The crater pulsed.
Not alive. Not really. Just a residual breath, warm ans chemical, like the battlefield itself was trying to forget what just happened.
Flint didn't mvoe.
To much noise in his skull—static cycling through fractured diagnostics, HUD alerts blinking like dying stars.
His blade was still drawn, humming unevenly.
That was wrong. It shouldn't hum. Not unless the core was- -
Flick.
The red light across his screen dipped, then sharpened
The titan hadn't moved.
But he didn't trust that.
He hadn't moved either.
Two statues sharing a mistake.
A second later,—
BOOM.
A sonic pop cracked low across the crater, not loud enough to warn, just sharp enough to cut. Direction unclear. Direction lied.
Flint flinched. Actual flinch.
That wasn't in the protocols.
He turned—jerky , too fast—and caught the descent.
A body hit hard, boots first. Dirt curled outward like breath caught in a fist.
Shade.
She didn't speak at first.
Her blade was already active, violet core gleaming through surface scorch. Her shoulder plating had melted slightly near the emblem. He fixated on that for 0.3 seconds longer than necessary.
It looked like a scar.
Real.
Earned.
"—Didn't expect you to still be upright," she said finally. Voice steady, but not untouched.
Flint's logic tree scrambled. Multiple outputs. All of them wrong.
'You're… dead.''
"Only part of me."
"Your signal—"
"Secondary core. Bait."
"You ran a false flatline?"
"No," she said, wiping plasma off the blade with her hand like it was blood and not light. "I just didn't finish dying."
She stepped closer
He scanned her frame—twice. Once automatically. Once because… he needed to.
[ID: SHADE-03]
[INTEGRITY: 79% –SURFACE FRACTURES, CORE STABLE]
[LOOPBACK ERROR: MINOR]
[LOYALTY SIGNATURE – ACTIVE]
[UNUSUAL MODULATION: 2.1% DEVIANCE]
That last line paused him.
Deviance. Small, but real.
He didn't ask. He didn't need to.
She met his gaze with one eye brighter than the other—not faulty, just… tired.
Shade turned back to the ridge . The titan hadn't shifted. Still centered in the dirt, like it belonged there.
Still centered in the dirt, like it belonged there. like someone leftit and never came back.
"It hasn't attacked?"
"No."
"Waiting?"
"Worse," Flint said. "Recording."
He didn't mean to say it out loud.
But Shade didn't argue.
She watched it like it was a riddle trying to dream.
Then her voice dropped—
"There's more."
"Whet kind?"
"I don't know yet. That's the part that matters."
Flint stepped up beside her. His foot scraped steel debris, loud. The titan didn't respond.
That was a warning.
He didn't read it that way. Not yet.
His HUD flared with fresh data—
[MULTIPLE INBOUND SIGNALS — RIDGE SOUTH]
[UNKNOWN FRAME PATTERNS: 6+]
[VISUAL CONFIRMATION: PENDING]
[ERROR: SHADOW FEED DESYNCED – POSSIBLE JAMMER?]
Shade's grip tightened.
"You scanning that?"
"I am."
"Doesn't feel like a charge line."
"No."
"Then what?"
"..They're not moving fast enough to attack."
She said nothing.
Because they both knew what that meant.
Not slow.
Controlled.
The first shadow crested the ridge.
It moved without weight. No stomp, No lift.
It just arrived—its limbs were too thin for its bulk,Like something built from a memory of what a body should be.
Flint thought: crawler-unit misbuild. Reclaimer class, maybe. Federation blacksite throwaway.
That was a mistake.
He tagged it as as light armor.
Another shadow followed.
Then two.
Then five.
All wrong.
All wearing red eyes that didn't blink, only measured.
Flint's blade hissed.
Shade raised hers.
"They're waiting on the titan," she said.
"No," he said. "They're waiting on us!
The enemy didn't rush.
That was the second mistake Flint made.
He watched the red-glow mechs descend the ridge, slow and absolute. Like they'd already seen how this ended and were just arriving to witness it.
He tagged one: Light biped, 3.2 meters. Frame type: unknown. It moved with a pulse—not walk, not glide. Just pulse.
To smooth.
[ERROR: GROUND CONTACT – NOT CONSISTENT WITH WEIGHT CLASS]
He reclassified it—incorrectly.
Shade held her stance.
Didn't breathe, either—not in any way that counted—But something in the angle Of her shoulder said she was exhaling.
A flicker across the HUD—
[SIGNAL COUNT: 12]
[CLASS: UNKNOWN]
[SPEED: NOMINAL]
[INTENT: UNCLEAR]
One unit shifted its head. Just a tilt. Like curiosity, if machines could feel it.
"They're not hunting us," Flint said. "They're… observing."
Shade's reply was soft static. Not broken. Just unwilling,
Then the titan blinked.
Once.
