"The truth is rarely pure and never simple."
— Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
Pixel was still there. Luca could feel her.
The weight hadn't shifted. The Specter's balance was still off-center, rear-heavy, exactly where a panther-sized nixocatus would be if she hadn't moved.
"She's invisible," Zoe said. "Like us. The camouflage is covering her too."
"That's not possible." Luca kept his eyes forward, scanning the terrain through the Specter's forward sensors. "The Specter's camo only syncs with Phantom suits. She's not wearing armor."
"Then explain what's happened."
He couldn't.
The Specter was designed for recon insertions. Luca and Zoe's Phantom suits linked to the vehicle's stealth field, extending the active camouflage to cover their bodies and equipnt. Anyone else riding along would be visible. That was the limitation. That was the whole point of needing Phantom armor in the first place.
Pixel didn't have a suit. Pixel was an alien cat from another star system who'd jumped into the Specter because apparently that was just what she did now.
But she was invisible anyway.
"Wait." Zoe twisted in her seat, pulling up her visor interface. "The stealth field is already covering her. That shouldn't be possible unless the System's treating her as part of the group."
"She's a cat, Zoe. You can't invite a cat to a party."
"She's not a cat." Zoe's eyes had that faraway look that ant she was going through her interface, moving through nus Luca couldn't see. "And the System already made a choice here. Maybe we can formalize it."
It was absurd. But so was flying an invisible hovercar toward a double portal overflow while an invisible alien predator sat in the back seat purring.
"Trying sothing," Zoe said.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened. Then Luca's visor flickered.
[System Notification]
Pixel [Nyxocatus Companion - Lv 1] has joined your squad.
[End of ssage]
Luca stared at the notification. Then he looked at Zoe.
"Did that just work?"
"I guess it did."
On his party display, a small purple dot appeared next to the seven blue ones. Pixel's silhouette materialized in the back seat, midnight-blue fur and bioluminescent markings fading into visibility like soone had dialed up the opacity. Her amber eyes caught his in the rearview, and she yawned.
"Okay." Luca turned back to the controls. "That's new."
---
The Specter cut through the morning air at eighty miles per hour, fifty feet above the desert floor.
Below them, the landscape scrolled by in a blur of brown and black, fused glass glinting where the Triumph's point defense had done its work. Craters pockmarked the terrain, each one a perfect circle of fused sand and scorched rock. So were still smoking. Nothing moved in any of them.
So that was what a frigate's point defense did to a desert. Good to know.
But ahead, the portals still pulsed.
The terrain got worse the closer they flew.
Black rock spikes jutted from the desert floor at random angles, glassy and sharp-edged. So reached twenty feet high. A toxic green fog rolled through the low points, pooling in arroyos and drainage channels. Where it touched vegetation, the plants had twisted and blackened. Saguaros that had stood for centuries had collapsed into withered husks.
The System was rewriting the landscape. Two overflows, forty kiloters apart, each one bleeding its corruption into the desert between them. Luca cracked his visor for a second and caught a whiff of sothing chemical, like rotting tal. He sealed it back up and glanced at Pixel in the rearview. She seed fine, but she didn't have a helt. He hoped whatever was in that fog didn't bother alien cats.
"Movent ahead," Zoe said.
Luca saw them. Creatures appearing from the Class 15 portal, streaming out, dozens at a ti. Level 15 to 17 on his visor tags, faceted scales catching the morning light. So headed northeast toward Tucson. Others angled toward the military positions on the western flats. A few turned toward the cliff where the Triumph had landed.
The overflow wasn't over. The Triumph had cleared the imdiate area, vaporized everything in a two-mile radius, and the portals were still producing.
Luca's comms crackled. The static was cleaner than before. They were getting closer to the source, and ironically that ant less interference. The portal's electromagnetic output was directional, radiating outward. Inside its shadow, signals had room to breathe.
"Chris." He keyed the channel. "You read ?"
More static. Then: "...barely. What's your position?"
"Two klicks out from the Class 15. Specter's cloaked. Zoe and I are investigating."
"Investigating?"
"Whatever caused this. Both portals going critical at the sa ti? That's not bad luck."
A pause. "Luca, the military has bombers circling. If you're anywhere near those portals—"
"Tell them to stop shooting toward the Class 15. Southern approach. We're coming in low."
"You want to tell the UER to stop shooting at an active overflow?"
"Just the southern approach. Give us ten minutes."
