The reinforced steel door shrieked its final protest as Rheon's plasma cutter sheared through the locking mechanism. He kicked the molten panel inward; the heavy, metallic reverberation swallowed the silence.
He entered the Darkness.
The server room was a mausoleum of obsolete technology. Dust motes danced in the single, thin shaft of neon light that pierced the high, broken ceiling. The air was stale, thick with the scent of ozone and something else—something ancient, magnetic, and profoundly alive.
Rheon's Vanguard armour immediately filtered the sensory data. His helmet's visor snapped into Thermal/Aether Trace mode, coating the room in a monochrome lattice of heat signatures and residual energy.
"Subject is present, Commander," the armour's AI confirmed in his ear. "Residual Nosferis signature is localised to the centre axis. No immediate movement detected."
She's waiting, Rheon thought, his hand already gripped the neurological suppression pistol. He didn't trust the silence. He didn't trust the sensors.
Lyra Kain was not a normal target; she was two minds, a mythological singularity.
"Nosferis," Rheon's voice cut through the air, amplified by his helmet. "You are contained. Stand down and allow for retrieval."
No response. Only the deep, unsettling quiet.
Rheon took a single, slow step, his boots crunching on decayed data storage strips. He felt the cold logic of the Aether Trace sensors falter, momentarily overwhelmed by a wash of ambient electromagnetic interference that seemed to originate from the centre of the room.
She's using the environment to mask her presence with static, the tactical part of his mind realised.
"Clever, Lyra," Rheon said, pivoting slightly, trying to track the movement he knew must be there.
He saw her then, not on the thermal scan, but with his naked eye—a dark shape dissolving from the corner where shadow met shadow. She was perched silently on a stack of decommissioned hard drives, her form almost completely black, drinking the darkness around her.
She didn't rush him. She spoke.
"Containment is an illusion, Commander," Lyra's voice was velvet and razor wire, pitched just low enough to vibrate against the sensitive internal mic of his helmet. "Your orders are obsolete. Your mission is a cage built for two."
She launched her attack—not a physical strike, but a direct, scalpel-like strike with the Bloodlink.
It flooded his neural network, bypassing the dampeners not through brute force, but through a calculated whisper of truth. It targeted the deep fracture in Rheon's psyche—the unshakeable duty he felt versus the nagging, undeniable corruption he witnessed daily in the Federation's absolute power.
You serve a rotting corpse, the seductive voice of the Aether Fragment hissed directly in his mind, overlaid with Lyra's own defiant clarity. They see you as a replaceable cog. They see your discipline as a leash. You know the truth, Commander. You've seen the purges, the lies, the innocent blood shed for 'order'.
Rheon staggered, not from pain, but from the unbearable, external validation of his deepest doubts. His entire life was built on the foundation of Federation Law. Lyra was attacking the foundation itself.
Fight it, Vale! His own disciplined consciousness screamed back. It's manipulation! She knows your files! She's feeding on your doubt!
Rheon countered with a desperate, precise action. He raised the suppression pistol and fired—not at Lyra, but at the wall directly beside her. The specialised round, designed to emit a tight burst of debilitating sonic energy, vaporised the concrete.
Lyra was forced to move. She launched herself across the room, the sonic wave disrupting the Bloodlink's force. The move was pure speed, a flash of crimson defiance against the grey inertia of the room.
"A clever distraction," Lyra conceded, landing lightly atop a defunct cooling array, her eyes blazing with appreciation. "You resist the temptation of truth. But for how long?"
"You are a plague, Nosferis," Rheon ground out, fighting the urge to tear the helmet off and silence the voice. "A mythological construct weaponised by a scientist. Your promises are lies."
Lyra laughed—a sound of chilling, seductive conviction. "Am I, Commander? Let me ask you this: Dr Seraph Morn… he told you the Aether Fragment was an unstable variable they needed to dampen before deploying me, yes?"
Rheon froze. His internal chronology software confirmed the precise wording of Morn's classified briefing.
"The nanites they injected me with were never for 'stability' or 'dampening'," Lyra continued, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial intimacy, filling the space the sonic wave had cleared. "They were meant to erase me. The technology was designed to suppress Lyra Kain's consciousness entirely, leaving only the Aether Fragment—the consciousness of Dracula—in control of a perfect, nanite-augmented host body. They didn't want a weapon. They wanted a King. A military leader they could control absolutely, using my body."
Rheon felt the blood drain from his face, despite the perfect temperature control of his armour. A King. The Federation often used messianic terminology in its propaganda, but to create a mythological ruler?
"Your General Vance only wanted me intact for the next phase: the Cognitive Merge," Lyra stated, her voice full of tragic clarity. "Morn didn't want Lyra Kain; he wanted to transfer a superior mind into my body. He wanted to transform himself into the ultimate weapon, Commander. Not me. Not Dracula. But Seraph Morn, the new vampire King."
Lyra's gaze was absolute. "I was a sacrifice, Commander. But you? You are a loose thread. A witness. A threat to his absolute power. Vance will eliminate you the moment I am contained. You are simply too strong, too honest, too devoted to be allowed to survive the merger."
She is not lying, Dracula's voice murmured, not in a seductive tone, but in one of weary, ancient recognition. We know ambition when we see it, soldier. Morn is a grub. He means to usurp me. You are next on his elimination list.
Rheon fired the suppression pistol, a burst of rage and confusion driving his hand. This time, the round was directed straight at Lyra.
She vanished.
The energy round tore through the stack of hard drives she had been standing on, vaporising the metal in a blinding flash. But Lyra was already gone, moving with a speed that left a faint, coppery scent of ionised air in her wake.
She reappeared, not across the room, but beneath him. Rheon felt a jarring seismic shift as the floor plating beneath his specialised boots buckled inward. Lyra had delivered a focused, devastating kick downward, tearing through the reinforced concrete and steel like tissue paper.
"I offered you the stars, Commander," Lyra whispered, her voice fading as she plunged through the gaping hole in the floor into the darkness below—into the pre-Federation sewer network. "Now I offer you freedom. The choice is yours. Hunt your enemy, or hunt your ally."
The air crackled, and then she was gone.
Rheon stood on the ruined floor, the metallic scent of dust and ozone quickly replacing the seductive fragrance of the Bloodlink. The comms were screaming with Gamma 9's confused queries, but Rheon ignored them.
He lowered the suppression pistol. Lyra had neither killed nor disabled him. She had simply delivered a catastrophic, inescapable truth, planting the seed of doubt that would either destroy him or free him.
Rheon looked down into the pitch black maw where she had disappeared. He was left suspended between absolute duty and absolute, terrifying, treasonous self-preservation.
He was the hunter, but he was hunting a woman who had just given him a reason to turn his gun on his own General.
The chase had begun. And Rheon Vale was already dangerously compromised.