Yellow Jacket

Rain thudded on the roof of the cargo hauler. Inside, the stink of blood and soaked armor clung to the air, joined now by the sharper stench of fear.

The enforcers were locked in one of the livestock pens, behind rusted bars and soaked chains. Stripped of their weapons and dignity, they sprawled in filth, suits half-dismantled, groaning as a four-eyed toad croaked from the corners and the reek of livestock soaked into their pride. Muk-Tah stood in front of the first, arms crossed, expression unreadable. Warren stood to his left, truncheon at his side, coat dripping slow arcs of rainwater onto the floor.

Muk-Tah stepped forward, voice sharp as a flint blade. "I am going to ask you again. Who sent you here? Where did you get your orders?"

The enforcer blinked. Then babbled.

It came out in a rush: half-begging, half-outraged nonsense. "We do our duty and we go home, that's the contract. That's why people sign up. I was promised rotation privileges, system credits, recovery packages. Not this. Not cages. Not this smell!"

Muk-Tah stared at him like the man had started bleeding sand. Warren didn't speak. Cassian raised an eyebrow but didn't move.

More voices rose from the other pens. Another enforcer howled, "This indignity will not stand! You have no idea who you're dealing with!"

"My father sits on the Power-line Board!" a third screamed, voice breaking. "He'll have you gutted for this! Do you understand who my father is?!"

One wailed, "I have legion academic tenure! We were never supposed to be in these things, not like this!"

Another: "I wouldn't have taken this job if I knew I'd be put in a cage by these hideous beasts!"

"Monsters! That's what you are! Sub-sector trash, uncoded filth who don't understand civilized procedure!"

"I demand a formal protest filed with the Green! I am a Tier 3 Legion instructor, bonded under Protocol 5-C!"

"Get me out of here! I can't breathe with that thing staring at me!" One of them pointed at a nearby blinkdrake, which had begun pulsing with quiet light as it clung to a corner rail, watching with unblinking eyes.

"They'll hear of this in the Spires. You think the Board will let this go?" another choked, gagging on the reek.

"They gave me a ring when I made a instructor! You know what color it was? Platinum. Not gold. Not silver. Platinum!"

Cassian muttered, "What does any of that even mean."

Muk-Tah said nothing. He just looked at Warren.

And Warren? He understood.

There was never any plan.

Just meat inside a mask, shocked to be treated like meat.

Warren narrowed his eyes as he activated Echo Vision.

The world shifted.

Light fractured around his pupils. Memory surged.

He saw the moment the enforcers had engaged: precise, lethal. They moved like a machine. No hesitation. No panic. But then... something changed. The first helmet cracked. The body inside staggered, not from pain, but confusion. The movements slowed. Sloppy. A second helmet was torn free in the chaos, same result. Flailing. Like the suit itself had known how to fight, and the person inside was just ballast.

He dropped the vision. Returned to the now.

"Cassian," Warren said.

Cassian stepped closer. "Sir?"

"Bring me a helmet. One of theirs."

Cassian turned without question, rooted through the pile, and returned with one of the cracked visors.

Warren took it. Turned it over in his hands.

No HUD. No targeting lattice. No internal comms.

No viewport. No monitor. No displays. Just padding. Damp. Stained. Empty.

He looked at Muk-Tah.

"There's no system interface. No displays. No sensor calibration. Just a shell." Warren paused. "It's like the suit fights. Not the person inside."

Muk-Tah grunted. "Then they wear corpses and call it armor."

"Worse," Warren said. "They wear masks. The suit doesn't enhance the soldier. The soldier enhances the illusion. Anyone can fit inside."

He looked toward the expedition guards. "Cassian. Bring me the weakest volunteer you can find."

Cassian hesitated, just for a second, then moved.

From the rear hauler, a young girl stepped forward. Slim. Barely into her teens. Her clothes were still too new to be soaked in violence.

Then Warren saw her face.

His blood went cold.

It was her. The girl from Sector L. The one Reggie had tried to take. The one Lucas had laughed about. The one Warren had saved with silence and a single kill.

She looked up at him with no fear. "I'm here to help."

Warren swallowed once. "We're going to ask you to wear something. This armor. It may react. It may not. If it does anything, hurts, burns, or binds, you let me know, and I'll stop it."

She nodded once. "Okay."

Warren's voice lowered. "We'll have to restrain you. Only to observe. You'll be safe. I'll make sure of it."

