Kylus punched him in the face.
The chair rattled. The man's head snapped sideways, blood spraying across the floor. Kylus didn't stop there. He hit him again, then again, thodical, precise, until the man stopped forming words and started making sounds instead. One of Kylus' n stepped in and grabbed his arm.
"That's enough," he said quietly.
Kylus pulled back, breathing steady, eyes fixed on the broken figure in front of him. "Look at ," he said.
The man forced his eyes open, vision swimming.
"Do you rember ?" Kylus asked.
The man shook his head weakly. "No," he muttered. "But I know who you are. Everyone does. You're Kylus. The strongest. The one they talk about."
Kylus nodded once, as if confirming sothing. "Then answer the next question carefully."
He leaned in close. "Where is Bull?"
The na hit harder than the punches. The man froze, eyes widening, breath catching in his throat. Fear took over whatever pain hadn't already.
"I don't know," he said quickly. "I swear. I don't know."
Kylus struck him again, harder this ti, until the chair scraped across the floor. His man pulled him back once more.
Kylus straightened. "I will ask again," he said.
The man was crying now, voice shaking. "Six months ago," he said. "We went to Earth. All of us. There was an internal coup. Bull had changed. He stopped sharing information. He hid things. People decided he was a liability."
He swallowed hard. "We betrayed him. He was arrested on Earth."
Kylus closed his eyes for a mont and exhaled slowly. He held his hand out.
His man placed a dagger into it.
The blade was old, worn smooth along the grip, balance perfect in a way that only ca from years of use. The man in the chair recognized it imdiately, eyes locking onto it in terror.
Kylus looked down at the dagger, thumb tracing a familiar mark. Bull had left it with him when he abandoned Jupiter.
Kylus stepped forward and drove the blade cleanly into the man's chest.
After squirming in agony, and palpitating, the man went still.
Kylus wiped the blade clean, slid it back into its sheath, and turned toward the exit without sparing the body another glance. As he walked out, he spoke evenly, like he was issuing a routine order. "Get the conference room ready. I want the top five hundred rcenaries on call. Tell them I'm putting up a mission that can push them straight into the top hundred."
By the ti he reached the conference room, most of his core team was already there, scattered around the long table, so leaning against consoles, others half-focused on live feeds. The atmosphere wasn't tense yet
One of them glanced up and smirked. "So you went all that way and didn't even catch one girl."
Another laughed. "You should've let us co. That wouldn't have taken long."
A woman seated near the holo-table shook her head. "If it were , no one would've walked away. I'd have ended it on the spot and taken her."
Soone else added, "Yeah. Shoot the rest, grab the target, leave. So easy."
Kylus didn't raise his voice. He didn't even stop walking. "I didn't want to upset her," he said. "And I didn't want her to be afraid."
That earned a few looks, so amused, so curious.
"This is sothing I want," he continued, stopping at the head of the table. "So don't worry about how it looked. Do what you're told."
The room settled. Jokes died where they stood.
One of them leaned forward. "So what's the next move?"
Kylus flicked his wrist and brought up a holo-map of Jupiter, layers of routes and regions sliding into place. "There was a man with them," he said. "Carried himself like a professional. I've seen him before, or soone close enough. Probably a rcenary. He knows this planet. Better than most."
He shifted the projection, highlighting major routes. "That tells where they're going. Helior Pri."
A few of his team frowned.
"That's the one place you don't run," soone said. "Not if you want control."
"Exactly," Kylus replied. "It's the only place here where I don't get to dictate terms. Which makes it the obvious destination."
He straightened. "Our goal is simple. They don't reach Helior Pri."
The room stayed quiet as the weight of that settled in.
A mont later, the main display lit up again as the call connected. Hundreds of feeds populated the air, faces and silhouettes from across Jupiter and beyond. The top five hundred. Veterans, hunters, killers, people who understood what it ant when Kylus summoned them.
"This is a live contract," Kylus said, voice carrying without effort. "The primary objective is capture. The target is Lyra. But rember, if there is even a single scratch or wound on her body, even as small as a hair, you and your family with entire generations will be wiped out."
