file that showed a corpse in a lab, surrounded by shattered vials and emergency containment foam. "Brilliant chemist, absolute dogshit at following his own safety protocols. But before he died, he managed to create something beautiful—a neurological agent that doesn't kill, doesn't leave physical damage, just... rewrites fear responses. Makes your own brain turn against you. Hallucinations. Paranoia. The absolute certainty that death itself has come calling and there's nowhere left to run."
Kaiser spoke for the first time since the footage started, voice casual as ever. "Don't worry though—still got about a dozen doses stashed in the safehouse. Plenty for future infiltrations, assuming we don't get stupid with our application rates."
Scourge let out a low whistle, something like approval flickering across his scarred features. "Psychological warfare. Turn their own minds into weapons. Clean, efficient, and it spreads terror faster than any physical assault could manage."
"Exactly," I agreed, warming to my subject. "By the time Rex's people figure out what happened, the stories will have already spread. The Ghost of Tartarus, walking through their defenses, driving soldiers mad with its mere presence. Every retelling makes it worse, makes it stronger. Fear compounds interest, and pretty soon you've got an entire facility of guards who are terrified of shadows."
"It's elegant," Clara's synthesized voice emerged from the speakers, carrying notes of genuine admiration. "Weaponized mythology combined with chemical enhancement. The toxin provides the immediate effect, but the legend ensures long-term psychological damage that will persist long after the chemical agent has metabolized."
Hawk was studying the footage with her Oracle-Eye, running analysis patterns. "Dispersal method?"
"Airborne micro-particles," I explained, pulling up a schematic of the delivery system—a device that looked like a ordinary air filtration unit but was anything but. "Odorless, colorless, takes effect within thirty seconds of exposure. The beauty is that it's not technically a poison—doesn't trigger standard chemical sensors, doesn't show up on medical scans. Just looks like severe psychological trauma, which in a place like Tartarus, is basically background noise."
"Fucking brilliant," Kane muttered, and coming from him, that was practically a declaration of love.
Dr. Molloy, who'd been quiet until now, cleared her throat. "Just to be clear—this toxin is non-lethal, yes? The deaths in that footage were all... self-inflicted?"
"Every single one," Kaiser confirmed. "The toxin doesn't kill. It just makes you want to kill yourself, or anything else that might be the source of the terror you're experiencing. Survival instinct turned inside out, rewritten so that death seems preferable to whatever horrors your brain is conjuring."
"That's horrifying," Molloy said.
"That's war," Scourge countered. "And it's a damn sight cleaner than most alternatives."
I was about to launch into a detailed explanation of the toxin's molecular structure—because honestly, the chemistry was fascinating even if the effects were nightmare fuel—when Karin's voice cut through the growing enthusiasm like a scalpel through flesh.
"It won't work."
Everyone turned to look at her. She stood apart from the group, arms crossed, expression skeptical in that particular way that meant she'd already run the numbers and found them wanting.
"Elaborate," Kaiser said, voice neutral but I caught the slight edge that meant he was already calculating responses to whatever objection she was about to raise.
Karin activated her own holographic display, tactical overlays painting the air in sharp crimson. "The toxin is effective against standard security forces—regular soldiers, augmented guards, even low-tier trait users who rely more on physical enhancement than mental discipline. But you're not going after standard security."
She pulled up profiles that made everyone in the room pay attention.
"Morgana is kept in Tartarus's deepest level, surrounded by suppression fields, anti-trait wards, and security measures that make Baron Varn's setup look like a corner store. And guarding her directly—" The profiles expanded, showing two figures that radiated danger even through static images. "—are Rex the 3rd's personal warlords. His absolute best. The killers he saves for threats that actually matter."
The first profile showed a man who looked like he'd been carved from granite and bad decisions. Massive frame, easily seven feet tall and built like he bench-pressed cars for fun. His augmentations were visible—military-grade enhancements that practically glowed under the holographic lighting. An arsenal of weapons covered every inch of his body, from pistols to plasma rifles to what appeared to be a fucking rocket launcher strapped to his back.
"Rambo," Karin said, and despite the absurd name, nobody laughed. "Real name unknown, but he took the designation from some old-world movie he was obsessed with. Augmented for speed—and I mean real speed, not just enhanced reflexes. He can move faster than most people can process, faster than most traits can track. Combined with mastery-level proficiency in literally every weapon system ever invented, and an Arsenal trait that lets him summon any weapon he's previously touched..."
She let the implication hang.
"He's a one-man army," Hawk finished quietly, Oracle-Eye flickering as it ran combat simulations. "Standard approach won't work. He'll kill us before we get within striking distance."
"And his partner," Karin continued, pulling up the second profile, "is somehow worse."
Irene looked like art dipped in blood and given form. Beautiful in that particular way that made your hindbrain scream danger, she stood in the hologram with casual grace, twin swords extending from her forearms like natural extensions of her body. But the swords were wrong—they seemed to writhe, to hunger, edges that looked less like metal and more like crystallized malice.
"Dual-wielding swordswoman," Karin said. "But her blades aren't just weapons—they're part of her trait. Blood Drinker. Every time those swords make contact, they don't just cut. They consume. Flesh, bone, metal, energy—doesn't matter. One touch and that part of you is just... gone. Not severed. Not damaged. Erased."
Kane's expression had gone even more neutral than usual, which for him meant deeply uncomfortable memories. "I've seen her fight. Once. From a distance. Smart people don't get close to Irene, because close to Irene means parts of you start disappearing."
