Page 20 of Deserted

“Son of a bitch,” I whispered, staring at the screen.

The video played again, showing that sinister shimmer moving inexorably closer to the bunker. According to the timestamp, this footage was from less than an hour ago.

I unplugged my tablet, my mind racing. No more lies. No more deflection. No more hiding behind Legion protocol or whatever passed for professional ethics among alien cat warriors.

He wanted to protect me? Then he better start with the truth.

I marched toward the door, tablet clutched in my hand like a weapon. It was time for Rhaekar Onca to explain exactly what was hunting me—and why he thought keeping me in the dark was any kind of protection at all.

8 /RHAEKAR

I foundthe tech shard buried beneath three meters of sand, its obsidian surface pulsing with malevolent life. My claws scraped against it, and the sound that resonated up my arm wasn’t physical—it was mental. A whisper. A hunger. A recognition. The Swarm knew I was here, and worse, it knew she was here too. The tech fragment wasn’t just active; it was hunting.

I did not panic. Rodinians did not panic.

I simply quickened my pace to a tactical jog and mentally revised our threat level from minor nuisance to imminent, dumbass-level catastrophe.

Because the sensor array had just pinged something alive.

It wasn’t just an echo of old tech. No, this was active. Searching. The readings spiked with intent that even our most advanced Legion scanners struggled to categorize. No biological traces. No footsteps. No scent trail. Just a shimmer of energy pulsing from below the dunes like a heartbeat. A cold, mechanical, hostile heartbeat. Swarm-adjacent.

Which meant trouble.

I knelt at the coordinates, brushing away the top layer of scorched sand with one clawed hand until something gleamedbeneath—slender, obsidian-black, ridged with etching. It pulsed faintly as I touched it.

And I absolutely did not curse out loud like a startled youth.

“Shit.”

Okay, maybe I did.

It was a shard of alien tech. One of theirs. Swarm residue, still alive with energy after all this time. Even buried, even damaged, it hummed with awareness. Hungry. Intelligent. Not ideal.

I extracted the fragment carefully, using a specialized containment tool from my field kit. The tech responded instantly—coiling tendrils of liquid metal reaching toward my hand before the containment field activated, freezing it in mid-motion. The sight sent a cold shiver down my spine, memories of the Burn campaign flashing through my mind. Legionnaires disappearing into the sand. Whole battalions lost to tech that seemed to melt into their bodies, rewriting flesh and bone into something neither machine nor organic.

The shard I held—barely the length of my forearm—was a fractional piece of a larger system. An appendage, perhaps. Or a scout probe. Hard to tell with Swarm tech; it changed function based on need. Adapted. Evolved. Which was why the Legion had opted to bomb this planet back to the stone age rather than risk further contamination.

Yet here it was. Active. Aware. And drawn straight to our shelter.

Drawn to Jas.

My tail lashed behind me, expressing agitation my face would never betray. I scanned the surroundings, extending my senses to their limits. The desert seemed calm, but the tremors beneath the surface told a different story. The tech wasn’t isolated. There was more—much more—moving beneath the dunes, awakening from dormancy.

The Legion had briefed us extensively on The Swarm before deployment to The Burn. I’d memorized the threat assessment, the containment protocols, the recommended countermeasures. But the briefings couldn’t capture the visceral wrongness of the tech—how it seemed to observe you even as you observed it. How it learned your patterns, anticipated your strategies. How it hungered.

“It doesn’t just consume,” Commander Vex had explained during our pre-mission briefing, his scarred face grim in the holographic light. “It assimilates. Adapts. Uses what it takes to become stronger. The first wave targeted our tech. The second, our bodies. The third...our minds.”

I recalled asking why Legion forces hadn’t simply purged all remnants from the planet’s surface after containment. Why maintain outposts on a world too dangerous to inhabit?

“Because it’s still valuable,” he’d answered, his eyes cold and calculating. “The tech is unlike anything we’ve encountered. If we can harness it—control it—the tactical advantages would be immeasurable.”

So we’d maintained our watch. Patrolled the perimeters. Monitored for signs of activity. And for years, nothing had happened. The Swarm had remained dormant, buried beneath meters of radiation-soaked sand.

Until now. Until Jas.

I secured the containment unit to my belt and rose, brushing sand from my armor. My scanner indicated the largest concentration of activity was still several kilometers out—converging on our position but not yet an immediate threat. I had time. Not much, but enough to formulate a plan that didn’t end with Jas dissected by alien tech with a taste for new genetic material.

I made it back to the bunker with only minimal muttering. She wasn’t in the main chamber. Probably trying to avoid meas much as I did her after my speech earlier. The thought brought a twist of something uncomfortable to my chest—regret, perhaps. Or guilt. Neither emotion had a place in Reaper training, yet here they were, making themselves comfortable in my conscience.

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