The signal wasn't a sound. It was an absence of weight.
Deep in the bowels of Sector 9, amidst the roar of the destabilizing volcano and the screech of tearing metal, ten thousand necks suddenly felt lighter. The constant, thrumming heat of the nitroglycerin collars—a sensation every slave had lived with for years—vanished.
The red LEDs on the iron bands blinked out.
Adam stood knee-deep in the slag pit, his sledgehammer resting on his shoulder. He felt the collar die. He didn't smile. He didn't cheer. He simply exhaled, a long breath that expelled a year of servitude.
Around him, the confusion was absolute. The eruption in the magma chamber below was sending tremors through the floor plates so violent that men were knocked off their feet. Steam pipes burst overhead, spraying scalding fog into the air.
"Back to your stations!" screamed Overseer Krell. He stood on a raised gantry, flanked by four guards with electro-batons. "It's just a tremor! Any man who drops his tool will be shot!"
Usually, this threat would send the slaves scrambling. But today, something was different. The fear was still there, but the inevitability of death had shifted. The volcano was going to kill them anyway. The guards were just a smaller fire.
A miner near the front, a gaunt man named Silas who had lost an eye to a rogue spark, looked up at Krell. He touched his dark collar.
"They're off," Silas whispered. Then louder. "The collars! They're off!"
Krell's eyes widened. He tapped his wrist control, frantically punching the detonation code. Nothing happened.
"Shoot them!" Krell shrieked. "Suppress the sector!"
The guards raised their carbines.
Adam moved.
He didn't move like a man. He moved like a landslide. He vaulted out of the slag pit, his massive boots crushing the metal grating. He covered the twenty feet to the gantry in three strides, ignoring the steam that hissed against his bare chest.
A guard turned, firing a panic shot. The bullet grazed Adam's shoulder, tearing a line of red through the soot. Adam didn't even flinch.
He swung the sledgehammer.
It was a twenty-pound block of hardened iron on a hickory shaft. In Adam's hands, it was a feather. The hammer caught the guard in the chest plate. The steam-armor buckled like tin. The guard was launched backward off the gantry, crashing into the machinery below.
Adam landed on the platform. He towered over Krell.
The Overseer scrambled back, dropping his control pad. He reached for his sidearm, a heavy revolver. "Stay back! You're just a slave! You're just meat!"
Adam looked at the man. He remembered being the Progenitor. He remembered weaving the stars. He remembered when life was precious because he had created it.
Now, he looked at Krell and felt nothing but cold, industrial indifference.
"I am the Anvil," Adam rumbled, his voice shaking the gantry.
He didn't swing the hammer. He simply reached out, grabbed Krell by the throat with one hand, and lifted him off the ground. Krell kicked and clawed, his boots dangling over the edge.
"And you," Adam said, "are the slag."
He threw Krell. The Overseer screamed as he plummeted into the molten runoff channel below. There was a brief hiss, and then silence.
Adam turned to the miners below. They were staring up at him, their faces illuminated by the red emergency lights and the glow of the lava. They were frozen, waiting for permission to live.
Adam raised his hammer high.
"Break them!" he roared.
The roar snapped the trance. Ten thousand men screamed back.
It wasn't a battle cry. It was a release of pressure. Years of torture, starvation, and humiliation exploded. Men grabbed pickaxes, shovels, and heavy wrenches. They surged forward like a tidal wave of grey rags and steel.
The remaining guards on the floor didn't stand a chance. They were swarmed, dragged down by sheer numbers, and beaten with the very tools they had forced the slaves to use.
But the Sultanate did not rely on flesh to keep order.
The blast doors at the far end of the sector groaned open. Gears ground against gears. Smoke billowed out, smelling of oil and ozone.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Three "Iron-Striders" walked into the cavern.
They were bipedal war-machines, standing twelve feet tall. Their chassis were brass and iron, powered by a glowing blue void-coil in the center. Hydraulic pistons hissed with every step. Mounted on their arms were rotary steam-cannons.
"Suppression Protocol Beta," a mechanical voice boomed from the lead Strider. "Disperse or be liquidated."
The miners faltered. A pickaxe was useless against two inches of boiler-plate armor.
The lead Strider spun its cannons. Brrrrt.
