Chapter 62 Chapter sixty two
I rolled to a stop, my lungs heaving as they remembered how to process oxygen that was thick with smog and heat. I ripped off my helmet, gasping. "Dax?"
Dax was already on his feet, his iron gavel in hand. He wasn't looking at me; he was looking at the horizon. "Mia... how long were we gone?"
I followed his gaze. When we left, the world had been in the middle of a reboot chaotic, yes, but hopeful. The Vanguard had been forming. But what I saw now wasn't a world in recovery. It was a world in a civil war of physics.
To the west, the sky was a jagged wall of purple static a Zone of Silence where digital tech clearly wouldn't work. To the east, the landscape was glitching, mountains flickering in and out of existence as if the render speed couldn't keep up with reality. And between them, rising from the ruins of the old cities, were massive, jagged towers of scrap metal and hard-light fortresses of warlords who had carved up the map while the "Gods" were away.
"The Architects said time moves differently in the Source," I whispered, checking the chronometer on the Norton’s dash. It was flashing a date that made my blood run cold.
Six months.
We hadn't been gone for minutes. We had been gone for half a year. And in that six months, the power vacuum we left behind had been filled by something monstrous.
"Six months without a patch," Dax growled, holstering his gavel and walking over to check his bike’s fuel line. "Six months of the Phase-State bleeding into the physical world with no one to regulate the friction. We didn't save the world, Mia. We left the door open and let the wolves in."
"We refused the chair," I said, standing up and brushing the dust from my leathers. "We chose to be riders. This is what it means. We fix it from the ground up."
But before we could even mount our bikes, the ground beneath us began to vibrate. It wasn't an earthquake. It was an engine thousands of them.
From the glitching heat-haze of the eastern horizon, a convoy emerged. These weren't the disciplined formations of the Iron Wolves or the sleek tech of the Elysium Group. These were Scavengers. Their vehicles were nightmares of welded steel and stolen Phase-tech monster trucks with hover-pads, muscle cars with plasma-turrets, and bikes that looked like they were built from the bones of dead servers.
They circled us, their engines revving in a discordant, aggressive rhythm. A massive rig, covered in spikes and decorated with shattered computer monitors, rolled to the front. A man stood on the roof, holding a microphone wired into a PA system that screamed with feedback.
He was huge, his skin grafted with patches of rusted chrome, his eyes replaced by crude, red optical sensors.
"Look what the glitch dragged in!" the Warlord bellowed, his voice distorted. "Two pretty little pre-war skins on vintage iron. You lost, tourists? This is Chrome-Skull territory."
Dax didn't flinch. He walked forward, his hand resting casually on his belt, right next to the iron wrench. "We're not tourists. We're the landlords. And you're parking in my lane."
The Warlord threw his head back and laughed a sound like grinding gears. "Landlords? The only law out here is the Scrap-Code. You pay the toll, or you become the toll."
He signaled with a rusted claw. Three of his riders peeled off the circle, revving their engines. They held electrified chains that crackled with unstable red energy. They were going to try and lasso us, drag us down, and strip the bikes for parts.
"Mia," Dax said softly, not taking his eyes off the Warlord. "We don't have the Sovereign’s god-mode anymore. We don't have the Architects' blessing. We bleed if they cut us."
"Good," I said, reaching for the sawed-off shotgun I kept in the Norton’s saddlebag a relic I hadn't used since Chapter 10. I racked the slide, the sound crisp and lethal in the desert air. "I was getting bored of immortality."
The first Scavenger lunged. Dax ducked under the swinging chain, his movement a blur of brutal efficiency. He didn't use magic; he used momentum. He drove his shoulder into the rider’s midsection, knocking him off the bike, then spun and slammed the iron wrench into the Scavenger’s helmet. The visor shattered.
I didn't wait. I kicked the Norton into gear, launching the heavy bike straight at the second rider. I didn't phase through him; I rammed him. The impact jarred my teeth, a painful, wonderful reminder of physics. As he wobbled, I grabbed his chain, yanked him off his saddle, and sent him tumbling into the dust.
The third rider hesitated. That was his mistake. Dax was already on him, vaulting off the tank of his own bike to deliver a flying kick that sent the man sprawling.
The circle of Scavengers went silent. The Warlord on the rig stopped laughing. His red optical sensors zoomed in on the silver hawk patch on Dax’s vest a patch that hadn't been seen in these parts for six months.
"Iron Wolves?" the Warlord hissed. "The Wolves are dead. The Red-Queen hunted them down."
Dax froze. "Who is the Red-Queen?"
"The ruler of the Neo-Vegas Citadel," the Warlord sneered, sensing he had struck a nerve. "She collected the bounties. Tank, Reaper, the Chen woman... she has their heads on spikes outside the databanks."
The world tilted. Tank. Reaper. My mother. Dead?
"You're lying," I screamed, leveling the shotgun at the Warlord’s chest.
"Go see for yourself, little ghost," the Warlord grinned. "If you can make it past the Radiation-Sea."
Dax looked at me. The amber fire in his eyes had turned into a cold, hard diamond. The joy of the return was gone, replaced by a killing intent that terrified me. We had refused to be gods so we could live a life of peace, only to find that our absence had slaughtered our family.
"We’re leaving," Dax said, his voice flat.
"You don't leave Chrome-Skull territory without paying!" the Warlord roared. He slammed his hand down, and the turret on his rig swiveled toward us.
Dax didn't even look at the turret. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a single object a small, crystalline shard he had palmed from the Hall of Origins before we left. It wasn't the admin sphere, but it was a fragment of the Architects' floor.
"I said we're leaving," Dax whispered.
He crushed the shard in his mechanical hand.
A shockwave of Pure Origin-Pressure erupted from his fist. It wasn't a weapon; it was a command of gravity. The Warlord’s rig crumpled inward as if crushed by an invisible giant hand. The turret bent like a straw. The Scavengers’ bikes stalled instantly, their crude engines choked by the sudden density of the air.
In the silence of the aftermath, Dax mounted his bike. He looked at me, and for the first time in sixty-seven chapters, I saw fear. Not for himself, but for what he might find in Neo-Vegas.
"If she touched them, Mia," Dax said, his voice trembling with rage, "if she hurt my brother or your mother... I will burn this new world down until there is nothing left but ash."
"We ride to Vegas," I said, holstering the shotgun and firing up the Norton. "And we hunt the Queen."
We tore out of the circle of stunned Scavengers, leaving them in the dust. The road to Neo-Vegas stretched out before us a broken, hostile highway leading into the heart of a nightmare we had allowed to happen.
The romance of the reunion was over. The Era of Penance had begun.