Mana fell in silence, not for want of noise, but because the ice world beneath her had muted the universe. Her armor cocooned her in zero-sheen white, edges scored with black carbon—stealth paint over thermal mesh, optimized for heat bleed and subsonic resistance. She plummeted at terminal velocity, arms tight to her sides, knees already locked for the shock. The world was a laceration of cold, cutting upward to greet her.
Through the neural link, Fox's voice trickled in—a digital pulse, threaded and silver: "Wind shear approaching maximum; correct by one-point-seven degrees east. Heat gradient: minus one-ten Celsius, falling. Expect glide window in five."
Mana flexed her hands, feeling the suit articulate the micro-adjustments, feathering her posture until the rush of descent gave way to a sickening smoothness. She squinted through the visor, letting the filters highlight the landscape. Below: a field of obsidian knifing through milky frost, every shard a dagger set for her heart. No clouds, no sky, only the stark blue hush of vacuum and the ghostly glimmer of stars above.
"Trajectory aligned," Fox said, "in three, two—"
Impact. Her boots struck the crust, shattering a meter-thick slab of ice. For a split second she cratered, knees absorbing the violence, then bounced to the surface, trailing powder like a comet's tail. The force left her breathless, ribs tight, Core spiking dopamine to keep her vision from tunneling.
She landed in a crouch, fist knifing into the ice for balance. The microfractures fanned outward—a perfect spiderweb, instantly frost-welded by the moon's endless night. Fox's voice, again: "Welcome to Zenith. You have ninety seconds until they triangulate your position. Move."
Mana stood, orienting herself. Ahead, the Erben archive loomed, a black monolith erupting from the wastes. It had the geometry of a knife, every line exaggerated by the way starlight refracted through the frozen air. The archives were older than any war, maybe older than humanity itself. The surface wriggled with sensor ghosts—infrared signatures, neural spikes, the crawling persistence of an apex predator closing in on a wounded animal.
Three Jäger squads, per the briefing. Probably more. She scanned the perimeter, letting the suit's AI overlay the expected approach patterns. The enemies were careful, but never subtle. She felt them before she saw them: the tremor of coordinated footsteps, the faintest percussion of claws on glass-hard ice.
Mana drew her katana. The hilt was already warm in her palm; the blade ignited with a whisper, blue-white and pure, a line of frost cutting through the spectrum.
"Contact," Fox intoned, his bandwidth now clipped and sharp. "Twelve on the near side, splitting into pairs. Secondary group at your two o'clock, holding at distance."
She didn't answer. The first Jäger dropped from the overhang above, jaws wide, claws extended. Mana sidestepped, let momentum do the work; she split it at the clavicle, plasma searing through flesh and bone. The air filled with the smell of burnt resin and something almost floral—the smell of Jäger blood, already vaporizing in the cold.
A second attacker landed behind her, blades out. Mana spun, blade low, severing both knees in one sweep. The Jäger toppled, torso folding in on itself, and she finished it with a reverse cut that sent half its skull spinning into the snow.
Three more closed in, moving as a single organism, arms outstretched for a pincer. Mana feinted left, ducked under their reach, and stabbed upward—directly into the soft plate beneath the sternum. The katana hummed as it met the power cell, and the resulting cascade of energy blew the creature's ribcage outward in a shower of frozen splinters.
Fox's voice: "Three down. Five. Seven." Every word punctuated by another death, another arterial spray that crystallized midair.
Mana moved through the chaos with detached economy. Each strike wasted nothing: she parried, riposted, always moving forward, never yielding ground. Her breath came slow and even, every motion calculated before she finished the last. She didn't see them as adversaries so much as obstacles, the way a child hopping stones over a stream would not pause to consider the stone's suffering.
Her visor flagged a new signature, larger than the rest. She pivoted, finding the squad lead—an alpha unit, taller and heavier, exoskeleton reinforced with dense plating, sensor clusters glowing faint amber. It advanced, arms held wide, and bellowed a shriek that set the air vibrating. Mana's suit dampened the worst of it, but her teeth rattled anyway.