A line of bullets tore through the front row of the mob. Men fell, screaming. The riot threatened to break into a rout.
Adam jumped from the gantry, landing heavily on the floor. He stood between the mob and the machines.
"Go around!" Adam shouted to Silas. "Take the side tunnels! Get them to the surface!"
"What about you?" Silas yelled, clutching a pry-bar.
"I will clear the path."
Adam turned to face the Iron-Striders. He was unarmed except for the hammer. He had no armor. He had no magic.
Physics, Kael's voice echoed in his head. They are top-heavy. The gyroscopes are in the waist. The hydraulic lines are exposed at the knees.
Adam tightened his grip on the hammer. He wasn't a strategist. He was a brawler. But Kael had taught him where to hit.
The lead Strider targeted him. "Target identified. Unit 99-Alpha. Priority threat."
The cannon spun.
Adam sprinted.
He didn't run away; he ran at the machine. He zigzagged, diving under a conveyor belt as the bullets chewed up the concrete where he had been standing. He slid across the oily floor, coming up directly beneath the Strider's legs.
The machine was clumsy at close range. It tried to stomp him, a massive metal foot crashing down.
Adam rolled. The foot missed him by inches, cracking the stone.
Adam rose to a crouch. He swung the hammer upward, aiming not for the armor, but for the knee joint—the soft spot where the rubber hoses connected the piston to the shin.
Clang-Hiss!
The hammer head crushed the coupling. High-pressure steam exploded outward, scalding the air. The leg seized up. The Strider lurched, losing its balance.
Physics. Leverage.
Adam didn't wait. He grabbed the damaged leg with both hands, planting his feet. He roared, every muscle in his god-forged body straining. He wasn't lifting the machine; he was tipping it.
With a groan of stressed metal, the twelve-foot giant toppled.
It crashed to the floor with an earth-shaking boom. The impact shattered its sensory array.
Adam leaped onto the chest of the fallen machine. The pilot inside the cockpit screamed as Adam raised the hammer.
He brought it down on the glass viewport. Crack.
He brought it down again. Shatter.
He reached in, grabbed the pilot—a terrified man in a flight helmet—and tossed him into the crowd of angry miners. They descended on him instantly.
The other two Striders turned, their gyros whining as they tried to track the fast-moving giant.
Adam grabbed the rotary cannon torn from the wrecked machine. It was too heavy for a normal human to lift, let alone fire. Adam hefted it, groaning under the weight. The ammo belt dragged on the floor.
He pointed it at the second Strider.
"Liquidation," Adam growled.
He squeezed the trigger.
The recoil nearly dislocated his shoulder, but he held firm. The heavy caliber rounds shredded the void-coil of the second Strider. The blue light flickered, turned red, and then detonated. The machine blew apart from the inside, sending shrapnel pinging off the walls.
The third Strider hesitated. The pilot, seeing two of his squadmates destroyed in thirty seconds by a man with a hammer, panicked. He tried to back up, to retreat through the blast doors.
But the miners were there.
Encouraged by Adam's victory, they swarmed the retreating machine. They jammed pry-bars into the gears. They threw heavy chains into the intake fans. A welder named Jorel climbed the back of the Strider and jammed a flare into the exhaust port.
The machine choked, sputtered, and died.
Adam dropped the cannon. He was breathing hard, his chest heaving. Blood from the graze on his shoulder ran down his arm, mixing with the oil of the machines.
The silence returned, heavy and thick.
Then, Silas raised his pry-bar.
"THE TITAN!" he screamed.
"THE TITAN! THE TITAN!"
The chant spread like fire. It echoed up the shafts, carrying through the ventilation ducts.
Adam looked at them. They were looking at him with the same reverence they used to give the Progenitor statues in the temples. But this was different. They didn't worship him because he was divine. They followed him because he bled with them.
"We are not done," Adam shouted, his voice cutting through the chants. "The Engineer opened the door. Now we walk through it."
He pointed his hammer toward the upper levels, where the smoke was thickest.
"To the docks!"
The mob roared and surged forward.
Adam took point. He didn't feel like a god anymore. He felt heavy. He felt pain. He felt the vibration of the earth in his boots.
And for the first time in an eternity, he felt proud.