03:18 P.M. – Sector 20, Outside of the Red Dogs Main Base
The air in the Red Dogs' garage was thick with the smells of oil, dust, and the ever-present, low hum of Blaze's unstable core.
He leaned against the rust-flecked frame of a derelict truck, a spectator to a private unveiling.
Ember emerged from the makeshift armory, and Blaze's low whistle cut through the garage's ambient noise.
It was a sound of genuine, theatrical appreciation.
"Well, well," he drawled, his eyes tracing the lines of the new equipment. "Is that the little 'present' our corporate friends gave you for field testing?"
It was an exo-armor, a masterpiece of sinister engineering.
The base chassis was a matte, gunmetal grey, but overlaid across it were slick, crimson red accents that seemed to drink the weak light.
The design was undeniably aggressive, with plates shaped to suggest licking flames, curling from the greaves up over the thighs and across the chest plate.
It was V-Tech's brand, stamped onto her flesh in alloy and polymer.
Ember ignored his tone, her focus entirely internal.
She moved with a deliberate, testing slowness.
She rolled her shoulders, the armor's joints responding with a whisper-quiet hydraulic sigh.
She flexed her fingers within the articulated gauntlets, then dropped into a shallow crouch, the leg servos compensating seamlessly.
She rose, twisting her torso, testing the range of motion.
"…It's surprisingly flexible," she finally said, her voice a low murmur of reluctant approval.
It wasn't just flexible; it was an extension of her body, a second skin that promised power without sacrifice.
The corporate cage, for all its horrors, had its comforts.
Ember fell into a fighting stance, her movements sharp and fluid.
Then she began.
Her fists became blurs, cutting through the air with a speed that was unnerving, impossible for unaugmented muscle and bone.
The exo-armor amplified her every motion, turning a simple shadowboxing routine into a display of lethal potential.
Each punch ended with a faint, pressurized hiss from the servos, a sound like a serpent striking.
She stopped abruptly, her boots planted firmly on the concrete.
She lowered her center, knees bending, the armor's leg actuators compressing with a low thrum of gathered energy.
Then she launched.
It wasn't a jump; it was a controlled explosion.
She shot upward, a streak of crimson and grey, clearing the three-story height of a nearby maintenance building with terrifying ease.
For a moment, she was silhouetted against the smog-choked sky before landing with a impact that was far too gentle for the force she'd exerted, the armor's systems absorbing the shock seamlessly.
From below, a slow, mocking clap echoed.
Blaze grinned, a wide, manic slash of white in the gloom. "Oh, that's a neat trick," he said, his voice dripping with a sarcastic admiration.
"That thing's good... for patching up weak, fleshy limitations, I suppose." The unspoken boast hung in the air: I don't need an armor to do the same thing.
A voice, cold and synthetically precise, spoke directly into the heart of his mind.
<
AiM's statement was a sterile fact, a correction to his unspoken thought.
Blaze's grin didn't falter, but his eyes flickered with a trace of annoyance at the ghost in his machine.
"I know," he murmured, the words a low, visceral rumble meant only for the AI.
He didn't need a reminder of what he was.
The real show wasn't the armor's power, but the cost of wearing it.
<
AiM's offer was as clinical as a surgeon's scalpel.
A wicked spark ignited in Blaze's eyes. "Now that's convenient," he purred.
He moved not with his usual theatrical swagger, but with the unnerving, liquid speed of his augmentations.
One second he was leaning against the truck; the next, he was at Ember's side.
Before she could react, he pressed his palm flat against the armor's flank.
A complex, fiery glyph flared to life on his palm, searing the air with a sharp crackle of aetheric energy.
It wasn't a gentle activation sequence—it was a violent command.
The glyph detonated.
A concussive wave of pure force, channeled directly into the armor's systems, slammed into Ember.
It wasn't an explosion of fire, but of kinetic energy.
The air left her lungs in a shocked gasp as she was catapulted upward like a stone from a sling, her "Wha—!" torn away by the roaring wind.
Blaze watched her tumble through the air, a speck of red against the grey sky, his head tilted with the curiosity of a boy who had just kicked an anthill.
"AiM," he called out, his voice casual amidst the chaos. "Be a dear and help her unlock the repulsors. Before she becomes a stain on the floor."
<
High above, Ember's world was a violent, spinning vertigo.
Then, a foreign presence slithered into the armor's operating system.
