Time dilated. The world slowed to a crawl.
The high-pitched whine of Vikoka's overloading core became a low, gut-wrenching thrum. The blossoming white light of the imminent explosion was a slow, beautiful flower of death. Kalpit saw Anasuya's face, a mask of horrified resignation as she braced for the inevitable. He saw the very air around them begin to shimmer and ionize under the immense energy build-up.
His Muladhara-sight, focused on physical structures, was useless here. This was a crisis of pure energy. Of impending, violent release.
Panic was a cold, constricting serpent around his heart. Death was a nanosecond away.
Then, something shifted.
The raw, devastating electrical current that had just passed through his body had left an echo. A phantom energy that now surged, not from an external cable, but from within. It was a current of pure emotion— a primal, terrifying fear of annihilation. But alongside the fear, there was something else. A desperate, burning desire to protect the woman who had fought beside him. To survive. To flow past this obstacle.
This surge of emotion was a key. It unlocked a new door.
Vashistha's voice echoed in the ghost-space of his memory. "There are seven centers. Seven processors."
The energy, born of raw survival instinct and a flood of adrenaline, bypassed his fried neural pathways and ignited the second center. It was located just below his navel, a place the ancients called Svadhisthana.
The Chakra of Flow.
CLICK.
It was the softest sound in a universe of roaring noise. A second bio-processor coming online.
And the world stopped.
It didn't just slow down. It stopped.
The expanding sphere of white light from Vikoka's chest froze in place, its tendrils of plasma held in perfect stasis. Anasuya was a statue, her expression of horror carved onto her face. A droplet of water, shaken loose from the ceiling by the vibrations, hung suspended in mid-air.
Kalpit could move.
He wasn't moving fast. It felt like wading through thick, invisible honey. But he was moving, while reality itself was held in pause. He understood instinctively. This new power didn't stop time. It overclocked his perception and his own bio-chemistry to an impossible degree. It was bullet-time, but for a nuclear bomb.
He was living in the spaces between ticks of the clock.
His mind was a maelstrom. How could he stop a miniature sun from exploding? He couldn't. It was an unstoppable reaction. He had microseconds of subjective time to find a solution.
He couldn't stop it.
But maybe… he could move it.
He looked at the wreckage of Koka, the twin hound that Anasuya had felled. She had pierced his neck, but his torso and limbs were mostly intact. A plan, insane and born of utter desperation, sparked in his mind.
He pushed through the thick, molasses-like air, his muscles screaming at the effort. Every step was an agony of exertion. He reached Koka's body. He gripped the dead Asura's legs. His enhanced Muladhara-sight flared, showing him the machine's center of balance. With a grunt that seemed to stretch for an eternity, he heaved.
The silvery, armored body of Koka lifted, inch by painstaking inch. Time was a rubber band, stretched to its breaking point. He could feel it beginning to snap back. The world gave a slight lurch, the flower of light expanding another millimeter.
No time!
He half-lifted, half-dragged the heavy corpse across the floor, positioning it directly over its still-living twin. He used Koka's inert form as a shield, a final, macabre act of fraternal sacrifice. The metal of their armor was forged to contain immense energies. It wouldn't be enough. But it might just be enough to deflect the blast.
To shape it.
The thrumming in his ears intensified. The world gave another shudder. Time was restarting.
He shoved the corpse into place and threw himself backwards, scrambling behind the only cover available—the thick, downed body of the first Enforcer he had disabled. He wrapped his arms around his head.
And reality came crashing back at full speed.
FOOOOOOM!
There was no sound. All noise was consumed by an instantaneous, silent flash of incandescent white. Light and heat slammed into the corridor like a physical hammer.
The shockwave hit a microsecond later.
KRA-KOOM-BOOOOM!
The tunnel screamed. The floor buckled. The ceiling rained down debris. Kalpit felt the Enforcer's corpse he was hiding behind get lifted off the ground, taking him with it. He was thrown through the air, tumbling end over end in a vortex of heat, noise, and pain, before everything went black once more.
He came to, coughing, his lungs full of dust and pulverized rock. The air was blisteringly hot. Every part of his body ached with a deep, resonant pain.
The corridor was a scene of utter devastation. It had been widened, scoured clean by the blast. The metal walls were melted and slagged. The spot where the twins had been was now a blackened, glowing crater. Koka's body, used as a shield, had been vaporized.
Anasuya lay in a heap a few meters away, groaning. Her clothes were scorched, and a nasty gash was bleeding on her forehead, but she was alive. The main force of the blast, deflected upwards by Koka's corpse, had missed them. Barely.
"Did we... win?" she rasped, pushing herself up.
Kalpit tasted blood. His control over the Svadhisthana chakra was gone, the processor shutting down from the overload, leaving him with nothing but the echoes of adrenaline and the profound, bone-deep exhaustion of a man who had lived a lifetime in two seconds.
"I think..." he coughed, a cloud of concrete dust billowing from his lips. "...we survived. It's not the same thing."
A sharp, repeating beep cut through the ringing in his ears. It was coming from Anasuya's wrist scanner. Her face, already pale with exhaustion, turned ghostly white as she looked at it.
"Oh, by the Sages," she whispered. "No."
"What is it?" Kalpit asked, trying to push himself to his feet.
"The core explosion," she explained, her voice trembling with dawning horror. "It wasn't just a self-destruct. It was a beacon. An energy signature so massive, so unique... it bypassed all of Atri's jamming."
She turned the scanner so he could see it. The tactical map was awash in red. Dozens, no, hundreds of icons were converging on their sector. Not just Enforcers. The symbols indicated heavy mechs, aerial gunships, and something else... a single, massive signature designated simply as KALI-PRIME.
"He's not just sending his army," Anasuya said, her voice barely a whisper. "He's coming himself."
The ground beneath them began to tremble, a deep, rhythmic vibration that had nothing to do with the explosion.
THOOM... THOOM... THOOM.
It was the sound of a god's approaching footsteps, amplified through kilometers of steel and stone.
Kali, the master of the age, the techno-Asura himself, knew where they were. And he was on his way to personally delete the glitch in his perfect system.