Arlen stood in front of the mirror, hair still damp, skin clean and flushed from a bath she hadn’t rushed because she hadn’t needed to. She’d put on sothing she knew Xavier would notice without having to comnt on it, fabric sitting where it should, nothing accidental about it. She checked herself once more, adjusted a strap, then leaned her palms on the counter and let out a small breath.
She started humming without realizing it.
It was an old song, sothing half-rembered from a bar years ago, the tune carrying better than the words. Every now and then a line slipped out under her breath, off-key and unfinished, more habit than performance.
"...don’t co ho too late tonight..."
She smiled to herself and shook her head, glancing at the door again, wondering how long he’d been gone. Ti had slipped sideways on her. It always did when she waited like this.
The, the bell rang.
Arlen’s head snapped up.
Her smile ca fast and unguarded as she crossed the room in a few quick steps and pulled the door open. "About damn ti," she started, already leaning forward, "I was beginning to think you—"
She stopped.
Rin stood there with his hands in his pockets, eyebrows raised, and Klatos beside him, posture tight, eyes already scanning past her shoulder into the room.
Arlen stared at them for half a second, then shut the door in their faces.
"Wait," she muttered, already turning away.
She grabbed the first thing within reach, which happened to be one of Xavier’s jackets tossed over a chair, pulled it on, and wrapped it around herself without thinking about how it looked. Then she walked back, took a breath, and opened the door again.
"Co in," she said, voice steadier now. "What the hell is going on?"
They stepped inside.
Rin looked awkward imdiately and focused very hard on the far wall. Klatos didn’t bother pretending. His gaze moved once, took in the room, then returned to Arlen’s face.
"We went to your old room," Klatos said. "It was empty. The staff said you changed rooms."
"We did," Arlen replied. "After dinner."
Klatos nodded once. "Do you know where Xavier is?"
Arlen frowned. "At the desk. He said he had to deal with the bill and the damage. I figured it’d take a while."
Rin shifted his weight. "We just ca from the desk."
Arlen looked between them. "Then what are you saying?"
Klatos didn’t answer her right away. He stepped past Rin, scanned the room once more, then reached for the remote on the table and turned on the wall display.
The screen lit up imdiately.
Every channel showed the sa thing from different angles. The Aurex Club in chaos. Smoke pouring out of shattered entrances. Ergency lights washing the street in color. Security footage looping bodies on the floor, fire crews moving in, crowds pushed back by cordons.
A banner scrolled across the bottom, naming the location, speculating causes, repeating the sa word over and over.
Attack.
Arlen stared at the screen, the jacket tightening around her grip as her jaw slowly set.
Rin broke the silence first. "Yeah," he said quietly. "We figured you should see that."
Helior Pri reacted as one body.
Not panic or confusion, nor the scrambling response people expected from a city caught off guard. Systems shifted roles without announcent. Streets around Aurex sealed in widening rings, traffic diverted with machine efficiency, airspace segnted into stacked corridors that forced anything airborne to land or leave. The club vanished behind moving walls of authority so quickly that half the city only realized sothing had happened when the feeds went dark.
Then the real presence arrived.
Heavy carriers rolled in first, suspension grinding against the pavent as they locked into position at every major intersection feeding the district. Infantry followed in coordinated waves, not riot or police, but elite planetary security forces wearing insignia that rarely left archives.
Their armor wasn’t flashy. It was functional, layered, designed for urban containnt and prolonged engagent. Weapons stayed shouldered but live, optics scanning windows, rooftops, and underground access points simultaneously.
Above them, drones filled the sky. These were city-locked assets, running on restricted cores, each one slaved into a shared combat lattice. They hovered in precise spacing, sensor arrays rotating, mapping heat, mass, and motion in real ti. Any anomaly was flagged before it finished becoming one.
Then the chs arrived.
Tall fras stepped off transport platforms with hydraulic weight that cracked pavent beneath them, bipedal units built for internal city warfare, sothing Helior Pri had never needed to show before. Arm-mounted cannons stayed powered down, but targeting arrays glowed faintly as they locked onto the Aurex structure from multiple angles. Their presence alone rewrote the scale of the incident.
The club itself sat at the center of it all, surrounded and sealed, its once-polished facade scorched, entrances collapsed inward, smoke venting through fractured upper levels. Fire suppression systems battled lingering heat while automated d units retrieved the wounded with chanical precision, tagging, sorting, extracting without conversation.
No one tried to interfere.
Civilians were already gone, streets cleared so thoroughly that it looked staged. News crews were kept back beyond visible range, feeds throttled and delayed, official statents replaced with controlled silence. Even the Iron Mandate, whose reputation thrived on spectacle and intimidation, stayed absent. No reinforcents or attempts to reclaim territory or bodies.
That absence spoke louder than any broadcast.
Helior Pri had rules.
Not written ones. Enforced ones.
This was a city where power didn’t posture in public and violence didn’t spill unless it was ant to erase sothing completely. Neutrality here wasn’t about peace. It was about control so absolute that breaking it ant inviting a response no faction could afford to challenge openly.
Inside the cordon, command units took over, data streams locked, evidence frozen at the molecular level. Every trace was cataloged, every angle reconstructed, every mont preserved for whatever authority operated above nas and banners.
Sowhere in the layers of that response, a single fact began circulating through channels that weren’t ant for outsiders.
Velkhar Dro was confird dead.
And for the first ti in years, Helior Pri had been forced to remind the galaxy why no one crossed its line unless they were ready to disappear into the consequences.
User Comments
0 comments from readers