[Location: Sector 7 - Evacuation Route] [Time: Life #40. Drop + 00:15:00]
"Drop in three!" Silas roared. "Two! One!"
The pod hit the ground. The doors blew off.
I didn't yell. I didn't panic. I moved with the terrifying, robotic precision of a man who had walked this exact street forty times.
I stepped out of the pod and kicked a piece of debris into the air.
ZAAAAP.
The red beam hit the debris instead of the rookie kid.
"Move right, stack on the burned car!" I ordered, my voice dead and flat.
Silas hesitated, confused by the rookie giving orders, but her combat instincts took over. She moved.
The smoke parted. The Stalker lunged.
I didn't shoot it. I didn't blind it. I activated my Overdrive, sprinting directly at the twelve-foot mechanical nightmare. As its scythe came down, I slid on the ash-covered asphalt, passing right beneath its legs. I slammed my silver hand upward, driving the Ouroboros directly into its lower chassis.
WHIRRR. I didn't punch. I discharged the temporal battery.
A localized EMP surged from my arm, instantly frying the Stalker's transmission array. It didn't die, but it couldn't talk to the Harvester ship in orbit.
"Sniper! 2 o'clock, high overpass!" I yelled, tossing a smoke grenade without even looking.
The thick white smoke bloomed just as the hyper-velocity round cracked through the air, missing my head by a millimeter and burying itself in a brick wall.
"Squad, suppressing fire on the overpass!" Silas roared, rallying the men.
We laid down a hail of pulse-fire, keeping the sniper pinned.
"Through the alley! Go, go, go!" I pushed the rookie forward.
We ran. We didn't stop. We didn't look back. I navigated the ruined city streets flawlessly, dodging collapsed buildings, avoiding the sewer grates, and staying out of the drone flight paths. Every time a threat appeared, I was already firing at it before it rounded the corner.
"Clear!" Silas yelled as we breached the heavily fortified doors of the Sector 7 Evacuation Hub.
We had made it. We broke the five-minute barrier. We had survived for fifteen minutes.
The squad collapsed on the floor of the Hub, panting, checking their ammo, and thanking whatever gods they believed in.
I leaned against a concrete pillar and slid down to the floor. My chest was heaving. Blood was pouring from both of my nostrils. The Ouroboros arm was hissing, venting superheated steam.
My brain felt like a bruised, swollen muscle. I squeezed my eyes shut, but all I could see were the thirty-nine different ways the people in this room had just died. I could smell Silas's burning flesh from Life #8. I could hear the rookie screaming from Life #14.
"Rookie."
I opened my eyes. Silas was standing over me. She wasn't smiling. She looked deeply unsettled.
"Your name is Caelum, right?" she asked, her voice low.
"Yes, Sergeant."
"I've been in this war for ten years, Caelum. I've fought alongside Tier 1 Special Forces. I've seen things that defy logic." She crouched down, her eyes locking onto mine. "But I have never seen anyone move like you just did. You didn't check your corners. You knew what was behind them. You kicked that debris before the laser even fired."
She looked at my silver arm, then back to my face.
"What are you?" she whispered.
Before I could answer, the heavy steel doors of the Evacuation Hub—the doors leading to the civilian transports—hissed open.
Silas stood up, turning with a sigh of relief. "Thank God. Command, this is Vanguard Squad, we have arrived at the—"
She stopped.
The Hub wasn't full of civilians. It wasn't full of transports.
The massive hangar was completely silent, save for the steady dripping of blood. The civilian transports were burning wreckage. And standing in the center of the carnage, waiting for us, was an Algorithm Executioner-Class dreadnought. It was the size of a three-story building, armed with twin plasma-cannons.
Adaptation successful, a mechanical voice boomed through the hangar. Trap triggered.
The cannons began to glow blue.
I let my head fall back against the concrete pillar and closed my eyes.
"Here we go again," I whispered.