Chapter 116 Hundred and sixteen
The belly of the Abyssal Leviathan was a cathedral of violence, bathed in the suffocating, crimson light of the heavy-water pressure-core.
Dax didn’t wait for the towering Depth-Commanders to advance. The Speedrun King lived on the offensive. He sprinted dead center toward the massive, suspended sphere of churning red liquid, his Phase-Knife humming with a brilliant, volatile blue light.
"Hold the line!" Jax roared, swinging his phased gear-axe as he and Tank charged the left flank.
The Depth-Commanders moved with a terrifying, mechanical grace that defied their massive iron bulk. One of the deep-sea mechs raised its gravity-hammer and brought it crashing down toward Tank.
It didn't just hit the floor; it warped reality. The localized singularity at the head of the hammer struck the grated deck, instantly creating a miniature black hole that crushed a ten-foot section of solid iron into a compacted sphere the size of a baseball.
Tank dove sideways, the sheer gravitational pull nearly dragging his heavy trike into the anomaly. "Watch the hammers! They aren't just heavy they delete the floor!"
"Then we take off their hands!" Jax bellowed. The Revers President didn't back down. He slid on his knees through the slick, black fluid coating the deck, ducking under a horizontal swing of a gravity-hammer. As the hammer passed over his head, Jax drove his gear-axe upward, the Origin-Code biting cleanly through the oxidized iron of the mech's wrist joint.
The heavy, singularity-laced hammer severed, hitting the floor and immediately compacting the mech's own severed hand into nothingness.
On the right flank, Reaper and Sienna were playing a deadly game of distraction. Sienna danced through the heavy, sweeping strikes of a Commander, using her twin Phase-Knives to sever hydraulic lines, while Reaper stood his ground, putting explosive Origin-Code rounds directly into the glowing green optic sensors of the mechs.
In the center of the chaos, Dax reached the base of the pressure-core.
It was suspended thirty feet in the air by a massive, rotating lattice of black-iron magnetic rings. The heat radiating from the heavy-water was agonizing, singeing the edges of Dax’s leather cut.
He didn't look for a ladder. He backed up five paces, broke into a dead sprint, and vaulted off the crushed chassis of a dead Abyssal-Leech, launching himself into the air.
Dax grabbed the lowest spinning magnetic ring. The sheer rotational torque nearly ripped his arms out of their sockets, but he held on, his heavy boots scrambling for purchase against the scorching iron.
"I'm on the lattice!" Dax yelled over the comms, hauling himself upward as the massive ring rotated him toward the ceiling. "I'm going for the top!"
THE ARK - THE FOUNDER’S SPIRE
Up in the penthouse, the silence was suffocating.
Outside the panoramic windows, the weaponized hurricane battered the grounded durasteel sphere of Neo-Angeles. Down in the crater lake, the colossal, biomechanical Leviathan sat motionless, its massive jaws clamped shut, the Vanguard trapped entirely inside its belly.
"I'm completely blind," I gritted my teeth, frantically typing on my repaired data-deck. My fingers were bruised and cramping, but I couldn't stop. "The Leviathan's hull is coated in an Abyssal gravity-matrix. It's swallowing every radio frequency I bounce off it. I can't reach Dax."
"Mia, you have to breathe," Captain Reyes said gently, stepping up to the console. "Steele knows what he's doing. He's got the best fighters in the wasteland in there with him."
"If he cracks that pressure-core without overriding the hydrostatic locks, the water won't just vent it will implode," I said, my voice shaking with sheer terror. "The entire beast will crush itself into a singularity, and it will take everyone inside with it. I have to give him the timing!"
I looked over at Leo and the exhausted Code-Born. They were running on fumes, their sapphire veins barely visible.
"Leo," I whispered, dropping to my knees in front of the couch. "I know I've asked too much of you today. But I need one more ping."
Leo opened his eyes. They were bloodshot and tired, but the fire of the Open World was still there. "What kind of ping?"
