Chapter 114 Hundred and fourteen
The crater didn't just flood; it was displaced.
As the Abyssal Leviathan breached the surface of the boiling, green-lit water, the sheer mass of the submarine dreadnought pushed a localized tidal wave against the lower levels of the Ark. It was a biomechanical nightmare forged in the crushing, lightless depths of the Mariana Trench.
It was shaped like a prehistoric viperfish, its hull plated in thick, oxidized black iron and bioluminescent lures that glowed with a sickly, radioactive green. But it didn't have teeth. As its massive jaws unhinged, stretching impossibly wide, it revealed rows of colossal, glowing acoustic-siege batteries.
"It's trying to clamp onto the Ark!" Captain Reyes shouted over the comms, her voice barely cutting through the deafening roar of the displaced water. "If it locks its jaws around the lower promenades, it’s going to drag the entire city down into the fault line!"
"Ghost! Hit it with everything!" Dax bellowed, bracing himself against a cracked marble pillar on the flooded lower deck as the water surged around his boots.
Up in the penthouse, I didn't hesitate. "Leo! Maximum output!"
The Code-Born kids screamed, pushing a blinding wave of sapphire Origin-Code into the Ark's mainframe. The fifty heavy exterior turrets swiveled in unison, locking onto the colossal beast.
They fired. A concentrated barrage of iridescent blue sub-ether beams slammed into the Leviathan's broadside.
But the beams didn't format the armor.
A localized, swirling black gravity-well shimmered to life across the dreadnought's hull. The sheer density of the Abyssal shielding bent the Origin-Code beams, scattering the sub-ether harmlessly into the storm.
"The cannons are useless!" I yelled, my heart hammering against my ribs. "Its hull is coated in a gravity-matrix! It's too dense to format from the outside!"
The Leviathan’s jaws snapped fully open. The massive acoustic-siege batteries in its mouth glowed with a blinding, concentrated green light.
It didn't roar. It fired a localized sonic boom.
The acoustic wave hit the Ark. The impact was entirely invisible, but the destruction was absolute. A massive, five-hundred-foot section of the Ark's lower durasteel hull buckled inward with a deafening screech. The smart-glass shattered into powder. Down on the promenade, Dax, Jax, and the Revers were thrown violently to the floor, clutching their helmets as the sonic pressure threatened to rupture their eardrums.
"We can't take another hit like that!" Tank groaned, pulling his massive frame out of the rising water. "It's vibrating the city to pieces!"
"Then we don't let it fire again," Dax growled.
He pushed himself up, his amber eyes locking onto the massive, glowing green cavern of the Leviathan’s open mouth just a few hundred yards away from the breached hull.
"Mia!" Dax called over the encrypted line. "The gravity-shielding only covers the outside of the hull, right? The weapon batteries inside its mouth are exposed!"
"Yes, but you can't shoot them!" I answered frantically, checking the telemetry. "The acoustic interference will shatter any kinetic round before it crosses the water, and plasma will just boil the surface!"
"I'm not going to shoot them from here," Dax said, a terrifying, familiar recklessness bleeding into his voice. He waded through the knee-deep water toward his Interceptor. "I'm going to ride down its throat."
Jax, spitting out a mouthful of seawater, stared at Dax. "King, you're crazy. There's three hundred yards of raging, boiling water between us and that thing's mouth. Choppers don't float."
"They don't have to float," Dax said, swinging his leg over the saddle and turning the ignition. The engine roared, spitting blue Phase-fire from the exhaust. "If the water is solid."
Down in the penthouse, I stopped breathing.
"Dax, no," I whispered. "You want me to phase the surface of the crater lake? The mass of the water is too chaotic! The kids are already burning out!"
"Ghost, look at the telemetry!" Dax ordered. "If that thing fires another acoustic wave, the Ark’s internal supports will collapse! We'll all be crushed! We have to board it, and we have to do it right now!"
I looked at Leo. The teenager was panting, sweat pouring down his face, the sapphire light in his veins flickering. But he met my eyes and gave a slow, determined nod.
"We can hold it, Mia," Leo rasped. "Build the road."
I ripped the master conduit from the weapons array and slammed it into the Ark's localized grav-plating network, inverting the signal to project outward across the water.
"Link up!" I screamed.
The kids grabbed hands. The Origin-Code flared.
I didn't try to freeze the water into ice. I used the sub-ether to dramatically increase the surface tension of the churning crater lake, creating a localized plane of hardened, iridescent blue light resting directly on top of the boiling waves.
"The surface is locked!" I yelled. "But I can't hold it long! The storm is fighting the frequency!"
"Wolves! Revers!" Dax roared, revving the Interceptor until it screamed. "We ride on water! Blood on the asphalt!"
"Blood on the water!" Jax bellowed, kicking his heavy chopper into gear.
The Vanguard launched out of the breached hull of the Ark.
Dax hit the churning, glowing blue surface of the lake at eighty miles an hour. The heavy tires of the Interceptor didn't sink; they gripped the hardened sub-ether tension like fresh asphalt. Behind him, Tank, Sienna, Reaper, and fifty Revers bikers poured out of the Ark, a roaring mechanical cavalry charging across the surface of the boiling ocean.
It was the most impossible, beautiful, and terrifying thing I had ever seen.
The Leviathan, realizing a swarm of bikers was charging directly into its open jaws, attempted to fire its acoustic batteries again. The green light in its mouth flared.
"Sienna! Blind it!" Dax ordered, swerving wildly as the water beneath the sub-ether tension heaved and rolled.
Sienna didn't brake. She stood up on her foot pegs, drawing her twin Phase-Knives. As they closed within fifty yards of the beast's massive, glowing maw, she hurled both blades.
The iridescent blue knives bypassed the shifting gravity-shielding entirely, burying themselves deep into the primary targeting sensors clustered at the roof of the Leviathan’s mouth.
The beast shrieked a deafening, mechanical whale song of pure static. The acoustic batteries misfired, sending a concussive wave straight up into the storm clouds instead of at the charging bikers.
"Punch it!" Dax yelled.
The Vanguard didn't slow down. They rode their heavy choppers directly up the sloping, barnacle-encrusted lower jaw of the Leviathan and launched themselves straight into the glowing green cavern of its mouth.
Dax locked his brakes the moment his tires hit the metallic flooring of the beast's interior. He drew his SMG and his Phase-Knife, his boots hitting the deck just as the massive jaws behind them began to slam shut.
The heavy iron teeth locked with a thunderous crash, sealing the bikers inside the belly of the deep-sea beast.
Down in the penthouse, my data-deck screamed a warning.
< SIGNAL LOST. >
The sheer density of the Abyssal armor had completely severed my connection to Dax's comms. I had no telemetry. No audio. Nothing.
I stood up slowly, the Origin-Code fading from my hands as the surface tension on the lake dissolved back into churning water. The Ark was silent, save for the groan of the damaged hull.
Dax and the Vanguard were trapped inside a pressurized, armored killing machine, cut off from the rest of the world.