?The scream of the depressurizing hangar was a physical weight against Willis’s eardrums. The air didn't just move; it clawed at his skin, dragging his body toward the jagged maw where the Syndicate’s boarding bridge had pierced the Oversight’s hull. Loose metal crates, discarded drone husks, and shattered glass flew past him in a lethal storm of debris. Willis drove the heel of his fire axe into the deck plating to anchor himself as the floor tilted toward the white abyss of the upper atmosphere.

  ?Malice was a flicker of violet shadow in the whirlwind. She didn't struggle against the vacuum. She moved with it, her body light and aerodynamically perfect. She vaulted over a sliding supply crate and lunged for Willis. Her curved blades shimmered with a toxic purple resonance that hummed at a frequency designed to bypass standard energy shields.

  ?"You are worth more than a sector’s weight in raw mana, Weaver!" Malice’s voice was a cold edge that cut through the roar of the wind. "The Syndicate does not leave profit on a sinking ship!"

  ?Willis parried the first strike, the impact sending a jolt of vibration up his arms. He didn't have the mana for a prolonged duel. He could feel the threads of the atmosphere thinning, his lungs burning as they fought for oxygen.

  ?

  ?He looked at the boarding bridge. It was a massive, rusted corridor of Syndicate iron, currently groaning as it ground against the Oversight’s matte composite hull. The friction was throwing off showers of white-hot sparks. Willis saw the thread of the bridge’s structural tension. It was held in place by four massive magnetic harpoons.

  ?[Status: Structural Integrity 22%]

  [Hazard: Atmospheric Decompression]

  ?"Vane! Get the lead truck onto the bridge!" Willis shouted. His voice was nearly swallowed by the gale.

  ?The first Syndicate transport truck, driven by Vane, was sliding backward toward the breach. Vane slammed the vehicle into reverse, using the momentum of the slide to steer the rear wheels onto the metal lip of the boarding bridge. The tires shrieked as they found traction on the rusted Syndicate iron.

  ?"The bridge is buckling, Willis!" Vane’s voice crackled through the comm-link. "If the Oversight ship shifts its stabilizers, the whole thing will shear off!"

  ?Malice didn't give Willis time to respond. She spun in a low circle, her blades slicing through the air in a double-arc. Willis leaped backward, the silver lines on his skin flaring as he wove a thread of weight into his boots. He landed hard, his eyes locked on the overhead power-relay for the hangar’s magnetic locks.

  ?

  ?Jax was already halfway across the bridge, his four-legged iron chassis stomping through the wind. His heavy chain-gun began to spin. The barrels were a blur of cold steel.

  ?"Step aside, girl!" Jax bellowed. "I’ll take his legs first. He doesn't need to walk to be worth a fortune!"

  ?The chain-gun opened fire. A stream of high-caliber kinetic slugs tore through the hangar, shredding the crates Willis had been using for cover. Willis dived behind the reinforced pillar of a docking crane, the metal screaming as the slugs punched through the outer casing.

  ?[Mana: 15/250 (Recovering)]

  [Stamina: 12/100]

  ?Willis looked at the refugees. They were huddled in the beds of the two trucks that hadn't reached the bridge yet. Lyra was standing on the tailgate of the middle truck, her mercury coat billowing wildly. She was throwing her pink discs not at the enemies, but at the hangar’s emergency shutters.

  ?"Willis! The shutters are jammed!" Lyra screamed. "The Oversight’s internal logic is locked in a Cauterize loop! It won't let the hangar seal while the breach is active!"

  ?Willis realized the Oversight ship wasn't trying to save itself. It was following a directive to purge the area, even if that meant letting its own atmosphere bleed into the void. The ship was a machine without a survival instinct, only a set of rules.

  ?

  ?He reached out and grabbed the thread of the Syndicate bridge’s power-source. It was a crude, high-output generator located at the base of the boarding bridge. He didn't try to shut it down. He wove a thread of his own volatile resonance into the generator’s cooling-loop.

