The voice was a ghost in the machine, a static-laced promise of a friendly face.
Arden was somewhere ahead, in this blinding, frozen hell.
Gideon's squad advanced, a slow, painful crawl through the freezing mist.
Every footstep was a calculated risk, the crunch of frost under their boots sounding like a thunderclap in the muffled silence.
They moved as one organism, a creature of fear and desperation, hugging the walls, their weapons sweeping the shifting white veil.
Their eyes, wide and straining, saw only phantoms in the gloom.
Each shadow was Cinder.
Each drip of condensing moisture was the click of her rifle.
Nino was their spearhead, his shoulders set like stone as he carried the heavy shield generator.
The faint, shimmering wall of hexagons it projected was the only thing between them and a silent, searing death.
It hummed a low, steady note that did little to calm the frantic beating of their hearts.
It was a prayer made of light and energy, and they all knew how fragile prayers could be.
A cold knot of frustration tightened in Gideon's gut, a familiar companion these days.
It was aimed at Arden and Tenn, a flash of anger at this freezing, blinding mess.
Did they have to flood the whole damn level?
But the anger was short-lived, smothered by the heavy blanket of his own responsibility.
He was the one who had given the order.
He had seen Blaze's fire and demanded a weapon of ice. Tenn, with her brilliant, frantic mind, had built it.
Now, his own contingency plan had turned against him.
The mist that was supposed to be their salvation had become their cage.
It hid them, yes, but it hid their hunter better.
It was a perfect, self-made tomb, and they were feeling their way through it, waiting for the walls to close in.
The silence that had fallen after the first attack was the most terrifying part.
It wasn't a retreat.
It was the quiet of a predator circling, waiting for its prey to break cover and run.
Gideon and his squad knew, with a cold, sinking certainty, that their encounter with Cinder was far from over.
Her disappearance wasn't a retreat, it was a tactical reset.
She wasn't just fighting them.
She was hunting them.
The way she had stood, unmoving in the mist, letting them waste their ammunition... the surgical, effortless precision of the shot that took three of their own... it was all a performance.
They weren't soldiers in a battle, they were animals being herded, their terror part of her sport.
And they were right.
Her voice cut through the frozen haze again, clear and flat as shattering glass.
It seemed to come from everywhere at once, echoing off the icy walls, impossible to pinpoint.
"The demonstration earlier wasn't enough to deter all of you?"
A slow, deliberate clap followed, the sound unnaturally crisp in the muffled air.
Each impact was a mockery of their survival.
"Amazing," she continued, her tone devoid of any real admiration.
It was the dry observation of a scientist noting an anomaly. "That none of you ran away with your tails between your legs."
The words hung in the air, colder than the mist.
She wasn't just trying to kill them.
She was trying to strip them of their courage, to make them feel like foolish, stubborn animals before she put them down.
Gideon gritted his teeth until his jaw ached.
Every word from Cinder was a needle digging under his skin, prodding at the raw, furious animal inside him that wanted to charge into the mist and smash something.
Beside him, Nino was a statue.
The mocking tone didn't seem to touch him, his world had narrowed to the weight of the generator and the shimmering wall of light it projected.
But Gideon could feel the shift in the others.
He heard the sharp, nervous intake of breath from the woman on his left, saw the young fighter on the right flinch at the sound of her voice.
Their resolve was cracking, freezing and splintering like the concrete under their boots.
The hallway stretched on, a tunnel of white blindness.
But the shape of a reinforced door was just beginning to solidify in the gloom a few feet ahead.
Tenn's lab.
A potential sanctuary, or another trap.
"Boss," Nino's voice was a low rumble, never taking his eyes off the mist. "Should we check the lab?"
"No," Gideon snapped, the word coming out harsher than he intended.
He pointed a thick finger down the hall, toward the ghost of Arden's voice. "We go straight. We regroup with Arden first."
As the order left his lips, and a shadow congealed from the mist ahead.
It was just a darker shade of grey in the white, a human-shaped blur.
But its posture was unmistakable—the lean silhouette of a rifle.