"A biological one," I said, my hacker's mind racing. "Dax's Phase-Knife. Tank's chain. They are permanently phased with your specific Origin-Code frequency. I don't need to break the Leviathan's gravity-matrix with a radio signal. I just need you to sing to the code inside the beast."
Leo sat up. He didn't ask for the other kids to join him; they were too far gone. He reached out and grabbed my bare hand.
"Find him, Ghost," Leo rasped.
The sapphire light surged weakly from Leo's hand into mine. I didn't use the deck. I closed my eyes and plunged my consciousness into the raw, ambient sub-ether frequency, filtering out the chaotic noise of the storm and the ocean, searching blindly in the dark for a single, familiar spark of blue light.
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
Dax reached the apex of the spinning magnetic lattice.
Directly beneath him, the massive sphere of heavy-water churned with catastrophic pressure, glowing an angry, violent crimson. At the very top of the sphere was the primary magnetic locking mechanism a heavy, durasteel deadbolt that kept the localized singularity from collapsing in on itself.
He raised his Phase-Knife, the blue light reflecting in the sweat pouring down his face.
If he drove the blade into the lock, the core would destabilize. But he had no idea what the internal pressure differential was. If he hit it on an up-cycle, the core would detonate outward, tearing the Leviathan apart and giving them a chance to escape. If he hit it on a down-cycle, the localized gravity would invert, crushing them all into atoms in a microsecond.
It was a fifty-fifty coin flip with the lives of his entire pack.
Dax tightened his grip on the hilt. He raised the blade high.
"Wait."
The voice was so faint it was barely a whisper, echoing not through his earpiece, but directly inside his own head, riding the sub-ether frequency of the blade in his hand.
Dax froze, his knife suspended inches above the deadbolt. "Ghost?"
"I've got you, Pres," my voice crackled, distorted and heavy with static, but it was the most beautiful sound he had ever heard. "The internal pressure is oscillating. You have a three-second window on the up-cycle. I'll call the mark."
Down on the floor, the battle was reaching a fever pitch. A Depth-Commander swung its gravity-hammer, clipping the rear tire of Jax's chopper and instantly deleting the back half of the bike.
"King!" Jax roared, rolling away from the compacted metal and scrambling to his feet. "Any day now!"
"Stand by," I whispered in Dax's mind. The heavy-water beneath him pulsed, shifting from dark crimson to a blinding, violent scarlet.
"Three."
"Two."
"One. Strike!"
Dax drove the Phase-Knife directly into the deadbolt with every ounce of strength he possessed.
The iridescent blue Origin-Code violently clashed with the Abyssal gravity-matrix. The deadbolt shattered.
For a terrifying microsecond, absolute silence fell over the massive chamber. The Depth-Commanders froze. The Abyssal-Leeches stopped churning.
Then, the heavy-water core ruptured outward.
"It's blowing!" Dax roared, ripping his knife free and throwing himself backward off the apex of the magnetic rings.
He plummeted thirty feet, hitting the slick, grated floor and rolling to his feet. A shockwave of superheated, crimson steam exploded from the top of the chamber, vaporizing the remaining Depth-Commanders where they stood. The sheer force of the outward detonation ripped a massive, jagged hole directly through the thick, pressurized iron ceiling of the Leviathan.
"There's the exit!" Dax bellowed over the deafening roar of escaping steam and tearing metal. "Mount up! We're leaving!"
"My bike is gone!" Jax yelled, gesturing to the compacted scrap of his chopper.
Tank didn't hesitate. He pulled his massive trike up alongside the Revers President. "Get on the back, mercenary! Blood on the asphalt!"
Jax grinned, vaulting onto the heavy durasteel cargo rack of the trike.
"Through the roof! Punch it!" Dax ordered, swinging his leg over his Interceptor.
The Vanguard gunned their engines. With the Leviathan's localized gravity dying, they hit the curved, inner ribs of the dreadnought's belly, riding up the walls like a massive, metallic half-pipe, and launched themselves directly out of the jagged, steaming hole in the roof.