6:54 AM
The armor wasn't like anything Silas had seen in SENTINEL's arsenal. It looked organic, grown rather than manufactured.
Crimson plates that shifted and flowed like liquid mercury, covering Marcus from neck to toe. The helmet was sleek, predatory, with a visor that glowed with inner light.
But it was Marcus's breathing that caught Silas's attention. Ragged. Pained. The armor might have integrated, but the cost was written in every movement.
"Kane?" Cross's voice echoed from the Wraith's external speakers. "Can you hear me?"
Marcus's head turned toward the sound. Jerky. Uncertain. Like a newborn learning motor control.
"I can—" His voice was wrong. Distorted through the helmet, but also deeper. Resonant. "I can hear everything. The Wraith's engines. Your heartbeat. Jesse's breathing. Mara's—" He stopped. Swayed. "This is wrong. I'm wrong. I can feel the armor in my blood. In my bones."
"That's the integration," Cross said. "Your body and the Spectrum unit are now one organism. You're experiencing sensory overload. It will normalize."
"Will it?" Marcus looked down at his hands. Crimson gauntlets flexed with his fingers.
"Or will I just get used to being a monster?"
"Does it matter?" Mara asked. She'd picked up the magenta device. Held it like a live grenade. "Monster that fights monsters. Seems like a fair trade."
"Mara—" Marcus started.
"Dr. Sato," she corrected. "And don't. Don't try to talk me out of it. I saw the files on Silas's tablet. Zero percent survival rate. I'm a scientist. I understand the numbers." She met Marcus's eyes—or where his eyes should be behind the visor. "I also saw four hundred and sixty-three people burn alive in São Paulo. So when I say I don't care about survival rates, I mean it literally."
She activated the magenta device.
Her scream was worse than Marcus's. Higher. More raw.
Jesse turned away, hand over his mouth.
Atlas watched with the detachment of a man who'd seen too much to be shocked anymore.
Silas kept recording, because data was all he had left, and if he stopped collecting it he'd have to process what he was witnessing.
Marcus stumbled toward Mara, reaching out. "We can stop this. We can—"
"No," Cross's voice cut through.
"Interrupting the integration will kill her faster. She made her choice. Respect it."
So they watched. Again.
Magenta light crawled across Mara's skin like insects. Her back bent backward until vertebrae popped. Blood ran from her eyes, her nose, pooling on the concrete beneath her.
And through it all, she laughed.
"Hurts less than Jakarta," she gasped between convulsions. "Hurts less than knowing I helped them make the weapons they used. Hurts less than surviving."
The integration took ninety seconds. When it finished, Dr. Mara Sato stood in magenta armor that looked like it had been forged in nightmares, breathing like she'd run a marathon, and smiled.
"Who's next?" she asked.
Atlas didn't hesitate. Picked up the amber device. Looked at it for exactly two seconds.
"Was good life," he said to no one in particular. "Until it wasn't."
He activated it.
His scream was a roar. The kind of sound that came from deep in the chest, vibrated the air, made your bones ache in sympathy. The amber light that consumed him was brighter than the others, or maybe that was just because Atlas was bigger, more mass for the integration to rewrite.
Silas watched his vitals on the tablet. Heart rate spiking. Blood pressure critical. Neural activity—
"His brain activity is increasing," Silas said aloud. "That shouldn't be possible. The integration should be causing neural degradation, but he's—"
Atlas hit the ground hard enough to crack concrete. The amber light flared so bright Silas had to look away. When he looked back, Atlas was standing in armor that made him look like a walking tank. Amber plating thick enough to stop bullets. Maybe missiles.
"Bozhe moy," Atlas breathed. "I feel... strong. Very strong. Also very much like dying."
"That's normal," Marcus said. "Apparently."
Three down. Two to go.
Silas and Jesse looked at each other. The older analyst and the kid who shouldn't be here. Both thinking the same thing:
We don't have to do this.
Then Silas thought about Beijing. About the signals he'd intercepted an hour before the attack. The Covenant's communications, encrypted so well he'd almost missed them. Almost. He'd flagged them for analysis, sent them up the chain, and Command had done exactly nothing because they were too busy covering up Jakarta.
Eighteen thousand people dead because SENTINEL was more interested in protecting their crimes than preventing new ones.
"Fuck it," Silas said, and grabbed the azure device.
6:58 AM
The integration was agony.
Silas had expected that. Prepared for it, mentally. You couldn't prepare for pain that rewrote your understanding of what pain meant.
The tendrils found his spine. Found his brain stem. Found the clusters of nerves that controlled everything from breathing to memory and decided to optimize.
His HUD exploded with data. Not just visual—everything. He could feel the Wraith's computer systems like phantom limbs.
Could sense the electromagnetic spectrum as color and taste and sound all at once.
Could hear the Obsidian Covenant's encrypted communications dancing through the air and understood them without translation because the azure integration had turned his brain into a living decryption engine.
Too much. Way too much.
He tried to scream but his voice was already being used by the integration process, commandeered for system diagnostics and neural mapping. So he screamed internally, where no one could hear, and felt his sense of self fragment and reassemble in a configuration that was optimal but not remotely human.
When the light faded, Silas Chen stood in azure armor that hummed with electronic potential, and he could feel every surveillance camera within six miles, every cell phone, every wireless signal.
He felt the Covenant's agents moving through the city. Felt their communications. Felt their next target.
"They're coming," he said. "They know we're here. ETA twelve minutes."
Everyone stared at him.
"How—" Marcus started.
"I don't know," Silas interrupted. "I just... know. I can feel them in the network. Their approach vectors. Their weapons signatures. I can feel everything and it's—" He stopped. Swallowed. "I think I'm going insane."
