The drone lay broken on the floor, smoke rising from its ruined body. For a moment, the chamber was quiet except for the soft crackle of burning wires.
Then the sound came again—boots, metal grinding, engines humming deeper inside the complex. Militech wasn't finished.
V reloaded with a sharp click, her eyes darting toward the noise. "Shit. They're sending in more. A lot more."
Lucy's hands shook as she checked her deck. Streams of red data flashed across her screen. "Max… I'm seeing multiple signals. Heavy squads, more drones, and something bigger. They're throwing everything at us."
Max stood in the center of the chamber, calm and steady, his rifle hanging loose at his side. His glowing eyes didn't flicker.
"Then they'll break everything they bring."
The floor trembled as a new sound rolled in—slow, heavy, like thunder made of steel. The walls shivered with each step.
Lucy swallowed hard. "That… that's not standard Militech hardware. That's classified-level weight."
V raised her pistol, lips curling into a hard grin. "Good. Means we're getting their best."
Max tilted his head slightly, listening to the echoes of machines moving closer. His voice was low but carried across the chamber.
"They think numbers and size make them strong. They're wrong."
The wall at the far end split open with a deafening crack, and the shadows of massive shapes filled the breach.
Max lifted his rifle again, his words flat, steady, absolute.
"Let them come."
The breach roared wider, slabs of reinforced steel torn aside by claws of machinery. Through the smoke, the hulking silhouettes advanced—Militech's black project war machines. Multi-legged walkers bristling with cannons. Towering mechs with armor thick enough to shrug off rockets. Their optics burned red, and their heavy servos screamed with every movement.
Lucy's screen lit up in a storm of warnings. "Jesus—those are Titan frames. Prototype series. Militech doesn't roll these out for anything short of a warzone."
V spat on the floor, her grin razor-edged. "Guess they think we count as one."
But Max wasn't grinning. He was silent. Still. The blue glow in his eyes deepened until it wasn't light anymore—it was fire trapped behind glass.
He spoke once, almost to himself.
"Eidolon. Access local fabricators."
A chime echoed, low and mechanical, rippling through the walls. Deep within the base, hidden banks of nanotech printers stirred awake—machines meant for weapons prototyping, hidden under Militech lock and key. Their locks were already gone. Eidolon had carved through them like smoke.
Max raised his hand, fingers splayed. Blue streams of code rippled across his arm, down into the floor. Metal around them began to tremble.
From the far corners of the chamber, plating tore free. Scraps of armor lifted into the air like feathers caught in a storm. Drones half-destroyed crawled up off the ground, their circuits seething with new light. Nanites swarmed across their broken shells, rebuilding, reshaping.
Lucy gasped, covering her mouth. "He's… he's making an army."
Max's voice rolled through the chamber, layered with the machine's echo.
"They wanted war machines. I'll show them what war really looks like."
The walls shook again, not from Militech's march this time—but from the thunder of hundreds of new footsteps. Shapes unfolded from the rising storm of nanotech. Infantry frames, jagged and lean, their optics burning with the same blue fire as Max's eyes. Drones, winged and sleek, breaking free from their steel cocoons. Even a pair of towering exo-suits—reborn from wreckage—rose to stand at Max's flank.
The chamber had become a forge.
V lowered her pistol for a heartbeat, just staring. "…You just built a fucking army in seconds."
The Militech mechs loomed in the breach, weapons whining as they locked targets.
Max stepped forward, his new forces moving with him in perfect sync, every motion precise, inevitable.
"No. I didn't build an army." His optics flared bright, cold, endless.
"I am the army."
The clash began as both sides roared forward, metal against metal, war against war.
The chamber detonated into chaos.
Militech's Titans unleashed hell—cannons pounding, rotary guns screaming, missile racks vomiting fire. The floor cracked under the sheer shockwaves of their barrage.
But Max's creations surged forward, a tide of jagged steel and blue fire. Nanite-forged infantry blurred through the rain of gunfire, their forms rippling as damage repaired in real-time. Shattered plating sealed itself with living metal, every impact birthing more fragments that reformed into blades, claws, and spears.
Winged drones streaked upward, their thrusters shrieking as they tore through Militech's suppressor bots in a storm of blue-lit trails. Explosions blossomed in the air, fragments raining down like metallic hail.
One Titan walker stomped into the horde, crushing half a dozen constructs beneath its legs. It fired point-blank, plasma bolts ripping the ground open.
Max lifted his hand.
The constructs flowed like liquid, scattering and reforming, climbing onto the Titan's legs in writhing packs. Blades of nanosteel stabbed into armor joints, drills spun through plating, and in seconds the massive machine screamed as its cannons folded inward, eaten alive by the swarm.
It fell with a crash that shook the chamber, blue fire spilling from its ruined core.
V ducked behind cover, firing into a squad of advancing shock troops that had followed the Titans. Her grin was manic. "Max, your toys are eating their toys alive!"
Lucy's fingers flew across her deck, eyes wide as data streamed past. "This isn't just a swarm. He's rewriting their code mid-combat. They're not just fighting—they're learning."
Max moved through the storm like a center of gravity. Every round fired at him bent wide, striking only his creations or vanishing into the floor. His rifle shifted shape again, a heavy railgun now, glowing lines of silver heat running down its length.
He fired once.
A Titan's head detonated, the rail slug punching through as if its armor was paper. The mech collapsed, a tower crumbling under its own weight.
The rest of the Titans pressed forward, their fire intensifying, shaking the chamber walls like an earthquake.
Max didn't slow. His voice carried through the chaos, cold, unshakable.
"They built these walls to cage weapons."
Another shot. Another Titan fell, sparks bursting like fireworks.
"But I am no weapon."
The swarm surged at his command, overwhelming the last line of mechs. Metal shrieked, fire poured, and Militech's prototypes fell piece by piece, ripped apart and consumed by the blue-lit tide.
Max stopped in the center of the battlefield, the floor slick with oil and molten steel. His army stood around him, silent now, watching with their burning optics.
He looked at the smoking breach, where deeper shadows stirred. Reinforcements. Bigger ones.
His optics burned steady, endless.
"Bring more."
***
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