The green sine-wave laser was a living wall of death. It moved with a fluid, hypnotic grace, its crest reaching for the ceiling before diving to scrape the floor, then rising again in an endless, lethal rhythm. There was no clear jump or duck. It demanded a continuous, adaptive dance.
Elijah's mind, already operating in a hyper-accelerated state, latched onto the pattern. Three seconds of observation. The wave had a predictable period. The dip, the rise, the crest. A three-beat sine.
"Three-beat pattern!" he shouted over the rising hum of the corridor and Vivian's sobs. "Jump on the dip, slide on the rise, tuck for the crest! On my mark!"
He didn't wait to see if they understood. The first dip was coming. "Jump!"
He sprang, not straight up, but forward and up, clearing the lowest point of the wave as it swept beneath him. He landed in a crouch as the beam began its upward rise. "Slide!"
He dropped flat again, the green light passing inches over his back as he skidded across the stone. The beam peaked at the ceiling. "Tuck!"
He pulled his knees to his chest, making himself as small as possible as the crest of the wave filled the space where a standing person would be. Then the cycle repeated.
He glanced back. Chloe was with him. Her movements were a half-beat behind, less instinctual, more consciously copied, but she was there. Her face was set in a grimace of concentration, her MOC-honed reflexes translating his commands into action.
Vivian was a catastrophe. She heard "jump" and leaped a full second late, as the wave was already rising. The green light caught her across the thighs, not with a cutting burn, but with a concussive, paralyzing THUMP that knocked her legs out from under her. She hit the floor hard, crying out.
"Get up!" Elijah roared, not stopping his own rhythmic dance. He couldn't stop. The conveyor was moving at a full sprint now. Stopping meant being dragged into the next wave.
Vivian scrambled, limping, trying to find the rhythm. She failed. The next sequence overwhelmed her. She froze in the middle of the corridor, lasers bracketing her—a dipping wave at her feet, a rising wave at her chest. She screamed, a raw sound of pure synaptic overload.
Elijah saw it. The problem was about to solve itself. The waves would intersect on her position in approximately 1.2 seconds. Deletion.
He didn't intend to move. His own rhythm was perfect, a loop of jump-slide-tuck that was keeping him alive. Letting her die was the logical, survival-positive outcome.
But Chloe was looking at him. Not at Vivian. At him. Her eyes were not pleading. They were assessing. Waiting to see what he would do.
A new variable entered his calculation: Chloe's trust. Her functional capacity is tied to her perception of my control. Letting Vivian die visibly may reduce her efficiency. Unacceptable.
Cursing inwardly, he broke his own rhythm. As he landed from a jump, he didn't slide. He pivoted and took two running steps back down the conveyor, against its flow, directly into the path of the next rising wave. He reached Vivian, didn't speak, just hooked a hand under her arm and heaved, throwing her forward toward the "safe" zone he'd just vacated. It was a brutal, ungraceful save.
The rising green beam, meant for Vivian, caught him squarely on the right forearm as he completed the throw.
The impact wasn't concussive. It was searing. A line of white-hot pain branded itself across his flesh. The smell of his own burning skin joined the ozone and burnt rubber in the air. He grunted, stumbling back into his own rhythm, his right arm hanging useless for a beat, the muscles singing with agony.
New injury. Minor. Reduced grip strength. Manageable. The diagnostics scrolled. Variable Vivian: preserved. Variable Chloe's trust: likely reinforced. Net outcome: acceptable.
They ran and danced and suffered. The lasers began to change. The simple three-beat sine wave broke down. Now the hums overlapped—a red leg-sweeper would fire during the dip of a green sine. A white neck-razor would descend during the crest. The safe pattern was gone. It was pure, chaotic reaction.
Elijah switched modes. He could no longer lead by command. He had to lead by shield. He positioned his body between the most immediate threats and the two women. He used his knowledge of the timing not to avoid, but to intercept.
A misdirected blue oscillating beam ricocheted off the breathing wall at a strange angle, spearing directly toward Chloe's temple. She was focused on a red sweep at her feet.
Elijah's left hand moved. Not to push her. He didn't have time. Instead, he flicked his wrist, swinging the heavy metal buckle of his belt into the beam's path.
The interaction was instantaneous. The beam hit the buckle. There was a dazzling flash of blue light and a sound like a hammer on an anvil. The buckle vaporized, the metal melting into glowing droplets that sprayed the floor. The beam itself deflected, scorching a blackened scar into the wall beside Chloe's head. The heat from the vaporized metal blistered the back of Elijah's hand.
Chloe flinched, feeling the wash of heat. She saw the deliberate, sacrificial intercept—the choice to sacrifice a non-vital object to save her. Her eyes found his. In that glance, amidst the storm of light and pain, her trust hardened into something absolute, and terrifying. He wasn't just trying to survive. He was calculating survival for the unit, and she was a prized component.
Elijah registered the look. Good. Efficiency maintained. His internal monologue, however, was churning with darker thoughts. This isn't a test. It's a harvest. It's measuring our stress response, our learning decay, our pain tolerance. The breathing walls… they're not just atmosphere. They're sensors. We're in a living diagnostic machine.
The concept was too vast, too horrifying. He forced it down. Focus. Abandoned building? Impossible. The energy output, the spatial tech… This feels like… A forbidden term from the fringes of MOC lore surfaced: Aetheric pocket. A sub-dimensional bubble. He shoved the thought away. Fairy tales. But the breathing stone against his back felt like a ribcage.
The corridor finally gave them a moment's respite. The lasers ceased. The conveyor slowed to a fast walk. They slumped against the wall, gasping, a gallery of burns and bruises.
Ahead, the corridor forked. Left and right, both identical black stone throats, both humming with the overlapping, chaotic light-shows of advanced laser grids. A choice.
Elijah looked at the symbols pulsing above each entrance. The left path's glyphs flashed in a frantic, seemingly random staccato. The right path's pulses were slower, more rhythmic, almost a simple repeating code.
Left: advanced encryption. High risk, likely shorter. Right: basic pattern. A grind, but predictable.
He looked at Vivian, barely standing, her face a mask of tear-streaked terror. She would die on the left path in seconds.
He looked at Chloe. She was studying the left path's symbols, her brow furrowed in concentration. "Left," she said, her voice hoarse but certain. "The pulse sequence… it's a MOC-grade skip cipher. I can read it. It's a shortcut."
Elijah's eyes met hers. MOC-grade. Her uncle's training. A potential key.
He looked back at Vivian, the liability. Then at the left path, the potential shortcut. The math, for once, was conflicted.
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