Long-press a paragraph to send danmaku
"Drop it. Now. Or I put a hole through your shoulder that no amount of rust-salve will fix."
I didn't even look up. I just kept my fingers locked on the cold, jagged casing of the star-core, feeling the grease smear across my knuckles. My back was pressed against a stack of rusted turbine shells that smelled like a century of failure.
"You're not a local enforcer," I said, my voice sounding like I'd been eating gravel. "Locals don't use high-grade pulse rifles. They use clubs and bribes."
"Smart kid. Too bad you're still a thief," she snapped.
I finally glanced up. She was leaning against the warehouse door, blocking the only exit. She looked like she’d been carved out of ice and military precision. Tight leather gear, a silver crest on her shoulder that screamed *High Council*, and eyes that looked at me like I was a smudge of oil on a clean floor. Elise Vane. I'd seen her face on the wanted posters in the lower wards. The Star-Huntress.
"This isn't theft if the owner's been dead for fifty years," I retorted. I shifted my grip, feeling the core vibrate. It was supposed to be dead. Every manual in Cinderport said these old-gen cores were husks—empty batteries. But this one was humming. A low, hungry thrum that made the hair on my arms stand up.
"It's forbidden tech, Renner," she said, stepping closer. The click of her boots on the metal floor sounded like a countdown. "Hand it over, and maybe I'll let you walk out of here without a zip-tie around your wrists."
"I'm broke, lady. My landlord is currently threatening to throw my bed into the street. This thing is my ticket to not sleeping in a gutter."
"It's a ticket to a torture chamber if the Council finds you with it," she countered. She stopped five feet away, the muzzle of the rifle perfectly aligned with my chest. "Last warning. Drop the core."
I looked at the core. Then at her. I didn't drop it. I squeezed it.
"What are you doing?" she demanded, her finger tightening on the trigger.
"Taking a gamble," I hissed.
I slammed the core into the makeshift socket I'd rigged in my palm-glove. For a second, nothing happened. Then, the world screamed.
A blinding, violent burst of white-gold light exploded from the core, slamming into my chest like a physical fist. I didn't just see the light; I felt it rip through my skin, searing a path of liquid fire from my palm to my heart. I let out a sound that wasn't even a scream—it was a choke, a gasp for air that had suddenly turned to ozone.
"Holy shit," she whispered. For the first time, the ice in her voice cracked. She didn't fire. She just stared, her eyes wide, as the light began to coil around me like living wire.
I couldn't breathe. My vision blurred, the warehouse spinning into a vortex of rust and gold. The heat was unbearable, a white-hot brand etching something into my sternum. I felt a snap—a mechanical, visceral *click*—deep inside my chest, like a gear finally finding its teeth after decades of spinning in the dark.
"Get away from it!" Elise yelled, finally snapping back. She lunged forward, not to arrest me, but to tackle me away from the erupting energy.
She hit me hard. We slammed into the dirt floor, her weight pinning me down, her breath hot against my neck. The rifle clattered away, forgotten. Her hands gripped my shoulders, trying to pry me off the core, but the energy wasn't dissipating. It was searching.
I looked up into her eyes. We were inches apart. I could smell the sharp scent of ozone and something like winter rain. Her pupils were blown wide, reflecting the gold fire still pulsing in my chest.
"Let go of it!" she commanded, her voice a desperate hiss.
"I can't!" I gasped, my muscles locking up. "It's... it's inside me!"
As the words left my mouth, the light didn't vanish. It leaped.
A jagged bolt of golden energy tore out of my chest, arching through the air and slamming directly into her heart.
Elise shrieked, her entire body jerking violently. She didn't push me away; she was slammed backward, but as we separated, a shimmering, translucent chain of gears snapped into existence between us. It wasn't physical, but I felt the tug. It was a hook buried in my soul, anchored to her.
We both scrambled back, gasping for air. I clutched my chest, feeling a strange, rhythmic ticking where my heart should be.
"What did you do?" she screamed, clutching her own chest. Her face was pale, her composure shattered. "What the hell did you just do to me?"
"I don't know!" I yelled back, trying to stand but stumbling as a wave of nausea hit me. "I just wanted to see if it worked!"
She tried to stand up, but as she moved more than ten feet away, her face suddenly contorted. She gasped, her hand flying to her throat as if someone were squeezing it. She collapsed to her knees, her breath coming in ragged, desperate wheezes.
I felt it too. A sudden, sharp constriction in my lungs. The air vanished. I clawed at my throat, my vision darkening. It was like an invisible leash had been yanked tight, choking the life out of both of us the moment the distance grew.
I dragged myself toward her, every inch feeling like I was pulling a mountain. The moment I got within five feet, the pressure vanished. We both slumped forward, heaving for air, our foreheads almost touching on the cold floor.
"You..." she managed, her voice trembling with rage. "You cursed us."
"I didn't know it was a curse!" I snapped, though I was shaking. "I thought it was a battery!"
"A battery doesn't bind a Huntress to a street rat!" She tried to push me off, but as she moved a few inches away, that familiar, terrifying pressure returned to her chest. She winced, her body leaning back toward me involuntarily.
She looked at me then, and the rage was replaced by something worse: genuine horror.
"We're locked," she whispered. "The core... it didn't just light up. It fused. You've linked our life signs."
"So we just... stay close?" I asked, my voice sounding pathetic even to me.
"If we separate, we suffocate," she said, her eyes narrowing. "And if you die, I probably die with you. Which means I can't kill you until I find a way to break this."
She reached for her rifle, her movements stiff. She managed to grab it, but she didn't point it at me. She held it like a shield, her knuckles white.
"Get up, Renner," she spat. "Before I decide that suffocating is better than spending another minute looking at your face."
I scrambled to my feet, my chest still ticking. I could feel her heart beating—not my own, but *hers*—echoing in the rhythm of the gear in my chest. It was intimate. It was invasive. It was the most terrifying thing I'd ever felt.
"Where are we going?" I asked.
"To someone who can fix this," she said, her voice regaining its edge. "And if you try to run, just remember: you're the one who's going to feel the air leave your lungs first."
We started toward the exit, walking in a tight, awkward synchronicity. Every time I lagged behind, I felt a sharp pinch in my ribs. Every time she sped up, I felt a tug in my gut.
Just as we reached the threshold of the warehouse, a heavy, metallic thud echoed from the roof. A shadow dropped from the rafters, landing with a bone-shaking impact right in front of us.
It was a man encased in obsidian-grade armor, a jagged electrified baton humming in his hand. He didn't look like a local enforcer. He looked like a professional executioner.
"Vane," the man growled, his voice distorted by a helmet. "The Council doesn't like it when their hounds get strayed. And they especially don't like it when they get... attached."
He raised the baton, the blue sparks leaping toward us.
"Is this the part where you save me?" I whispered, glancing at Elise.
She didn't look at me. She just shifted her grip on the rifle and stepped half an inch closer, her shoulder brushing mine.
"Shut up," she hissed. "And don't you dare die."
The armored man lunged, the baton whistling through the air, and as he swung, the gear in my chest gave a violent, sudden lurch, sending a jolt of gold lightning straight through my arm and into the air between us.