Something tore across Blake's mind—a psychic wound that wasn't his own. Kitt's presence flickered like a damaged transmission, her consciousness fragmenting.

  Blake whispered into the warping corridor.

  The walls shimmered, transforming into high-definition displays. Fallujah, 2004: Blake kneeling beside a dying Marine, applying pressure to a neck wound that pumped blood between his fingers. Kandahar, 2007: Blake on-loan, sighting down a rifle scope at a target who'd never see him. Colombia, 2016: his team, bound to chairs, bags over their heads while a cartel enforcer circled them with a machete.

  Propaganda. That's all this is.

  Blake's pulse remained steady. He'd seen this playbook before—psychological warfare 101. Break the subject by confronting them with their worst memories and their darkest actions. But Blake had lived those moments and processed them years ago. There was no more self-recrimination to wring out of them. Those memories, and any emotions they evoked, belonged to him—not to the trying to weaponize them.

  "You've got nothing new to show me," Blake said to the not-so-empty air. "I remember every face, every kill. Once I realized I couldn't forget, I embraced it. I make it a to remember."

  The corridor twisted again, revealing the villa outside Bogotá where Blake had finally caught up with his team's betrayer. Three shots—two in the chest, one in the head. Professional. Cold. The reel was first-person, showing Blake wiping down his weapon, methodically removing evidence, and moving the unconscious mistress of the man he'd killed to a couch in the living room—he'd had to knock her out, as she kept screaming and hitting him. It wasn't Blake's finest night, to be sure, but Arias had sold Blake and his team out, which made the man a fair target by Blake's reckoning.

  She sees you The voice slithered through the air. Knows that she's bound herself to a killer, an unfeeling machine. Just like Kaelen.

  The name sent a jolt through Blake's bond with Kitt—recognition, fear, and pain. None of those emotions belonged to him.

  Kitt's reaction was visceral enough to stop Blake's chanting. He sucked in a slow breath through his nose. Four-count in, hold for seven, eight-count out. One of the pranayama breathing patterns. Suitable for use during yoga, when preparing to fire at a target six hundred yards away, or when some cosmic horror is trying to crack your skull open and spill your memories across the floor.

  "Sloppy work," Blake said, continuing down the corridor, step after lurching step. "Bringing up names I don't know. What the hell is a Kaelen?"

  The images on the walls flickered—faster now. Blake in Sudan. Blake in Yemen. Blake with a knife. Blake with a garrote. Blake, unarmed, with blood to his elbows. All real memories, all things he'd done.

  "Are you hiring?" Blake kept moving forward, unwilling to stop his forward march. "Is that what this is? We're reviewing my resume?"

  His words echoed through the broken hallway of the Leviathan. No answer came—not that he particularly wanted one, but it was telling. The thing wasn't wasting as much effort on him anymore. Based on the constant low-level static of Kitt's distress buzzing across the bond, the outsider had found an easier target.

  Blake pressed his back against a bulkhead and checked the corridor ahead.

  ""

  He felt her consciousness flicker, like a candle in a draft. Whatever the entity was doing to her, it was working better than its ham-fisted attempts to break him. Blake had spent decades compartmentalizing trauma. Kitt was... younger. Less experienced, more open... More vulnerable.

  The walls rippled again, the outsider finally circling back around to try its luck again. This time it showed Blake standing over a kneeling figure—a man with hands zip-tied behind his back. The memory was crystal clear, and Blake recognized it immediately: Caracas, 2019. A human trafficker who'd sold nineteen young girls to the cartels.

  The job was simple: he set up a camera, got the bastard to confess, and forced him to name some important names. After that, Blake had executed him with a single shot to the back of the head, retrieved the footage, and walked away without looking back.

  The display was clearly meant to evoke shame or regret. After all, the man had been defenseless. Blake wondered if the outsider was terrible at its job or if the problem was with him—because he'd do that job again for free.

