Executor
The sirens wailed across Axis Point, low and mechanical—more like a warning hum than a call to action. A heartbeat of the city itself. But that heartbeat was dying.
I ran with Aria beside me, her boots slamming the steel corridors with sharp rhythm. Kael was behind us, shielded in a protective veil of synthetic fiber that shimmered like stars.
> "They've overridden the city's neural net," Aria said, breath tight. "We've got less than five minutes before the shutdown cascades."
> "We head for the Data Core," I replied. "If we don't lock Kael out of the global grid, they'll find her anywhere."
> "And if we do?" she asked.
I didn't answer.
Because either way, someone would die tonight.
---
They struck first at the Central Vaults.
Machines, laced with sentient code and powered by the last surviving strands of the Spiral's corrupted data. Not Spiralborn… something else.
> Executors.
They weren't human. Or if they had been, there was nothing left now but sleek, six-eyed husks of metal and memory.
They didn't fire bullets.
They fired concepts.
The first soldier they touched stopped mid-step, froze—and then folded out of existence like an obsolete program. Gone. Never was.
Kael screamed. I turned and fired.
My shot scraped along the Executor's alloy frame, ricocheting with a sound that was less metal and more… resentment.
> "They're rewriting people," Aria growled, unloading three rounds into the nearest machine. "Like files."
> "The Architect made them," Kael whispered. "To clean errors."
I looked at her.
> "And what do they consider an error?"
She met my gaze, expression hollow.
> "Me."
---
We reached the Data Core as the ground trembled. Sparks lit the floor. The last security turrets fired blindly into the dark.
The Core was a tower of quantum light, its base humming with a reality so dense it warped air.
> "You'll have ten seconds to sever Kael's existence from the net," Aria said, starting the encryption sequence. "After that, we're in blackout."
Kael stepped forward.
She hesitated.
> "What if I vanish?" she asked softly.
> "You won't," I told her. "You're not code anymore. You're alive."
She nodded, trembling.
And stepped into the light.
---
The Executor came crashing through the wall.
Aria screamed.
It raised a limb of pure logic—and aimed it at Kael.
> "Anomaly detected. Purge required."
I moved.
No hesitation.
No calculation.
Just will.
I tackled Kael from the beam's path, and the concept-strike hit the Core instead.
Reality screamed.
Then the world went white.