Nino didn't wait.
He was already shifting, muscles bunching as he angled the heavy shield.
The humming barrier swung to face the new threat, its light casting long, distorted shadows down the frozen walls.
There was no shout, no warning shot.
The shadow simply moved, a slight, professional dip of the shoulders as it settled into its aim.
The world erupted in a storm of silent, searing red lines.
They punched into the kinetic shield with a sound like a torrent of hot nails hitting a metal sheet.
The air filled with the sharp smell of aether and the frantic, angry buzzing of the barrier straining under the assault.
Sparks of dissipated energy fizzled and died on the frost-covered floor.
Nino's quick reflexes had saved them from being shredded.
But they were pinned.
The path forward was a kill zone.
"Damn it!" Gideon roared, the sound swallowed by the gunfire.
He had no choice.
He grabbed the shoulder of the fighter next to him and shoved, his voice cutting through the chaos. "The lab! Now! Get inside!"
The retreat was a frantic, stumbling scramble away from the deadly light show, toward the only door they could reach.
The heavy door to Tenn's lab hissed shut behind them, the thick metal sealing with a sound that was both a relief and a sentence.
They were safe from the immediate storm of red light, but the silence that descended felt just as dangerous.
Gideon's chest heaved, his breath pluming in the air.
They were all intact, but a cold, sickening feeling settled in his gut.
They hadn't escaped; they had been herded.
Every step felt like it was on a path Cinder had chosen for them.
The lab was the epicenter of the artificial winter.
A thick, brittle layer of frost coated every surface—workbenches, monitors, the tangled nests of wires snaking from open panels.
The air was so cold it hurt to breathe, sharp and metallic in their lungs.
The emergency lights cast a weak, blue-tinged glow, making the shadows between frozen machinery seem deep and impenetrable.
It was in this frozen, silent tomb that one of the younger fighters stifled gasp.
Her hand, clad in a fingerless glove, was pressed to her mouth, her eyes wide and fixed on one of the several upright pods lining the far wall.
Inside, suspended in a clear, viscous fluid that had frozen into a cloudy, semi-opaque slab, was a figure.
The Doll.
Its form was perfectly androgynous, its skin pale and seamless.
One of its arms, visible through the ice, was a masterpiece of polished alloy and synthetic muscle, far beyond any augments Gideon had ever seen in the Junkyard.
Its eyes were closed, its expression utterly vacant, as if the person inside had simply been… deleted.
Gideon's gaze hardened as he stared at the frozen soldier.
He knew Tenn was brilliant, and he knew she worked with dangerous, corporate-level tech.
But this… this was something else.
What had she brought into their home?
"What the hell is Tenn experimenting with now?" he growled, the words low and dangerous in the frozen quiet.
Nino, ever pragmatic, stepped closer to the pod, his brow furrowed.
He reached out, not touching, but tracing the shape of the Doll's frozen face in the air.
"Now that," he murmured, his voice a gravelly whisper, "is really creepy."
It was an understatement that hung in the frigid air, carrying the weight of a deep, instinctual revulsion.
They were looking at a future they didn't understand, and it was frozen in a block of ice in their own basement.
The voice that slithered into the lab did not come from the hallway they had just fled.
It came from the opposite wall, from the jagged hole in the concrete that Arden had smashed in his own desperate escape.
Cinder's tone was different now—not a flat mockery, but laced with a spark of genuine, cold interest.
"I think I know now why Boss wants Tenn alive."
A deliberate pause stretched, long enough for every person in the frozen lab to stop breathing.
The words hung in the air, a confession that changed everything.
"Didn't know he gave her a gift," Cinder continued, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur that was somehow more threatening than a shout. "That's a gossip-worthy piece of information."
The squad reacted on instinct, a product of a hundred firefights.
Weapons snapped toward the broken wall, fingers hovering over triggers.
Nino's head swiveled between the sealed main door and the new threat, his face a mask of grim confusion.
His mind was a tactical scramble.
Her shadow was outside.
The bullets were coming from the hall.
How is her voice in here now?
Is she faster than sound?
