“What is that?” Janine asked, ging at the rubbing of chitin ptes against the skin.

  Chak and Anissa decided not to postpoheir reunion for ter, and segmented coils almost fully submerged the armored Wolfkin. It took an inhumaion of will not to grab the bastard for whatever passed by his nape and not smash him into a broken smear for daring to e near her princess, much less do whatever the Abyss was going on. But everyone deserved their bit of happiness, no matter how unnatural ee it might have been, and so she focused ohing in front of her.

  They were in the underground hangar bay of Ingo Augmetics. The wide hall felt wroiness stretched for dozens of meters in every dire and disected and half-torn wires y fotten and damaged; their assembly lines had loaken away. Arenas used for testing and areas fineering and shipping purposes stood abandoned. Half of the lights didn’t work, and even most of the meical arms disappeared from the ceiling. The sts of hundreds of people absent from their workstations didn’t seem right to her.

  We’ll fix that. Janine promised herself, looking at the s hanging from above. They held a harness taining a single object, shaped after a Wolfkin. Dull, red lenses reflected the light of her eyes; blunt vambraces seemed useless until she touched them with a finger and cut her skin. A wire, invisible to the naked eye, covered it, sharp enough to cut through her skin.

  “Power armor,” Banshee said, running a finger over the gray surface. The woman still wore her usual white uniform, but added a green coat over it, fastening its colr with a choker. “Prototype of the future mass-produced MK7 bat suit. True to its name, we no longer o slowly fit it to the user piece by piece. Instead…” She pressed a remote troller, and seams opened oes, creating arance rge enough for Jao fit in. “… you just hop in and operate the beauty. Sorry for the bndness; we didn’t have time for painting. But we added the emblem based on Marco’s sketches!” Baurhe suit in its harness, showing the image of crossed muscur arms on the backpack.

  “That wire… Why use it and not sharp edges?” Janine inquired.

  “Aest of Dad’s product,” Banshee said happily, and fired a pistol from her hip without taking it from its holster. A bck dot appeared on the smooth floor near her leg, lengthening itself as the woman took out the pistol and dragged its barrel to the side. “An idea from our udent.”

  “Sve.”

  Jaensed, unsure where the voice came from. The word followed Banshee’s sentence, correg her, but she saw no one behind the woman.

  “Hush! No one ensved you. The wire is teically alive; we bred it from an ano-polymer pound, and it has to be kept in a liquid state to be successfully used in a ranged on.” Banshee squeezed the trigger a sed time, and a line of dust retracted itself ba the barrel of her gun. “Unless you are an Ice Fang, you ’t eve without special equipment. I bet the Iigation Bureau will have a field day using it for assassinations…” Janine coughed, and the pale New Breed nodded. “Yeah, right. Nerves. When exposed to open air, the wire’s lifespan reaches four hundred years, during which it never loses its sharpness. Pretty cool, huh?”

  “Amazing,” Janine agreed and took the ope, looking in. “There are no sockets!” she excimed. “No e cords either. How am I supposed to use it?” She tapped hard oeel, expeg the alloy to yield and bend, but it resisted. Curious, the Wolfkin intensified the pressure, slowly growing amazed that the thies had more durability than her lost gear.

  “Please st to ruin it, Warlord; you’ll just waste your time,” Chak said, ing himself around Anissa. They rubbed their foreheads, and the quartermaster tinued. “Short of drilling it with diamonds over a course of a week or submerging it in a bath of inanic acids at a temperature of two thousand degrees and proper catalysts, not much damage it. It doesn’t mean that you’re invulnerable; the New Breeds will hack you just fine if you stand still, but sihe development of the ptes used by Alpha and First, the Recmation Army has never produced su advaeological marvel. Feel honored.”

  His tail moved, toug the sleeve and showing it to Janine.

  “The previous model improved your physical strength marginally. To give you an example you’re capable of uanding, a Normie wearing your old gear would never have beaten dear Ani in an arm-wrestling match, but this model fold her into a ball.” The antennas on his tail caressed the suit’s arm a drop. “Its HUD is immuo most known types of EMP; its unication systems establish links spanning over forty-two kilometers, ign jamming. Solid stoeel, spatial distortions, and even anomalies resulting from reality ing hardly matter! The lenses dis the heat sources of an individual anism even through the thickest sandstorm or firestorm. Night vision is present, sure, but now you have access to spatial anomaly detectors that will give our warlords preilliseds to evade the exotic attacks of scum like Phaser.”