  ?[Skill Manifestation: Feedback Loop]

  ?The generator began to shriek, the sound a mechanical counterpart to the howling wind. The rusted iron of the bridge started to glow a dull, angry red as the power surged back into the hull.

  ?"What are you doing, Weaver?" Jax roared, his front legs skidding on the heated metal.

  ?"I'm giving the Oversight an infection!" Willis replied.

  ?The surge hit the Oversight ship’s hull. The matte-black composite began to smoke as the Syndicate’s unrefined power clashed with the Oversight’s delicate logic-circuits. The ship’s internal sensors registered the surge as a catastrophic fire-hazard.

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  ?[Emergency Protocol: Fire Suppression Initiated]

  ?The massive hangar shutters finally began to grind shut. They didn't care about the boarding bridge or the people on it. They were designed to seal off a fire at any cost. The heavy steel slabs descended like a guillotine.

  ?"Back!" Malice hissed. She recognized the danger instantly and vaulted toward the Syndicate ship.

  ?"Vane! Floor it!" Willis yelled.

  ?The second and third trucks roared as they found the bridge. The middle truck, carrying the nurse and the child, bounced over the gap just as the shutters slammed down onto the bridge’s metal neck.

  ?The impact was cataclysmic. The Oversight’s shutters sheared through the top half of the boarding bridge, sending a rain of white-hot metal shards into the air. The bridge groaned, its magnetic harpoons straining as the Oversight ship began to pull away, dragging the Syndicate vessel with it.

  ?Willis was trapped on the wrong side of the shutters.

  ?He stood on the narrow lip of the breach, the freezing wind of the upper atmosphere turning his breath into ice. Behind him, the Oversight hangar was sealed. In front of him, the bridge was a burning, mangled wreck, and the three trucks were perched precariously on a tilting metal platform that hung over a five-mile drop.

  ?Jax was still on the bridge, his iron chassis pinning the middle truck against a guardrail.

  ?"You're coming with me, one way or another!" Jax screamed. He raised his massive pincer to crush the truck’s cab.

  ?Willis didn't think. He wove a thread of momentum between his heart and the truck’s bumper. He threw himself into the void, his body a silver streak against the white clouds.

  ?He didn't hit the bridge. He used the thread to swing himself around the underside, the friction of the metal burning his palms as he whipped upward like a pendulum. He landed on Jax’s back, his fire axe held in both hands.

  ?"Get off my people!" Willis roared.

  ?He drove the crystalline blade into the steam-vent on Jax’s chassis. A jet of pressurized vapor erupted, scalding Willis’s face, but he didn't let go. He twisted the blade, the silver lines within the wood glowing with a fierce sapphire light.

  ?[Critical Hit: Engine Malfunction]

  ?Jax’s chassis seized. The mercenary let out a cry of frustration as his mechanical legs locked up. The weight of the four-legged iron beast began to tilt the bridge even further.

  ?"The harpoons are snapping!" Lyra yelled from the truck.

  ?One of the four magnetic harpoons shattered with a sound like a cannon shot. The bridge swung violently to the left, the metal screaming as it began to tear away from the Syndicate ship’s hull.

  ?Willis looked at the gap. It was thirty feet of open air between the tilting bridge and the Syndicate ship’s hangar.

  ?"Vane! Jump it!" Willis shouted.

  ?"We won't make it with this weight!" Vane replied. "The trucks will nosedive!"

  ?Willis looked at the threads of the three trucks. He realized what he had to do. He didn't have the mana to lift them, but he could change their relationship with the world for just a second. He could weave a thread of lightness into the metal, a momentary suspension of the System’s gravity-logic.

  ?[Skill Manifestation: Gravity Suspension (Prototype)]

  [Mana: 0/250]

  [Warning: Consciousness Failure Imminent]

  ?He reached out with both hands, his fingers trembling, the silver lines on his skin turning a dull, ashen grey as he poured every remaining drop of his life-force into the weave.

