Chapter 158: A Daughter’s Call!

Chapter 158: A Daughter’s Call!

In the crater below, shattered metal debris was scattered everywhere.

A dense web of violet-gold light blades wove through the air, forcing Ryan back step by step.

A sharp sound cut through the chaos.

The sleeve on his left arm was torn clean off. A light blade carved a deep gash across his forearm, cutting all the way to the bone. Violet-gold blood dripped from his fingertips.

Ryan didn't even flinch. He flipped his wrist and brought the broken sword up to catch the second strike coming straight at his face.

Sparks flew.

The clone had no concept of retreat. She used the rebound force to wrench her body into a grotesque angle mid-air, then drove her right leg, crackling with savage energy, straight at Ryan's neck.

Ryan had no choice but to raise his left arm and take it.

The impact slammed into his forearm with tremendous force. The metal floor beneath him buckled again.

He slid backward, his spine shattering a thick support column behind him.

The clone landed in a low crouch and launched herself forward again.

She had abandoned defense entirely.

Faced with the broken sword held across Ryan's chest, the clone didn't even try to dodge. She drove herself straight into it.

Ryan clenched his jaw and forced the blade to deflect half an inch at the last second.

The flat of the sword caught her shoulder and sent her stumbling. But the light blade in her hand sliced across Ryan's ribs in that same moment, tearing away a chunk of flesh.

This wasn't a fight. It was a one-sided, suicidal assault.

Up in the hall above, War Ghost was pacing like a caged animal.

"What the hell is the Commander doing? Just cut her down!" War Ghost slammed his fist into a heap of scrap metal. "He never even blinks when he's killing those alien bastards. Why is he just standing there taking hits?"

Nicholas had his eyes locked on the readouts flickering across the briefcase screen, sweat pouring down his face.

"He can't! That thing's energy frequency is perfectly synced with the Commander's!" Nicholas hammered at the keyboard with both hands. "That old bastard Saren programmed this clone's defensive system to mirror the Commander's energy in reverse. If the Commander uses his Extreme Path energy to attack her, every single bit of damage bounces straight back onto him!"

Osiris gripped his war blade and kicked a pile of machine parts across the floor.

"So we just watch the Commander get bled out?" Osiris turned to stare at Nicholas. "Open that spatial fracture. Let me in there so I can cut that freak apart."

"I can't open it! It's governed by higher-dimensional physics!" Nicholas yanked at his own hair in frustration.

High above them all, Saren watched Ryan getting pushed to the edge below and let out a sharp, grating laugh. The sound traveled through the spatial frequency and bored its way into every ear in the fortress.

"Pitiful carbon-based creatures."

Saren gave the skull staff in his hand a slow, idle sway.

"Your genetics carry the potential to tear galaxies apart, yet you insist on being dragged down by these useless emotions."

"You can't bring yourself to strike, can you? Not that face."

"This is exactly why our Hunter civilization stands above yours. We cut out every weakness and kept only the most efficient killing instinct."

Saren looked down at Ryan amid the ruins, his voice thick with contempt.

"Keep dodging. When you've bled out your last drop, I'll open your skull myself and pull every memory out of your head."

"Then I'll go to Earth. I'll find your real daughter."

"And right in front of you, I will reshape her piece by piece into the most perfect war machine ever made. She will become the sharpest blade the Council has ever wielded, turned against your own kind."

Ryan leaned against a cracked wall, breathing hard.

The wound on his chest kept sealing under the pressure of his Extreme Path energy, only to be torn open again by the clone's light blade, over and over.

His eyes hadn't left the clone's face.

The resemblance was too close.

No expression, nothing in those eyes but pure destructive hunger, yet the bone structure, the brow, the features — it was Ella, grown up, looking back at him.

Every time he raised the sword to strike, his mind flashed to the image of his daughter lying in that hospital bed, gripping his hand and calling him dad.

The broken sword felt like it weighed a thousand pounds.

The clone closed in again. She raised both light blades above her head and drove them down toward his heart.

At that razor-thin moment between one breath and the next, a burst of harsh static crackled through the tactical comm in Ryan's ear.

It lasted less than half a second. Then a woman's voice forced its way onto the channel.

