Chapter 8
The silent wave of annihilation struck Arya like an invisible wall forged from every conceivable ending.
The temporal navigation device on his wrist shrieked sharply, projecting blood-red warnings across his field of vision, but it was already too late.
He was hurled backward, his body feeling as though it might be torn apart by a force that was not merely physical, but one that sought to erode his existence from this layer of reality itself.
The world around him spun into a blur of buildings and night sky.
Yet instinct—honed from thousands of time jumps and life-or-death situations—took over.
Amid the wild rotation, his trained muscles tightened, and he executed a massive somersault in midair, a maneuver impossible without the assistance of the technology embedded in his shoes that regulated friction and momentum.
His feet landed against the vertical surface of an office building, not gently, but with a forceful impact that asserted his presence.
Krak!
The sharp yet subtle crack split through the night air.
Fine spiderweb fractures spread instantly across the glass beneath his soles, freezing the reflection of city lights into shattered patterns.
But it held.
Arya crouched briefly, one palm pressed against the cold glass, his breathing heavy yet controlled.
His eyes, alert and vigilant, immediately fixed upon the center of the explosion.
There, where Mydra 9-C had just expelled its death, the massive gray mist still churned, though it had begun to lose momentum without its continuous energy source.
And within it, Mydra's severely damaged, formless body—like a melting wax statue—began to fall.
Its consciousness extinguished, its energy core dimmed, and gravity—long defied through paradoxical force—finally claimed it.
The temporal anomaly that had threatened to rewrite history with plague and extinction was now nothing more than a silent, colossal meteoroid plunging toward the innocent heart of the city.
Nearby, Arya's exhausted stabilizer disc, now dull and powerless, also fell, trailing the collapsing giant like a loyal escort into ruin.
But before dread could even touch Arya's chest, a movement had already begun.
Nirmala had not been thrown.
She had held her position, crouched low at the edge of the rooftop with perfect balance, as though her body had fused with the building's structure.
Her blue hair, swept by the wind, seemed frozen in deliberate stillness.
From the beginning, she had calculated this possibility.
As Arya's body was flung back, her fingers had already reached for a round object at her belt.
Not a futuristic grenade, not an advanced device, but what appeared to be an ordinary baseball, its reddish-brown leather surface and visible stitching deceptively simple.
There were no words, no excessive movements.
Only a short, powerful, efficient swing of her arm.
The ball shot from her hand, not in the gentle arc of a child's game, but in a straight, rapid trajectory like a projectile purified by singular intent.
It pierced through the remnants of the evaporating gray mist, ignoring the faint distortions around it.
And struck.
Not with a spectacular explosion, but with a dense and satisfying "thok!" directly against the core of Mydra 9-C's falling body.
At the instant of impact, the baseball glowed with a pale orange light before fading.
The effect was immediate.
Mydra's falling body jolted violently, as though struck by a final surge of electricity.
Its descent did not slow, but a yellow grid-like energy pattern suddenly enveloped its entire deformed surface, locking the remnants of its wild paradox energy within a tight containment field, preventing any secondary explosion or final contamination upon impact.
The atmosphere at that altitude shifted.
The deafening roar of wind seemed to subside, replaced by a tightening silence before the final storm.
From their opposing positions, Nirmala and Arya locked eyes.
Just a brief glance, a silent exchange of information faster than words.
In Nirmala's right eye, partially veiled by bandages over the other, Arya read a fully formed plan—a final choreography that demanded nanometer precision.
Arya nodded, a small gesture filled with certainty.
Then, they moved.
Like two pendulums released from opposite ends of a colossal clock, their feet left fresh fractures upon the glass of their respective buildings.
Arya slid to the left, Nirmala to the right, beginning a perfect orbit along the vertical surfaces of the skyscrapers.
Their paths were not straight lines, but a great imagined circle encircling the projected impact point of Mydra 9-C below.
Each step was measured and synchronized, as though connected by an invisible metronome string.
Their adhesion-regulated shoes left faint blue trails of light that faded instantly, sketching temporary circular patterns across the canvas of old glass and concrete.
Amid their rhythmic movement, their hands were not idle.
Like reflexes trained a thousand times over, their fingers reached for simple tools at their belts or pockets.
Slingshots with lightweight futuristic metal frames.
In a single breath's motion, the leather pouches were loaded not with ordinary stones, but with ten clear crystal marbles, each containing a pulsing core of light in a different color—red, blue, green, yellow, purple, and beyond—like a rainbow imprisoned within glass spheres.
The peak of their orbit arrived.
Positioned directly opposite one another along the imaginary circle, like two guardians of cardinal points in an ancient ritual.
Without command, without further visual signal, they paused.
Their bodies bent into identical stances, one foot pressing against the glass for support, hands drawing the slingshot bands to their maximum tension.
Their faces were calm, their focus locked onto a single point in the darkness of the street below, where Mydra's massive shadow and the dead disc neared the ground.
Then, release.
Swish-swish-swish!
Ten soft yet successive sounds, nearly simultaneous.
The crystal marbles shot forth, not like bullets, but like colored raindrops falling with intent.
They spread slightly in the air, forming a loose constellation-like pattern.
Reality below did not follow the script of a calm final impact.
Before the dust from the collision fully settled, before the crystal marbles completely dimmed, a violent reverse gravitational pull erupted at the crater's center.
Like a film rewound at insane speed, shattered concrete and fragments of asphalt ceased expanding outward and began to be dragged back inward.
And from that point, Mydra 9-C's body—meant to be shattered and helpless—rose upward.
This was not resurrection.
It was the final reflex of a dying paradox engine.
A hidden reserve of energy discharged, propelling it skyward with agonizing velocity, like a rocket that had failed to launch yet still screamed upward.
Its ruined body—with remaining heads dangling limply, broken limbs twisted, and its energy core flickering like a dying bulb—shot vertically into the sky, leaving behind a fractured trail of dark energy smoke.
Its movement was erratic, wild, and dangerous.
It could strike a clock tower, an office building, or crash back into a dense residential district.
Nirmala's and Arya's eyes narrowed simultaneously.
There was no time for shock.
Their instinct to act was faster than thought.
Their hands, having just relaxed the slingshots, were already reaching for another device at their waists.
Not weapons, but instruments whose tips emitted bright orange anchoring beams.
With the same swift and precise aim they had used to fire the marbles, they released four bursts of light.
To be continued…