The blade came down in a perfect arc—silent, golden, inevitable.
Lina threw herself sideways, boots skidding across dust-slick pavement. The edge passed inches from her neck, slicing through empty air with a sound like torn voltage. She hit the ground hard, shoulder-first, rolled behind a half-collapsed market stall, and bit down on a curse.
Pain lit up her ribs. Her limbs dragged. Vision smeared at the edges like her body wasn't fully hers anymore.
But what came through the comm next hit harder than the fall.
Still sprawled on the ground, her chest tightened—not from pain, but from something colder. The kind of cold that didn't come from wind or wounds, but from instinct. A feeling she couldn't explain. Like her heart had already started bracing for something she didn't want to hear.
No. Not Kai.
She hissed through her teeth, half-spitting the words at the open air.
"You don't get to drop bullshit like that over comms. Say that again—I swear I'll find you and gut you first."
Her hand shot to her belt, fingers closing around one of the two grenades still clipped to her right side—old rebel-issue, small enough to hide, loud enough to clear a room. Kai used to call them "kamikaze dice."
She palmed one now, the smooth curve steady in her grip, thumb brushing over the worn pin. But she didn't pull it.
These were last-resort weapons.
And she wasn't done yet.
"Lina."
The voice cracked through her comm again.
"Don't go back to the base."
For a heartbeat, everything dropped away—sound, air, the Seraph—gone.
Just that voice. Just those words.
No.
"Kai's gone, Lina. I'm sorry."
It felt like she was outside her own body, watching herself sit in silence while the words echoed in her ear.
"Shut the hell up," she hissed, pressing her back against twisted metal. "Who the fuck are you?"
"Listen—this isn't the time—"
"What did you just say about Kai?" Her voice rose, sharp, hoarse. "You think this is the time to screw with my head? Who are you?"
"Not your enemy," the voice said, tightly. "But if you want to live through this, you need to move. That unit's recalibrating."
Lina's breath came fast and shallow. Sweat clung to her jawline, streaked through grime and blood. Her braid was half-loose, dark hair matted to her temples. Her jacket—standard rebel shellcoat—was torn along the left arm, where the Seraph's blade had grazed her earlier. Underneath, her skin was marked with bruises and dirt, but her eyes were sharp, fixed, alive.
Angry.
She dragged herself upright, wiped blood from her lip with the back of her hand.
"You don't get to talk about Kai," she said. "Tell me who you are!"
There was a pause. A flicker of static.
"This isn't the channel for details," the voice said—but it came through clipped, like half the sentence had been chewed off by noise. A low hum crawled in the background, just beneath the words, sharp and artificial.
Her breath caught, pulse hammering, but before she could press further, her HUD flared—a layered warning, clean and cold.
[ TARGET LOCK: ACTIVE ]
[ TRAJECTORY ALIGNMENT: 87% ]
The Seraph had her again.
Hydraulics hissed as it stepped forward.
"I'll explain everything in person. Signal's getting—"
"—scrambled. Can't hold this link. Old hospital, east edge. Get—"
"—there alive."
The voice fractured into static, then dropped out completely.
Dead air.
She didn't care about tactical advantage anymore.
She had to get out. Now.
She had to run to Kai. Find out what the hell was going on.
And every second these things stayed standing was one more second wasted.
Lina's grip tightened onto the final grenade. She didn't breathe, didn't think—just pulled the pin, shoulder twisting for the throw—
The shot cracked across the square.
Her hand exploded with pain.
The grenade slipped from her fingers, pin half-out, skittering uselessly across the concrete.
She cried out and dropped to one knee, blood blooming fast over the shredded edge of her glove. Her right hand hung useless at her side—nerves burning, bone likely splintered.
It took her a second to register where the shot had come from.
Not the Seraph that had been advancing with a blade.
Another one—stationed far off to her left, half-shadowed beneath the broken awning of a collapsed storefront.
