Preparations had begun two months ago. After long contemplation, Augustus had concluded that passive defense was inadequate. Strict security measures might repel ordinary assassins—but Ghost operatives were not ordinary. They were psionic supersoldiers—unpredictable and beyond conventional logic.
Augustus's advantage lay in the fact that he knew the Ghost operatives would come for Angus Mengsk.
Since that was inevitable, why not turn it into a death trap—using his father as bait?
Augustus had always preferred taking the initiative, switching from defense to offense. That was simply his style.
Of course, the 'Angus' in question was merely a criminal—his appearance surgically altered and his memories implanted—meant to deceive the Ghost operatives with false memories.
The explosives hidden within the floor were connected to a pulse monitor on this fake Angus. The moment his heart rate deviated from normal levels, the psionic nullifiers would activate to suppress the Ghost operatives' powers—and then the explosives, enough to level an entire building, would detonate.
This also meant that in order to account for Ghosts' mind-reading capabilities and make the trap more convincing, everyone on the sixtieth floor was left in the dark, including the Mengsk family's security team and servants—among them, the loyal old butler Charles.
The butler had volunteered for this sacrifice.
Due to time constraints and the immaturity of memory implantation technology, Augustus had not yet been able to find enough criminals to replace all those people, nor could he ensure the implanted memories would be flawless.
When Augustus made this decision, he remained silent in the face of his own ruthlessness. It had started with re-socialized soldiers. Now, it could be anyone.
He realized that he had begun sacrificing others for the sake of a goal.
Right now, Augustus still felt some confusion. But perhaps one day, even if it meant sacrificing hundreds of thousands, he would not hesitate—and would grow used to it.
The guards and servants on the upper floors were the most loyal defenders of the Mengsk family. Most came from the slums of Styrling and were beneficiaries of the family's charitable programs. From childhood, they had been trained to serve House Mengsk. These people were willing to die for the family—but that didn't mean they deserved to be sacrificed so casually.
Yet Augustus had no choice. His enemy was Sarah Kerrigan, the most powerful Ghost operative in history. As long as Kerrigan lived, the lives of Augustus and his family would remain in constant danger, like a blade lodged in the throat.
All he could hope for now was that it would be worth it—as long as—
Suddenly, one of the panels on the holographic screen went black. It belonged to a small ship that had been preparing to land atop the collapsed building. A parallel feed from another vessel showed that the downed ship was spiraling toward the ground, its cockpit glass stained red from the blood splatter.
"What killed him? The ship was hit!"
"Pull up! Get out of there!" Augustus shouted. At that very moment, the second ship was also struck—the pilot's head was blown apart by a 25 mm round. And then Augustus saw her—the red-haired Ghost—standing amid the rubble.
The curvaceous female Ghost gripped a Gauss rifle tightly in her hands. Her helmet had been knocked off, and her blue-and-white adaptive combat suit was soaked in blood. Even with her psionic powers suppressed and standing at the epicenter of the explosion, Kerrigan's immense power had shielded her.
Though clearly, she looked much weaker now.
Perhaps that was the very reason Arcturus Mengsk ultimately chose to abandon her—his hatred for psionics rooted in the death of his family. If Kerrigan ever turned against him, he would never sleep soundly again.
"Kill her," Augustus said again.
"Kill her."
He would not risk everything on the chance of capturing the three Ghost operatives alive. Kerrigan was rated Level Ten, only because that was the Confederacy's upper limit for psionic classification. Augustus didn't know much about Kerrigan during her Ghost days, but he had at least witnessed the power of the Queen of Blades.
As the last remaining ship pulled up and zoomed out, the soldiers Augustus had dispatched finally reached what was now the tower's top—the ruined sixtieth floor.
The Gauss rifle roared—but every bullet froze in midair just meters from Kerrigan, as if they had struck an invisible gel barrier. Then, under the pressure of an overwhelming psychic force, they were crushed flat. The deformed rounds dropped to the floor like squashed soda cans.
"Don't get close! Fire from a distance!" the Revolutionary Army commander barked through the comms.
"Her psionic strength is far beyond what we anticipated," said the Umojan Shadow Guard beside Augustus. "Could her power be above Level Ten?"
"She's running out of energy," he replied. "A living Level Ten psionic under our control would be far more valuable than a dead one. The Shadow Guard has the technology to de-ghost former Confederacy operatives. It could return her to normal—assuming she was ever 'normal' to begin with."
"Or we could study her," Augustus said coldly, shocking even the Shadow Guard.
"Sergeant Faraday," Augustus ordered, "patch me into the comms."
