The standoff was a drawn wire, taut and singing with the promise of imminent violence. Eva's mind was a storm of calculations—the Goliath's mass, Zane's cybernetic speed, the fragile cluster of survivors behind her. There was no clean way out. Only a bloody one.
It was in this suspended silence that they heard it.
A scream. But not a human one. It was the sound of tortured metal, of reinforced concrete and plasteel slabs being punched through, one after another, from some unimaginable height above. It grew from a distant shriek to a deafening roar directly overhead.
CRASH-BOOM-CRASH-BOOM—
They all looked up as the ceiling of the corridor directly above them bulged, cracked, and then exploded inward in a shower of dust, sparking wires, and jagged debris. A figure plummeted down, landing in a three-point crouch between the two groups with an impact that shook the floor and sent several survivors stumbling.
Dust swirled, settling to reveal Project Flame.
He was not unscathed. His simple prisoner's garb was torn, and fine scratches marked his skin, but he rose to his full height with an air of utter nonchalance, as if he had just stepped off a curb, not fallen through multiple levels of a fortified complex. He brushed a piece of plasteel shard from his shoulder, his pale, focused eyes scanning the scene with detached curiosity.
"Hmm," he muttered, more to himself than anyone. "Seven slabs. The structural integrity of this place is appalling." His gaze, sharp and dismissive, swept over the huddled survivors, past a wide-eyed Derek and a stunned Leo, lingered for a microsecond on Maya—who had gone perfectly still, her head cocked in a predator's recognition of a bigger predator—and finally landed on Eva.
"You," he said, his voice a low rumble. "The ghost in the machine. Where is the schematic for the sub-basement arterials? The standard maps are deliberately misleading."
Before Eva could even process the question, his attention shifted to the blocked corridor. He saw the cybernetic Goliath, its single red eye fixed on him. He saw the figure beside it.
His eyes narrowed on Zane. The half-metal, half-flesh visage seemed to intrigue him.
"A puppet," Project Flame stated, his tone one of clinical disdain. He pointed a finger, not at the hulking Goliath, but directly at Zane. "But the strings on this one are… interesting. Half-rotten, half-steel. A flawed repair."
He took a single, casual step forward. "I'll deal with the little one first."
The Goliath, programmed to protect its partner and eliminate threats, interpreted the movement as hostility. With a hydraulic hiss, it lunged, its massive claw arm swinging in a devastating arc meant to crush Project Flame's skull.
Project Flame didn't dodge. He didn't block.
He simply turned his body and met the charge.
His open palm slapped against the incoming hydraulic claw. The sound was not a clap, but a deep, percussive THUMP that vibrated in their chests. The Goliath's entire forward momentum stopped dead. For a moment, the giant machine strained, its servos whining in protest, pushing against the immovable object that was a single man.
A faint, almost bored smile touched Project Flame's lips. "When the big guy hits you," he said, his voice calm, "send him through the walls."
With a twist of his wrist and a subtle shift of his weight, he redirected the Goliath's own immense force. He used its momentum against it, spinning the several-hundred-pound cybernetic monster as if it were a toy. With a final, effortless shove, he launched it sideways.
The Goliath became a living cannonball. It tore through the reinforced wall of the corridor in an explosion of shattered plasteel and twisted rebar, vanishing into the darkness of the adjacent level with a fading crash of continuing destruction.
Project Flame watched it go for a second, then turned back towards Zane. "Now," he said, and began to walk, not with haste, but with the inevitable, slow stride of a tidal wave.
Zane's mechanical lens whirred, processing the impossible display of power. A flicker of something—not fear, but cold, tactical reassessment—crossed his remaining organic eye. "Well," he rasped, his voice a blend of his old gravel and a new synthetic buzz. "That was… hmm. Never mind." His steel talon flexed. "So, where were—"
He never finished.
Eva saw her opening. With Project Flame drawing Zane's focus, it was the only chance she would get. She didn't scream. She didn't telegraph. She just moved, a blur of augmented motion, her fist aimed not at Zane's cybernetic half, but at the junction where flesh met machine on his jaw—a point of potential vulnerability.
Zane's reactions were inhumanly fast. He didn't fully evade, but he shifted, taking the brunt of the blow on his armored shoulder. The impact was solid, a crack of knuckles on metal, but it barely rocked him.
He turned his head slowly, the mechanical lens focusing on her with a faint click. The detached analysis was gone, replaced by a cold, programmed fury.
"A mistake," he buzzed.
The fight began in earnest, and it was a brutal, one-sided demolition.
Eva was fast and skilled, a product of the Architect's finest enhancements. But Zane was something else. He was a fusion of his own innate, half-dead resilience and the Architect's most ruthless cybernetics. He was faster, stronger, and his new body felt no pain.
He blocked her next flurry of strikes with contemptuous ease, his metal arm moving faster than her eyes could track. A backhand swipe sent her stumbling back, her forearms stinging from the block. She tried a low sweep, but he anticipated it, leaping and bringing his steel-taloned foot down where her leg had been, cracking the floor.
He was toying with her. Systematically dismantling her defenses. A jab from his organic hand snapped her head back. A kick from his robotic leg sent her crashing into the wall, the breath driven from her lungs. She pushed off, gasping, launching herself at him again, but he caught her fist in his metal hand and squeezed.
The sound of the bones in her hand grinding together was audible. Eva cried out, a short, sharp gasp of agony.
Derek and Leo could only watch, horrified and helpless, as Eva, their last best hope, was being utterly and completely wrecked. And Project Flame was already gone, having stepped through the hole in the wall to finish his business with the Goliath, leaving them to face the relentless, remorseless engine that was Zane.