Another pause. Longer this ti. Luca could picture Chris at the communications console, running through the options, calculating how to phrase a request that would make any sane military commander hang up imdiately.
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"Copy. I'll make the call."
"Noted."
Zoe was already activating the Specter's shields, the deflectors that could stop plasma fire and shrapnel. They'd drain the power cells fast, but right now speed mattered more than endurance.
---
The portal lood ahead, a jagged crack in reality rising from a depression in the desert floor.
The Specter's tir showed four minutes and twelve seconds of active camouflage remaining.
Four minutes to find whatever had caused this.
Zoe brought them in low, the Specter's magnetic drive humming as it descended toward the portal's edge. Up close, the Class 15 was chaos.
The portal itself was a crack in the air, almost like a broken mirror. Its fractured surface undulated violently, rippling so fast it hurt to look at. The overflow was doing that, pushing the boundaries past what they could hold. Dark clouds of purple and green churned across its face, swirling into each other and breaking apart again.
Luca had seen a lot of portals. This one looked angry.
Creatures erged from it in pulses. Every fifteen seconds, another wave. Level 15 glass-scaled lizards with jaws that split three ways. Level 17 variants with thicker scales and two red eyes instead of one. They hit the ground running, scattering in different directions like they had destinations programd into their skulls.
So went for the military positions. Others angled toward Tucson or the Triumph's landing site.
None of them looked up at the invisible hovercar floating forty feet overhead.
Luca activated [Microfra Scanburst].
His interface lit up with data. Structural weak points in the black rock formations. Sensor blind spots where the portal's energy created dead zones. And there, between the portal and a cluster of spikes, he saw sothing partially buried, which his interface tagged as an anomaly.
"There." He pointed before Zoe could. "Take us down."
"Take us down."
---
The Specter descended low enough for Luca to jump out, touching down on a flat stretch of fused glass thirty ters from the portal.
Pixel landed without a sound. The low rumble in her chest said she wanted to tear sothing apart, but she stayed close, muscles bunched, ready to spring.
Around them, the overflow continued. Creatures stread past at a distance, heading for their assigned destinations. A group of Level 16s passed within touching distance. None of them turned or even slowed. The camouflage was holding.
Luca put a hand on Pixel's head. "Easy, girl."
The rumble didn't stop, but she pressed into his palm. Her fur was warm. Real. She might be invisible to everything else, but she was still here.
Behind them, sothing caught the light.
Luca turned. In the distance, the Triumph of Darron was lifting off from the clifftop. The rocky shelf had finally given way, fracture lines spreading until the stone could no longer hold the frigate's weight. The ship's repulsors humd, a bass note that vibrated through the earth, as the frigate rose on a shimring cushion of blue-white light. Debris cascaded into the desert below as the crumbling cliff fell away beneath it.
Ryan's voice crackled through his earpiece. "Luca, we're relocating north, between here and Tucson. Chris has a line to the IFC. They're setting up a coordination channel, trying to get everyone on the sa page."
"Copy. Keep the point defense hot. Creatures are still coming through."
"Already on it. Emily's coordination, Chris has the tactical display. We're tracking everything that moves." A pause. "I've got Poorwills circling the Class 15. Whatever you find down there, we're recording."
"Who's in piloting?" Luca asked, dreading the answer. Ryan was not a good pilot.
"Alessio. Your little brother flies better than Chris, by the way. Don't tell him I said that."
Luca's brain stalled.
"What the hell is Alessio doing on my ship?"
Alessio. His sixteen-year-old brother. The one who was supposed to be at the Genesis Platform. Or in New Hampshire with his team. Luca didn't even know where Alessio was supposed to be, but it definitely wasn't here. Alessio had been watching Pixel. That's why Pixel was here. Because Alessio was here. Because apparently his little brother had decided to hitch a ride on his starship during a Victory Tour that had turned into a portal crisis.
"Flying it." Ryan still sounded calm. "Kid's got good hands."
"Where's Matteo?"
"With Danny and Joey. Keeping your guests calm," replied Ryan as though it were the most natural thing in the world. "You find anything yet?"
Both of them. Both of his brothers. On his ship. In a combat zone. Five people had died tonight because of these portals, and his teenage brothers were in the middle of it.
He had to focus. Deal with his brothers later or whoever let them into his ship to begin with. Right now, the Poorwills were recording. If this went sideways, at least there'd be evidence.
"Maybe. Give us two minutes."