"I'll speak to the Ghost myself."
...
More and more soldiers of the Korhal Revolutionary Army, clad in crimson power armor, stormed the sixtieth floor of the Sky Tower—its upper structure already reduced to rubble. Gauss rifles roared as thousands of spike rounds, copper bullets, and B2-C concussion shells poured down upon the red-haired Ghost's invisible psionic shield. The fallen munitions piled into small hills at her feet.
Despite facing a psionic being unlike anything ever encountered, young Corporal Faraday remained calm and composed as he directed his troops.
Like many officers under Augustus's command, Corporal Faraday had risen from a common private to the rank of noncommissioned officer almost overnight, his promotion earned through sheer loyalty to Augustus himself.
From among over a million Korhal revolutionaries and foreign auxiliaries, Augustus had picked out several hundred individuals like Faraday—comparing photos, places of birth, even voices—until he found this one young man, barely in his twenties.
As commander of Augustus's personal guard, Corporal Faraday had earned deep trust. Many believed his meteoric rise was only just beginning.
"Cease fire. Load EMP rounds," Corporal Faraday ordered through the command channel. "Activate the external broadcasting units on your armor. Link into the command line—let the Commander speak."
The soldiers stopped firing. A moment later, Augustus's voice came steadily through the comms, broadcast from the hovering ship above.
"Sarah Kerrigan… we should end this with a handshake."
At that moment, Sarah Kerrigan was utterly exhausted. Her body was covered in wounds, and her psionic energy was nearly depleted. Her once-tied crimson hair now hung loose across her shoulders, obscuring the left half of her face.
She was only sixteen years old. There were still traces of youth on her face, and her pale lips trembled from the tension of her wounds. She breathed in ragged gasps, each sharp inhale tinged with pain.
"Who's speaking?" Kerrigan asked, stalling for time as she searched for an escape route. But beneath her feet lay broken ceiling panels and shattered walls—no cover, no path of retreat.
"Can you hear my voice?"
She was already gathering the last of her psionic strength, ready to make a final, desperate move. The psionic inhibitor implanted in her ensured absolute loyalty to the Terran Federation—any thoughts of rebellion or surrender were to be instantly purged.
"Augustus Mengsk. Enemy of the Federation," came the voice.
"Augustus…" Kerrigan whispered, injecting herself with a dose of adrenaline under the noses of the Revolutionary Army soldiers.
"They say memories fade with time—reduced to vague silhouettes, or scripts edited and rewritten at will. So tell me, Kerrigan… how much of the past you believe in is even real?"
"You're debating philosophy with the enemy… in the middle of a battlefield?" Kerrigan tried to reboot her stealth systems, but they seemed completely disabled. She wanted to stall Augustus with small talk, but found herself at a loss for words.
At sixteen, Sarah Kerrigan was a woman of few words—like a silent mountain.
"You should try to remember," Augustus continued, his tone as calm as if they were sharing a casual conversation.
"Think about your mother. Perhaps she was gentle and beautiful… or maybe sharp-tongued and impatient. It doesn't matter. Because when you were still a child—you killed her."
"What the hell are you talking about?" Kerrigan's pale green eyes widened as the nightmare that had haunted her for years resurfaced once more. She had already severed ties with that hellish past—by her own choice.
A flash of blood.
"Your uncontrolled psionic surge crushed her skull as if it were a bug. Blood splattered like juice. Cracked bone, stretched nerves, dangling eyes, brain matter smeared with white and red… and her jaw—half torn from the flesh…" Augustus described the memory in a cold, uninterrupted monotone, as if reading from a menu. Kerrigan's expression twisted in anguish.
"She was your mother. So why did she look like that in the end?"
Sarah Louise Kerrigan!
She began to tremble. The nightmare she was told had been erased by science now came flooding back like a tide. A look of sheer horror overtook her face. The unflinching Ghost who never shed tears collapsed to her knees, covering her face—
—and broke into uncontrollable sobs.
For the first time, the psionic inhibitor—hated and cursed by Kerrigan—failed to activate.
The Korhal Revolutionary Army soldiers who had been watching her so intently froze, unable to comprehend what was happening. They hesitated, unsure whether they should continue firing.
Of course, they couldn't understand what Augustus was saying. To these young men, so susceptible to mysticism, those incomprehensible phrases might as well have been arcane incantations—spells capable of driving a psionic into madness.
And perhaps, the leader of the Revolutionary Army—Angus Mengsk's son, the Wolf of House Mengsk, the Eagle of Korhal—was about to earn yet another title.
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