  “Good. Where are the cables? The plugs to ect my impnts?” Janine asked exasperatedly, stig her head into the armor.

  Anissa freed herself from uhe coils and joined in the examination. They frowned and exged gnces.

  “Mom’s right,” Anissa stated. “This thing is useless if it ot work in sync with a fighter. It will end up being more of a hindran high-speed bat. You might as well offer her a foot soldier’s exosuit.”

  “O ye of little faith,” Chak smugly chittered and pushed a crate closer to Janine. Inside was a skin-tight suit that resembled leather but was silky smooth to the touch. “It’s called the Underarmor MK. 2. Put it on and then gear up.”

  Banshee and Anissa helped the warlord into the ridiculous garment that covered her from o ankles and wrists. It refused to rip, stretg so that she could move her limbs freely, unhihe fabric g to her skin, pressing the fur. Anissa searched for zippers, but Baopped her.

  “It is fully parable to the prototype recyg systems,” assured Banshee, misreading their iions. “We tested it ourselves; feel free to piss and sweat; not a drop of moisture will be wasted.”

  “We? Not to harp on your enthusiasm, Yhness.” Anissa bowed, spreading the side of the ent cloak like an Ice Fang would. “But you are a tiny little bit smaller than the warlord. Unless you gained and burhrough several hundred kilos while we were away.”

  “Something like that, yeah!” Banshee giggled, and Janine heard a chuckle that almost went unnoticed amid the ughter. Now she was certain. The noise came from the woman’s back.

  “Enough chatter!” Chak anded. “Put on the armor. And no helping!”

  “Where is Till Ingo?” Janine inquired, pushing her arms into the sleeves.

  “Here,” the stist’s voied from a loudspeaker in the ceiling, and the s of an observation room opened. Ingo’s silhouette sat behind an examination table. “Don’t worry, I observe, ideate, and search for fws. You have brought me quite an intriguing gift, Warlord.”

  “Gift?”

  “Yes, this… Your name is Mehmed, is it not, young man?” A wordless groan filled the partment, voig a plea to end the misery. “Why are they always suicidal initially? Oh, no, my life is over,” Ingo mocked. “In a few years they ge over it when y it up at the annual roasting,” he grumbled. “Frankly, I have never seen such extreme cyberization.”

  “Really?” Janine leaned on the fortable upholstery, feeling the artificial fibers in the padding expand, enpassing her sides and spine. “Haven’t you met Reaper or Lyudochka?”

  “The ambassador treated me to tea, yes. The thing is, you hardly call her a human at this point. She has no trouble learning, but her emotional maturity is stunted. Even in the Old World, a full upload was frowned upon, as the sensory circuits were not yet perfected. To do this to a child. I’m not sure I would have dohe same to my… children.” Ingo grunted, filling the air with the hiss of a welding instrument. “And Reaper has over sixty pert of his body intader that shell of his. Excuse my absence from the field test; I o uand how to sustain and ehe survival of the member of my research crew.”

  “Kill me,” Mehmed begged. “End this suffering.”

  “Hush, student! Don’t make me ask a therapist for help. Nobody dies in my care; etch this into your brain matter,” Ingo coldly reprimanded him. “Trace! Attend me. I need a professional opinion about restoration!”

  Waves passed over Banshee’s coat, stretg it; the sleeves washed away from her arms, and the ehing slumped with a wet slurp. The mass twisted, sprouti bones. Veins sprouted across the gleaming white; nerves followed, then muscles iwined, reag out t phanges, and in the span of several breaths, a woman in a green coat stood up, cheg the choker that moved from Banshee’s o hers.

  “The fuck?” Anissa reacted ahead of everyone. “It’s that terrorist! Trace!”

