The Marshals watched in terror as Park and Raymond dismantled their comrades with effortless precision. The spell was broken only when the two agents qdig Bryce out of the rubble.
Survival instinct kicked in. They rushed the trio. One Marshal reached Raymond first, aiming a strike before the weapons master could arm himself.
Raymond was faster. His elbow cracked into the man's jaw before the blow could land. In the same motion, he drew a pulse cannon and fired point-blank into the Marshal's stomach, hurling him backwards.
Park moved through the chaos with focused energy. He stepped onto one Marshal's shoulders and delivered a series of powerful kicks to the man's head. Then, he bent backwards and headbutted another attacker behind him. Using his legs, he swung around to a different opponent, wrapping his legs around their neck and slamming them into the concrete. A final strong blow to the head knocked out the Marshal and left a dent in the floor. Park twisted again and launched a spinning kick that sent his first opponent flying.
Raymond now wielded a digital chain, its end a nest of shimmering, monomolecular knives. He whirled it in a wide arc. The Marshals dodged, but the chain was intelligent, tracing their movements and slashing at them with surgical precision. The blades didn't pierce deep; they flayed, carving intricate patterns of cuts into their steel hides, keeping their nanites frantic with repair work.
Bryce freed himself from the remaining few slabs during the chaos.
He launched into the air, a silver comet, and landed feet-first on a Marshal's head. The skull exploded like overripe fruit, blood and biomatter painting the nearby walls and cameras.
The cameras on the General's collapsed building were dead, but dozens of others throughout the barracks remained intact, their red recording lights blinking relentlessly.
"Arggghhhh!" Bryce's scream was a raw thing of rage. He stretched out his hands, sweat sheening his metallic skin as he concentrated. The air itself hummed in response.
Every piece of debris from the shattered building shuddered, then lifted into the air. Under the command of his nanites, the rubble morphed, edges sharpening into razored, sturdy shards. A cloud of deadly projectiles hovered for a heartbeat, then shot towards the Marshals—the standing, the fallen, all of them.
-20HDC!!! The notification flashed red but he dismissed it with a painful hiss.
Park and Raymond immediately broke off their attacks. Their new mission was to stop Bryce.
Park's thrusters flared. He snatched a sword from Raymond's back and became a blur of silver, intercepting and shattering the deadliest shards. Raymond followed, his chain now a precision instrument, flicking knives to deflect and tumble the rubble from its course. But they couldn't stop it all. The remaining Marshals were impaled, crying out as shrapnel bit deep. One died instantly when a piece took him in the throat—a moment Raymond had missed, his focus divided.
A second chopper now hovered a mile out, joining the first one.
"Bryce, control yourself!" Park screamed.
A sledgehammer blow to the back of Bryce's head cut off his response. His head snapped forward, his body following, driven to a knee. Three more concussive strikes landed in the same spot.
A Pulse Cannon, thrown like a spear, arced over his head. It fired downward at point-blank range, the blast slamming his face into the concrete.
It was the same spot he had struck The General.
A blinking white light filled his vision. A cascade of system error notifications. A high-pitched ringing in his ears. Then, a painful, violent reversal—his metallic form dissolving back into vulnerable flesh. He lay on the ground, vision swimming as he tried to find his attacker.
The General stood over him, heaving with anger, a shard of debris embedded in his cheek.
"It is time to get out!" he shouted to his remaining men. Then he looked down at Bryce. The Marshals scattered into the maze of barracks buildings, with Raymond giving chase.
"You've encountered my first precaution," the General spat. "Soon, you'll meet the second. You are not winning." He turned and sprinted into a long, low building.
Bryce's system was rebooting, his HDC stabilising. He could give chase, but caution held him. Is this a trap? A tunnel designed for an ambush?
Park helped him to his feet.
"I'll go. You stay here and secure anyone who runs out." Park's voice was low and urgent. "But Bryce, remember our objective. The General is the primary target. We can arrest the others for obstructing an arrest, but that does not warrant their death." With that, he plunged into the building after the General.
The barracks were a claustrophobic maze—rows of single-room dwellings facing each other across narrow, identical passages.
Park ran blindly, his footsteps echoing in the sudden silence. He saw no one.
Raymond, guided by his 360-degree B-Wax view, saw everything. He targeted the nearest Marshal, almost catching one before a new blip on his sensor distracted him—The General, moving not on the ground, but along the exposed iron rafters of the roof, swinging with monkey-like agility.
Raymond closed in on his original target, leaping with an electrified gauntlet ready to strike.
The General dropped from the ceiling, knocking Raymond's arm aside. The Marshal scrambled away.
"I have questions!" Raymond shouted, but The General ignored him. "Where are all your colonels? Why haven't those choppers in the air intervened?"
He climbed above and chase after the General, who was running swiftly until he skidded to an abrupt halt, his gaze fixed on the ground below, concern etched on his face.
Raymond stopped too, fear of a trap freezing him. A third chopper had joined the two in the distance, and all three were now advancing toward the barracks.
Why did he stop the moment they started moving? Raymond's paranoia spiked, and he followed the General's gaze.
The sight below made his fear evaporate. The Marshals had stopped running. Their Homo Deus modes had flickered out, and they lay on the ground, panting, utterly spent.
Raymond laughed. "You led them on a chase they couldn't sustain! They've burned through every last drop of their glucose, you fool!"
"That is not what worries me," the General replied. Then he did the unexpected. He rushed Raymond, grabbed him in a crushing grip, and leaped down into a room where Park was in the process of handcuffing two exhausted Marshals.
They landed on Park, knocking the cuffs from his hands. The General seized both agents, he gripped tightly. Park hammered at his head and arms with his machine-powered fist, but the General just groaned, absorbing the blows.
"Run!" the General roared at his men. "Gather your strength and go! They are close!"
"We can't leave you!" one Marshal protested.
"You are a Homo Deus user too!" another added.
"Go… I have… more control. I can… switch… it off." The General's words were slurred as Park's relentless blows busted his lips and swelled one eye shut.
The six Marshals obeyed, stumbling into a room that housed a single helicopter on a private helipad, its rotors already beginning to spin. They piled in, and the aircraft lifted off, soaring away.
The General released Park and Raymond, collapsing to the floor. A large, holographic red warning filled his vision, visible as a reflection in his glazing eyes:
WARNING: TOTAL SYSTEM SHUTDOWN WILL REVERT BODY TO DETERIORATED BASE STATE. CONFIRM SHUTDOWN? [Y/N]
"Yes," he whispered.
His body began to change. His hair fell out in clumps, the remainder turning a brittle white. His powerful frame shriveled, muscle and mass evaporating until his skin hung loose on his bones like a shroud, a web of blue veins pulsing beneath. He looked two hundred years old.
"Five, Four, Three, Two," he counted, his voice a weak rasp. A weird, triumphant smile stretched across his ancient face.