[Location: Sector 7 - The Burning City] [Time: Life #10. Drop + 00:01:00]
"Drop in three!" Silas roared. "Two! One!"
The floor dropped out. The pod hit the asphalt. The doors blew off.
I walked out slowly. I wasn't screaming anymore. I wasn't hyperventilating. I felt utterly, entirely numb. My brain felt heavy, stuffed with the agonizing memories of nine brutal deaths packed into ten subjective minutes.
My silver arm, the Ouroboros, was humming with a new, distinct frequency. It was hot against my skin.
It was learning.
Every time I died, the arm recorded the telemetry data of the Enemy. The speed of the Stalker's lunge. The trajectory of the red beam. The exact millisecond the drone dropped the grenade.
I didn't have to think anymore. The data was downloading directly into my nervous system.
"Move! Move! Move!" Silas yelled.
I stepped to the left. Exactly two feet.
ZAAAAP.
The red beam swept past me, missing my shoulder by an inch. It hit the kid. He vaporized. I didn't even blink. I couldn't save him. His death was a fixed variable in this equation.
I walked toward the burning hover-car. I didn't hide behind it. I stood on the hood.
"Rookie, are you insane?!" Silas screamed, grabbing for my ankle. "Get down!"
"Three," I whispered to myself. "Two. One."
The smoke parted. The Stalker-Unit emerged.
Target acquired.
It lunged. Twelve feet in a fraction of a second.
But I wasn't where it calculated I would be. I sidestepped its massive scythe-blade, feeling the wind of it slice past my ear. As the machine's momentum carried it forward, leaving its neck exposed, I raised my pulse-rifle.
I didn't aim for the heavy carapace. The Ouroboros highlighted a tiny, unarmored joint beneath its optical sensor.
I pulled the trigger once.
CRACK.
The pulse-round punched through the joint and detonated inside the machine's central processor. The Stalker seized violently, sparks showering from its neck, before it crashed into the asphalt, dead.
Silence fell over our section of the street.
Silas slowly stood up from behind the car, her revolver still raised. She stared at the smoking wreckage of the Stalker, then looked up at me standing on the hood of the car.
"Good shot, rookie," she panted, wiping ash from her forehead. "I didn't even see it move."
I lowered my rifle. My hands were shaking, but not from fear. It was adrenaline. It was the intoxicating, terrifying realization that Dr. Aris was right.
I could beat them. I could map the future.
I jumped down from the car, taking a deep breath of the smoky air. "Sergeant, we need to move to the evacuation point. More are coming."
Silas nodded, reloading her gun. "Right. Form up! We—"
A high-pitched whistling sound pierced the sky.
I looked up.
Through the black smoke, a massive, blue plasma warhead was falling from an Algorithm Harvester in low orbit. It wasn't aiming for the street. It was aiming for the entire city block.
There was no time to run. There was no time to dodge.
The warhead hit the ground.
The world dissolved into white fire. The heat was so intense my flesh instantly vaporized off my bones.
[BIOLOGICAL CESSATION DETECTED. TEMPORAL SINGULARITY ENGAGED.]
[Time: Life #11.]
"Drop in three!" Silas roared. "Two! One!"
The pod floor dropped.
I sat in my crash harness, staring blankly at the red jump-light.
Killing the Stalker didn't matter. Surviving the first five minutes didn't matter. The Algorithm had an orbital strike waiting.
To live past five minutes, I had to figure out how to stop a warhead from falling from the sky.
I closed my eyes as we plummeted into the fire.
The Loop was a prison. And I didn't even have the key.