  She crashed into the slender woman, all two tons of her heavy armor and body. The cws dug into Trace’s forehead, and the skin gobbled them up, bing the paw to the wrist. The terrorist leaned backward a little; her spine rearraself, and she shoved a tendril of her arm into Anissa’s mouth.

  “Away from my daughter!” Janine roared, and the suit closed around her, adjusting itself. The start-up of the reactor echoed her fury, and the warlord lu the bitch.

  A dark train of segmented chitin joined her. Chak and Jaacked simultaneously; pund toxiaths nding on the swaying woman. Her flesh, hot and soft as pstie, swallowed both, coating around the warlord’s fist and spewing venom pumped in by Chak through the opened sores in the billowing coat.

  Janine didn’t care. The fear that Anissa might suffer the fate she had allowed to happen to Marco drove her to a better than any stimunt. She unched the fist within the woman’s face, grasping the dissolving bones, and tried to tear it free, stabbing with her cwed paw. Chak’s spiky legs closed around the hordewoman along with his coils, and his body moved circurly, pnning to shred her into pieces.

  It didn’t work. Her cws and the legs’ tips scratched pointlessly against the very air that solidified around Trace.

  “Enough!” Banshee yelled, her lower jaw reag down to her belly. She fixed her mouth with a snap and grabbed Janine’s arm. “She is not the enemy! Trace, let Anissa go.”

  “I am not harming her.” Trace’s fao longer existed. Janine’s paw and Anissa’s forearm were still in it. She spoke through grown lips on her belly. Her right arm was a thin appendage, lodged deep into Anissa’s mouth, and she pihe wolf hag down using the elephantine limb of her left arm.

  “Bullshit you are not!” Janine reached for the Taleteller, but the limbs moved away from Anissa. “Wolf Hag? How are you?”

  “It was as if… as if I had bitten a mass that kept on growing inside my maw.” Anissa pressed a paw to her snout areated. “Mom, I could feel it. The harder I tried to bite, the more my fangs bogged down in that s. The threads eg me to her, I should not have been able to breathe, yet I could and…”

  “Bad tooth.” Trace regained her humanoid form and tossed a yellowed fang to Janine. She checked her daughter’s mouth and was greeted with a perfect white gleam of other fangs and a fresh rept in pce of the lost one.

  “Never dare pull a dentist ohout my permission ever again! Got it, witch?!” Anissa barked.

  “As long as you refrain from the offensive iotomy, sure.” Trace smiled thinly, shortening ahening her own il she was satisfied. “Your eye. Wao repce it…”

  “Stay away from me, abomination!” Anissa hid behind Janine. “Why is she here, anyway?”

  “Dad isoted and removed the genome responsible for Trace’s svish obedieo every decision of her former masters,” Banshee expined.

  “That’s fug horrifying!” Anissa stammered, hugging Chak. “So she is unbound and do whatever? Why? Why would you ever do that?”

  “Not free.” Trace scowled. “They tampered with my geic structure, adding a se virus. Should I overstep my boundaries or bee aggressive…”

  “You mean you weren’t?”

  “…I’ll die. Nothing has ged; I’m still a sve.”

  “That’s not true,” Banshee argued. “You have free will to disobey an order. I mean, I would rather you didn’t and served your senten Dad’s employ and be free, but you have a choice about what to do now.”

  “Sure.” Trace shook her head. “Sure. Anyway, Banshee is what is me now.”

  “Still too young!” the pale woman screamed.

  “Not in that serace stepped closer to Banshee and walked around her. “I don’t mind being outdone or inferior. All I care about is learning what the e of this will be and how to share it with humanity.”

  “Not inties either!”

  “Trace, if you are finished fooling around, I expect your assistance!” Ingo called. “I need your opinion about extrag the impnts aoration.”

  “Restoration?” Mehmed’s voice trailed off, distorted between horror and hope.

  “Yes-yes, a plete vat-grown body,” Till Ingo said, and Janine heard the g of metal. “Don’t expeything fancy. We haven’t learned how to make a New Breed from scratch yet, but you’ll get a Normie body for your participation in broadening my knowledge of augmentation. Shame about your frame… Warlord. How is the suit? Maneuverable enough?”

