The moment Lira triggered the Overdrive, the world went white.
No build-up, just instant, overwhelming light that swallowed the entire perimeter. Every scavenger within sight threw their arms over their faces. Kane didn't have time to blink. The shockwave hit him like a freight hauler.
Air slammed out of his lungs.
His feet left the ground.
He felt himself launched backward, rolling across dirt, glass, and metal until something solid caught his side and stopped him with a sharp burst of pain.
The sound came next.
A roaring, grinding, metallic howl like the entire Sector was being crushed inside a collapsing machine. The air vibrated with it, crackling like it was full of electricity. Kane lifted his head, blinking through spots of white seared into his vision.
Lira was at the center of the explosion.
Or what was left of her shape.
A pillar of pure white energy consumed the ground around her. Her silhouette blurred inside the light, arms outstretched toward the Anchor core. Code spilled off her in cascading streams, fragments of glyphs, broken symbols, raw System data peeling off.
The Anchor core shook violently as the Overdrive beam slammed into it.
The corrupted code wrapped around the core shuddered, trembled, then began to unravel, ripped apart strand by strand. Fractured data evaporated into thin air, dissolving.
The machine-beast, still twitching without its head, reacted too late.
Its remaining limbs convulsed as the Overdrive wave hit. The cables across its body jerked wildly, then burst apart. Plates of metal peeled off like shedding bark. The flesh underneath blistered, glowed, then disintegrated entirely.
By the time the white light began expanding outward, the mutant was already gone.
Kane planted his hand against the ground, struggling to get up. The shockwave hit a second later, harder than the first. The ground rippled. The barricade flipped backward like toy pieces. Entire sections of the perimeter wall tore loose and flew into the ruins.
Kane dropped flat again as the wind howled past him.
He yelled, "LIRA—!"
But his voice disappeared in the roar.
The pillar of Overdrive energy surged higher. The beam warped the air, bending it like it was bending reality itself. Dust spiraled upward around it, forming a towering vortex of sand, ash, and glowing debris.
Kane's ears rang. His breath felt thin. Every instinct told him to crawl toward her—but the shockwave was too strong. He could barely lift his arm without being shoved back down.
The ground fractured beneath the Anchor frame.
A wave of force blasted outward from the core, ripping open a widening crater. What remained of the scavenger barricades collapsed inward, swallowed by the growing pit. The Anchor itself sank halfway into the crater as its stabilizers detonated in a chain of blue sparks.
"Fall back! FALL BACK!" Captain Mara's voice faintly echoed somewhere behind the chaos, but it was impossible to obey any command except stay alive.
Kane shielded his head as debris rained down—chunks of concrete, snapped cables, pieces of metal frame.
The blast pushed outward again.
And again.
Another wave.
Then another.
Each smaller than the last, but still powerful enough to shove the surrounding ruins outward in circular ripples. Buildings groaned as their foundations cracked.
Finally—abruptly, the light extinguished.
Like someone snapped the power off.
The pillar collapsed into nothing.
No echo.
No glow.
Just silence.
A thick cloud of dust drifted down, smothering everything in muted gray. Kane coughed, pushing his way to his elbows, then to his knees.
His hands trembled. His vision was a mess of static spots, but he forced himself to turn toward the center of the blast.
Where Lira had been.
Where the defense team had been.
All that remained was a crater.
A deep, uneven wound in the Sector, glowing faintly with residual energy. Bits of metal floated in the air as if gravity hadn't fully returned yet. Loose cables dangled from cracked walls. Melted components steamed in shallow pools of shimmering liquid.
No bodies.
No armor.
No movement.
Nothing left of Lira except—
Kane's throat tightened.
He took a slow step forward—
—and the ground shifted beneath him.
His legs buckled, and he fell hard. Pain shot through his ribs, knocking the breath from him again. He tried to push himself back up, but debris slid down the slope of the crater, pulling him with it.
