The explosion's shockwave hurled Wei Xu across the chasm—ironically saving his life. The force ripped the air from his lungs and flung him like a ragdoll. He slammed into the ground, hard, the impact rattling his ribs. He rolled, metal screeching against stone, and finally skidded to a halt, half-buried in a dune of coarse sand.
His visor filled with static before the HUD re-stabilized. He sucked in a ragged breath, every inhale scraping against the dust clogging his throat.
"God… damn that hurt." He spat. His mask was lost during the chaos. "An ambush… I knew something was wrong when I saw those faulty weld marks. That wasn't UCSA's work. It was too shit, but why the hell would the Ash Baron even bother with UCSA tech if he logistically can't maintain it?"
The exosuit's HUD screamed with warnings. Flashing crimson alerts pulsed across his vision, overlapping each other with deafening chimes. Hydraulic failure. Oxygen depletion. Armor breach. Critical concussion risk.
"I know I got shot at—shut up." Wei Xu's voice cracked. He forced a hard override command through his neural uplink. The alarms cut off, leaving only the thrum of the suit's reactor and the howl of the storm.
Wei Xu blinked, forcing his head to stop spinning. The world swam. He clenched his teeth and shoved a neural pulse into the system.
"Combat AI… run north. Patriot encampment. Now."
The suit's AI hesitated for a fraction of a second before its synthesized voice confirmed:
[Running North. Initiating sprint mode.]
Wei Xu staggered upright as the exosuit surged forward. The desert blurred around him—sand tearing against his armor like shards of glass.
But his pursuers were clever. They knew the Patriots were too far away to intervene. This ambush wasn't reckless—it had been calculated. They had bought themselves plenty of time.
He pulled up a bioscan. The readouts painted a brutal but survivable picture. Internal bleeding: minimal. Oxygen saturation: dropping but stable. Armor: shredded but functional. His ERA plating and composite mesh had absorbed most of the initial blast. The blowout panel had vented the worst of it. Only a concussion, bruises, and a splitting headache.
Alive. Barely.
Then the system highlighted a gaping void in the rear of his suit. His stomach dropped.
"Shit… the back panel's gone. They blew it wide open. I'm screwed."
One well-placed shot, and his reactor would be cooking his organs.
Wei Xu thought for a split second then growled, ripping apart the radar housing. Sparks danced across his gauntlets as he tore the unit free and jammed it into the exposed breach.
The suit shrieked with error codes. Hydraulic warnings. Overheating alerts. Neural interference.
"I know it's exposed," he snarled, "but I'd rather have the radar exposed than the core. It will buy us time."
The radar housing wasn't going to stop a proper round—but it might deflect small arms.
His thoughts sharpened. That wasn't a standard RPG. The blast radius, the penetration—it was too clean. Too precise. Specialized anti-exosuit ordnance.
"High-Explosive Sabot from an Infantry Fighting Vehicle? No… they wouldn't waste armor-piercers on me. More likely…" He narrowed his eyes as fragments of memory snapped into place. "Those bastards dug up a crate of UCSA's SCRPGs. Smart munitions. Shit."
The memory replayed in his head—the distinct thump, the spiral vapor trail. No engine noise, no treads, no wheels. Infantry. Portable. He clenched his jaw. They've got another round loaded.
"AI—switch to quadruped locomotion. Reduce profile."
[Understood. Reconfiguring.]
The suit dropped to all fours with a metallic clang, bounding forward like some mechanized predator. Each stride churned the sand beneath him. His speed dipped, but his profile shrank, making him harder to hit. It also made him want to vomit but he held it in.
"Better be worth it," Wei Xu muttered through gritted teeth.
As Wei Xu went through the different possibilities in his head, he came upon a terrifying possibility,"If they've got drones… then I'm screwed."
Unbidden, memories surfaced. Patriot drones screaming out of the sky like falling stars, ripping through Ash Baron trenches. Impossible to dodge. Even UCSA's older drones had been nightmares.
He spat bitterly, sand sticking to his lips. "Dumbass UCSA leadership… why didn't you stop after the first failed invasion? Even if you fail, at least clean up your mess."
The desert answered with another thunderous crack. The dune beside him detonated, showering him in sand and shrapnel. Through the haze, he saw the streak of a second rocket slicing the storm in half.
"God damn it!" He yanked the suit sideways. His lungs burned as oxygen dipped.
[Warning: O₂ reserves at 47%. Cell integrity compromised.]
One of his supply tanks was gone. The sandstorm howled, grains whipping against his visor in endless waves. The suit's hydraulics rasped and squealed with every motion, like bones grinding in an open wound.
