The Titan was not just waking up; it was rearranging the geography of the Wasteland.
Deep inside the thoracic cavity, the vibration was no longer a sound—it was a tectonic event. Julian and Lyra clung to the railing of the spiral staircase as the entire world tilted fifteen degrees to the right.
GROAAAN-CRACK.
The sound was deafening, like a mountain breaking its own bones. Massive rusted gears, dormant for centuries, began to grind against each other, shedding waterfalls of red dust and sparks. The "Heart" in the center of the chamber pulsed with a frantic, blinding rhythm, sending shockwaves of pure kinetic energy up the spinal column.
"We have to go!" Lyra screamed over the noise, pulling Julian away from the console. "The exit is closing! If that hand makes a fist, we're crushed!"
Julian stumbled, his eyes still swimming with the afterimages of the map he had seen. Seven Titans. Seven Locks.
"The ecosystem," Julian shouted, pointing down. "Look!"
Below them, the Clockwork Jungle was in a frenzy. The copper trees were retracting into the floor. The wire-vines were coiling tight. The biomimetic life forms—the spark-insects and scavenger beasts—were fleeing upward, swarming the gantries in a panicked exodus.
"Move!" Lyra shoved him toward the ascent ladder.
They climbed. It was a race against the machine itself. The walls of the Titan were contracting, the black iron ribs compressing as the giant took its first breath in an age. Steam vents erupted randomly, blasting scalding vapor across their path.
They reached the Shoulder Joint. The massive circular bulkhead door they had opened earlier was starting to slide shut automatically.
"Slide!" Julian yelled.
They threw themselves under the closing door, scraping their backs against the lowering steel. They tumbled into the Arm Assembly just as the bulkhead slammed shut with a boom that shook their teeth.
Inside the arm, the angle was steeper. The Titan was raising its arm. The floor became a slide.
"Grab the cables!"
They hauled themselves up the braided nerve-bundles, hand over hand, muscles burning. Julian's crystal hand—now smooth, geometric, and glowing with a calm, dangerous blue light—dug into the metal cables, fusing slightly with them to give him unnatural grip.
Finally, they saw the light of day. The jagged opening between the Titan's thumb and forefinger.
But the light wasn't the bruised purple of the Wasteland sky. It was dark.
"Is it night already?" Julian gasped, pulling himself onto the outer plating of the giant hand.
They stood on the knuckle of the Titan, three hundred feet above the Glass Waste. The wind whipped at their clothes.
Julian looked up. And his blood turned to ice.
It wasn't night. The sky was blocked out.
Hanging in the air above them, defying gravity with the low, menacing thrum of a thousand anti-gravity engines, was the Void Armada.
It was a fleet of nightmares. Dozens of airships, sleek and armored in black iron, shaped like sharks. Their hulls bristled with harpoon cannons and Aether-bomb bays. And in the center of the formation floated a leviathan—a dreadnought the size of a city block, its prow decorated with a golden skull.
The Sovereign's Gaze.
"They found us," Lyra whispered, stepping back. "How did they get here so fast?"
"They didn't," Julian realized, staring at the fleet. "They were waiting. They knew the Titan was here. They just couldn't open the door."
A spotlight from the dreadnought snapped on, pinning them against the black metal of the Titan's hand. The light was blinding.
A voice, amplified to god-like volume, rolled across the desert.
"JULIAN VANE. SURRENDER THE KEY. AND THE EMPIRE WILL BE MERCIFUL."
It was the voice of General Elias Thorne.
Julian shielded his eyes. "Merciful? He wants to hollow me out and use me as a spark plug."
"We can't fight a fleet, Julian," Lyra said, her voice trembling. She looked over the edge of the hand. It was a sheer drop to the glass desert below. "And we can't jump. It's too high."
BOOM.
A warning shot fired from a destroyer class ship. An Aether-shell exploded against the Titan's wrist, fifty feet below them. The shockwave knocked them flat against the metal.
"THIS IS YOUR ONLY WARNING," Elias's voice boomed. "DEPLOYING RETRIEVAL SQUADS."
From the bellies of the airships, swarms of smaller crafts dropped. They looked like metal wasps—Valkyrie Interceptors. Small, fast, open-cockpit flyers carrying two soldiers each. They buzzed through the air, circling the Titan's hand like flies around a wound.
"They're going to pin us," Lyra yelled, drawing her pistol. "If they land, it's over!"
Julian looked at the Titan. It was still moving, slowly trying to push itself out of the earth.
"The Titan," Julian said. "It has defenses."
"Julian, don't," Lyra warned. "You barely survived harmonizing with the Heart. If you try to control the whole body..."
"I don't need to control it," Julian said, standing up in the spotlight. He held up his crystal hand. "I just need to give it a target."
He didn't take off the ring. He didn't need to anymore. The upgrade he received from the Heart allowed him to push the signal through the dampener.
He slammed his hand onto the Titan's knuckle.
WAKE UP.
He sent a pulse of aggression. A target lock. He visualized the fleet above them not as ships, but as flies biting the giant.
The Titan groaned. The massive fingers beneath them twitched.
Suddenly, the "pores" on the Titan's metal skin opened. But they weren't pores. They were Vent-Cannons.
HISSSSS-BOOM!
A massive geyser of pressurized steam and shrapnel erupted from the Titan's arm, shooting straight up into the swarm of Valkyries.
The sky turned into chaos. Three interceptors were caught in the blast, spinning out of control and crashing into each other.
"EVASIVE MANEUVERS!" Elias roared over the speakers.
"It bought us maybe thirty seconds!" Julian shouted. "We need a way off!"
"Look!" Lyra pointed to the east.
Emerging from a thick cloud bank, flying low and fast, was a ship.
It didn't look like the Imperial ships. It was a patchwork beast—a galleon hull welded to a zeppelin balloon, painted in garish reds and yellows. It had graffiti on the side: THE RUSTY PELICAN.
It wasn't attacking the Titan. It was diving straight for the hand.
"Pirates?" Julian asked.
"Worse," Lyra groaned. "Sky-Runners. Mercenaries."
The red ship roared past the Titan's hand, banking hard. A figure stood on the prow, waving a grappling hook.
"Hey! Glow-stick!" the figure shouted—a woman with bright green hair and goggles. "Need a lift? The fare is expensive!"
"Get on!" Julian yelled, grabbing Lyra.
"Are you crazy? They'll sell us to the highest bidder!"
"Better than the Empire!"
The Rusty Pelican swung around for another pass. The green-haired woman fired the grappling hook. It smashed into the Titan's plating just feet from them, the cable pulling taut.
"Jump for the line!"
Julian and Lyra didn't hesitate. As the pirate ship sped past, pulling the cable, they leaped off the Titan's hand.
They caught the thick steel cable. The sudden jerk nearly ripped their arms out of their sockets. They dangled in the air, thousands of feet above the ground, swinging wildly as the pirate ship accelerated away from the angry Titan and the descending Imperial fleet.
"FIRE!" Elias commanded.
The sky lit up with blue tracer fire.