Ten meters to his left, Shade stood beside a collapsed antenna tower. One hand rested genly on the hilt of her plasma blade. She didn't shift. Didn't twitch. Just a quiet exhale through the core fans—discipline in silence.
To the right, Drift twitched.
Again.
His upper servos jittered as pressure built. Not fear fear —just too old a model. The rail rifle buzzed in his grip, overcharged and coiled like reflex gone impatient. Too ready.
[[COMMS – LOCAL ENCRYPTED]
FLINT: "Drift. Your wrist."
DRIFT: "I know. Can't stop it. Pressure's wrong. This zone feels… off, right?"
He wasn't wrong. Flint just hadn't said it out loud.
There was a weight to the air—dense, oppressive. Not weather. Not wind. More like… gravity had been dialed up a notch without permission.
SHADE: "Contact. Far side. Something's moving."
Her voice was quiet. No urgency. Just an observation, like she was noting rust.
FLINT: "Visual?"
SHADE: "Haze. Sixty meters. Four-legged silhouette. Big mass. Heavy."
Drift's optic brightened just a fraction.
DRIFT: "Crawler?"
SHADE: "Too smooth."
DRIFT: "Quad mech?"
FLINT: "Federation ? Reclaimer?"
SHADE: "…Neither."
Then it stepped out.
Like it had always been there—just waiting for them to notice.
One armored foot pressed into the dust. Then another. Four in total. It didn't lumber. It didn't stomp. It… glided. Like gravity favored it.
Black-plated. No flare. No smoke. Every panel sealed tight.
Its limbs moved in deliberate synchrony—not like something piloted. Not even like something programmed.
Something else.
At the center: a single, red optic.
Unblinking.
[SENSOR PING – NO RESPONSE]
[ENEMY ID; UNKNOWN]
[SIGNAL REQUEST – FAILED]
[NO AFFILIATION DETECTED]
No tag. No flag. No trace.
Nothing.
Flint's thoughts surged—not panic, he wasn't built for that—but something close. His fans kicked harder. Servo micromovements refined themselves. His equivalent of a breath tightening.
FLINT: "Unknown contact. Unmapped frame. Profile… Titan-class. Threat level undetermined."
__
Drift shifted, weight leaning on the rifle. His optics narrowed.
The weapon began to hum—quiet at first.
FLINT: "Hold fire. We don't know what—"
The titan paused.
Its optic tilted. Not aimed. Angled. Like it was listening.
Drift's wrist clicked—louder this time. Flint turned—
To slow.
Something ni the field shifted. Not wind. Not motion. Pressure. Sudden and vertical, like the ground had just inhaled.
Instinct—not code—shivered down Flint's spine.
The rifle whined. Drift didn't speak. He didn't need to.
Logic lost the vote.
Flint opened his mouth—
Too late.
The titan's optic ignited.
No flicker. No pulse.
Just ignition.
A flood of red light blasted across the zone like dawn on fire. Then came the sound—stacked and layered, low-frequency thunder chewing through steel.
And than—erasure.
There was no beam trail. No arc. Just a cut. A perfect silence made visible.
Drift didn't fall .
He just...Stopped.
One second crouched behind a fractured panel.
The next—gone.
No shrapnel. No metal. No scream.
Just fragments in the air. Ash that didn't belong to the world.
Then came the blast wave.
It hit the hauler behind them like orbital freight. Seven tons of rusted chassis lifted off its broken axle like it weighed nothing.
Flint didn't dive. He was flung.
His HUD scrambled mid-air—alerts chasing each other in glitchy stutters.
The ground caught him like a slap.
His left arm sparked on impact.
[LEFT ARM: OFFLINE – SERVO CUTOUT]
[STABILIZATION: DEGRADED]
[DAMAGE REPORT: STREAMING]
He didn't scream.
But his system did.
Internal static garbled audio channels. His joints roared with calibration errors. Still, he forced his vision to stabilize.
And through it all—he could still hear it aloud.
Not Drift. Drift had nothing left to make noise.
The hauler struck the ground beside him with a crunch that echoed through his core. Flint's cover—gone. Just shattered steel and a few sparks trailing like blood that didn't know where to go.
He was mid-roll, instincts overclocked, servos whimpering. One internal stabilizer blew—sharp enough to feel like a snapped rib, if he'd ever had one.
His left shoulder tore. Bad.
HUD blinked furiously.
[LEFT ARM: OFFLINE – SERVO CUTOUT]
[STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY: 63%]
[STABILIZATION: INCONSISTENT.]
He didn't pause to read the rest.
The world spin sideways as he pushed up—one foot dragging slightly. Motors protested. His balance mod tried to compensate and failed halfway.
He scanned.
shade.
There.
She was already airborne.
Her boosters shrieked with fury, slicing through the haze like vengeance set on fire. Her plasma cutter unfolded mid-leap, the energy core snapping with a charge too hot to wait.
He wanted to stop her.
He didn't.
She didn't need him to.
For one fractured heartbeat—measured in motion, not time—he believed she'd make it.
She closed fast, blade raised in a perfect arc toward the titan's center.
