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SCL Chapter 102: The Blade and the Trap
🕑 Added 2025-06-03 02:38:48 +0000 UTCDozens of tense, painstaking minutes passed before Kerrigan finally reached the sixtieth floor. The top twenty levels required both retinal and genetic authorization from the steward to access—but Charles bypassed every safeguard on behalf of the Ghost.
Ghost 24718 silently entertained a malicious thought: what would this ever-loyal servant feel once he learned that his master died because of his own hands? The operative resolved to spare the man’s life, so he could live out his remaining years in eternal guilt.
This Ghost’s mind had been warped by the tortures of the lab. He had once been a kind man, but the instructors had shattered his humanity through endless trials and sadistic tests—leaving behind someone who took deep pleasure in his enemies’ suffering.
Kerrigan felt a wave of disgust at her companion’s vile thoughts. She told herself she would never do such a thing.
Charles, the steward, trembled with fear. It felt as though a ghost had possessed him—he remained conscious of what he was doing, yet powerless to resist.
The bedroom door eased open with a faint creak. The slender figure of the Ghost operative slipped through the narrow space between the door and its frame, her footsteps as light and silent as a cat’s upon the deep crimson carpet. Her partner followed closely behind.
Angus Mengsk lay peacefully in bed, wrapped in a velvet blanket. The faint snore in his breathing revealed that his sleep was far from restful.
Kerrigan drew a razor-sharp dagger from the sheath at her hip, a loaded pistol in her other hand. There was no need to use her shoulder-mounted rifle. Her assassination training had taught her that all it took was to place the blade against the target’s neck and yank back by the collar—one clean stroke from the ultra-sharp titanium alloy dagger would be enough to sever the head of this respected man.
She had no doubt this was the real Angus, not a decoy. Because even in his dreams, Angus was reliving his vision of a Terran Democratic Republic.
In his mind, he saw warm memories with his family: a six-year-old Augustus Mengsk wearing denim overalls, building blocks alongside his little sister; and on the black-and-white tiled floor of their home, Arcturus Mengsk darting back and forth like a headless monkey.
Sarah Kerrigan holstered her pistol at her waist. With the combat suit’s adaptive camouflage and the power granted by her psionic abilities, she moved with such deadly precision that the moment she seized Angus Mengsk, she flipped her dagger and slashed his throat.
The blade slid in effortlessly, cleanly severing trachea and artery in one fluid, uninterrupted motion.
It was like slicing through unresisting rubber or leather. As Kerrigan grabbed Angus’s hair and lifted his head, a torrent of blood gushed from his carotid artery, spraying the ceiling and walls like a pressurized fountain.
A respected freedom fighter. A revolutionary pioneer. His ideals may have been ridiculous, even laughable—but still, he was a hero worth remembering. At least, until the scientists at the Ghost Academy erased her memories again.
It had all gone far too smoothly—slipping past hundreds of guards, infiltrating the sky tower of the Old Family on Korhal, protected by intricate security systems, and effortlessly taking the head of a rebel leader.
Since the day Kerrigan began her assassination missions, she had never failed. Ghost operatives carried out assassinations in ways that defied common understanding and stretched the limits of human imagination. They were like specters among the living—grim reapers who harvested lives.
Unless, of course, the target knew the methods of a Ghost operative and understood how the most powerful psionic assassin organization in history operated.
But that was impossible—those details were top secret. Even the Confederacy’s Senate knew nothing about it. All they knew was that Ghost operatives existed.
And that was enough. The powers on Tarsonis didn’t care how their weapons functioned. They only cared that their enemies in the Senate were eliminated. That was the purpose of psionics.
Angus Mengsk’s cold gray eyes were now closed. His chiseled features and hawk-like nose gave him the appearance of a statue. Once the Confederacy’s top officials received his frozen head, they would undoubtedly inspect their trophy with great interest.
Kerrigan didn’t know whether the nobles at the top of the Tarsonis towers or the lords of the Confederate Senate still retained any shred of humanity. It was common knowledge among all Terrans that the Confederacy housed two massive criminal syndicates: the Marine Corps and the government itself.
The former was a haven for the most deranged and violent offenders—nearly 50% of its soldiers were rehabilitated criminals with extensive rap sheets. But the crimes of the Confederacy's government dwarfed those of the military. No law meant to uphold justice could ever touch the corrupt officials or those polished, professional politicians.
To judge them fairly would require a power even greater than the Confederate government—and a whole new set of sentencing standards.
Kerrigan knew only the gods could wield such authority. But if they truly existed, then they must operate under a warped moral code—one where the guilty walk free while the innocent die unjustly.
As Angus’s heart still beat—slowing with each second, pumping blood from his torn arteries—Kerrigan calmly slid her bloodstained dagger back into its leather sheath. Then she dropped the dripping head into the backpack on Ghost 24718’s back.
