The hallway lights died all at once.
An instant earlier, the Dominion vessel had been filled with alarms and flashing emergency signals. Now—only a suffocating darkness swallowed everything. The hum of the engines sputtered, then stuttered into silence. The ship drifted dead in space.
Rourke froze, his heartbeat echoing like a drum inside the sudden void.
"What just happened?" he whispered.
"EMP surge," the female agent answered, her silhouette barely visible. "But not the standard type. This was—"
A thunderous clang reverberated through the hull, cutting her off.
Then another.
And another.
Something was attaching itself to the ship.
Inspector Vehr drew his sidearm, its power cell glowing faintly in the dark. "Emergency backups should've kicked in. Whatever hit us… disabled them selectively."
"Selective EMPs?" Rourke asked. "Who even has tech like that?"
Vehr didn't answer.
Because they all knew the truth, even if none wanted to say it:
Whoever was boarding the Vigilant Crown wasn't Dominion.
A faint scraping noise traveled down the corridor—slow, metallic, deliberate. Rourke strained to listen, but the sound wasn't quite footsteps. More like claws dragging across the deck. Or tools. Or… probes.
The female agent moved to the side of the door, pistol raised. "They're at the aft hangar. If they breach this wing next—"
"They will," Vehr said calmly. "This section houses our anomaly containment labs. If their target is Talon, they'll come here first."
Rourke clenched his fists. "Why me? I don't even know what I am."
"You're a Gravity Wielder," the female agent said quietly. "That's reason enough."
Another violent impact resounded through the bulkhead at the end of the hallway—closer now, shaking dust from the ceiling. A panel sparked, flickering pale blue light across the corridor.
For a split second, Rourke saw movement beyond the smoke.
A shape.
Tall. Thin. Unnatural.
The silhouette seemed to bend the shadows around it, as if the dark preferred to cling to its outline.
Rourke's breath hitched.
"What is that?" he whispered.
Vehr's response was a low, grim murmur. "A Hunter."
Rourke turned toward him. "Hunter? As in—?"
"Yes." Vehr tightened his grip on his weapon. "The ones who track gravitational anomalies across the star lanes. They hunt Wielders. They harvest them."
"Harvest?" Rourke repeated, stomach twisting.
There was a terrible unspoken truth in the silence that followed.
The Hunters didn't kill Gravity Wielders.
They collected them.
The bulkhead at the far end buckled inward with a thunderous groan.
Metal screeched.
Then—
CRRRAAACK.
The wall tore open.
Cold, airless black spilled through the breach like a living thing. Debris scattered across the floor. Emergency seals deployed instantly, releasing shimmering layers of force shielding that barely kept the vacuum at bay.
The Hunter stepped through the breach.
Its body was humanoid, but elongated—limbs too long, bones visible beneath metallic exoskin. Its head was smooth and featureless, except for the faint glow of three dim, blue lights where eyes should have been.
But what caught Rourke's attention wasn't its appearance.
It was the pressure.
An invisible force radiated from the creature, bending the air, warping the flickering lights. Reality itself seemed to tremble in its presence.
Rourke felt the hum inside him respond—instantly—like a magnet dragged toward a stronger pole.
His knees buckled.
Vehr grabbed his arm. "Stay focused, Talon!"
"I can't," Rourke gasped. "It's pulling—"
The Hunter's head turned, slowly, unnaturally, until it locked on him. The faint blue lights pulsed.
The temperature dropped.
And the pressure inside Rourke surged, slamming into his ribs from the inside.
The female agent fired first.
Her pistol shot a beam of charged plasma across the corridor, striking the Hunter dead center. The energy crackled and flared across its torso—
—and was absorbed.
The Hunter didn't flinch.
The lights on its head pulsed again, and an invisible force blasted outward. The female agent flew backward into a wall, her pistol skittering away across the deck.
"Seren!" Vehr shouted.
He fired next—three precise bolts aimed at the Hunter's joints.
The creature absorbed those too.
Rourke struggled to his feet, breath ragged. "Why isn't it attacking him back?"
Vehr snarled, "Because you are the objective."
The Hunter stepped forward.
Each footfall seemed to distort the metal floor beneath it—like gravity itself bent to accommodate its movement.
Rourke staggered back until his spine hit the wall. He could feel that pressure again, spiraling inside him, responding to the alien force approaching.
Pulling him. Calling him.
"Stop," Rourke whispered.
The pulse inside him rose—hot, immense, like a star waking in his veins.
The Hunter raised a hand, fingers unfolding like mechanical talons.
Rourke felt his feet lift off the ground.
Vehr lunged forward, grabbing Rourke's wrist. "Fight it! Push back!"
"I don't know how!"
"You did it before—now do it again!"
The Hunter closed its fist.
The invisible force tightened around Rourke's chest—
—and the pulse inside him exploded.
A shockwave tore through the corridor.
The Hunter skidded backward, scraping across the deck. Vehr was thrown aside. Emergency lights ruptured overhead, showering the hallway in sparks.
Rourke collapsed to the floor, groaning.
But the Hunter wasn't down.
It rose slowly, body crackling with residual energy. Its three blue lights flickered—once, twice—as though recalibrating.
It stepped forward again.
Persistent. Silent. Unstoppable.
Vehr pushed himself upright, blood streaking down his forehead. "We can't hold it here! We need to move!"
Rourke swallowed, still trembling. "Where?!"
"The only place it won't risk destroying," Vehr said.
A tremor shook the ship.
The Hunter's lights locked onto Rourke again.
Vehr grabbed him by the arm. "The emergency escape deck. Now!"
The creature advanced.
The ship groaned.
The hum inside Rourke thundered.
The chase had begun.