The first shape broke from the dark.
It came on all fours, long-limbed, skin stretched too tight across jagged bone. Its mouth split wide with rows of pale teeth, catching the light before it sprang.
"Contact front!!" someone shouted, but the echo was swallowed by more movement. Rifles flared. The creatures folded mid-leap, body smacking into the concrete with a sound not unlike wet stone.
Shadows began to pour in through the gaps in the collapsed gantry - four, five, six bodies shifting unnaturally fast. Their claws sparked against steel as they clambered across the walls. Tac-lights danced across faces that weren't quite animal, weren't quite machine, and were gone again just as fast.
"Hold our formation!" Layla barked. "Keep the corridor tight!"
The squad closed ranks, boots braced, rifles pumping measured bursts. Two creatures went down in sprays of calcified dust, another collapsed screaming when several rounds punched through its throat. The others came on anyway.
One slammed into a soldier at the perimeter, knocking him back against a support beam. Its claws screeched across his armor, sparks kicking into the air. Before it could tear through, Layla's rifle barked in response - nine shots tight, hammering into the thing's spine until it crumpled.
The soldier staggered upright, visor cracked but intact. "I'm good!" he shouted, voice ragged.
The hiss came again, this time from above. Layla snapped her visor up. Dozens of eyes gleamed in the rafters. The ceiling moved as the creatures swarmed across it like a living tide.
"Down the center!" Layla shouted. "Give me space to move!"
The squad obeyed without hesitation. Rifles shifted upward, tac-lights burning across the ceiling as fire poured out in controlled rhythm. Dust and fragments rained down with the bodies, collapsing in heaps across the floor. For every one that fell, another slipped closer through the haze.
Layla tapped her forearm HUD, teeth grit. The dampener signal spiked, delivery was seconds away.
"Cover me!" she snapped. "I'm making for the crawler!"
"Ma'aam - "
"That's an order!"
She broke from the formation at a dead sprint, boots hammering against the cracked floor. Her squad closed the gap behind her, rifles cascading in steady fire to cut a corridor through the horde. The creatures lunged from the sides, shrieking with jagged mouths, only to be torn down by disciplined bursts. Every shot bought her another step.
One broke through, barreling straight at her. Its body twisted mid-run, too fast, unnatural. Layla threw herself low, sliding under its reach as it skidded past. A soldier behind her dropped it with several clean shots to the skull.
"Keep moving!" he shouted.
She didn't look back.
The crawler loomed ahead, field generators glowing in dull pulses across its front and sides. The hum of the dampener was deafening now, a bass note that rattled the teeth. The ground vibrated beneath her boots.
"Thirty seconds!" came the call from her comm.
She vaulted the last barrier, scrambled across the torn asphalt toward the crawler's flank. Behind her, the squad's rifles thundered, creatures shrieking as they pressed harder into the kill zone. The air reeked of dust and blood and scorched plating, it was all anyone could smell.
Layla reached the crawler, slammed her palm against the side rail, and pulled herself up. Her visor flickered with warning lights, the drop was coming.
The sky split with a roar.
A black shape tore down from the stratosphere, burning like a second sun, velocity screaming past the threshold of sound. The earth shook. The squad scattered for cover. The sound broke against them in waves - pressure that rattled the lungs, a howl that belonged to something larger than the sky itself. Layla braced herself against the crawler's hull as the machine slammed into the dampener field, all that speed swallowed in a single crushing instant. The ground buckled, the air howled, dust rolled out in waves. The pressure wave was unlike anything she'd seen before. The kinetic dampeners arrested the mechs momentum, catching it like a baseball to a glove. The force from the impact transmitted into a pressure wave that cratered the area in front of the crawler. When it cleared, the mech knelt, centered, coolant steam venting from its frame.
Layla didn't wait. She sprinted towards the machine, boots hammering cracked asphalt. Steam licked around her legs as she climbed the rungs on the mech's side and dropped into the cockpit. The canopy sealed above her head with a hydraulic hiss.
For a heartbeat she was blind, cocooned in darkness. Then the interface lit, arcs of green and gold wrapping across her visor. The system linked to her suit in a surge of haptic pressure. She gritted her teeth, forcing herself through the calibration as the machine's weight became her own. Hydraulics screamed. Servos flexed. She grabbed the controls as input become muscle memory.
"Prophet to command," she said, voice tight. "I've got the machine."
Static crackled in her ear. Then one of her soldiers: "Copy that, Iron Prophet. Contact, east side. Multiple targets."
Movement continued to slither through the dark, beyond the collapsed infrastructure. Shapes, more than one, long-limbed and jagged. Eyes like shards of glass catching the refracted light. The creatures moved with no pattern, each step unnatural in a way the human body refused to parse.
