The "Iron Lung" garage felt smaller every hour. For Luke, the walls weren't just closing in; they were beginning to hum.
He sat in the corner of the workshop, staring at his right hand. The obsidian hadn't just reached his shoulder; it was beginning to lace across his collarbone in delicate, geometric fractures. He picked up a metal wrench with his right hand and squeezed. The steel gropped and deformed like soft clay, but Luke felt nothing. No cold, no pressure, no texture.
"Luke? You've been staring at that tool for twenty minutes," Zane said, stepping into the light. He saw the crushed wrench and his expression darkened. "How much of the arm can you still feel?"
"None of it," Luke whispered. He looked at his brother, and for a second, his eyes flickered with a violet lattice instead of pupils. "It's not just the feeling, Zane. It's the... thoughts. When I touch the station's deck plating, I don't feel the floor. I feel the life-support rhythms. I feel the heartbeats of three thousand people on this station. It's too loud."
Zane grabbed Luke's human hand—the left one—and squeezed it hard. "Stay with me. Don't let the signal take you over. We're going to find a way to reverse this."
"What if there is no reverse?" Luke asked, his voice sounding hollow. "What if I'm just the next version of the 'Harvest'?"
The Shadow of the Tenth
The heavy blast door of the garage groaned as Hogarth signaled a coded knock. "You've got company," the old miner grunted, looking nervous. "And they didn't come through the front door."
Out of the steam and shadow of the ventilation shafts stepped three figures. They didn't wear the polished, white-and-gold armor of the Academy. They wore "Scrap-Plate"—thick, blackened layers of tungsten and lead, scarred by years of radiation and combat.
The leader stepped forward, removing a dented helmet. He was a man in his late fifties, his face a jagged map of burn scars, with a mechanical eye that whirred as it scanned the room.
"You look just like him," the man said, his voice like gravel in a blender. "Especially the eyes. Though Harry's only turned blue when he was about to blow something up."
"Who are you?" Zane demanded, stepping in front of Luke.
"Colonel Silas Vane," the man replied.
Mira gasped, dropping her data-pad. "Dad?"
The Colonel looked at Mira, a flicker of pain crossing his scarred face before it returned to military iron. "I told you to stay in the Jovian colonies, Mira. I told you the Academy was a trap."
"You were dead!" Mira cried, rushing forward. "The Fleet reported you lost at the Home-Hive!"
"The Fleet reported a lot of things," Silas said, looking at the twins. "I'm the commander of what's left of the Old Tenth. We didn't retreat when the Gate closed. We hid in the shadow of the debris, waiting for a signal that never came. Now we hear the Hampton boys have turned traitor and robbed the Prometheus Core. I figured it was time to see if the bloodline still had any fire in it."
The Hard Truth
Silas walked over to Luke, his mechanical eye zooming in on the obsidian armor forming on the boy's chest. He didn't look horrified; he looked clinical.
"Project Chimera," Silas muttered. "Vance finally found a way to bridge the neural gap. You're not fading, kid. You're being 're-indexed.' The Drealius network thinks you're a vacant throne, and it's trying to sit down."
"Can you stop it?" Zane asked desperately.
"Stop it? No," Silas said, looking Zane in the eye. "But we can weaponize it. The Senator is moving his 'New Vanguard' fleet toward the Belt. He's going to use this station as a 'testing ground' to show the public how dangerous you are. He wants to kill the Hampton name once and for all."
The Call to Arms
The Colonel turned to the rest of the squad—Jax, Sloane, and Mira. "If you stay with them, you're ghosts. You'll never have a home, a rank, or a peaceful night again. But if you want to actually finish the war Harry Hampton started, the Old Tenth has a base hidden in the Vesta asteroids. We've got ships that the Sol Grid can't track and guns that don't follow the Senator's rules."
Luke stood up, the violet light in his eyes stabilizing. He felt the vibration of a ship docking three levels up—not a freighter, but a military transport. The Iron-Guard were already here.
"They're on the station," Luke said, his voice resonating with a strange authority. "Three squads. Deck 4. They're venting the atmosphere in Sector B to flush us out."
Colonel Silas grinned, a terrifying, toothy expression. "Then I guess it's a good thing we brought the heavy gear. Twins, get to your mechs. Let's show these Academy lapdogs how the Old Tenth says hello."