Wolfskin

by Jeremy Szal

Genres: Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Alien Invasion

Synopsis

Vakov Fukasawa is trapped.

Captured by his ruthless and cruel enemies, the House of Suns, he has been broken in body and mind, tormented until he is something less than human. And yet, Vakov and his brother Artyom are the Common's last hope.

The war against the Suns has grown to swallow the galaxy. Entire systems rattle with violence. Planets are burning. Species are hunted to extinction. And now that the genocidal alien Shenoi have been successfully summoned, billions of lives are staring into the abyss.

To save his friends and his home, Vakov will need to work with his brother to build a great intergalactic army. He will need to become the hero, the legend, his people believe him to be. He will need to draw on his every last ounce of courage to gain the loyalty and fury required to survive. He will need to become The Black Wolf.
But is Vakov willing to pay the price that victory demands?


Praise for Stormblood:

'Stormblood is a high stakes adrenaline filled adventure featuring two estranged brothers suddenly on opposite ends of an addict's war. And it's real damn good' Nick Martell, author of THE KINGDOM OF LIARS

'A captivating military sci-fi debut. Stormblood tells a splendid story about two brothers divided by war that is full of comradeship, actions, and conflict' Novel Notions

'A magnificent and explosive adrenaline-fest . . . Szal's debut is an absolute must read for fans of gritty, action-packed, detective and military SF' Grimdark Magazine

'This frenetic, grisly sucker-punch of a book manages to be everything you could want from sci-fi, while also carving out its own niche with a rusty slingshiv.' Fantasy Book Review

'Vakov Fukasawa is a former soldier, addicted to the biotech inside his own body that makes him constantly crave for action. And there is plenty of action in this fast moving novel, but not at the expense of ideas, or of humanity, or of vivid descriptions of Szal's carefully imagined war-torn galaxy' Chris Beckett

Release date: March 5, 2026

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 608

Sample

My name is Vakov Fukasawa. I’m a Reaper: a bio-engineered soldier injected with a drug called stormtech – DNA harvested from an extinct alien race known as the Shenoi – making me and Reapers like me permanently addicted to adrenaline and aggression.

I only survived the harrowing war against the galactic empire calling themselves Harvest because of my bond to my brothers, my family, the Reapers like me. But when the war came to an end, I came back to a world where I didn’t belong.

Compass is an asteroid city and the galaxy’s grand capital, where I only swapped one war for another. Stormtech was unleashed on the market, creating a galaxy-wide drug epidemic. Harmony, the galactic governing body who shot me up with stormtech in the first place, told me my fellow Reaper squadmates were being deliberately overdosed, tortured, and killed.

And my estranged little brother Artyom was the prime suspect.

I’d abandoned my brother once before. I wouldn’t make the same mistake now. I agreed to investigate.

I discovered that the Reapers were being murdered by a cruel, violent cult known as the House of Suns. They worshipped the Shenoi, and they wanted to uplift humanity by spreading the stormtech into as many souls as possible. Mad bastards, the lot of them. Mad and dangerous.

Things only became worse when the Kaiji – an alien species who ruled over a great empire – told us the Shenoi were planning a return, and the House of Suns were the ones trying to summon them. If they were successful, all of humanity would pay the price – a price measured in blood.

As I investigated, I became more and more addicted to stormtech, and my own violent nature. But I learned to adapt. Despite all my doubts and uncertainties, I stopped resisting the stormtech, tried to work with it. It was because of this that I was able to kill the cult’s leader. Before she died, she fired six bullets into my little brother’s chest.

I was able to use a dose of altered stormtech to revive him.

Artyom was imprisoned for his crimes. But given the informa­tion he’d shared about the cult, I was determined to free him.

The Suns’ leader was dead, but the cult organisation was not. They were just as determined to awaken the Shenoi and plunge the galaxy into mindless chaos. Two men led the organisation: The Jackal, a sociopathic hunter, and the new leader of the cult. And Sokolav, my former Commander. He’d trained us Reapers. He’d known me since I was a boy. He’d saved my life. And now he wanted me dead.