  He shook his head. It was easy to get distracted, splitting his focus the way he was. He hadn't resumed his mantra, either, which was sloppy. It proved that he needed to practice with this weird mental technique if he wanted to make it into anything reliable. With a feeling akin to letting out a long-held breath, he let go of that strange dual state, his mind coalescing once more.

  He was confident in resisting the outsider. He needed to be on top of his game to figure out how to help Kitt.

  "" Blake tapped their connection, trying to strengthen it. It felt like shouting across a canyon and hearing only the faintest echo in return. ""

  The corridor split into three identical passages. Each one showed the same thing: more hallway, emergency lighting, and corrupted Leviathan flesh merging with metal walls. Blake stepped into the leftmost passage, acting purely on instinct. Two paces in, he heard the subtle shift of the other corridors closing behind him.

  Only one way forward, now.

  "You picked the wrong approach," he said, his voice flat. "You want to break someone? You don't go after their past. You go after what they care about ."

  "I don't know who Kaelen is. I don't know what happened to Kitt before we met. But I know Kitt can still sense me right now, and that's all that matters." Blake gripped Verdict tightly with both hands, pressing the weapon tight against his chest, as if it could help bridge the gap between them. "Kitt, I need you to fight. Whatever this thing is showing you, it's a send-up—if it's not all outright lies, then its at least twisting the truth on you. Either way, you need to shut it out."

  The walls rippled, a wave of nausea rolling through the corridor. The images changed, showing Blake with a knife to a bound man's throat. Algeria, 2013. Intelligence extraction. The target had lived, minus three fingers. Blake rolled his eyes.

  "You don't know me," Blake said to the presence. "You've rummaged through my memories, but you don't understand what you're seeing."

  He felt Kitt's consciousness spiral further away, fragments of her terror leaking across their bond. The outsider was winning.

  "" Blake sent, pushing his thoughts as hard as he could at their bond. ""

  The corridor bent again, this time folding in on itself like paper. The geometry made Blake's eyes water. He blinked away the tears and kept moving, one foot in front of the other.

  We're breaking her, the voice whispered. And then we'll break you. Just like the others.

  "It'd be interesting to see you start trying." Blake picked up his pace, almost jogging now. The corridor curved before ended abruptly at a sealed bulkhead door. Emergency light spilled from beneath it, blood-red and pulsing. Blake placed his hand on the control panel. It squished beneath his touch, organic matter having replaced the electronic components. Blake gagged, turned away, and started walking away. He needed a bit of room to use his skeleton key.

  "I'm going to kill you," Blake said to the presence. "I don't know how yet. But I'm going to find a way. And Kitt is going to help me do it."

  Blake braced against the wall and adjusted Verdict's power settings. The ship's flesh pulsed against his back, wet and warm.

  "Minimum charge," he muttered. "Just enough to crack it open."

  Verdict hummed in his hand, the weapon drawing power from his core. The drain hit harder than expected—ten percent of his reserves gone before he'd even pulled the trigger. Blake steadied his aim at the sealed door and fired.

  The Singularity Shot ripped from Verdict's barrel, a cobolt tear in reality. The space around the blast warped and folded. For a split second, Blake saw dozens of versions of himself firing from different angles before the shot struck home.

  The door and surrounding wall vanished in a pulse of twisted light. Where organic matter had fused with metal, now only a jagged hole remained. Smoke curled from the edges, smelling of burnt copper and rotten meat.

  Blake waited three breaths before peering inside.

  The room beyond should have been corrupted like the rest of the ship—walls crawling with fungal flesh, surfaces warped by the Outsider's influence. Instead, Blake stared into a room that looked untouched. It was some manner of control center or flight deck, but he lacked the context to identify it properly.

  Taking a steadying breath, Blake stepped through. When nothing moved to kill him, he let the breath go and found a good spot to plop down against the wall.

  He had told Kitt he was coming to help, and even if his only workable idea was terrible…

  Not terrible, he corrected himself, Terrifying.

  Even if the only plan he had was terrifying, he had promised her that he was on his way. Blake didn't consider himself a good man, but he did take pride in being an honest one.