A number appeared beside her image, asured in USC, high enough that several feeds shifted as people leaned closer.
Murmurs rippled through the call.
Another set of images appeared: Viola, Reva, Requiem, and Iria.
One of the rcenaries spoke up. "What about the rest? Is there a bonus for them? Does the payout change depending on how many we bring in?"
Kylus considered it for a few seconds, eyes unfocused as he ran the outco through his head.
Then he answered. "Their survival doesn't matter."
The feeds went dark one by one as the call ended. Kylus stood there until the last window vanished, then waved his hand and dismissed the room entirely. His team didn't argue. They knew better. Footsteps faded, doors sealed, and the conference room settled into silence.
The lights dimd automatically.
Kylus moved to the center console and pressed a recessed switch that most of the crew didn't even know existed. The main board flickered, recalibrated, and then projected a single still image into the air.
An old one.
Seventy figures stood together in the fra, rough and uneven like it had been taken without care for composition. At the center was Bull, younger, broader, wearing the sa expression he always had when he thought he was carrying the world alone. To Bull's left stood a child, barely six or seven years old.
It was Kylus.
To Bull's right stood a small girl, no more than three, clinging to Bull's side without fear.
It was Lyra.
Kylus didn't move as he studied the image. Red markers crossed out more than half the faces. Forty of them were gone. Around thirty remained untouched.
He stared at Bull first, then at the child version of himself, then at Lyra.
"Why did you choose her and abandoned ?" he muttered quietly.
His hand hovered near the image but never touched it. The crossed-out faces seed heavier now, not reminders of loss but of debts still unpaid.
"I will find you soon enough," Kylus said to the empty room. "And when I do, I will get my answer. And then kill you."
The image stayed suspended in the dim light, a frozen mont from a life that had already collapsed, waiting for the rest of it to catch up.
SIGH!
Kylus shut the projection down and stepped away from the console. The image vanished, the room returning to its muted, functional state. He didn't look back as he left. The corridor outside was already alive again, crew moving with purpose now that orders had been given. He headed straight for the command deck, issuing instructions as he walked.
"Prep for departure," he said. "Full burn once we clear traffic control. I want route options layered and ready."
Acknowledgnts ca in fast. Engines began cycling. Docking clamps disengaged one by one. His ship didn't rush. Everything about it suggested inevitability rather than speed. When the bay doors opened and Jupiter's light spilled in, Kylus was already seated, eyes forward, hands resting loosely as the ship lifted and slipped into controlled ascent.
On the other side of the city, Requiem didn't waste ti explaining things twice.
"We don't leave through the streets," he said, already pulling gear from storage and stacking it near the door. "We go underground. Service tunnels, freight lines, old access routes that don't show up on public maps."
Viola frowned but nodded, already adjusting her own pack. "That'll slow us down."
"It'll keep us off sensors," Requiem replied. "Speed doesn't matter if every move is logged."
Reva watched him for a mont, then spoke. "What do you need from us?"
Requiem looked at all of them. "Your devices."
There was a beat of silence.
"My phone?" Lyra said. "All of it?"
"Yes," Requiem said. "Everything that can talk, ping, track, sync, or rember where you've been."
They didn't like it. It showed on their faces. Viola hesitated the longest, jaw tight as she handed hers over. Reva followed, slower, clearly irritated. Lyra gave hers up last, reluctant but understanding enough not to argue.
Requiem took the pile, walked to the sink, and crushed them one by one. Screens shattered. Chips snapped. Power cells sparked briefly and died. He dumped the remains into a sealed disposal unit and locked it.
"We don't contact anyone," he said, turning back to them. "Not Angel. Not allies. Not favors. Nothing until we reach Helior Pri."
Viola crossed her arms. "And if sothing goes wrong?"
"Then we deal with it without leaving a trail," Requiem replied. "Kylus hunts patterns. We give him none."
He slung his pack over his shoulder and headed for the exit. "Move fast. Stay close. Once we're underground, there's no turning back."
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