"Nir als zhen alesfin'al lo'styour mi'ndal, Tani!"

  "In Véthari, Maia. If you don't mind."

  “Pardon me, milady. But what the fuck are we doing right now?” Maia sibilated, low and laced with panic, peeking down adjacent corridors to ensure they were alone.

  Most had evacuated the gilded, scented, circuitous halls to more secure sections, but she figured some professional caution to be wise.

  Tani held up a finger, humming softly, scrolling through the intangidisk she'd borrowed from her. Stride unhurried with a confidence that reassured Maia one moment, then deeply irritated her the next.

  “I thought you being a Magistrate meant not fighting our own battles anymore?”

  “Battle?” Tani giggled. “Don't be silly, Maia. This is a casual little stroll.”

  She gently tossed the intangidisk back without a glance.

  “But for your edification, our attackers appear legion. And they seem to know the Citadel. Its layout, access points. They’re breezing through an emergency tunnel network known to few, and dispersing all throughout. Which means they’re either very good or very invited.”

  "Thorne?"

  "A likely culprit given his palace’s proximity, and the fact he was in such a hurry to leave."

  “Even more reason not to be strolling without any starsdamned Sentinels!"

  "They would only hinder us. Their synthenoidic brains take me being in danger rather personally."

  "So does mine,” Maia grumbled as another explosion rocked the floor, closer than ever, enough to make her feet sweat. "Hinder us from doing what exactly?"

  Tani tilted her head back, grin more crooked than a knowingly dyslexic tax collector.

  "I want to test something, of course."

  Stars help us...

  A knot twisted Maia’s gut. Those words usually meant they were headed into hell with fuel-soaked underwear. For rather cursory purposes too. Curiosity—The Scientist's Burden—was Tani's chief vice of choice, only worsened by her elevated position. The nigh-endless resources funded her every scientific whim, every little hypothesis. Substantial or not.

  Tani was brilliant. Beautiful. Hadn’t truly failed since their childhood. But she was simple flesh and blood, and one day she'd be forced to face her own mortality. One way or the other.

  Maia choked the tharrael's foregrip with whitened knuckles. Their training and upbringing had prepared them for a decent scrap, but they weren’t soldiers. She could only hope to be enough.

  “Here.” Tani stopped at a nondescript wall panel, one of thousands. “A tall rectangle. Maybe add a smiley face if you’re feeling spunky?”

  Maia huffed, shook hair from her eye and disapprovingly complied. The tharrael purred to life, capacitor humming at her shoulder as it spat a jade beam—sliced into the durtanium like a razor through wet tissue. Flooding the sterile air with heat, and the sharp tang of ozone.

  The rectangle collapsed toward them with a metallic groan, gusting up the tail of their robes. Behind it yawned an endless tunnel, likely a maintenance shaft, lined with softly glowing power conduits.

  They walked on a few dimly lit minutes, before something echoed from the leftmost fork in the shaft. Her esteemed, but infuriating milady-ship, seemed to know her way, and rushed to look out a large vent.

  “Keep your voice low,” Tani whispered, bubbling with an almost chirpy glee. “We appear to be right on time.”

  Maia frowned, inching closer in the cramped space, one of Tani's serpentine braids tangled around her neck. "On time for—?"

  "What do you mean the starsdamned code isn't working!?"

  A harried conversation spilled through from the other side. It was beneath them, unseen, but very loud.

  "They've all worked until now, I don't know."

  "Nubien, mettik eshkor chargik togalors!"

  "And waste more charges? They're good on doors, not aegietheric shells, foudarek! We need to rip the new code from the computer to drop the barrier to the next tunnel. Help me with this panel, now!"

  Their vantage overlooked a chamber converted to a storage room of sorts, nothing but cold, open air between them and the distant floor. Golden pillars, crates, and equipment lined its long perimeter. Dusty and ancient.

  Maia caught narrowly a glance as the men went to work below, but most were speaking Frussian. The others Véthari with strong Sapien accents, an unusual linguistic lilt similar to her and Tani's own.

  “Okay, engage only if necessary.” Tani squared her shoulders. “Don’t want you drawing fire after I jump down.”

  Maia nodded, almost managed a yawn before the words registered—lucky that Tani’s hand was faster than her shriek.

  "Quiet, you! I want to surprise them!"