"She's bloodlust incarnate," Karin continued. "No mercy, no hesitation, no survival instinct beyond the need to cut and consume. Most warlords avoid her specifically because fighting her means accepting that you'll lose pieces of yourself even if you win."
The workshop had gone very quiet.
"So," Karin finished, meeting Kaiser's eyes directly, "your Ghost of Tartarus strategy won't work. Not against these two. Rambo's augments include chemical filtration—he won't even register the toxin. And Irene..." She paused. "Irene doesn't feel fear. Not in any conventional sense. Her brain chemistry is so altered by bloodlust that terror just registers as another flavor of excitement."
Kaiser was quiet for a long moment, his golden eyes distant as he processed the new variables. Around him, I could see the others shifting—concern, calculation, the growing awareness that this recruitment wasn't going to be the clean operation we'd been planning.
Finally, he spoke.
"I have a plan for Irene."
The words hung in the air like a promise or a threat.
"Elaborate," Hawk demanded, and I could hear the worry beneath her tactical curiosity.
"Later," Kaiser said, in that tone that meant the subject was closed for now. "But Rambo..." He grimaced, and for the first time since I'd known him, I saw genuine uncertainty flicker across his expression. "Rambo is going to be a problem. Speed that fast, that many weapons, combat mastery across every system... that's not a fight I can predict. Not with certainty."
"So we bring overwhelming force," Scourge suggested. "Full assault, every asset we have, drown him in numbers until—"
"No."
Everyone looked at Kaiser, surprised by the flat refusal.
"I'm going alone."
The workshop exploded into protest—Hawk and Jerry and Karin all talking at once, voices overlapping in a cascade of objections and tactical assessments and increasingly creative profanity. Even Kane raised an eyebrow, which for him was practically shouting.
Kaiser waited for the noise to die down before continuing, voice calm but carrying absolute conviction.
"Morgana is a time manipulator who's been imprisoned and used as a weapon for three years. Her psychological profile—" He pulled up files that I recognized as coming from very illegal sources. "—indicates severe trauma, paranoia, and a tendency toward violence when feeling threatened. She's not going to respond well to a full assault team kicking down her door. She'll see it as another attempt to control her, another group trying to turn her into a tool."
He met each person's eyes in turn.
"One person, approaching carefully, offering freedom without demanding immediate trust—that has a chance of working. A squad of heavily armed soldiers? That just confirms every fear Rex has been feeding her about the outside world."
"And if Rambo kills you before you reach her?" Hawk's voice was tight with barely controlled emotion.
"Then I die," Kaiser said simply. "But at least Morgana won't be traumatized by watching another battle fought over her like she's property to be claimed."
The logic was sound, even if nobody liked it. I could see the acceptance settling over the group like uncomfortable fog—the awareness that sometimes the smart tactical decision and the humane decision aligned in ways that made everyone involved deeply unhappy.
"Fine," Hawk said finally, voice clipped. "But we're staging nearby. You go in alone, but the second things go sideways, we're coming through whatever walls necessary. Understood?"
Kaiser nodded. "Understood."
"And this plan for Irene," Karin pressed, not willing to let that particular thread drop. "Care to share before you walk into a death trap?"
"Her swords consume what they touch," Kaiser said, and something cold flickered behind his golden eyes. "But consumption is just another form of trait interaction. And trait interactions are—"
"—something you can hijack," I finished, seeing where he was going and feeling a grin spread across my face despite the circumstances. "You absolute magnificent bastard. You're going to steal her consumption ability mid-fight."
"In theory," Kaiser admitted. "In practice, it'll require perfect timing, physical contact, and probably hurt like hell. But yes—if I can hijack Blood Drinker for even a few seconds, turn her own weapon against her..." He shrugged. "It's not a guarantee. But it's a chance."
"And Rambo?" Kane asked, bringing us back to the problem without a clean solution.
Kaiser was quiet for a long moment, staring at the holographic profile of the warlord who moved faster than thought and killed with the precision of a lifetime spent mastering death.
"Rambo," he said finally, "is going to require improvisation. Adaptation. And probably a significant amount of luck." His smile was sharp and entirely humorless. "But then again, I've been running on luck and improvisation since this whole thing started. Why stop now?"
The workshop settled into uneasy silence, everyone processing the mission parameters and quietly calculating odds that nobody wanted to speak aloud.
"Alright," Kaiser said, his voice carrying the particular cadence of a man preparing to do something monumentally stupid for arguably good reasons. "Objections? Suggestions? Alternative strategies that don't involve me walking into a maximum-security prison to negotiate with a traumatized time manipulator while avoiding two warlords who specialize in extremely creative murder?"
He looked around the room, meeting each set of eyes.
"Anyone? Now's the time to speak up, because once we commit to this, there's no calling it off halfway through."
The silence stretched, heavy with unspoken concerns and tactical assessments and the growing certainty that this was happening whether anyone liked it or not.
And then, from the back of the room, a small hand raised.
Tara.
Everyone turned to look at her—this tiny figure with golden hair and mismatched eyes, the child Kaiser had saved from Baron Varn's trafficking operation, the girl who'd awakened mythic-tier powers and was still learning what that meant.
Her hand stayed raised, steady and certain, while Clara's voice whispered something in her neural link that made her smile—small and bright and utterly fearless.
"Yes"
END OF CHAPTER