The siren in the bunker changed from a rhythmic pulse to a flat, agonizing screech. Baron Grasberg's throne room, once a sanctuary of industrial rot, suddenly felt like a tomb. Through the heavy view-screens, Ken watched as the outer hull of the Deep-Stack groaned and buckled.
"They aren't using the doors," the Baron whispered, his mechanical eye spinning wildly. "They're cutting through the tectonic plates."
A sound like a thousand screaming saws tore through the chamber. The massive steel wall at the far end of the server room didn't just break; it disintegrated. A spray of white-hot molten metal rained down, followed by four silhouettes that moved with a speed that defied human biology.
They were the Iron Hounds.
They were not soldiers. They were the Empress's personal pack of cybernetic hunters—wraiths of chrome and obsidian who had traded their humanity for the perfection of the machine. They didn't wear armor; their skin was the armor, a segmented carapace of dark alloy that hummed with high-frequency mana. Their faces were smooth, featureless masks of polished glass, devoid of eyes or mouths.
One of the Hounds landed in a crouch, its fingers—long, needle-like talons—digging into the metal floor. It didn't speak. It didn't shout a command. It simply emitted a high-pitched sonar ping that rattled the servers and made Ken's Null-Core throb in his chest.
"Targets acquired," a voice whispered from the air itself, a synthesized harmony of the four Hounds speaking as one. "Prince Ken Vaelstron. Asset: Aegis Heart. Status: To be reclaimed. Resistance: To be erased."
"Run!" the Baron roared, pulling a heavy rail-shotgun from the side of his throne. "Riggs! Engage the blast shields! Maya, get him to the hangar!"
The Syndicate guards opened fire. The heavy thud of rotary cannons filled the room, but the Hounds moved like smoke. They blurred between the bullets, their bodies flickering in and out of the physical plane using localized warp-drives. One Hound lunged at a guard, its talons glowing with violet energy. In a single, fluid motion, it sheared through the man's heavy ballistic shield and the chest plate beneath it as if they were made of parchment.
"Go, Ken!" Maya grabbed his arm, her grip bruising. She fired her pistol at a Hound that was scaling the server racks, the bullets pinging harmlessly off its obsidian skin. "They're faster than the Silver Guard! If they corner us, we're dead!"
Ken gripped the toolkit, his knuckles white. He looked at the chaos—the sparks, the screaming, the smell of burnt ozone. He saw a Hound turn its faceless head toward him, its glass mask reflecting the violet light of the Aegis Heart.
It lunged.
The Hound was a streak of black lightning. It crossed the thirty-foot gap in a heartbeat, its talons raised for a strike that would pin Ken to the server racks.
Ken didn't run. He leaned into the attack.
Just as the Hound's claws were inches from his throat, Ken reached out. He didn't try to block the physical blow; he targeted the mana-circuits in the Hound's arm. He grabbed the creature's wrist, his Null-Core flaring with a silent, hungry roar.
The Hound froze. The high-frequency hum of its body died instantly. The violet light in its talons flickered and went dark.
Ken felt the machine's internal logic screaming against the void he had introduced into its system. He didn't just stop the attack; he began to pull. He drained the mana from the Hound's warp-drive, dragging the energy into his own cells.
"Error," the Hound's voice stuttered, no longer harmonious. "Data corruption. Energy sink detected. Re-routing—"
"There's nothing to re-route," Ken whispered.
He twisted the arm. The reinforced alloy snapped with a dry, metallic crack. Ken followed through with a palm-strike to the center of the Hound's glass face. He released a burst of raw Null-energy—a concentrated wave of 'Nothing' that shattered the optical sensors and fried the delicate neural-link inside.
The Hound slumped, its obsidian body turning a dull, lifeless grey as it crashed into the servers.
"One down!" Maya shouted, her voice filled with disbelief. She didn't waste time staring; she grabbed a pulse-grenade from her belt and lobbed it at the remaining three Hounds.
CRACK-BOOM.
The electromagnetic pulse didn't stop them, but it disrupted their warp-drives for a split second, forcing them to remain physical.
