POV: All Four
The hallway wasn't a hallway anymore.
It was a killbox.
ALETHEIA-1 finished rising. 10 meters. Black Wosam plating. 4 faces rotating on its neck.
Iron. Wind. Lightning. Gold.
A mockery of us.
"Initiating Protocol: Harvest," it said in 4 voices.
Director Kolawole's assistant smiled from the catwalk. "Don't break it too much. It's expensive."
Kunle moved first. A faint red glow on his body,his eyes crimson red
He slammed his gauntlet into the floor. Every screw, every pipe, every weapon in the hall ripped free and became spears. He threw them.
_CLANG CLANG CLANG_
They sparked off its armor.
The Iron face opened its mouth and fired back. A beam of molten metal.
Kunle caught it with both hands. Let it burn. FORGE IT.
He twisted it and threw it back. The mech stumbled one step.
"Not bad," the Iron face said. "For scrap."
Dele was already airborne.
"Talk less," he said, and brought Oshogbo down on the Lightning face.
The bolt he threw was absorbed. Then fired back at 10x power.
It hit Dele and sent him through a wall.
He came back 2 seconds later. Smoking. Grinning. Blood on his teeth.
"Yeah. I like you."
Iyanu breathed in.
The Wind face raised a hand. A hurricane formed in the hallway, trying to crush us.
She exhaled.absorbing the power of the wind at the very core
Grey eyes met grey sensors.
"That's not wind," the face said. "That's theft."
"That's Ọya," Iyanu said. She ripped the sprinklers from the ceiling. Water became 100 glass blades and scored lines across the mech's chest.
Zainab hadn't attacked yet.
She walked. Gold rivers flowed from her sleeves and sank into the floor.
The Gold face looked down. "What are you doing?"
"Listening," Zainab said.
The rivers found the wires. Found the truth. Found the human pilot wired into the chest, screaming, eyes rolled back.
She pulled.
The mech convulsed. "Pilot vitals unstable. Unknown interference detected."
"Enough," all 4 faces said together.
It slammed both fists down. The shockwave cracked the floor and threw us back.
Kunle hit a wall. His core cracked. Pain.
_YOU ARE Ọ̀GÚN_, the voice in his head said. _WEAPONS ARE FOR THE TEAM._
He looked at the others. Dele bleeding lightning. Iyanu with hair floating. Zainab with gold in her eyes.
He made a choice.
Kunle ripped his gauntlet off. Tore the red core from his arm. It was still burning.
He threw it to Dele.
Dele caught it. Lightning met forge.
Oshogbo drank the core and became red and blue. Iron and Storm.
"Next," Dele said, and threw it.
Iyanu caught it. Wind caught the lightning. The axe became lighter. Faster. It sang like a storm.
She threw it to Zainab.
Zainab didn't catch it. She let the gold rivers take it. The weapon turned liquid. Light and thunder and wind and gold.
Zainab looked at the God-Machine. "You copied our Paths. But you don't have _this,she conjured up a powerful beam
She threw it.
The oshogbo Axe flew. It wasn't metal anymore. It was a concept.
*Forge + Storm + Wind + Gold = Àṣẹ*
It hit the chest dead center. Of the mech
The 4 faces on the aletheia-1 creamed in unison. Armor peeled away like paper.
Inside: a man. Old. Bald. Wired into the machine with cables in his spine. Crying.
"Please," he whispered. "It hurts. Make it stop.
We all looked at him with a chill down our spine
Pandora's dynamics has gone to far,even using a living human to generate power for their mech
Silence. Except for alarms.
Kunle stepped forward. One arm. Smoking.
He didn't kill him. Ọ̀gún's mercy.
He touched the cables and unmade them. The machine powered down with a loud screeching hum
The pilot collapsed. Alive.
The hallway was wreckage. Sparks. Smoke.
Sirens wailed.pandora reinforcements were 3 minutes out.
"That was stupid," Dele said, then laughed. "Let's do it again."
We were all left speechless by this crazy dude
Zainab was already kneeling by the pilot. Gold light closing his wounds. "He's a witness. We need him to testify."
Iyanu picked up the axe. It was just an axe again. But warm. "The Director knows we're here now. She let us win."
Kunle looked at his missing arm. Then at the scrap around him.
He knelt. And in 30 seconds he built something new.
Not an arm. A gauntlet. Bigger. With 4 small ports.
"For next time," he said. "So we don't have to throw our weapons."
Emeka burst in from a side door. "They're glassing the block in 5 minutes!"
Iyanu looked up through the hole in the ceiling. The clouds above Peacehaven were spinning. Not natural.
"They're coming," she said. "The real army."
Dele hefted the axe. "Then we go to them."
Zainab stood. "Ago iwoye first. Civilians."
The 4 of us looked at each other. Bruised. Bleeding. But standing.
"On three?" Kunle said.
"One," Dele said.
"Two," Iyanu said.
"Three," Zainab said.
We ran. Out of Peacehaven. Into the night.
Behind us, Peacehaven burned.
Ahead of us: ago-iwoye And a 300m God-Machine stepping into the bay.