The buckled steel plates of the inner door shrieked under the kinetic pressure, the first blinding flash of a mercenary plasma charge cutting through the smoke directly toward Jax's chest.

Jax Stone did not flinch. His boots, braced against the rusted deck plates of Evelyn Carter's hidden workshop, ground into the zinc dust. His massive, broad-shouldered frame shuddered as the thermal backdraft of the explosion scorched the front of his sleeveless industrial miner's vest, but he held. He was the human anchor of their failing sanctuary, his scarred forearms bulging as he threw his entire weight against the buckling titanium frame.

"Get back from the door, Jax!" Evelyn yelled, her voice a sharp, metallic whip over the rising scream of the sirens. She was already dragging the newly stabilized Prototype V1 harness toward the assembly bench, her customized laser-welder tucked under her arm. "The seals are blowing! If that plasma cuts the primary hydraulic line, we’re going to be cooked in our own steam!"

Julian Cole lay paralyzed on the zinc-plated bench, his lower body entirely unresponsive. The calcifying side effects of the Osteo-Stab serum had turned his vertebrae into a rigid, unyielding column of lead, and his external leg braces—permanently fused and ruined during the escape from Penumbra Station—clamped his limbs like dead iron weights. He was completely blind, his face wrapped in thick, sterile pressure bandages. Yet, as his left eye—the hacked industrial ocular scanner—flickered violently, his mind mapped the room in a low-resolution, high-contrast vector overlay.

The digital interface traced the workshop in jagged, glowing blue lines. He could see the skeletal, glowing orange frame of the Singularity Harness resting on the table beside him, its Aegium wiring pulsing with a weak, stable hum. Its core temperature was stable at thirty-six degrees, but its battery was siphoned down to a critical three percent.

"Julian," Leo Vance whispered, his voice trembling as he crouched behind the heavy hydraulic press. The boy’s hands were wrapped in dirty, blood-stained rags, the raw radiation blisters he had earned in the fuel vaults weeping fresh fluid against the grip of his Modified Pneumatic Rivet Gun. "They’re through the secondary blast doors. I can hear their boots. They’re not standard security. The cadence is too light... too fast."

"Scavengers," Julian rasped, his left arm twitching rhythmically. The chronic tremors—the permanent neurological debt of his left-hemisphere brain damage—were growing more pronounced, a relentless, silent ticking that vibrated through the metal of the assembly table. "They’re not here to arrest us, Leo. They’re here to collect the corporate bounty Victor Sterling put on my head. They want the harness. They’ll strip this hangar to the bone to find it."

*BOOM.*

A second plasma charge detonated. The inner door exploded inward in a violent shower of white plastic smoke and brilliant orange sparks. The concussive wave threw Jax backward, his massive body crashing into a stack of industrial crates.

Instantly, the corridor outside erupted with high-velocity kinetic fire. Sleek, black-armored mercenaries wearing the tactical gear of Helios Corp's elite security divisions poured through the breach, their kinetic rifles spitting a relentless hail of lead. The rounds chewed through Evelyn's wooden workbenches, sending splinters of composite and sparks raining across the room.

"Leo! Catwalks!" Jax roared, scrambling to his feet despite his bruised ribs and fractured knees. He reached down and seized a massive sheet of Titanium-Alloy Scrap—a buckled heavy bulkhead plate salvaged from a destroyed military cruiser. With a guttural grunt, he hoisted the heavy plate, using it as an improvised shield to block the narrow entrance corridor.

*Clang-clang-clang!*

The kinetic rounds flattened against the heavy titanium plate, the impact sending violent vibrations through Jax's arms that threatened to shatter his bones. But he held the line, his broad chest heaving as he forced the mercenaries into the narrow chokepoint of the doorway, limiting their line of sight.

From the overhead cable trays, Leo Vance scrambled like a spider. His small build allowed him to navigate the narrow metal hangers with ease, bypassing the fire zone below. He leaned over the edge, his blistered hands gripping the heavy frame of the Modified Pneumatic Rivet Gun. Gritting his teeth against the white-hot agony in his palms, he squeezed the pneumatic trigger.

