Eve: Cyber Valkyrie by Jade Gretz

https://www.deviantart.com/jadegretzai/art/Eve-Cyber-Valkyrie-1301399585?file=1

Choirs of the Void

Frost rimed the edges of Eve’s peripheral vision, a crystalline lacework born of absolute zero. She drifted through the shattered ribcage of the orbital research tether Aethelgard, her cybernetic musculature adjusting to the erratic pulses of artificial gravity. Silence in the vacuum of space is a given, but inside the pressurized remnants of the station, the silence possessed a heavy, suffocating texture. It felt deliberate.

"Your vitals are elevating by a fraction of a percent," Adam’s voice murmured through her internal comms. His tone was a velvet drape over taut wire, betraying an anxiety he rarely admitted. "Tell me you see something other than floating debris and my impending panic attack."

Eve’s boots magnetized to the titanium deck with a muted thud. She drew her blade, the edge humming to life with a pale, lethal incandescence. "I see a gallery of empty suits, Adam. No bodies. No signs of structural breach prior to the tether's collapse. Just husks. It is like they unzipped themselves and walked away from their own flesh."

"That is exceptionally poetic and deeply unhelpful," Adam replied, his keystrokes echoing faintly over the feed. "The biometric scanners went dark seventy-two hours ago. Five thousand souls, Eve. They do not simply evaporate."

"They did not evaporate," Eve said softly, tilting her head. A solitary drop of crimson liquid drifted past her visor, frozen into a perfect, macabre ruby. "They were harvested."

Eve moved with the liquid grace of an apex predator. Her nanomaterial suit, sleek and iridescent, shifted in hue as she passed beneath the flickering, dying lumen strips of the promenade. The architecture of Aethelgard was designed to mimic a grand terrestrial cathedral, complete with vaulted ceilings and stained-glass observation ports overlooking the swirling bruised purples of the nebula below. Now, those ports were obscured by a creeping, iridescent webbing.

"Adam," Eve whispered, touching the webbing with the tip of her blade. The material recoiled, letting out a sound like a choir of dying cicadas. "The bio-matter here is active. It is reacting to the thermal output of my sword."

"I am running a spectral analysis through your optic feed," Adam said, his voice tightening. "Eve, that is not an invasive fungus. That is human DNA. It has been completely resequenced. You are walking inside the crew."

A cold thrill of terror, primal and sudden, washed over her synthetic spine. The mystery of the missing five thousand was solved, but the answer birthed a far more insidious question. What manner of cosmic architect could weave a human tapestry out of a sovereign space station?

"I suggest," Adam continued, trying to mask his dread with dry wit, "that you do not touch the walls anymore. They might ask you for a dance."

"If they do, I will politely decline," Eve replied, her gaze fixing on the colossal blast doors of the central arboretum. "The thermal bloom is concentrated beyond these doors. Whatever reshaped them is nesting in the garden."

"I can trigger the emergency bulkhead release, but Eve, listen to me. The energy signature I am getting is impossible. It is reading as a void-class anomaly. It generates a localized gravitational shear. If it pulls you into its event horizon, I cannot pull you back."

"You have always been my anchor, Adam," she said, a faint, reassuring smile gracing her perfect features. "Just keep the tether tight. I am going in."

The blast doors parted with an agonizing shriek of warped metal. Eve stepped into the arboretum, and the universe seemed to hold its breath.

The terror was eclipsed, for a fleeting moment, by a profound, intoxicating beauty. The massive domed chamber, once a sanctuary for genetically modified flora, had been transformed into a cosmic terrarium. The air was thick with a luminescent dust that tasted of ozone and crushed orchids. In the center of the room, suspended in a web of spun starlight and pale, shivering veins, hung the entity.

It had no fixed geometry. It was a shifting kaleidoscope of nebular gas, weeping sores, and crystalline limbs. Yet, as Eve approached, the chaotic mass began to refine itself, distilling its unfathomable horror into a form designed entirely to bypass her combat protocols. It was adapting to her psychology.

The entity folded in upon itself, the grotesque fleshy tendrils smoothing into porcelain skin. The nebular gas compressed into flowing, obsidian hair. Within seconds, a mirror image of Eve hovered before her, bathed in an ethere
...(more at https://www.deviantart.com/jadegretzai).
For more supergirl, chun li, batgirl, tifa, lara croft, wonder woman, rogue and much more, please visit my page at www.deviantart.com/jadegretzai - Thanks for your support :)