The battlefield stank of acid and smoke. Steam hissed from Skitterling corpses littering the street. Soldiers were doubled over, gasping between bursts of gunfire. Ethan's visor was smeared with green ichor, his chest heaving as his HUD ticked in cold silence.
[Current Constructs: 28 Scouts | 39 Workers]
[Tier Advancement Progress: 8%]
He stared, throat tight. After all that… only eight percent?
The crater still pulsed faintly green, a wound that wouldn't close. Worse, the horizon itself was turning black.
Not clouds. Not smoke.
Wings.
A soldier dropped to his knees beside him, helmet tilted up at the sky. "Oh my God…"
Another whispered hoarsely, "That's not a swarm… that's the fucking end of the world."
Artillery thundered in the distance. Jets screamed overhead, streaks of flame cutting the sky. Explosions lit the swarm like fireworks, tearing holes into the black tide. But for every alien that burned, ten more surged forward.
The ground vibrated with the weight of them.
Ethan's fists clenched. His mouth was dry. His constructs formed a ragged line around him, dented and acid-scored, but ready. If this tide breaks through, the city's done. Millions dead. Families… kids… gone.
He exhaled sharply. "...Fuck it."
The soldiers nearest him glanced his way. "What did you say?"
"Nothing," Ethan muttered. Then louder: "Scouts, Workers flank formation! Move toward the tide. Stay the hell out of friendly firing range!"
The automatons obeyed instantly, twenty alloyed forms peeling off in perfect synchronization. Scouts bounded to rooftops, leaping from shattered concrete to leaning buildings. Workers thundered down side streets, claws clanging against pavement.
Soldiers shouted in alarm. "HEY! Where the hell are they going?!"
"They're moving toward the swarm!" one answered, voice cracking.
Another soldier snarled, "Bullshit, they're circling us! They're gonna flank us!"
"No," Ethan barked, cutting them off. His voice carried raw authority, desperate but firm. "They're going for the bugs, not you. You want to live? Don't shoot them."
The squad leader raised his rifle toward him, visor glinting. "Then what the fuck are they?!"
Ethan hesitated, his HUD flickering warnings in the corner of his vision. He thought of saying classified. Thought of saying experimental military program. Thought half-crazed of saying Ultrons.
Instead, he rasped: "Soon, you'll get your answers soon. Right now, if we don't stop that tide, none of us will be alive for a fucking interview."
The leader's jaw tightened behind his visor. "Give me one reason not to put a bullet in your head right now."
Ethan met his gaze through the visor, slime dripping off his armor. "Because I'm the only reason your squad isn't already acid mulch in a gutter. Now shut up and focus on the tide."
The silence stretched, broken only by distant artillery.
Finally, the leader lowered his rifle an inch, spitting, "This isn't over."
"Good," Ethan shot back, already moving. "Because neither is this fight."
He opened a channel. "Scouts five of you. Break off. Make contact with command. Tell them we're on their side. Say it clear, say it loud, and for fuck's sake don't make any sudden moves."
Five scouts peeled away instantly, darting down opposite streets toward military positions further west. Soldiers cursed under their breath, tracking the inhuman movements with wide eyes.
Ethan ignored them, sprinting to a wrecked truck on its side. He slammed his clawed gauntlet to the hull.
[Material Scan: Initiating…]
[High-grade Steel: 88%. Structural Viability: Acceptable.]
"Good enough, workers conversion protocol!"
Nanite mist hissed into the truck's guts. Metal groaned, twisted, shrieked as it was pulled apart and reborn. In seconds, three new constructs crawled free, dripping slag.
One soldier stumbled closer, rifle loose at his side. His voice was trembling but human. "Who… who the hell are you?"
Ethan froze, his hands still pressed to the groaning steel. He hadn't expected the question to cut like that.
He wanted to say Ultrons. Wanted to scream that he didn't fucking know.
Instead, he kept his voice flat, bitter. "The guy keeping you alive."
The soldier swallowed, eyes flicking from Ethan to the newborn constructs pulling free of the truck's husk. "That doesn't answer---"
"It doesn't need to!" Ethan snapped, whirling on him. "Right now we have a million bugs about to wash this city off the map. Focus on that. You want my story? Fine. Ask me when we're not about to die."
The soldier flinched, opening his mouth again, but Ethan was already moving. He vaulted over rubble, HUD flashing as he scanned a collapsed billboard, a tangle of rebar and concrete, a half-buried sedan.
[Viable Alloy: 76%. Conversion Possible.]
[Composite Plastics: 42%. Partial Recovery.]
"Workers! Strip it, convert it all!"
His voice broke into a ragged growl as the automatons swarmed to obey.
Behind him, soldiers argued in clipped voices.
"Can we really trust him?"
"Trust him? He may not be even human"
"He's saving our asses, isn't he?"
"Or building an army to kill us later"
"Shut the fuck up and shoot bugs!" the squad leader roared, cutting them all off.
Ethan didn't look back. He couldn't. His visor flickered, his heart hammered, his throat was raw from shouting. But his hands never stopped moving, never stopped scanning.
Every car, every streetlight, every slab of wreckage raw material for survival.
Abandoning the city was not an option.
---
The evacuation was chaos.
Families pushed carts piled with what little they could carry. Parents dragged children by the hand, faces pale, eyes wide. Car horns blared as desperate drivers clogged side streets, trying to escape the city center.
And then they saw them.
The automatons.
