Months pass as Khaos grinds through the eastern sector, tearing apart robots, collapsing power cores, and smashing buildings with brutal precision.
When the dust finally settles and the wreckage grows still, he collapses atop a mound of rubble to rest and hums, a slow, eerie melody that threads through the tunnels like a lullaby.
He presses his armored chest with a reverent touch; the thick crust of colored blood on his skin glitters in the dim light. Even down here, in of their sanctuary, everyone stops at the beautiful sound. As fear still ripples through the underground community, Khaos still remains a monster for them to not even sleep past it.
Above ground, strike teams fan out to the known coordinates of Khaos's hidden beacons. Each group establishes a base camp and waits, ready to strike when the signal comes.
In the western wards, Pax hands one of his metal arms to the forger, who clamps it into a workbench and begins the delicate upgrades. Sparks fly; tiny servos click into place, as the smith tests the circuitry. Ethan arrives, dusty and alert. "Final touches before we head out?" he asks.
Pax nods. "Yeah. Making sure these boys smash Khaos's face in."
Ethan gives him a half-smile and a warning. "Keep your mask on. You know he's looking for you."
Pax shrugs, eyes on the horizon. "I always wondered why he hunts me. Then I realize, we were the ones who made the best impression on him, better than anyone ever could. He's coming for us to feel that thrill again."
Ethan allows himself a thin, bitter laugh. "That could be true ."
That night they roll out in a convoy of battered cars toward the ruined Scarlet city and the bridge where the giant digital cube field hangs on the skyline like a thunderhead. They set camp in the shadow of the broken span. Pax strolls to the edge of the command vehicle where Ethan is hunched over a terminal, fingers flying across the keys.
"How long you think it'll take?" Pax asks.
Ethan doesn't stop typing. "First we'll send a recon team to get a sample of the digital field without being detected. Since Khaos created an ancient robot guardian to watch over that cube. Once we get the samples and analyze it we'll see how high that digital field's tier is, then we'll upgrade our beacon to match it. Only after that can we break in and destroy it."
Pax studies the immense digital cube, its surface crawling with code and light. "Based on the field's scale, I'd say four to six months."
Ethan nods, jaw set. "Hope we get it done before he reaches the western side."
Moments later, Pax slips on his mask and leads a scout team into the ruined city. They move quietly through shattered streets, keeping low as the colossal robot guardian scans the area with sweeping beams of blue light. When its sensors shift to another sector, the team sprints forward, reaching the base of the giant digital cube field.
Several members kneel and deploy miniature tech pincers, collecting strands of glowing data and fragments of digital matter. Each sample pulses faintly before being sealed into reinforced test tubes.
Just as they finish, the guardian swivels toward them. Its sensors flare red. Missiles streak through the air.
"Move!" Pax shouts.
The team scatters, diving behind wreckage as explosions rip the streets apart. Pax then sneaks up to the towering guardian. With a roar, he slams his metal arm into its head, knocking the machine through the shell of a crumbling building.
"Go!" he yells.
The team vanishes into the smoke as Pax disappears with them into the maze of ruins.
Deep underground, Khaos tears through an army of defense robots. Between strikes, his massive beacon hums behind him and suddenly glows red.
Khaos pauses, waves a hand, and a holographic screen materializes in front of him. Through the guardian's recorded vision, he sees fleeting images of intruders, blurry figures racing away, before the feed distorts.
He stares at the static for a moment, then dismisses it with a flick of his wrist. The screen dissolves into sparks. Without much thought, he turns back to the battle and resumes his slaughter.
Hours later, in the the base camp at the bridge, Ethan studies the glowing test tubes and exhales in relief. "It's doable," he says, scanning the readouts. "We'll just need a mountain of resources to upgrade and fuel our beacon to match it."
"Then we start now," one of the engineers replies.
Teams rush into motion, hauling crates of ore and energy cores toward the converters. The beacon chamber fills with a rhythmic hum as streams of energy flow through the conduits, evolving the beacon's code layer by layer.
