"!!!" Altair snapped his eyes open to a surrounding that was dimly lit by the emergency lights on the Ironside's corridors. He shifted his head from left to right, trying to maintain balance to his already blurry vision that seemed to have a mind of its own. He felt soaked, soaked with sweat and a strange kind of substance that was splattered over half of his face.

  With numerous thoughts running through his mind, and a foreboding emotion, he raised his right hand and wiped off a stain on the left side of his face. Once done, he took a look at it, it was dim, and he couldn't make out what it was, but one thing is for sure it was brown, or perhaps dried blood.

  "What did happen?" He said with a raspy voice and a tinge of pain coming from a parched throat. "How long had passed?" He shifted his head again, as he was slowly regaining sense of his surroundings.

  "Vigil!" He called out to his trusted buddy that he had fought alongside for a long time.

  "…"

  "Vigil…" His voice now grew more desperate and weaker by the second. Yet there was still no response.

  He lightly closed his eyes and reassessed the surrounding situation. He was currently disoriented and his memory was a little hazy, but he could guess the result of the battle that transpired. Therefore, his priority should be to regain his focus. Thus, he waited for his eyes to adjust more into the darkness, and once he felt much better, he forcefully opened his eyes and moved his body that seemed to weigh more than the Ironside itself.

  "Gnghh!" Within a short span of a single breath he was able to sit upright, and with laborious breaths that followed, he proceeded to lean against the nearby wall.

  "Huff. Huff" He gripped his chest as he exhaled what seemed like an entire week's worth of exhaustion.

  Now placed in a much better position, he once again took a look around his surroundings. All around him were puddles of dried blood, some of it being clearly fresh, perhaps it leaked from a few hours ago. Then as he looked more and more into it, from the edges of the puddle were even more dried blood, which meant he had been out for a long time.

  With escalating anxiety, he pulled up his right hand, which had a square device which was strapped to his wrist. He raised his other hand and tapped it, however his finger merely slid across. He tapped again, to no avail it didn't respond.

  "Could it be out of power?" He grimaced, but that only sent frustrations to his nerves, not only that the pain from his entire body was accumulating, and so in a fit of anger, unbefitting of someone who had died over thousands of times, he slammed it with his other hand. "Fucking work already!" He roared with frustration.

  Then, as if the heavens, if there were any, had answered him, the watch opened up and a digital interface was projected into a hologram at the top of the wristwatch. "Finally!" He clicked his tongue.

  Using his left index finger, he swiped across the hologram until it finally arrived at a set of statistics.

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  *-*-*

  Synthcell: 4% From Nominal Levels: Critical Level!!!

  Unable to restore to nominal levels, therefore the Synthcells will prioritize emergency cellular repairs, which are vital to sustain life.

  Time Left Until All Synthcells Are Used: 3 Hours, 25 Minutes and 47 Seconds.

  *-*-*

  Upon seeing the levels, Altair's face went pale as if all the energy he had saved up upon waking up had suddenly vanished. He gripped his chest and instinctively knew that he had broken ribs; not only that, along with dozens more injuries across his body.

  For the levels to drop that low, he thought that he must have been out for a long time, but thankfully, he woke up just in the right time before it completely ran out, or else he would die from all the blood loss. Just the thought of dying once again sent shivers throughout his entire body.

  For the first time in a long time, even though he had lived for more than three thousand iterations, he felt grateful to the Synthcells that Terra had developed while in the war against the precursors. Numerous times he felt anger towards it for keeping him alive, repairing and regenerating lost limbs, to broken bones, when he had already lost everything.

  There were times like that; however, most of them, no, almost every time due to it, he would have to voluntarily execute himself just so that he would finally get into the next iteration.

  This time, however, he wasn't on Terra; therefore, he needed to watch out for going back to another iteration. Who knows, this time it might be permanent, though that would be great; there was a growing desire within him. To know, to know just why all of these things were happening to him.

  However, that didn't matter much right now. If he dies, he dies, but now time is on the move, and time waits for no man. Despite all the ache and pain all over his body, he gritted his teeth and forced himself to stand up.

  Midway through, one of his legs suddenly folded as if the motor control around it suddenly disappeared. He fell, but he was able to lean beside the wall, but that didn't stop as his body started to slide. Not letting himself fall towards the floor of the Ironside, with the last bit of strength he had he pushed his body against the wall and attempted to reach for his commanding chair.

  He stretched out his right hand as he pivoted towards the chair and was only barely able to grab the edge of the seat.

  "Gngh!" he groaned in pain as the leg that folded made a loud snapping sound. Yet he merely steeled his jaw as cold sweat broke out through his forehead.

  With a final burst of energy, he grabbed the commanding chair with both of his hands and forcefully turned it towards his sides. With a sudden gasp of wind, he fell face-first into the chair. To realign himself, he squirmed around and turned to place his back against the chair with his chest facing the consoles, whilst his bones were cracking aloud, and his muscles beating like a heart due to the intense pain, followed by a throbbing of the backside of his head as blood rushed throughout his entire body.

  "Huff. Huff." He exhaled in a deliberate manner, trying to bring out and bring in as much oxygen as he could.

  There were many things running through his mind, however one thing was for sure, if the Ironside still had the emergency lights on, that meant there was still power left in the Ironside, and he could distinctly remember that Vigil said in the past that the mysterious atmospheric energy around them was being passively absorbed by the Ironside. Which meant if he was still alive, and the Ironside still had lights on and at the very least barely functional, then they could regain their combat capabilities within a few days or hours, depending on the results of what he was about to do.

  With that in mind, he hovered both of his hands atop the console and started pressing multiple buttons, to check up the current status of the Ironside and to find out the well-being of his friend and companion Vigil.

  *-*-*

  Rebooting…

  Time Until Emergency Reactivation Of Basic Neural and Interface Systems: 2 Hours.

  *-*-*

  He breathed a sigh of relief, as he had enough synthcells to sustain his injuries, which meant he wasn't going to die of blood loss anytime soon. However, that also meant he had to spend two hours in isolation for the meantime.