“Confirmed annihilation of Battalion Ten,” another officer added. “We’ve lost contact with Seven and Eight, sir.”
Commander Dubhe stepped closer, his face twisted in fear and disbelief. The main monitor showed chaos—soldiers running, personnel scrambling for shelter from the relentless intruder.
“What the hell is this android? I’ve never seen anything like it,” he muttered, turning to Claudia Hosse. “Has the automated defense system been repaired yet?”
“No, sir,” Hosse replied. “The overload that knocked out our radar and external antenna circuit is still disrupting the system.”
“Officer Grant?”
“No luck, sir. Cannons and guided missiles are unresponsive. Electromagnetic nets and steel barriers are offline as well. We can’t isolate any part of the fortress.”
“What about the technicians? Why haven’t they resolved this yet?” Dubhe snapped. He’d issued the repair order ten minutes ago!
Hosse and Grant exchanged uneasy glances.
“We’ve lost communication with the repair center, sir,” Grant said. “No audio or video feed from that sector.”
Dubhe clenched his fists to suppress a cry of frustration, keeping his posture rigid and his hands clasped behind his back.
“The enemy is in Tunnel C!” another officer announced. “He’s on Level One and advancing, sir!”
A wave of murmurs swept through the command room, followed by a stunned silence. The situation wasn’t dire—it was catastrophic. The intruder was only six floors above them. In minutes, he’d be knocking at their door.
“We’ll deploy our best men,” Commander Dubhe declared. “Activate the Grenadier Squad!”
Officer Liza Grant relayed the order through the loudspeaker. Her half-empty cup of coffee sat forgotten on her desk, now cold.
Because of the bad weather, the dirt shortcut leading to Bellatrix had turned into a muddy quagmire. A vast plain stretched ahead as Vicky navigated her off-roader, bucking across the ruts.
She squinted through the darkness and the rain hammering the windshield, steering toward the facility. She kept the headlights off to avoid giving away her approach, though it wasn’t hard to know where to go—in the distance, columns of fire rose up, massive, blurry pillars of red light cutting through the stormy night, licking the ground. All she had to do was drive toward them.
They were nearing the end of the road, and doubts about what lay ahead sent a shiver through her—much like the cold had back in the motel’s shed. She resisted the urge to question Juzo again; after his sharp ‘Vicky, I’m going—whether you like it or not,’ she knew his next response would be icy indifference. It was far too late to turn back now. They were deep in enemy territory, heading straight into a confrontation with a much more formidable foe.
“All of that—caused by a single android?!” Vicky exclaimed. “Does that computer really mean that much to him?”
Gripping the dashboard as the vehicle shook with force, Juzo glanced at his friend, who was wrestling with the steering wheel. He didn’t doubt her driving skills but feared the treacherous road might send them skidding and flipping over.
Relax, he told himself. If we flip, you’ll find out soon enough. Perhaps it would’ve been smarter to take his motorcycle.
Something shifted near his feet. He reached down, his hand brushing against something soft—it was Vicky’s blonde wig. Tossing it onto the back seat alongside the paper map, he focused on the rows of posts lining the path. The downpour and the pitch-black night made them hard to spot; they emerged one after another, illuminated by the glow of the distant fire. Occasionally, he caught sight of additional rows of posts further away, barely visible through the storm. These long metal rods were the radio and radar antennas—known as the outer antenna circuit.
“Look!” Vicky pointed to the left.
Juzo turned in time to spot a pile of destroyed androids smoking in the dark, under the rain, scattered at the base of one of the posts in the muddy ground. He glanced down at the stopwatch-like device in his lap. The data on the screen confirmed his suspicions.
“Looks like we won’t need to do anything here,” she said. “You’ll have to thank that belligerent Cyclops for this one.”
Juzo nodded, tossing the device onto the back seat next to the wig and the map. Vicky was right, though her observation left him uneasy. If the fortress had been accidentally compromised due to the attack, then ironically, the A60 had made their infiltration easier. But if he had done so deliberately… Well, maybe the android’s systems weren’t as damaged as they had thought.
One possibility was that the Cyclops had reached Bellatrix guided by some tracking chip, following his programming to retrieve the computer. But sabotaging the enemy’s defense system to facilitate entry? That was an entirely different level of calculation. The goal might’ve been the same, but the implications were worlds apart.
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The A60 could get to the machine before him—or worse, destroy it before he had a chance to access the encrypted data.
Their infiltration of Bellatrix had been simplified. The rest of the plan? Not so much. Not only would they have to break into the fortress, access the massive computer’s secure hardware, locate the Auriga, and make it halfway across the globe—but now they had a new, powerful, and unpredictable adversary in their way.
The sound of distant booms reached them, carried on the wind and rain. Neither ventured to guess if they were explosions or thunder.
The fortress’s perimeter wall came into view, a shadow emerging through the curtains of water and darkness—less than two hundred yards away.
“Here!” Juzo ordered sharply.
Vicky hit the brakes, and the off-roader skidded before coming to a halt. Juzo jumped out before the vehicle had completely stopped—its swaying chassis narrowly missed hitting him as he darted through the rain. With his backpack slung over his shoulders, he sprinted through the muck, boots sinking into the mire, every step a fight to stay upright.
“Move it!” he shouted back at Vicky. The gunfire had stopped; all that remained was the wailing of an alarm. The android must have already breached the fortress.