She stepped forward without protest.

Muk-Tah crossed his arms. "What are you planning?"

Warren didn't answer immediately. He crouched, inspecting the armor segment, then looked back at the girl. "What's your name?"

She blinked. "Anza."

Warren nodded. "If this suit activates around you, then we know it isn't chip-locked. We can see if Anza here is in control. Not the armor."

Anza stood still as the guards circled her. The hauler's floor was slick beneath her boots, and the cloying scent of wet iron and animal musk made her stomach tighten. Her arms were already locked behind her back, bound not harshly, but with the methodical efficiency of men used to binding things that might break.

Warren hadn't lied. They'd been gentle. One of the men, older, heavier in the shoulders, with a predator's stillness, moved with a kind of calm that made the others step lighter. Batu, someone had called him. A mercenary captain, sharp-eyed and quiet, the kind of veteran whose silence made Anza more nervous than threats ever had. She'd heard stories back in the Bazaar: Batu had once tracked a Stitcher through three districts without backup, brought it down barehanded when his lance jammed. He was one of the few who had turned down Lucas's bounty on Warren when others had scrambled to take the contract while the ink was still drying. There was no swagger to him, no arrogance, just the weight of a man who had survived too many things to care for bragging. He checked the restraints himself, nodding once with eyes that saw far too much.

Yeri and Holt flanked her on either side. The Bazaar guards were calm and quiet, moving with a practiced ease that masked their readiness. Yeri's hands were steady, medical-precise. She had been training under Wren as a field medic and was probably her second-best student, right behind Deana. That calm, measured presence settled something in Anza's chest, even now. Holt looked mean, jagged across the cheek from an old blade scar, jaw set like he chewed gravel, but when he met Anza's eyes, there was something gentle beneath the scowl. A kindness that didn't need words to be known.

They weren't scared for her. But they were scared of what might happen when the suit closed.

The armor sat open like a hungry shell. Gleaming white, segmented for mobility but dense enough to stop flechettes, and still faintly steaming from the last wearer, a man whose eyes had gone glassy just before they dragged him from the frame. The white surface shone with cold authority, unmarred in places, yet scratched raw in others. It looked like it had been built not just to protect, but to dominate. No insignia. No rank. Just a clean, engineered menace.. No one had spoken his name. It didn't look like it had ever been designed to be worn by someone like her. It looked like it was meant to wear someone.

Anza kept her breath slow. Her heartbeat steady. She had told Warren she wasn't afraid. That had been mostly true. But now, standing on the edge of something vast and unknowable, with the helmet poised like judgment above her, doubt scraped its way up her spine. She wasn't afraid of the suit. She was afraid of what it might awaken in her, what it might reveal, or erase. The fear wasn't loud. It was quiet, crouched behind her ribs, whispering questions she wasn't ready to answer.

Now, as the helmet was lifted, she felt the lie try to rise.

Warren was close. She had always liked Warren. He wasn't like the other recruits. He actually seemed to know the answers. She still remembered when she asked him if the city had ever been clean, and he told her: once, before the world fell. Lucas had been trying to nudge her toward his brother Reggie, saying Reggie could protect her from the bad things out there. But Warren had told her, plain as daylight, that Reggie was the bad thing, just waiting to find someone like her. He may have been cold, but he had never lied to her. And she trusted that more than comfort.

"I'm going to lower the helmet now," Cassian said. He didn't sound cruel. Just tired.

Anza nodded once.

The helmet slid down. It touched her forehead, then settled.

And everything went dark.

No HUD. No startup flash. No voice.

Just her breath.

Then a pressure, almost like water, rising around her skin.

She swallowed hard.

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Nothing burned. Nothing pierced.

She felt the neck seal close with a faint hiss, and then, stillness.

Outside the suit, she heard Batu murmur, "Nothing. No flicker."

Warren's voice came next, quiet but sharp. "Restraints off."

"What?" Yeri asked. "She might still...."

"She's awake. She's herself. Let her go."

Hands moved. Cold metal loosened.

Anza flexed her fingers, tested her shoulders. The suit moved with her, but it was clumsy, half a beat behind, like a puppet with tangled strings. It didn't guide her limbs or override her breath. It moved when she moved, but not well. Her steps felt heavy, uncertain, and every motion dragged like she was submerged in thick water.

"I can feel it," she said, voice muffled slightly inside the helmet. "But it's not doing anything. It's just… there."