"Later," Mara said. "Go insane later. Right now, we need the kid to make a choice."
All eyes turned to Jesse Park.
Jesse looked at the viridian device in his hand. Looked at the four armored figures surrounding him. Looked at the future where he activated this thing and became like them—powerful and broken and definitely dying.
He was twenty-two years old. He'd joined SENTINEL because his parents were proud of him for it. Because the recruiter made it sound like he'd be saving the world.
He thought about his instructor.
Remembered her pushing him out the door during the attack. Remembered her saying run with smoke in her lungs and the building collapsing behind her.
Remembered watching her die on the monitors as he sprinted away like a coward.
"I don't want to do this," Jesse said quietly.
"I know," Marcus replied. His voice was gentle despite the helmet's distortion. "None of us do."
"Then why—"
"Because someone has to." Mara gestured at the burning city visible through the hangar's open bay doors. "The Covenant won't stop. SENTINEL's gone. Government response will be too slow, too political. We're all that's left."
"We're five people," Jesse said. "Five people against an organization that killed eighteen thousand trained operatives in one night."
"Yes," Atlas agreed. "Stupid odds. But I have learned something in my forty-three years: sometimes stupid odds are only odds you have."
Jesse looked at the device. At his reflection in its dark surface. Saw a scared kid who didn't belong here.
Made a choice anyway.
The viridian light felt like drowning in emerald fire.
7:02 AM
When it was done—when all five of them stood in chromatic armor, breathing like they'd been tortured and technically had been—Director Cross descended from the Wraith.
He looked at them for a long moment. Five armored figures who'd been human ten minutes ago and might never be fully human again.
"Congratulations," Cross said. "You survived the integration. You're now the Spectrum Initiative. SENTINEL's final weapon against the Obsidian Covenant."
"Weapon," Jesse repeated. His voice through the viridian helmet sounded young and old at the same time. "That's all we are?"
"Yes," Cross said. No hesitation. "But you get to choose your targets. That's more than most weapons can say."
Marcus stepped forward. The crimson armor moved with him like a second skin. Or a first skin. Hard to tell anymore.
"Silas says the Covenant is coming. Twelve minutes. What's the play?"
Cross smiled. It wasn't a pleasant expression.
"You wanted to know if the armor works? You're about to find out. Lieutenant Vega has identified the strike team's composition. Thirty Covenant soldiers. Enhanced with stolen SENTINEL biotech. Armed with weapons designed specifically to kill people like you."
"People like us," Mara said. "We're not people anymore. Let's not pretend."
Cross nodded. Acceptance. "Fine. Armed with weapons designed to kill things like you. Your mission is simple: stop them. Kill them if necessary. Capture them if possible. And above all—survive."
"That's three missions," Atlas pointed out.
"Yes. Welcome to SENTINEL operations. Contradictory objectives are standard."
Marcus looked at his team. At four strangers who'd become something else together.
Who shared pain and transformation and a future measured in hours if they were lucky.
"All right," he said. "Let's see if we can die slower than they expect."
Obsidian Covenant Strike Team Alpha
En Route to Target
7:04 AM
Commander Sable didn't believe in ghosts.
She believed in mission objectives. In superior firepower. In the righteousness of the Covenant's cause.
But when her intelligence officer reported five thermal signatures at the target location—five signatures that burned crimson and azure and amber and magenta and viridian on the infrared—she felt something close to superstitious dread.
"Spectrum," she said. "They actually deployed it."
"Confirmed," her intel officer replied. "Project Spectrum was SENTINEL's Hail Mary. Zero percent survival rate in testing. Command declared it a failure."
"Apparently Command was optimistic," Sable said. She checked her weapons. Railgun loaded with armor-piercing rounds. Plasma charges. EMP grenades. Enough firepower to level a city block.
Against five test subjects who'd survived what no one else had.
"Change of mission parameters," she told her team. "Primary objective is no longer intelligence gathering. Primary objective is kill. No capture. No mercy. These are SENTINEL's final gambit. We end them here."
Thirty Covenant soldiers checked their weapons.
They'd killed eighteen thousand in one night.
What were five more?
Hangar Bay
7:08 AM
Marcus felt them before he saw them. The crimson integration had done something to his senses, made him aware of threats the way you're aware of your own heartbeat.
"They're here," he said.
"Four minutes early," Silas added. The azure armor's sensor suite was insane. "Thirty soldiers. Approaching from three vectors. They're not trying to be subtle."
"Why would they?" Mara's voice was calm. Clinical. "They outnumber us six to one. They have superior weapons. Superior training. Tactically, this should be a massacre."
"Should be," Jesse echoed. His viridian armor flickered nervously. "But we have... what, exactly?"
Atlas cracked his knuckles. The sound was like boulders grinding together. "We have armor that should not work. We have power that should have killed us. We have nothing to lose."
"And we have each other," Marcus added. "For what that's worth."
The hangar's proximity alarms screamed.
Through the open bay doors, Marcus saw them: thirty figures in black tactical gear, moving with military precision, weapons raised.
Director Cross's voice crackled through their integrated comms: "Spectrum Initiative, you are authorized for lethal force. Show them what SENTINEL's final weapon can do."
Marcus looked at his team. At four people who'd been strangers eight hours ago.
Who'd shared transformation and pain and the certain knowledge that they were probably going to die.
"Stay together," he said. "Watch each other's backs. And if this is it—if this is where we fall—we make it cost them."
Four acknowledgments. Four armored figures moving into position.
The Covenant strike team opened fire.
And the Spectrum Initiative learned what they'd become.