Worse, the cult had gained the allegiance of Eclipse, a faction of spacefaring warriors with a serious bone to pick with Harmony. Fortunately, we had formed an alliance with the alien Kaiji. Our battle was no longer contained to Compass; it now spanned half the galaxy.

I was placed in charge of my own elite squad, and tasked with destroying the cult. The squad included Grim, a hacker and my best friend. Quilan, an anxiety-ridden alien and explosives expert. Jasken, a bounty hunter with a troubled past. Mandy, an eccentric sharpshooter. Juvens, a Kaiji warrior with a delightfully dark sense of humour and a penchant for killing. And Katherine Kowalski, a Harmony operative, and my partner.

But now we were squarely within the Suns’ sights. They wanted all of our heads on spikes. Especially mine. I’d never faced such a brutal enemy, and it filled us all with fear.

I grew closer to my fireteam, developing bonds and relationships with them, like I’d done with my Reaper brothers. I did the same with my brother while he was in prison,

Slowly, I became a warrior again. I used my new stormtech abilities to lead my fireteam to victory, destroying the cult’s plans and killing off their lead members one by one. They’d killed my Reaper brothers, and now they were trying to kill my friends. I swore that I would make them pay. And if there’s one thing you need to know about me, I keep my promises.

But as we waged our war against the House of Suns, I started to have nightmares. Violent dreams, filled with images of the Shenoi. I saw their shadowy forms moving in the dark spaces between stars, and my body reacted badly.

The Kaiji told me that this was something called Blindspace. It was the alien’s hivemind, which they used to conquer the galaxy. And now my mind, my body, was connected to it.

I should have told my fireteam. But I didn’t. Not until I thought it was too late. Blindspace would have killed me. But we were able to infuse Kaiji DNA into my flesh, which severed me from the hivemind and saved my life. Now, I have the DNA of two alien species, writhing inside in my flesh.

I am a hard man to kill.

Sharpened by rage, strengthened by friendship, I faced an invading force of cultist ships as they tried to take over Compass. But my enemies underestimated my fierceness, and I led my flotilla to victory in what was one of the greatest naval battles in humanity’s galactic history.

My victory had won my brother his freedom. But when I went to release him, I walked into a trap. Sokolav, thinking my brother still loyal to the Suns, used him as bait to capture me, and hand me over to the Jackal.

In that a single moment, I was undone.

This is where I am now: being taken from my home, far from the eyes of my friends. I know my enemies, so I know that they intend to torture me for sport. Death, if it comes, will be a mercy.

I have no chance of escape.

No hope.

No hope, except for Artyom.

Dread.

I know what it is to feel it. To be the hunted. To feel that formless, black anxiety swell in the deep hollows of my stomach, spreading upwards like a shadow of death. But I have never felt the kind of dread that I felt now as I stared into the eyes of the Jackal. My captor. The man who had hunted me for years.

His eyes left never mine as half a dozen men hauled me into the belly of a small starship. Trapped in my exoskeleton, I was unable to move. Defenceless. In a few minutes, the starship would soar through space, stealing me away from Compass. Away from my home, my family, my friends.

The Jackal sensed my dread. His eyes twinkled with cold amusement as he leaned over, his teeth bared in a predatory smile.

‘Do you hear that, Vakov Fukasawa?’ he asked, once the men had secured my restraints and locked my exoskeleton down. But besides the thunder of blood in my ears and the trembling of my heart, there was only silence. Great, unwavering silence. ‘That’s the sound of you being undone, alone. Without friends. Without anyone to save you.

‘A jackal always catches up with his prey. And now, I’m going to remake you, Vakov. Break you. Turn you into my instrument. What will you be, by the end of it?’ His eyes searched me. Relishing me, eating up every single centimetre of me. Then he drew back and lifted up a steel muzzle. Ever so gently, he strapped it around my head and locked it to my face. His warm breath tickled my neck as he spoke in my ear. ‘This is where you belong. Not in the light, but alone, and in the dark.’

