[Location: Outpost Omega - Sub-Level 2] [Countdown: 00:10:05]
"I need to get the mainframe online," Vesper said, her voice shaking but her logic kicking back in. "I need to decrypt the core files. I need to know exactly what they did here before that countdown hits zero."
"Generator room is sub-level 2," Silas read from a faded wall schematic. "Rook, stay here with Lyra. Barricade the door. Caelum, Vesper, with me."
We descended into the bowels of the facility. The air grew bitterly cold.
"You knew," Silas said to me as our boots clanked down the metal stairs. "Didn't you?"
"No," I said honestly, feeling numb. "I knew I was different. I knew I could loop. But I thought it was an anomaly. A glitch in the universe. I thought I was a soldier who got unlucky."
"It wasn't luck," Vesper said, typing frantically on her pad as we walked. "The fragment files... they talk about 'harvesting temporal energy.' They were trying to build a soldier who could predict the future. A weapon that could win the war by infinite trial and error."
"And they succeeded," Silas muttered. "They made the ultimate meat-shield."
We reached the generator room. A massive, dormant fusion core sat in the center.
"I can jump-start it," Vesper said. "But the power surge will likely trigger the automated internal security."
"Do it," Silas ordered, drawing her gun. "We can handle old security."
Vesper bypassed the panel and slammed the heavy breaker switch.
HUMMMMMM.
The lights flickered on, blindingly bright. The facility groaned as power flooded the ancient systems.
[WARNING. UNRECOGNIZED BIOMETRICS. PURGE PROTOCOL INITIATED.]
"Move!" I yelled.
A heavy sentry bot dropped from a ceiling hatch. It was old, clunky, and covered in rust—but its twin gatling guns spun up with a terrifying mechanical whine.
BRRRRT!
I shoved Vesper behind a concrete pillar. Sparks showered over us as heavy caliber bullets chewed up the cover.
"Silas! Flank right!" I shouted.
Silas slid across the slick floor, firing her revolver. BANG! BANG! The bullets sparked harmlessly off the bot's heavy deflector shields.
"Shields are too strong!" she shouted, diving behind a generator casing.
"I'll draw its fire!" I yelled over the deafening gunfire. "Vesper, overload the core! Give me a localized EMP!"
"Are you insane?!" Vesper screamed back. "It might fry your arm's neural link!"
"Just do it!" I shouted, sprinting out into the open.
The bot's sensors snapped toward me. I activated my Overdrive. [POWER: 100%].
I ran straight into the hail of bullets. The rounds hit my metal arm, ricocheting off the dense armor plating as I used it like a shield. I leaped into the air, bringing my metal fist down as hard as I could onto the bot's central sensor array.
CRUNCH.
"NOW!"
Vesper slammed both hands onto the console.
ZZAAP!
A blinding blue pulse of electromagnetic energy exploded from the core. The bot seized up, its guns clicking uselessly before it collapsed into a smoking heap. My mechanical arm went dead, hanging heavy and useless at my side. The facility plunged back into emergency red lighting.
"Is everyone okay?" Silas coughed in the smoke.
"Yeah," I groaned, clutching my dead shoulder.
"Caelum," Vesper said, her voice barely a whisper in the eerie red light. "The mainframe is unlocked. There's a video file queued up on the main terminal upstairs. And the countdown... it just hit zero."