The signal came not as a sound, but as a deep, bone-jarring thrum that vibrated up through the polished basalt floor. Two kilometers below, Volkov’s charges had breached the primary coolant intake. A green light blinked on Isabelle Moreau’s wrist-mounted display. The first domino had fallen. She keyed her comm.
— All teams, execute. Hammer, on me.
Her voice was a flat, cold line in the chaotic hum of the Spire. Her team of three moved instantly, their dark tactical gear blending into the shifting shadows of the non-Euclidean architecture. They advanced down a wide corridor where the walls seemed to curve away at impossible angles, the air thick with the smell of ozone and something ancient, like dust from a long-sealed tomb.
The assault began. Moreau’s team was the hammer, their objective to drive Axiom’s security forces back into the traps laid by the coalition. Suppressed rifle fire echoed in short, controlled bursts. Axiom troopers in their black polymer armor returned fire, their energy weapons casting brief, violent flashes of blue-white light that sizzled against the basalt. Moreau moved with brutal efficiency, two rounds to the chest, one to the helmet visor, then on to the next target.
A secondary explosion erupted from a corridor to their left, a concussive blast of heat and pressure. The EU sappers. The anvil. Screams erupted over the open channels of the Axiom network, a chaotic symphony of panic and pain. The plan was working. They were funneling Joric’s forces into the kill-boxes, turning the Spire’s own structure into a weapon against its defenders. The cost was measured in bodies, and the bill was being paid in full.
Moreau checked her tactical display. Red icons representing Axiom units were being systematically erased from the map as the traps sprung. But one icon was not retreating. It was advancing. A single, heavy marker, punching through a sector that should have been impassable.
She looked up from her display and saw him. Commander Joric. He was leading a squad of his best men through a hall where the floor had lost its integrity, shimmering like a heat haze. It was memory quicksand, a localized reality glitch where solid matter had forgotten its purpose. Axiom troopers sank into it, their armor plating dissolving into the shimmering floor, but Joric strode through it as if on solid ground, his sheer will bending the unstable reality to his path. He was not being funneled. He was creating his own path, a straight line aimed directly at Sineus’s planned route to the core.
The coalition’s elegant plan had just met the brute force of a man who would not be herded. Moreau’s mind processed the new tactical reality in a fraction of a second. Joric would intercept Sineus in under two minutes. There was no time to redeploy the others.
— Hold this corridor, — she ordered her team, her voice leaving no room for argument. — I’m diverting the heavy asset.
The price of the choice was simple: she was breaking formation, abandoning her role as the hammer’s head to face their most dangerous opponent alone. It was a tactically unsound decision that would likely get her killed. It was also the only decision that mattered.
She moved, her body a blur of motion, cutting across the battlefield to place herself directly in Joric’s path. He saw her, and his advance did not slow. He simply adjusted his trajectory, a predator locking onto a new target. The chaos of the larger battle faded into a dull roar as they closed the distance. All that existed was the hundred meters of basalt between them.
He was a storm of controlled violence, his armored frame immense. He didn’t bother to aim his rifle; he swung it like a war club, the heavy stock meant to crush her skull. Moreau didn’t try to block the blow. She couldn’t. Instead, she moved with it, her body a study in brutal efficiency. She parried the rifle with her own, the impact jarring her arms to the shoulder, and used his momentum to spin inside his guard. She drove the butt of her weapon into the seam of his armor at the neck.
The blow would have felled a normal man. Joric merely grunted, the sound like grinding stone, and backhanded her across the face. The force of the strike sent her stumbling back, the world exploding in a flash of white pain. Her helmet’s internal display cracked. He was pure force. She was precision. It was not an even match.
As she fought to regain her footing, a thought, sharp and clear as a compass needle, cut through the pain. Sineus’s quiet insistence on a single, true north. A steady point in the chaos. For a moment, under the relentless pressure of Joric’s assault, her own purpose felt like it was spinning, lost in the violence. Was this her mission? To die in a pointless duel in a hallway at the end of the world?
Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw him. A fleeting shadow. Sineus, running past the duel, his focus absolute, his eyes locked on the great circular door of the control room fifty meters ahead. He did not look at her. He did not slow. He trusted her to hold the line.
Her objective was complete. He was through.
In that instant, everything settled. The spinning chaos in her mind locked into place. Her internal compass found its north. Her purpose was no longer to win, not even to survive. It was to be the gate. To keep Joric here, occupied, for as long as it took. The pain in her head vanished, replaced by a cold, crystalline clarity.
Joric charged again, a bellow of rage tearing from his helmet’s external speaker. This time, she met him not with deflection, but with a solid, rooted stance. She was no longer a duelist. She was a wall. The hammer had become part of the anvil. The fight was not over, but its purpose had fundamentally changed. She would hold him here, or she would die here. There was no other option on the map.
The path to the control room was clear.
The cost was still being calculated.