"At least they built you tough," he muttered to himself, fingers flying across failsafe controls. "Slow as hell, but alive. That's all that matters."
Gunfire crackled behind him. Bullets snapped into the sand at his flanks, throwing up tiny fountains of grit.
His pursuers were closing.
Then—movement above.
He froze for half a heartbeat. Helicopters. Dozens of them. Shadows flickered in the sandstorm's veil as rotor blades carved the air with a thunderous chop.
"What the hell?" Wei Xu's voice dropped. His heart palpitating in fear at seeing the sleek armaments flying through the sky. "Army helicopters? No… not strike group. ECA Army… Why the hell are they this far out?"
It was basically impossible. The ECA was gone, there was no way of dynamically changing the patrol paths of the military. Army helicopters meant that something happened inside the inner city zones, but what could possibly shake the ECA?
"Whatever, I'll think about it later"
He forced himself to check the rear cam. Blurry shapes emerged from the storm. Desert-camouflaged operators, moving with practiced precision.
PMCs. And gaining.
"F*ck it." Wei Xu snarled, wrenching the suit to the right—straight into the inner zone defensive perimeter.
The mercs didn't hesitate. They followed. Wei Xu's gut twisted. Nobody in their right mind would cross that line. Not Patriots. Not the Baron. Not scavengers.
This line meant certain death for anyone who crossed it.
He zoomed in and caught a glimpse of their insignia.
"…Erussian flags? Why the hell are Erussian PMCs here?"
Before he could think, the landscape shifted.
Lush greenness.
Vast walls of forest rose from the sand like a hallucination. Towering trees. A shimmering lake. Birds cutting across the sky. Deer bending their heads to drink. The forest seemed beautiful and perfect. Maybe too perfect.
Wei Xu's visor highlighted a cave two klicks ahead, nestled in the slope of the false oasis. His muscles screamed, his lungs burned, but he pushed the exosuit harder.
"The cave's only three hundred meters… just three hundred…"
Each step felt heavier, each breath shallower. Metal screeched, hydraulics whined. But he reached it.
He stumbled into the cave. Lights flared on. Sirens wailed.
"Shit. Secured site!"
The floor dropped out beneath him. Gravity seized him, hurling him into the dark.
Outside, the PMCs regrouped.
The orange-mohawked soldier frowned, scanning the tracks. "Cap, you sure he went in here? Trail's dead."
"Shut it," the man with the cigar muttered, puffing smoke into the storm. "You don't need to question Cap."
The captain ignored them both. He crouched by the lake, dipping his fingers in. Perfectly clear water rippled outward. His gut churned. "This forest… it feels too quiet, especially being in the defensive perimeter."
Cigar smirked. "Boss, you're paranoid. ECA's been gone for thirty-one years. What could they do to us?"
"That's what bothers me." The captain's voice dropped. "Why do people still fear them?"
Cigar waved him off and stepped toward the waterline. "The top dogs in the region are probably hoarding this, that's all. Probably set off rumors about the ECA to ward off adventurous people and just kill the people who didn't listen themselves. Lots of people use this tactic to keep away unwanted visitors. I would too, considering this forest has fresh water. We should fill a few jugs, call it a day."
"Not before we test it."
Cigar scoffed. "Test it? You saw animals drinking it. We've had worse. Hell, we drink radiation runoff half the time. We're still alive. Just eat more meds, and you'll be fine."
The captain didn't answer. He realized suddenly how long it had been since Dimitri—the orange-haired one—had spoken.
"Dimitri?"
The question hung in the air.
Then Cigar's head burst apart, a fine red mist hanging in the wind. The captain didn't even react before his skull liquefied, collapsing him into the dirt. Their bodies sizzled, steaming, dissolving into slurry.
The forest went utterly silent.
A sound rippled through the air—not mechanical, not natural. A layering of frequencies. A hum so precise and inhumane it almost hurt.
Whrrr-kzzh—vvvmmm.
The trees wavered, as if the air itself bent. Something bled into existence—edges forming, dissolving, forming again.
A drone.
Its sleek frame shimmered, cloaked by the ECA technology. Panels of adaptive camouflage rippled like liquid crystal. Its sensors pulsed beams invisible to the naked eye, each one bending reality around it.
The sound deepened. Not a simple rotor, not an engine. It was closer to a symphony of modulated tones, machine-perfect, alien in precision. The kind of noise that made the human brain instinctively recoil.
The drone scanned where the corpses were. Cold. Methodical. Almost curious.
Then it flickered, collapsing back into distortion—like ink dissolving in water.
The forest stood untouched. Serene.
As it always had been.
As it always would be.
{End}