Page 98 of Stars in Umbra
Not until he had a handle on shit.
He turned on the helmet’s cloaking module.
To the outside world, he was just another Sable Security officer.
However, he was certain Mirage’s all-seeing surveillance would catch on to him soon.
He only had a slim window in which to ghost out of Eden II.
He slipped out of the vault, down the emergency stairs, and past the sub-level hangars.
He didn’t stop, nor look back.
He just kept racing, moving hard and fast.
All he thought of was how the only way to protect the Riders now was to disappear before he became the blade that cut their throats.
18
Divine Terrifying Power
RINA
Afew weeks later, just after second dusk in New Rambasa, the sky above Dunia fractured with light.
It wasn’t the soft shimmer of atmospheric satellites or the gleam of incoming trade shuttles.
It was a tear. A violent, blazing rupture in the violet dome of the evening.
Followed by a silhouette hurtling out of the heavens with terrifying speed, limbs limp, tumbling headfirst through clouds and industrial air currents.
It slammed with significant kinetic energy into an arterial skyway between two commuter districts, plummeting through it and onto the ground.
The impact shook the pavement.
Vehicles screeched to a halt.
Pedestrians screamed and scattered.
A crater bloomed in the street, debris flung in a jagged halo around the motionless body at its center.
He, for it was a man, stirred.
He should have been dead, but somehow he survived a drop from the lower atmosphere.
Steam curled from his back. Blood trickled from his temple.
His clothing, what remained of it, appeared scorched, charred at the edges, as if he had passed through a massive inferno or an interstellar forge.
His body, half-buried beneath the rubble, was covered with a shifting, glowing glimmer.
Someone screamed. Another ran for help.
Within minutes, the first-response drones were overhead, sirens wailing. Clinical bots scanned him, attempting to stabilize his vital signs.
Nothing made sense. His biometric signature returned a null reading.
He had no ID chip, no civilian tag, no affiliation.
