Alex Kane was broken.

Broken by the war, by the death of his lover, ready to kill himself...until his old bosses from Fleet Intelligence offered him a chance at redemption with one last mission.


All he had to do was walk into the middle of a gang war, penetrate an insular cult of cyborgs and kill the same sort of half-alien, half-machine monster who'd killed the love of his life during the war...the same machine the cyborgs worship as their messiah.


What could go wrong?


An 8,000-word short story in the Commonwealth universe of Glory Boy and Birthright.