The world turned white.
It wasn't fire. It was sound.
A sonic wave, compressed to the density of solid matter, erupted from the basement of the keep.
It didn't expand outward. The Leviathan Drill was a Core Bore. It directed energy in a straight line.
UP.
The stone floor of the keep disintegrated. The walls blew out. The tower above—ancient stone reinforced with steel—didn't crumble. It vaporized.
A column of pure kinetic force punched a hole through the fortress and into the sky.
Marcus was thrown backward.
He hit the stone rim of the courtyard fountain. The impact knocked the wind out of him.
Debris rained down. Stone shards. Twisted rebar. Dust as fine as flour.
Marcus curled into a ball, covering his head. The roar was deafening. It felt like his bones were vibrating apart.
Then, silence.
Just the ringing in his ears.
Marcus coughed, spitting grit. He opened his eyes.
The courtyard was gray. Visibility was zero.
"Marcia!" he croaked. "Lucilla!"
"Here," a voice groaned from behind the sandbags. Marcia stood up, shaking dust from her hair. She held her bruised arm.
The keep was gone.
In its place was a smoking crater. And in the center, glowing cherry-red, was the tip of the Leviathan Drill.
It hadn't exploded. It had vented.
"Galen!" Marcus yelled into his comms.
"I'm alive!" Galen's voice was hysterical. "I'm in the safe room! The overload failed! The casing breached before the core went critical! It's leaking energy!"
A mechanical groan cut through the dust.
A blue light flared in the gray fog.
The Titan.
The massive, spider-legged Sentinel hadn't been destroyed. It had been staggered. Its energy shields flared, flickering but holding.
It stood up. Hydraulics whined.
Its single red eye swept the courtyard. It locked onto the heat signature of the glowing Drill.
"Target obstructed," the Titan boomed. "Re-engaging."
It leveled its plasma cannon at the crater. At the Drill. And at Galen, trapped underground.
"It's going to finish the job," Marcus realized.
Movement to his left.
Executive Vane was crawling out of the mud. His suit was shredded. His face was bleeding.
He didn't look smug anymore. He looked terrified.
"Get me out of here!" Vane screamed at his Praetorians.
The two gold-armored guards recovered fast. One ignited a jetpack on its back. It swooped down, grabbing Vane by the belt.
"Evacuation Protocol," the guard stated.
It launched into the air, dragging Vane toward the hovering Icarus.
"Burn it!" Vane shrieked as he ascended. "Burn the whole site! Leave no assets!"
The Titan's cannon began to glow. A sun was building in the barrel.
Marcus scrambled over the fountain rim.
"JARVIS!" he screamed. "I need a solution! Now!"
The UI in his mind didn't flicker. It didn't glitch.
It exploded into clarity.
The black text boxes were gone. The red warnings were gone.
The interface was GOLD. Crisp. High definition. Beautiful.
[ANALYZING BATTLEFIELD...]
[TARGET: TITAN-CLASS SENTINEL]
[WEAKNESS: VENTRAL HEAT SINK]
A wireframe overlay appeared on the Titan. A small, glowing exhaust port underneath the main chassis.
[PROBABILITY OF HIT: 2%]
"Two percent?" Marcus yelled. "Give me better odds!"
[CALCULATING...]
[OPTION B: HACK FIRING SOLUTION]
[ACCESSING TITAN FIRMWARE... ERROR. ENCRYPTION LEVEL: MILITARY GRADE.]
[TIME TO CRACK: 45 MINUTES.]
"We have four seconds!"
The Titan's cannon whined louder. The air ionized, smelling of ozone.
[ALTERNATIVE: HACK THE ENVIRONMENT.]
The gold wireframe shifted. It left the Titan. It mapped the ground beneath the machine.
The courtyard floor was ancient stone. But beneath it...
[SCAN COMPLETE. SUBTERRANEAN CISTERNS DETECTED.]
[STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY: COMPROMISED BY BLAST.]
The UI highlighted a web of cracks radiating from the crater. They ran directly under the Titan's rear legs.
[TACTICAL ADVICE: SHOOT THE FLOOR.]
"Marcia!" Marcus roared. "The ground! Shoot the ground under its legs!"
Marcia didn't ask why. She didn't hesitate.
She grabbed an RPG launcher from a fallen soldier's corpse.
"Clear!" she yelled.
WHOOSH.