I felt the dread gnaw at me, threatening to consume me. But it did not. Because, behind the Jackal, I could see Artyom. My little brother. He sat in a bucket seat, watching the scene unfold with seemingly cold indifference. But that was just a mask he had to wear. The Jackal believed my brother was his ally. He had to keep it that way. Artyom couldn’t let any of them know where his loyalties truly lay. He did not speak a single word to me.

Instead, he discreetly tucked his thumb into his fist and then twisted his middle finger and index finger together. A signal.

Survive, he was telling me. Survive.

I was not alone. I had not been abandoned.

I was a Reaper. A warrior of rage and fury. I’d gone to hell and back more times than I could count. I had survived a war. I had defeated Jae. I had destroyed the House of Suns’ fleet and led my team to victory in the Battle of Khaar.

Did the Jackal truly think he understood me? Could undo me? No. He didn’t know what I was capable of. What I’d endured. He thought he could muzzle me like a dog. But I wasn’t a dog, I was a wolf, and I still had my claws.

Do your worst, you bastard. Hurt me. Wound me. Cut me. I know pain. I know dread. I know what it is to be broken.

I would not simply survive.

I would rage.

Most people die before they go to hell. My enemies have not given me the privilege.

I’m locked away the Jackal’s dungeon, in the sunless depths of his prison facility. Blackness consumes my vision. It suffoc­ates me. Chokes me.

My body’s been shelled inside a prisoner’s ironsuit. It’s black and red and encases me from sole to scalp in a thick, rubberlike material. It’s skintight, immobilising me. The words Permanent Prisoner – RDJ177 are stencilled across the back and shoulders of my suit. My head and face have been sealed in a constricting hood with only the narrowest of holes for my eyes, nose and mouth, fitting me with a rebreather. It regulates my oxygen supply, which means I cannot suffocate myself, even if I wanted to.

I’m strapped down to the bench. Bound there with a series of heavy leather and metal bonds that clench tightly around each one of my limbs, in addition to my waist, biceps, chest, neck. The reinforced buckles are each equipped with heavy ratchet mechanisms, so special equipment is needed to loosen them. My chest heaves against the thick bands strapped across my torso, against the straps of the full-body harness that’s wrapped around me, pulled so tight I can barely breathe without pain. Even the bonds encircling my wrists are so secure I cannot even clench my fingers.

It all serves to remind me that there’s no escape. Not from the life-support cables that the ironsuit has threaded through my body to pump me with nutrients. Not from the other cables that feed me time-dilation drugs that muddle my sense of time passing.

I am completely within their power.

The ironsuit can thicken, becoming as hard as rock on the outside. But for now, my body’s secured into the armoured suit that’s become my coffin. The coffin, like my ironsuit, fits me down to the centimetre, compressed to the shape of my body. There’s no room to struggle. I can’t move or speak. It feels like every muscle is bound in iron and encased in concrete. I’m isolated from everything. I’ve got nothing here. Nothing but the sound of my blood trickling through my veins, the smell of my fermented sweat, the echo of my breath thundering in my chest.

Encased like this, held immobile, I’m filled with a sense of crushing, all-consuming claustrophobia. But I am not left alone for long enough to get used to it. Every so often, my captors pull me out of my shell to torment me, interrogate me, or perform invasive tests and experiments. They’ll drown me in icy water, force me to run on a treadmill till I pass out. Sometimes they’ll stretch me on a rack and pull the stormtech out of me, or carve little wounds in my flesh and fill them with salt and take wagers on how long it’ll take for the wounds to heal. Other times they’ll slap me around, tickle me, tighten my harness to the breaking point, or find new ways to humiliate and terrorize me. When they’re bored, they’ll lock me back in here, and the horror becomes new once again.

But the worst torment is the pain that they inflict on my mind. They tell me that I’m a failure. That I’ve been abandoned, that no one is coming for me, that I’m theirs’ forever. Their words creep into my head, turning my mind against itself, and with each passing day it becomes harder to resist them.

