Chapter 6: The Syndicate That Hunts Stars
The air was red when Ruby emerged.
Not from blood—though that wouldn't have been surprising—but from the glow of emergency lights pulsing through the upper corridor. Smoke curled from the walls like ghost fingers, and the console panels sparked as though rejecting reality itself. Ruby didn't break stride. She sprinted through the chaos, heart pounding, weapons still warm from the tension in the lower levels.
"Sable!" she called.
No answer.
She ducked beneath a fallen support beam, the heat from a ruptured plasma pipe scorching her cheek. The lab had turned into a death trap in a matter of minutes. Whether it was sabotage, a power overload, or the awakening of that thing below—she wasn't sure. But she knew one thing.
This wasn't random.
Someone didn't want her walking out of this place alive.
A shadow darted past the far end of the hallway.
She froze.
Her instincts screamed louder than the fire alarms. She dropped into a crouch and flicked a blade into her right hand. The air around her buzzed—charged with something unnatural.
Then came the sound of boots. Not one pair. Multiple. Heavy. Coordinated.
Not Syndicate hunters. Not rogue bounties.
These were professionals.
She turned and ran.
Two corners down, she reached the access corridor to the medical wing where she'd left Lyra. She tapped the override on the sealed door. Nothing. Fried.
Ruby didn't hesitate—she punched her palm into the panel. Her Titan blood surged, momentarily fracturing the circuitry with raw kinetic force. The door slid open violently.
"Lyra!" she shouted.
Lyra was already on her feet, blood-streaked and breathing hard. A half-destroyed medical droid lay in pieces at her feet.
"I thought you abandoned me."
"You wish," Ruby said, grabbing her by the arm. "We've got company."
Lyra didn't ask questions. She never did when it counted. The two of them moved fast, weaving through collapsing corridors and jumping debris. As they reached the main exit corridor, a burst of gunfire tore past Ruby's shoulder. She ducked and rolled, dragging Lyra behind a broken console.
Three figures advanced through the smoke. Their armor was matte-black with gold insignias etched on the shoulders—stars twisted into sharp crescents.
Ruby's stomach sank.
"Starhunters," she muttered.
Lyra's eyes widened. "I thought they were extinct."
"They're worse. They evolved."
The Starhunters weren't bounty hunters. They weren't even mercenaries. They were specialists built to track and eliminate powerful entities—mostly Titans, or beings close to Titan-level anomalies. And they didn't leave survivors.
The first one raised his weapon. It wasn't a gun in the traditional sense—more like a pulse rod charged with quantum disruption. Ruby had seen one like it used once on a Titan hybrid in the Morren Fields. There hadn't been anything left to bury.
"Cover me," Ruby said.
Lyra raised a small energy disc, deflecting the first two blasts. Ruby launched forward, sliding under a beam and throwing a blade. It hit the lead Starhunter in the side, sending him stumbling. Before he could recover, she was on him—knee to the face, elbow to the throat.
But the second was smarter. He moved in a blur, hitting her with a shockwave that flung her into the side wall. Ruby hit hard, the world spinning. Her bones ached, but she pushed through the pain.
The third Starhunter lifted his visor. His face was pale, tattooed with old war runes.
"I knew it," he said. "The last child of Titanfall."
Ruby spat blood. "You're late to the funeral."
"Not yours."
He raised his weapon.
Before he could fire, the ground shook violently. A tremor—deep and guttural—rippled up from the lab's lower levels. Everyone froze.
Even the Starhunters.
Ruby knew that vibration. She'd felt it once before, when her father had torn apart a rift engine to save a multiverse city. It wasn't a bomb. It was a release. Something was coming.
The prototype.
And it wasn't happy.
She used the moment of distraction. Her fingers snapped upward, drawing a secondary blade from her boot. She threw it in a tight arc—it sliced across the Starhunter's chest. He screamed, armor cracking.
Then came the pulse.
It hit like a wave of heat and static. The lights blew out. The air rippled. Ruby's ears filled with whispers—echoes of something not meant to exist in this dimension. The wall behind the Starhunters shattered, and a shadow passed through it.
Not walking. Gliding.
The prototype emerged from the dust.
It was taller than she remembered. The chains that had bound it were gone, but the spiral mark still pulsed across its chest like a wound that couldn't close. Its eyes were pitch black.
The Starhunters turned their weapons on it.
Big mistake.
The first fired. The pulse didn't even reach the creature. It dissolved in mid-air. The prototype lifted a single hand—and reality bent. The Starhunter screamed as he was pulled into himself, folding into nothingness like paper burning inward.
The others ran.
The prototype didn't chase. It turned to Ruby.
She raised her blade. "If you're here to kill me, get in line."
But the creature didn't move closer. Its voice came without sound, inside her mind again.
"I am you."
"No. I'm not some failed experiment."
"Not failed. Ascended. They feared what I became."
"And they were right."
It tilted its head. "You run from what you are. Your Titan blood burns under chains. Why pretend?"
"Because Titans are extinct."
"No," it said, eyes gleaming. "They sleep. And they wait for you."
Before she could ask what it meant, it vanished. Not teleported—vanished. As if it had never been there at all.
Lyra touched her shoulder. "Ruby… that thing—"
"I know."
"Should we chase it?"
"No. We're not ready."
They stepped over the twisted remains of the first Starhunter. His armor still smoked. Ruby knelt and checked the insignia on his gauntlet. A new symbol was etched below the crescent—an eye with a slit pupil.
She'd seen it once. On an old bounty terminal buried in the archives of the Fracture Guild.
It belonged to the *Reclaimer Syndicate*.
The same group that had hunted her kind into extinction.
She stood slowly.
"They know I'm alive," she said.
Lyra didn't ask who *they* were.
"What now?" she asked instead.
Ruby stared out through the shattered window of the corridor. Far beyond the red smoke and broken domes of the lab, the stars shimmered in silence. But something felt wrong.
The constellations had shifted.
"Now," she said, "we hunt them back."