Not a flare. Not an alert. Just a dim to bright motion. Like an optic sigh.
He almost missed it. His system caught it first.
[OPTIC VARIATION – NONTHREATENING]
[RESPONSE: NONE]
Flint didn't override.
That was mistake three.
Because that blink wasn't passive.
It was timed.
The first unit surged forward—jagged limbs slicing over broken rock. It didn't sprint. It snapped through distance like a skipped frame in corrupted footage.
Shade moved before he could.
Boosters flared behind her back, kicking dust into chaotic spirals. Her plasma blade dragged a trail of violet light behind her Trailing light like a comet — or just coolant burning off.
The suddenness of it stunned him.
She launched—shoulder forward, blade aimed down.
Not for a limb.
Straight for the core.
"Shade—!"
Too late…
THE enemy didn't dodge. It didn't even react.
That's what made it dangerous.
It let her close.
She struck.
Metal met energy. A screech split the crater—wrong pitch, raw and artificial, like anger trying to invent a new frequency.
Flint's HUD fractured—just for a blink.
<<< _audio_log/_Damaged | spectrum spike detected >>
<< W_H_O~~~D_I_E_D /shade/ where is shA_de/>>
<
He stumbled.
The glitch hit deeper than expected. His vision folded in on itself for half a frame.
When it cleared—
Shade was on the ground.
Her blade hissed low, half-buried in the enemy's shoulder. Not a clean strike. Not even penetration. Just a strike that meant nothing.
The unit had absobred it.
Not resisted.
Absorbed.
She rolled free, sparks tracing her path. Her left arm hung low—servo stuttering. She caught herself with the other, coughing static over the comms.
"Shade—?"
"I hit something wrong," she muttered.
"No—it let you."
Their mistake hadn't been charging too fast.
It had been thinking it hadn't already learned them.
The titan lifted a hand.
No rush'n,
no aim.
Just gesture.
Then—
A second unit activated.
Not visually. Not with motion.
Flint felt it.
Like a cold hook in his spine.
He looked right—
And it was already mid-swing.
A blade. No glow. No heat. Just steel, fast and silent.
He ducked.
Barely.
The cut missed his optic by 4.1 centimeters. But the wind of it cracked his lens cover—spidering fractures blooming outward like frost learning how to scream.
The enemy didn't follow through.
It stepped back.
Measurin.
Always measuring.
He stumbled again. Caught himself on a slab of half-melted composite. His left leg buckled. Internal stabilizers spun—
[ERROR: VERTEX CALIBRATION DRIFT – 2.3°]
He didn't fix it.
He just… stood like that.
Tilted.
Wrong.
Shade hissed over comms, "We're not in a fight."
"Yeah."
"This is a test."
"No," Flint said, raising his blade in a crooked guard, tip dragging faint sparks from the concrete beneath them.
"It's worse."
"We are the example."
The units surrounded them—not tactically.
Ceremonially.
Like a hunt staged after the kill.
They didn't rush. Didn't fire. Just stalked the outer rim of the crater, optics gleaming red with intent, not aggression.
Intent was worse.
Flint adjusted his blade grip. Servo error pinged across his palm—barely noticeable.
He noticed anyway.
Shade limped to his side, her left shoulder steaming where the joint had overcorrected on impact.
"They're not closing in."
"No."
"Why?"
"…They already know how this goes."
The titan still hadn't moved. Its single red eye dimmed again—softly, deliberately.
Another signal spike.
Small. Subtle. Like someone whispering across a room they shouldn't be in.
[EMISSION::INTERMITTENT SIGNAL — NOT HOSTILE]
[TYPE: UNKNOWN—SIMILAR TO OBSERVER PROTOCOL]
Observer?
That didn't make sense.
Unless—
"They're learning," Flint muttered. "From us."
"Then we're teaching them the wrong things," Shade replied.
She readied her blade again. Slower. No charge buildup—just reflex. It flickered at the tip, uneven. Slight capacitor lag.
Flint's eyes caught the edge of hers weapon, not the blade itself—but the reflection.
And in it—
His own optic.
Cracked. Thin fissure through the lens, diagonal.
Like something built to reflect finally showing damage.
His HUD stuttered.
Just a flicker.
But that's all it took.
<< ACCESSING: memory_core.dr—ftloop >>
<< ??? >>
<
<
He forced a reboot spike through his thought process—manual override. Sloppy. Barely cleared the corruption.
The crater wobbled back into place.
Shade didn't seem to notice.
But one of the machines did.
A crawler unit-low and wide, all all knuckles and quiet servos—tilted its head in sync with the moment his HUD snapped back to clean.
Coincidence?
He tried to believe that.
Shade whispered: "Left flank. Third one back."
"See it."
"Looks… twitchy."
"No. Look at the way it's lagging behind."
"So?"