"Ryan! Can you hear me!"

Sophia.

The quantum network at Earth Command had been routed back through the temporary channel Nicholas had set up earlier, forcing its way into the lunar fortress's local network.

Sophia's voice was sharp with panic, and close to breaking.

"Ryan! Answer me!"

Ryan's head snapped up. He swung the broken sword sideways and shoved the clone's light blade off course.

"Sophia?" His voice came out rough. "I'm fine. How's Ella?"

A beat of silence on the other end.

Then a tiny voice, barely there, threading through in fragments.

"Daddy..."

Ryan's whole body went rigid.

"Daddy... it's so loud... Ella hurts..."

"The bad people... they're coming for Ella..."

The little girl's voice was soaked in fear and misery. She was still burning with fever. Somewhere between waking and unconscious, her Extreme Path bloodline had picked up on the violent energy surges from the moon and pulled her toward them.

"Daddy... where are you..."

Those few faint words came through the comm and hit Ryan somewhere beneath his ribs.

The world in front of him went quiet.

The spatial storm, the main cannon explosion, the high priest's taunting voice — all of it disappeared.

There was only his daughter saying "Daddy, it hurts."

Ryan looked down at his hands. Then he looked at the clone standing in front of him, winding up for another attack.

He smiled.

It was not a kind smile.

"I'm such a goddamn idiot." The words were barely above a murmur.

He had actually felt guilty. Standing there against a hollow slab of flesh with no soul, letting it get to him.

This was not Ella.

Ella would throw her arms around his neck and pout until she got what she wanted.

Ella would hide in Sophia's lap and sneak snacks when she thought no one was looking.

Ella would grab his hand and ask him when he was finally going to take her to the amusement park.

What stood in front of him was nothing more than a disgusting puppet. A lump of tissue Saren had pulled Ella's genetics from and forced into a shape.

This was an insult.

An insult to Ella.

An insult to her father.

A thunderous surge of energy detonated from somewhere deep inside Ryan.

The True Dragon Tyrant Blood cut loose.

The violet-gold energy that had defined his power shifted. It darkened. It became something so deep and concentrated it looked like it could swallow light whole — a void purple that carried genuine gravitational weight.

Dark violet dragon scales began rising through the skin along his arms, spreading fast, covering his forearms and the backs of his hands. His fingernails lengthened and hardened in an instant, becoming razor-edged dragon claws.

The metal wreckage surrounding him dissolved into powder under the pressure of that energy.

Up in the hall above, Nicholas stared at the numbers spiking off the top of every scale on his screen and dropped straight to the floor.

"The Commander's energy frequency shifted!" He jabbed a finger at the display. "It's completely broken from its previous pattern! The clone's reverse-defense system just went offline!"

High above, the contempt vanished from Saren's face.

He gripped the staff hard.

"Kill him." Saren sent the command to the clone.

The clone's legs drove down, punching through the alloy floor plating. She launched forward, leaving a violet-gold streak across the air behind her. The two light blades in her hands fused into one — a massive energy war cleaver that screamed with enough force to split open space.

It came down toward the top of Ryan's head like an execution.

Ryan stood where he was. He didn't lift the broken sword.

He just tilted his head back slightly and looked up at that face — seven parts Ella's face — suspended above him in the air.

"Using my daughter's face to play god."

Ryan's voice was quiet. It still reached every corner of the fortress.

"What exactly are you supposed to be?"

The cleaver dropped to within two inches of his head.

Ryan moved.

He didn't dodge. He didn't raise a weapon to block.

The right hand covered in dark violet dragon scales shot out at a speed that had no business existing in a body made of flesh.

A sharp crack.

Ryan caught the blade bare-handed.

The clone jolted to a stop in mid-air. She pushed everything she had into her energy core, trying to force the cleaver down, but Ryan's grip held it completely still. It did not move a fraction of an inch.

Ryan's right hand closed.

A clean snap.

The Extreme Path light blade — the one said to cut through degenerate matter armor — crumbled in his single hand. Shards of violet-gold energy burst outward in every direction.

The clone lost her balance and pitched forward.

Ryan's left hand came up. Five dragon claws locked around her throat.