  ?"Now!" he gasped.

  ?The trucks roared. Vane slammed the lead vehicle into top gear and drove off the edge of the crumbling bridge. The truck didn't fall. It sailed through the air with an unnatural, slow-motion grace, its tires spinning in the void before slamming onto the Syndicate ship’s landing deck.

  ?The second truck followed. Then the third.

  ?Willis fell to his knees on the bridge. He was empty. The world was spinning, the white clouds and the black ships blurring into a single grey smear.

  ?The final harpoon snapped.

  ?The bridge fell away from the ships, a mangled piece of iron tumbling into the abyss. Willis felt the weightlessness take him. He didn't reach for a thread. He didn't have any left.

  ?As he fell, a silver blur shot out from the Syndicate ship’s hangar. It wasn't a thread. It was a cable.

  ?Lyra stood at the edge of the hangar, her mercury coat glowing with a frantic light as she held the end of a high-tension tow-line. The cable wrapped around Willis’s waist, yanking him out of the air with a force that nearly snapped his ribs.

  ?He swung through the air, his boots skimming the bottom of the Syndicate hull, before being hauled upward into the hangar.

  ?He hit the deck hard, his axe clattering away from his hand. He lay there, his chest heaving, his eyes fixed on the ceiling.

  ?"We made it," Lyra whispered, kneeling beside him.

  ?"We aren't safe yet," Vane said, stepping out of the truck and looking at the Syndicate crew that was already surrounding them.

  ?The crew was led by a man Willis hadn't seen before. He was tall and thin, with skin that looked like it had been stitched together from different bodies. He wore a long, black leather coat and carried a heavy, energy-pulsar.

  ?[Antagonist Detected: The Collector - Level 18]

  [Faction: The Iron Syndicate]

  ?"You’ve cost us a lot of hardware, Weaver," the Collector said, his voice a dry rasp. "But the trucks are full of fresh biomass, and your core is still intact. I’d say we’re still in the green."

  ?The Syndicate guards raised their rifles. Vane raised his own weapon, but he was outnumbered ten to one.

  ?"Wait," Willis croaked. He pushed himself up, his arms shaking.

  ?He didn't look at the Collector. He looked at the shadows behind the guards. He saw the threads of the ship’s internal security system. They weren't locked like the Oversight’s. They were messy, unrefined, and full of gaps.

  ?

  ?"You want profit?" Willis asked, his voice gaining a sudden, dangerous clarity. "Then don't look at us. Look at your own navigation logs."

  ?The Collector paused, his brow furrowing. "What are you talking about?"

  ?"The Oversight didn't let us go," Willis said. "They attached a tracker to the bridge’s power-surge. They’re already painting this ship for an orbital strike."

  ?As if on cue, the ship’s alarms began to scream a frantic, rhythmic warning. The overhead lights turned a violent, flashing red.

  ?[Warning: Orbital Lock Detected]

  [Time to Impact: 60 Seconds]

  ?The Collector looked at his wrist-console, his face turning a sickly shade of grey. "How... how did you know?"

  ?"I’m a Weaver," Willis said, his blue eyes flashing with a cold light. "I see the strings before they pull."

  ?The ship rocked with a massive explosion as the first Oversight probe hit the outer hull. The Syndicate ship began to bank hard, the gravity plates failing as the vessel entered a terminal dive.

  ?"Everyone to the escape pods!" the Collector screamed, his greed forgotten in the face of annihilation.

  ?The guards scattered, leaving the trucks and the refugees in the center of the burning hangar.

  ?Willis looked at Vane and Lyra.

  ?"We aren't going to the pods," Willis said.

  ?He looked toward the front of the ship, where the bridge was located.

  ?"We’re taking the helm."

  ?He grabbed his axe and began to run toward the cockpit, the ship’s hull screaming as the Oversight’s secondary beams began to tear through the metal above their heads.