Layla strode forward in the mech, each step shaking the ground. She raised the railgun and fired at one of the creatures. The recoil boomed like a thunderclap, the slug ripping through her first target and punching a hole through the concrete wall behind it. The squad fanned out, rifles sparking fire into the shapes, but the creatures didn't scatter. They charged.
The second wave hit with force enough to shatter steel. A claw raked across the mech's arm, gouging into the armor. Layla drove her plated fist straight down, crushing the thing's chest into pulp against the ground. Another clambered up the mech's leg, but her shoulder pods flared, spitting missiles into its midsection. The explosion threw three more off their feet.
"Hold the line!" she roared.
The squad obeyed. Tight formation, clean arcs of fire. Every shot measured. Every step covered. They fought like they'd been born here, backs to one another, rifles echoing in a cacophony of rhythm. The creatures kept coming, calcified bodies cracking under bullets, limbs shearing under rail slugs.
One leapt high, clearing the squad's lights, and landed on the mech's chest. Its claws screeched across the canopy. Layla triggered the bracing rotors and twisted. Metal shrieked. The creature's spine broke against the mech's armored ridge and momentum of the twist. She flung it off and drove the railgun into its skull point-blank. The blast lit the bay in a wash of white.
For a moment, it looked like they might win. The squad pressed forward. Layla stomped through wreckage, crushing broken bodies beneath the mech's weight. Each creature seemingly falling faster than the last. It wasn't until the far wall collapsed that the battlefield took a drastic turn.
Something unidentifiable moved through the dust. Not another creature, not exactly. It's figure stepped into the half-light, cobalt skin gleaming under the broken floodlamps. More agile than any human, slimmer than the soldiers but faster in every line. Eyes rotating with concentric rings, like machinery thinking through infinite layers.
Unity-9.
She didn't even look at Layla at first. Her focus was on the remaining creatures. She moved with terrifying speed, each step silent, every strike absolute. The first creature almost immediately moved in, starting low, claws sparking against the floor, jaws splitting wide. She vanished in a flicker of cloak, and when she reappeared, it was already too late for it - she drove a piece of rebar effortlessly clean through the top of its skull as it skidded past.
Two more bounded after her, one darting wide to flank, the other leaping high like a wolf breaking cover. Unity-9 rolled beneath the pounce, her heel snapping upward to catch the leaper's ribcage mid-air. The thing twisted around her feet with a crack, body folding sideways into its packmate. They landed snarling, tangled, as she drew her sidearm in one smooth motion. Several sharp shots ended their convulsions before they could rise.
Another barreled straight for her, shoulders rolling with unnatural strength. She didn't move until the jaws were snapping for her throat. Then she pivoted, catching its momentum with both hands on its forelimb. Her weight shifted - one turn, one calculated redirect, and the beast slammed headlong into a steel column. Its skull burst wetly against the metal. She slid a concealed knife across her thigh into her grip and finished it with a precise thrust to the brain stem.
The ceiling trembled. Three more dropped from the gantry above, claws screeching as they scrabbled for purchase. Unity-9 was already moving. She slid a grenade across the floor in their path, cloak flickering as she darted aside. The creatures lunged straight into the blast, bodies tearing apart mid-stride. She emerged from the haze behind them, another rebar whipping into her hand like a staff.
They kept coming. The chamber filled with more and more pounding claws, shrieks that echoed like broken horns. Unity-9's movements narrowed to essentials: a roll beneath one lunge, a reverse grip driving her knife up into the roof of its mouth; a sidestep from another charge, redirecting its weight into its own packmate until both shattered on the floor. Her strikes were clean, mechanical, and each one a solved problem.
Shapes flickered into view around her; cloaked Synthetics, escorts she had brought without warning. One fired a short burst that cut a hound mid-leap, its body tumbling past her shoulder. Another vaulted rubble, slamming a bayonet down into a spine, pinning it thrashing to the concrete. Their timing was precise, their interventions woven seamlessly with her own strikes, like parts of the same calculation.
Two more beasts circled, low and wary, foam flecking from their jaws. They moved opposite one another, testing for weakness. Unity-9 stilled completely. Eyes whirred once, locking their patterns.
The first lunged. She spun off its angle, rebar gripped like a spear. The steel drove through its chest and pinned it to the floor, claws raking uselessly at the air. She kicked the weapon deeper, snapping its body flat.
The second lunged immediately, jaws wide enough to take her head. She bent backward at the waist, letting it sail past. As it landed, her cloak shimmered, and she reappeared astride its back. One precise knife thrust slid through the base of its skull. It fell still in a heartbeat.
Silence returned.
Carcasses lay strewn across the chamber, jaws cracked, limbs bent at impossible angles. Unity-9 stood untouched, plating unscarred, eyes returning to their neutral rotations. Her escorts flickered back into invisibility, leaving the impression they had never been there at all.
Every kill had been deliberate. No wasted effort, no flourish. Just inevitability given form.
