Chapter 25
Deep beneath the surface of Gaeth-9, far beyond the sight of rebellion and ruins, the Kargal Empire's hidden mechanisms stirred.
Inside a buried vault lined with crystallized nerves and twitching data-spines, a pulse was received.
Encrypted. Lethal.
CODE BLACK: APOSTLE MUTATION CONFIRMEDTARGET: CLASSIFIED (KIRO, ORIGIN: SLAVE DIVISION 9X)INITIATING SLEEPER PROTOCOL — OMEGA THRESHOLD CLEARED
A dozen cryo-chambers hissed open like ruptured lungs.
One by one, the sleepers awoke.
They didn't gasp or scream. They didn't speak.
Because they weren't human anymore.
Each of them had been altered—fused with void-stained genetic templates and neural scripts seeded by the Watchers. Their spines were cored with living metal. Their minds were blank slates save for a single command:
Eradicate the Mutation.
High Marshal Verik Drae watched their reawakening through a visual stream fed directly into his cortical HUD. His face was stone, hands folded behind his back.