The thick, leathery scales scraped violently against Marcus's bare, burning skin in the pitch-black toxic water.
It felt like coarse sandpaper wrapped around a massive, shifting boulder. The freezing cold of the subterranean lake was entirely gone, replaced by the searing, agonizing heat of the highly concentrated terraforming defoliant.
Every inch of Marcus's body felt like it was submerged in liquid fire.
His lungs were screaming. The Warlord's Warlord math screamed louder.
He was ten feet underwater. His burned left hand and his exhausted right hand were locked onto the heavy, rusted iron of the massive manual shut-off wheel. The Carrier was miles away, its intake pipes currently sucking down millions of gallons of poisoned, black sludge.
He didn't let go of the wheel.
He couldn't.
The massive creature in the dark bumped him again. The sheer displacement of the water violently shoved Marcus sideways, nearly tearing his grip from the rusted iron.
It wasn't a fish. It wasn't a shark.
It was something immense, heavy, and born from the Board's toxic chemicals. It was a Leviathan of the ink.
Marcus gritted his teeth, locking his jaw against the burning need to inhale.
He tapped into his Neural Link, flooding his forearms with raw, unmitigated nanite energy. He used the surge not to fight the beast, but to completely override the agonizing pain of the chemical burns eating through his skin.
He planted his heavy, melted combat boots squarely against the slick concrete wall of the massive intake pipe.
He didn't turn the wheel hand over hand anymore.
He violently jerked his entire body backward.
The heavy, rusted iron gears shrieked in protest, fighting the pressure of the dying lake.
Then, they snapped into place.
THUNK.
The deep, heavy, metallic sound vibrated through the dark water, slamming into Marcus's chest like a physical blow. The deafening rush of water rushing past his legs instantly ceased.
The manual valve was completely closed. The poisoned reservoir was locked away from the Carrier forever.
The Warlord's mission was accomplished.
Marcus immediately let go of the wheel and kicked upward toward the surface.
He was completely out of air. Black spots danced wildly across his vision.
He didn't make it two feet.
The Leviathan struck.
Massive, jagged jaws violently clamped down on Marcus's right calf. The teeth didn't feel like bone; they felt like jagged shards of rusted steel. They instantly pierced the thick rubber and leather of his combat boot, driving deep into his muscle.
Marcus opened his mouth in a silent, agonizing scream.
A tiny bubble of precious air escaped his lips, rising toward the surface he couldn't see.
The beast didn't just bite him. It thrashed.
It violently shook its massive head side to side, treating the Emperor of Rome like a ragdoll. The sheer, terrifying kinetic force of the thrash dislocated Marcus's right knee with a sickening pop.
The Leviathan dragged Marcus backward, deeper into the boiling, toxic black ink.
Marcus fought back blindly.
He punched downward with his right fist, aiming for where he thought the creature's eye should be. He missed, his knuckles scraping painfully against thick, armored scales.
He tapped his Neural Link again, channeling the raw energy into his left hand. He fired a blinding blue EMP spark directly into the beast's snout.
The electricity crackled loudly, but the thick, chemical sludge of the water instantly diffused the charge. It barely stunned the massive creature.
The jaws tightened. The Leviathan pulled him further down.
Fifteen feet. Twenty feet.
The Warlord was drowning in acid.
Above the surface, on the narrow concrete walkway, Marcia didn't scream. She didn't panic. She didn't stand near the edge weeping for her Emperor.
She was a Roman General.
She saw the black water violently churning exactly where Marcus had dived. She saw the massive, dark shape moving beneath the surface. She knew he hadn't come back up.
She didn't wait for Lucilla to hack a solution. She didn't wait for Narcissus to figure out his compromised armor.
Marcia spun around, her scarred face an absolute mask of Warlord iron.
She sprinted toward a rusted, destroyed industrial crane sitting near the open elevator shaft.
"Narcissus!" Marcia roared, her voice echoing off the cavern walls.
She grabbed a thick, heavy, rusted steel industrial cable hanging loose from the crane's winch. It was as thick as her wrist.
She rapidly looped the heavy steel cable twice around her own waist, locking the rusted carabiner securely to her combat belt.
She violently threw the other end of the fifty-foot cable directly at the massive iron giant.
"Hold the line!" Marcia commanded.
Narcissus caught the heavy steel cable in his massive, glowing-red right hand. The thick battleship steel of his fingers crushed the wire rope slightly as his grip locked.
Marcia didn't hesitate for a single second.
She gripped the heavy hilt of the polished Warlord sword tightly in her right hand.
She sprinted toward the edge of the walkway.
Without a word, without taking a deep breath, she vaulted over the narrow concrete railing.
She dove headfirst directly into the boiling, chemical acid.
The impact was brutal. The toxic black defoliant instantly attacked her exposed skin, burning her scarred face and searing her eyes. The pain was blinding, absolute agony.
She didn't care.
She kicked downward, the heavy Warlord sword dragging her straight toward the violent churning in the deep.
Down in the abyss, Marcus was fading.
The pain in his leg was completely numb. His vision was entirely black. His lungs were violently spasming, demanding he inhale the toxic sludge. His Warlord iron was breaking under the sheer, biological necessity for oxygen.
He stopped fighting the jaws. He went limp.
Suddenly, the black water directly above him exploded.
A brilliant, blinding flash of blue light violently cut through the toxic ink.
The broken, glowing blue Amp that had sunk to the bottom of the lake was suddenly kicked upward by the violent churning of the water. It floated past Marcus's face, casting a harsh, sickly blue glow over the nightmare.
In that split second of light, Marcus saw it.
The Leviathan was massive. It looked like a mutated, armored crocodile, its thick, gray scales heavily scarred and slick with chemical ooze. Its pale, yellow, unblinking eye was locked directly onto Marcus.
And then, falling straight down from the surface like an avenging angel of iron, he saw her.
Marcia.
Her face was contorted in absolute, agonizing pain from the acid. Her eyes were squeezed tightly shut against the burn. Her hair floated wildly in the black sludge.
She didn't swim toward Marcus.
She gripped the heavy steel Warlord sword with both hands, pointing the blade straight down.
She used the momentum of her dive and the heavy weight of the steel to drive the polished blade directly, violently downward.
She drove the Warlord sword straight into the center of the Leviathan's massive, pale yellow eye.
The thick steel blade punched through the thick membrane with a sickening, wet crunch, burying itself hilt-deep directly into the beast's mutated brain.
The Leviathan let out a horrific, high-pitched, vibrating shriek that echoed through the dense water.
The massive, jagged jaws violently snapped open.
Marcus was instantly released. He floated backward, entirely limp, his right leg a mangled, bleeding mess.
But the beast wasn't dead.
It went into a violent, catastrophic death thrash.
The massive, armored tail whipped blindly through the black water, churning the toxic mud at the bottom of the lake into a blinding storm of debris.
The massive head jerked violently upward, trying to dislodge the heavy steel sword buried in its skull.
Marcia refused to let go of the hilt. She held on with both hands, her boots planting against the beast's armored snout, fighting the thrash.
The violent, twisting motion of the Leviathan's death throes caught the thick industrial steel cable wrapped around Marcia's waist.
The heavy wire rope whipped through the water like a massive steel snake.
It violently wrapped twice around Marcus's waist, instantly pinning his arms to his sides.
The Leviathan thrashed downward, diving toward the concrete floor of the reservoir in its final seconds of life.
The thick steel cable pulled taut with a sickening jerk.
It violently yanked both Marcia and Marcus downward.
They were tangled together, tied directly to a massive, thrashing, dying monster, plummeting straight toward the bottom of the boiling, toxic black abyss.