Am I dead? No. No, not yet. I can feel the stormtech. Dragging itself down my spine. Slithering in and out between my ribs. Bashing itself against the closed cage of my chest, desperate to be free.

A mind in motion is always fed. Trapped here, motionless, mine is scratching itself raw. Those scratches are carving ­channels and tunnels in my brain, forming deep ruts, sending my thoughts down a never-ending spiral of anxiety. How long have I been locked here this time? A week? Two weeks? Two months? Has everyone forgotten me? How long will I be trapped here for? Or are they going to leave me here for good this time?

Does anyone care about me? Does anyone even remember that I exist?

No. No one does. I’m alone. I’m alone.

A storm of frustration and anxiety swells within me. My pulse quickens. Heart pounding. Chest heaving. Muscles tensing. I twitch against my restraints. The metal and leather bite hard into my flesh, draws blood. The armour senses my struggle and compresses against my flesh.

Claustrophobia overwhelms me. The whispers of insanity swarm around me. I’m having a panic attack. Can’t breathe. Can’t breathe!

Yes you can! Breathe, damn you!

I force myself to slowly rake in air. Release it. Another. Then another. I twitch the toes of my left foot, then my right, then each hand. Repeating the pattern, over and over, seeing my breaths like the rising tide of an ocean, lifting me up and down, till the last violent spasm ripples out of my body and takes the panic with it. I go limp, half-drowned in icy cold sweat.

I don’t know how much longer I can do this.

The worst thing about being a prisoner isn’t the hopelessness. It’s those first few seconds of consciousness, rising from a tortured sleep. Blinking, confused, hazy. In those brief moments of peace, you forget where you are. What’s being done to you. Then the realisation sets in and the horrors inevitably come crashing down on you like a tsunami all over again. Pure misery, renewed each day.

It’s hard to keep hope alive when it’s being regrown, only to be destroyed every single day. But I hold on to it, because of my brother.

Artyom. My little brother. We were so close to being in the clear. We had a small window of happiness, of hope, before the Jackal cruelly snatched it away. But as he did, my brother whispered for me to trust him. He promised he’d get me out of here. That hope is the only thing keeping me sane.

I know he’s out there. Somewhere. Just like my friends, the ones I left behind. I whisper their names to myself in the darkness. Katherine. Grim. Mandy. Jasken. Quilan. Juvens.

I want to be with you. To be safe, to hear your voices and see your faces. To ask for your forgiveness. I know I do not deserve it. But I’m asking for it anyway. Please don’t let me be forgotten.

The alien stormtech leaps along my arms, goes spidering up my biceps. As it does, my mind swerves back to the interrogations I’d endured at the hands of the Suns. They piled their questions on me like water poured on a prisoner in an oubliette till I thought I’d drown in them. They asked about Harmony, war plans, schematics, the location of stockpiled ships and weapon caches. But they never questioned me about my own stormtech.

They don’t know that I’ve also been injected with Kaiji DNA. How long will that last?

I try to force the anxieties away. I won’t let the Jackal break me. This isn’t my first time as a prisoner. My time with Harvest taught me what it means to endure suffering. They did not break me. And neither will the Jackal.

Hours pass. I recede into myself. Lost in the hazy, twitchy realm of sleepless exhaustion, my mind drifts in strange directions. And when it does, like always, I see them in my mind’s eye. The Reapers. My dead friends. They’re standing in a rolling field on a bright summer’s day under a clear blue sky. Sometimes they call to me, asking me to follow them, to find the light.

Every other time I’ve encountered them, the Reapers faded as soon as I tried to talk to them. But something feels different this time. Like my soul is transitioning between the borders of life and death. Alcatraz steps forward, stretches his hand out towards me, inviting me to take it. I do not know if it’s real or not. But I know that the Reapers are offering me an escape from this madness, this pain.

I can join them at last. I can let myself go.

I’m about to venture forwards when a sound jerks me out of my vision. A distant, foreboding rumble. Armour plates are shifting with a sound like the grinding of ancient alien stones. The sound of my machine prison preparing to release me. The sound of pain about to come.

