NOVEL NEXT Ch4 Lorna: Draugenes Dans
22:17, February 1, 2295
35 E Wacker Drive, Chicago, IL 60601, Terra Alliance territory
Lorna Weiss ducked into the alley's embrace, its brick walls still radiating the day's trapped heat despite winter's grip. Her fingers found the elastic hair tie, placing it between her teeth—a habit from training days when instructors screamed about "tactical presentation". She gathered her golden locks with efficiency, sweeping them into a half-up ponytail that left enough loose to frame her face. Professional but approachable, as her boss Artak Otis had said. Like a therapist who kills.
From her coat's inner pocket came the lavender perfume—a delicate crystal bottle no larger than her thumb. Three precise spritzes: behind each ear where her pulse points burned hottest, another at the nape of her neck. The scent mixed with cordite and ozone from the earlier fight, creating something uniquely hers.
Men like Thomas never understood. They'd spray themselves with tactical deodorant and call it good. But then, they'd never walked into a room full of generals who saw breasts before badges, never had to prove their kills smelled as sweet as their faces.
"Thomas has engaged the Fenris Horde nest," Diego's voice crackled through her earpiece, the sound quality so clear she could hear him sipping his perpetual coffee. "Heavy resistance, but the Vanguard squad is holding. That Diabolisk's getting closer to Triumph Tower, though. Seismic readings put it at... Jesus, it's big."
"How big are we talking?" Lorna murmured, her hand finding Baldr's deactivated hilt through the coat's fabric. The cylinder's weight had worn a permanent crease in the pocket. "Sedan? SUV? Small building?"
"Think school bus. With anger management issues."
"Sounds fun." She stepped from the alley into the financial district's canyon of steel and glass. The towers loomed like judges, their windows reflecting the city's neon pulse—blues and golds and angry reds bleeding together. "One Radi-Mon at a time, Diego."
The street ahead was wrong-quiet. No late-night joggers, no delivery drones humming between buildings. Even the ever-present hum of fusion generators seemed muted. From the old Patriot's Bank—a neoclassical relic among the modern towers—green light spilled like poisoned honey. The building's carved stone eagles watched with blind eyes as sounds that had no business coming from human throats echoed within.
The scene inside the marble lobby turned her stomach—not from gore, she'd seen worse, but from the casual cruelty of it. Three figures hunched over shattered Helionite containers, their forms a blasphemy of bark-textured skin stretched over rot. Draugs. Their movements held that particular wrongness of things that remembered being human but had forgotten why it mattered.
Scattered around them: fresh corpses. A security guard, his blue uniform dark with blood. A janitor, her mop still clutched in dead fingers. A young couple in evening wear—probably from the theater district, wrong place, wrong time. The Draugs had torn into them with the enthusiasm of children opening presents.
Lorna's left wrist flicked, activating her Quantum Watch. The device was art and function married—silver casing no thicker than a traditional timepiece, its sapphire face currently glowing with soft blue light. Neural interface engaged, projecting data directly onto her retina. She focused on the lone human figure standing among the monsters.
The watch's AI parsed his features: skull-tight skin mottled with necrosis, metallic teeth filed to points, eyes that burned red as dying stars. His leather jacket—probably his from before—hung on a frame that was more wire and bone than flesh.
"Mac Watrous," she spoke aloud, the watch cataloging her observation. "Ex-professor, Champaign Institute of Technology. Class-1 Terrorist. Favorite lecture topic: how wealth inequality justifies monster worship!"
Watrous's head snapped up with reptilian speed, those burning eyes finding her. His lipless mouth stretched into what might generously be called a smile. "Ah, the Terra Alliance sends its favorite dog." He paused, tilting his head as if tasting the air. "Or should I say... bitch?"
He gestured at her. The other Draugs rose from their feast, nuclear waste dripping from mouths that opened too wide. Chunks of civilian fell from their fingers with wet sounds.