She waited until it lunged, then dropped to one knee. The katana sliced an arc through the alpha's left thigh, then rebounded up to catch its jaw. The plasma edge bit clean, and the alpha's head spun away, still shrieking. Its body tottered, nearly toppled her, but she sidestepped and let it fall.
A pause. The remaining Jäger—five, by her count—hesitated, realigning their formation. Mana wiped the blade clean against her own leg, then snapped it off, letting the cold finish the sterilization. Steam rose from the cauterized flesh, a brief, spectral column in the night.
"Squad one neutralized," Fox said, voice low, almost reverent. "Seventeen seconds. A personal record."
Mana stood still, scanning for the next threat. Her fingers found the familiar seam at her hip—three traces right, three traces left. The snow was now mottled pink and black, jagged with bodies. Above, the archive glittered, untouched and waiting, while her hand continued its ritual, a silent metronome against her suit that left microscopic scratches in the finish.
The world was quiet, again.
She checked the charge on her katana, ran diagnostics on the suit. Everything green, except her pulse, which had barely shifted.
Fox's voice: "Second squad is holding back. They may be coordinating with the third. Suggest approach with caution."
She didn't move, not yet. She let the cold creep in, let her heart slow. Above her, the pale blue stars winked in and out of the haze, as if watching her with cold amusement.
Mana exhaled.
She counted down, in her head: ten, nine, eight. At seven, the world would start up again, and she would be ready.
At six, the second squad moved.
They came not as a swarm, but as a logic puzzle, each unit spaced precisely, their footfalls in harmony. The air grew colder in their wake, as if they brought entropy with them. Mana watched them approach, noting the subdermal glint of neural ports. The Mimics. She had seen their work in shattered blackboxes, in the way dead hands sometimes curled into her own signature grip.
"Mana," Fox said, and for the first time in months, his voice carried a tremor. "They are not baseline. Mimics—tuned to your combat pattern. Do not repeat moves inside a twelve-cycle window."
Mana cocked her head, watching the Jäger spread to encircle her. Each mirrored her posture, adjusting stance by millimeters, watching for the next shift. The closest one twitched its left shoulder; so did she, and instantly all six followed, the movement propagating like a disease through their ranks.
For a moment, Mana tested them. She raised her blade, flicked it left—every Mimic did the same, forming a perfect reflection. She let her weight shift, softening her knees, and the pattern rippled through the group. It was uncanny, like fighting herself in a funhouse mirror.
"Recommendation: improvise," Fox said. "Go wild."
Mana inhaled, found the familiar anchor in her spine, and dropped into a stance she had never used in combat. Street fight, old Earth. She let her right arm dangle loose, left leg forward. The Mimics hesitated—fractional lag, but there. She swung the katana low, blade nearly dragging the ice. The nearest Mimic recalculated, countered high. Mana's face remained as still as carved ice as she feinted the slash, and with her left hand—bare, unarmored—she punched straight into the Jäger's throat.
Cartilage shattered under her knuckles. The Mimic reeled, not with pain but confusion, and Mana followed with a brutal knee to its helmet. The Jäger toppled, its neural port leaking dark, viscous fluid. The rest responded instantly, adapting her new pattern, but Mana was already moving, already thinking past it.
She ran through a dozen styles, none lasting more than two exchanges. Boxing into capoeira into a fencing move she'd seen once on a training sim. The Core struggled to keep up, spike after spike of pain lancing up her back, but Mana pushed through it, muscles operating at peak efficiency, her mind registering only the clean satisfaction of a problem being systematically solved.
The Mimics fell, one by one. Sometimes they outpaced her, sometimes they met her blow for blow. But each time, she changed. The last two came at her in perfect unison. Mana hurled her katana skyward, the blade spinning in the frozen air. Both Mimics tracked it, their neural processors calculating trajectory. As one raised its fists to mirror her empty hands, Mana's palm slid to her thigh holster. The shotgun cleared leather before the katana reached apex. The Mimic's fist connected with empty air as the weapon's report cracked across the ice—a sound like planets colliding. The first Mimic's chest cavity erupted in crystalline fragments; the second barely registered the shift before the second barrel emptied its skull.
Fox's voice crackled through her neural interface, a mix of admiration and exasperation. "Did you just throw a six-million-euro plasma katana into the air as a distraction? Christ, Mana. Effective, though. Very effective."
