Butter opened her eyes.

  The world resolved not into a place, but a state: a prison of humming, cyan light. The memory of Leirbag Legna’s presence was a greasy stain on her soul, the echo of his command, “Fetch more. Their purity will sweeten the persuasion,” a cold knot in her stomach. He had failed this time. The next time, fueled by the stolen innocence of children, he would not.

  Her body ached with the ghost of shattered ribs, but the white hot agony was gone. Her magic, slower than Lóng Yán’s infernal regeneration or Winter’s divine resilience, had done its work over hours, knitting bone and soothing torn muscle. It was enough. It had always been just enough to keep her alive.

  Her olive green beanie was soaked through with sweat, a damp, cold crown of fear and exertion. She focused past it, past the low thrum of the energy cocoon and the chilling silence of the bunker.

  Click. Scritch scritch. Crunch.

  The sound was tiny, absurd, and the most beautiful thing she had ever heard.

  Her gaze drifted down. There, clamped onto the inner curve of the shimmering energy field, was Chomp.

  It was a feral little thing of her own design, a failsafe she had inked into existence for a moment exactly like this. A comically large snail, its shell a swirl of garish yellow and violent purple. Its body was a vibrant, almost luminous red, and its mouth, a horizontal slit of impossible sharpness, was working methodically against the cocoon.

  Scritch scritch. Crunch.

  Sparks of nullification energy fizzled and died around its mandibles. It did not care. Its single, simple directive was to chew. If it was not fed a specific berry every five hours, it would eat its way out of the sketchbook itself, and then through whatever was containing it. A necessary risk for a girl whose power could be stolen, or worse, trapped.

  A hairline fracture, no wider than a thread, appeared in the cyan lattice directly under its relentless mouth. The high pitched hum of the cocoon stuttered, emitting a brief, static crackle.

  Butter’s heart hammered against her newly healed ribs, a frantic drum against the cage of her chest. This was it. Not a rescue from the outside, but a jailbreak from within.

  She did not dare move. Did not dare breathe too loudly. Her eyes, wide and fixed on the tiny, working creature, were the only part of her that was alive with motion.

  Scritch scritch CRUNCH.

  The fracture widened, branching out like a lightning bolt frozen in the energy field. The light around Chomp flickered, dying. A piece of the cocoon, about the size of a coin, vaporized into a wisp of ozone and spent magic.

  It was a small hole. An insignificant breach.

  But it was a hole.

  Through it, she saw the polished obsidian floor of Asma’s throne room. Freedom was a sliver of reflected light.

  Chomp, oblivious to the magnitude of its achievement, simply adjusted its grip and began chewing on the edge of the hole, making it wider. Scritch scritch. Crunch.

  The hum of the cocoon was now a strained, wavering note. The collar around her neck felt heavier, its silencing runes pulsing as if in panic.

  Butter’s fingers, pinned to her sides, twitched. Her plan was already forming, a desperate, silent calculus. The moment the hole was large enough, she would have one chance. One, before the bunker’s systems registered the containment failure.

  She stared at the determined little snail, her unlikely savior, and waited for the world to break.

  ///

  The training chamber was a symphony of controlled chaos, its sterile air thick with the ozone tang of hive mind circuitry and the coppery scent of split lips. In the center of the storm, Torren was a force of pure, undirected entropy.

  He fought maskless. The complex HUD that would calculate trajectories, analyze weak points, and suggest optimal strikes was conspicuously absent. He did not need it. To Torren, combat was not a science. It was a demolition job.

  From his perch in a shadowed corner, Kip watched, taking a loud, crunchy bite from a glossy red apple. He had long ago categorized Torren not as a martial artist, but as an overgrown honey badger. There was no technique, only a relentless, brutal instinct to reduce the opposition to inert matter. And it was this primal unpredictability that made him a living paradox for the hive mind. How do you compute an opponent who does not even know his own next move?

  THWACK THWACK THWACK THWACK.

  A barrage of impossibly fast, piston like punches hammered a soldier’s guard, the sound a staccato beat of concussive force. The man’s arms, reinforced by demonic energy, were beaten down, and the final blow, a short, devastating shovel hook to the jaw, sent him flying across the room. He hit the far wall with a resonant BANG and slid into a motionless heap.