The Seraph with the blade stepped into view, its weapon still raised—gold and humming.
The other two didn't move. They just stood there, watching her bleed. They weren't in a rush like they'd already calculated she wasn't worth the effort anymore.
She slumped hard against the wall, left hand clamping around her ruined right, trying to stop the tremor. Dust stuck to her lips. Her vision swam. She blinked hard.
Kai would've called this the end of the line.
But Lina wasn't ready to die lying down.
She let her head droop. Let her chest hitch like she was slipping under.
Let them think the fight was already gone from her.
And then, with a snap of motion, she yanked the last grenade from her belt with her left hand and threw it—wide, fast, reckless.
The grenade bounced between the legs of the one moving in to finish her.
A roar of fire and smoke erupted through the ruins. The Seraph staggered back. Its blade flew from its grip, skidding across the broken street—until it stopped at her feet.
The others didn't move. They were watching.
Daring her.
She stared at the sword, lying just out of reach—heavy, inert, and clearly not meant for anyone like her.
Everyone knew weapons like that were built for augmented bodies—rigged with bio-circuits, pressure syncs, and strength no unmodified human could match.
Even on her best day, with both hands intact, she wouldn't have been able to lift it.
And now—bleeding, half-conscious, her dominant arm broken—it should've been impossible.
She reached out anyway. That was her last hope—and in that moment, it felt like the blade was calling to her. Her fingers—trembling, bloodied, bruised—closed around the hilt.
The metal didn't reject her.
It pulsed.
A current surged up her arm, sharp and electric, and for a breath she only stared—stunned that it hadn't burned her, more stunned that it had answered her at all—until the pain hit like a second pulse, not the heat of healing but something far worse: a searing fusion of fire and wire, of nerves being rewritten, bones snapping and reknitting under pressure, flesh unraveling and reforming into something that pulsed with light instead of blood.
She screamed—once, hoarse and animal—then choked it back with a raw bite to her lip, copper flooding her mouth as silver began threading through her joints and pale circuitry bloomed beneath the skin like veins being overwritten; her fingers twisted, cracked, and shifted—not soft anymore, not human anymore—but shaped into something colder, cleaner, harder.
And the sword in her hand?
It lit up like it remembered her.
A wave of light pulsed outward, harsh and white-hot, momentarily flooding the ruined street.
Across the square, the Seraphs flinched.
[ VISUAL SENSOR DISRUPTION — CALIBRATING ]
[ UNAUTHORIZED WEAPON SIGNATURE DETECTED ]
[ ERROR: BIOLOGICAL INTERFACE CONFIRMED ]
One of them took a half-step back. The other tilted its head, almost like it was trying to make sense of the anomaly in front of it.
"That weapon is not assigned to organic units," one said, its voice flat but not quite confident.
"Correction," the second replied, more slowly this time. "That weapon is responding to her."
"Impossible. Her bio-tag is unregistered. She has no grafts. No link keys. No override class."
A pause.
"And yet her limb is regenerating."
They didn't understand it. They didn't know what she was anymore.
The sword burned in her palm, its glow now far too bright, too alive—and somewhere between one ragged breath and the next, her body gave in all at once, not to fear or pain, but to the black static rushing up from within, swallowing thought, breath, control.
She collapsed forward, not gently but hard and final, her grip on the blade held tight by instinct or inertia, though her mind had already gone dark.
And still—she moved.
Something within the sword—or within whatever part of her had ceased to be entirely human—seized hold of her weightless frame and carried it forward, dragging her limp body across the fractured square in slow, uneven steps, not out of will, but out of something older, colder, and inevitable.
The Seraph with the missing blade didn't react at first. It reached for its side, retrieving a black-edged combat knife from its hip in a motion that was smooth but not immediate, it is not preparing for this—a bleeding human girl with a shattered hand, unconscious, and still advancing.
And just before the Seraph could raise its knife—the blade in Lina's hand began to fall.