  "With what?!" Maia hissed, peeling away her hand. "A bloodcurdling scream and a gooey mess? That fall’s at least sixty feet!"

  "Seventy-five and a half actually."

  "Well, excuse the fuk'al out of me Tani, seventy—!"

  The certainty of the statement stopped her cold. Intently, Maia dove into the pools of Tani's perpetually amused, mahogany eyes. Suspicious. Curious. Until a tired realization smacked her over the head with a rock.

  "How much of this was planned, and how much improvised?"

  Tani quirked a smile, then tinkered with her bracelets, golden and beautiful, but oddly unfamiliar. Hadn't even noticed them before now.

  They stirred with an electric thrum, then molded into gloves like nanites. Smooth. Fluid. Ornate. Azure energy weaved through Tani's fingers, an infernal power that thickened the air and rattled Maia's teeth. Tani's normal irises erupted into twin suns of the same blue fire, burning with a dazzling intensity.

  Maia took a step back in the name of self-preservation, but was gently pulled into a hug. A painless pulse tingled down her spine where Tani's hands rested, and for a moment it felt like old times. Simpler times. Back when they're biggest problems consisted of what flavor Frost-Bop they'd buy after school.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  Tani relinquished her abruptly to clasp the vent, posture poised like a blade begging to be drawn. The metal melted like butter before their eyes, far faster than a tharrael could ever dream.

  "Apologies are in order. But as I’ve always said, intelligent opportunism is one of our greatest tools. A crucial element of the—."

  "Scientist's burden," they finished together, but Maia muttered the words like a curse.

  Maia's fist clenched the smooth fabric of her robes. She wasn’t angry. Not yet. But as far from happy as they were from their home planet. Tani never kept anything from her, not for more than an hour at least, or occasionally for a joke.

  And these...weapons? Had to have taken time, and they sure as hell weren't anything to laugh at. She beat back the sting of betrayal, somewhat comforted that there had to be a good reason.

  She blinked and Tani was gone, a wisp of light in her wake. A moment later, screams and gunfire echoed up into the vent. Panicked and relentless.

  Maia, feeling more alone and terrified than ever before, could only hope—pray—that...

  Today wasn’t the day Tani faced her mortality...

  Another puddle of blood and bile splashed at Tani's feet, staining the tails of her alabaster robes. Power absolute rippled from her fingers as she ran, warping the very air as cries of dying men tangled with frantic gunfire.

  A cacophony of chaos. A battle, which had very quickly turned slaughter.

  Twin azure blasts lurched from her hands, shrieking through the damp chamber. Three soldiers met her wrath against the wall—with a crunch and gurgled screams. Each whine, each wisp of light, dropped even more.

  Two. Four. Ten.

  A blinding dance of fates performed to sobs and gnashing teeth. The perfumed air drowned by the stench of burning flesh.

  A barrier coalesced at her left disruptor with a thought, a beveled shield of potence. Bullets hammered at its shimmering surface and ricocheted wildly. Off the floors, the walls, riddling the men of origin to fleshy ribbons.

  Slowly.

  Everything slithered by like serpents through thick honey. The dometric energy saturating Tani's body quickened her reflexes, but the projectiles were dilated too. Reduced to one-one-hundred-third their true velocity, courtesy of an obscenely expensive neuro-node.

  “Cut around, get behind her and—!”

  “No! Just—just—run!”

  The stragglers regrouped behind a pillar, a huddle of black boots and khaki fatigues. Like children playing hide-and-seek. Poorly.

  Tani purposefully shortened her stride. Panting. Deliberate. A hungry takir soon to feast on a wamu herd. Admittedly, they'd done far better than she'd calculated. But as Thorne had often said during her tutelage, determination without power was white noise. Ephemeral as smoke.

  She skirted the pillar to wide-eyes, where another hail of ineffectual ordnance met her shield. Though they were enemies—emphasis on were—this butchery was simply a proof of concept. Not deep-seated malice. A gift for dragging fiction kicking and screaming into reality.

  And for progress? True progress like her disruptors? She'd slaughter them all over again. Thrice.

  Of the dozen left, two dropped their rifles and sank to their knees with hands high. An intelligent gesture that ironically fueled Tani into a sprint, into a high balletic arc above their heads, bullets hissed past, close enough to brush her braids. As if—

  Tani unleashed a tremulous blast at the floor like a desolation round, tempestuous enough to stir a gale. To light the room like a star.