  Sensory input from the left. Another soldier, seeing an opening, threw a haymaker at the back of Torren’s skull.

  Torren did not fully turn. He simply shifted his head a fraction, the fist whistling past his ear. His left hand, a vise of calloused flesh and reinforced bone, snapped up and closed over the attacking fist. There was a sickening, wet CRUNCH as he crushed the knuckles within his grip.

  A third soldier launched a high kick at his face.

  Still holding the first man’s shattered hand, Torren’s right hand shot out and caught the incoming ankle. He stood there, a mountain anchored to the floor, ignoring the frantic, useless punches the one armed soldier rained upon his broad back.

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  His movements were economical, almost casual. He kicked out the standing leg of the kicker, forcing his legs into a wide, unstable V. In the same fluid motion, he delivered a straight kick backward, a brutal thrust that connected with the chest of the puncher behind him. The sound of shattering ribs was a dull, percussive THUD.

  Now he turned his full attention to the man whose leg he held. With a grunt of effort, he wrenched the legs apart, dragging the soldier through a violent, forced split. The horrific POP SNAP of tendons and hip joints giving way echoed in the chamber, followed by a raw, agonized scream that was cut short as Torren dropped him to the floor.

  A fourth soldier, seeing the pattern of grounded, close quarters brutality, opted for a dynamic entry. He leaped, flipped in a showy arc, and landed a solid double footed kick square in the center of Torren’s chest.

  The big man staggered back a single step, a low “Oof” forced from his lungs. But his balance never broke. As the soldier landed, Torren’s hands, like twin catapults, thrust forward and clamped onto his legs.

  He spun, a monstrous top of muscle and fury, using the man’s own momentum against him. He was flung like a ragdoll, a human javelin hurled across the length of the chamber.

  But Torren was not done.

  He zoomed. One moment he was at the spin’s point of origin, the next he was a blur intercepting the soldier’s flight. A single, colossal punch was driven into the small of the man’s back mid air, accelerating him into the ground with a final, spine jarring CRUNCH.

  Silence, save for the low moans of the broken.

  Torren straightened up, rolling his massive shoulders. He wiped a smear of blood from his chin with the back of his hand and grinned, his scarred face crinkling around the eyes. His short, sandy blonde hair was a ruffled mess.

  “All right, that’s enough for today,” he called out, his voice a rolling baritone with a distinct, no nonsense British accent. “Good job, lads.”

  He ambled over to Kip, who took one final, deliberate bite of his apple.

  “Your turn,” Torren said, the grin still plastered on his face.

  Kip rolled his eyes, a laugh shaking his shoulders as he tossed the apple core into a nearby recycler. “You wouldn’t be able to keep up, old man.”

  Torren’s laugh was a deep, rumbling thunderclap in the chamber. He clapped a hand on Kip’s shoulder, a gesture that would have dislocated a normal man’s collarbone.

  “Not too old to break your bones, kid.”

  A slow grin spread across Torren’s scarred face as he watched Kip. The kid was all sharp edges and effortless grace, a ghost in the machine. But in that confident, handsome face with its silky black hair and tan skin, Torren did not just see a partner. He saw a reflection. A younger, less broken version of himself, pulled from another lifetime of ash and blood.

  The memory descended on him with the weight of a tombstone.

  The Sin War. The First Night.

  The air was not air. It was poison and embers. The official orders had been clear: all Magpies to bunkers. Maximum containment. But Torren had never been good with orders. The bunker was a cage, and the world outside was a playground of finally justified violence.

  Humans had always been horribly weak. Even before the serum, when he was just a brawler, a gym freak, he could break them with a single, well placed blow. But after? The serum had made him a god of carnage. Fifty times stronger. A slight flick of his wrist could pop a human skull like overripe fruit. His missions before the war had been boring exercises in restraint. He had let bullets hit him sometimes, just to feel the sting against his indestructible muscles, a tiny spark of sensation in a numb existence.

  But now there were demons.

