09-11-2355 | 12:02
Port Helix Biophysics — Processing Bay.
—
They roll the final corner, the skiffs rattling as their hulls bump the reinforced bay doors. The sound dies beneath the roar of the crowd outside, swallowed whole by a living wall of noise. The cordon ahead glows like a wound with hard-light braided into seamless arcs, blinding white and humming with strain. Beyond it, the mob seethes: bodies pressed shoulder to shoulder, a tide of heat and spit and flickering holograms that paint the air in strobing color.
The signs scream in all directions. CLEANSE THE STAIN. SEND THEM BACK. KILL THE RENDLINGS. That last one, in neon pink, waves from the hand of a boy who can't be more than twelve.
An older woman beside him brandishes a sign that pulses VANQUISH THE DEMONS in toxic green, her mouth moving with the rhythm of the chant: "Not human, not safe, not one of us."
Someone hurls a glowstick. It ricochets off a trooper's shield, scattering pink sparks that fizzle against the barrier. The crowd cheers at the impact like it's a sport. Another voice rises above them—a man's, raw with anger.
"Get them out of our city! We paid to keep this place clean!"
A chorus answers, "OUT! OUT! OUT!"
Then something heavier cuts through the noise. A gray blur arcing over the cordon. A civilian Kinetic Stabilizer Drone, the kind used by the injured, sails high, almost graceful until it slams into the skiff's side. The clang rings like a bell, hard and hollow, and a scorch mark blooms across the ceramic plating just inches from Ryn.
The troopers tense. One raises his weapon slightly, the shimmer of the barrier flickering from the surge. Someone in the crowd jeers, "What, can't even bleed right?" Laughter follows, mean and electric.
Ryn doesn't step back. He doesn't flinch or cower in fear, for he knows what the throw means. That these people would rather destroy what helps them walk than share air with him. He stays at the hatch, unmoving, the cold light catching on his face. His gaze moves across the mob like he's memorizing them one by one, imprinting the sound and the rage into his bones.
The chants keep rolling, louder, uglier.
"Monsters go home!"
"Lock them underground!"
"No more freaks!"
The noise is a storm that doesn't care who it hits.
Ryn's voice is low when he finally speaks, just loud enough for the trooper nearest to hear. "Drama queens. Any of these can become a rendling."
Dax sees Ryn watch and drops his hand on Ryn's shoulder, his expression utterly flat. "Hostile public feedback is not a variable to be engaged," Dax says. "It is a contaminant. Contain the reaction profile."
The trooper doesn't answer. The skiff engines cycle, a dull rumble beneath the fury outside. Ryn doesn't look away as the hatch begins to close. He stands there through the narrowing slit of light, watching the faces blur together, bright, furious, afraid, and lets the door seal them away.
Ryn finally moves, stepping onto the loading ramp. He sends a tight, sarcastic glare back at Dax. "Thrilled to receive that high-value tactical insight, Commander. I'll just file it right here with the easy button. Is this the part where I look suitably stoic for the news feeds, or can I just be my usual pissy self?"
Kaito throws his head back and laughs. "We def need a hazmat suit for the feels." Kaito catches Dax's unblinking, deadpan stare. The laugh dies a painful, wheezing death in his throat. He straightens up. "I'll uh... sweep the local comms for contaminants over here." He backs away quickly.
Sera ignores them all, slapping a small micro-drone into the rafters with a practiced flick of the wrist. "Birds up," she calls. Two micro-eye drones climb and spread a thermal net. Kaito shuts down nonessential building cameras with his jammer, patching the team feed only to the critical frames.
Cole Maddox folds his arms, scanning the thermal readings. "Maybe there's a buddy this time. Maybe they planned it. Maybe it's coordination and not a lone anomaly."
Ryn snaps his head toward Cole. "Oh, you make it sound like the Rendling applied for a collaborative grant. Did you check its paperwork for co-signer details?"
Dax snaps, "Maddox, we act on evidence, not assumptions that compromise focus. Kestra, you will limit your verbal commentary to tactical confirmations. You are not paid for performance art."
Ryn spins toward Dax, his jaw tight. "You run the team, Commander. You call the plays. You don't tell me how to respond to a bully with an overactive imagination."
Dax holds Ryn's defiant stare for a beat, his own jaw working. He drops the eye contact, addressing the group instead. "All hands. You are not a unit yet, you are a collection of expensive variables. Focus, and move."