Mana blinked away the phantom sensation of sweat that her body remembered but could no longer produce. Her optics recalibrated with a soft click as she scanned the horizon, the suit's density regulators keeping her dry despite the exertion.
"Third squad's approaching," Fox said, softer now. "They're not running attack posture. Weapons holstered."
The leader was easy to spot. Taller, with a line of scarred flesh across the right cheek—tissue regenerated but the old wound still visible, as if worn on purpose. The squad marched in deliberate lockstep, but kept a respectful distance. The leader stopped, raised both hands, palms open.
Mana kept the katana low, but ready.
The Jäger spoke, voice raw and unmodulated. "Weapon-Touched." The syllables were torn from a damaged larynx, but clear enough. "You remember."
She nodded, one sharp dip.
He gestured to the dead Mimics. "You do not die. Not like others." He looked at her, unblinking. "We know your violence. It is…different."
She waited, unsure if the Jäger was posturing or buying time.
He pointed to the archive, black and angular behind him. "We want inside. As you do. We seek same thing. You call 'Eden'." The word came out strange, as if the Jäger had never formed it before.
Mana's Core stuttered at the name. Theories and warnings whirled in her neural stream, none of them helpful. She stared at the Jäger, reading his body language, the slow, almost reverent way he held himself.
The leader gestured again. "We can fight. You may win. You may lose. But…" He shrugged, the motion stiff. "No point. Both want same. We can wait."
Mana held the katana a moment longer, letting the weight of his words settle. It was against every protocol to trust a Jäger, even one who owed her a debt. But something in his stance—defiant, but also expectant—made her believe him.
She shut off the blade, let it vanish in a hiss of cold air.
The Jäger nodded, satisfied. "You may pass. But know—" He drew a slow line across his scar. "If we meet again, it is not here." He looked back at the archive, a flicker of something like awe in his dead eyes. "Eden changes everything. Maybe even us."
Mana moved past them, toward the entrance. The Jäger leader stepped aside, watching her with a soldier's wary respect.
Fox, voice barely a whisper: "What now?"
Mana didn't answer. She pushed open the obsidian doors, stepping into the dark. Behind her, the Jäger watched, silent as statues.
Inside, the blue light waited. And for the first time, she felt the faint stir of fear in her own chest—because she was not sure, anymore, if Eden was meant for her kind.
The corridor was cold, but her hands burned with the memory of impossible violence.
She followed the geometry of the archive, ready for whatever it had been built to preserve.
The entry corridor narrowed, forcing Mana to fold her shoulders in. The walls—if they could be called walls—were striations of glassy mineral, patterned in fractal tessellations that shimmered at the edge of vision. No dust, no scent of rot; just the faint ozone of static charge and the subliminal thrum of an energy source so old and deep it made her tongue taste metal.
She walked, each step a test of the ground's strength. The light inside the archive was not reflected, but generated: cold blue rays pulsing from seams in the crystalline floor. The glow carried no warmth, only the suggestion of memory, as if the whole place was a solidified thought waiting to be recalled.
Mana traced the walls with her eyes, mapping the runes that crawled along their length. Each sigil, each spiral, echoed the neural lattice she carried in her own skull. She could almost feel the language unfolding, a logic older than her ancestors' wars.
At the first junction, a holographic display bloomed from the wall—pure light, geometric, yet rippling with analog softness at its edges. The projection rotated, collapsing and reassembling into a familiar shape: the double helix, but expanded, spun into a toroid, recursing into itself. As she approached, the display's axis tilted, following her face, then blossoming into a three-dimensional map of star systems.
Fox, in her neural stream: "The system is responding to your Core signature. Compatible architecture."
Mana reached a hand out, fingers splayed. The projection's light caressed her palm, and at the touch, thousands of symbols rushed past, arranging themselves into a tight cluster. At the center, a single coordinate blazed white-hot.
The word formed in Mana's throat at the exact moment it materialized in her neural link, their voices overlapping in perfect synchronicity: "Eden."
"Wir haben es gefunden," she whispered in the old language, the words escaping unbidden.
Fox's voice, indistinguishable from her own thoughts: "Tatsächlich."