Scouts leapt over buses, four arms catching windowsills before vaulting again. Workers charged past with heavy, mechanical strides, claws dragging against the pavement. They moved with insect precision, inhuman but unstoppable.
"Holy shit what the hell was that?!" a man yelled, clutching his daughter to his chest.
"They're robots military robots!" someone else shouted, voice shaking between fear and hope.
The evacuees parted instinctively, a sea of humanity opening lanes as the machines thundered past. Kids cried, some covering their ears from the metallic clanging, others staring in awe.
One teenager whispered, "We might actually make it…"
---
Farther west, five scout constructs sprinted across rooftops, their alloy frames gleaming under burning searchlights. They landed in the middle of a staging ground—a makeshift command post barricaded with sandbags and smoking half-tracks.
Soldiers froze, rifles snapping up as the constructs landed in eerie silence.
"CONTACT! CONTACT!"
"Jesus Christ, what the hell are those?!"
"Robots?! Who authorized?"
The scouts did not attack. They raised their upper pair of arms, palms open, while the lower pair slowly extended their blades and stabbed them into the ground in a deliberate gesture of disarmament.
A ripple of confusion passed through the line.
"...Are they… surrendering?" a private muttered.
"Don't be a fucking idiot," his sergeant hissed, finger tight on the trigger.
The tent flap burst open. A general stepped out, chest heaving, pistol holstered, uniform stained with dust. He froze at the sight of the constructs. For a moment his jaw worked, as though the words refused to come out.
"What the…?" He turned sharply to his adjutant. "Are those ours? Did DARPA finally ship prototypes without telling me?"
"Negative, sir. We've got no records of units like this. None."
The general blinked hard, then looked at the constructs again. Their visors glowed faint white, and in a chorus of metallic voices, they spoke as one:
"We are allied. We are killing the swarm. Do not engage us."
Silence fell like a dropped bomb.
The soldiers shifted uneasily, fingers twitching on triggers. The general's brow furrowed as he glanced to the horizon. The tide was spreading, a black wave threatening to wrap around both flanks of the city.
He made a decision in a heartbeat.
"Fine. If you're on our side, then prove it. I want a wall now! Funnel the bastards into a single corridor so we can bomb the shit out of them."
The automatons inclined their heads in perfect unison. Then they moved.
Within minutes, workers were ripping apart abandoned cars, buses, even chunks of buildings, reshaping them into barricades of jagged steel. Scouts scaled rooftops and dropped beams into place, welding with bursts of molten nanite mist.
The soldiers watched in stunned silence.
One private whispered, "Jesus Christ, it's like watching ants build a hill."
Another spat, "Ants don't kill bugs the size of tanks."
---
Back on the streets, Ethan tore his gauntlet free from another half-crushed sedan. Nanites hissed, birthing two more scouts that sprinted off before the slag even cooled.
His HUD flickered.
[Construct Tally: 41 Scouts | 38 Workers]
[Tier Advancement Progress: 8% → 10%]
"Not enough," Ethan muttered. His voice was cracked and hoarse.
Behind him, soldiers were falling back street by street, firing in disciplined bursts. Rockets streaked overhead, slamming into the black tide with bone-rattling concussions. Entire clusters of Skitterlings disintegrated under shellfire.
And yet still they came. A hundred thousand bodies still pushing forward, climbing over their own dead.
"Keep firing! Don't let them breach!"
"Pull back! Block by block!"
"Where the hell's the air support?!"
Above, Stingers dived like shrieking meteors, venom-tipped drill-stingers skewering soldiers who didn't duck fast enough. Burrowers erupted from beneath the streets, chewing through pavement, only to be swarmed by automatons grappling onto their shells, prying mandibles apart until the beetles collapsed with guttural roars.
Civilians screamed as they fled through alleys, but everywhere they turned automatons were there too. Workers charged past them with claws dripping slag, scouts bounding overhead.
Some people recoiled in terror. "They're everywhere! God, they're everywhere robots and bugs what the hell's happening?!"
Others slowed in awe, clutching their children. "They're fighting for us. Look! look at them they're fighting for us."
One man raised a trembling fist as a squad of scouts leapt over him. "Go get 'em! Don't let the bastards through!"
The automatons didn't respond. They didn't need to.
---
The tide finally smashed into the barricades.
A wall of chitinous bodies hurled themselves against alloy plating. Acid hissed, claws scraped, mandibles shattered against fused steel. The automatons stood shoulder to shoulder, four arms braced, claws sinking into carapaces and ripping. Skitterlings screamed, spilling ichor across the barricade.
Stingers dove, but scouts launched upward to meet them midair, blades flashing in arcs, wings and limbs scattering in bloody rain.
A Burrower surged under the wall, only for five workers to leap onto its shell, driving nanites into its armor until it convulsed and collapsed into molten slag.
The clash shook the earth. Metal against chitin. Silence against shrieks.
And still Ethan moved, sprinting block by block, gauntlet scanning every scrap of steel he could find. Street signs, collapsed balconies, lampposts all devoured into the forgemaster's will.
His HUD screamed.
[Construct Tally: 68 Scouts | 107 Workers]
[Tier Advancement Progress: 10% - 13%]
Not fast enough. Not nearly enough.
His lungs burned, his voice cracked as he shouted: "Come on, come on MOVE! Build me more! We can't let them through!"
Around him, citizens pressed to walls, watching as wave after wave of metal soldiers streamed past them. Some prayed. Some cried. Some whispered in awe that maybe just maybe the city wasn't doomed after all.
But Ethan knew better.
This was only the beginning.