  He closed his eyes. Part of him, the one he'd nicknamed Stubborn was still chanting those damned coordinates under his breath, making sure there was no room in his head for the entity to take hold.

  Here goes everything.

  Blake's voice was a thread, thin and straining, lost somewhere in the howling static the Outsider generated within her. But the entity… its presence was no distant call. It was inside her. A violation. A cold, knowing intimacy that wormed through the deepest parts of her mind.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  So far away, the non-sound whispered directly into her consciousness. Can he even hear you? Does he care?

  Around her, reality flickered, stabilized, became something else. The sterile, gleaming white of the royal surgery in Orestes Palace surrounded her. Sunlight, pure and clean, streamed through high windows, illuminating dust motes dancing in the air. The memory—her memory—of the binding. The day she truly became, fused with Vylaas. A cornerstone of her existence.

  But the memory was wrong. Tainted. The comforting sterility felt brittle, the light too harsh. Where Vylaas's gentle face should have been, laying nervously beneath her nascent form, the image stuttered. Vylaas flickered, replaced by Kaelen’s sharp, aristocratic features, his eyes holding a familiar assessment—cold, appraising. There was no apprehension there, just an expectation of what he was due: the weapon he was promised. Then Kaelen vanished, replaced by Blake. His gaze wasn't gentle either, nor particularly cold; it was focused, intense, the look he got when lining up a shot, analyzing a threat. Calculating.

  Do you see? The Outsider's thought slid alongside hers, slimy and possessive. The prince, the warrior, the mercenary. Different faces, same function. It drew lines, brutal connections smeared across the pristine memory.

  The same sharp edges. The same willingness to cut away whatever holds them back. The suspicion lurking behind the eyes. They see tools, Kitt. Weapons. Assets to be deployed.

  The insinuation grew teeth.

  Vylaas was soft, yes, but pressured by a system that demanded hardness. When pressed too hard, he cast you aside, forced you to fight his battles.

  Kaelen embraced that pressure, forging himself in the crucible of war and politics… And he was willing to use the blood of his brother Vylaas to quench his blade.

  And Blake… He wears his scars like armor and sees betrayal in every shadow.

  She remembered the nights alone in a hangar, Vylaas lost in his cups while she held down the fort. Kaelen had visited the hangar more than once, marvelling at the power she managed to bring out of the aging Titan armor. But he had never spoke to her, simply marvelling at the results of her work and admiring the war-machine she inhabited.

  She naturally thought then of Blake. Laser focused on his training, the maintenance of gear that he knew she would maintain for him. They spoke, yes, often even as equals… But he was so used to operating alone. Surely, he didn't actually need her. He hadn't even wanted their bond, that was something she forced on him…

  You chose another master, little weapon the Outsider crooned, locking in on that thought in a heartbeat.

  One who knows precisely how to aim you, how to use you until you fracture. And when you break? When you are spent? He will discard the pieces. Just like the others would have.

  Distantly, Kitt became aware of a heat coming from her core. From her bond with Blake. It helped ground her, pulling her back from the treacherous brink.

  No!

  Her rejection flared, primal and absolute. A denial scraped raw from the core of her being.

  Blake is not Kaelen.

  Embers of memory glowed against the encroaching mental frost: Blake, hauling a wounded scavenger clear of collapsing debris in the wake of the rebellion; Blake, sharing rations with skaeldrin children during an afternoon of rebuilding, his face impassive but his actions clear; Blake, his hand steady on Verdict, staring down a giant in order to act as a shield between Nahren and Rax's further predations.

  "He's a Warden", the rebuttle screamed into the void the Outsider carved inside her. Her thoughts raced: Blake where Kaelen sought to dominate and to break. Blake moves like water around obstacles, finding new paths. Kaelen was stone, immovable, demanding the world bend to his will. The difference felt vast, unbridgeable. She it to be.

  The warmth from her bond grew stronger. Something was happening, but Kitt couldn't spare any attention for it, struggling with the outsider as she was.

