?The corridor leading to the Syndicate bridge was a nightmare of buckling steel and screaming alarms. Every few seconds, the ship shivered as an Oversight kinetic slug punched through the outer hull, sending shockwaves through the deck that rattled Willis’s teeth. The air was a thick, choking soup of orange hydraulic fluid and the acrid smoke of burning insulation. Willis led the charge, his fire axe held low, his silver lines pulsing with a frantic, staccato rhythm that mirrored the ship’s dying heartbeat.

  ?Vane followed close behind, his kinetic rifle braced against his shoulder, clearing corners with a grim, professional efficiency. Lyra brought up the rear, her pink data-discs buzzing around her like a swarm of angry hornets, their light cutting through the gloom of the failing emergency lamps.

  ?"Fifty meters to the primary bulkhead!" Lyra shouted over the roar of a ruptured steam pipe. "But the Collector’s personal guard is still holding the door! They have a heavy-pulse turret set up at the end of the hall!"

  ?Willis skidded to a halt at a T-junction. He leaned his head around the corner for a fraction of a second. A bolt of blue plasma incinerated the wall inches from his face, the heat singeing his hair. The Syndicate guards were dug in behind a barricade of reinforced crates, their turret’s rotating barrels a blur of lethal energy.

  ?[Status: Syndicate Bridge Access - Locked]

  [Hazard: Heavy Pulse Fire]

  [Mana: 40/250 (Slow Recovery)]

  ?

  ?Willis looked at the floor. The Syndicate ship was a patchwork of scavenged technology, and the power cables for the turret weren't buried deep in the bulkheads; they were run through a series of exposed ceiling conduits. He reached out with his , tracing the flow of electrons through the copper.

  ?"Vane, give me three seconds of suppressing fire!" Willis commanded.

  ?"You have two!" Vane replied.

  ?The Ranger stepped into the hall, his rifle barking in three-round bursts. The slugs hammered against the Syndicate’s barricade, forcing the guards to duck and throwing off the turret’s aim for a precious heartbeat.

  ?Willis didn't run down the hall. He leaped upward, his fingers hooking into the gaps of the ceiling grating. He wove a thread of momentum into his legs and kicked the power conduit with a force that sheared the metal housing. He grabbed the thick, pulsing cable inside.

  ?The electricity surged through his silver lines, a jarring, agonizing jolt that made his vision swim. He didn't let go. He wove the raw power into a tight, vibrating loop and threw it toward the turret.

  ?[Skill Manifestation: Feedback Spike]

  ?The blue plasma-bolt that was meant for Vane’s chest never left the barrel. Instead, the turret groaned, its internal capacitors overloading as Willis’s spike hit the power-intake. The machine erupted in a spray of white sparks and oily smoke, the explosion throwing the Syndicate guards backward.

  ?"Move!" Willis yelled, dropping from the ceiling and sprinting toward the bulkhead.

  ?They reached the bridge door just as the Collector was attempting to seal it from the inside. Willis jammed the blade of his axe into the closing seam, the crystalline wood screaming as the hydraulic motors fought against it. He poured his remaining mana into the axe, the blade glowing with a fierce, sapphire light that began to melt the steel of the door.

  ?With a final, violent heave, the bulkhead buckled and swung open.

  ?The bridge was a chaotic theater of red lights and frantic officers. The Collector stood at the central command chair, his hands flying across a holographic interface as he tried to stabilize the ship’s dive. He turned as Willis entered, his eyes wide with a mixture of fear and calculated rage.

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  ?"You’re too late, Weaver!" the Collector hissed. "The Oversight’s orbital lock is at ninety-eight percent! Even if you take the helm, you’re just steering a casket!"

  ?"I’ll take my chances with the casket," Willis said.

  ?Vane moved with a blurred speed, his rifle butt slamming into the jaw of the nearest Syndicate navigator. Lyra’s discs swept across the room, their pink edges slicing through the holographic displays and plunging the bridge into a terrifying, natural darkness lit only by the fires outside the viewscreen.

  ?Willis lunged for the Collector. The tall, stitched-together man pulled a short-barreled energy-pulsar from his coat and fired. Willis twisted mid-air, a thread of momentum yanking his torso to the side as the bolt scorched his ribs. He slammed into the Collector, the momentum carrying them both over the command console.

  ?They hit the deck hard. The Collector was surprisingly strong, his thin arms like coils of rusted wire. He gripped Willis’s throat, his fingers digging into the silver lines.

