Time fractured. The world was the screaming klaxon in my ears, the flashing red strobes painting the walls in blood, and the impossibly small icon of the drone closing on the map. It was a predator, a mechanical hornet, and I was the hive.
There was no time to run, no shelter to be found. My body was locked in place, a statue of cold, clinical terror. My training, my entire life of calculated action, had evaporated. There was only the animal certainty of imminent annihilation.
Kaelen’s voice was a raw, broken sound in my comm, not a command but a prayer torn from his throat. “*Elara!*”
Then, the world outside the reinforced viewport dissolved into a blur of motion. A dark shape, impossibly fast, a human projectile fueled by pure, desperate will.
The main door to the command center burs