Vicky stepped out of the vehicle, and the storm greeted her with stinging slaps of water. With her blue jacket zipped up to the top, she pulled up her hood and glanced back at her off-roader, stranded in the downpour. Juzo stood waiting, his expression saying, ‘Now you suck it up.’ Her partner had no patience for hesitation.
They passed a small, darkened guard booth. Its narrow door swung ajar in the wind. Peeking inside, they recoiled in shock—a man sat slumped in a chair, motionless before a flickering screen. He wore a soldier’s uniform identical to Juzo’s.
The soldier’s vacant eyes stared at the static-filled monitor. Vicky waved a hand in front of his face—no reaction. Pressing her fingers to his neck, she checked for a pulse.
“Guess you won’t need your fake ID after all,” she said.
“Is he dead?”
She shook her head. “Some kind of trance. Maybe an ultrasonic weapon…” She trailed off, realizing Juzo was already gone.
She found him around the corner of the booth, crouched over a ground-level ventilation hatch. He entered a code on the electronic handle, flipping it open. Shrugging off his backpack, he held it above his head as he climbed inside, descending into the narrow shaft. Rain swirled around the edges, cascading into the opening like a miniature waterfall.
Vicky watched as Juzo disappeared into the square of darkness. The thought of squeezing into that cramped space, surrounded by rushing water and mud, filled her with a suffocating sense of dread.
“What are you waiting for?!” Juzo’s voice echoed from within.
Taking one last look at her vehicle, abandoned near the guard booth, Vicky sighed. Once the attack ended and the forensic team began combing through the scene, her beloved off-roader would undoubtedly be confiscated and dismantled.
She took a deep breath and followed Juzo into the dark. A moment longer, and she might’ve stayed behind.
A sharp crack rang out, and the metal door exploded into a thousand shards, flying through the air like diamond splinters, wrapped in a cloud of freezing gas escaping from the destroyed lock compressor.
Through the thick vapor emerged a face with a massive glowing red eye—and before the last shards hit the floor and the metallic tinkling had faded, the A60-R8 took its first steps into a new chamber.
The place was nearly swallowed by shadows, with only a faint blue light glowing from nowhere. Aside from the shattered remains of the front door scattered across the threshold and the lingering fog, the place was empty.
It was a circular area about the size of a small stadium, completely enclosed by a geodesic dome—a structure made up of hexagonal patterns that shimmered as if crafted from black glass. Across the hall stood the exit: a hexagonal door among countless others, marked with the words: Level Five.
The intruder began moving toward it, his image mirrored on the polished floor below. His footsteps echoed ominously through the cavernous space, a sound that could chill anyone to the bone.
The voice of Officer Liza Grant boomed through the chamber, omnipresent and commanding:
“Grenadiers, execute the intruder!”
The chamber was, in truth, merely a staging area for Level Five. Its grand, empty design served a singular purpose: to trap and neutralize enemies. The android had walked right into it.
Halfway across the room, the A60 stopped.
“Stand aside, and no one else needs to die,” he warned. His synthetic voice resonated through the dome, multiplying in eerie echoes.
Above, one of the upper hexagons near the dome’s apex lit up, revealing itself as a hidden hatch. A faint hum filled the air, intensifying until the very walls began to vibrate. The fragments of the destroyed door trembled on the floor, producing a faint metallic jingle.
From the hatch emerged a squadron of ten Grenadiers clad in their Nemean V.2s—olive green and black plate armor with sharp, aggressive contours designed to intimidate on sight. Gleaming like chrome, light as acrylic, and strong as steel, the armor was worn over a dark bodysuit. Their black helmets featured a pair of small, equally black wings on either side, raised like the feathered wings of a Pegasus about to take flight, and a visor that covered their faces. Their green breastplates mimicked broad, muscular chests, and embedded at the center was the crimson crest of the Empire: a white winged horse rearing atop a laurel crown. Jutting out from behind their shoulder plates like sharp fins was a shorter, more aerodynamic model of the Daedalus thrusters. Above the groin guard, they wore belts fitted with small leather pouches. Sturdy green cuisses, black kneepads, and black boots added a modern touch to a majestic suit that harkened back to those worn in the ancient Middle Ages.
At the head of the squad stood the captain, wearing a Nemean V.3—a variation of the other armor, though with more refined detailing. The shine of his plates wasn’t green, but the same crimson as his coat of arms, and his thrusters weren’t small fins but feathered black wings that reached down to his waist.
Watching them fly—tracing silver streaks along the walls of the dome and displaying a stunning show of military coordination—was like witnessing a strange blend of eras. They carried themselves with the proud bearing of knights and, at the same time, exuded the terrifying aura of something futuristic—a winged killing machine.
One after the other, like wolves stalking their prey, they circled the Cyclops. The hum of their thrusters scraped the air until it turned to a roar.
The intruder stood still.
The crimson-armored leader fulfilled his role as executioner and, raising one arm, delivered the sentence. Behind his wings, cannons emerged, where a bubbling light signaled the coming attack.
The commander dropped his arm, and the cannons fired laser rings at the enemy.
The shots hit their mark, and the dome shook with an explosion that sent up a spray of metal debris and stained the gleaming dark walls with the glow of fire.
In the blink of an eye, everything was lit in red.