They’re opening my coffin once more.

The Reapers start to fade. I wordlessly scream for them to stay. Not to leave me behind. But they do. The bodies of my friends become smoke and the light vanishes, and I’m left with that sensation of crushing dread that consumes me from the inside out.

Because I know what’s coming next.

There’s the sound of a great, wrenching crack like the stone jaw of a statue breaking free from the empire of its body. Machinery whines. A vibration travels under my back, shudders up my spine, as the mechanical teeth pull me forward. Into hell.

Light.

Blinding light flooded into my eyes, searing my irises. I squinted against the glare, a black wave of fuzzy spots writhing in my vision. I waited for a moment before I opened my eyes completely and looked down at my body.

I was strapped to a cradle machine that was shaped like an oversized cryocrypt tube. It was connected to a mad tangle of thick industrial machinery, all black gears and life-support cables, all working to keep me prisoner. I’d been positioned flat on my back, but now the bench was tilting, raising me to a sitting position. My prisoner’s suit thinned, becoming more pliable but no less tight. Racked with nausea and claustrophobia, I felt my heart hammering through my ribcage as the helmet encasing my head peeled back. My cracked lips parted and I gasped for air through the narrow slit in my hood. It tasted so sweet and fresh and pure that I almost wept.

But I didn’t. I didn’t dare.

I heard someone approaching me. A familiar, sinister voice penetrated my thoughts. ‘There you are old friend. Did you have a nice little rest?’ asked the Jackal.

I wanted nothing more than to close my eyes again. To lock myself back in my world for a few moments more. But that was all part of the game. I couldn’t show him weakness. I had to face him. I had to show him that he hadn’t yet broken me.

So I faced him. My captor. My tormentor.

He was built like a rapier: slim-shouldered, needle-thin, long-limbed. He wore a taunting, sly smile, like everyone around him was a fool, and their behaviour was a constant source of amusement. The overhead lights sliced across his sharp Japanese features, bathing the left side of his face in inky shadows. His black hair was well-oiled, swept back from his face. He wore an ornate maroon shirt with a floral pattern and a pair of black suspenders, buttoned into his silk trousers. His aftershave smelled of lavender and thyme. At first glance, he looked like a young, well-mannered businessman. Until you saw his eyes, his face. His face was that of an ancient predator, in love with the hunt. A man who enjoyed scrutinizing his prey, not to catch them more efficiently, but to draw it out, make a game of it. This was a man who lived to dominate and break other men.

‘I’m impressed,’ he continued, patting my chest, rattling the buckles of my harness. ‘You’ve lasted three weeks, twenty-one hours and seventeen minutes in isolation. It’s your personal best, I think. I half expected you to chew through your own tongue this time. I wonder, would little Grim or Katherine have handled this so well?’

I felt it then.

Hatred.

A seething tsunami of hatred and rage. Scalding my guts, strangling my throat, squeezing me with such force it felt like my skull would split wide open. It tasted like blood, like acid. My lips peeled back from my teeth in a snarl, a low growl in my throat. The loathing I felt for the Jackal was so strong I felt dizzy. I jerked in my restraints, the straps biting hard into my flesh, desperate to tear him apart.

‘Ah. There’s the beast in you,’ The Jackal purred. ‘And I was starting to think that we’d broken you. It sure looks like it, doesn’t it?’

Before my captivity, I had been built like a stallion. Over two metres tall, bound with thick chords of taut muscles, I was as agile I was strong. I was the sort of man who punched his way through things instead of going around them.

But every time they pulled me out of my shell, I saw how much my body had deteriorated.

My skin was the texture and colour of faded parchment. Bruises covered my body like islands of blue and purple surrounded by yellowing water. A legion of ragged scars, wounds, lacerations and burns had been carved into my flesh. Everything ached. My muscles felt shrunken and malformed, and it felt as if every vein my body had become filled with finely powdered glass. I could smell my wounds, smell the stink of my sweat and my scalp was covered with scabs and crusted with dry blood.