Months slip by. A full year passes since Khaos began his invasion of the eastern sector.
At last, he stands before a massive steel gate marked WESTERN SECTOR. His humming grows deeper, resonating through the tunnels like a storm's pulse.
Suddenly, his beacon blinks. Dozens of digital screens erupt around him, each showing one of his hidden beacons across the world, one after another, they explode or flicker out. Khaos watches silently as the final screen cuts to black.
He waves his arm, clearing the holograms, not giving much care.
Lifting his bone sword, he slices clean through the enormous gate.
Instantly, the darkness bursts alive with light. Thousands of laser turrets ignite, raining energy bolts down. Khaos deflects each one with inhuman precision, launching digital hooks that pull him closer to his enemies. He moves like a blur, dismantling the front line of defense in minutes.
In the western council chamber, chaos reigns. Alarms wail as the leaders watch the live feeds of Khaos advancing through the defenses.
Brad slams his fist on the table. "Don't panic! We still have time. His other beacons are gone, once the final strike team destroys his main one, it's over. Still, we'll start the surface evacuation now, just in case."
Dozens of screens show Khaos cutting through robots and turrets with unstoppable fury. Sparks and digital light fill the monitors.
Meanwhile, at the camp near the bridge of Scarlet City, Ethan shouts, "Alright! We're all finished!"
Pax tightens his mask and replies, "Then let's end this."
Moments later, Pax leads a dozen armed soldiers toward the robot guardian. The machine's scanners lock onto them instantly, and it launches a barrage of missiles. The soldiers dive for cover as explosions tear through the city. Gunfire erupts in return, bullets clanging off the robot's metallic shell.
The guardian suddenly leaps into the air, unleashing another rain of missiles from above. Several soldiers are caught in the blasts, screams echo as Pax rolls behind cover, firing rapid bursts from his gun arm.
The robot turns its sensors toward him and fires again. Pax sprints across the cracked pavement, the explosions chasing him step for step. Meanwhile, Ethan and a few teammates drive three armored trucks carrying the massive digital beacon. They then deploy the beacon and activates it, as its light pulses a digital field.
Both digital zones collide, the air distorts, both digital field flickering and crashing against one another in violent surges. But then, to Ethan's shock, the cube digital field overpowers theirs, forcing their beacon's energy backward.
"Impossible!" Ethan gasps. "We should've thought of this…" He slams a fist on the dashboard, then opens comms. "Brad! Our digital beacon isn't strong enough! There could only be one explanation! By slaying our robots, Khaos must've absorbed their energy digitally and merged it with his main beacon!"
Brad's voice cuts through the static. "Retreat for now!"
Ethan looks toward the distance to see many explosions . Pax barely dodges another explosion as the robot's missiles carve deep craters in the ground. Then, the guardian halts. Its bulky metal shell splits apart, falling away piece by piece, to reveal a smaller robot hidden inside.
The new form raises its arms, and the discarded armor pieces around Pax suddenly ignite with crackling lightning. The plates lift, spinning around him in a deadly circle.
Pax fires his gun arm, but the robot darts aside. Bolts of lightning connect between the hovering armor plates, trapping him in a glowing cage.
Electricity lashes out—Pax is struck and thrown back into a wrecked car. The metal hums and vibrates as the lightning intensifies. He dodges the next waves by flipping and rolling through the arcs.
The plates closes in, lightning converging from every direction. Pax launches his detached arm toward the robot, but it dodges. Using his magnetic pull, Pax draws himself to his flying arm, soaring upward he dodges all of the lightning. With his other arm, he activates an energy blade and drives it straight through the robot midair, impaling it.
Both crash through a shattered building until Pax's detached arm clocks back. Reconnecting, he channels raw energy through his blade, an immense blast erupts, tearing through the robot's body in a storm of sparks and smoke.
The guardian collapses in flames. Pax lands hard, gasping for breath. Ethan and his team rush to his side, just as a deep metallic roar echoes from the cube field.
Another robot guardian emerges, twice as large.
"Run!" Ethan yells.