The impossibility of her movement was a cold dread in his veins.
But Gideon's mind latched onto a different part of her sentence, the implication hitting him like a physical blow.
His own frustration at Tenn, his anger at the frozen Dolls—it all vanished, replaced by a colder, sharper fear.
Blaze wants Tenn alive.
The words re-contextualized everything.
The attack on the base, the hunt through the sub-levels—it wasn't just a purge.
It was a targeted extraction wrapped in a massacre.
Tenn was the prize, and Arden was the one standing between her and the Scorchers.
His mind flashed to the frantic, static-laced call from Arden just minutes ago.
The fear in his strategist's voice hadn't just been about survival.
He must have known.
He must have realized the true value of the person he was trying to protect.
And now he was out there, in the freezing, sniper-infested dark, with a living corporate target in tow.
Gideon's gaze swept across his battered squad, their faces pale in the blue gloom, their breath misting in the air they couldn't afford to share.
They were safe for a moment, trapped in a frozen cage.
But Arden and Tenn were not.
They were still in the maze, with a hunter who had just confirmed they were only interested in one specific piece of prey.
The danger Arden was in wasn't just about bullets and fire.
It was about being an obstacle to a plan they were only just beginning to understand.
And Gideon knew, with a sinking certainty, that the Scorchers didn't just move obstacles out of the way.
They burn them.
***
Jessa felt the phantom weight of a contract settling on her shoulders, its terms written in invisible, bloody ink.
She had nodded.
She had agreed.
And in the Junkyard, agreements like this always had a price, one that was never stated up front.
This creature's voice was sweet, its words were gentle, but Jessa's entire life had been a lesson in reading the spaces between words.
She had felt the greedy hunger of slavers disguised as employers, the casual cruelty of enforcers hiding behind a smile, the cold calculation in the eyes of someone deciding if you were worth a bullet or a bandage.
This was all of that, refined into something far more potent.
The kindness was a mask, and behind it, Jessa could feel a vast, ancient malice—not a hot, impulsive anger, but a cold, patient emptiness that regarded her and Tink not as people, but as objects of a fleeting, morbid curiosity.
The girl in the pink dress tilted her head, a picture of perfect, helpful innocence.
"I should remove those gags," she said, her voice a soft, melodic chime.
The offer was exactly what they needed.
It was the first step toward freedom, toward being able to speak, to cry out, to breathe properly.
Yet, the way she said it—with that placid, unchanging smile and those milky, unseeing eyes—made the simple act of kindness feel like a violation.
It was not a rescue, it was the first step in a new, more intimate game, and Jessa had just agreed to be a player.
A sliver of defiance, honed by a lifetime of having nothing to lose, made Jessa press further.
Her voice was rough against the cloth of the gag. "...What about the ropes?"
The girl in pink didn't move, but the air around her seemed to grow still, as if the room itself was holding its breath.
The gentle smile never wavered.
"Don't be so impatient, little lady," she chided, her tone light and singsong, like a mother scolding a child for wanting dessert before dinner.
She paused, letting the weight of her next words sink into the stale, bloody air. "We still need to discuss what I want you to do."
The transaction was now laid bare.
Freedom was not a gift, it was payment for a service.
A service whose nature Jessa couldn't begin to imagine, and that terrified her more than the ropes.
Her eyes, the only part of her she could move freely, darted to Tink.
He was trembling, his small frame looking impossibly frail against the heavy chair.
He needed out of this chair more than she did.
He needed a medic, not more terror.
"...What about him?" Jessa asked, her voice barely a whisper.
The girl's head tilted a fraction, her milky gaze seeming to pass over Tink without truly seeing him.
"About him," she said, the words dismissive and final. "Don't worry. I will remove it later."
The word was a small, casual cruelty that stole the air from Jessa's lungs.
Tink wasn't a person to this creature.
He was a tool, a piece on the board to be moved or removed at her leisure.
And Jessa's cooperation was the only thing keeping him from being discarded entirely.
The question came from nowhere, a sharp, strange probe in the tense silence.