Muk-Tah's voice rumbled low. "Does it speak to you?"

"No."

"Does it think?"

She considered. "I don't think it knows how."

Warren stepped into view. The storm light framed him. His coat still dripped. His eyes studied her the way most men studied threats.

But he didn't look afraid. Just certain.

"Move your arm," he said.

She raised it.

The suit followed.

He nodded. "Now swing it."

She did. The joints flexed, but sluggishly. No resistance, just a delay, like the suit was mimicking rather than supporting. It was like wearing a second skin with no nerves, no instinct, no power.

"She's in control," Cassian said.

"For now," Batu added. "We should see how long that lasts."

Warren didn't smile. "Then we watch. Anza, if it changes, anything, you tell me."

"I will."

Yeri scratched his jaw. "So this proves it? It's not a chip thing?"

Warren answered without looking away from her. "It proves the armor doesn't need a soldier. It just needs a shape to fill. What it does with that shape… we're still learning."

Anza lowered her arm. Inside the helmet, it was quiet. Not peaceful. Not safe. Just... quiet.

But she wasn't afraid.

Not with Warren watching, not with the memory of his truth still anchoring her. He was cold, yes, but constant. A fixed point in a shifting world, and somehow, knowing he was there made the silence feel survivable.

The hold stank of wet fur, metal, and fear. The old hauler creaked with every shift of weight, as if even the frame knew what they were doing was wrong. Lights dangled from repurposed drone rigs above, flickering through humidity and rust. They cast warped shadows across the floor, dancing over the gleaming white bulk of the deactivated enforcer suit.

Anza sat inside the shell.

The armor was locked down. Secured. The joints limited by external clamps. She'd volunteered. She'd said she was ready.

Yeri had finished threading the harness lines through the backplate herself, her hands steady despite the cold sweat on her temple. Batu had supervised the load-in, one hand always on the pulse lance slung tight across his chest. Even now, he stood just behind Warren, still and watchful.

Holt knelt beside Anza, whispering quietly, comforting her, maybe, or himself. He was the one who offered to release the head clamp.

Cassian watched from a distance, eyes twitching with calculations.

Muk-Tah said nothing. He stood like stone.

Warren gave the nod.

Then someone in the cages laughed.

It was dry, cracked, a voice stripped raw from yelling hours ago.

"XKR-V89xAlpha3-FlagLoadXinit-ZeroX7-ThreadLock AcceptRun."

The words had no weight at first. Just static noise. Then the helmet blinked.

A flicker.

Barely a flicker. But it was enough.

Yeri turned. Batu's hand dropped to his weapon.

And Holt, dear Holt, already had one hand on the release latch.

He reached to lift the helmet off.

Anza's face was exposed.

The armor moved.

No power readout. No activation sequence. No lights. But the suit moved.

Not her.

It.

The fingers of her right hand clenched faster than she could understand. Faster than thought.

And Holt didn't even scream.

The crunch echoed through the hauler like a falling tree.

His throat collapsed under the pressure. Blood sprayed from the corners of his mouth, arterial and bright.

It struck Anza's face. Direct.

Her cheeks, her lips, her brow, her mouth, just opening to say thank you filled with Holt's blood before the word could form.

She blinked. Froze. Her scream came too late.

Holt fell back, convulsing, a hand raised in disbelief before he hit the floor and didn't move again.

Anza screamed.

It ripped from her, raw and human and broken. She thrashed against the restraints, but the suit didn't stop moving.

The clamps burst off with a shriek of forced steel. Sparks fanned out like shattered fireflies.

Yeri screamed too, stumbling back, almost slipping on Holt's blood.

The enforcers in the cage laughed again.

Louder.

Madder.

Barking and wailing like nobles drunk on their own downfall.

"They die like the beast they are?" one shrieked. "You animals! You cattle!"

Anza sobbed inside the suit. "I didn't.... I didn't mean to....."

But her arms rose.

The suit moved without her.

She was inside something else now. A shell. A predator.

Batu fired.

The shot sparked off the shoulder plate, ricocheting into the hauler's bulkhead.

"Don't aim for her," Warren snapped.

"She's gone!" Batu shouted back.

"She's in there!"

Anza's body slammed against the hauler wall, her limbs fighting the armor's commands. The suit twisted her spine the wrong way, forcing her upright like a marionette.

Yeri crawled toward Holt's body, sobbing. "Please… no....."