  Both kill, do they not? The Outsider’s insinuation slithered through her defenses, cold and slick. The memory of Blake training, the lethal grace of his movements, superimposed itself over the image of Kaelen sparring, his strikes brutal and efficient.

  Both manipulate. Both maneuver. Both control. The face of Mara, listening intently as Blake outlined troop movements, blurred with the memory of Vylaas studying forbidden texts on statecraft, seeking leverage.

  Identical tools, different hands, the entity sneered, its amusement a corrosive acid. Does the distinction matter to the broken pieces left behind?

  A sudden burst of heat, actively uncomfortable, and Kitt could hear Blake's scoffing retort: "Fuck "

  Joy surged within Kitt at hearing him, and she threw herself back into the fight.

  "Context matters! Intention!" The protest felt thin, desperate against the crushing weight of the Outsider's logic, but it was true. Meaning existed beyond simple action. It had to.

  Lies the non-voice resonated, shattering her fragile defiance like glass. Intentions are feathers scattered on the wind. Nature… nature is a cage forged of teeth and hunger. Nothing more.

  Then, colder than the void between stars, the memory hit her. Rax's ambush. Eland’s ship, chaos erupting. Blake, hours after his core flared to life, moving through the Skaeldrin assault teams. Not fighting, precisely. Disassembling. Seven of them, higher Tier, better equipped. He moved with an economy of motion that spoke of endless repetition, each strike precise, final. A blade flickered, a body dropped. A pistol barked, another fell. No wasted energy, no hesitation. He was a machine, processing people into meat.

  And afterwards… the silence from the System. The utter lack of recognition. No Gnosis. Demiurge itself saw nothing learned, nothing overcome. Just… labor completed. What kind of life have you led, her own thoughts echoed from that moment, laced with a horror she hadn't fully understood then, that a fight like that doesn't even register?

  Ice bloomed in her core, sharp and spreading. Such coldness… embedded so deep it didn't even ripple the surface. What vastness of carnage lay buried in his past? What terrible forge had hammered him into this shape, stripping away everything but the weapon? The Outsider didn't need to whisper now. The questions resonated within her own suddenly hollow spaces.

  And at her lowest point, something finally snapped.

  The ice constricted, a cage of doubt snapping shut around her core. Then, warmth. Not the gentle pulse from before, but a sudden, violent surge from outside. Blake’s emotions slammed into her—rage, potent and immediate; fear, cold and sharp beneath the anger; and beneath it all, a thrumming desperation. They weren’t echoes anymore. They were his, but they were also hers, tearing through her defenses, raw and unfiltered.

  KITT! HOLD ON!

  The mental shout wasn't just words; it was the force of his will, a physical impact against the Outsider’s pressure. She felt the raw need behind it, the refusal to lose her. It was a lifeline flung across the psychic void, and she lunged for it, wrapping her fracturing will around the connection.

  The Outsider’s presence wavered, a flicker of surprise in its cold, knowing expanse. This intrusion, this fierce, unexpected defense, wasn’t part of its calculation. If Kitt wasn't mistaken, it was reacting as if whatever was happening hurt.

  "Lies," Kitt spat the thought into the mental static, the word fueled by the fire Blake poured into her. "He’s protecting me. Your picture is skewed. Incomplete. Blind."

  The entity rallied, its non-voice regaining its edge, sharp as fractured ice. But the flood from Blake continued, intensifying. Not just feelings now, but something more. Fragments. Pieces of his thoughts, disjointed but sharp with intent.

  ...find her... anchor... goddamn Outsider interference... pressure point... need to break through...

  Kitt reeled, the sensation utterly alien. Their bond allowed shared feeling, a resonance of spirit. But thoughts? Direct, unshielded fragments of cognition? That required conscious projection, focused intent. This... this was different. Unprecedented. Impossible. The connection was changing, deepening somehow in the crucible of the Outsider’s assault, becoming something she didn't understand.

