The fortress had been wounded, but it was far from dead. Smoke from S3bastian's final blast still curled upward through the shattered wall, staining the desert night with a bitter chemical haze. Allied troops surged into the breach like blood through a torn artery, boots crunching over shards of alloy and glass, rifles sweeping every shadow.
The interior was worse than the desert battlefield. Cables-like veins hung from the ceiling, dripping sparks. The walls throbbed faintly, pulsing red as though the fortress had a heartbeat. The deeper they went, the more oppressive the air became, thick with static that crawled on skin and teeth.
Shawn Rose moved at the center of his Thorns, his katana drawn, arcs of electricity dancing faintly across its edge. He was practically drained of energy, with the adrenaline from S3bastian's decision fueling him. Other than that, he was basically running on fumes.
"Rose's Thorns, left flank," he barked, voice hoarse. "We carve space for triage. No wounded left behind."
"Yes, sir," Spencer answered, visor crackling with his own faint charge.
Reinhardt's laughter thundered ahead of them, shaking the smoke. The old knight plowed forward, hammer slung over his shoulder, armor charred but unbowed.
"Push! Push, my friends! Tonight we bring the storm to the storm!"
Morrison moved beside Reyes, his rifle raised, calm as stone. "We finish this tonight," he muttered.
Reyes just smirked. "Wasn't having any plans of prolonging this."
Then the fortress went still. The red glow dimmed. The cables fell silent. The hum that had been vibrating through the floor vanished, leaving only the sound of soldiers' breaths and distant boots. And then, from the pit at the heart of the chamber, something began to climb.
The first thing they saw was a hand, rising from the abyss like a nightmare dredged up from the deep. Black alloy fingers curled over the rim of the pit, joints glowing purple. Another hand followed. Metal groaned as the thing pulled itself upward.
The head rose last, hunched to fit the chamber. It was the shape of a jackal's skull, crowned with jagged spines that scraped the ribs overhead. Two eyes blazed violet, drinking the surrounding light. Its chest was plated in scarred alloy, every seam bleeding discordant glow. Cables trailed its back like dreadlocks.
In its grip was a staff taller than towers, etched with shifting sigils that made eyes water to follow.
The soldiers faltered. Some whispered prayers. Others raised rifles out of reflex, though what good would bullets do?
When it spoke, it's voice reverbed around the room, penetrating their skulls.
"This is my body. You have crawled inside it like insects. And now you will learn what it means to trespass. You wish to take me down? I'd like to see you try."
Adawe's voice cracked through comms like a blade.
"All units...listen carefully. The objective is to capture Anubis. I repeat: capture, do not kill. We need him alive."
The order ricocheted down the line. It hit Shawn's sternum like a cut. Even Reinhardt hesitated. Reyes swore quietly. He knew that Adawe would never order such a thing. No. This came from high command. World leaders only had the authorization to order something like this even though the fate of the world was at stake.
"Copy," Jack said. "Capture."
Anubis lifted its staff and swept it through the air.
The world broke. A wave of purple distortion tore through the chamber. Men screamed and dropped. Others turned their guns on allies, eyes flashing violet. Pain surged in every soldier's veins, amplified, multiplied, unbearable.
Shawn staggered, clutching his chest as wounds he'd already healed for others opened again in his own body. His lungs seized. His teeth rattled. But he forced his palms to the floor and burned a surge of bioelectricity outward, shattering the invisible lattice that had netted his Thorns.
"Ground it!" he roared. "Bleed it through me!"
The Thorns shook free, sparks dancing from their skin, and reset their lines. Anubis laughed, a sound that made the walls tremble. It swung the staff again. The wave screamed.
Men's hands snapped to their throats as if chained there. Knees buckled. A heavy gunner in a forward position spasmed and discharged an entire belt into the ceiling. Slabs of armor rained down, crushing three in the second rank. Someone bled out in seconds, arterial, bright.
"Shields!" Morrison shouted. "Stack on Reinhardt!"
Reinhardt lifted his barrier like a man shouldering a sky. The first lick of violet slid over it and hissed, like oil on a pan. The second licked deeper. The third shattered it, a sound like a bell torn in half.
The backlash drove Reinhardt to a knee. Ana's hand shot out to steady him and didn't quite make it. She fired instead. The round hit the Anubis' left eye and dimpled it like a raindrop striking molten glass. The purple dimmed, then flared twice as bright.
"Learn," Anubis whispered, everywhere. "What you break, I can unbreak. What you cure, I can infect."
Then he cut loose.
The staff described a figure-eight and violet arcs sleeted out like chain lightning, skipping man to man, birthmarking them in pain. A squad at the far right seized as one organism, rifles ratcheting up in perfect, hideous unison to track their own platoon. Jack's voice hit like a hammer: "Down! Down!" They went to their bellies and the volley ate the air overhead and the ricochet did the rest. Screams. Screams. A sergeant crawled three feet without his legs before his lungs remembered he was dead.
Reyes sprinted up onto a gantry, firing buckshot into the Anubis' head. Sparks flew, but the monster's eye only burned brighter. A ripple of Discord shot back, seizing Reyes and slamming him into a wall.
Ana fired round after round, piercing Bastions and Orisas that spilled from hidden alcoves, but her voice cut steady through comms: "Shawn, it's magnifying pain. Every cut, every burn, it makes worse."
She was right. Soldiers dropped screaming not because they were mortally wounded, but because scratches became agony, bruises became fractures.
A gunner screamed as his own belt discharged, mowing down comrades. A squad froze mid-step, bodies twitching as if strings had been pulled tight. A medic tried to stabilize a bleeding private and instead convulsed, injecting poison into his veins by mistake.
"Every second we delay, more die!" Morrison shouted. "We need a plan!"