Lorna drew Baldr but kept the blade dormant. Her heart was doing its pre-combat dance—not fear, just her body preparing for what came next. "Here's your one chance: surrender, submit to containment, maybe they'll find enough of your brain left to study."
His laugh bounced off marble walls like breaking bones. "Surrender? When we're so close to true evolution?" His eyes flared brighter, and she could smell ozone building. "You still think in their terms—human, inhuman, us, them. But we're all just meat waiting to transcend."
"The thing about being the Alliance's bitch, Watrous—I'm good at killing. But I guess you don't mind dying." She shot back.
"Rís, Beinagrind!" Watrous cut her off with an incantation.
The words were Old Norse—no, newer. Joturmál, the space era psionic tongue of giants and great beasts that Lorna's ancestors had created from the fusion of Nordic languages. Ironically, the tongue was also a favorite of Radi-Mons that it had been a taboo in Alliance lands since '84.
The corpses responded, flesh sloughing away like overcooked meat to reveal skeletons beneath. They rose with the jerky movements of marionettes, empty sockets somehow still managing to convey hunger.
"Your precious Alliance. They feast in towers of glass while children starve in the streets below." Watrous continued, his voice taking on a lecturer's cadence. "They hoard fusion technology while the poor freeze. But the Nucleus Virus?" He spread his arms like a demented preacher. "It doesn't check bank accounts or income levels. It makes equals of us all."
"Baldr, activate!"
The Psytum Sword's quantum blade erupted with its signature hum, azure light painting the lobby in shades of drowning. The weapon's weight shifted as energy coursed through it, familiar as her own heartbeat. Five opponents: three Draugs who'd chosen their fate, two skeletal puppets who hadn't.
"Let's test that equality theory." Lorna shifted her weight to the balls of her feet, coat swirling.
The first Draug moved like corrupted lightning. Its bulk—easily three hundred pounds of mutated muscle—should have made it slow. Instead, it crossed ten meters in a heartbeat, claws extended. Lorna met its charge with Baldr's edge, quantum energy meeting corrupted flesh with a sound like tearing silk. Black ichor sprayed, but the thing's momentum carried it forward even as she opened its torso.
The second Draug tried to flank while the third moved to block the exit—pack tactics, some part of their brain still functioning. The skeletons advanced with mechanical precision, their movements perfectly synchronized.
Dance, don't fight. Her personal doctor and friend, Nikki's words. You're not strong enough to match them all the time, but you can be where they aren't.
Lorna flowed. The second Draug's claws passed through air she'd just vacated. Her pivot brought Baldr up through its reaching arm, severing it at the elbow. The creature's howl had too many vocal cords—a harmony of agony.
A skeleton's fingers—still wearing a wedding ring—raked across her coat's back. The ballistic weave held, but the impact sent her stumbling forward. She converted it to a roll, coming up with Baldr in a defensive arc that took the skeleton's skull off at the jaw.
"They taught you well." Watrous observed from his position near the bank's old vault door. "But footwork won't save you from what's coming."
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The third Draug was smarter, more patient. It circled, looking for openings. The remaining skeleton tried to grab her sword arm. She let it commit, then spun inside its reach. The angle was awkward, but Baldr's edge didn't care about angles. Bone parted like paper.
Now the smart Draug attacked, and Lorna understood why it had waited. This one had been military—she could see it in its stance, the way it led with its shoulder to protect its center mass. Even corrupted, muscle memory remained. They traded blows, Baldr meeting claws that sparked against the quantum edge.
For a moment, their faces were inches apart. Through the rot and mutation, she saw green eyes—human eyes—and the ghost of an Alliance uniform beneath the twisted flesh. One of their own, turned.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, the words escaping before she could stop them. Then Baldr found its mark, sliding between ribs that had spread too wide.
"Járn-önd!"
Watrous's Jǫturmál spell hit like a sandstorm given malice. Dark particles erupted around them, each grain moving with purpose. They scraped exposed skin, tried to find her eyes, her mouth. The taste was rust and graves.
