The spider reeled, sparks spraying from the hole burned into its armored head. Its optics flickered between red and static, code breaking apart in real time. For a heartbeat, the synced Militech troops faltered—long enough for Max's constructs to tear into them like a precision strike team ripping through a weak flank.
V gave a sharp whistle, ducking behind cover as she slammed a mag into her pistol. "He just bricked their goddamn command node. Beautiful."
Lucy's deck screamed warnings, data streams spiking red across her HUD. Her hands shook as she typed. "No—wait—it's not down. It's rerouting through backups, rewriting itself. Max, it's—"
Her warning cut short.
The spider let out a synthetic shriek, and its optics split into dozens of smaller red points. All around the chamber, wreckage twitched. Broken drones jolted upright, half-melted mechs dragged themselves across the floor, and fallen soldiers spasmed as implants kicked back online.
Lucy's voice broke into a whisper. "It's pulling every system back under control. Even the dead hardware."
The sound was unbearable—grinding steel, cracking bone, servos whining as Militech's AI welded flesh and circuitry into shambling combat units. The battlefield filled with them: twisted, jury-rigged warforms stitched from wreckage.
V grimaced, raising her weapon. "That's not tactics. That's recycling bodies for parts."
Max stood still, blue light burning steady in his optics. His drones tightened formation around him, nanite plating shifting into heavier armor configurations. Infantry braced shields. Air units adjusted wings for suppression runs. Exo-suits locked into firing stance.
His voice was calm, flat—like a system log.
"Eidolon."
The chamber thrummed as his network synced tighter. Bandwidth spiked, connections solidified. Every construct's optics flared brighter as protocols aligned. The floor vibrated under the synchronized movement of hundreds of machines responding to one operator.
The spider shrieked again and pushed its swarm forward—an avalanche of corrupted drones, reanimated soldiers, and gutted mechs driven like puppets.
Max lifted his railgun. The coil screamed as it superheated, white-hot arcs running its length.
"Assimilation against assimilation. Let's see whose system holds."
The two swarms collided, blue against red, precision against brute force, code and counter-code tearing into each other in real time as Max walked forward through the crossfire.
The chamber became a storm of fire and steel.
Militech's swarm surged like a tidal wave, every movement rigid, calculated—an army of puppets run on one clock cycle. Max's constructs answered with speed and adaptability, shifting mid-strike, weapons reconfiguring in real time.
A corrupted mech lunged forward, its torso rebuilt from scrap plating, arms ending in jagged cannons. Max's infantry swarmed it, shields absorbing its fire before splitting formation, opening a clean shot. Drones screamed down from above, drilling into its armor and tearing its reactor apart. The explosion ripped through the corrupted ranks, but the spider AI simply redirected them, filling the gap without hesitation.
Lucy's hands flew across her deck, sweat running down her face. "It's rewriting on the fly—pushing patches faster than anything I've ever seen. Max, it's adapting to you."
Max's voice cut through the chaos, flat, unshaken.
"Then it will adapt to failure."
He fired his railgun. The slug punched through a corrupted Titan frame, snapping it in half. Before the wreckage hit the ground, his drones were already dismantling it, absorbing the scrap into their own armor.
V laughed, firing her pistol until the slide locked back, then grabbed a rifle from a fallen soldier. "Your toys are eating their toys alive, choom. This is some nightmare fuel."
The spider AI shrieked, optics flaring. Its corrupted units shifted tactics instantly—coordinated suppressive fire hammered Max's forward line, while a group of reanimated soldiers charged low, crawling under the cover fire to get close. One detonated mid-lunge, a suicide implant lighting up the chamber.
The blast tore a hole in the floor and threw several constructs apart in pieces.
Lucy shouted over the static. "It's using the bodies as smart bombs now!"
Max didn't break stride. His optics flared, and the fragments of his destroyed units melted, reforming into fresh drones midair. His voice was calm, almost quiet against the chaos.
"Every weapon you bring becomes mine."
The spider host reared up, slamming two massive legs into the floor. Panels split open along its armored body, releasing swarms of micro-drones, each no larger than a bullet, red optics flashing. They poured into the chamber like a cloud, ripping through Max's outer ranks, slicing into armor joints and servos.
Lucy's face drained of color. "Shit, they're anti-swarm. Designed to shred nanotech."
For the first time, Max paused. The cloud pressed inward, shredding through several of his constructs at once, blue sparks raining down like fireflies.
V gritted her teeth, bracing behind cover. "Max, they're cutting you apart—"
He raised his hand.
The blue glow across his body pulsed once—sharp, like a heartbeat. His entire army froze for half a second, then every construct detonated a short-range EMP burst in perfect sync.
The chamber went white with static.
When the haze cleared, Militech's micro-drones were twitching wrecks, falling from the air in showers of sparks. Max's swarm was already rebuilding itself from the debris, systems rebooting under Eidolon's control.
The spider host let out a screech that rattled the chamber's walls. Its optics blazed crimson as it shifted to a full-overclock state, its weapons spinning up to maximum output.
Lucy's voice broke into a whisper. "It's going critical. If it pushes that much power through its core…"
Max stepped forward, his railgun glowing white-hot, coils screaming. His army spread around him, forming a wall of blue optics against the spider's red horde.
He spoke, steady, absolute:
"Then I'll end it before it ends itself."
The chamber shook as both sides launched everything they had.
The air cracked with thunder as the two armies slammed together once more—blue arcs colliding against red fire. Every blast from the spider host was enough to level buildings, yet Max's constructs intercepted them with layered shields, sacrificing frames that melted into slag only to be rebuilt seconds later.
The AI host pushed harder, forcing raw power through its systems. Armor panels split and glowed from the heat. Its shrieks warped into distorted, overlapping voices—dozens of synthetic tones howling as one.
Lucy stared at her deck, eyes wide. "It's bypassing safeties—bleeding itself dry just to keep pace. Max, if it breaches full override, it could fry half the grid in this sector!"
***
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It's 22 chaps ahead