"Your rage... it's magnificent, Iron!"
He was laughing... even now.
"You're the pinnacle of evolution! Destroy me if you can!"
I lunged forward, ignoring the zero gravity. My prosthesis was supposed to crush his skull.
But...
The thermal overload in my cerebral cortex caused my vestibular system to glitch. The world tilted. I missed by mere centimeters, and momentum carried me right past him. Valerius's right arm elongated. He wound up for a strike meant to rip open my throat and ribcage. I saw it all in slow motion.
"No!"
A blurred shadow darted in from the side. Tira. She slammed her entire body into me. The impact was weak, but it was enough to shift me half a meter away. Valerius's claws missed my neck by a hair, slicing deep into Tira's shoulder instead. She cried out and was thrown against the wall, crashing into the floating debris.
"Tira!" I tried to lunge forward, but my legs wouldn't obey.
Valerius was already preparing his next strike, but Zeno blocked the lunge with his massive forearm. Sparks showed in all directions as the nano-claws dug into Zeno's composite armor.
"Iron. Get up," Zeno's voice sounded quiet. It lacked the usual digital distortion.
He kicked Valerius away with a powerful strike and glanced back at us for a split second.
"Tira! Listen closely," Zeno pointed deeper into the hall, where the technical sector lay hidden behind a heavy blast door. "Back there is an experimental airlock with a teleport. It was Valerius's escape route. Drag Iron there. Blow the entry console as soon as you're inside."
"What about you?!" Tira screamed, clutching her bleeding shoulder.
"I will... end this."
Zeno charged at him. Valerius unleashed hundreds of razor-wires, trying to entangle Zeno, but he tore them apart with his bare hands, driving his opponent back toward the panoramic windows.
Tira rushed over to me. She grabbed my good arm and hauled me up.
"Come on, Iron! Do you hear me? Get up! For Ephraim! For Zeno!" she screamed right in my face.
Combat drones and mutants—Cain's "rejected specimens," freed from their cages by the explosion—poured out of the ventilation shafts and side corridors. Dozens of grotesque monsters with hypertrophied muscles and steel jaws blocked our path.
I reached for my weapon, but my arm simply fell limp at my side.
"Leave them to me," Tira said fiercely.
She pulled out her hacker tablet and a couple of EMP grenades she'd swiped from the armory.
With one hand, she fed overload codes into the drones' turrets, forcing them to gun down the mutants, while with the other, she hurled grenades with pinpoint accuracy at the feet of the advancing beasts. When one of the mutants lunged at her, she didn't scream. Ducking smoothly, she drove her dataspike knife straight into the nerve cluster at the back of its neck.
"Let's go! Move!" she yelled, dragging me over piles of bodies.
We reached the airlock. Tira rapidly punched in the code, and the heavy door slid open. We tumbled inside, and Tira immediately shot the control console, reducing it to a lump of slag. We were safe... for a couple of minutes.
At that moment, a voice echoed in my head.
"Iron. Can you hear me?"
The voice in my head...
I froze.
I didn't even realize it was Zeno at first.
"Zeno... please, don't..."
"Easy, kid. You always asked where I came from. Far to the north, there is a valley. A village stands there... Dornheim. That's where I grew up. And I was their elder, Iron. I promised them I'd return. But my duty remained unfulfilled. All these years, I've been searching for someone who could finish what I started. Someone to be their new shield. And I found you."
An image blossomed in my mind: green hills, wooden houses, people, and among them—me.
"Iron, this is your final mission. Find it. Become their leader. Lead them, protect them from what's coming after the fall of the Academy. Teach them what I taught you."
"I can't... not without you..." I whispered. A tear rolled down my cheek, evaporating instantly against the heat of my skin.
"And most importantly... Stay human..."
The connection abruptly cut out.
A second later, a sound tore through the air outside the door.
The flash was so powerful it punched right through the armored blast door.
"The Source" ceased to exist. The orbital elevator began to collapse. Massive segments of the station tore away and plummeted downward, turning into meteors.
The next instant, Tira activated the teleport. The space around us compressed into a singularity, and the world vanished.
Cold. That was the first thing I felt. Cold, damp air and the smell of pine needles.
I opened my eyes. The white glow had vanished, leaving behind only a murky gray haze and a splitting headache.
I was lying on the grass. Tira lay next to me. She was looking up, and I followed her gaze.
The sky above us was scarred with fiery streaks. Dozens, hundreds of fragments of the Academy were falling through the atmosphere, burning up and showering sparks.
I slowly pushed myself up, leaning on my arm. Tira stepped closer and silently rested her head on my shoulder. We stood at the edge of a cliff, and below us stretched an endless forest.
Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!
Use arrow keys (or A / D) to PREV/NEXT chapter