The headless corpse was tossed aside without ceremony. The Ghosts exited the bedroom, ready to leave.
Mr. Charles, the butler of the Mengsk family, stood at the doorway. Perhaps he already knew of his master’s death. A wave of grief emanated from him—so strong that Kerrigan, with her sensitivity to emotions, could feel it through her telepathy.
She offered him a flicker of sympathy.
But then the psionic dampeners began to kick in again. The pain returned, and with it, all her extraneous emotions were scrubbed away.
Something was wrong—the dampeners weren’t supposed to work like this.
A sudden surge of Kerrigan’s unique psionic intuition exploded in her mind, like ten thousand needles stabbing into her brain. A sense of unknown danger was approaching.
In that instant, her calves tensed. She spread out her mental field across the floor they were on—but all she found were a dozen unaware security personnel and servants.
No, something wasn’t right. Her psionic intuition had never been wrong. If the danger wasn’t human, then—
“It’s a trap!”
The moment Kerrigan shouted, the standby-mode Umojan Psionic Inhibitor installed in the floor activated. An invisible barrier field instantly enveloped the entire sixtieth floor. Her psionic strength began to weaken—drained as if being sucked away by the very air.
This type of psionic nullifier was certainly not Korhal technology. It came from the Shadow Guard Academy on Umoja—expensive, concealed beneath the hardwood floors, and connected to a feedback-trigger mechanism. And to achieve maximum psionic suppression, the installer had gone to insane lengths—at least twenty such nullifiers had been placed throughout the floor.
Kerrigan had no idea what exactly was weakening her power. Together with Ghost operative 24718, she sprinted down the corridor at breakneck speed. Not even the fastest human athletes in history could compare to the velocity unleashed by Ghost operatives in full combat gear—but it was already too late.
The moment the nullifiers activated, a deafening explosion shook the heart of Styrling’s central district. Those asleep were jolted awake by the thunderous blast, and the flash from the explosion lit up the night sky like daylight.
Bright flames surged from the windows on the sixtieth floor, shattering the glass of dozens of floors below. A few heartbeats later, the tower’s top two levels collapsed—its support structures obliterated in an instant.
The giant 'MENGSK' letters atop the tower broke loose, crashing toward the ground. Segments of the tower’s outer walls, peeled off by the shockwave, fluttered down like scraps of paper.
At that moment, even the Revolutionary Army soldiers still on patrol in the shopping districts or stationed along the street could see the blazing light erupting from the top of Mengsk Sky Tower.
Augustus jolted awake at a table inside a command center conference room. He swiftly changed into the Revolutionary Army’s dark gray uniform, and with the help of two personal guards, donned a suit of powered armor composed of locking plates and reinforced bindings. Only then did he activate the command center’s communication system to issue orders to the panicked soldiers.
After a brief silence, the barracks at Mengsk Sky Tower erupted with noise. Hundreds upon hundreds of soldiers from the Revolutionary Army’s 1st Division poured out. Several squads clad in deep red power armor rushed toward the tower—their shoulder guards marked with white emblems depicting a clenched whip encircled by a ring.
Neither the officers nor their men knew what had happened. They had only just received orders to apprehend several powerful psionic assassins sent by the Confederacy.
As they advanced along the main road, another unit—about a hundred strong—joined their ranks. Their armor appeared identical to the rest, except for a golden wolf head insignia on the chest plate: the crest of the Mengsk family. This marked them as Augustus’s personal guard—his true elite.
Only a few high-ranking officers knew this unit by name: Styrling Strikers—an anti-psionic force professionally trained and established at the very founding of the Korhal Revolutionary Army.
The Strikers’ armor came equipped with anti-cloaking visors, and each squad carried 20 mm Longshoreman heavy sniper rifles capable of firing EMP rounds—weapons specifically designed for counter-Ghost operations.
Drop ships lifted off from the requisitioned Styrling Skyport, searchlights crisscrossing the city skies.
Augustus circled the table a few times while more marines streamed into the conference hall. Suddenly, a Shadow Guard operative from Umoja, cloaked in active camouflage, placed a hand on his shoulder.
Then a holo-projection came to life—a real-time feed transmitted from a dropship hovering above the Sky Tower. The building’s servants were fleeing in a frenzy. Some were knocked down by Revolutionary Army soldiers surging into the structure. In the narrower corridors, even stampedes had begun to occur.
“Find them,” Augustus commanded over the comms. “Keep your distance and stay alert. Your enemies are psionics—any attack could strike directly at your mind.”
More images streamed in from the various units breaching the tower. One squad advanced steadily up a spiral staircase, followed by security personnel leading hounds bred from Styrling wolves. Armed civilian retrofitted aircraft circled overhead, scanning the rubble for signs of life.
Augustus’s eyes locked onto the segmented holographic displays, focusing on every unit that might encounter the Ghost operatives.