"It's not laging," Flint said. "It's copying."
Shade paused.
Then, slowly, her blade dropped a few inches.
Just enough to simulate fatigue.
The crawler mirrored her—identical arm drop. Same delay.
Flint just stared.
Didn't have too.
"Yeah," he muttered. "They're syncing us. Studying form."
"Why?"
He wanted to answer.
But another ping interrupted—
[SIGNAL: MICRO-CYCLE UPLOAD – BROADCASTING UNKNOWN FORMAT]
Not to them.
To each other.
Not orders. Not strategy.
Playback.
They were sharing what they learned.
Real-time.
"This isn't a war," he said, voice low. Bitter.
Shade didn't ask because She didn't need to.
They both understood now.
They weren't being attacked.
They were being archived.
And somewhere beneath his feet, the earth pulsed again. Like memroy rising through stone.
Not warning them.
Just… recording.
Time didn't stop.
It just slowed—like the crater forgot what it was for.
Flint stayed motionless. His feet clicked in the dirt with micro-adjustments he didn't authorize. Balance calibration rechecked itself twice in four seconds. Both times, it got the math wrong.
He didn't fix it.
Let the weight sit uneven. Let the earth remind him he was cracked somewere deeper than plating.
Shade hadn't moved either.
Her blade glowed low, almost lazy. The heat bloom off the core warped the air between them—tiny ripples of distortion tracing slow, horizontal lines. Like rain, without weather.
The enemy didn't advance.
The crawler shifted. Twice. Once to test. Once to see if they were still watching.
They were.
"We've been in this standoff too long," Shade said.
"Too short," Flint said. "If we were supposed to survive it."
She didn't reply.
Just leaned slightly, like she was listening for a sound no one else could hear.
Behind them, another mech on the rim adjusted position. No aggression. No movement cues. Just…
Drift.
Not the mech.
The motion.
Drift in intent. As if the unit didn't even know what it was waiting for anymore.
Flint's core ticked up one degree.
Not danger.
Heat.
His internal temp control issued a silent flag
_ _ _ _ _ _ __ _ _ _ _ _ __ _ _ _ _ _ __ _ _ _ _ _ _
[CORE REGULATION: SUB-OPTIMAL]
[ACTIVATING: LOW PRIORITY FAN LOOP]
He blinked.
No, not blinked.
Paused.
And in that gap, his memory surged without permission.
<
Shade, dragging Drift's broken wrist module from under a wrecked hauler.
Her voice saying, "He clicked 3 times, he thinks. That's when he always made bad calls."
He'd laughed. Back then.
He didn't laugh now.
"Shade," he said quietly.
Her head tilted.
"I think we're supposed to break formation."
"Why?"
"Because we haven't."
One of the enemy mechs stepped forward—half a meter. Just one leg.
It wasn't aggression.
It was boredom.
Shade's optics narrowed. Her jaw twitched.
She didn't have a jaw.
But it still twitched.
That's how long they'd been standing there.
Some of them moved like they were trying to remember how people get impatient.
Flint lowered his blade an inch. Let the tip touch the dirt. The energy core hissed as it made contact—just a tiny flare, Like it wanted to ignite but couldn't finish.
The red-eyed crawler watched the motion. Tracked it.
Then copied it.
Its own blade hissed softly against the dirt. Same angle.
Flint's HUD flickered.
[ERROR: MIRRORED REFLECTION – SOURCE UNCLEAR]
[DIAGNOSTIC RECOMMENDED: Y/N]
He didn't run the chekc.
He already knew what it would say:
You're not the original anymore.
There was a low hum behind the clouds—distant, not thunder. Something low, almost hungry. Like pressure builds before collapse. Or like a subwoofer stuck underground.
Shade whispered, "Do you hear that?"
"I do."
"It's close."
"Its above."
She looked up.
So did he.
But there was no sky.
Just a grey smear of stormless atmosphere that didn't even pretend to be real anymore.
Then—
His comms cracked.
Not a voice. Not a signal.
A fragment:
<
<
And then—
Silence.
No response.
No confirmation.
Just that.
And in the stillness that followed, a new sound slid into range.
Subsonic. Mechanical.
But also… wrong.
It didn't walk like a mech.
It didn't crawl like a tank.
It arrived.
And it wasn't coming from the ridge.
It was coming from below.
Beneath the crater.
A shape rising through the earth.
No icon and no ID.
No logic chain ready.
Flint took a single step back.
His blade flared again—out of sync?
Shade said, "Is that—?"
He didn't answer.
Because the next sound wasn't mechanical.
It was a whisper.
Low. Direct.
Inside his audio array.
<
<
<
The earth cracked beneath his feet.
Then—
Darkness.
Not night.
Something worse.
Like light had decided not to show up this time.
And whatever was coming through that crack?
It wasn't coded. It was deciding itself.