The engine on the ridge roared, a sound of cold, mechanical purpose that cut through the unnatural quiet of the ravine. Rhys pushed himself to his feet, his sidearm a familiar weight in a world of smoke and lies. The air tasted of ash and betrayal. Fifty meters away, the woman rose from the dust. The oracle. The enemy.
A flicker of light on his wrist drew his eye. The screen of his wrist-comm, cracked but functional, displayed a new contact. A single, blinking icon moving toward their position from the north. It was a Compact recovery team, designation displayed in stark, block letters. Sanitizer. The word was a clinical euphemism, a piece of system jargon he had used a hundred times himself. It meant witnesses were to be erased. It meant they were coming to finish the job. The ETA was eight minutes.
The last vestiges of his loyalty, the final fraction that had survived the artillery strike, evaporated into the smoky air. It was not a dramatic shattering, but a quiet, hollow collapse, like a building whose foundations had been vaporized. He was no longer a pilot of the Babylon Compact. He was collateral. He was a loose thread to be snipped. The price of his life’s obedience was this: to be hunted down and killed by the very system he had sworn to protect.
He looked back at the woman. The oracle. Nysa Calder. Her name came to him from the pre-mission briefing, a file he had skimmed and dismissed. Now she was the only other living person in this tomb, and his training, a lifetime of ingrained doctrine, screamed one clear order: eliminate the threat. She was Chorus. She was the enemy.
As if sensing his thoughts, a faint light began to bloom from within her. It was not the aggressive violet of their weaponry, but a soft, defensive shimmer, a pale luminescence that made the air around her seem to warp. Her body, already translucent and strange, became a column of clouded, internal energy. She was gathering power, preparing for a final, desperate fight. Preparing for him.
Rhys raised his sidearm. The motion was automatic, a pure function of muscle memory. He centered the sights on her chest. His finger rested on the trigger. It would be so easy. One clean shot. One less variable in a world that had become pure chaos. It was what he was built to do. It was the system’s final command, echoing in the ruins of his faith.
But the system was a liar. The system had murdered his friends. He held his aim steady, the weapon an extension of his will, and for the first time, his will was entirely his own. He did not fire. He let the weapon hang in the air between them, a question instead of an answer. This small act of inaction was a rebellion, a choice to reject the logic that had led them all to this ravine.
— They’re coming for both of us, — he said, his voice a raw rasp. The words felt foreign in his mouth, an appeal to an enemy, a violation of every protocol he had ever known. He was trading his entire ideology, the bedrock of his identity, for the simple, brutal truth of their shared predicament.
He saw her react. The light around her did not dim, but it stopped growing. Her head tilted, a flicker of assessment in her milky, unfocused eyes. She was listening.
— We run together, — he said, the words coming faster now, pushed by the inbound timer on his wrist, — or we die separately.
It was not an offer of peace. It was a proposal of physics. Two targets moving in different directions were easy to eliminate. Two targets moving together, covering each other, were a problem. It was a tactical calculation, the only language he had left. He was offering her a temporary alliance, a pact forged in the shared betrayal of their masters.
Her defensive glow began to subside. The pale light receded back into her limbs, leaving her looking fragile and gaunt in her simple, colorless robes. She was weighing his words against a lifetime of ingrained hatred for his kind, for the men of Matter who saw her spirit as a disease. He could see the conflict in the subtle tension of her stance. Her trust in him was nonexistent, a flat zero, but her trust in the logic of survival was absolute.
The roar of engines grew louder. On the horizon, three kilometers away, the silhouettes of Compact assault vehicles crested the ridge. They were heavy, six-wheeled machines, built for rough terrain and overwhelming force. Their forward cannons were already swiveling, seeking targets. The time for debate was over.
A spotlight flared to life, pinning them in a harsh, white glare. Dust motes danced in the beam, a swirling galaxy of tiny particles.
Nysa made her choice. She took a half-step, not away from him, but sideways, moving to stand with him. Without a word, she turned, placing her back to his, her shoulder blades nearly touching his own. The truce was accepted. Not with a handshake or a nod, but with the pure, tactical geometry of two soldiers preparing to fight their way out of a kill box.
He was a fugitive, allied with a heretic. The system he had served was now the monster hunting him. He felt a strange, cold clarity settle over him. The world was broken, but for the first time, he saw the cracks clearly.
The first shot from the ridge kicked up a plume of dirt ten meters to their left, and they ran.