He slid several feet before grabbing onto a half-melted barrier plate jutting from the dirt. It burned his fingers, but he held on anyway.
"Lira…" he whispered.
He didn't get to say anything else.
The final tremor hit, weak, but enough to break the last section of ground beneath him. The slope collapsed, sending rocks and metal down like an avalanche.
Kane felt himself buried.
Cold metal crashed over his back.
Dust filled his mouth.
A heavy beam pinned his shoulder.
He gasped, vision fading around the edges. The crater's faint glow pulsed like a heartbeat, then dimmed.
And everything went still.
For a long time, there was nothing.
No sound.
No light.
Just a heavy pressure on Kane's back and the taste of dust in his mouth.
Then something cold touched his cheek.
Rain.
A thin line of it slipped between pieces of metal and rubble above him, dripping onto his skin. Another drop hit. Then another. The steady rhythm cut through the haze in his mind, pulling him back toward consciousness.
He tried to inhale.
Sharp pain flared through his ribs.
He froze and waited for it to pass, blinking until shapes slowly formed in front of him, twisted metal, broken concrete, a snapped cable hanging inches from his face.
His voice came out rough. "...I'm alive?"
It didn't feel like it.
But he could move his left hand, scraping dirt away until his fingers found a gap wide enough to push at. The debris didn't shift much, but it moved, just enough.
He gritted his teeth and forced his arm forward.
Metal groaned as he dragged himself a few inches out of the pile.
His ribs screamed in protest.
He ignored them.
He had one thought in his skull, blurring out everything else.
Lira.
When he finally pulled himself halfway free, the world came back into view.
What was left of it.
Sector 73 was unrecognizable.
The barricade was gone.
The buildings were half-collapsed or melted at the edges.
A crater the size of a plaza sat where the defense team had once been.
Kane braced himself against a jagged support beam and hauled his torso upright. His head throbbed. His ears still rang. But he was breathing, and for a moment that felt like a miracle.
"Lira…"
Nothing answered.
He stepped toward the crater, slowly, dragging his right leg, which wasn't responding properly. Every breath burned. Every movement hurt.
He reached the crater's rim.
Steam drifted along its bottom, swirling over glass-slick ground. Pieces of melted armor were buried in the walls, too warped to identify. A few broken weapons lay scattered, their cores burned out.
But what drew his eye were the lights.
Small, faint motes drifting lazily in the air; soft, pale-blue sparks, floating.
He stared at them. These are?…
Core fragments.
Lira's.
The glow intensified as a cluster of motes drifted closer to him. They hovered in front of his chest, pulsing like they were… sensing him.
The motes sank into his skin.
He gasped and stumbled backward, gripping his shirt as cold fire spread through his veins. The glow crawled across his body in thin silver lines before sinking deeper, threading through him like it was searching for a place to anchor.
A soft chime rang inside his head.
Then another.
Then three rapid tones, overlapping.
Kane froze.
A second line appeared, clearer, louder, like it was being spoken directly into his awareness.
"Stop," he hissed, dropping to one knee. "Stop, stop, get out of me—"
The silver-threaded glow along his arms brightened, pulsing once.
A third notification chimed:
Colder.
As if something inside him had opened its eyes.
Kane's breath shuddered. He clawed at the dirt, trying to steady himself as the cold sensation surged through his chest and up his spine.
Then he heard it.
A voice.
Quiet.
Neutral.
Close, inside his head, but not echoing. More like someone speaking right next to his ear.
"Rogue fragment neutralized. Integration initiated."
His pulse spiked.
"What—what does that mean? Who's—?"
The silver glow faded instantly, leaving only a faint flicker under his skin.
Kane swayed, vision blurring again. His blood felt too heavy. His thoughts slipped like they were falling out of his skull.
Rain continued to fall, sizzling on the crater's hot edges.
He tried to stay upright.
Failed.
His body sagged to the side, landing on the warm ground. Vision dimming. Hearing fading.
Just before everything went black, a few shapes appeared; human silhouettes in the distance.