Darkness.
Nothing else. No thoughts. No pain. No sound. Just empty black that stretched forever in every direction.
Then a voice rolled through it—male, deep, low, like it came from the bottom of an old well.
"Wake up."
It echoed, slow and heavy.
"You don't have to die. You do not need to die. I do not need to die."
The words bounced around the nothing, growing louder each time.
"WE MUST NOT DIE."
My eyes shot open.
My body moved before my mind caught up. Muscles twitched on instinct. The world spun violently as I twisted mid-air. My right bionic arm snapped up on its own, palm facing outward. The grapple fired with a sharp hiss, cable whipping across the gap and latching onto the side of a concrete building. I yanked hard. The winch screamed as it reeled me in, swinging me away from the ground that had been rushing up to meet me only a heartbeat earlier.
Cold wind tore across my face. The King's Gambit blurred past in streaks of neon and shadow. Time slowed naturally around me now, smoother than it ever had before, like breathing instead of forcing it. My arm moved with fluid precision, firing the grapple again without me even thinking the command. It latched onto a higher ledge. I swung upward in a long arc, boots skimming past a glowing billboard that advertised synthetic dreams. Another shot. Another swing. The districts unfolded beneath me—walkways, markets, the endless glow of the massive cavern city.
For one full minute I flew like that, body and arm working together in perfect rhythm. Adrenaline sang in my veins. The blue patterns on the bionic pulsed bright and steady.
Then the high crashed.
My timing slipped. The next grapple missed its target by half a meter. I slammed hard into the side of a residential tower, shoulder and ribs taking the impact. Pain exploded through my chest. I fell, scraping down the wall before crashing onto a lower rooftop. The air left my lungs in one violent rush.
I lay there gasping, vision swimming.
Voices shouted from below—sharp, authoritative.
"Movement on the east tower! Swinging suspect, bionic signature confirmed!"
"Section seven, converge! Same unit that responded to the drill site—do not engage lethal until we have visual!"
They were coming. The same kind of black-armoured figures that had taken Jonathan's body. I could hear the heavy boots and the low whine of drones powering up.
I rolled onto my knees, every part of me screaming. A body this weak shouldn't be able to move. Yet I ran. A body this weak shouldn't be able to stand, let alone run. Yet i ran. A body this weak should've just died, but this body, this boy, still wanted to live.
I sprinted.
Alleys blurred past. I cut through narrow service corridors between buildings, shoulder slamming into walls for balance. I vaulted over a stack of shipping crates, landed hard, and kept going. My legs burned. Blood trickled from cuts I didn't remember getting. Every breath hurt. But I ran. I climbed a chain-link fence in three desperate pulls, dropped to the other side, and kept moving. I leaped across a gap between two low rooftops, time slowing just enough to make the distance.
A fence at the edge of a maintenance yard caught my foot mid-jump. The world flipped. I tumbled hard, rolling down a steep embankment until cold water swallowed me.
The creek was fast and filthy. Dirty water rushed into my mouth and nose. I clawed at nothing, lungs already burning. Pain flared everywhere—ribs, shoulder, the raw places where skin had been opened and closed again. My bionic arm wouldn't respond properly; the signals kept shorting out because my brain couldn't focus. My power fizzled, time refusing to slow when I needed it most. The current dragged me under again and again.
My left hand finally caught on something solid. With the last strength I had, I tugged. A loud mechanical click sounded—old, rusty, but real. A hidden panel in the embankment wall swung open and sucked me inside. It slammed shut behind me, cutting off the roar of the water.
I flopped onto the cold floor face-down.
No sound. No footsteps. No one else.
That was enough. I passed out.
***
Darkness again. But different this time. I could see my own body floating in an endless void. No ground, no sky, just me and the black. My right arm was gone—only the scarred stump remained, pale and vulnerable.
A noise behind me. I spun around fast. Nothing there. Just more emptiness.
"LOOK UP."
The deep voice again, closer now.
I tilted my head.
There I was—another me, floating above, identical down to the last hair. But something felt wrong. The copy looked… sharper. Hungrier.
I reached out with my left hand. My own skin started peeling away like wet paper, curling back to reveal red muscle and white bone underneath. Panic surged through me. I tried to scream but no sound came.
