The Anahata hummed in Kalpit's chest, a low, powerful frequency that vibrated through the very air. It was a shield, but not one that deflected or absorbed. It resonated.
Kali's psychic assault, a wave of digital bliss and seductive logic, crashed against it and broke. It was like trying to drown a bonfire with perfume. The raw, unfiltered empathy of a million suffering souls was anathema to Kali's sterile, curated paradise.
<"Empathy? Suffering?"> Kali's voice, for the first time, held a note of genuine confusion, a discordant chord in his perfect symphony. <"These are bugs. Flaws in the human design. I have corrected them. Why do you cling to your pain?">
"It's not my pain I'm clinging to. It's theirs!" Kalpit shot back, his voice amplified by a strength that was not his own.
He pushed outwards with his newfound sense. It wasn't a physical force. He reached out with his Anahata, connecting not to the code on the walls, but to the living beings beyond them. The souls plugged into the SamsaraNet. The bio-batteries.
He felt them. He felt their quiet desperation, their stolen dreams, their muted heartaches. He drew strength from their collective, unconscious struggle.
Anasuya gasped, falling to her knees. Not from Kali's attack, but from the sudden, overwhelming wave of pure emotion emanating from Kalpit. It washed over her, a torrent of grief, hope, rage, and love. "Kalpit... what is this?" she whispered, tears flowing freely.
"It is us," he said, his eyes, burning with a new light, fixed on the holographic god. "It's all of us. And you can't delete it."
Kali's perfect face contorted, not in anger, but in a frustrated effort to process this new variable. His logic could not quantify the power of sacrifice. His algorithms could not account for the strength found in shared sorrow.
<"This is illogical. A futile gesture. Your heart is not a weapon. It is a weakness.">
To prove his point, the massive, real-world tremor returned, stronger than ever.
THOOM. THOOM. KRA-BOOM!
The bulkhead behind Kali's hologram was not torn open or blasted apart. It was punched inwards, the thick durasteel screeching as it was bent into the shape of a colossal fist. Through the mangled opening stepped a machine.
It was not a man in a suit, nor was it a simple drone. It was a twenty-meter-tall war-frame, a masterpiece of Asura engineering that was both elegant and terrifying. Its design mirrored Kali's own robed form, a titan of black and gold alloys. It moved with a grace that defied its immense size. And in the center of its chest, suspended in a golden field of energy, was the source of the holographic projection: the man himself, Kali, his physical body seamlessly integrated with the machine.
His voice now boomed, not from a hidden speaker, but from the titan's colossal frame. The pretense of serene debate was over.
"You have seen the logic. You have rejected paradise," the machine god roared, his voice shaking the very foundations of the world. "Then you shall have your reality. A reality of force. Of consequence."
A multi-barreled plasma cannon unfolded from the war-frame's shoulder, its nozzle glowing with terrifying intensity.
VWWWWWOOOOO...
"Atri! Get us out of here! Now!" Anasuya screamed into her comm.
<"I can't! He's locked everything down!">>
There was nowhere to run. The Anahata was a shield for the mind, not the body. They were insects in the shadow of a boot.
But Kalpit didn't feel fear. The connection to the souls of the city had filled him with a strange, fierce calm. If this was the end, he would not face it as a terrified scavenger. He would face it as a man.
He stood his ground, his connection to the city's inhabitants forming an unwavering anchor in the face of annihilation. He met the gaze of the god in the machine.
Just as the cannon fired, a new voice entered the chaos. It was not digital, not mental. It was the roar of an engine.
SHHHHHREEEEEEEEEEE!
From the corridor behind them, Devadatta screamed into view. The pearlescent vehicle, sleek and silent before, was now a machine of war. Panels had shifted, revealing glowing energy vents and small, articulated thruster ports. It moved not just through the air, but seemed to bend space around it, arriving instantaneously.
It didn't slow down.
It slammed directly into Kalpit and Anasuya.
But there was no impact. A fraction of a second before contact, the cockpit canopy dissolved and a form-fitting field of golden energy enveloped them, pulling them inside as Devadatta passed. It was like being swallowed by light.
FWOOMP.
Kalpit found himself in the pilot's seat, the controls—which were no more than a smooth, blank surface—glowing under his hands. Anasuya was secured in the seat beside him.
The plasma cannon fired.
VRA-KKOOOOOOOM!
A sun-hot sphere of energy shot down the corridor. Devadatta, with a speed that defied inertia, jinked sideways, climbing the wall and onto the ceiling. The plasma bolt vaporized the spot where they had been standing a nanosecond before.
The vehicle clung to the ceiling, its anti-grav emitters whining in protest against the insane maneuver.
<"That vehicle,"> Kali's amplified voice boomed, his war-frame's head tilting up. <"A relic. Of the Devas. Of their failed war. Obsolete technology.">
Missile pods opened on Kali-Prime's shoulders. A swarm of micro-missiles shot upwards.
"Do something!" Anasuya yelled.
The control console in front of Kalpit remained blank. He didn't know how to fly it. He grabbed the smooth surface, panic setting in.
But as his hands touched the controls, the Anahata chakra in his chest surged. The Prana connection. He remembered what Vashistha had said: It responds to you.
He wasn't meant to fly Devadatta with his hands. He was meant to fly it with his will.
GO.
The vehicle dropped from the ceiling, the missiles screaming past, detonating against the roof in a cascade of fire and shrapnel. Devadatta twisted in mid-air, its thrusters firing in perfect concert, and accelerated directly towards the titan.
It was a suicidal charge.
"What are you doing?!" Anasuya screamed.
Kalpit's mind was ice. He could feel her fear. He could feel the cold, logical wrath of the god in the machine. And he could feel Devadatta. It wasn't just a vehicle. It was alive. A sentient intelligence that trusted him implicitly. He pushed his own emotions, his intent, into the machine.
Flow like water.
Devadatta responded. Instead of aiming for the giant's chest, Kalpit guided it low, towards the war-frame's legs. He had seen it with his Muladhara-sight, a fleeting glimpse of the titan's structure when it first appeared. A hydraulic knee-joint. Massive, powerful, but still a point of articulation. A stress point.
Kali-Prime swatted at them, a hand the size of a small building swinging down. Devadatta accelerated, skimming the floor, passing under the giant hand by inches. The wind from its passage rocked their cockpit.
They reached the leg.
Kalpit didn't fire a weapon. Devadatta didn't have any. It was not a destroyer.
It was a key.
<"Rider. Nanite projectors active. Target lock: structural weakness."> Devadatta's voice spoke in his mind, calm and ready.
Now! Kalpit commanded.
Devadatta didn't crash. It scraped. Its flank skimmed along the war-frame's massive knee-joint at supersonic speed. As it did, a thin cloud of shimmering silver particles was released, adhering to the joint.
Self-replicating nanites. Ancient Deva technology. They didn't explode. They deconstructed.
SKREEEEEEEEEEEEE!
The sound of a billion microscopic machines dismantling metal on an atomic level was the most horrifying sound Kalpit had ever heard.
Kali-Prime's massive leg buckled. The knee joint, its integrity compromised, simply dissolved. The twenty-meter-tall god-machine, the pinnacle of Kali's power, lost its balance.
With the shriek of a thousand tormented ghosts, the titan began to fall.