They send the drones in. Sera's birds sweep the gantry and call heat signatures tight. Kaito feeds them overlays; Bishop rigs two portable cages to choke points near the main corridor. Irie stands ready with med strips and an auto-hypo.
Ryn glares at Dax's back for one long second, then shoves himself into the darkness of the bay.
Then the scream starts. It is close and sharp, slicing through the industrial quiet of the bay. Ryn goes rigid. He does not bolt. He turns, his focus snapping instantly to the east catwalk. He sees a woman there, backed against a conduit, hands clawing at her throat. The Rendling moves toward her, making no noise, gliding like it owns the geometry of the air.
Ryn doesn't hesitate. He surges toward the catwalk, a faint, metallic scent of ozone trailing his movement. The Rendling is inches from the woman's throat, its slick, black surface trembling with predatory focus.
Ryn pushes his hands forward, a silent, silver-white energy erupting from his palms like a camera flash. "Oh, no you don't," he mutters, his voice low and laced with disdain. "This is hardly the time for a quick bite."
A focused wave of pressure hits the creature, causing its sleek form to split with a horrific sound, spraying black, gluey substance against the wall. The Rendling loses its footing and its concentration, tumbling violently backward off the catwalk railing, leaving the terrified woman collapsing against the conduit.
"Move the woman," Ryn orders, his voice calm and fast despite the chaos. "Irie, you take her. Sera, drone escort."
Irie is already moving. Ryn doesn't retreat. He steps out into the bay, eyes locked on the Rendling, using his motion to open a vector between creature and survivor. He is deliberate, drawing the beast's lethal attention onto himself.
Ryn doesn't wait. Two lines of silver snap into existence at his fists, drawing metal from the air itself. Construct Blades, dual edges of ferro-energy that hum with an unnerving, high-frequency note. He executes a flawless aerial flip toward the Rendling, the silver blur cutting twice at the creature's flank. The black skin flakes but does not detach. The Rendling snarls, recognizing the sting.
To evade the creature's snapping counter-attack, the air behind Ryn collapses with a violent, cracking sound. He is not pushed; he is hurled backward by the resulting vacuum, a projectile launched like a railgun slug. The sheer velocity carries him not around but through the adjacent maintenance wall at shoulder level.
The concrete explodes outward in a shower of pulverized dust, and he passes cleanly through two layers of structural partition to gain immediate tactical separation. The Rendling pivots with a violent blue flare in its chest, recognizing the new threat velocity.
Ryn catches his balance mid-roll, lands inside the cavity, and immediately points toward the survivor. "Get her down, now."
Irie hauls the woman and ducks her under a hard-light panel. Sera's drone flits ahead, creating screen time with blinding light bursts. Kaito drops a portable hard-light baton in the creature's path to buy them microseconds of distraction.
Shots go in. Bishop opens with a focused pulse carbine burst, and the Rendling reacts, its surface rippling like disturbed oil.
Dax runs. He moves economy-first, pops the collapsible grav baton and swings, a clean, heavy arc that transfers raw momentum onto the Rendling's shoulder. The creature absorbs the vector, barely flinching, and answers with an elbow that slams into Dax's guard. Dax rolls through the impact, uses the baton as a pivot point, and finishes the half-twist to put distance between him and the blow. He executes efficiency, not flourish, landing with his breath steady and controlled.
The Rendling barks, a wet, clicking sound, and violently reorients toward Ryn.
"Target the core," Dax says, controlled. "Contain its mobility, Kestra."
The Rendling ignores him and vaults toward the team instead, a lateral movement that covers forty feet in a single, impossible bound.
Kaito yells, "That's not in the brochure," and charges anyway, swinging a hard-light baton that blooms with white energy on impact.
Sera rains drone microbursts from above, the wire-rounds nicking and distracting its movement. Bishop drops a massive hard-light plate between the Rendling and the med lane, creating a temporary shield.
Ryn extends a hand toward a nearby fire suppression conduit. The pipe screams as the water inside violently tears free. It doesn't spray; it instantly coils and hardens mid-air into a helix of shimmering, razor-sharp liquid.
He arcs this under the creature's belly. "Hold still, you cheap knockoff," Ryn spits, trying to trip its vector.
It thrashes, shaking the blow off like a dog shakes off mist, and snaps viciously at Bishop. Bishop catches the hit with his cage anchored and takes the full kinetic impact. The Rendling clamps on and tries to drain the armor seam with teeth and hydraulic pressure. Bishop grunts under the strain.