"This way!" Maya hauled Ken toward a narrow maintenance shaft behind the Baron's throne.
They scrambled into the dark, cramped tunnel. Behind them, the sounds of the Baron's last stand echoed—the boom of his shotgun, the screams of his men, and the rhythmic, terrifying clink-clink-clink of the Hounds' claws on metal.
"We have to get to Hangar 4!" Maya panted, her boots echoing on the service ladder as they descended further into the Deep-Stack. "The Vulture-Class is fueled, but the hangar doors are on a timer. If the Hounds reach the control room, they'll lock us in!"
"They're right behind us," Ken said. He could feel them—the cold, artificial hunger of the machines. They weren't hunting him for a crime; they were hunting him because he was an anomaly that needed to be deleted.
They reached the hangar level, a vast, dimly lit cavern filled with half-assembled ships and crates of black-market tech. In the center sat the Vulture-Class stealth hopper. It was a jagged, predatory-looking craft, painted in matte black with engines that looked far too large for its chassis.
"Get in!" Maya scrambled into the cockpit, her fingers dancing over the manual switches. "Ken, the toolkit! Lock it into the stabilizer in the back! If that Heart bounces around during takeoff, we'll turn into a star!"
Ken dove into the cargo hold, jamming the toolkit into the reinforced docking port. He heard the hangar's main blast doors groan—not opening, but closing.
"They're locking us in!" Maya yelled. She slammed her fist against the console. "The overrides aren't responding! They've bypassed the Baron's codes!"
Ken looked toward the hangar entrance. The three remaining Hounds emerged from the maintenance shaft. They didn't run this time. They stood in a triangle, their glass masks glowing with a synchronized, dark-red light. They were pooling their mana, preparing a combined-beam attack to vaporize the ship's engines.
"Maya, start the engines," Ken said, his voice dropping into that cold, terrifying calm.
"I can't take off through six inches of battleship plating, Ken!"
"Start the engines," Ken repeated. He jumped out of the cargo hold, standing on the hangar floor between the ship and the Hounds. "I'll handle the door."
"You're going to get yourself killed!"
"Just fly!"
Ken planted his feet. He looked at the three Hounds. They raised their hands, a sphere of swirling red and violet energy forming between them—a Tier-6 'Calamity' beam designed to level city blocks.
Ken closed his eyes. He didn't reach for mana. He reached for the silence. He thought of the deep, empty space between the stars. He thought of the 'Nothing' that had defined his life as a failure.
He opened his eyes. They were entirely black. No iris, no white—just two holes into the void.
The Hounds fired.
A massive beam of destructive energy tore through the hangar, turning the air to plasma. It hit Ken.
But it didn't pass through him. It didn't explode.
Ken stood like a stone in a river. He held his hands out, palms forward. The beam hit his hands and began to spiral, compressed and twisted by the gravity of his Null-Core. He wasn't just absorbing it; he was refining it. He felt the immense heat, the raw power of the Empress's magic, and he crushed it into a needle-thin point of pure kinetic force.
"My turn," Ken growled.
He threw his hands forward, releasing the stored energy in a single, focused blast—not at the Hounds, but at the massive hangar doors behind them.
The shockwave was deafening. The refined energy hit the center of the blast doors and punched a hole clean through them, the metal melting and peeling back like wet paper. The vacuum of the Under-Sector's lower atmosphere began to howl through the opening.
The Hounds were caught in the backdraft, their heavy bodies tossed aside by the sudden change in pressure.
"Now, Maya!" Ken yelled, sprinting for the ship's boarding ramp.
The Vulture-Class roared to life, its oversized engines glowing a fierce, electric blue. Ken vaulted into the hold just as the ramp hissed shut.
"Hold on to your soul, Prince!" Maya screamed over the comms.
The ship lurched, the G-force slamming Ken against the bulkhead. They shot through the jagged hole in the hangar doors, diving into the smog-filled abyss of the Under-Sector.
Behind them, the Deep-Stack receded into the gloom. But high above, through the toxic clouds, Ken saw a single, golden light descending from the upper spires.
Dorian wasn't letting the Hounds finish his work.
End of Chapter 18