The freezing water hit the back of Marcus's throat.
It tasted like copper and old iron. The shock of inhaling the subterranean lake was instantly overshadowed by the violent, convulsive spasm of his entire body.
The raw electrical current from his own EMP arced wildly through the pitch-black water, tearing through his nervous system. His muscles seized. His left hand was locked in a death grip around the exposed wiring of Narcissus's chest cavity.
His vision went completely, blindingly white.
He was drowning, electrocuting himself fifty feet underwater.
Then, beneath his hand, the Warlord's Dreadnought moved.
It wasn't a subtle twitch.
A deep, mechanical hum violently vibrated through the freezing water, shaking the concrete floor of the reservoir.
The massive hydraulic pistons in Narcissus's legs shrieked to life, protesting the crushing pressure of the deep. The heavy anchor chains rattled against his battleship-steel armor.
Deep in the darkness, two optical sensors flickered. They didn't glow the soft gold of a Sentinel. They burned a dull, angry, Warlord red.
Narcissus's massive right hand shot out.
He grabbed Marcus by the heavy collar of his scavenged armor. The grip was terrifyingly strong, nearly crushing Marcus's collarbone.
The Iron Dog planted his hydraulic leg into the concrete bottom.
With a roar that Marcus felt in his bones more than he heard, Narcissus violently kicked off the floor of the abyss.
The ascent was brutally fast.
The water pressure violently released around Marcus's ears. His lungs burned like they were filled with acid. The white static in his vision fractured into dizzying darkness.
They tore through the fifty feet of freezing water in seconds.
The surface of the black subterranean lake suddenly erupted.
A massive, twelve-foot geyser of white foam and displaced water exploded into the cavern. The Iron Dog breached the surface, holding the limp, gasping Warlord entirely out of the water in one massive hand.
"Marcus!" Marcia screamed from the darkness.
Marcus violently coughed up a mouthful of black water, his chest heaving as his lungs frantically pulled in the cold, sterile air of the bunker. He was shivering uncontrollably, the residual electricity still sparking faintly across his wet armor.
Narcissus didn't drop him. The giant treaded water, his massive hydraulic legs easily keeping both of them afloat.
"Walkway," Narcissus rumbled, his voice deeper and wetter than before.
He turned his massive head. His red optical sensors cut through the dark, illuminating a narrow concrete maintenance path ringing the very edge of the massive reservoir, about thirty feet away.
Narcissus swam toward it, his heavy strokes displacing massive waves that pushed Marcia and Lucilla toward the ledge.
The Iron Dog reached the concrete edge. He slammed his free hand onto the walkway, the steel denting the concrete. He easily hauled Marcus up, dropping him onto the cold, solid ground.
Marcia scrambled up next, pulling a sobbing, entirely exhausted Lucilla behind her.
Narcissus grabbed the edge of the walkway with both hands and hauled his massive, two-ton frame out of the water. The concrete groaned beneath his weight as he stood, water pouring from his armor joints in heavy waterfalls.
Marcus pushed himself up onto his hands and knees. He coughed up another stream of water, his body shaking violently.
He looked up.
At the far end of the narrow concrete walkway sat a massive, glowing console. It was heavily reinforced, surrounded by thick glass, and lit by a harsh, sterile white light.
It was the main Board terminal for the Naples water purification grid.
The suspended acid bomb was physically destroyed, but the digital valves holding the water back from the Carrier's pipelines were still locked. The thirty-six-hour clock was still ticking for the five thousand scavengers on the ship.
Marcus forced himself to his feet. His legs felt like lead.
He looked at Lucilla. She was huddled on the concrete, her teeth chattering so hard she could barely speak. She was staring at the dark water, terrified of the deep.
Marcus walked over to her. He didn't offer his hand. He didn't ask if she was okay.
"Lucilla," Marcus ordered, his voice rasping from the water.
He reached down and grabbed the scavenged datapad she had somehow managed to keep dry inside her coat. He shoved it into her shivering hands.
"Get up," Marcus said.
She looked up at him, her eyes wide with lingering panic.
"We have five minutes," Marcus said coldly, pointing toward the glowing terminal at the end of the walkway. "Nero thinks we're dead at the bottom of the lake. The second you plug in, he's going to know the Warlord is still breathing. I need those valves open before he sends the Burners down here."
Lucilla looked at the terminal. She looked at the datapad.
She remembered the Warlord's words on the catwalk. The Butcher is dead. You are Lucilla of the Legion.
She took a slow, shivering breath.
