The digital timer on the massive acid bomb beeped again.
00:02:59.
The sound echoed off the dark, wet walls of the cavern like a gunshot.
Marcus didn't move a muscle. He didn't blink. The heavy, melted rubber of his left boot was pressed firmly against the metal grate.
He felt the mechanical tension beneath his heel.
It was a rigged pressure plate. He had stepped directly onto a terraforming detonator.
If he lifted his foot, the catwalk wouldn't explode. The massive, toxic green payload suspended fifty feet above the pristine underground lake would simply drop. It would instantly vaporize the entire water supply of Naples.
The Carrier would die of thirst. The Legion would die on the beach.
"Marcus," Marcia whispered, her voice tight with panic.
She took a slow step forward on the metal grating.
"Don't move," Marcus ordered. His voice was completely flat, devoid of panic. It was pure Warlord iron.
He slowly turned his head to look at her. The harsh blue light of the cracked Amp illuminated the raw terror on her scarred face.
"I can swap with you," Marcia said, reaching out a hand. "You're heavier. If you slide your foot off, I can slide mine on. You're the Warlord. You have to lead."
"No," Marcus said instantly.
"Marcus, we have less than three minutes," Marcia argued, her shotgun lowering as she stepped closer. "You can't defuse a Board bomb. You don't have JARVIS. You're blind."
"I said no," Marcus barked, his eyes flashing.
He absolutely refused to let her play the martyr. He was the Emperor. He was the Warlord. He bore the weight of the Carrier, the Legion, and the five thousand scavengers currently fighting for their lives outside this door.
He would not put that weight on her shoulders.
"If the mechanism shifts even a millimeter, it drops," Marcus said coldly, staring down at the glowing red light under his boot. "I'm not moving."
He looked past Marcia. He looked at the trembling mechanic clutching a scavenged datapad.
The Galen void hit him like a physical blow in the chest.
If Galen were here, the brilliant, cowardly engineer would already have the grate open, his hands casually snipping wires while complaining about the rust.
But Galen was in a coma, his lungs burned by radiation, floating in a healing pod on the Styx.
Marcus only had Lucilla.
Lucilla was staring at the red timer on the suspended bomb. Her breathing was ragged, shallow, and bordering on hyperventilation. The white bandage on her forehead was stark against her pale, terrified face.
"Lucilla," Marcus commanded.
She jumped, her eyes snapping to him. "I... I can't reach the terminal from here," she stammered, pointing across the fifty-foot chasm to the far side of the catwalk. "The control panel is over there. I need to plug in."
"You're not plugging in," Marcus said.
He reached down to his belt. He slowly, carefully unlatched his heavy steel combat knife.
He held the bloody blade out to her by the handle.
"You're going under," Marcus said.
Lucilla stared at the heavy knife. She looked down at the grated floor of the catwalk.
Beneath the metal grid was a terrifying fifty-foot drop into the freezing, pitch-black water.
"Under the grate?" Lucilla whispered, her voice cracking. "Marcus, I'm not a mechanic. I write code. I don't defuse physical detonators. I'll drop it. I'll kill us all."
"You are a Board Executive," Marcus said, his voice hard, leaving absolutely no room for argument. "You know how Vane designs his fail-safes. You know the wire colors. Take the knife."
Marcia looked at Marcus, her eyes wide with disbelief. He was forcing his traumatized sister to hang upside down over a subterranean lake to cut a bomb wire with a Warlord's knife.
It was insane. It was analog. It was their only chance.
00:02:15.
Lucilla slowly reached out. Her hand was shaking so violently she nearly dropped the knife. She gripped the heavy steel handle.
"Go," Marcus ordered.
Lucilla dropped to her knees on the metal grating.
She crawled to the edge of the catwalk, just a few feet from where Marcus stood frozen. She looked over the railing. The blue light from the Amp reflected off the perfectly still, black water below.
She swung her legs over the edge.
She grabbed the thick metal bars of the walkway with her left hand. She held the heavy combat knife in her right.
Slowly, agonizingly, she lowered herself beneath the catwalk.
She was hanging entirely suspended over the abyss, her boots dangling over the water. The rusted metal bars dug painfully into her palms.
"I see it," Lucilla called up, her voice echoing in the cavern. "It's a standard Board analog trigger. A simple circuit break beneath the pressure plate."
"Cut it," Marcus ordered, staring straight ahead at the payload.
Lucilla shined a small penlight from her belt upward.
Beneath the thick rubber sole of Marcus's boot, a small, heavily wired metal box was bolted to the underside of the grate.
Two wires extended from the box. One red. One blue.
They were incredibly thin, delicate fiber-optic cables. The blade of Marcus's combat knife was thick, jagged, and coated in dried clone blood.
It was like trying to perform open-heart surgery with a meat cleaver.
"Which one?" Marcus asked.
"I... I don't know," Lucilla sobbed quietly, her left hand cramping as she hung from the bars. "Vane usually wires the blue to the primary detonator, but this is Nero. He might have reversed it."
Suddenly, the cavern speakers crackled to life with a loud burst of static.
"Oh, he absolutely reversed it," a voice echoed cheerfully.
Nero.
The manic clone wasn't attacking them physically. He was attacking them psychologically. He was watching them on the security feeds.
"Hello, Butcher," Nero's voice purred through the speakers, his tone mocking and intimate. "Having a little trouble with the wiring?"