Now the real fight starts.
Lorna's blade cut through the whirling sand, but Watrous had erected some kind of barrier—the quantum edge sparked and skittered off invisible walls. His eyes blazed brighter through the storm, and his filed teeth caught the lobby's emergency lighting.
"The Alliance's favorite Psi Lynx," he said, the words carrying despite the howling sand. "Did you know they call you 'the Honeypot' in Boston underground? The Alliance sends you to kill when a blade works better than a bomb, or to bed when a kill would cause too many questions."
"Fulmen Argentum!" Silver lightning erupted from her fingers—the spell she first learned from her father Harald, though she'd never tell anyone that. Ordovox, the spell's language, was a psionic variant of the ancient Latin. It helped her sell the idea that she was just another Valoran, not some Nordling refugee running from her ruined motherland.
It carved through part of Watrous's barrier, sand falling like rain.
Watrous gestured and the sand responded, forming complex patterns that hurt to look at. "How many of us have you hunted? How many humans who just wanted something more than wage slavery have you slaughtered? All for what—enough credits to pay next month's rent?"
"You're not some noble revolutionary." Lorna strode forward, Baldr humming eagerness. "You're a man who got tenure, got bored, and decided other people's bodies were acceptable casualties for your philosophy experiment."
The sand whirled faster. "The wealthy live in climate-controlled towers while the poor sell their children to Leased Lily services. Where's the justice in that?"
"None. World's unfair." She feinted left, then struck right. More of his barrier crumbled. "But you know what's worse than unfair? Being digested alive by something that used to be your neighbor."
"At least the Virus offers power to anyone brave enough to claim it!" He gestured at the fallen Draugs. "These volunteers came willingly!"
"Volunteers?" The word tasted like bile. "Like the women you keep abducting? Or the Diabolisk heading for Triumph Tower?"
His grin stretched wider than human anatomy should allow. "Ah, you know about that? The ladies were quite enthusiastic once they understood. The power they gained, the freedom from human weakness..."
Dark sand erupted from his mouth mid-sentence—not a spell but something worse. The particles buzzed with sickly green energy, Void-touched and wrong. Where they touched marble, the stone aged decades in seconds.
"You still think what we're doing is evil?" His voice came from everywhere and nowhere. "The Nucleus Virus is liberation! Ask Skarn! He speaks of you, you know. His perfect crucible."
"Skarn's done. Imprisoned." Lorna lunged through a gap in the sand, her Psytum Sword singing. "And you'll join him soon."
Watrous's laugh was breaking glass. "Imprisoned. Little lynx, you can't cage a force of nature. He's merely waiting. No prison can hold what our great Primarch has become."
"We'll see about that."
"But he does speak of you. Constantly. The one that got away. The perfect breeding stock for—"
"Glacies Lunae Fulgur!" With anger, Lorna casted her spell. The Lunar bolt cut him off, ice and lightning married into something that made the air scream. Part of his sand shield shattered, frozen particles tinkling on marble.
"Kyrrð Ginnungagaps!"
The Void spell hit without warning—no gesture, no tell. One moment Lorna was advancing, the next her throat constricted. Her Aether, the internal wellspring that powered her psionics, suddenly felt a thousand miles away. Baldr's blade flickered and died like a snuffed candle.
Watrous moved faster than anything that decayed should. His shoulder caught her solar plexus, driving her back. Her spine felt marble with a crack that sent stars across her vision. Then his weight was on her, metal fingers digging into her shoulders hard enough to bruise through the coat.
"The perfect crucible," he hissed, his face inches from hers. His breath was a chemical wasteland—like a bad mix of antifreeze and rotting meat. "That's what Primarch Skarn calls you. Nordling stock, strong psionic potential, proven fertility..." His filed teeth clicked together. "Instead, you live pretending to be a Valoran like the rest of them Alliance dogs. The moment someone finds out you're a Nordling, you'd be deported—"
As Watrous's weight pressed down on her, Lorna twisted her right hip, creating just enough space to draw Váli — a white 10mm Magnum from her left side. The pistol was sleek in its matte surface. The gun's barrel was slightly elongated, tapering off with a precision muzzle. The grip itself was ergonomic, fitting perfectly into Lorna's hand. It had been a twenty-first birthday gift to herself, bought using money she'd made as a Leased Lily. She'd named it after Odin's son, born to avenge.