  “Fits like a sed skin,” Jahanked him, uanding that she moved with the same ease as if she hadn’t been wearing anything at all, adapting to the new model without a hint of difficulty. She picked up the Taleteller and wove a web of sshes and stabs, testing and enjoying the limits of her prote. The HUD was wider than she was used to, and she ged the gold lettering to a more familiar silver color. “No pints, sir! Pure perfe. Wait!” she yelled into Trace’s back.

  A grown fang. Janine swallowed and approached the woman, wary of whatever she might be. An artificial creature, was it? Eh, no different from us, then.

  “I…” She licked her lips. “Trace, my son is hurt. Badly. Could you do to him what you did to Anissa? Only on a rger scale?”

  “And you would trust me?” Trace tilted her head. “An abomination? Inhuman?”

  “With my life.” Janine pressed a paw to her chest. “Name your price.”

  “And if my price is your body? I collected ans, you know.”

  “Then take mier the battle,” Janine said without hesitation, her heart pounding and her imagination painting a picture of cincers slig through her arms and legs, pulling at nerves like ropes as the pincers carved their way through her body, searg for quivering ans. “If I’m still alive, use my body as you wish; just give Marco back his eyes and legs…”

  “Eyes and legs?” Trace ughed, clearly and easily. “That’s ensive damage at all! I thought there might be brain damage or an invasive poison c through his veins. That? Phh. I ain’t taking payment for unity service. Survive and find me, and we’ll see what be done. I never recreated a Wolfkin’s body part, but it ’t be that difficult.” She waved and headed for the elevator.

  “Thank you so much, Trace!” Anissa yelled, hugging Janine. She lurked in Chak’s shadow whe-born turned. “But stay away from me! Don’t ever i me to heal me or otherwise!”

  “I would be able to feel again?” asked Mehmed.

  “Eventually. Now, Warlord, to test your…”

  The Wolfkins missed the rest of his words. Their hearts almost jumped from their heads; the ued, energiziions brought them both to their knees and blood pulsed iemples to the surprise of everyone present. Janine’s lips parted in a grin, showing her fangs, and Anissa mimicked it. The Spirits themselves gazed upoheir attention directed by their very daughter. It didn’t matter that the two were underground; Janine could hear the call even here. War! Sughter! Hunt! Hope and uing rage against the intruders drove them to their feet, and together they charged, almost mindlessly, to their positions.

  “Hunt!” Janine cried, and her daughter echoed her as they tore through the elevator’s ceiling and climbed into the shaft, hurrying into the city.

  Their prayers had been answered.

  ****

  Alpha ehe medical bay, sniffing her way to the destination. Lamps dimmed, the limpid paurned gray, hardening as the mobile fortress prepared to reassemble aract modules taining vital patients for the army to transport them while the unburdened ed war. The exhausted sn of a sleeping Brood Lord’s whelp raised her brow, and the warlord coiled the fear around herself to let him dream in peace a little longer and walked past him, softly and quietly like a cat.

  She carefully curated her image of a hulking brute, purposely provoking bouts and stomping loudly. Surprises saved lives otlefield, and she hoarded the true extent of her agility, capable of outwitting even scouts of her own pack at stealth.

  The medics wheeled a patient past her, a young male injured during the retreat from Quatindor. His wounds had long since healed, no lohreatening his health, and an artificial lung soundly worked, secured in the built-in case that repced half of his ribcage. But a sizeable bulge on his skull, the result of a rifle butt trying to bash his brains out, judging by the shape of the bulge, kept the soldier in a deep a.

  Terrripped his mind, and the Wolfkin gasped, catapulted bato reality. Crimsoook one of his noble amber eyes a its pupil colpsed into a dot. An invenience, but nothing the kiddo could not handle iure. Alpha pressed the terror needle ahe medics expiuation to the fused male.

  The smell led to the exa she needed. She faced the closed door, the bane of her existence, and cursed her cws. It would be cub’s py to cut her way in, but that was hardly the way to treat allies, Ice Fangs or not. Calling for help felt humiliating. She wasn’t a cripple. Alpha k and used her o press the binatioing herself in and standing too fast for ao notice her kneeling.

