The ground bucked like a living thing as the first Cinder charge detonated half a kilometer away. Even deep within the bunker's reinforced belly, the sound was a physical blow, a concussive roar that rattled Kael's teeth in his skull.
"The hatch won't hold!" Kael shouted over the sirens now wailing from the bunker's ancient speakers.
Lyra didn't flinch. She was adjusting the settings on her wrist-mounted console, her fingers moving with a practiced, icy calm. "The hatch isn't meant to hold. It's meant to funnel them. If they want the Core, they have to come through the throat of this place. We make them choke on it."
"Core, give me everything," Kael said, his hand tightening around the obsidian sphere. "No more 72%. I need 100."
"Do it," Kael growled.
The silver mist didn't just coat his arm this time; it surged into his chest, wrapping around his heart. Kael's vision didn't just sharpen—it fractured. He could see the bunker in wireframe, sensing the stress points in the metal and the heat signatures of the Vulture gunships hovering like hungry insects above the canopy.
"They're dropping 'Seeker' droids," Lyra warned, her violet blade humming with a hungry, low-pitched thrum. "Stay behind me, Scavenger."
"Name's Kael," he corrected, his voice sounding metallic, even to his own ears. "And I don't stay behind anyone anymore."
The titanium hatch at the end of the hall suddenly vanished in a white-hot flash. The molten metal sprayed inward, and through the cooling smoke, the Seekers emerged. They were spindly, four-legged machines designed for narrow corridors, their central "eye" glowing with a lethal crimson laser.
Lyra moved like a streak of violet lightning.
She didn't just swing her blade; she danced. Every movement was a masterpiece of kinetic efficiency. She deflected the first laser bolt back into the eye of a droid, then spun, her blade cleaving through the chassis of two more in a single, fluid arc.
But there were too many. A dozen more Seekers poured through the breach, their leg-servos clicking rapidly on the dusty floor.
Kael thrust his hand forward. He didn't have a blade, but he had the Core. A wave of distorted air—a physical ripple in reality—blasted from his palm. It hit the lead row of droids like a wrecking ball, crushing their delicate frames into scrap and slamming them back into the breach, momentarily blocking the path for the others.
Lyra glanced back, a look of genuine surprise flickering in her violet eyes. "Not bad for a scavenger."
"I'm a fast learner," Kael panted. The strain was already beginning to claw at his mind. The wireframe view of the world was flickering, turning blood-red at the edges.
"The Great Pillar is falling!" Lyra yelled.
A massive groan of wood and metal echoed from above. The skyscraper-tree, weakened by the Cinder charges and the weight of the station's hubris, was tilting. The entire bunker began to slant. Dust and debris rained from the ceiling.
"We have to get to the lower levels," Lyra said, grabbing Kael's shoulder. "There's a transit rail—a mag-lev that leads to the 'Seed Vault.' If we lose the Vault, the Earth stays dead forever."
"And the Prefects?"
"If we're lucky, the tree falls on them," she said grimly.
They sprinted deeper into the bowels of the facility, the world tilting further with every step. Behind them, the sounds of the Seeker droids' saws cutting through the debris grew louder.
As they reached the mag-lev platform, Kael looked up through a crack in the ceiling. He saw the sky—no longer orange and toxic, but choked with the black smoke of the Council's fire. And above that, the glinting, cold eye of the Aegis station.
He knew then that this wasn't just a fight for survival. It was a declaration of war.
"What's a Solar Lance?" Kael asked, his blood running cold.
Lyra turned, her face pale. "It's a satellite-based orbital strike. They aren't just burning the forest anymore. They're going to erase this entire coordinate from the map."
"How long?"
"Get on the train!" Lyra screamed.