She fired the 10mm Magnum. The round tore through his knee, black fluid spraying over her pants as augmented bone shattered.
Watrous's grip loosened with a guttural scream, but before Lorna could bring Váli up for a killing shot, his clawed hand knocked her arm wide. The shot punched a hole in marble as they grappled on the floor, his strength forcing her gun arm down. His teeth snapped inches from her throat.
"Lorna, amiga!" Diego's voice suddenly came in her earpiece. "Doc Nikki just called. We need Watrous alive! Try to be gentle—"
"Looks like it's your lucky day." Lorna sighed.
"What?" The Draug raised an eyebrow. Or what remained of it.
Without another word, Lorna drove her knee into his damaged leg, her strength making him rear back just enough. Váli's barrel found his temple as they were both locked in place.
"Alright. The Diabolisk," she snarled, finger tight on the trigger. "How did you create it?"
"Why, from the loving womb of a human mother! Transformed by the Nucleus Virus and kept safe. Loved. Content. Beyond your reach – "
His words cut off in a scream as she shifted her aim and put a round through his foot. Black ichor pooled beneath them, mixing with what might have once been blood.
"Stop bullshiting." Lorna pressed Váli harder against his temple. "Tell me the truth."
"But I speak the truth, little lynx. Mars. The Primary Hive Cluster. That's where all the Hundkyndas — chosen broodmothers – go!" he gasped, a gurgling laugh. "Ah, the youngest one — her gift to the city... the Diabolisk approaches Triumph Tower. A message to those fat cats in their glass towers!"
Lorna's grip on Váli tightened. This was not the first time the rumor circulated: women in developed countries across the Five Realms of Sol System being taken and forced to birth such monsters in some distant hive. It defied science on too many levels to be believable.
She wanted to kill him, to give him the most agonizing death imaginable. But her Alliance employers needed proof, or at least information.
"Diego!" she called out, keeping her gun trained on Watrous as she rose. "I need a containment team here at Patriot's Bank. Now."
"Copy that," Diego replied. The ground trembled - stronger now. Close. "Thomas! Status?"
"Got my hands full at the nest!" Thomas's voice crackled through the comm, punctuated by distant gunfire. "These things just keep coming."
"I'll call Emmanuel," Diego cut in. "He can meet you at Triumph Tower, Lorna. You shouldn't face that thing alone."
"Understood." Lorna put one final round through Watrous's other leg, pinning him down. The Draug's howl echoed off marble walls as she retrieved Baldr's cylindrical silver hilt from the floor. "We'll speak again. Count on it."
Lorna clenched Baldr's hilt in one hand, pulling a vial of Indra-Sprite from her coat with the other. The liquid inside glowed neon-blue, like an elixir of life.
She unscrewed the cap and took one gulp, exhausting half its content, the liquid scorching her throat with an electric bite, radiating warmth that surged through her veins like molten silver. Her vision sharpened, the marble walls and remnants of shattered glass snapping into acute clarity.
For a split second, she caught her reflection in the glint of a broken window. Her own eyes, sapphire blue, stared back.
"You won't stop it," Watrous hissed from his spreading puddle. "Do you know how many men it takes to kill a Diabolisk?"
"Lucky for Chicago, I'm not a man." She corked the bottle, pocketed it, and checked Váli's magazine.
His laughter followed her out, echoing off marble. But Lorna was already running, her enhanced body eating up blocks as sirens wailed in the distance.
Somewhere ahead, a Diabolisk was carving its way toward Triumph Tower.
One monster at a time.