Straight for the core.
Not a limb. Not a turret. The heart.
But the titan moved.
Not in defense—in adaptation.
A side panel rotated open—soundless. Efficient.
A rail beam hissed free and fired.
Before Flint registered the light, it was over.
The shot passed through her.
Mid-lunge. Dead center.
No burst. No scream. Just a red-hot line, cleaner than war should ever be.
Shade didn't fall. Her momentum carried her past the titan, blade stil humming.
She skidded across the dirt—silent, limbs sparking. Then nothing.
Nno motion. No flame.
Only a quiet flatline in his HUD.
[UNIT SHADE – CONNECTION LOST]
[SIGNAL: FLATLINE]
Flint stared.
He didn't shout. Didn't curse.
There was nothing to say.
One breath ago, they were three.
Now—just him.
He didn't move. Couldn't.
His blade hadn't even cleared its housing.
His left arm sparked dead weight at his side.
And the titan???
It turned.
Slow. Calculated.
Its optic dimmed once, then surged—brighter than before. Steam hissed from beneath its ribplate, bleeding like a sigh.
The battlefield held its breath.
[CORE STABILITY— —FLUCTUATING]
[FUEL REMAINING – 38%]
[NO ALLIES DETECTED]
Flint stood.
He didn't check diagnostics. What was the point? His HUD stuttered, cracked and discolored, but he could still see the thing that mattered.
The eye.
Focused.
Waiting,
Choosing.
He drew his blade.
[WEAPON SYSTEM: ACTIVE – ENERGY EDGE STABLE]
No speeches. No commands. No tactic.
Just a simulated breath.
Didn't need it. Took it anyway.
Some fights? You don't win. You go in because you have to.
The blade hissed as it left the sheath—angry and imperfect. His grip trembled.; the actuator kept misfiring. A warning pinged at the edge of his screen.
He ignored it.
The titan didn't move. Just stared. That eye like a sun waiting to ignite.
Flint didn't wait.
He surged.
Boosters screamed—unstable, overtaxed, but enough.
He skimmed the ruined street low, blade trailing sparks from fractured concrete.
He struck.
Upwards.
The blade screamed against steal—caught the titan's shoulder. Too shallow. Surface damage.
Not enough.
The titan rotated. Fast. Too fast.
A turret emerged from its side panel—sleek, precise.
Firing sequence activated mid-motion.
[DANGER ZONE: 2.3 METERS]
[EVASION WINDOW: 0.4 SEC]
He dove left.
Almost made it.
The beam caught his right flank—burning clean through armor.
Pain. If machines felt that word.
[RIGHT ARM: 49% FUNCTIONAL]
[CORE: OVERHEATING — VENT RECOMMENDED]
He roled under the titan's frame. Everything screamed—systems, steel, logic. Even gravity seemed offended.
And then—he saw it.
A cluster of coolant lines beneath the torso. No armor. Minimal shielding.
No time to second-guess.
He stabbed upward.
Steel split. A hiss of vapor burst from the gash—coolant turned to mist in the open air.
The titan staggered.
Not toppled. But shaken.
Then—
A vent opened above him.
Too clos.
The heat hit like a god's breath.
His chestplate blistered, warped.
He screamed.
Not out loud. Not with voice.
But with error.
[SENSORS: BLIND]
[CORE STABILITY: 31% — REDLINE]
[STRUCTURAL DAMAGE: CRITICAL]
He stumbled out, every step jerking from locked joints and burned wiring. One optic gone fuzzy.
The titan turned again. Still operational. Still aimed.
Its main cannon powered up.
Slow.
Intentional.
Target: Flint.
There was no cover.
No clever angle.
No backup.
And yet—
He rose.
Not strategy. Just defiance.
[COMMS – PRIVATE RECORDING]
FLINT: "…Then burn with me."
He charged.
Boosters flared. Heat pouring from broken seals. Not flight—just force.
The titan fired.
White light took the field.
He ran straight into it.
There was no light left.
Just the bitter stink of scorched alloy and spilled coolant. Thick. Clinging. Like something chemical had tried to die but hadn't finished the job.
Flint didn't move.
Not from hesitation—he wasn't rigged for that—but because… something else , a weight. An echo in his core.
Something whispered behind his optics:
Get up.
His body replied:
No.
So he stayed down, halfway embedded in a crater shallow as shame.
[FUNCTIONAL STATUS: 19%]
[CORE HEAT DISSIPATION: FAILING]
[LEFT ARM – UNRESPONSIVE]
[PRIMARY OPTICS – FRACTURED, REFOCUSING]
A hiss nearby. Coolant leak, maybe. Or something breathing. The air shimmered like the memory of fire still haunted the dust.
His left servo twitched.
The noise it made didn't sound mechanical—it sounded injured.
His fingers curled into dirt that was still warm from the last beam strike.
Not ash Not yet.
Movement ahead. Blurred.
Too indistinct to tag. No ID. No ping. Just… mass, shifting.
He scanned.
Then scanned again.
Still nothing.