Layla froze, breath caught in her throat. For weeks she had spoken against this Synthetic phantom, calling her an idol of false progress. And here she was, cutting through monsters like they were nothing. Something inside of Layla hardened. "This is it," she whispered to herself. "This is the moment. The turning tide of this war."
She pivoted the mech, railguns whirring as they charged. Her squad shouted protests over comms, but she ignored them. If she could kill Unity-9 here - if she could show the Purists that even the gods of steel bled, then their cause would ignite in a way that had never been seen before.
The mech's cannons erupted. Slugs tore through where Unity-9 had been standing a breath before. She blurred aside, faster than the eye. A missile streaked past her and exploded against the gantry. Sparks rained down, flames licking through the rubble.
Layla charged, swinging the mech's gauntlet in a wide arc. Unity-9 didn't retreat. She leaned outside of the swing and pressed one hand against the mech's elbow joint. Sparks cascaded as her touch disabled the servos. The arm locked mid-motion. Layla cursed and kicked forward, trying to crush her underfoot. Unity-9 sidestepped, graceful as glass, and the stomp cratered the concrete instead.
All the while, she kept dismantling the remaining creatures - killing them between Layla's strikes, never giving her full attention. It was like Layla was an afterthought.
"Fight me!" Layla screamed through the comms, voice cracking with fury.
Unity-9 glanced at her then. Just for a moment. Her eyes spun once, a gyroscope locking into place. She didn't speak. She simply struck the mech's chest with an open palm, and released a point-blank energy discharge, followed by a powerful concussive force, detonating against the outside of the mech. It rippled through the cockpit, throwing Layla against her restraints. The HUD flashed red. Systems sputtered.
The creatures broke, finally, their numbers spent. Their carcasses littered the floor. Unity-9 finished the last one, bisecting its neck with the strength of her bare palm strike - dropping it without effort. Then she turned back to Layla. Her expression was unreadable. There was no triumph. No anger, rather something colder, more certain. Before anyone could do anything, she was gone. She moved into the haze and vanished, leaving only silence and wreckage behind.
Layla slumped in the cockpit, chest heaving, mech crippled. Her squad clustered below, rifles still raised, staring at her like they couldn't decide if she was victorious or damned. She clenched the mech's frozen controls, forcing herself upright. "She's not untouchable," Layla muttered, voice raw. "She's not. She cant be."
Layla climbed out from the ruined mech, armor scorched and visor fractured, every breath tasting of ash. Her squad waited in silence, heads bowed, rifles loose at their sides. They had survived what should have ended them, and survival alone made their eyes search hers for meaning.
She stood tall. "You saw it. We faced those things and we're still standing. And you saw her. She's no phantom, no myth. She was here. She looked right at us, and we didn't break."
The words stiffened their spines, kindled something fierce behind their exhaustion. That was enough. Layla stooped and pried a shard of Synthetic plating from the rubble. It burned faintly against her gauntlet before she slipped it into her pack. Proof. A promise. She turned once more toward the haze where Unity-9 had vanished, the silence heavier than any gunfire. Her voice dropped, meant for no one but herself.
"She looked at me. She saw what I was, and she let me walk away as if I were nothing. That won't stand. Next time, she won't get the choice."
The squad worked in silence, bagging fragments of plating and tagging the remains of the fallen beasts. Their movements were practiced, efficient, but Layla could feel the questions simmering behind every visor. Questions about what they had seen. About what it meant. About why Unity-9 had stood in the same ruin as them, fighting the same monsters, then disappeared without a word.
Layla stood apart, watching the crawler's floodlights sweep across the shattered bay. The silence pressed harder than the battle had. She tapped her comm once, sending the encrypted ping that would route directly to Purist command.
Evidence in hand. Survivors intact. Awaiting retrieval.
She didn't bother with details. Those would come when she stood before Dr. Voss herself. This wasn't the kind of intel to trust to transmissions. One of the operatives hefted a bag of plating into the crawler, shaking his head. "Never thought I'd see Ascendents and Synthetics fighting side by side. That's a hard pill to swallow."
Layla crouched to secure a crate, her voice low but edged. "These creatures were filth. But what's worse is seeing machines and traitors fight shoulder to shoulder, like they belong together."
The operative glanced at her, visor catching the floodlight. "Do you think they planned it? Mobilized from the get go?"
"They probably didn't have to," Layla said, sealing the latch. "Survival's an excuse. That's all it takes to make monsters into allies."
Her eyes strayed back to the crater where Unity-9 had vanished. The shard of plating in her pack felt like a brand against her spine. Proof of something larger than any of them had words for. Proof that had to be shown, no matter what the cost.
She clenched her fist, lowering it slowly. The silence was heavy, but her conviction was heavier. When the crawler's engine rumbled back to life and her squad climbed aboard, Layla stayed standing in the open a moment longer, visor tuned to the horizon. She turned at last, not because she wanted to, but because the skies had nothing left to give her but enemies.