Against her will, her limbs were forcibly straightened by the suit's own servos.
With a deafening roar that shredded the air, hidden panels on the boots and back snapped open.
Raw, blue-white repulsor energy screamed from the ports, arresting her deadly fall and transforming her uncontrolled ascent into a wobbly, terrifying hover.
She wasn't flying; she was being kept aloft by a ghost in the machine, a puppet on burning strings.
"Do you like your new feature?" Blaze called up, his voice dripping with mock sincerity.
The repulsors screamed as Ember answered.
A controlled burst of power became a furious, forward dash.
She shot toward him like a crimson comet, the armor whining in protest, her fist aimed squarely at his grinning face.
It should have connected.
It was a blow faster than any human could throw, amplified by the suit's raw power.
But Blaze wasn't human.
Not anymore.
He didn't duck or block.
He simply swayed his head to the side, a lazy, almost imperceptible tilt.
Her gauntlet whistled past his cheek, the displaced air rustling his hair.
The movement was so minimal, so effortless, it was an insult in itself.
Ember landed, her boots scraping on the concrete.
Her knotted brows tightened further, a storm brewing in her eyes.
The annoyance curdled into pure, hot rage.
With a guttural cry, she unleashed a flurry of blows—jabs, crosses, a spinning kick that could shatter concrete.
To Blaze, the world had slowed to a crawl.
His mind, accelerated by the corporate tech woven into his synapses, processed the assault as a languid dance.
He saw the subtle shift of her shoulder before the punch, the minute adjustment in her hips before the kick.
Each attack was a telegraphed, sluggish movement.
He weaved and sidestepped with the bored grace of a man avoiding falling leaves, his hands still tucked in his pockets.
The roaring repulsors were a distant hum, her enraged shouts a distorted, drawn-out echo.
He was a ghost in her storm, untouched and utterly, infuriatingly bored.
Ember put the full, servo-enhanced force of the exo-armor into her next punch, a straight right aimed to wipe the smirk from his face.
This time, Blaze didn't move at all.
Her fist slammed to an abrupt, shuddering halt in mid-air, a mere few inches from his nose.
A faint, hexagonal shimmer of orange light flickered into existence where her knuckles had struck, dispersing the kinetic energy with a sound like shattering glass.
The air around it wavered with displaced heat.
The kinetic barrier.
It hadn't even been a conscious effort on his part.
Blaze didn't flinch.
His grin didn't even twitch.
He simply looked at her frozen fist, then back into her furious eyes, his head tilted.
"Have you warmed up already?" he asked, his voice light and conversational, as if they'd just finished a casual jog.
Ember's arm dropped to her side.
The servos gave a defeated whine.
The fight drained out of her, replaced by a cold, simmering understanding.
She was a spectacle.
A weapon being tested against an immovable object.
Her new power, her new speed—it was all just a show for him, and a cage for her.
She let out a sharp, disgusted breath through her nose.
"Hmph. You are annoying," she muttered, the words fall flat.
She turned her back on him, the repulsors on her armor cooling with a descending whine.
She had given up.
Not on the fight, but on the idea that she could ever land a blow on the man he had become.
Suddenly, a sharp crump of a distant explosion tore through the relative quiet of the garage.
A fireball, vivid orange against the dull grey sky, bloomed over the roofline of the Red Dogs' main base, followed by a rolling cloud of black smoke.
The sound of secondary detonations—likely munitions catching—came a heartbeat later.
Blaze didn't even turn his head to look.
A slow, predatory smile spread across his face, all traces of his earlier mockery gone, replaced by a cold, focused intensity.
"Right on schedule," he murmured, his voice a low thrum of anticipation. "It seems Ash and Cinder have already started the opening act."
Ember didn't waste a word.
The brief, frustrating test of her armor was forgotten, shelved in the face of real, tangible destruction.
The distraction was over; the mission was now.
She gave a single, sharp nod, the crimson helmet of her exo-armor sealing over her head.
"Then let's go," her voice echoed, filtered and metallic from within the helm.
Without another look back at the burning base—the internal problem was being handled—the two of them moved.
Blaze ignited first, a pillar of contained, white-hot flame that scorched the concrete where he stood before launching into a blazing trajectory.
A moment later, Ember's new repulsors roared to life, and she shot after him, a sleek red streak following a comet of fire.
The party was starting.