The suit's helmet turned toward her.

"No!" Warren moved.

He flared Flicker, reappearing between Yeri and the thing Anza wore.

He didn't raise his truncheon.

He didn't strike.

He placed his hand on the helmet.

"Anza," he said, voice low. "If you can hear me. I'm right here."

The suit paused.

The arms dropped by an inch.

But then the voice returned. The enforcer in the cage, coughing blood through his teeth.

"Override: Standard Reinforcement Directive, Killchain Locked."

The suit spasmed. Sparks flew from the joints.

Anza's scream rose again.

"Turn it off!" Yeri shouted.

Cassian scrambled toward the console rig. Batu pulled him back.

"No override systems!"

Then Warren saw it: the back of the suit, where internal channels opened and closed like gills, pulsing with light.

Not tech.

Not just tech.

Something organic.

A spasm ran through the suit.

Then it stepped forward.

Two of the cage of nobles began to chant, mad little songs of drinking the blood of an empire.

Warren drew the truncheon.

"Lock it down," he said.

"How!?" Batu barked.

"Manually."

Batu got there first. The mercenary captain moved like a falling mountain, massive, silent, unstoppable. His Skill Brother Bear activated in silence: nanites shimmered around him, forming the translucent shape of a massive bear that overlaid his frame.

Batu's muscles swelled. His veins shone like circuits. His bones didn't creak, they thundered.

He grabbed the backplate of the suit with one hand and slammed his other fist into the spine seam, cracking it wide open.

Alloy bent. Screws shattered. The suit convulsed.

He roared, not with rage, but with absolute force.

Nanite claws overlaid his fingers. He tore the channels open like gutting prey. Fluid burst in arcs. Heat spilled into the air like steam from a ruptured core.

Yeri moved in, her knife in hand, eyes wild. Batu held the spine open, braced with everything he had.

She jammed her blade deep and twisted.

The suit shrieked.

Anza screamed.

And then everything went still.

The suit collapsed.

Anza slumped.

Alive.

But dead eyed.

The nobles fell silent.

And someone whispered:

"That was fun."

Warren turned.

"Who said that?"

No answer.

Just the smell of blood and the hollow silence of something unnatural finally quiet.

The crowd was already forming by the time anyone realized what had happened. The first screams had carried. The shock had rippled. People were coming fast,expedition team members, Boneway Tribesmen, Most didn't know what they were about to see.

But they came.

Muk-Tah stood at the hauler door, one arm raised to bar the way. "Back. Hold the line. No one crosses till we say."

No one listened.

Boots scraped metal. Voices murmured. People leaned and craned, trying to glimpse past the wall of bodies.

Then they saw.

Cassian had shouted something earlier, but no one had heard. Yeri had yanked Anza from the frame, arms locked around her torso, dragging her free just as the neural spine snapped.

Everyone had stopped.

The suit had dropped.

But what spilled out wasn't just wiring.

It was a spine. Organic but not entirely.

The bone had been fused with augment-metal. Flesh still clung in places, shriveled but unmistakable.

The suit had never been empty.

It had never been armor.

It had been a Broken.

Someone screamed. Maybe one of the Boneway guards. Maybe Deana. Maybe Anza again.

Wren went pale.

Warren crouched low, examining the remains.

Batu didn't let go. He knelt over the thing like he'd just killed a beast.

Calra's voice cut through the haze. "Is that… is that a Broken?"

Warren didn't look up.

"It was."

Grix snarled. "I never fucking trusted those Green corpo bastards. All they ever did was lie."

Cassian stared at the remains. "That's a chip. That's a fucking chip!"

Wren's hands were shaking. "Then this wasn't just armor. It was… it was a body....."

Deana looked like she might vomit. "They always said the Broken were monsters. Just things that needed killing. But they made this."

Batu rose slowly. His nanite bear silhouette flickered, then faded. Sweat clung to his brow.

Warren stood.

"The Green Zone doesn't build power," he said. "They break it. Then they wear it."

Silence fell again.

The suit twitched once more.

Wren raised Stick.

Warren stopped her.

"It's dead. Whatever it was."

Anza curled in Yeri's arms, trembling.

Warren watched the remains, eyes cold.

This was the cost of power in the Green.

Not credits.

Not fragments.

People.

Broken. Used. Hollowed. Turned into weapons.

And somehow, the warlord had learned to do the same.

Or maybe… he was still working for them.