The Triumph banked north, its silhouette shrinking against the morning sky until it was just another shape against the clouds.
They were on their own.
Three minutes on the tir.
Luca turned back and moved toward the debris field.
---
The case was bigger than he expected.
Eight feet long, maybe four feet wide, made of sothing that had been tal before the heat got to it. The outer shell had lted and re-fused, warped into organic shapes that reminded Luca of cooling lava. One end had burst open, the contents vaporized or scattered.
But there was enough left to see what it had been.
Luca knelt beside the wreckage and wiped ash from the surface with his gauntlet. Under the soot and carbon scoring, fragnts of text erged. Part of a serial number, stamped into the tal. Most of it was lted beyond recognition, but a few characters survived.
—7X4-INV—
"Zoe, I've got sothing." He keyed his helt cam. "You seeing this?"
"I see it."
Power cells. Type-E, from the size of the lted housings. Backpack-sized units, dozens of them, all wired together in a configuration that made no sense for storage or transport. The connections ran in parallel, converging on a single discharge point aid directly at the portal.
"That's a burst rig," Zoe said. "All that energy released in a microsecond."
Soone had set this up deliberately. Fed enough power into the Class 15 to push it from stable to critical to overflow. The burn pattern on the ground told the rest of the story.
Five kids. Teenagers who'd co out here to grind levels like everyone else. Unlucky bastards who happened to be in the wrong place when soone decided to turn a managed portal into a massacre.
Luca's jaw tightened.
A notification flickered in his visor.
[Pixel has defeated Crystalline Scuttler - Lv 15]
[ 0 XP]
[ 0 Credits]
Level disparity too great for experience gain.
Luca looked up. Forty ters away, a Level 15 dissolved into black dust. Nothing visible had touched it. But on his party display, Pixel's purple dot was right there, already moving to the next target. She'd broken from his side without him noticing.
Another notification.
[ 0 XP]
[ 0 Credits]
And another.
[ 0 XP]
[ 0 Credits]
[Pixel has reached Level 2!]
She was hunting. Invisible, silent, moving through the creature stream like a shadow with claws. The monsters couldn't see her any more than they could see Luca. But Pixel wasn't standing still. Pixel was doing what Pixel did.
[ 0 XP]
[ 0 Credits]
[Pixel has reached Level 3!]
The notifications kept coming. Luca's interface showed her purple dot darting through the chaos, leaving dissolved corpses in her wake. Each kill ant nothing to him. Level disparity. But to a Level 1 companion facing Level 15s...
[Pixel has reached Level 4!]
He couldn't control her. Didn't even know if he should try. So he focused on what he could control.
The serial number fragnt wasn't much. Not enough to trace on its own. But it was sothing. Physical evidence that this overflow wasn't natural.
The tir on his interface read ninety seconds.
Another wave of creatures erged from the portal. Level 17s this ti, bigger than the last batch. They stread past him on both sides, prismatic scales catching the morning light. Close enough to touch. Luca froze, surrounded, invisible, a single still point in a river of monsters flowing toward Tucson.
None of them turned as they couldn't see him. Not yet.
He grabbed a fragnt of the case, that chunk of lted tal with the partial serial number still visible, and started moving.
"Zoe. Need pickup. Now!"
The Specter descended from above, Zoe bringing it low and fast. Luca ran alongside the stream of creatures, matching their pace, the tal fragnt clutched in one hand.
[Pixel has reached Level 5!]
Pixel's purple dot on his display closed the distance, matching his pace. He couldn't see her, but he could feel her presence beside him.
[Pixel has defeated Crystalline Scuttler - Lv 17]
[ 0 XP]
[ 0 Credits]
[Pixel has reached Level 6!]
She bounded up first, a blur of midnight fur launching over the roll cage into the cabin. Luca grabbed the fra and hauled himself up, boots kicking against nothing, hanging there with one hand on the bar and the other clutching evidence while the stampede flowed beneath him.
Zoe pulled up hard. The Specter climbed.
His camouflage flickered. Once. Twice. Then it died completely, the tir hitting zero as he dangled from the Specter.
That was when he saw them.
To the east, a dust cloud stretched across the horizon. Helicopters first, a dozen of them, maybe more, flying in staggered formation. Behind them, the ground convoy. APCs. Combat vehicles. Armored trucks with mounted weapons. All of it moving fast, heading straight for the portal site.
All of it branded with the sa logo.
Orion Horizons.
Convenient timing.
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