And they were headed straight for the main stage.
***
The air in the briefing room was thick with the smell of aether, stale sweat, and the sharp, clean scent of recently cleaned weapons.
It was the smell of a lull, a fragile pause that everyone knew wouldn't last.
Rook's voice was a low, grinding rumble, a sound that seemed to vibrate through the scarred metal floor plates.
He stood before a scattered group of Talons, their faces a mix of exhaustion and grim focus.
Some were still wiping grime from their armor; others stared at the floor, their minds clearly replaying the recent chaos in the sewers.
"—which means," Rook continued, his massive hands resting on the table, "we can no longer assume we're fighting gangsters with scavenged gear. The Scorchers are now equipped with specialized corporate equipment. The kind you don't find in the Junkyard."
The door at the back of the room hissed open.
Every head except Rook's turned.
Echo stood in the doorway, a silhouette against the brighter light of the hallway.
Her gaze, cool and assessing, swept over the assembled soldiers before landing on Rook.
She didn't apologize for the interruption.
She simply absorbed the scene.
Rook gave a single, shallow nod in her direction, a silent acknowledgment between veterans.
He didn't break his rhythm.
He tapped a command into the console on the table.
A grainy, shaky holo-image flickered to life above it. It was footage, likely pulled from a helmet cam, showing the sleek, deadly form of one of Cinder's drones hovering in a rubble-strewn street.
The image zoomed in, highlighting the drone's seamless alloy casing and the faint, corporate glyphs etched near its repulsor vanes.
"This," Rook said, his voice dropping into an even deeper, more deliberate tone. "This is what hit us. Not some slapped-together junk. This is factory-made. Built with a purpose."
The image changed, showing a sudden, blinding flash from the drone's weapon, followed by static.
The unspoken message was clear: that flash was the last thing some of their comrades ever saw.
A heavy silence fell over the room.
The theoretical threat of corporate backing had just become a brutal, pixelated reality.
Rook let the silence hang for a three-count, letting the image of the advanced drone burn itself into their minds.
"Due to this... oversight," he said, the word 'oversight' tasting like ash in his mouth, "we lost good people. Fast. They never stood a chance."
He slowly scanned the room, his weathered face a mask of grim resolve.
He made eye contact with a rookie whose hands were still trembling, with a grizzled veteran whose jaw was clenched tight, with a medic who looked like she'd seen too much death in one day.
"From this moment forward," Rook's voice hardened, losing its rumble and gaining the sharp edge of a command. "You assume every piece of gear they have is better than yours. You assume every shadow holds a weapon you've never seen. You fight smarter. You fight meaner."
He leaned forward, his presence seeming to fill the entire room.
"My only order," he said, his voice a low, forceful thing that brooked no argument, "is that we end this fight with fewer of our own in the ground. Do you understand me?"
A chorus of low, determined grunts and sharp "Copy that" answered him.
The fear in the room hadn't vanished, but it had been forged into something harder: a cold, sharp resolve.
Echo, still standing by the door, gave a barely perceptible nod.
The briefing was over.
The real work was about to begin.
The low murmur of voices returned as the Talons dispersed, the brief moment of unity fracturing back into individual purpose.
Some headed for the armory, others to check on the wounded, their boots scuffing softly against the dusty floor.
The room emptied until only three figures remained, standing in a loose triangle near the still-glowing projector.
Echo waited until the last soldier had stepped out and the door hissed shut before she moved.
She closed the distance to Rook in two silent steps, her movement economical and deliberate.
"Rook," she said, her voice low, a blade meant for his ears only. "I've got some interesting intel from Vega."
Rook, who had been staring at the blank space where the drone's image had been, slowly turned his head.
His brow, already heavy with the day's burdens, furrowed deeper.
His eyes, tired and skeptical, searched her impassive face.
"That was fast," he rumbled, the words laced with a veteran's caution.
He knew her methods were effective, but their speed always unnerved him. "Are you certain what he told you is the truth? A cornered man will say anything to buy a breath."
Before Echo could answer, a soft scrape of a chair leg drew their attention.
Mags had settled herself on a nearby crate, her shotgun resting across her knees.
She didn't look at them, instead focusing on methodically checking the weapon's action with a series of precise, practiced clicks and checks.
The sound was sharp and definitive in the quiet room.
She wasn't intruding, but she was making her presence known, a silent auditor to this new development.