The rocket streaked across the courtyard.
It didn't hit the Titan. It hit the cracked flagstones right beneath the massive rear hydraulic foot.
BOOM.
The explosion wasn't big. But it was enough.
The stone shattered. The roof of the ancient Roman cistern gave way.
CRUNCH.
The ground swallowed the Titan's leg.
The machine lurched violently to the right.
The plasma cannon fired.
Z-Z-Z-T.
The beam went wide. It missed the crater. It missed Marcus.
It sliced upward.
It hit the Icarus.
The luxury starship was hovering fifty feet above, waiting for Vane.
The plasma beam sheared through the port landing gear. It melted the intake fan.
The ship shuddered. Debris rained down—white ceramic plating and burning engine parts.
Vane, dangling from the Praetorian's grip halfway to the ramp, screamed as the ship listed. He swung wildly in the air.
"My ship!" Vane wailed. "You incompetent toaster! You shot my ship!"
The Titan struggled to free its leg. It flailed, its other legs smashing the courtyard walls.
"It's stuck!" Lucilla shouted, firing her SMG at the machine's sensors. "Pour it on!"
But the Praetorians weren't done.
The guard holding Vane tossed the Executive onto the tilted ramp of the Icarus.
Then, it turned. It looked down at Marcus.
It dropped from the sky.
THUD.
It landed in the mud, ten feet away.
The second Praetorian—the one Marcus had kicked—stood up from the debris.
Two of them. Gold armor. Energy pikes humming.
"Threat Elimination," the lead Praetorian droned.
They charged.
They moved faster than human eyes could track. A blur of gold light.
Marcus raised his sword. He was tired. He was slow.
[COMBAT MODE: ENGAGED.]
The UI shifted.
Time seemed to slow down. Not literally—but Marcus's processing speed spiked. JARVIS was overclocking his neural link.
Gold lines appeared on the ground.
[DODGE LEFT: 0.3s]
Marcus stepped left.
The energy pike thrust through the air where his chest had been a millisecond ago. The heat of the plasma singed his ear.
[DUCK.]
Marcus dropped to one knee.
The second pike swept over his head, slicing a stone pillar in half.
[COUNTER: UPWARD THRUST. TARGET: NECK JOINT.]
Marcus didn't think. He obeyed the gold line.
He drove the Vibro-Gladius upward.
The blade hummed. It slipped between the gold gorget and the helmet of the first Praetorian.
Sparks flew. Hydraulic fluid sprayed—black oil mixed with blue coolant.
The Praetorian stiffened. Its sensors flickered.
Marcus twisted the blade.
CRACK.
The head unit severed internally.
The Praetorian collapsed like a puppet with cut strings.
Marcus stood up, wrenching his sword free. He was breathing hard. The adrenaline was electric.
"One down," Marcus panted.
He looked at the second Praetorian.
[STAMINA: 40%]
[ADRENALINE: CRITICAL]
[QUOTE OF THE DAY: "FLOAT LIKE A BUTTERFLY, STING LIKE A EMPEROR."]
Marcus grinned.
"JARVIS," he said. "You're a smartass."
[I LEARNED FROM THE BEST, SIR.]
The second Praetorian hesitated. It looked at its fallen comrade. Then it looked at the Titan, which was thrashing in the hole, trying to aim its cannon again.
"Marcia!" Marcus yelled. "Flank right! Lucilla, suppress the Titan's sensors!"
"On it!" Lucilla yelled, firing bursts at the giant red eye.
Marcus pointed his sword at the remaining guard.
"Round two," Marcus said.
But the ground shook again.
A deep, terrible rumble from the crater.
"Marcus!" Galen's voice screamed in his ear. "The core is destabilizing! That vent wasn't the end! It was the warm-up!"
A fissure cracked open in the center of the courtyard. Red light spilled out.
"The whole mountain is going to go!" Galen yelled. "We have five minutes before this place is a crater!"
Marcus looked at the Titan. It had freed its leg. It was standing up.
He looked at the Icarus, smoking but still hovering.
He looked at the exit. Blocked by the Titan.
"We need a ride," Marcus said.
He looked at Vane's escape pod—a small, armored rover sitting near the landing ramp of the Icarus.
"JARVIS," Marcus thought. "Can you drive that?"
[I CAN DRIVE ANYTHING WITH A CHIP, SIR.]
"Then let's steal a car."