A glitch? Or—
[ENEMY UNIT: UNKNOWN]
[STATUS: STANDING. ACTIVE.]
Not a scan error.
The titan had survived.
Somehow.
It stood at the edge of the clearing, smoke leaking from vents. The shoulder he'd struck glowed red-hot—a surface wound. Mocking.
No stagger. No limp.
It hadn't flinched. It had paused.
Like it had needed a second.
To think.
Now it moved again.
Deliberate. Measured.
Not injured—just calculating.
The cannon rose.
No audio cue. No warm-up signal. Just a sharp, unnatural whine—high-pitched, like something broken trying to scream in reverse.
Flint rolled.
Badly.
His stabilizers shrieked. Left leg dragged through a twist of rebar—snagged—tore a cable—
The blast hit where he'd just been. Concrete warped. The street turned to heat-glazed slag.
He hit the ground sideways, frame scraping across bent steel and glowing stone.
He groaned—not pain. Something older. A code-deep refusal.
"Grind me to nothing then," he muttered. No mic online. Said it anyway.
[INTERNAL AUDIO NOTE: UNRECORDED.]
[ERROR – SELF-DIAG MONOLOGUE LOOP DETECTED]
His systems staggered. Not from damage, but from something… fractured.
Not just heat.
His name.
His code.
Something in the way he recognized himself had gone sideways.
He stood
It hurt. Or it should have. What Flint had wasn't pain.
It was loss of function.
His left optic was dead. The right flickered, but held.
And then—he saw it.
His blade.
Half-buried in dirt, still glowing faintly from the last impact. The edge buzzed, soft and irregular.
He didn't need it.
But he reached anyway.
Not for the weapon.
For the remindered.
The handle sizzled against his palm. Not enough to melt. Just enough to feel like something old remembered what resistance felt like.
He turned.
The titan hadn't moved.
Why?
[ENEMY AI PATTERN: NON AGGRESSIVE?]
[TACTICAL POSSIBILITY: SYSTEM STALL?]
[RECALCULATING…]
"…Wrong again," Flint muttered. "Maybe I'm the broken one."
He took a step forward.
Then another.
Boots dragging through the glass-stained concrete. The dust around him seemed to freeze—holding breath.
The titan moved.
Just one step. A pivot. Shoulder rotation—14°, clockwise.
Too fluid for failure.
Not a stall.
A feint.
Too late to adjust.
A secondary cannon snapped from its side—quiet. No glow. Just there.
It fired.
Force—not energy.
A slug tore through Flint's side, low. Beneath the core housing.
Designed to injure. Not kill.
[CORE CONTAINMENT: BREACHED – MINOR]
[LEFT HIP ROTOR: DESTABILIZED]
He dropped to one knee.
Sparks coughed from the wound. Tiny. Angry.
"…Thanks," he said, teeth that didn't exist clenched. "Needed that."
The titan didn't advance.
Its optic pulsed—once.
Slow.
Deliberate.
Not a targeting cue.
Something else.
Disinterest?
Or worse-measurement.
Flint's fist closed.
No. Not a fist. Just the shape of one.
He didn't raise his weapon.
Instead, he said it out loud—words wasted on logic.
"You're not trying to win"
Silence.
"But you're not letting me lose either."
That landed… somewhere. The air twitched.
Then—sound.
Low. Distorted.
A subsonic hum crawled through his HUD. Just over a second. But it felt longer.
His display smeared like wet glass.
He blinked.
No fix.
And then—
The ground shifted.
Not a quake.
A breath.
A ripple, deep beneath the dirt. Not explosive. Just… vast.
He stumbled back. Stabilizers howled.
[SEISMIC SIGNATURE DETECTED – NON NATURAL]
[ORIGIN: UNKNOWN – RADIUS EXPANDING]
The battlefield tilted. Vertigo surged—sensor-based. Artificial.
His legs forgot where the floor was.
He dropped.
Hard.
Not a a fall.
Just collapse.
Impact shook something loose in his head.
<< system log— / /drift-loop// .meam access violation —|retry? yes/no y/n>>
<< status… uP / doWN / ….accessing.. / thIs was whERE— >>
<< yOU are not alone you are not alone you a–YOU ArE NOT A—YOU—A-_— >>
He forced a reboot—manual override.
Slow.
Crude.
Fingers clawed through molten dirt. A seam in his palm tore open.
Not a wound.
But it felt like one.
Sparks dripped from his elbow like exhausted blood.
The titan didn't follow.
Still watching."
Still recording.
He didn't have enough power to charge.
So he crawled.
Not toward the titan.
Around.
The broken edge of a collapsed overpass jutted out—twisted beams like ribs of something long dead.
There was no cover.
Just shadow.
And in that shadow…
Click.
Not loud. Not mechanical.
Personal.
His wrist servo twitched.
The same way Drift's had.
Same tempo.
Same pitch.
Same mistake.
He didn't move.
Didn't speak
Just sat in the half-light, blade laid across his lap like an afterthought.
And in the reflection—
A faint crack.
His right optic.
Hairline fracture, diagonal.
Like a mirror trying to remember how to bleed.