I was only thirty-two years old, and yet I looked like a corpse.

I looked around. My prison cell was both a torture chamber and a small laboratory. It was a claustrophobic hexagon-shaped room of hard, jagged angles and black metal. But my attention was focused on the people standing around me. The cultists that made up the Jackal’s entourage. His lickspittles, his lackeys. These arrogant and despicable creatures. They thought themselves honourable, brave. They liked to call themselves noble, progressive, thinking that it shielded them from morality and judgement. And now they’d made a hobby out of tormenting and torturing me for their own amusement and revenge.

They were everything I hated.

‘There you are, Reaper. How I’ve missed that scent of yours,’ Xagao said. He was slim but broad-shouldered, black-skinned and fiendishly cruel. I’d severed his right arm in the battle on New Vladivostok, and I saw he’d found himself a replacement. He stepped close to watch the stormtech as it roved through my body. Jealousy dripped from him. He especially hated that his body was immune to stormtech and mine wasn’t. He prodded me just below the ribs, where he knew I couldn’t abide it. I flinched despite myself. ‘Oh, you didn’t like that, did you? Good. We like our prisoners to put up a bit of a fight. We like the prisoners who scream.’

‘You screamed loud enough when I cut off your arm,’ I rasped.

Xagao’s fist crunched into the side of my head. It was like having a door slammed against my skull. My neck cracked painfully. Blood leaked down the side of my head and dripped to the floor.

Ekko Sajara laughed at Xagao’s reaction. He was a slender wisp of a man, with an almost elven appearance. His white-gold hair fell down to his shoulders and fluttered behind him like a comet trail when he moved. His ears were pierced with black and ruby stones, his jaw carved from hard marble. His older brother Aegon stood next to him, almost a spitting image of his younger sibling. They were both offensively handsome creatures, obnoxious and boorish, and were rarely seen without their own cadre of sycophants. Between the two, Aegon was the better killer. He viewed the act as a grotesque sport, the height of human endeavour. The two of them had a perverse fascination with pain and cruelty. Aegon liked to inflict it, while Ekko liked to watch.

‘You might want to keep your distance, my dear Xagao,’ purred Ekko. ‘After all, the Reaper here did make mincemeat of your arm.’

‘Shut your gob, you inbred shit,’ Xagao sneered, ‘or I’ll shut it for you.’

‘Manners, manners.’ Aegon waggled a finger with a theatrical sigh.

Xagao’s sneer only deepened. He hated the Sajara family almost as much as he hated me. ‘I was talking to your brother, not you, you preening goat.’

‘Do you quarrel with us, Xagao?’ Aegon asked eagerly. Lust for violence sparkled in his eyes. ‘That would be a most unwise move, my good fellow. Perhaps you should withdraw. You wouldn’t want to overplay your … hand.’

Having dismantled his enemy for the moment, Aegon turned his attention to me. ‘Oh, what a specimen you were, Vakov. What a specimen. A creature of myth, reincarnated into the modern age.’ Aegon leaned forward and spoke in a stage whisper. ‘I admired the sight of you: fully armoured, sword in hand, crushing skulls with a single blow and severing heads with but a single swipe. It was glorious. A remarkable show of herculean strength.’

‘Those were our people he was killing,’ Xagao grinded out.

‘They were weak,’ Aegon said affably. ‘Better to separate the wheat from the weeds before the harvest, no?’ Lovingly, he traced a slender, manicured finger down my restrained arm, admiring the stormtech with childlike glee. ‘What beautiful alien technology this is. What violence it could unleash! ’Tis a cruel thing indeed, to take a lion away from his jungle and cage him. Such a majestic beast should be allowed to indulge his predatory nature.’ He sighed sadly. ‘But alas, the lion and the jackal cannot be king of the jungle both.’

