Chapter 93 Ninety three
The heavy, humid air of the glowing jungle smelled of ozone, scorched armor, and the metallic tang of blood.
Dax didn’t lower his SMG. He took a slow, deliberate step toward the lowered ramp of the Dreadnought-Crawler, his boots sinking an inch into the bioluminescent mud. Beside him, I kept my hand hovering near my data-deck, the sapphire Origin-Code still humming in my veins from the feedback loop I’d just broadcasted.
"Captain Reyes," Dax said, his voice a low, gravelly rumble that cut through the hiss of the cooling engines. "You're a long way from home. And if you know who we are, you know we don't like surprises. Start talking."
Reyes coughed, spitting a streak of red onto the mud. She leaned heavily against the hydraulic piston of the ramp. She looked exhausted, battered, and pushed to the absolute brink of human endurance.
"The Board you fought in Coldwater," Reyes began, her voice tight with pain. "Chairman Vance, the Directors... they were middle management, Steele. Glorified wardens left behind to monitor the prison."
"They had an Aegis-Class Destroyer," Reaper pointed out from the ridge, his sniper rifle still trained on the tree line. "That’s a lot of hardware for middle management."
"It was a relic," Reyes fired back, her dark eyes flashing. "The real architects of the old worldthe Foundersdidn't stay in Coldwater when the Nullity arrived. They went to sleep. Deep-cryo bunkers beneath Neo-Angeles, shielded by orbital plating. They were supposed to sleep for another hundred years, waiting for the aliens to format the planet so they could wake up and rebuild it in their image."
I stepped forward, the pieces clicking together in my hacker's brain.
"But they didn't sleep for a hundred years," I realized, the cold dread pooling in my stomach. "Because we broke the script."
Reyes looked at me, her eyes dropping to the heavy, cracked data-deck strapped to my forearm. "You're the Ghost. The Architect of the New Game."
"That’s what they call me on the forums," I muttered.
"When you detonated the Void-Drive in the upper atmosphere," Reyes explained, "the Origin-Code shockwave didn't just terraform the wasteland. It acted as a global EMP. It fried the Founders' cryo-stasis algorithms. They woke up early to find the Nullity gone, the Phase-Shields dropping, and the world entirely rewritten."
"So a bunch of old billionaires woke up from a nap," Tank rumbled, stepping off the roof of the Crawler with a heavy thud. He adjusted his EMP shotgun. "We handled the Board. We can handle a few angry grandpas."
"They aren't grandpas," Reyes said grimly. "They’ve spent the last century synthesizing their consciousness with pre-war combat AI. They are post-human. And they are waking up the Prime Forges. Neo-Angeles isn't a city anymore; it's a war machine. And they are expanding."
Dax lowered his SMG an inch. He looked at the massive, crippled Crawler. Its treads were completely blown, and smoke was billowing from the primary intake vents. It wasn't going anywhere.
"If Neo-Angeles is a war machine, why did you run?" Dax asked. "You're wearing their armor. You were one of them."
"I was a Paladin of the Sunburst Vanguard," Reyes corrected, touching the golden insignia on her chest plate. "My job was to protect the future of humanity. But when the Founders woke up, they realized the new world couldn't be controlled by silicon and steel anymore. The Origin-Code changed the rules. So, they started hunting for a new power source."
Reyes turned her back to us and walked up the heavy steel ramp, gesturing for us to follow.
Dax and I exchanged a look. I drew my heavy pistol, just in case. We walked up the ramp, our boots echoing in the cavernous, smoke-filled belly of the Crawler.
The interior was a mess of sparking wires and dead Paladins who had died defending the hull. But at the very back of the transport was a reinforced, lead-lined blast door.
Reyes punched a twelve-digit sequence into the keypad. The heavy locks disengaged with a pneumatic hiss. The door slid open.
Inside the small, cramped cargo hold, there were no weapons. There were no crates of gold or quantum processors.
There were people.
Specifically, six teenagers, huddled together in the dim emergency lighting. They were dressed in drab, grey rags, looking terrified and malnourished.
But that wasn't what made me gasp.
Beneath their skin, tracing the lines of their veins, was a faint, pulsing sapphire light. It was the exact same light that ran through my own blood.
"The Origin-Code," I breathed, taking a step into the hold. My data-deck vibrated violently in proximity to them.
The oldest of the group, a boy with messy dark hair and fierce, protective eyes, pushed himself in front of the younger ones, clutching a rusted wrench.
"It’s okay, Leo," Reyes said softly, raising her hands to show she was unarmed. "These are the people I told you about. The Wolves."
"They call them the Code-Born," Reyes said, turning back to Dax and me. "When the shockwave hit the earth, it didn't just mutate the animals and the plants. It bonded with the survivors living in the deepest slums of the outer cities. The children absorbed it."
"Why are the Founders hunting them?" Dax asked, the protective instincts of the Alpha already flaring in his amber eyes.
"Because the Founders' old tech is failing in this new atmosphere," Reyes explained bitterly. "They can't harness the Origin-Code mechanically. But they figured out they can harness it biologically. They were plugging these kids into the Prime Forges, using their life force as living batteries to power their new war machines."
I felt physically sick. It was the Red-Queen’s nightmare all over again, just wrapped in a different corporate logo.
"I couldn't stand there and watch them do it," Reyes said, her voice cracking for the first time. "I loaded as many as I could into Convoy Seven and stole the Crawler. We’ve been running for three weeks. The Origin-Beasts out there were drawn to the kids' energy signatures... but the Founders' hunters are the ones who crippled our treads yesterday."
"They're tracking you," Dax realized, his head snapping toward the open ramp.
"They have Sun-Hounds," Reyes confirmed. "Hover-bikes, plasma lances, and orbital tracking. They aren't far behind us."
Dax didn't hesitate. The Speedrun King didn't need a committee meeting to make a call.
He keyed his comms. "Tank. Reaper. Sienna. Strip the Crawler of any usable ammo and med-kits. We have six VIPs. We're putting them on the pillion seats."
"The Crawler is dead in the mud, Prez?" Tank asked.
"Dead and buried," Dax confirmed. He looked at Captain Reyes, then at the terrified, glowing kids in the hold. "Captain, grab your rifle. You're riding with Tank. We're taking you to Coldwater."
"You don't understand, Steele," Reyes warned, gripping her plasma rifle tightly. "If you take us in, you’re putting a target on your city. The Founders won't stop until they reclaim the Code-Born."
Dax walked right up to Captain Reyes. He was taller, broader, and smelled of exhaust and absolute defiance. A slow, dangerous smile spread across his scarred face.
"Captain," Dax said, his voice echoing in the cargo hold. "I just spent the last six months planting trees. I was starting to get bored. Let them come."