The other me didn't peel. Instead it zoomed forward and grabbed my shoulders with crushing force.
"WAKE UP. SHE CANNOT WIN. WAKE UP. WE CANNOT DIE. WAKE UP JAYDEN. I SAID, WAKE UP!"
My eyes shot open for real this time.
Pain. Blinding, white-hot pain everywhere. I tried to scream but only a muffled grunt came out. A purple mask sealed tight over my mouth and nose, pumping cold gas into my lungs. My body thrashed violently against straps holding me down. I looked left—my arms were cut open, held apart with metal clips. Notes and diagrams lay scattered on trays around me. My bionic arm rested on a nearby desk, wires pried out and hanging loose.
My torso was split wide open. Maria's hands were inside me, fingers moving with clinical precision. Her face tilted up toward mine, eyes wide with shock.
She screamed and stumbled backward, knocking over a tray of tools.
"You— you shouldn't be awake! The dosage was perfect. You should still be under!"
She was right. I felt the gas pulling me toward unconsciousness again, heavy and sweet. But every time the darkness crept in, that ringing voice in my head yanked me back.
I screamed against the mask, the sound muffled and desperate. Even muffled, the bionic arm on the table reacted. Its blue lights flared bright red.
Maria had made one mistake—she had left the neural connection embedded in my stump. The arm suddenly jerked to life on the desk, spinning violently. It knocked her back, then aimed its palm straight at me. The grapple fired with perfect accuracy, latching onto the purple mask and ripping it off my face in one clean yank. Fresh air hit my lungs.
Maria recovered fast. She spun her staff out—click-click-click—blade extended at the end. She brought it down toward my chest, ready to finish what she had started.
My thoughts moved faster than her swing. The bionic arm, still connected by its cable, shot another grapple that wrapped around her neck and yanked itself forward, locking tight against her body. She dropped the staff and clawed at the metal with both hands.
"Self-destruction sequence 0010!" I barked, voice raw and cracking.
The blue patterns on the arm instantly shifted to angry red, pulsing faster. A low warning hum filled the room.
Maria froze.
"Fix my body and let me go," I growled, "or we both go up in flames. Your choice."
She stared at me, calculating. She had studied the arm long enough to know its metal was something special—far too strong for any normal explosive. If it claimed self-destruct, whatever it would trigger was no ordinary bomb.
"Damn you," she hissed. She slammed a lever on the bed. The surface tilted back upright. With quick, precise movements she began closing me up—stitching muscle, sealing veins, layering skin back into place. Her hands moved like they had done this a thousand times. By the end, the cuts looked almost clean, just angry red lines and fresh stitches.
She pried the restraints off with a blade, then immediately pinned me down with surprising strength, knife pressed to my throat.
"Disable the arm. Now."
My body was too weak, too injured to fight her off. Every movement sent fresh pain through the fresh stitches. The arm was still locked around her, my main weapon turned into a hostage.
I tried anyway. A small blade shot out from the elbow of the bionic. I drove it toward her stomach. She blocked it effortlessly with her free hand.
"You think I'm an idiot?" she snarled and pulled back. "I learned every function while you were under. Last chance—disable it."
I held her gaze for a long second. Then I spoke the shutdown code. The red lights faded. The arm released her and flew back toward me on its grapple line, latching onto my leg before I picked it up and locked it back into the stump with a series of clicks and whirs. It rebooted with a soft chime.
We stared at each other across the small space. Both of us held weapons—her with the blade, me with the newly reattached arm. Tension crackled between us.
Then Maria flicked her wrist and tossed the blade into her open bag. She walked past me without another word, collecting her tablet and tools.
"You weren't actually going to kill me with that stab," she said calmly. "Or you're just insanely weak. Either way, we're done here."
I stayed frozen on the edge of the medical bed, breathing hard, watching her move around the old lab like nothing had happened. The stitches pulled tight with every small shift. Pain throbbed in time with my heartbeat. But I was alive.
And so was she.
For now.
The tunnels outside the lab waited in silence. The King's Gambit continued its endless hum far above us. Jonathan's face flashed in my mind—his body split in two, the trucks, the blood. Maria's back was turned as she packed her things.