"Aren't you mad at those guys who kidnapped you both?"
Jessa blinked, bewildered.
Of course she was mad.
A hot, helpless anger had been simmering in her chest since they were tied to these chairs.
But it was a quiet, desperate thing—the anger of a cornered animal that knows it can't fight back.
What was the point of admitting it?
What game was this thing playing now?
Before she could form a question, the girl in pink spoke again, her voice a soft, knowing whisper.
"You're mad, aren't you?"
As she spoke, a bizarre, intricate glyph—a pattern of sharp, jagged lines that seemed to drink the light—flared to life at the tip of her right index finger.
It pulsed with a deep, ugly violet light.
Against her will, Jessa's eyes were drawn to it.
It was like a hook sinking into her mind.
The simmering anger in her chest didn't just boil over, it was amplified.
A foreign, all-consuming wrath flooded her veins, hot and metallic.
It wasn't her own.
It was too pure, too violent.
The memory of Ash's smile, the smell of this room, the feel of the ropes—it all fused into a single, blinding imperative.
Her pupils contracted, a faint, unnatural red glow igniting within them.
"I'm going to kill those f*ckers!" The words ripped from her throat, raw and guttural, a voice she didn't recognize as her own.
The Pink Dress's smile widened, a curve of pure, predatory delight.
She watched, utterly captivated, as her borrowed rage twisted Jessa's young face into a mask of feral hatred.
The trap was no longer just physical.
It was nesting deep inside Jessa's mind.
The borrowed wrath was a fire in Jessa's blood.
It burned away her fear, her reason, leaving only a raw, screaming need to break, to hurt, to kill.
She strained against her bonds, her body arching against the chair.
The coarse ropes, once just tight, now bit deep into the skin of her wrists and ankles, burning like brands.
A thin trickle of warm blood traced a path down her palm, the pain a distant, meaningless echo beneath the roaring in her head.
Her thrashing was violent, uncontrolled, the legs of the chair screeching against the floor.
Beside her, Tink could only watch, his own fear momentarily eclipsed by a wave of pure, bewildered horror.
This wasn't the Jessa he knew.
The Jessa who was always sharp, always calculating their next move.
This was a stranger, a snarling animal.
His wide, terrified eyes flicked from her contorted face to the source of this change.
The Pink Dress was watching him.
As if feeling the weight of his gaze, her head turned with an unnerving, fluid grace.
Her murky white eyes, like frosted glass, lined up perfectly with his.
In that endless white, Tink saw no concern for Jessa's pain, filled with amusement.
He saw only the calm, patient gaze of a scientist observing a successful experiment.
He was not a person to her in that moment.
He was merely a witness, and his terror was just another piece of data.
This time another glyph formed at her right index finger, then touched Tink's forehead.
Tink could only watch, paralyzed, as the same finger that had poisoned Jessa now turned toward him.
Another glyph bloomed at its tip, this one a sickly, pale green that seemed to pulse with a lethargic energy.
He tried to flinch back, but there was nowhere to go.
Her touch was cold, impossibly so, as she pressed her fingertip to the center of his forehead.
A wave of profound weakness washed over him.
The world didn't go black, but it bled of all its color and sharpness, the sounds becoming muffled and distant as if he were sinking deep underwater.
The last clear thing he heard was the girl's voice, speaking to Jessa with the tone of a benefactor granting a wonderful prize.
"Lucky for you, Jessa. I wouldn't just let you fight without any weapon."
Through his dimming vision, Tink saw her other hand produce an object from the folds of her dress.
It was a conduit, but unlike any rusted, jury-rigged piece of scrap he'd ever seen in the Junkyard.
It was long, white, and pristine, its surface smooth and unblemished, glowing with a soft, internal light.
It looked less like a tool and more like a shard of bone taken from a holy place.
"Here," the voice echoed, the final word he would hear. "A special conduit for you."
The last thing Tink's eyes registered was the sight of that beautiful, terrible weapon being offered to Jessa, her hands still bound, her eyes still burning with a rage that was not her own.
Then, the world dissolved into nothing.