Missiles rain down. The blast wipes out half their group. Ethan, Pax, and six surviving teammates barely make it out alive.
Moments later, they stagger back into the base camp, smoke stinging their lungs and boots crunching on ash. Pax drops to a crate and spits blood. "What now?!" he demands.
Ethan rubs his jaw, scanning the damage reports on his tablet. "We need more time to upgrade our beacon," he says. "But Khaos's main beacon keeps evolving too. How do we out-level his beacon—wait." He cuts himself off, then opens the comms. "All surface groups, do you copy? I need every last broken beacon part you can find. Bring them here. We'll convert the remnants into energy!"
All of the teams through out the world then starts gathering the broken pieces of the beacons they've just destroyed.
"It'll take time for them to arrive," Ethan admits, looking up. "Do we have time, Brad?"
Brad's voice comes steady over the channel. "We do, Our robotic army will stall Khaos for another 6 months, then the rest of the human army and I will hold the line. That's another six months, any more than that, and we'll all be dead!"
Ethan closes his eyes for a second and exhales. "I hope it's enough."
Pax slams a palm on the crate and lifts a scorched robot headpiece. "We can use the guardian remains," he says, holding the jagged metal like a talisman.
Ethan peers at the fragment. "That might work, but you'll have to destroy a lot of them to harvest enough energy."
Pax grins, blood drying at his lips. "No problem. I'll get as many pieces as I can. I'll handle it."
Months goes on. As Khaos chews through line after line of robotic defenders and turret emplacements, every swing of his blade topples buildings and ruptures power cores. Brad and the council guides the last of the civilians up to the surface and into a ruined town, a temporary refuge.
Across the world, some of the other groups arrives at Ethan's camp and haul broken beacon parts into the energy converter. Men and women continues to toss more scorched cores and fractured latticework into a humming energy converter. The beacon ripens, layer by layer, code folding into code upgrading the beacon even more.
Pax and a dozen fighters strike out on raid after raid. They've smashed many guardian robots already but every guardian they down seems to be replaced by another from inside the cube field. With each one growing more powerful than the next. More and more of Pax's men dies but he still returns, each time pulling scrap and cores into the converter for the cause.
On Pax's comm, Brad's voice comes through, rough and steady. "Pax, listen. Our robot army is going to run out soon. After that I'll be out front defending with the rest of the human army. You're next in line for the tiger suit. If it ever arrives to you over, that means I'm dead…and Khaos is coming for the surface, finish off the rest of humanity. I just wanted you to know that."
Pax's jaw tightens. "Don't die down there, Brad! We'll break in. I promise, you don't die!"
"I hope so," Brad answers, and the line clicks dead.
Six more months pass. The last of the robot army falls. Khaos takes heavy breaths as his beacon heals his wounds, as he stomps across the last gate of the western sector. Seconds later It detonates beneath his strike, smoke vomits into the air.
He steps through.
On what's left of the underground community, soldiers form lines, scarred veterans and fresh recruits, a last ragged wall. Leading them is a towering tiger-mecha. The mask then opens as Brad's stares back at Khaos.
"Long time no see, Buzz," Brad calls out, voice hollow with memory. "It's me, Brad. Your fellow, friend."
Khaos pauses. For a sliver of a second, recognition flickers in the his eyes, as they were once slaves working together for the same master.
"Buzz, what changed you?! You weren't like this at all! Also Why did you kill Leo?.... He was like our older brother..... We were like a family...... Answer me!"
The name hits like a bell. Khaos's humming warps into something ragged and broken. Words come out, half-mechanized, half-primitive:
"Buzz… still… Buzz. Buzz… free. Buzz… angry. All… must… die."
Brad's expression breaks, and then hardens. He seals his cockpit. With a sweep of his gauntleted hand the six nearby beacons flare to life, a great digital lattice snaps into being around them like a cage of light.
"No more, Buzz," Brad says into the roar. "You've done enough. You can rest easy now."
Khaos's low hum detonates into a roar. The lines tighten, gun shots are fire, explosions blooms, as he charges forward with determination to end it all!