Lucilla froze. The knife trembled in her hand.
"Don't listen to him," Marcus snapped, his jaw clenched tight. "Focus on the box."
Nero laughed. It was a high, theatrical sound.
"Did you really think I'd let a Board Executive play the hero?" Nero taunted, his voice bouncing off the damp walls. "You aren't a Warlord's mechanic, Lucilla. You're the Butcher of Sector 4. Your hands are too soft for that knife. They're only good for signing glassing orders."
Lucilla squeezed her eyes shut. A tear slipped down her cheek, falling fifty feet into the black water below.
00:01:30.
"I can't do it," Lucilla cried out, her grip slipping slightly on the metal bar. "He's right. I don't know the code. I'm going to kill you."
"Lucilla, look at me," Marcus commanded.
He didn't yell. He didn't project his voice. He spoke with the quiet, unyielding, grounding iron of a brother who had carried her through hell.
She opened her eyes and looked up at the bottom of his melted boot.
"The Butcher is dead," Marcus said softly, his voice cutting clearly through Nero's laughter. "You died in Syria. You are Lucilla of the Legion. You are my mechanic."
He paused, letting the weight of the title settle on her.
"Cut the wire."
Nero scoffed over the speakers. "Touching. Truly. But she's going to cut the red one, and you're all going to boil."
Lucilla stared at the two thin wires. Red and blue.
She remembered the Warlord's Warlord math. She remembered the Warlord's trust. She was not a Board Executive. She was a survivor.
She wedged the thick, bloody blade of the combat knife between the two wires.
She didn't cut the blue. She didn't cut the red.
She jammed the jagged tip of the knife directly into the center of the metal box, physically shattering the analog circuit board connecting them both.
CRACK.
The small metal box sparked violently.
The red light beneath Marcus's boot instantly turned green.
The digital timer on the massive suspended acid bomb froze.
00:00:14.
The cavern fell dead silent.
Lucilla let out a ragged, echoing sob of pure relief. She nearly lost her grip on the metal bar, her muscles failing from the adrenaline crash.
Narcissus lunged forward.
The Iron Dog's massive hand reached over the railing, grabbing Lucilla by the back of her coat. He hauled her effortlessly up onto the catwalk, setting her gently onto the metal grating.
She collapsed into a heap, dropping the combat knife. She buried her face in her hands, weeping uncontrollably.
Marcia let out a long, shaky breath, lowering her shotgun. She looked at Marcus.
Marcus slowly, carefully lifted his heavy left boot off the pressure plate.
Nothing happened. The payload didn't drop. The water was safe.
The Warlord's Warlord had won. The analog Warlord had beaten the high-tech trap.
Marcus bent down and picked up his combat knife. He wiped the clone blood and circuit board grease off on his naval coat.
He looked up at the closest security camera mounted in the corner of the cavern.
"Your game is over, Nero," Marcus said coldly, his voice echoing toward the lens. "I'm coming for the terminal."
Nero didn't reply immediately.
The silence stretched for three agonizing seconds.
Then, Nero laughed.
It wasn't a theatrical, mocking laugh this time. It was a low, dark, terrifying chuckle of absolute, genuine amusement.
"Did you really think I wired the payload to the pressure plate, Emperor?" Nero's voice slithered through the speakers, dripping with malice.
Marcus froze. His blood ran cold.
"I wired the plate to the timer," Nero said cheerfully. "I wired the payload to the weight limit."
Marcus looked down at the grated floor.
Narcissus had taken a single step forward to pull Lucilla up. The Dreadnought's immense, twelve-foot frame weighed over two tons. He was made entirely of battleship steel and heavy hydraulic pistons.
The catwalk was built for clone-troopers. Not for a Warlord's giant.
"Narcissus, back up!" Marcus roared, realizing the trap too late.
The Iron Dog tried to step backward.
It was too late.
A massive series of mechanical clunks echoed from the walls.
The explosive bolts securing the suspended metal catwalk violently detonated all at once.
BOOM.
The entire fifty-foot stretch of the metal walkway instantly collapsed.
The floor simply vanished beneath their feet.
Marcus didn't even have time to scream. Gravity took him instantly.
He was plunged into the dark abyss, falling fifty feet toward the freezing black reservoir below. Marcia and Lucilla fell beside him, their screams echoing off the cavern walls.
They hit the water like concrete.
The freezing, pitch-black liquid instantly swallowed Marcus. The shock punched the air from his lungs. The heavy naval coat dragged him down.
He kicked violently, fighting the dark water, swimming desperately toward the surface. He broke the surface, gasping for air, the freezing water biting into his skin.
Marcia surfaced a second later, coughing violently, her shotgun gone. Lucilla bobbed up next to her, thrashing in a blind panic.
"Narcissus!" Marcus roared, treading water in the pitch-black subterranean lake. "Narcissus!"
There was no answer.
Marcus looked around wildly in the dark. The blue light from the broken Amp had sunk to the bottom.
There was no massive iron giant breaking the surface.
Narcissus wasn't wearing an environmental suit. He wasn't made of flesh and bone. He was made entirely of Warlord Warlord math. Battleship steel and heavy anchor chains.
He was a two-ton anchor.
The Iron Dog had instantly sunk like a stone into the pitch-black abyss.