The cold voice was a paradox: a promise of salvation delivered by a mechanical threat.
"Only one. Choose, or the Spire will choose for you."
Josh's mind, which a moment ago had fleetingly dismissed itself as that of a 'coffee-maker designer,' snapped back to the reality of his most recent, terrifying job: fusion reactor engineering. The coffee maker memory was a shard of protective, self-deprecating panic—a world where the stakes were a burned latte, not a planetary power grid meltdown. But here, clinging to the smooth, black face of the Promachonos Spire, the stakes were fusion-level. He was a nuclear engineer, and that knowledge was the only thing standing between them and the Syndicate's mechanical dictatorship. I'm the brain here, he reaffirmed. The logic that understands power—the kind that melts worlds, or lifts them.
The bronze barb, aimed at Doric, was connected to a hidden, high-pressure steam line running just under the obsidian surface. The silver arm, offering entry, was a precision lock mechanism. It was a classic engineering problem: an irresistible force and an immovable object, designed to test the 'Strategos'—the city's military and engineering master—to make a logical, self-sacrificial choice for the greater good.
Logic over emotion. That was the Chryseos Syndicate's creed, and apparently, the Spire's programming.
"This isn't a choice, Doric," Josh murmured, tightening his grip on the Aether-Core. The core, a crystalline fragment of pure, contained energy, was still thrumming from the overload he had forced on the Kyklops.
He looked past the silver arm and the bronze barb, focusing instead on the Aetheric Plasma Field shimmering around the Spire. It wasn't just a shield; it was a complex energy network, its frequency visibly fluctuating with the Spire's internal diagnostic tap. The Plasma Field and the arm/barb mechanism were connected, all running from the same massive power regulator inside.
"You want logic?" Josh whispered to the Spire. "Here's a flaw in your programming."
The Promachonos Spire, he realized, was not just the city's axis; it was a gigantic, integrated circuit. The Zeus Protocol was likely the master reset—a controlled, system-wide reboot that would purge the Syndicate's control. But the Spire's logic, designed by a past version of Ajax, had a blind spot: the Core itself.
The Core was both the key and a massive power source.
Josh didn't try to fight the machine. He didn't try to enter. Instead, he jammed the tip of the Aether-Core—the "heart" of the city's defense grid—directly onto the seam of the retracting iris door, where the obsidian met the Plasma Field. He didn't need to install it yet; he just needed to make contact.
The result was not an explosion, but a sudden, violent feedback loop. The Core's raw, amplified energy hit the Plasma Field's primary coil. The Spire was trying to regulate the core's power, but Josh's overload was forcing the Plasma Field to try and contain an impossible surge.
The gentle, rhythmic tapping inside the Spire stopped.
The female voice shrieked in his mind, the sound now a broken, digitized screech: "—UNAUTHORIZED PARAMETER CHANGE! INITIATING HARD LOCKDOWN—"
The silver arm retracted instantly. The bronze barb, instead of striking Doric, became frozen—a paralyzed instrument of failed will. The Plasma Field flared, a blinding white-and-gold fire that enveloped both men, but the energy was chaotic, diffused, and harmlessly pushed away by the Aether-Core's disruptive resonance.
The momentary overload forced a circuit-break in the Spire's automated gate logic. The metallic iris, having partially opened, could not close.
"Now, Doric!" Josh yelled, yanking his friend's arm and shoving him through the breach.
They tumbled onto a polished floor of dark, magnetic stone. The air was cool, sterile, and smelled faintly of ozone and expensive clockwork lubricant—a stark contrast to the smog and burning metal of the Lower Tiers. Behind them, the massive iris door finally slammed shut with a hydraulic thud, sealing them inside.
They were in a colossal, circular chamber. It was empty save for a single, cylindrical obsidian column at the center, throbbing with a soft, blue light—the Regulator Chamber access. But surrounding the column, etched into the floor, were rings of luminous bronze script, runes that Josh immediately understood as control schematics, even without translation.
"You crazy son of a blacksmith," Doric coughed, pulling himself to his knees. "You just reverse-polarity-jumped the entire defense grid! Did you... did you just shut down the Zeus Protocol?"
"No," Josh said, heart hammering, but his mind clear for the first time since transmigration. "I didn't shut it down. I gave it a coronary. We've got maybe two minutes before its primary logic reboots." He pointed to the luminous script on the floor. "This entire chamber is the regulator. And look."
Etched in the ring closest to the central column was a fresh inscription, not in bronze, but in a faint, electric-blue glow: "STRATEGOS AJAX: ACCESS GRANTED. TEMPORAL ANOMALY DETECTED. FINAL CHOICE REMAINS."
"It accepted my power surge as a valid, albeit catastrophic, form of entry," Josh explained, running a hand over the glowing words. "The Spire still believes I'm Ajax, the Strategos, but it knows I'm fundamentally compromised. And the 'Final Choice'... it's not about who enters the chamber, Doric. It's about the Protocol itself."
Doric looked around the vast, silent chamber. "What is the Zeus Protocol, Ajax? You never told me the final steps of your design."
Josh swallowed, the fear returning, not from assassins, but from knowledge. "It's not an emergency reboot. It's an Aetheric Weapon."
He knelt down, tracing the glowing runes. "The Promachonos Spire isn't a defense regulator; it's a focusing lens. If I install the Core, the Zeus Protocol doesn't purge the Syndicate—it overcharges the entire city's Aetheric Steam network. It's a clean-slate detonation. It kills the city's power source, dropping Olympus Aethelos from the sky, sending it crashing into the clouds far below. No Syndicate, no Senate, no city. Just the void."
The revelation hung heavy in the crystalline air. A death sentence, disguised as a self-defense mechanism. The ultimate, cold logic of his past self: if I can't have it, no one can.
"—REBOOT COMPLETE. SECONDARY PROTOCOL ENGAGING: THE CRUCIBLE." the dry female voice returned, stronger now, no longer shrieking.
In response, the entire floor of the chamber began to revolve with a slow, heavy crrrunch. The polished magnetic stone began to heat, and from the wall, two new, silent automatons detached—smaller than the Kyklops, but far more agile, sculpted from dark iron and resembling mechanical hounds. They moved with the terrifying, zero-friction silence of hunters.
"We didn't get two minutes," Doric muttered, pulling his massive spiked club from his sling.
"The Crucible," Josh breathed, grabbing his Aether-Core. "It's the final test. If we fail, the Spire installs the Core itself and starts the countdown."
As the iron hounds sprang from the wall, one towards Doric, one towards Josh, a blinding red light flashed from the central Regulator Column. The light wasn't energy; it was a complex, interlocking network of laser-etched lines, now projecting a three-dimensional holographic schematic of the entire Aether-Core's final installation sequence.
It showed not one installation point, but two: a primary slot, and a hidden Bypass Nexus.
The Spire was offering the Strategos Ajax one final, impossible gamble: install the core in the Bypass Nexus to save the city, but doing so would require an unholy fusion of his modern knowledge of fusion-level physics and the ancient logic of Aethelosian steam technology—a paradox that could only be solved by the consciousness of Joshua Harper, the temporal anomaly.
Josh's eyes met Doric's across the revolving, heat-intensifying floor. The iron hound lunged.
-----TO BE CONTINUED