Nothing more. Nothing needed in this moment of perfect alignment.
Mana let her suit record everything, cycling the visor to maximum intake. She transferred the star map to her Core. The neural download was smooth, but cold.
Fox, softer: "You did it. That's the location. Copying to relay. Stand by."
She blinked, clearing her mind, and that's when the archive's quiet was punctured by a low, rising hum.
Warning lights guttered to life, painting the corridor in angry red. Above her, the smooth planes of the ceiling cracked open along hairline seams, and through these wounds poured the Kollektiven drones—hundreds, maybe more. They moved like oil, each appendage extruded in new directions as needed, their crystalline claws singing against the glassy walls.
The first drone reached her at the intersection, moving faster than any organic thing should. Mana dropped, letting it glide overhead, and drew both NEXUS pistols in one fluid arc. The air was too thin for proper recoil, but the report of the shots still left an afterimage of sound in her ears. The rounds punched through the drone's organic core, crystal shards exploding in microgravity, and the drone disintegrated in a shimmer of blue dust.
More followed. Mana retreated into the main chamber, fighting for every meter. Her breathing was ragged, the suit's O2 injectors working overtime to keep up with the spike in demand. Sweat froze at the edges of her mask, melting only where her blood ran hot down a new cut on her shoulder.
"Mana, there are too many," Fox said, voice hardening. "You need to exit—now."
She turned, mapped the geometry of the archive in three seconds, and found the shortest route out. The drones anticipated her, filling the hallway in a moving wall. Mana toggled the pistols to scatter, gritted her teeth, and fired in rapid succession, cutting down the front line. She ran through the debris, boots skipping over blue shards, the wound in her arm searing with every stride.
The next chamber was round, domed, the ceiling mapped with the same star chart as before—only this time, three coordinates pulsed in sequence, triangulating the path to Eden. The effect was almost beautiful; Mana registered it only as a waymarker. She leapt for the next corridor, ignoring the pain in her lungs.
More drones, smaller this time, shaped like obsidian wasps with wings that blurred in the dark. They stung at her calves and back, slicing her suit open in a dozen places. Each wound bled, the liquid boiling off to steam in the frigid air.
She reached the entry corridor, blinking blood and sweat from her eyes.
Fox, raw: "Extraction team ETA three minutes. You must reach the surface."
The corridor now crawled with drones, a living carpet of obsidian and light. Mana drew the katana again, plasma blade singing as she sliced through them. Every stroke cost her—a bite to the thigh, a puncture at her hip, a shot of crystal through her palm—but she kept moving. Always forward.
At the last turn, her foot slipped on blood-slick ice, and she crashed shoulder-first into the wall. The pain was electric, so bright she saw stars. A drone lunged for her throat; she caught it barehanded, felt the heat of its living core against her skin, and crushed it until it popped. As the creature's fluids ran between her fingers, a sound escaped her throat—hmm-hmm-hm-hmmmm—the notes rough and wrong but reaching for something older than the pain.
She made the door, then stumbled onto the open ice.
The world outside was chaos. The Jäger—Weapon-Touched and his squad—were already engaged, fighting off a tide of drones that spilled out of every aperture. The Jäger leader caught Mana's eye across the field; he gave a single, slow nod, then turned to cut down two more drones with his bare hands.
She ran, legs burning, lungs desperate for air.
At the extraction point, the shuttle waited, Fox's signature pulsing in the cockpit. Mana dove inside, slamming the door with a bloody fist. The shuttle rose, blue light streaking past the viewport as the drone swarm battered the hull.
Inside, Mana collapsed to the deck, blood freezing to the cold metal. Fox's voice clicked through her neural link: "Mission parameters met. Vital signs suboptimal but within acceptable range. Your extraction timing was... efficient."
She couldn't speak. Instead, she watched through the frost-blurred glass as the Jäger leader's silhouette shrank into the distance, still fighting.
The data core in her spine pulsed with the new coordinates.
Eden is real.
The price of finding it was written across her armor, and in the scars to come.
Mana closed her eyes. In the neural darkness, Fox's presence registered—steady, constant—the only fixed coordinate in her universe. His voice would be there when she woke. That was enough.