Dow grunted, stroking his chin with one big hand as he inspected me. Dow was a bastard, hard as a rusted nail and as ugly as incest. He was a war-scarred beast with heavy eyebrows, a hungry look in his eyes and cracked lips that were permanently fixed in a contemptuous sneer. His greasy hair was an uncompromising black, coming down to his chest, while his right ear was nothing more than a flap of gristle. I’d bitten it off when I first arrived here. I’d been aiming for his eye. His jagged armour, marked with a skull sigil, marked him as a member of the Death Squad. Men who made a living hunting down other men. ‘The bastard is knocking on death’s door,’ he rasped.

‘He seems to have one foot through it already,’ Sabine Sajara purred. Unlikely lover to Dow, and sister to Aegon and Ekko, her hair was white-blonde and her eyes were flecked with silver. Her armour was burnished gold, filigreed with thorn and rose patterns. She looked like a creature from an ancient fairytale, come to life. But she was a wretched harpy of a woman with an insatiable appetite for cruelty and a superiority complex of staggering proportions. ‘We were all talking about you, Vakov,’ she said, sipping from a glass of red wine. ‘About how much fun it is to have a gimp chained up in the basement. Who knew that Reapers would make such delightful pets?’

I stared straight ahead, ignoring her. I hated these people. But what I hated even more was seeing the joy in their eyes as they saw me brought low, humiliated. I’d built up a reputation as a fearless warrior and now the Jackal was tearing it down for their enjoyment.

‘How miserable and frustrating this must be for you, Vakov,’ the Jackal said. His fingers coiled beneath the back joint of my harness and jerked hard, making the straps dig painfully into my gut. ‘To be kidnapped and held captive like this. Strapped down, helpless, having day after day stolen from you while life goes on outside without you.’

‘When do we get to have our fun with our prisoner?’ asked Xagao.

‘In good time,’ the Jackal said softly.

‘As you say, boss.’

Sabine and Aegon smiled grotesquely at each other, mocking Xagao’s desperate attempts to please their Commander. Xagao took the bait. ‘Something funny, you stupid cow?’ he growled at Sabine, his contempt so thick you could have cut it with a knife.

‘Why, nothing at all.’ Sabine sipped at her wine and smiled. ‘Whatever gave you that idea?’

Xagao wasn’t backing down. ‘Go ahead. Laugh at me. It’s only fair. After all, I laughed myself sick when a third of your ships got razed over Hyperion. How many ships do you own now, bitch?’

Sabine’s left eyelid twitched. Sensing violence in the air, Dow stirred, eager to tear someone’s tongue out.

I watched the scene play out. The cultists had always been at each other’s throats. They were vipers. This was their way. But they’d never feuded like this before. Something had changed.

The Jackal ignored the banter, his eyes lasering into me. ‘You’ve earned yourself quite the number of enemies over the last few years, Vakov. You’re the most valuable prisoner I’ve ever had. Imagine if I auctioned you off to the highest bidder! I’d make a fortune. But all the credits in the Common don’t compare to the satisfaction I get from having you under my lock and key. Especially because he helped put you here.’

The Jackal stepped aside for a moment, and tightness spread through my chest as I saw him.

Artyom.

My younger brother was a little shorter than me, but he otherwise had the same broad-shouldered, tight-muscled, long-limbed and agile build that I did. His face was sharp and shrewd, and his features were a mix of East Russian and Japanese, like my own. He swept a tumble of messy black hair out of his face as watched me. He wore an olive-green suit and a standard issue harness, with his helmet clipped to his waistbelt. The cult’s sigil was marked proudly on his shoulder.

We’d grown up together, only for him to become a broken lonely soul as he reached adulthood. In the past year, I’d watched him evolve into a new man. A man desperately trying to right his wrongs, to redeem himself after a lifetime of mistakes. I’d seen so little of him since my captivity. The brief moments we’d spent in the same room were during my torture or interrogation. Never alone. There’d never been any opportunity for us to communicate.

But we had our ways.

Artyom curled his left hand into a fist, his thumb tucked out of sight, a private signal. Soon. Working on it. He then scratched the back of his neck with his right hand. Stay strong.

The reassurance helped to calm me down. Just. I was not alone in this nightmare. He was still searching for an