LUPUS.EXE

Chapter 10: Synthetic Moon

The pulse hit just before dawn, a silent shockwave that rolled across the mountain range like an invisible tsunami. One second, Lupus was on the upper ledge, scanning the frozen horizon with Ari and Nyra at his side; the next, every feral in the lower encampment dropped to their knees, clutching their heads as silverlight bled from their eyes. It came from the sky—not natural moonlight, but something artificial, wrong, too smooth, too rhythmically perfect. Nyra cried out, stumbling backward as her nanites flared and sparked inside her arm. “It’s syncing them,” she gasped. “They’re using her code. ” Ari stood firm beside Lupus, eyes wide but unshaken. Lupus didn’t move. The moment the pulse touched his body, the nanomachines reacted—not defensively, but with a growl of resistance, forming a magnetic shell around his spine and skull. The synthetic moon couldn’t control him. It didn’t dare. But it was already infecting others. Below the ridge, five members of his outer pack began to shift violently, not at will but in response to a frequency outside of their bodies. Bones cracked wrong. Joints twisted in unnatural patterns. Mouths opened in silent screams as they became puppets—werewolves not of instinct, but of programming. Lupus dropped from the ridge like a shadow falling, boots cracking the stone as he landed between the collapsing shifters. They turned to him, their eyes blank and glowing silver, foam spilling from their mouths. He gave them one warning. “Fight it. ” None responded. Then he moved—fast, brutal, cruel. His claws tore through tendon and bone, shattering ribs, caving in skulls, snapping spines with calculated savagery. Blood sprayed. Limbs hit snow. When it was over, five broken bodies lay twitching at his feet, and the others—those not fully synced—stood paralyzed in awe, terrified not by what had attacked them… but by what had saved them. Back on the ridge, Nyra had collapsed to one knee, panting, her veins glowing faintly as she ran diagnostics against the moon’s signal. Lupus crouched beside her, lifting her chin, scanning her pupils. “It’s not affecting me,” she said through clenched teeth.

“But it knows I built you. It’s trying to use my code to corrupt the pack. ” Ari stood behind them, tense, her blade drawn. “If that was just the test,” she muttered, “then the next wave will be war. ” Ilsa appeared on the edge of the cliff, eyes narrowed, one hand resting on Lyss’s shoulder. The girl’s aura shimmered, her psychic field reacting to the pulse like sonar. “It’s still circling,” she whispered. “It’s not just one satellite. It’s a swarm. ” Lupus rose, muscles flexing beneath his coat, blood still drying on his jaw. “Then we take the swarm,” he said. “Every signal. Every drone. Every control node. ” His voice was calm, but every wolf near him felt the shift—the pressure in the air, the invisible weight of dominance. His Alpha-Sigma aura deepened, hardened, cracked open the will of the pack like thunder against bones. He didn’t ask for loyalty. He extracted it. Nyra stood on trembling legs, nodding once. “We’ll need uplink access to a Zion nexus. We hijack the code before the next lunar sync. ” Ari’s mouth twitched in a grin. “Just say the word. ” Ilsa tilted her head. “And what if we find resistance? ” Lupus turned, silver eyes glowing like blades. “Then we do what I always do,” he said. “We destroy it. ”