*Thud-hiss!*

A three-inch industrial steel rivet launched from the barrel with terrifying kinetic force. It caught an advancing mercenary directly in the shoulder, the high-velocity spike punching clean through his carbon-fiber armor and pinning him to a vertical support pillar. The mercenary screamed, his rifle clattering to the floor as he hung suspended against the metal column.

"Keep them back!" Evelyn shouted, her laser-welder flaring as she manually soldered a secondary copper grounding shunt to the harness’s casing. "I need sixty seconds to lock the Aegium coils! If the capacitor surges before the ground is set, the whole core will implode!"

Julian focused his Gravity-Sense, ignoring the agonizing physical pain in his spine. He could feel the undulating gravity waves of the station outside, but here, inside the workshop, the space-time grid was flat, disturbed only by the high-frequency vibrations of the kinetic gunfire.

"Leo!" Julian called out, his voice calm, analytical, and hyper-focused. "The primary power conduit on the left wall—it runs on a shared local circuit with the door controls. If you can bridge the contacts, you can short-circuit their tactical shields!"

Leo spotted the severed high-voltage line hanging from the ceiling. He reached down from the cable tray, his bleeding fingers wrapping around the thick, insulated wire. He swung the cable forward, attempting to fling it toward the mercenaries' advancing line.

But a stray kinetic round cut through the air.

*Snap.*

The bullet sheared the high-voltage cable mid-air, inches from Leo’s fingers. The severed end whipped against the concrete wall, throwing wild, blue sparks that died instantly as the line grounded out. The failed attempt left them exposed, the mercenaries' shields flaring with a cold, mocking light as they advanced.

Through the smoke, a massive scavenger enforcer pushed past the pinned mercenary. He wore a patchwork mechanical exoskeleton, his posture stooped under the weight of a heavy kinetic hammer. He deployed a crackling portable energy shield, the blue hexagonal grid absorbing Jax's physical strikes as he stepped into the workshop.

With a guttural roar, the enforcer swung the kinetic hammer.

The impact against Jax’s titanium scrap shield was deafening. A localized shockwave rippled through the air, shattering the remaining diagnostic terminals on the nearby shelves. Jax was thrown backward, his boots dragging through the zinc dust as the shield buckled under the force. The enforcer raised the hammer for a second, lethal blow.

"Not today, you scrap-pile bastard!" Leo screamed from the ceiling.

With a desperate heave, Leo pushed a heavy diagnostic unit off the cable tray. The fifty-pound steel casing plummeted through the air, smashing directly onto the enforcer's helmet. The visor cracked, the enforcer stumbling backward as the impact disrupted his exoskeleton's balance sensors.

Jax seized the opening. With a roar of pure, unadulterated fury, he swung a massive, heavy-duty mining wrench he had retrieved from the floor. The solid steel tool caught the enforcer directly in the chest plate, the sheer physical force of the strike shattering the portable shield generator and sending the enforcer crashing into the buckled door frame.

But the victory was short-lived.

From the corridor, the mercenaries brought up their heavy weapon—a tripod-mounted kinetic suppressive turret. The spinning barrels whirred, a deafening crescendo that drowned out the sirens.

*Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat!*

A relentless, high-velocity storm of heavy rounds chewed through the workshop. The concrete pillars began to disintegrate, chunks of stone and twisted rebar raining down on the floor. The sheer volume of fire pinned Jax behind a rapidly failing structural column, the metal peeling away under the kinetic onslaught. He was trapped, unable to move, his titanium splints groaning under the pressure.

Evelyn was thrown to the floor, her laser-welder slipping from her grip as a stray round shattered the assembly bench's support leg. The table tilted violently, the newly calibrated Singularity Harness sliding toward the edge.

Julian lay completely exposed on the buckled zinc bench, his paralyzed legs pinning him to the metal. Through his dead ocular scanner, he could hear the heavy, metallic scraping of a secondary squad of scavengers. They had bypassed the main corridor, entering through the buckled rear maintenance hatch behind the assembly line.

They were heading directly for him, their vibro-blades humming in the dark.