She didn't cry. She didn't hesitate. She stood up.
The terrified girl who had nearly dropped the combat knife vanished.
As she walked toward the glowing console, her posture changed. Her shivering stopped. Her eyes locked onto the green lines of Board code scrolling across the massive screen.
This wasn't an analog bomb. This wasn't a physical fight in the mud.
This was her world.
Lucilla reached the terminal. She didn't look back at Marcus. She slammed the datapad's thick connection cable directly into the console's primary access port.
The screen flashed red.
[UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS. ENCRYPTION PROTOCOL: VANE-OMEGA. 256-BIT SECURE.]
Without JARVIS, Marcus couldn't brute-force the firewall. He couldn't flood the system with junk data to overwhelm it. He had to rely entirely on the human brain of a disgraced Board Executive.
Lucilla's fingers flew across the datapad.
"He used Vane's old architecture," Lucilla said, her voice entirely steady, devoid of panic. "It's a cascading lock. If I miss a sequence, the valves permanently weld shut."
"Don't miss," Marcia said, stepping up behind her, her eyes scanning the dark cavern.
Lucilla didn't respond. She was completely dialed in.
Her hands moved in a blur. She wasn't just typing; she was slicing. She bypassed the first security gate in ten seconds, exploiting a backdoor she had helped design three years ago.
The red warning on the screen flickered. It turned yellow.
"Second gate down," Lucilla muttered, her eyes reflecting the code. "He layered it with a biometric failsafe. Rerouting the sensor feedback to a dead loop."
Marcus watched her. The Warlord's mechanic was finally earning her title. The "Galen void" was filled.
"Got it," Lucilla said sharply.
She hit the final execute command on her datapad.
The massive console screen instantly flashed brilliant green.
[ACCESS GRANTED. PRIMARY VALVES UNLOCKED. REROUTING TO EXTERNAL AQUEDUCT.]
Deep beneath their feet, the concrete walkway began to violently shudder.
A massive, deafening groan echoed through the cavern. It sounded like the earth itself was shifting.
The enormous subterranean pipes lining the walls of the reservoir groaned under immense pressure. The valves physically disengaged.
Millions of gallons of pure, crystal-clear drinking water began to pump out of the Naples reservoir.
It bypassed the burning, toxic beach traps entirely. It surged through the ancient, scavenged pipelines running deep under the ocean floor, funneling straight into the massive intake valves of the USS Prometheus miles offshore.
The 36-hour clock was dead.
The Carrier was saved. The scavengers had water.
Lucilla let out a long breath, stepping back from the console. She looked at Marcus, a small, triumphant smile breaking through her exhaustion.
"Valves are open, Warlord," she said.
Marcus nodded once. "Good work, Mechanic."
Before Marcus could say anything else, a massive, heavy steel door at the far end of the walkway—fifty feet past the terminal—slowly began to grind open.
It wasn't an exit to the beach.
The heavy gears shrieked. The door slid back, revealing a wide, heavily armored elevator shaft leading deeper into the terraforming facility.
The space was bathed in harsh, red emergency lighting.
Standing in the center of the doorway was Nero.
He wasn't wearing an environmental suit. He wore a crisp, immaculate white suit that practically glowed in the red light. He looked exactly like Executive Vane, but his eyes were manic, wild, and entirely unhinged.
He wasn't holding his violin.
He was holding a long, heavy, perfectly balanced weapon. It was polished steel, engraved with intricate Roman numerals.
It was Marcus's looted Warlord sword. The one Nero had stolen from the wreckage of the Maglev train in Bulgaria.
"Bravo," Nero applauded slowly, the sound echoing down the walkway. "Truly, Warlord. You survived the drop. You saved the rust bucket. You even brought the Butcher back to life."
Marcus didn't speak. He stepped in front of Lucilla. He drew his rusted, dull combat knife. It was pathetic compared to the Warlord sword.
Nero smiled, a wide, terrifying grin that stretched too far across his face.
"But the Warlord's math always ends in zero," Nero purred.
He stepped aside.
From the dark elevator shaft behind him, five massive shadows moved into the red light.
They were Burner clones.
They were sleek, heavily modified, and wore thick, fireproof black armor. They didn't carry pulse-rifles.
They each carried a heavy, industrial-grade flamethrower. The pilot lights hummed to life, casting an eerie orange glow over the concrete.
"I promised you a duel, Emperor," Nero said, raising the stolen Warlord sword and pointing it directly at Marcus's chest. "Let's see if the Warlord can fight without his machine."