The child scrambled back to his feet and ran, but his legs were unsteady, and he fell again. He tried to get up, but his eyes were drawn to the ground. Buried under pieces of burnt, destroyed building, he saw what looked like a ribcage.
He sobbed, a loud, heartbroken sound that cut through the silence. He started running and crying, and the red eyes stayed behind him, not moving. All he could hear were his feet stepping over things that sounded like broken rocks.
Meanwhile, Wolf looked around with his suit's enhanced vision. All he saw was the ground, which was completely leveled. The boy was running over what his vision identified as bones and bodies.
The view shifts, cutting to the sky where several jets are flying in. Their pilots stare in disbelief at the scene below. A massive, gaping hole now exists where twenty buildings once stood. The other buildings, each over a thousand feet tall, have been leveled in seconds.
"How could something do this?" one pilot says over the comms, his voice filled with shock. "Those buildings are made of our strongest metal. Yet here we are."
The site of the impact looks like a pie dish, with the surrounding buildings pushed over onto their sides, forming a perfect crater in the heart of the city.
More jets fell into formation overhead, these ones high-grade rocketjets built to maneuver at incredible altitudes. They flew over the still-standing buildings of Sunfish City, a sprawling metropolis that covered the ground for as far as the eye could see. The rooftops of the buildings, a vast mosaic of blue and green solar panels, created the illusion of a huge, pixelated screen.
But that illusion was shattered by the enormous hole in the city below. The smoke was so thick it was like a wall. In the buildings that had been knocked over and now leaned at dangerous angles, humans screamed, losing their footing and falling out of the high windows. They rained down, a cascade of bodies hitting the ground with sickening thuds. The jets couldn't get lower; the buildings were so close together that the city looked like a series of tight hallways. The pilots could only move in a straight line, navigating the narrow corridors.
These were not just buildings; they were huge, four-by-four square towers, packed so tightly together that the initial shockwave from the impact had been powerful enough to topple over 200 of them at once.
The scene cuts to the command center, where the Supreme Captain stares at a huge screen showing the aftermath. His eyes are wide with shock.
"How could you let this happen!" he yells at someone off-screen.
"I'm sorry, sir," a voice responds, "but it was too fast."
"It? Are you telling me this isn't a meteor?" he asks, his voice incredulous.
"No, sir. It looked like a human-sized small ship."
"Have the jets located it?"
"No, sir. The smoke is too thick. There's nothing they can do."
A pilot's voice cuts through the comms. "Supreme Captain! I'm getting a heat signature! It looks like a bot, but its core is heating to over a million degrees Fahrenheit."
The Supreme Captain's eyes go wide. A million degrees over the sun's core could get that hot. The realization dawns on him. "That half-human fuck is here! Send in all the bots! I repeat, send in all the bots! We need to take that core! Now!"
"What about the humans there, sir?" another voice asks.
The Supreme Captain slams his hand on the console. "Who gives a shit about them? We have more important things to get, like that sun core! Tell the pilots to fly at him at full speed. Put their stupid lives to good use to slow him down for us."
"But..." a voice protests.
"There's no fucking buts!" the Supreme Captain screams. "Do what you're told!"
A hundred jets, like a deadly waterfall, dove in perfect unison into the massive hole in the ground. Their descent was a suicide mission, a final, desperate act ordered by the Supreme Captain. The ensuing explosions were so immense they created a second shockwave, a deafening roar that slammed into the city.
The ground shuddered as humans were blown from their feet, sent flying through the air to hit walls, cars, and light poles. Simultaneously, a fleet of larger jets appeared above, dropping huge, heavily-armored bots into the streets. These bots, massive and single-minded, didn't stop for anything or anyone. They barreled down the streets toward the crater, trampling over humans in their path without a moment of hesitation. They were a cold, unfeeling army, designed to destroy.
A jet peeled away from the others, the pilot surveying the scene with his heat vision. All he could see were the burning wrecks of the hundred jets they had sacrificed, a giant pile of twisted, glowing metal.
"We did it, sir!" he reported over the comms, his voice filled with relief. "We killed it."
In the command center, the Supreme Captain's fists slammed down on the console. "You son of a bitch! I said get the core, not destroy the whole fucking thing!"
"Hey, Cap," another pilot's voice cut in.
"Yes, Blue?" the Captain answered, his fury momentarily paused.
The pilot's jet immediately turned off, its engines going silent in the air. A look of sheer panic crossed his face. "No, no, no, fuck! What just happened?" He slammed the eject button, his cockpit rocketing away from the disabled jet.
Back in the command center, a technician frantically looked at his screen. "There's no way that half-breed is dead. He's just gone."
"Yes, you're right," the Captain said, his voice dropping to a low growl. "There's no sign of him. That means that bitch moved. But where?"
The ejected pilot was falling toward the ground, but he suddenly stopped, hanging in mid-air. "What was that?" he whispered to himself, looking up. All he saw were a pair of glowing red eyes staring down at him, and his parachute was being held by a huge, robotic hand. Before he could even scream, his body was thrown into a building like a bullet into a wall.
The bots, thousands of them, looked up in unison, locating Wolf in the sky above the crater. All at once, they launched themselves upward, flying at him like a volley of rockets.
But one by one, Wolf knocked them down. He moved with impossible speed, deflecting the onrushing bots like a tennis player hitting ten balls at the same time. They fell into buildings, smashing through walls, tearing up roads, and flattening cars in a chain of chaotic destruction. One massive bot crashed through a skyscraper, falling story after story before finally coming to rest in the decimated shell of a shopping mall.
