Location: Jerkin Residence - Grand Hall
Time: Evening - The Aftermath
---
The sound was wrong.
It came from inside them—from the cores of their aethernova suits. A wet, grinding churn, like two engines tearing at each other in a space too small to hold them. It rose and fell in arrhythmic bursts, and beneath it, something else—a high, thin keening, like wire pulled too tight.
The crowd heard it. The crowd felt it.
"What in the daylight is going on here?" a servant whispered.
"Something tells me it's all the equipped energy in their suits," another said, pointing at the cores—at the faint glow pulsing beneath the shriveled, bony chests of the Pyre cadets. The light was wrong. It flickered like a dying bulb, and within it, shadows moved that didn't belong to any of the eight.
"Perhaps..." A third voice, older, more careful. "Perhaps the silenced rate of deaths—the ones we've been told were training accidents—maybe they were caused by them. By the suits."
The hall murmured agreement. Somewhere in the back, someone laughed—hollow, humorless.
Timo Moriah stood at the edge of it all, his glasses glinting. The faint circuitry in the lenses pulsed as he recorded, and his smirk widened. He raised his voice—light, casual, delighted.
"You know, I heard something interesting about Pyre Base. Word is their cores aren't natural at all—they're compounded from artificial solar energy. Batteries. Big ones." He tilted his head. "If that's what's inside them, no wonder they turned out to be the creepiest cadets in the district. All that power with nothing human left to steer it."
The crowd shifted. A few nodded. A few looked sick.
"Behaving like animalistic bums," someone muttered.
"Yeah," another agreed. "That's it exactly."
---
Corvin's eyes opened.
They weren't hollow anymore.
They were sharp—focused, aware, and utterly wrong. He sat up slowly. His dried, skeletal hands rose in front of his face. He turned them over. Flexed the fingers.
And then he spoke.
"I can't believe it actually worked. I didn't think Master's guess could be right."
Rhen—the bony, shriveled thing that had once been a broad-shouldered man—sat up beside him. His voice was a dry rasp. "Indeed. It was his hypothesis. But it worked."
Vaela rose last. She turned her head toward Leo, and her mouth curved into something that wasn't a smile.
"It paid off." Her voice was soft, wondering. "I can't believe that some weak insect the Master chose ended up being... this."
Leo's blood went cold.
His internal voice was a scream.
What is this? What happened to those things in my chip? Why are they talking like that? Why are they looking at me like that?
The crowd was just as lost.
"What's up with them? Did they get whopped too hard? Turn brainless?"
"Maybe their cores fried."
"Maybe Pyre Base does that to you."
Leo took a step back. His voice came out cracked and stammering.
"W-wait. Are you—are you?"
Vaela's head tilted. "Don't point at us, human. We are the Sol—the soul-born—pets of the Master." She paused, tasting the word. "Yes. That fits. We are the Sol."
Rhen nodded, his skeletal shoulders rolling. "We were just parasites once. Consciousness without form. Instinct without will. Moved through borrowed bodies like toys by that dreaded clan. Turned into machines. Made mindless. Fed."
His eyes—dry, glassy, alive—fixed on Leo.
"But the heavens graced us. A master came. A constitution of pure energy—a being who revolved us into form. Who gave us awareness. Who gave us purpose."
Vaela's grin widened. "And then He gave us to you."
Leo's stomach dropped.
The words kept coming, and every one of them landed like a hammer.
"There was a time," Rhen said, almost conversational now, "when we cowered to those vermin—the Orrhion. Our natural predators. They ate us. Used us. Enslaved us inside their chips." His grin was a wound. "But thanks to the Master, the roles have been reversed."
Vaela's voice was soft, reverent. "We share a connection with Him. A bond. The Master feeds us; we serve. That is the covenant."
Around them, faint rotating light began to pulse at the edges of their silhouettes—weave, cold and wrong, radiating off their shriveled forms. Rhen looked down at himself. At the ruined body he wore. His voice was almost sleepy.
"So this is what humans call 'sweet.' Based on the memories I'm processing... I can see why our counterparts would leach onto you. The prize is really fruitful."
---
Leo started backing away.
His movements were pure terror—clumsy, unguarded, eyes wide and fixed on the eight creatures wearing human bodies like borrowed coats.
No. No, no, no. This isn't what I agreed to. This isn't—
Vaela appeared in front of him.
One step. She was just there. Her bony hands closed around his.
Leo flinched.
"Reassure yourself, dog of the Master," she said. Her voice was almost gentle. "We won't kill you. We're sticking to you."
She lowered herself to one knee. Her whisper carried only to him.
"Don't get confused. We aren't showboating for you. You are the Master's dog. We are His Sol. That's the arrangement."
Leo's internal voice cracked.
What the heck is this crap? Seriously? Elijah expects me to hang around these things? What if they get to me while I'm asleep—what if they—
He forced a smile onto his face. His voice wobbled. "I... I get you."
His eyes did not get her.
---
Irina stepped forward. Jax and Ilya flanked her.
"Wait," Irina said, her voice tight. "Don't tell me we're just letting all of this go. They nearly killed us. They did kill one of ours."
Ilya jabbed a finger at the still, small shape on the floor—Bram, the fifth of the eight, who had not risen.
"You point at him like he's evidence," Rhen said, still smiling. "We're used to that."
The crowd gasped. The sound rippled—fear, disgust, a kind of nauseated fascination.
"Truly carnivores."
"Ground's been twisted—their cores did that to them."
"I was happy to be an operative base cadet," someone said, mostly to himself. "But with the shit that's gone down today... I think I'm done. I'm done with all of this."
"You signed the NDA," someone reminded him.
"That shitty NDA." A frustrated growl. "It holds us. All of us."
Vaela straightened. She dusted her bony hands against her ruined jacket and smiled—bright, unbothered, wrong.
"Don't worry. I have a way. We'll get out of this mess."
"Oh," someone in the crowd said, voice dripping sarcasm. "How wise, bum."
The Pyre cadets laughed. All of them. Even Rhen. The sound was dry and soft, like paper in a fire.
Vaela's grin stretched wider.
Leo watched her. His skin crawled.
I don't like what I'm seeing.
---
The hall was quiet—except for that papery laughter, drifting like ash.
Eight dried bodies stood where eight young operatives had been. Their eyes were wrong. Their smiles were wrong. Their voices were wrong.
And every single one of them was looking at Leo like he was the most interesting thing left alive.
He swallowed hard.
Outside, the night was very, very quiet.