Adamus dodges the first sword ssh, opening up the soldier to a strike from Marqus.

  The stone bde cuts at the man’s neck. Blood gushes out from it as Marqus kneels down and thrusts his bde into the next man.

  Adamus scrambles away as Marqus rises and rips his sword out of the soldier.

  “We need to get out of here…” Jasper mumbles in the wind.

  “Ohhh! Really!” Adamus shouts back, twisting away from another soldier. “And here I was thinking that you all found it fun to fight for your lives!” He slugs a soldier in the jaw. The man loses grip of his sword, giving Adamus ample opportunity to grab it and sm the bde into the man’s thigh.

  The move is bold but careless.

  Another soldier takes Adamus from behind, driving a bde into the side of his stomach. He grasps the wound in shock and gasps in pain. The wind that’s been knocked out of him doesn’t compare to the stormwind that is threatening to become a blizzard.

  The soldier tears his sword from Adamus. Blood sprays onto Jasper’s face and gsses. Adamus falls to his knees and gazes upon his own blood on his own hand.

  Why is it his hand?

  Where are you? He thinks as he makes a wet, cold fist. You always helped me before. You always saved me. Why aren’t you coming out of me, now? I need you.

  The soldier lifts the sword over Adamus’s head.

  I need to fight.

  The sword falls beside Adamus. Jasper wrestles with the soldier after tackling him. He doesn’t know what’s taken hold of him. He simply had to do something, no matter how stupid.

  Marqus helps Adamus to his feet, his stomach still bleeding. “We’ll deal with that ter,” Marqus huffs as he carries Adamus toward the spaceport.

  Beneath the pair’s feet, Jasper finally manages to gain the upper hand over the soldier he’s been wrestling with. He can hardly see a thing through his gsses but for the icy haze of the helpless man he’s strangling. The man extends a hand into the snow. Marqus plunges his bde into that hand. The man cries out in pain.

  Jasper fumbles off the soldier as Marqus moves the sword to the man’s chest and stabs his heart, killing him.

  Jasper sits on the snow, gazing at the dead man. His breath warms as it quickens.

  Marqus sheaths his bde. “I’m not carrying you, too,” he states as he moves forward with Adamus.

  The soldier whose thigh Adamus stabbed rises from the snow, “You monsters…” He says, hardly able to get the words out of his mouth. Adamus and Marqus ignore him, but Jasper stands and looks to him.

  “You… You killed everyone in the vilge, huh? All my comrades? My friends…”

  Jasper doesn’t know what to say to the man. He wipes the frost from his gsses for the final time tonight as the soldier pleads, “Why?”

  Jasper gnces back at Adamus and Marqus. He is careful to make certain the pair can’t see or hear him as he tells the soldier, “Because you’re Republic.”

  The soldier stares at Jasper, dumbfounded.

  Jasper walks to the spaceport.

  The soldier pounds a bloodied fist into the snow. He raises his head to the cold and screams out, “What are you just watching for, Gergor? Go after them!”

  The shout drives Jasper’s eyes to the bck ship above.

  Its symbiotic skin shifts and cracks in the harsh wind and snowfall. It takes Jasper far too long to realize that the ship isn’t just moving toward him, it’s plummeting downwards. A sea of white overtakes the night sky, kicked into the violent wind by the ship. The snow splits around the spaceport as Jasper runs for it.

  “What are they thinking!” Adamus shouts at the sight of the mass hurtling right at him.

  “Just run!” Jasper cries through heavy breaths as he scrambles to join Marqus and Adamus.

  The ship crushes through the gate to the spaceport, exploding it into a thousand pieces of frozen wooden shrapnel. A rge chunk flies into Jasper, knocking him down.

  Marqus grips Adamus tighter as he dashes for cover. “What are you doing?” Adamus panics, “Go back for him!”

  “Your life is more important, my lor—”

  “Gods! Cut it with the ‘lord’ shit, old man!” Adamus smacks Marqus away, prying himself free of his grasp as the ship flies over both their heads.

  The curls of Adamus’s hair are blown by the wind and the ship as he slides along the frozen ground to free Jasper.

  “I’ve known you for like a day, and you’ve done nothing but get yourself into trouble!” Adamus huffs in frustration and exertion as he attempts to lift the hefty chunk of broken gate off Jasper.

  “And you're an asshole!” Jasper yells in pain as the weight presses down on his chest and legs. Adamus hears one of Jasper’s bones snap.

  “Funny.” Adamus sneers, lifting with all his might, “People keep telling me that I’m an asshole and a dick, but I’m also an Emperor, apparently! So tell me, Jasper,” Adamus grits his teeth. The symbiotic ship twists in the frigid air and charges the spaceport again. Jasper closes his eyes and hopes for a painless death. Something twists within Adamus as he digs his hands into the wood and shouts, “Which one am I supposed to be!”

  Jasper’s eyes shoot open to view Adamus holding the mountainous chunk of wood over his head. Adamus screams again as he unches the chunk at the ship.

  The harsh, improvised javelin pierces the ship’s skin, tearing and scarring it.

  “Huh…” Adamus gnces at his arms.

  His scars are back. His stomach wound is healed. The beast is hungry for more.

  Jasper rises but trips over himself. He cries at a sharp pain in his upper leg. He can’t stand at all. The bone is broken.

  He watches helplessly as the ship tilts. The jagged wood is lodged in it like a piercing dagger, yet, much in the way that the soldier Adamus fought carried on with a sword in his thigh, the ship gathers itself in the air before continuing its charge.