Wolf didn't just knock them down; he used them as stepping stones, leaping from one to the next in the air to gain momentum. The bots, both big and small, in their thousands, covered him like a swarm of locusts, trying to overwhelm him. They tried to engulf him, but it was useless.
He unleashed the full force of his sun core. A blast of pure, incandescent heat blazed out from his body, incinerating the swarm. The bots exploded, vaporizing on contact, leaving a trail of ash and smoke behind. The energy cut through the swarm like a knife through thick glass, leaving nothing in its wake.
The blaze was a death ray, a searing torrent of energy that cut through the sky. It sliced jets in half, vaporized bots, and tore through skyscrapers like butter.
On the ground, humans, animals, and bots alike were crushed by the falling building parts. The cut-off sections of the skyscrapers plummeted to the streets below, hitting the ground with the force of a one hundred-foot tree falling onto a home, destroying everything in their path.
The human death count climbed on a screen in the command center, the number flashing red as it soared past 67,000.
"What the hell is that state number showing on the screen?" the Supreme Captain demanded, his voice a low growl.
"That's the death count, sir," a technician replied, his voice barely a whisper.
"Get that trash off my screen!" the Supreme Captain roared. "Put on something useful!"
"But the lives, sir, look!" a voice pleaded from the command center.
The Supreme Captain spun around, his eyes blazing with fury. "Shut the fuck up and look at what that core can do!" he screamed, pointing at the screen showing Wolf's power signature. "Look at all the power he has! Just fucking look at what we could do if we could get that tech into our bots! We could take over the universe! We won't have to give wood to get things done ever again."
He took a deep breath, his voice lowering to a chilling whisper. "You have to let them die for humanity to be reborn."
A young kid tried to run across the road, a desperate dash for safety. He was caught in the open, and just as he reached the other side, a massive bot, flying at full speed toward Wolf, slammed into him. The child's body was instantly crushed as the bot continued its flight.
Wolf, still covered by the swarm of bots, was struck by the impact. The force of the blow sent him and the bot smashing into a building, an explosion of concrete, metal, and dust.
The bot lay against a wall, melted and fused to the brick. Wolf got ready to take off again, but just as he turned, something caught his eye. He froze.
It was a playground, a place for children, now nothing but a twisted mess of plastic and metal. In the wreckage, he saw tiny, motionless bodies. They weren't just injured; they were unconscious. His core, burning with over a million degrees of heat, cooled down. The red light in his eyes flickered and then, for a single second, turned a soft, warm blue.
The scene faded, and he was back on Mars, at a playground. There, the children were laughing, all with different disabilities, playing without a care in the world. He was looking at a specific family, a small girl with bright, playful eyes, and the air was filled with the sweet, sugary scent of toasted bread.
"When we're gone," a voice said. Wolf looked to his side and saw a man named Joe sitting beside him. "They'll be the ones looking after Mars, turning it into a great world for Earth to use. It doesn't matter if they're disabled or not. We will all be working as equals."
Wolf looked at the laughing kids. "Yeah, but we're already equal."
"Not yet," Joe said with a smile. "But we will be."
Wolf smiled.
The scene cut back to the present. The smoke still swirled around the wreckage, and all that could be seen were two blood-red eyes.
A voice boomed through the speakers of the remaining bots, an arrogant, confident sound that sliced through the smoke and silence. "Look at you," it taunted. "That core you're using so recklessly, that core you think is yours... it belongs to me."
Wolf turned, his red eyes blazing, and moved to destroy the bot. But the machine froze, a powerful, invisible command overriding his will.
"We should have never sent you useless pieces of trash to Mars."
Wolf's eyes went wide. The voice was unmistakable. It was the same one he had heard on the alien ship. "You..." he growled.
"Yes, me," the voice replied, dripping with condescension. "You half-human... clearly half as smart, too. I'm the reason Mars was attacked, and I'll be the reason you give us what is owed. Now, make yourself useful for once and give us that core."
Wolf's anger built, a low rumble in his chest. "Humans," he corrected, his voice full of rage. "You killed my people."
The Supreme Captain's laugh was cold. "'Humans'? You half-breeds can't even think for yourselves. The only humans here are us. We are clean. No physical disorders. All we're doing is cleaning up God's mistakes."
"There's no point in trying," the Supreme Captain's voice boomed through every bot. "We've already overwritten your body. So give it up."
Thousands of bots surrounded the building, climbing and clinging to its surface like a swarm of ants. The Supreme Captain's voice was a cold command.
"Now use your core on yourself, you half-breed."
Wolf went quiet. The bots continued to climb, getting closer, a relentless, metal tide. Some jumped on him, crawling over his shoulders and head, trying to cover him completely.
"Just hold still," the voice commanded.
Buried in the darkness now, covered by the swarm, Wolf's voice was a low whisper. "Hey..."
A new voice, a small, feminine tone, responded on a private channel. "David located."
In the command center, the Supreme Captain watched the screen, a smirk of triumph on his face. But then, a flash of searing light filled the bot-cam. The sun core fired up, and Wolf's red eyes flared with the fire of a sun. On the Supreme Captain's screen, nothing remained but a single, brilliant image: a pair of glowing red eyes staring directly back at him.
Wolf's voice cut through the comms, a low and chilling roar that echoed in the empty room.
"FOUND YOU."