Her posture was a clear statement: whatever this intel was, it concerned her too.
She had pulled the trigger that started this, and she would see it through.
Echo's gaze flickered to Mags for a heartbeat, acknowledging her, then returned to Rook.
A faint, cold smile touched her lips, a gesture that held no warmth.
"He wasn't trying to buy his life," she said, her voice dropping even further. "He was spitting venom. And venom… is rarely a lie."
Rook uncrossed his arms only to fold them again, a restless, heavy motion.
The polished chrome of his augmented limbs caught the projector's dying light, throwing sharp slivers of white across the walls.
The pristine metal was a stark contrast to the grime still clinging to his armor; he must have taken a moment to meticulously clean the machinery, a small ritual of control amidst the chaos.
His voice was a low, impatient rumble.
"So, what is it?"
Echo's eyes held his, the pale light making them look like chips of frosted glass. "It seems the Red Dogs were never in cahoots with those pyromaniacs," she said, the words clean and precise. "They were forced to submit. They're not allies. They're victims. Or slaves."
The only sound for a long moment was the soft, rhythmic rubbing of cloth on steel.
Mags had produced a clean, oil-stained rag and was slowly, methodically running it along the barrel of her shotgun.
She didn't look up, but her shoulders tightened almost imperceptibly.
Her nod, when it came, was a single, shallow dip of her chin.
It wasn't agreement with Echo so much as a grim acknowledgment of a puzzle piece snapping into a new, more dangerous configuration.
The weapon in her hands, recently aimed at those very "victims," suddenly felt heavier.
"I'm trying to think of how we can exploit that," Echo said, her gaze turning inward, sharp and calculating. "Turn their fear into a weapon. Make them bite the hand that used to feed them."
Rook let out a slow breath, the sound a low hiss of escaping pressure.
He shook his head, a gesture of weary pragmatism. "…That would be an ideal scenario."
He leaned forward, his augmented arms creaking softly. "If. And only if, it could happen. If it were that easy, those Dogs would have already turned on their masters. A cornered animal is more likely to curl up and die than fight the bigger predator."
A cold, knowing light flickered in Echo's eyes.
"I know that already," she said, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur. "I wasn't planning to just whisper in their ear and hope. I was thinking of giving them some 'help'. A little push in the right direction."
Rook's expression hardened.
He straightened up, his full, imposing height seeming to block out the light. "You do know that we're already tight on manpower here?" he growled, the question a blunt instrument. "Every gun we have is needed right here, right now. You're talking about starting another fight we can't afford, with an enemy we don't understand, on a hope that a beaten dog still has any teeth left."
"That's precisely why we're discussing it right now," Echo countered, her voice a low, insistent blade.
She took a half-step closer, the space between them crackling with divergent strategies. "If everything goes right, it would be like hitting two birds with one stone. We weaken the Red Dogs by exposing their desperation, and we let them bleed the Scorchers for us."
Rook's jaw tightened.
He could see the cold, elegant logic of it, a spider's web of a plan.
But he dealt in the concrete—in ammo counts and fortified positions.
"Another 'if'…" he began, the word heavy with all the things that could go wrong.
The rest of his objection died in his throat.
It wasn't a sound that started so much as a feeling—a deep, sub-sonic thump that hit them in the chest a fraction of a second before the sound itself.
The world seemed to flinch.
The floor plates beneath their feet jumped, a sharp, violent vibration that rattled teeth and sent a fine dust sifting down from the ceiling.
Then the sound arrived.
A deafening, concussive explosion that tore through the walls, swallowing Rook's words and every other thought in the room.
The single, lumen strip flickered wildly, casting their frozen, startled faces in strobes of stark light and sudden shadow.
In a split second everything halts to a standstill, the three of them stood like a statue in the shuddering room, the aftermath of the blast kept ringing in their ears.
But Mags moved faster than anyone on the room.
In one fluid motion, she abandoned the cleaning rag, swept her shotgun into a ready position, and was already moving toward the door, her boots hitting the floor in a silent, predatory stride.
There was no hesitation, only a grim, focused urgency.
Echo and Rook exchanged a single, sharp glance—a world of unspoken communication in that split second.
The theoretical debate was over.
The "if" had been answered with fire and thunder.
As one, they turned and followed Mags out, the door hissing shut behind them on a room now empty save for the settling dust and the ghost of an unfinished argument.