Moonstar: Mind Huntress by Jade Gretz

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Moonstar: Mind Huntress ANIMATION

Fate's Maw

Danielle Moonstar did not see the future in clean, linear prophecies. She saw it as a starving thing—a ravenous, multi-limbed shadow that thrashed against the walls of the present, offering her glimpses of its hunger in exchange for her sanity. This particular glimpse had come three hours ago, during a tactical briefing. One moment, she was pointing at a hologram of the abandoned Arcology; the next, she was drowning in the scent of burnt ozone and screaming metal.

The vision was crystalline: Sam Guthrie, as Cannonball, a human rocket in his crimson and yellow suit, blasting through a corroded hallway. Illyana Rasputin, Magik, stepping through one of her disc-shaped teleportation gates, her soulsword a sliver of defiance. Then, the walls would bleed a phosphorescent green, and the geometry of the place would unfold. It wasn’t an explosion; it was an inversion. Sam would be caught in a spatial ripple, his invulnerable blast field straining, then shattering like glass as his body was turned inside out. Illyana, reacting with hell-forged speed, would slash her sword to open a retreating portal, but the corrupted space would reflect it back, severing her own arm. The last image was of Illyana’s detached limb, fingers still clenched around the sword, dissolving into embers.

“You’re quiet, commander,” a voice drawled, slicing through her reverie. Sam Guthrie leaned against the doorway of the observation deck, a grin on his face. “Contemplatin’ the artistic merits of Sentinel wreckage?”

Moonstar turned from the viewport. The Blackbird hung in silent orbit above the dead zone that was once the Boston Arcology. “Contemplating the density of certain Kentuckian skulls, Guthrie. You’re late.”

“Had to polish my boots,” he said, stepping in. His confidence was a physical warmth, a stark contrast to the cold dread coiling in her gut. “Illyana’s already in the ready room. Says the metaphysical stink from the Arcology is makin’ her teeth itch. So what’s the op?”

This was the moment. The first step onto the path the vision had laid out. “The Op is straightforward. Intel suggests a remnant of the Technarchy is holed up in the Arcology’s sub-levels, trying to reboot a fusion core. If it succeeds, the resulting pulse will scramble every neural implant on the eastern seabed. Millions will stroke out in their sleep.”

Sam whistled. “Nasty. So we go in, politely ask the mecha-monster to stop, and if it refuses, Illyana banishes it to the Mojoverse and I punch the core?”

“Essentially.” Moonstar’s voice was steady, a commander’s voice. “But the Technarch isn’t alone. It’s woven a tapestral ward—a psychic and spatial trap—around the core chamber. It feeds on kinetic energy and teleportation signatures.”

Sam’s easy smile faded. “My blast field. Illyana’s stepping discs.”

“Precisely. The trap is designed to reflect that energy back on you, magnified. It will unravel you both.” She said it flatly, watching his face.

He stared at her. “You foresaw this.”

“Yes.”

“And we’re still goin’?”

“We have to.”

Illyana’s voice, cold and smooth as a razor’s edge, cut from the doorway. “Because the alternative is worse.” She entered, her black and gold armor seeming to drink the light. Her blue eyes were fixed on Moonstar. “You saw what happens if we do not go.”

Moonstar nodded. “The Technarch completes its work. The pulse fires. But the ward, having absorbed no energy, remains dormant and undetected. Two weeks from now, the New Mutants run a training exercise here. The ward triggers on a lower setting. It doesn’t kill. It… infects. It rewrites your reality. You all become living vessels for the Technarch’s consciousness. You become the new plague.”

The ready room was silent save for the hum of the ship. The horror wasn’t in gore; it was in conversion, in the loss of self. Moonstar had seen it in her vision—the empty, smiling faces of her students, speaking in binary unison.

“So we are the mine detectors,” Illyana said, a faint, morbid smile on her lips. “We trigger the trap, absorb its fury, and in doing so, burn it out.”

“It will kill you,” Moonstar said, the words ash in her mouth. “The vision was absolute. Sam’s field fails. You lose your sword arm. The feedback kills you both.”

Sam crossed his arms. “But you’re sendin’ us anyway. There’s a ‘but’ comin’, Dani. There always is.”

This was the seduction. The terrible, glittering alternati
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