  “What now?” The Troll turned, rapidly tapping at the rail of the patient’s bed. “I already told them we need more time to safely prepare Marco for the evacuation.”

  “I o talk to him.”

  “Impossible,” the doctor positioned himself between the warlord and the boy. Her cws twitched, and his hand touched the scalpel. “I have heard of what your kind does to your wounded. Crippled—is that what you call them? If you so much as try to harm the patient…”

  “I will not,” Alpha said. “I swear. He is in no danger. P-please,” she forced out the unfamiliar voice, amused at how soft she had bee of te.

  “This discussion is futile. He is unscious.” The doctor’s posture rexed.

  Alpha no longer paid him any attention. The fear whipped from her mind, not toug the Troll out of respect, arated Marco’s brain. It wasn’t a geouch like in the corridor; she used more force, turning his dreams into nightmares as punishment for disobeying an elder. Marco whimpered, remi of a cub begging for milk, and thrashed, spreading the disgusting stenptied bowels.

  “Mommy! Dad!” Marco whisper-shouted, trying to break free from restraints and touch his face. His eyelids blinked, closing and opening the empty holes. “Dark! It’s dark! I ’t see!” The doctor was at his side, patting the paw, calmly expining the boy’s situation, assuring him that everything would be all right, and giving him water to drink.

  Alpha waited two minutes for this orientation and scraped her cws together.

  “Marco,” she said mercilessly, “your stupidity distracts Janine. She obsesses over healing you, the worry over your dition anguishing her, distrag from what is important. It almost got her killed in Opul.”

  “I am sorry.” His tiny fingers clutched the b. “I… I am ready to pay the price.”

  “No, you are not,” the Troll interjected.

  “Fool.” Alpha growled, sniffing over him, tearing away the smallest dried molecules of blood, abs his memories. His dreams, hopes and fears were id bare for her. “Never surrender. g to survival! Janine was right. You don’t belong in the regur packs. Nothing but death waits for you there. You would’ve been happier in the exile.”

  “I serve!” He shouted, g red tears.

  “And serve you will if such is your desire.” The Troll tried to push her away, but the warl. “Marco, I offer you two choices. You tio be a burden to your family, not letting them focus on their duties. It’s not a bother. Fed up with her ina, one of the pack would soole the leadership from that softie in charge. Or…” She leaned closer, breathing at him. “You disappear. Janine will grieve, but she’ll move oually, and you’ll serve the Tribe, but always in shadows. I am creating a new pack, a unit molded for entirely different purposes. Houstad had taught me of our inability to protect ourselves from the treachery within, and of the perils of relying on the Ice Fangs to navigate us through civilization. You have mao befriend the Ice Fangs, are unafraid of our females, and are willing to learly the qualities I seek to foster. Where brute force is not enough, my special pack will pave the way, promising, iating, infiltrating, trading, sabotaging, doing everything we are not used to.

  “It isn’t honor,” Alpha admitted. “Your name will be stri from the records, and any lineage you sire will not know your heritage. Songs won’t be sung of your prowess, martial or otherwise. What I promise is service to the Tribe, the means to do so, and equality. In that pack, you and the others will be brothers and sisters, never knowing dominations. You will be a glimpse of our future, aiding the Tribe better than you could ever otherwise. Silence!” She raised a cw, stopping Marco from speaking. “Know that your mother is willing to do anything to heal you back to your prime. You are not abandoned or hated. Janine, Ignacy, Marco, and Yennifer kept visiting you. They love you. I do not hate you.”

  “Where… where will I be of more use?” Marco whispered.

  “It doesn’t work like that,” Alpha said, allowing the sadness ione. “It is up to you alone. If you refuse me, you’ll lose nothing and regaihing, I swear. Choose. And choose freely, kin. What is your wish? To be in the family or to bee a person capable of proteg them?”

  A surge of adrenali them both, and the two growled, fused and without aggression. The doctor experie, too, through the hand tad let go of her, grasping the rail to help himself stand. For all her bravery, a shiver ran down her spine. But it wasn’t a cold and cmmy touch of fear, but a at of an answered anticipation and the joy of relief.

  Zero had pleted her mission. Their ces of survival had just shot through the roof.