  Jasper hurries to crawl away. His broken leg and tired arms fight him with every movement.

  Adamus raises his arms. The beast moves within them, anxious to get out.

  The ship lunges down, charging rapidly until something stops it.

  Adamus lowers his arms. The beast within them shifts in disappointment.

  Jasper halts his crawl at the sight of the Biotransport ramming into the symbotic ship. The ink-like skin rips and writhes against the pulsating scarred mass of the transport.

  The ships wrestle. They fight each other in the sky as the snowfall turns intense and bnkets the vacant spaceport in a cloud of blinding white. The dark ship falls into that new cloud and crashes to the ground in an explosion of white and bck.

  The Biotransport descends once the battle is won. Its skin parts as it makes its way to Adamus and Jasper. Leo holds out his hand, “Get in!” He shouts over the blizzard. Adamus lifts Jasper, tossing him into the ship before leaping on board himself. “Where’s the old man?” He asks as Leo struggles to hold up the injured Jasper. “Marqus? I thought he was with you,” Leo mutters as the door of flesh begins to close.

  “Shit.” Adamus smacks the door back open and jumps down to the spaceport as the ship ascends.

  “Where are you going?” Jasper grumbles.

  Kiren peels herself away from the controls, “That idiot is going to get my Dad!” She dashes out the door and falls to the spaceport. Leo hurries for the controls to keep the ship steady, dropping Jasper in the process. He curses as everyone leaves him, catching only a glimpse of Adamus and Kiren running into the snowy void.

  Adamus makes for the st pce he saw Marqus, but it’s near impossible to tell where that was.

  Kiren snatches him by the leg.

  “Get off me, kid!” He yells over the deafening wind. Kiren lifts a palm over her face to shield her eyes as she looks to Adamus, “That’s my Dad you’re running after, dumbass! I don’t trust you to be the one to save him!”

  “Kids shouldn’t say words like ‘dumbass’!”

  “Shut the fuck up and help me look for my Dad!”

  Adamus considers kicking the girl away, but there’s a desperation in her eyes. Having her around might slow him down, but this is her Father that he’s trying to find after all. Adamus rolls his eyes, “Fine.” He trudges forward with the child still clinging to his leg.

  A snow-covered Qrow caws a shivering call out into the violent night.

  Swords csh in the distance as bck ships rise.

  Marqus slices an arm off a sergeant and moves on to the other officers before they can enter their ship. Adamus tackles one of them, smming a man’s head into the symbiotic flesh. “I was going to ask where you’ve been, but clearly you’ve been too busy to go anywhere,” Adamus jokes as the beast twitches inside him.

  Marqus huffs, “You should have left me, my lord.”

  Adamus scowls at him. Marqus shrugs, his eyes fall to Kiren as she strikes the st man in the groin. “You should have left, too.”

  Kiren isn’t happy with the statement, “I wasn’t going to let you die!” Marqus sheathes his bde and looks to the sky, ignoring his daughter, “Republic bastards were hiding out, waiting for us. Whole thing was a trap. Where are Jasper and Leo? I saw that public transport ship, but—” The Biotransport swings back down. The door opens slowly, but Jasper lunges out his hand as fast as he can, “Are those Republic ships?”

  “Of course they are.” Kiren stomps on the head of the Republic Officer she previously kicked in the groin before skipping aboard the Biotransport. Marqus and Adamus both hurry on board the ship, but the same Officer that Kiren had stomped snatches his leg.

  The beast stirs inside Adamus. It begs to be let out. It begs to kill the man beneath him. It begs for blood.

  “You’re him…” The stomped Officer groans, “I saw you in Rome… You were supposed to marry the president’s daughter… Why…” His voice starts to fade, “Why did you have to ruin everything?”

  Marqus unsheathes his bde and sheathes it again once the man is dead. “Come on,” He grips Adamus’s arm and leads him into the Biotransport.

  The ship soars into the night, fighting the powerful wind and snow as the Republic ships follow it.

  The cold Qrow follows the chase until each ship pierces the atmosphere.

  The ships dance in the stars. Weaving in and out of each other in spirals, each one desperately trying to outmaneuver the other.

  The Biotransport doesn’t stand a chance.

  It is a passenger carrier made by the Division for tourists and other common travelers. The symbiotic ships are built for speed. They are common crafts to be sure, but they have been modified by the Republic for paramilitary use. There are two of them on the tail of the Biotransport.

  The Republic was guaranteed to win this chase before it even began.

  The twin symbiotic ships both ram their sides into the Biotransport.

  Those inside begin to panic as the dark flesh turns to tendrils that dig into the transport’s skin.

  Marqus draws his bde, tired from the previous battles and the one to come. Kiren makes her hands into fists and steps beside him. Jasper is overwhelmed with panic; his mind races as his broken leg still stabs with pain. Leo battles the controls, begging for the ship to fly free of the Republic symbiotes.

  The beast twists and twitches and scratches inside Adamus. Letting it out here would mean killing everyone on board. It would be the vilge all over again, it would be Rome all over again. Adamus fights against it.

  No. He pleads. No. No! NO!

  He closes his eyes.

  The blue glow drifts toward him.

  He’s a child in fire again.

  “Why?” Adamus asks, “You used to help me, you did help me, you still help me, but why do you want me to do these things?”

  The glow flickers out into a mouth.

  “One.”

  It says.

  “One. Zero.”