  Beautiful.

  A thunderclap of power that blew soldiers back in heaps of tangled limbs and sordid defeat. Before they could yet recover, Tani—eager to end this—cast their final moments upon the walls in morbid silhouettes. Each received by the ferryman, swift and clean.

  Coin-less.

  One by one.

  An opaque dust settled as Tani stalked toward the single remaining assassin, scurrying along the floor before his back met a wall.

  Nowhere left to crawl.

  “Wait—please! I surrender, I surrender!”

  Tani loomed like a shadow, the sight of him curling her lips.

  An older man. Fair-skinned. Dark tousled hair. More shoe salesman than fanatic in appearance. His terrified eyes contradictory to a man who’d slit her throat as she slept.

  “Did you hear me?! I surrender! Under Directorate Combat Mandate 420.29, a non-armed combatant of—!”

  “Spare me, Alos!” Tani snapped, still brimming with adrenaline. “My predecessor wrote the damn thing, I don’t need a lecture from the likes of you!”

  “Well, then you know that there are—!”

  Alos' voice caught on the saliva in his throat. Sweat dripped from his brow to hydrate his lips as his gaze narrowed.

  “How—you shouldn't—why do you know my name?”

  "For the very same reason I saved you for last."

  She let the silence hang, a cruel heartbeat or two longer than necessary.

  “Alos Bundee. Born 2575 on the now obliterated planet of Orr. You grew up near my hometown, believe it or not. Your military service left you angry, bitter. Between that and your disdain for Magisterial rule, your slide into extremism was inevitable. Every one of your rebellious steps led you to where you grovel now.”

  Alos tightened his jaw, salvaging a soldier’s pride. What remained of the man who'd fought and killed at Gelismane, Avansen, and Torros Prime.

  “What’s the point telling me shit I already know?”

  “To lead into what you don’t,” Tani cooed. “You died fifteen years ago, Alos. The moment you broke your vow to the Directorate—long before I hired you and your so-called revolutionaries for this assault. It simply took until today for you to notice you were standing in a grave.”

  Alos blinked a few times, but to his credit, the truth of her words registered quicker than anticipated. Made evident by the hoarse laugh that choked free of his cracked lips.

  “Should’ve known. Too much money. Information was too accurate," he swallowed between chuckles. "It's funny actually, besides Thorne, think I hated you the least most days. Might've made it quick and painless given the opportunity."

  "What's that old expression? It's the thought that counts?"

  His laughter went on a minute longer, tired, but genuine. Until it abruptly stopped, replaced by a thousand-yard stare zeroed at the floor. Tani knelt, elbows planted atop her knees, almost tempted to offer a consoling touch.

  Almost.

  With a gesture at her ear, Tani stood to the sound of an electronic whine, her optics switched from passive-observance to active-combat. Wispy azure lines filled her vision, tracing the signature of Alos' slumped form.

  “But yes...you should have known.”

  Twin beams of dometric might spat from her eyes, boring into his skull. The air thickened with static as his screams escaped clenched teeth. Limbs crackled like kindling. Wet. Sickly veins writhed beneath his thinning skin as the sound of agony tore through the chamber—bones turned to jelly—before Alos burst in a bubble of steaming viscera.

  He splattered Tani's robes and face, warm little rivers that raced to greet her boots. She stood taller as the stench of guts and excrement filled the air, studying the puddle once-called Alos Bundee.

  His dying echo took hold of her mind, a hellish howl that clawed at her resolve, trying to reach the humanity beneath.

  The hum of her disruptors faded as the dometric energy ebbed. As the glow at her pupils fizzled, and exhaustion gnawed at her bones. The microsynthenoids had chosen the perfect moment to lose power—cutting her off from Domain-0.

  From god back to girl, in a blink. Burdened by her gruesome murders all alone.

  ...

  ...

  Or so she'd hoped.

  Soft footsteps drew closer, and Tani knew immediately whose silhouette haunted her peripherals. Not even a sheer drop could stop Maia's inventiveness for long. A persistence Tani usually admired. Loved. But with the stench of death clung so close to her soul, she found herself unable to meet her gaze.

  Tani was proud of her creations. Her many plans not yet manifest. And no one could dull the thrill of success coursing through her veins.

  Even still.

  All the power, genius, and plotting in the galaxy...couldn't save her from...

  The look of horror on Maia’s face.