  He walked through the apocalypse, a mountain of muscle moving through the chaos. The symphony of the damned played around him: the howls of infernal beasts, the screams of the dying, the crump of collapsing buildings. A streak of blinding light cut across the sky, a Pakistani Storm Assassin, her form a blur as she unleashed devastating blasts of orange lightning that vaporized entire packs of demons where they stood.

  Torren gave her a wide berth. No fun in a fight if you get vaporized in the first nanosecond. He was not here for efficiency. He was here to feel.

  Then he saw it.

  Lumbering through the ruins of a city square was a demon, a hulking fusion of man and goat. It stood eight feet tall, its body a tapestry of corded muscle under coarse black fur. Brutal, spiraled horns swept back from its head, and its eyes burned with stupid, malevolent fire. It was perfect.

  Torren’s grin widened, a predator’s flash of teeth in the gloom. He did not run. He zoomed, closing the distance in a blink, the ground cracking under the force of his launch.

  “Hey there,” he rumbled, his voice a low roll of thunder beneath the cacophony. “Put your fists up.”

  The goat man demon spun, its cloven hooves scraping on the rubble. It did not roar. It did not speak. It simply lowered its head and charged, the power in its thick legs shaking the ground. One massive, twisted fist swung in a haymaker meant to pulverize stone.

  Torren did not dodge. He stood his ground, the grin on his face stretching into something ecstatic and unhinged.

  “Yes,” he breathed, the word a puff of steam in the chill air. His own fists came up, not with technique, but with eager, brutal intent.

  The demon’s fist met his.

  The impact was a BOOM that vaporized the rain in a ten foot circle. The shockwave blew out the windows of the already shattered buildings around them.

  Torren did not flinch. He did not slide back an inch. He absorbed the world ending force, his boots grinding deeper into the asphalt.

  He felt it. A jolt from his knuckles all the way up his arm. A real impact. A genuine threat.

  A laugh, raw and full of joy, erupted from his chest.

  “I FEEL ALIVE!”

  The world had narrowed to a single, glorious point of impact.

  This was no longer a fight. It was a sacrament. The demon, a mountain of weeping muscle and chitin, was his altar. They traded blows that did not just land. They reverberated, each punch a clap of thunder that sent visible shockwaves tearing through the air, shaking the very foundations of the ruined city block.

  For the first time in a decade, Torren did not hold back.

  His magpie armor, a masterpiece of Syndicate engineering, was a cage. It contained him. It softened blows, dispersed kinetic energy, and protected the fragile human inside.

  He did not want protection. He wanted to feel.

  As he blocked a hammer blow that would have flattened a tank, his thumb flicked a hidden switch on his wrist.

  CH SHUNK.

  The sound was a release. The matte black plates of his armor folded in on themselves with a series of rapid, precise clicks, retracting into the undersuit like the shell of a turtle withdrawing. He stood in only the form fitting black base layer, his massive, scarred frame exposed to the elements, to the violence, to the truth of the impact.

  The demon roared, confused by the sudden vulnerability. It charged, its bulk a blur of malevolent force, and threw a straight punch that could level a fortress wall.

  Torren did not block. He did not brace. He spread his arms wide and took it.

  THOOM.

  The sound was the physical manifestation of pain. It was the feeling of every rib screaming in unison, of his organs slamming against his spine, of the air in his lungs becoming a weapon that tried to tear its way out of his throat.

  He was airborne, a cannonball of flesh and bone fired backward across the battlefield. He tasted copper and earth and glorious, unvarnished sensation. The wind screamed in his ears, a requiem for his own invincibility.

  He slammed his boots down, carving twin trenches through the asphalt and concrete for fifty feet, grinding to a halt in a cloud of dust and sparks. He stood, swaying, a string of bloody saliva dripping from his lips onto his chest.

  A grin split his face, wide and unhinged, a rictus of pure, ecstatic joy. He looked at the distant demon, his eyes alight with a feverish need.

  “GIVE ME MOREEEE!”

  The bellow was a challenge to the universe itself.

  And he zoomed. Not away. Not to safety.

  Back into the storm. Back toward the pain. Back to the only thing that made the numbness go away.