  ?"I should have harvested your core in the hangar!" the Collector spat.

  ?Willis didn't struggle against the grip. He reached up and grabbed the Collector’s wrist. He didn't use a thread. He used the raw, unrefined data-leakage from his own overcharged nervous system. He forced a surge of sensory input—the cold vacuum of the hangar, the scream of the falling bridge—directly into the Collector’s neural link.

  ?The man shrieked, his eyes rolling back in his head as his mind was flooded with a dozen conflicting realities. He slumped forward, unconscious.

  ?Willis pushed him aside and scrambled into the pilot’s seat. The controls were a mess of Syndicate-jargon and flickering error-codes. Outside the viewscreen, the Oversight ship loomed like a black mountain, its primary sapphire cannon beginning to glow with the terrifying light of a terminal strike.

  ?[Warning: Orbital Strike Imminent]

  [Time to Impact: 15 Seconds]

  ?"Lyra! Get the coordinates for the Trench floor!" Willis shouted.

  ?"I’m on it!" Lyra was already jacked into the secondary terminal, her fingers dancing across a sea of data. "But the engines are dead, Willis! We’re just falling!"

  ?"They aren't dead," Willis said, his eyes fixed on the sapphire light above. "They’re just throttled by the Oversight’s jammer."

  ?He looked at the ship’s engine-threads. They were being choked by a web of white, sterile logic—the Oversight’s 'Sovereign-Code' that forced the ship to maintain its trajectory for easier targeting. It was a digital leash.

  ?Willis reached into the console. He didn't look for the throttle. He looked for the leash. He found the white threads of the jammer and wrapped them around his hands. He didn't try to break them; they were too strong. Instead, he wove them into the ship’s own atmospheric-thrusters.

  ?

  ?[Skill Manifestation: Inverse Drag]

  [Mana: 5/250 (Exhaustion Warning)]

  ?Willis slammed his hands forward. The Oversight ship’s own targeting beam, which was designed to anchor the Syndicate vessel in place, was suddenly yanted inward. The Syndicate ship didn't resist the pull; it accelerated into it.

  ?The massive vessel lurched, the inertia throwing Vane and Lyra against the bulkheads. They weren't falling away from the Oversight ship; they were diving directly toward its primary cannon.

  ?"Willis, what are you doing?" Vane roared.

  ?"We’re going to give them a reason to let go!" Willis replied.

  ?The Syndicate ship, a jagged needle of iron, slammed into the Oversight ship’s primary emitter just as it fired. The result was a cataclysmic discharge of energy that had nowhere to go. The sapphire beam backfired, erupting inside the Oversight ship’s own hull.

  ?The shockwave tore the two vessels apart. The Syndicate ship was thrown backward, spinning wildly as its hull plates were sheared off by the force of the explosion. But the Oversight ship was in worse shape; a massive fireball was consuming its lower decks, its orbital lock finally broken as its systems scrambled to contain the internal breach.

  ?"Engines are back!" Lyra screamed. "I have twenty percent thrust!"

  ?"Point us at the Trench!" Willis commanded.

  ?He fought the yoke, his muscles screaming as he tried to stabilize the ship’s spin. The ground of the planet was rushing up to meet them—a jagged horizon of obsidian spires and emerald fog. The Syndicate ship was a burning wreck, but it was a wreck with a heading.

  ?[Altitude: 5000 Meters]

  [Status: Atmospheric Entry - Critical]

  ?"Brace for impact!" Vane yelled, throwing himself into a crash-seat and grabbing a refugee who had wandered onto the bridge.

  ?Willis didn't look for a seat. He stayed at the helm, his hands locked on the controls, his silver lines glowing with a final, desperate sapphire light as he wove a thread of stability between the ship’s prow and the air itself.

  ?They hit the emerald fog at Mach 2. The viewscreen turned into a blur of green fire and black shadows. The ship groaned, the sound of tearing metal filling the bridge as the wings were sheared off by the density of the atmosphere.

  ?They weren't flying anymore. They were a five-hundred-ton kinetic slug aimed at the heart of the Trench.

  ?The ship slammed into a massive field of black fungus, the impact throwing Willis through the viewscreen. He felt the cold, toxic air of the Trench hit his face, and then everything went black as he tumbled into the spongy, hissing darkness.

  ?He didn't hear the explosion. He didn't feel the heat. He only felt the silence of the deep-structure reaching up to catch him one last time.