Cole makes the call that nobody wants. He tosses a sonic grenade into the Rendling's open flank, meant to disorient. "NO!" Dax bellows, but it is too late. The grenade detonates with a hollow bass.
The gantry floor flexes violently where the resonance hits the substrate. Cracks spider out, and a section of industrial tile collapses. Dax, Ryn, and Bishop immediately drop through the opened hole. As they plummet, Ryn's eyes glow a fierce white. He slams both arms wide, violently wrenching the ambient gravity around them. The sudden, extreme field distortion acts like a massive brake. They are slowed from a dead drop to a rough, heavy thud against the maintenance void floor, the impact still jarring, but survivable.
The Rendling drops through the hole after them with a single clean motion and lands squarely on Bishop's chest. It immediately targets the neck-and-shoulder joint of his armor harness, not tearing with tooth and claw, but pressing and pulsing, a focused attempt to force energy transfer through the seam. Bishop shoves with the maul, but the Rendling's grip is a malicious application of physics, looking for the weaknesses in the power flow, not just tissue.
Ryn is down fast, but airborne instantly. He snaps his hands together. The scattered iron dust on the floor plate suddenly coalesces and rises into twin, dark gray impact spheres, solid as dense scrap. He hurls the first one at the Rendling's foreleg joint; the impact hits like a sledgehammer, rocking the creature sideways. Before it can recover, Ryn propels the second sphere directly into the Rendling's core mass. The beast staggers, its internal blue light flickering violently, forcing it to relinquish its draining grip on Bishop.
They tumble into a power room. Rows of auxiliary banks line the walls, access consoles and coolant conduits. Cables run like veins. The Rendling scrambles for the nearest panel, presses a slick palm to it, and the lights pop. Main power dies instantly. The room goes to emergency green immediately. Night vision registers.
"Power cut," Kaito calls over the comms. "Auxiliary doing the tidy up. It's learning the grid."
Ryn is already moving. He slams a ferro-construct lattice across the nearest breaker with two hands, trying to force the creature's touch into a dead conductor. The Rendling refuses to quit. It pins a console and forces a high-level shutdown command with a swipe that looks like a hand but behaves like a key card. Auxiliary reroutes, a series of clicks and bleeps, and the Rendling uses the brief flicker to slip a seam in the gridlock outside. It finds the dark maw of a maintenance tramway and vanishes into the building's underbelly.
They hit the room's floor hard. Dax stands immediately. His face is a closed thing. He does not shout. His voice is flat and low: "Recon. Now."
The order is short and absolute. No sermons, no performance, just cold intent. It lands on Ryn like pressure, a wave of contained fury. He can feel it everywhere, in his chest, in the hollow behind his eyes. He knows Dax is furious. He also knows shouting will not bring back what they lost.
Dax does not raise his voice. He steps forward, voice flat, precise. "We lost the primary," he says. "It accessed auxiliary and adapted. We recover, and we change how we move."
Ryn answers without theatrics. "Understood. Recovery protocol alpha."
"Secure the power room," Dax continues. "Tag damaged transponders. Exclusion perimeter tight. Fast sweep on tramway coordinates. Move."
They move like a machine returning to order. At the pad the team is patched and breathing hard. The skiffs spin up around them. Outside the crowd waits, placards flickering in holo-glow. The signs trade outrage for worry as the skiffs lift them away.
"Fucking hell," Kaito curses under his breath. "That thing learned. How the hell did it learn that fast?"
Dax meets him with a look that says the question is noted and will be answered later. "We got one set of data. It used the gap. We close the gap."
Ryn feels the gravity of Dax's silence in the space between commands. It is not a reproach. It is a verdict. He tastes something sour and metallic in his mouth and does not try to soften it.
"Where to next" Irie asks, voice tight with adrenaline.
Dax breathes once, steady. "We go again. Different approach. Keep your heads."
Ryn nods, slow and exact. No excuses, no pleading. The team recalibrates on the fly, fingers already mapping where the Rendling will appear next. They move with the worn certainty of people who have lost and learned and refuse to lose the same way twice.
—
A.N: Thanks for reading! This chapter was meant to be a blunt instrument, all momentum and consequence. I wanted the crowd to feel like a physical force and the Rendling to move like a private, precise crime. If anything here landed too hard or not hard enough tell me which moment you felt in your chest and I will lean into it in the next scene.