The silence was broken only by the sound of Grix spitting on the floor.

"Corpo pigs."

No one disagreed.

The cargo hauler, reeking of blood and rot and something older, became the heart of it.

And what waited inside it… wasn't done bleeding.

Warren didn't say anything for a while. He crouched inside the cargo hauler, one hand pressed to the floor, eyes narrowing.

Then his pupils constricted.

Echo Vision: Active.

The world around him dimmed. The sound dulled. And in its place came the overlay: movement like smoke, faint afterimages of the past. This wasn't just combat memory: it was stress, adrenaline, instinct. All recorded by the skill, waiting to be played back.

He saw the flicker of the suit locking down. The blur of Holt's hand on the release lever. And then: a head turning. One of the enforcers in the cage. His mouth moved. Not a shout. A phrase. Simple. Sharp. The suit responded.

The same one who had yelled, earlier:

"Do you understand who my father is?!"

Warren stood.

He crossed the space in three steps.

The enforcer didn't get a chance to ask another question. Warren grabbed him by the hair, wrenched his head back, and ripped out his tongue.

The man screamed, or tried to. He choked on his own blood, hands flailing, throat convulsing. Everyone looked shocked at the sudden act of violence.

Warren looked over at Yeri, his voice low. "It was this fuck."

Yeri's face went still. She reached into her belt pouch, pulled out her barbed knuckles, and slid them on.

They didn't speak again.

They beat the enforcer without hesitation. Warren held him up while Yeri drove punches into his ribs, his gut, his throat. He tried to scream again. Nothing came out but wet breath and blood.

When they were done, when the man couldn't move, couldn't lift his arms, couldn't beg even if he still had the mouth to do it, they dragged him to the other side and tossed him into the holding pit.

People crowded to the edge. More arriving by the second. Some had missed what happened, others hadn't. But all of them wanted to see.

Three dush-feathered galbrats waited there.

The small, bird-like creatures. They clung to the ceiling mesh earlier, chirping in chorus, their bodies light but twitchy with predator rhythm. They didn't have beaks. Just long, spear-thin proboscises. Meant for blood.

They didn't usually attack people. They waited for death. Followed it.

But the man was almost dead.

They smelled it.

The first galbrat struck his thigh, drove the needle-flesh deep. The second followed at the ribs. The third clamped to his chest.

He tried to scream again.

But the sound died quick.

The blood didn't.

Inside the hauler, silence fell. The nobles, those who'd worn the enforcer suits, or stood among them, went white.

Warren turned to face them.

"The next one of you fucks who doesn't give me everything I want," he said, voice cold, "goes in with the fucking toads."

No one moved. Even Yeri stared, jaw tight. Batu's fists clenched. He didn't speak, didn't argue, but the way his jaw locked said enough. Even he thought it went too far.

And Warren....

He agreed.

He didn't say it aloud. But in the back of his mind, something recoiled. Not at the blood, or the pain, or even the death. He'd dealt in all three. They were currencies he understood.

But this?

This was desecration. A kind of horror that unspooled dignity. It wasn't justice. It wasn't even rage.

It was a message. And he wasn't sure it was one worth sending.

He glanced at Batu, and saw it: the faintest shudder. Not fear. Not weakness. Just the instinctive recoil of a man who'd killed before, but still had a line.

Anza took a step forward. Her face was streaked with Holt's blood. She was still trembling. But her voice was clear.

"Warren, please don't. No one should die like that."

She wasn't pleading like someone fragile. She wasn't asking as a victim.

She said it like a truth the whole room knew but couldn't speak.

Like someone who had seen horror, and knew that not even monsters deserved to die that way.

Batu didn't look at her. He didn't need to. He was still staring at the pit, and his silence said it all.

Warren gave a slow nod.

"Okay," he said. "Not the toads."

He paused. Then looked at the crowd.

"You okay if I break them first, then toss them to the galbrats?"

Anza looked up. Her hands curled tight. For a moment, she didn't answer.

Then she nodded. A sharp, broken breath.

"That's… a lot less cruel."

Anza didn't speak again. She just turned away, wiping her face with the back of her hand, smearing blood she hadn't earned.

Yeri crouched beside the Anza, her barbed knuckles still on. She wasn't shaking. Not yet. But her hands wouldn't unclench.

Warren stood alone at the center.

"Start talking," he said. "One lie, and you join him."

And this time, no one waited to answer.