The ceiling of the Prometheus Core didn't just break; it detonated.
Four massive, charcoal-black shapes tore through the obsidian overhead, propelled by high-pressure methane thrusters. These weren't training mechs. They were "Eclipse" Stalkers—the Iron-Guard's silent killers, sleek and predatory, with multi-lens eyes that glowed a cold, mechanical red.
"Protect the pillar!" Zane roared, his voice cracking over the comms.
He slammed his training mech into a defensive stance in front of Luke's motionless body. Luke was still standing at the central console, his obsidian-stained arm vanished into a port in the crystalline pillar, his head tilted back as violet light surged through his veins. He was wide open.
The First Contact
"Identify yourselves, traitors!" a voice boomed from the lead Stalker. It was the cold, synthesized tone of a man who had long ago traded his humanity for a paycheck. "By order of Senator Vance, you are to be dismantled for the crime of high espionage."
"Try it, bucket-head!" Jax bellowed.
His Brawler mech charged forward, the massive kinetic shield raised. One of the Stalkers fired a concentrated sonic blast—a "Shatter-Wave"—that rippled through the air. The shield groaned, the metal warping under the pressure, but Jax didn't stop. He slammed into the Stalker, the sound of five hundred tons of colliding alloy echoing through the chamber like a thunderclap.
"Mira! Sloane! Take the flanks!" Zane commanded. "Don't let them circle Luke!"
The Shadow Dance
The chamber was a nightmare of tight corners and "Harvest" pods. Sloane moved her scout-mech with a fluidity that shouldn't have been possible in the heavy gravity of the Core. She used the pods as cover, popping out to fire precise thermal bolts into the Stalkers' sensor clusters.
"I can't get a lock!" Mira shouted, her fingers flying over her console. "They're using a localized jamming field! Every time I try to hack their HUDs, the feedback fries my processors!"
"Then stop trying to hack them and start hitting them!" Zane snapped.
He ignited his plasma sword—the one that had turned a jagged, flickering purple. He dove into the fray, his movements a blur of violet light. He fought with a reckless fury, a man who knew that if he failed, his brother was already dead.
The Breaking Point
But the Iron-Guard was too disciplined. Two of the Stalkers ignored Jax and Zane, focusing their fire on the central pillar.
"They're trying to destroy the connection!" Mira warned. "If they sever the link while Luke is inside, his neural-lattice will collapse! He'll be brain-dead!"
"Not on my watch!"
Sloane threw her scout-mech into the line of fire, her light armor shredding under a barrage of railgun slugs. A spark erupted from her cockpit, and her mech slumped against the pillar, its left leg severed.
"Sloane!" Zane cried out.
"Keep... fighting..." she gasped over the comms, her HUD flickering red. "I'm... still... here..."
Jax was being overwhelmed, three Stalkers pinning him against the wall, their obsidian blades slowly grinding through his Brawler's chest plate. The air in the Core was filled with the smell of scorched wiring and the screams of dying machines.
The Awakening
The lead Stalker stepped over Sloane's wreckage, its arm-mounted cannon spinning up, aimed directly at Luke's head.
"The Hampton line ends today," the pilot cold-bloodedly announced.
Suddenly, the violet light in the central pillar didn't just pulse—it exploded. The thousands of pods lining the walls began to vibrate in unison. A low, subsonic hum filled the room, so powerful it cracked the glass of the Stalkers' cockpits.
Luke's eyes snapped open. They weren't violet. They were a brilliant, burning blue—the same blue as the General's "zone."
He didn't move his mech. He simply raised his free hand, the obsidian veins glowing with a terrifying intensity.
"DISCONNECT."
The power in the entire Core reversed. The Stalkers' engines didn't just stall; they inverted. The internal reactors of the Iron-Guard mechs flared, their own power being sucked into the pillar like water down a drain. The four black mechs collapsed to the floor, their pilots trapped in suits that had suddenly turned into lead coffins.
Luke slumped forward, the connection to the pillar finally severing. Zane caught him in his mech's hands just before he hit the floor.
"Luke! Talk to me!"
Luke looked up, his face gaunt, his skin almost translucent. He clutched a small, glowing data-drive—the memory of thirty thousand souls.
"I have it," Luke whispered. "I have the proof. But Zane... we have to go. My father... he's not just a ghost. He's a Signal. And the Senator is the one broadcasted it to the Drealius in the first place."