  The non-sound recoiled, a psychic hiss that scraped against the inside of Kitt’s mind. The Outsider’s cold certainty fractured, pierced by the unexpected heat of Blake’s intrusion. It sensed its grip loosening, the carefully constructed cage of doubt beginning to buckle.

  It redoubled its efforts, malice sharpening its assault. Images lashed out: Vylaas, gentle hands tending a wounded hexapup, overlaid with Blake cleaning blood from his knife, his movements economical, devoid of sentiment despite the body cooling at his feet. But the comparisons landed differently now. Blake’s presence was a rising tide within her, warm and insistent against the Outsider’s glacial logic. Each assertion met a counter-current, a refusal born not just of her own will, but of the shared reality surging through their bond.

  He protects, Kitt thought, the idea solidifying. He stands guard.

  More fragments of Blake’s consciousness bubbled up, sharp and clear through the psychic static.

  ...no choice...

  gotta let go...

  put it all on black...

  Accompanying the thoughts were emotions that struck her with physical force: a spike of fear, sharp as broken glass, quickly swallowed by a wave of something else… something warmer, steadier. Trust. Raw, unvarnished trust aimed directly at her. He was gambling, betting everything on their connection, on her.

  The Outsider flinched again, the sheer force of Blake's focused trust seeming to burn it.

  And then—the veil between them tore.

  It wasn't a gradual bleed; it was a dam bursting. The barriers between their minds, already strained, shattered under the force of Blake's desperate gamble. Memories flooded her, not her own synthesized recollections, but Blake’s lived experience, raw and unfiltered.

  A kaleidoscope of pure sensation slammed into her consciousness:

  Sunlight glaring off sand-colored walls. The metallic tang of blood sharp in the air. Concrete stained dark. Dust motes dancing in the sudden quiet after gunfire. A child’s wail, high and thin, cutting through the ringing in his ears—Fallujah.

  -~-

  Moonlight filtering through dense canopy. The earthy smell of damp soil and decaying leaves. The familiar, comforting weight of a rifle settled against his shoulder. Branches snagging at his gear. Silence, thick and watchful—Kandahar.

  -~-

  Faces swimming into focus, distorted by rain or flickering firelight. Eyes wide with fear. Eyes narrowed in defiance. Eyes vacant with loss. A hand reaching out, pleading. A fist raised in anger. So many faces, etched into his mind like grooves on worn metal—Colombia, Somalia, Kazakhstan, too many places to name.

  -~-

  The crushing weight in his chest, a physical ache. The knowledge that he walked away when others didn't. The ghosts that followed him in the quiet hours. The gnawing guilt of survival.

  -~-

  A weariness that went bone-deep, heavier than any pack. The constant tension in his shoulders. The endless cycle of threat and response. A life spent looking over his shoulder, anticipating the next attack. The years of not knowing a full night's sleep.

  And beneath it all, bedrock solid, an unshakeable foundation: Purpose. Lines drawn in the sand, invisible but absolute. Things he would do. Things he would not. A code forged in fire, grim but unyielding.

  The sheer volume, the intensity, the reality of it all—it was too much. In a horrified flash of insight, Kitt realized that Blake had forced himself through their bond. But the only method he had of doing that was through the same process he used to bind gear to her. Blake had her his consciousness. It was suicidal.

  The torrent swept over Kitt, a psychic tsunami drowning her own identity in the flood of Blake’s life, his pain, his resolve. Her consciousness frayed, dissolved. The world fractured into blinding light and roaring darkness. Then, nothing.

  In her place, something new opened its eyes for the first time.

  I put a shout out for Seras yesterday, but I wasn't in a position to actually write anything, so they get a second out of me today. Serasstreams is good people, there's no two ways about it. They run a mentor program for new RR authors that has been super valuable to myself and a lot of people I know, and they do it for nothing more than the good vibes generated from seeing people succeed.

  write. They've got a few stories up on RR which you can binge now, but DMA is an incredible story that just launched on KU. You should consider picking it up! That's all I'm saying.