The first rooftop was already half-sunken, its surface pockmarked with holes and slick with moss.
Tau-5 fanned out in formation, their boots gliding over the treacherous terrain with mechanical precision.
Cain took point, his steady, unhurried strides somehow never slipping despite the uncertain footing.
Bright muttered a quick prayer under his breath as he vaulted over a broken skylight, landing in a crouch beside Clef.
"Sixty-two minutes," Bright whispered, glancing at his cracked watch.
"Not that I'm counting," Clef muttered, shotgun tight in his hands.
A gust of fetid wind howled across the cityscape. The backstreets stretched endlessly below, labyrinthine and hostile.
Shadows twitched and shifted in the alleys.
Somewhere far off, something screamed, a sound torn halfway between a man and an animal.
Bright waved forward. "Move."
They sprinted for the next rooftop. The gap was nearly three meters wide, the alley below an endless pit of darkness.
Tau-5 crossed first, flinging themselves effortlessly across, their genetically-enhanced legs absorbing the impact. Cain followed, his leap almost casual.
Bright tightened the straps on his gear, backed up a few paces, then ran full tilt and hurled himself across.
His boots scraped the edge of the concrete, almost slipping, Clef grabbed his arm and yanked him forward, steadying him.
"You owe me a drink," Clef said, smirking.
Bright grunted. "You drink like a fish. Pass."
The rooftop vibrated suddenly underfoot.
A low, throbbing hum filled the air.
Bright spun around, and saw them.
Sweepers.
Climbing.
They scaled the sheer walls like cockroaches, dragging their rusted sacks behind them, their mouths splitting into wet, unnatural grins behind the mechanical mask.
Their hands, or what passed for hands, clawed into the concrete with terrifying ease.
Bright felt the bile rise in his throat. "Move! Move!"
Tau-5 opened fire in unison.
The rooftop exploded into gunfire, rounds shredding the first wave of Sweepers into mist and bone.
But more kept coming, pouring over the edge like a tidal wave of filth.
Cain stepped into the fray calmly.
A Sweeper lunged at him, a wicked blade flashing from its sleeve.
The blade slammed into Cain's chest, and instantly, the Sweeper's own torso split apart as if struck by an invisible hammer.
Blood sprayed from the creature's chest, its body folding backward violently.
Cain, untouched, didn't even blink.
Bright fired a three-round burst into another Sweeper's head. It collapsed, twitching.
Clef blew apart a pair of Sweepers at the knees, sending them crashing onto jagged rebar.
The team retreated toward the far end of the roof, fighting every inch.
Bright's voice cracked through the comms. "Tau-5! Clear a path!"
The bio-robots obeyed instantly, forming a firing line, unleashing a storm of experimental weaponry, railguns, plasma bolts, compressed kinetic rounds, tearing swathes through the massed Sweepers.
Cain was a force of nature, wading forward with brutal efficiency.
A Sweeper stabbed him in the side.
Instantly, its own ribcage caved inward with a sickening crunch, the thing collapsing in spasms.
Another leapt onto Cain's back, shrieking, and its own spine snapped in half, the momentum rebounding catastrophically.
Cain remained perfectly upright, like an iron statue amidst the chaos.
Bright reloaded, breathing hard. "Stairs!" he shouted, spotting a crumbling fire escape leading down to the adjacent building.
They sprinted for it.
Tau-5 covered the retreat, their armor sparking from glancing blows.
Clef kicked open the top platform and led the way down.
The fire escape rattled and groaned under their weight.
Sweepers were everywhere now.
They poured from shattered windows, clawed out from sewers, even erupted from beneath piles of refuse.
The city had come alive to kill them.
Halfway down, a Sweeper hurled itself onto the stairs, knocking Bright against the railing.
It swung a jagged cleaver
Bright ducked
Cain reached up and yanked the creature off by the arm.
The Sweeper twisted in the air, and its own shoulder detonated, bone and gore splattering across the rusted metal.
Cain threw the twitching body aside like a broken doll.
The last few meters they jumped.
The fire escape collapsed behind them with a screech, taking a dozen Sweepers down into the abyss.
Panting, Bright looked around.
They were deeper into the maze now, the alleyways narrowing, the buildings looming taller, hunched like ancient gods.
Fifty minutes left.
"Keep moving," Bright rasped, throat raw.
They ran.
Through the fetid corridors of the Backstreets they fled, hunted by laughter and dragging chains.
At a crossroads, they skidded to a halt.
Tau-5 Alpha, their de facto squad lead, pointed. "Movement. Seventeen hostiles, north-northwest."
Bright bit down a curse. "Options?"
Cain turned to a side alley, narrow and dripping with filth. "That way. It will bottleneck them."
Clef looked down the alley and grimaced. "Looks like a goddamn rat's nest."
Bright tapped his rifle. "Better than facing a firing squad. Go."
They plunged into the alley, single file, weapons raised.
The walls closed in. Overhead, wires sagged like spiderwebs.
Doors banged in the foul wind.
Sweepers flooded into the mouth of the alley, shrieking.
Bottlenecked, they came two at a time, easy targets.
Tau-5 fired in synchronized bursts, precise and pitiless.
Bright picked off the few that slipped through.
Clef tossed a makeshift incendiary down the alley, igniting the filth and flesh in a wall of flame.
The Sweepers howled, consumed.
Cain stayed at the rear, unshakable.
When a Sweeper slipped through the burning wreckage and tried to drive a rebar spike into Cain's side, the thing's own skull cracked open like a melon, flinging it backward into the fire.
The alley opened into a deserted square, dominated by the ruins of what had once been a church.
Flickering neon buzzed overhead.