Shawn wiped blood from his mouth, forcing himself upright. "We can't kill him. They expect us to capture him. Chain him up and put him in a cage like a.... Oh that's it. A Faraday cage."
Garbiel's voice cut in sharp: "Explain."
"Too complicated to fully explain. We make a loop make sure they're conductors. Use his own power against him. He powers his own prison."
"Approved," Adawe said instantly. "Do it."
The Thorns scattered. They ripped cables from walls, dragged coils across the floor, spiked anchors into ribs of the chamber. Soldiers bled themselves raw holding lines in place. Reinhardt braced an entire gantry with his hammer.
Shawn drove his katana deep into the Titan's back, right into the knot of light at the base of the skull. He became the conductor, as the only one who could effectively turn Discord against itself, veins burning, breath rattling.
"Now!" he screamed.
The loop closed. Purple lightning poured into the circle, running cable to pillar to gantry to floor scar. The chamber hummed. Anubis staggered as its own energy turned into chains, forcing it to hold a breath it didn't have.
"All units!" Morrison bellowed. "We have him contained!"
The soldiers roared. For the first time, hope flared. But Anubis' voice cut through the noise.
"Do you think that I could be felled so easily. I have prepared for such a situation."
Anubis went still. Then the fortress responded. Circular hatches irised open along the chamber walls. Cold vapor rolled out. From within rose three new frames sleek, humanoid, terrifying.
One was blade-lean, its forearms capable of splitting into edges. One was shielded, wrapped in baffles and armor. One bore wings of hard light, latticed and bright.
Their optics burned clean violet, sockets waiting. Glyphs flickered across their chests: GOD INITIATE I, II, III.
"No ordinary shell can contain me," Anubis intoned. "Special units must be created to house my brilliance. These are not soldiers. These are vessels. Hosts."
Threads of violet unspooled from the Titan's chest, reaching for the Initiates.
"Cut those lines!" Morrison barked.
Reyes moved instantly, blasting the socket of the blade-lean Initiate before the thread could enter. Sparks showered. The thread recoiled.
The shielded Initiate stepped forward, chest opening like a mouth. Reinhardt slammed his hammer down, raising a slab of floor between socket and thread. The thread began to burrow, cracks spidering through stone. The winged Initiate took to the air, soaring toward the high tunnels. The third thread chased it like a drawn nerve.
Virginia pressed her hands to Shawn's katana, flooding it with counter-frequency. The blade hummed, jamming the handshake. The threads stuttered. One missed its socket entirely.
But one struck true.
The winged Initiate's chest seam opened. The thread lanced in. Its body lit. Glyphs cascaded: HOST_CAND—HOST_PRIM—HOST_FORK.
"Shawn!" Virginia shouted. "He's splitting!"
The chamber erupted into chaos. The blade Initiate lunged at Reinhardt, sickle-arm clashing against hammer. Sparks flew as steel met alloy. Reinhardt roared, holding ground with raw will.
The shielded Initiate advanced like a walking wall. Morrison's rockets barely dented it. Ana picked seams with precision shots, targeting mimic-points where pain responses flinched it. Reyes blinked behind and blasted joints until plates buckled.
The winged Initiate, half-filled with Anubis' shard, dived from above, talons raking. Shawn raised his katana and dragged the Discord fork into himself, veins burning like molten glass. He screamed but held it long enough for Spencer to fire a bolt of pure electricity through its wing. The omnic crashed into the floor.
"Break them!" Morrison shouted. "Break them all!"
Reinhardt bellowed and smashed the blade Initiate's chest, hammer cracking it in two. Violet light spilled out before sputtering to ash.
Reyes planted grenades under the shield Initiate's baffles, jumping away as they detonated. The omnic staggered. Morrison's final rocket split its core, dropping it to the ground.
Ana steadied, exhaled, and fired one perfect shot into the winged Initiate's optic. It spasmed, glyphs sputtering, and collapsed. The thread inside writhed before snapping like a cut wire.
All three Initiates lay still.
Shawn, barely conscious, pressed both palms to the Titan's back. "Now," he whispered, blood running from his mouth. "End this."
The Thorns poured everything into him. Electricity roared through Shawn, into the katana, into the knot of light at Anubis' core.
The Titan convulsed. Plates cracked. Purple lightning exploded outward.
Anubis screamed, not with rage this time, but with something close to disbelief.
"And I was so close too. They profited whether I won or lost." He chuckled to himself as he looked to the ceiling. "Crazy how I did most of their work and didn't even look their direction. Almost as if they had a hand in my creation. Ahhh I see. It makes sense now."
The knot shattered. Anubis collapsed, the body of a god crumbling to slag.
Silence followed.
The fortress, once alive with a heartbeat of Discord, went still. The cables sagged. The red glow dimmed. The air tasted clean again, if only faintly.
Shawn collapsed, caught by Virginia before his head hit the floor. He was breathing, shallow but steady. Adawe's voice came through comms, choked but firm.
"This is Commander Adawe. Confirmed. Anubis is destroyed. The God Program is no more. The war… is over."
Allied troops stared at the ruin. Some cheered, voices breaking. Others simply sank to their knees, too numb to celebrate. The cost had been unimaginable. Thousands lay dead. The fortress was a tomb. But the god of machines was gone.
Reinhardt planted his hammer and bowed his head. Morrison exhaled, shoulders sagging. Reyes reloaded both shotguns, as he kicked the husk of the Titan. "Did we kill him anyway?"
Ana's eyes softened as she looked at Shawn. "No. He's just stuck in that body until we extract his programming from it. Better to make sure there's no way for it to power back up, yes."
Shawn's eyes fluttered open. He looked up at the ruined ceiling, at the dawn beginning to creep over the desert through the breach. He smiled faintly, bloody but alive.
"The god was just in the name. He was more like a patient."