The office smelled of old paper and new orders — inked mana-scrolls folded like prayers, cartography that decided which bodies would matter and which would be buried. It sat behind the command hall like rot behind velvet: decisions made in clean rooms that killed men in the mud.
They led Kaiden in on boots that complained with each step. The patch on his chest hummed with unstable warmth; the new tag in his feed read: VOLATILE UNIT — ACTIVE. It sat on him like indictment and insignia both.
Lord Zarkus waited behind a low table, fingers laced, eyes the color of yellowed brass. He listened to the reports — numbers and dead names — as if hearing a symphony whose notes were men and mountains.
"Rank II Autonomy is not a pardon," Zarkus said when the papers finished. "It is a privilege and a harness. You will act in the Empire's strategic interest and answer to my staff alone."
Kaiden's voice came out like rusty gears. "Understood."
Zarkus inclined his head the merest degree. "You may request one companion to be assigned to your immediate command. Courtesy to assets of your grade."
For a moment Kaiden's breath slipped like a gear. The offer should have been patronizing — a leash disguised as mercy — yet it was an opening.
"Sylen," he said simply.
The name landed like a thrown knife. Zarkus watched him, patient and predatory. "That female? She is presently attached to her unit under prior assignment."
"She kept me from becoming a butcher," Kaiden said. "Let her come."
Silence gathered weight. For all the scorn welded into his seams and the smell of iron in his hair, the request wasn't about rank. It was the kind of loyalty that only forms in blood and ruin.
Zarkus steepled his fingers. "You ask for what reads like favoritism."
Kaiden didn't flinch. "You want me effective. Let me pick who stands with me when I break things."
The Commander's face betrayed the faintest amusement. "You are not in a position to bargain for sentiment, Sergeant."
"This isn't sentiment," Kaiden said, tone low, mechanical, steady. "It's pragmatism. If she falters, I take the cost. Her life will be my responsibility."
There was a long pause. Then Zarkus nodded. "Agreed. Sylen will be transferred under your operational command. Her status will be adjusted. Understand that if you fail, that pledge will be counted against you."
Kaiden's vents hissed; a dry sound escaped his throat that might have been a laugh. "Fair."
The ritual of paperwork followed — seals, inkings, the illusion that ink could make blood lawful. Kaiden watched the ink dry in the margins of his life.
He was given a chamber adjacent to the First Cohort barracks. The Volatiles would mobilize within a fortnight.
Sylen didn't meet his eyes when the message came through. She was already patched, her bandages smelling faintly of disinfectant and soot. Later, in a corridor where pipes chattered and the world hummed with bureaucracy, she found him.
"You asked for me," she said.
"I didn't ask nicely," he replied.
She offered a half-smile that didn't reach her eyes. "That's you."
"You don't have to go," he said, softer than he meant to.
"It's a different kind of leash," she said. "I know what it is. I know your hands." Her fingers brushed the weld of his forearm where plate met scar. "You won't patch me with corpses, Kaiden. Not while I breathe."
He made a dry sound. "Good. I wouldn't trust you otherwise."
There was something in her look he had seen before — loyalty that had walked through too many corpses. She chose him as much as he had chosen her. Maybe that was why he could still stand.
The Volatiles' barracks smelled of copper and fresh grease — not the old, sweet rot of the Maintenance Pit but something sharper, experimental, alive. The people there weren't soldiers; they were instruments — half-formed, wire and rune, sinew and glass.
Zarkus introduced them like tools cataloged by purpose:"Korvash — demolition and field sabotage." A broad-shouldered thing whose chest cavity gleamed with smelting plates."Linho — recon and infiltration." Small, quick, a whisper in motion."Maela — mana disruption." A woman whose tattoos glowed when she laughed and dimmed when she thought too hard.Two more — quiet, efficient — machine and motion fused.
They watched Kaiden like something dangerous in a cage.
Maela stepped forward, extending a hand that trembled with restrained energy. When she touched him, her skin left a faint cool sigil that shimmered, then faded. "You'll burn brighter than the rest, Callister. Don't be the kind of fire that destroys the whole house."
The name hit him like static through his chestplate — Callister.He froze for a breath too long. A memory flickered: white light, blood, Arvan's hand, a promise broken by metal and pain. His optics glitched, refocusing too sharply.
Kaiden's reply came slow. "I'll keep the flame long enough to find what's behind the smoke."
Her lips curved. "Then don't be a fool."
That night, the War Room smelled of exhaust and cold metal. Zarkus laid three holo-maps over the table: the border corridor near Garanth, a lattice of veins pulsing red through enemy lines.
"Our theater is the Garanth corridor," Zarkus said. "Human supplies feed their advance. We cut arteries — not frontal assaults. Surgical strikes. In and out."
He looked to Kaiden. "You'll lead the insertion team."
Kaiden watched the red threads flicker. Somewhere behind those lines was Arvan Callister — the man who had looked at him not as a weapon, but as a mistake. The thought itched like rust in his mind.
Zarkus's tone was the same iron calm. "Your autonomy is conditional. Prove useful, and you keep it. Fail, and you'll be stripped down to utility."
Kaiden's response was small, quiet, but it carried weight. "I'll do it."
Sylen stood close, nearer than order required. The leash around his neck tightened — but now it looped two ways.
Before they dispersed, Maela's voice found him again. "If that violet rot wants to spread, don't let it settle. Motion hides mutation."
He almost smiled. "Then I'll keep moving."
When they filed out, Kaiden lingered in the doorway, staring at the cold maps and runed walls. Freedom and ruin, he thought. Two words for the same road.
The leash was still attached — but now he could pull on both ends.
He stepped into the night with Sylen at his shoulder, the Volatiles trailing behind like a procession of broken moons — and somewhere in the distance, beneath smoke and empire banners, the Garanth corridor waited to burn.