Bright collapsed behind a broken fountain, gasping. "Forty-one minutes."
Clef popped the last shell into his shotgun. "Think we can hole up?"
Bright scanned the square. Too many entrances. Too exposed.
"No," Cain said simply. "They will not stop."
Bright nodded grimly.
"Then we keep moving."
They crossed the square at a sprint, ducking gunfire from shadows, slipping through the corpse of the dead city.
They were bruised, bloodied, low on ammo, and utterly alone.
But they were alive.
And they still had a mission to complete.
...
The air vibrated with tension, the wounded skyline silhouetted against a pulsing, blood-red moon.
Bright and his battered team stumbled into a devastated plaza, trying desperately to regroup.
The Sweepers were still coming, endless and ravenous, like a nightmare given flesh.
Clef slammed a fresh drum into his shotgun. "This is it, Bright. This is where we die."
"Why does that sound like a gift for me?"
"Well... You probably won't die but it's the same right?"
Cain simply stood there, hands loose at his sides, face unreadable.
Bright opened his mouth to respond
When the sky tore open.
With a roaring shriek, a brilliant rift cleaved itself into existence above the plaza.
Blinding white light spilled through, outlining the decaying ruins in harsh contrast.
Through the portal came the thunder.
Three Foundation dropships roared overhead, their spotlights scything through the smoke.
Fast ropes dropped.
Figures in heavy armor and gas masks descended like angels of death.
The first to hit the ground was a squad in pristine white tactical gear, the emblem of a leaping rabbit stitched onto their shoulders.
Mobile Task Force Lambda-5.
The White Rabbits.
[Mobile Task Force Lambda-5 specializes in traversing unstable, surreal, and controlled reality, and containing potentially dangerous persons and artifacts capable of manipulating space and time.]
Their guns opened fire immediately, specialized rounds ripping through the front lines of Sweepers with merciless efficiency.
Tau-5 reinforced the assault, moving in tandem with the new arrivals, filling the air with burning ozone and the scream of magnetic accelerators.
Bright staggered back, staring in disbelief.
Clef let out a ragged laugh. "I am not hallucinating, right?"
Cain squinted upward, utterly calm. "Backup."
Seconds later, another wave came crashing down.
Black-armored soldiers, marked with a hammer smashing into the Earth.
Mobile Task Force Nu-7.
Hammer Down.
[A battalion-strength force consisting of three company-sized elements of special operations infantry forces, a light armored vehicle company, tank platoon, helicopter squadron, chemical-biological-radiological-nuclear (CBRN) platoon, combat engineer platoon, nuclear weapon specialist (NWS) squad, plus additional combat specialist and support personnel.]
Heavy ordinance thundered as grenade launchers bloomed in the night, shredding the remaining Sweepers.
Bright felt a pressure at his side. A soldier had materialized beside him, offering a fresh magazine.
"You good, sir?"
Bright nodded numbly, slamming the mag home. "Yeah. Yeah."
The Sweepers didn't stand a chance. Caught between the hammer of Nu-7, the surgical strikes of Lambda-5, and the brutal precision of Tau-5, they were torn apart in minutes.
Ash, smoke, and blood filled the air, drowning out the dying screams.
When it was over, the plaza was a graveyard.
Bright yanked off his helmet, coughing.
His red hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat.
From the glowing portal overhead, two figures descended, flanked by MTF escorts.
Volt and Pyre.
And walking between them, calmly adjusting his glasses, was Dr. Gears, the infamous, emotionless genius of Site-19, as methodical and cold as a machine.
Bright blinked, too stunned to speak.
Clef beat him to it, striding forward, wiping blood off his face with the sleeve of his jacket.
"You wanna explain," Clef barked, "how the hell you made a portal? I thought we were locked out until the next one?"
Dr. Gears adjusted the cuff of his lab coat.
"Field improvisation. Agents Volt and Pyre were able to generate a stable quantum anchor through controlled anomalous feedback. I simply refined the theoretical model."
Bright stared at him. "You MacGyvered a multiversal bridge."
"Correct," Gears said without inflection. "It is not a permanent solution. Current estimates give us a stability window of ninety-seven minutes before decay."
Volt grinned, sparks dancing across his fingers.
"Pretty badass, huh?"
Pyre, rolling his eyes, added dryly, "Took us five tries. The first three nearly incinerated the workshop. The fourth... well, let's just say someone's eyebrows still haven't grown back."
Volt flushed slightly. "We don't talk about that."
Bright shook his head in amazement.
"You saved our asses," he said, clapping Volt on the shoulder hard enough to send sparks flying.
"Yeah, well," Volt said, grinning, "somebody had to."
Gears stepped forward, peering at the surroundings like a biologist studying a diseased petri dish.
"The Sweepers are... unique. Their biology suggests partial reality corrosion. Prolonged exposure inadvisable. Extraction protocols now in effect."
Clef spat into the dirt. "Extraction sounds real nice right about now."
Bright turned to Cain, who merely inclined his head.
"Lead the way, Doc."
Gears nodded once.
"Form up. We are evacuating immediately. After everything end, re-deploy"
"Whaaaaaaaat? That fast? Only 30 minutes left before the sweepers retreat" Bright said after checking his watch.
"What do you think? The mission is still active, Agent Kay is back so he will join your team as the captain"
Above them, the portal shuddered, the edges fraying slightly.
Time was running out.
Without needing to be told, the survivors moved, the remaining Sweepers howling impotently in the distance.
Bright looked back only once, at the burning ruins, the blood-soaked streets, and the seemingly endless night.
Then he set his jaw and followed the others into the light.
"30 minutes break... how cruel~" He said dramatically