The escape was a violent ballet of steam, shadows, and sheer panic.
Kaelen shot up through the vertical shaft, using the minimal thrust from his wrist-rig to slow his ascent. He didn't climb; he slid, his boots scraping against the jagged rock face. The Stealth-Shield crackled around him, invisible but vibrating intensely, a sensation like being wrapped in tight, humming static electricity.
Aura's Data Stream: (MAINTAIN CONSTANT AETHER FLOW. THE QUANTUM DISC IS OVERHEATING. DEVIATE 3 DEGREES RIGHT. THERE IS A LOOSE REBAR SECTION. USE IT FOR PURCHASE.)
Shut up! Kaelen thought, his lungs burning with every upward gasp of thick, humid air. I know this mine better than you do, code-ghost!
He instinctively followed Aura's cold, precise command, reaching out and gripping the icy-cold rebar exactly where the AI had predicted. The solid metal halted his painful slide just long enough for him to catch his breath.
Beneath him, the heavy thudding of the Enforcers' drilling grew louder. They were breaking through the rock where he had landed moments before. They were fast.
He burst from the mouth of the mine shaft, coughing violently as the fresh, frigid air of the surface hit his lungs.
He was in the desolate outskirts of the city of Ironheart.
Ironheart was a titan of bronze and grime, a monument to the Aether Age. Massive copper steam pipes snaked across the landscape like metallic ivy, hissing perpetually as they drove the city's complex mechanisms. Above him, towering Steam-Golems, powered by immense Aether furnaces, hauled raw ores. The entire city felt like a giant, roaring, meticulously crafted clockwork machine.
But Kaelen couldn't pause to appreciate the industry.
Aura:
"Too exposed," Kaelen muttered, pulling his battered leather cap low over his face. He quickly disconnected the pipe from the Quantum Disc, and the beautiful, terrifying purple-white shimmer vanished. The disc instantly cooled, becoming heavy and inert in his palm.
He shoved the disc deep into an inner pocket of his scavenged coat.
Just as he did, the three bronze-suited Enforcers emerged from the mine shaft, their heavy boots kicking up dust. They weren't looking at the tunnel Kaelen had just vacated. They were looking directly at him.
Impossible. The Shield worked!
Aura: (THE STEALTH-SHIELD HIDES US FROM OPTICAL RECOGNITION. IT DOES NOT MASK THE HIGH-FREQUENCY VIBRATIONAL SIGNATURE OF THE QUANTUM DISC. THEY ARE TRACKING THE DISC'S HERTZ FREQUENCY, MECHANIST. RUN.)
Kaelen bolted. He ran not toward the train station, but toward the nearest complex of pipes—a maze of hot brass and scalding steam designed to disorient any pursuer not built for this environment. He needed cover, not speed.
He was a Scrapper by trade; he knew the city's underbelly like the scars on his own body. He scrambled up a network of hot pipes, the metal burning his hands even through his gloves, relying on the tight, precise jumps that years of scavenging had taught him.
The Enforcers were less agile. They couldn't climb the twisting pipes as fast, but they had a horrifying advantage: range.
CLANG!
A heavy, magnetized grappling hook, powered by a small steam engine in the Enforcer's wrist, slammed into the metal pipe just inches from Kaelen's head, tearing off a chunk of brass.
He didn't look back. He leaped across a seven-foot gap, landing precariously on a vibrating cross-beam, the massive city roaring beneath him.
Aura (Exasperated Tone—a faint, algorithmic equivalent): (YOUR DEVIATION FROM THE OPTIMAL PATH HAS REDUCED OUR SUCCESS PROBABILITY TO 55%. THIS IS INEFFICIENT. ENGAGE THE RED-LINE TRAIN. NOW.)
"Shut up and give me a plan!" Kaelen snapped, his voice barely audible over the hissing steam. He was trapped on the beam. The Enforcers were climbing closer.
Aura:
180 degrees counter-clockwise? That'll blow the line! I'll kill myself!
With two seconds to spare, Kaelen reached up, blindly grabbing the massive bronze valve wheel above his head. He closed his eyes against the anticipated scalding pain and cranked it hard.
The sound was deafening. FWOOOOOOSH!
A pillar of superheated, blindingly white steam erupted from the pipe with the force of a cannon blast, enveloping the entire junction. The pressure surge shook the massive structures, causing the Enforcers to scream in muffled agony and fall back.
Kaelen was thrown violently across the narrow beam, landing hard near the edge of a massive, black-iron airship dock. He was singed, but alive.
He scrambled to the dock's edge. Below was the Red-Line Train Station, a frantic, bustling nexus of steel and humanity.
He jumped.
It was a controlled fall—a desperate drop onto the roof of a passenger car just as the colossal, piston-driven train began to pull out of the station, roaring its final, deafening blast of steam.
Lying flat on the grimy, hot metal roof, Kaelen watched the immense, dark bulk of Ironheart blur past.
"We made it," he thought, a fragile wave of relief washing over him.
Aura: (INCORRECT. WE HAVE ACHIEVED THE FIRST STEP. WARNING: THE PANTHEON'S LAST MEMORY CORE INDICATES THAT THE CHRONOPHAGE IS NOW USING THE RED-LINE TRACKS AS ITS PRIMARY DATA-STREAM. WE ARE CURRENTLY TRAVELING INTO A REGION WHERE HISTORY IS UNSTABLE.)
Kaelen looked at the steel tracks speeding beneath the train. He saw the gleam of the metal, the regular clickety-clack of the wheels.
But then, the steel rail—in one section, for a single, horrifying second—didn't look like steel anymore. It looked like lines of pure, flowing code, flashing white and green, before snapping back into solid metal.
They are hunting us in the past. We must reach The Keystone before they delete the future.