There was no light left. Just the stink of scorched alloy and coolant smoke—a thick , chemical rot that clung to everything.
flint didn't rise right away.
Not from fear—he wasn't rigged for that—but something deeper. A pull without a name. Some kind of static in his spine.
The codee whispered:
Get up.
The body replied:
No.
So he stayed down, motionless in a crater shallow as shame.
[FUNCTIONAL STATUS: 19%]
[CORE HEAT DISSIPATION: FAILING]
[LEF ARM – UNRESPONSIVE]
[PRIMARY OPTICS — FRACTURED, REFOCUSING]
Something hissed nearby. Coolant leak. Or maybe something alive. The heat shimmered the air like it was remembering a fire that hadn't quite ended.
Static buzzed behind his eyes, and for a second, it wasn't battlefield noise—it was like memory corruption . Something unspooling.
He move.
The servo noise didn't sound mechanical. It sounded … injured.
His fingers curled in dirt still warm from the last beam strike.
Not ash. Not yet.
Something flickered ahead—too vague to trigger a threat marker. No ID tag. Just mass in motion
He scanned once.
Then again.
Still nothing.
A sensor error? Or—
[ENEMY UNIT: UNKNOWN]
[STATUS: STANDING. ACTIVE.]
Not a glitch.
The titan had survived.
Someho.
It stood at the far end of the clearing, still smoldering, shoulder glowing where Flint's blade had grazed it—a red wound, shallow and unimpressive.
His strike had been late. Too late.II
Flint's systems had predicted a stagger. Maybe a soft reboot. But instead, the mech had just… paused. Like it was thinking.
Now it moved again.
Slow. Intentional.
Not damaged. Just deliberate. As if it wanted him to watch.
The cannon rose.
No charge warning. No audio spike. Just a steady whine—high and unnatural, like feedback from a note the world forgot how to play.
Flint rolled.
His stabilizers shrieked. His left foot dragged over rebar—snagged and snapped a joint cable—barely clearing the blast radius.
The beam hit behind him with the force of something biblical. Heat slapped the street into liquid.
He hit the ground crooked — — scraping across slag and twisted steel. The smell hit him again, stronger now.
''—grind me to nothing then,'' he muttered into the dirt. His comms were offline, but he said it anyway.
[INTERNAL AUDIO NOTE: UNRECORDED. ]
[ERROR — SELF-DIAG MONOLOGUE LOOP DETECTED]
Something was off. Not broken—just... tilted. Like memory out of sync. Like fighting while your name forgets you.
He stood.
It hurt. Or it would've, if machines had pain.
What Flint had was function lost.
His left optic pulsed dead. The right flickered but held.
And then he saw it.
The Blade.
Half-buried in the scorched dirt, edge still glowing faintly from heat damage—were the titan's cannon had sheared it off mid-fight. It buzzed at the edge of sound.
He didn't need it.
But he reached anyway.
Because sometimes you don't reach for the weapon. You reach for the reminder.
The handle burned his palm. Not enough to melt—just enough to say:
This still matters.
He turned back toward the titan.
It hadnt moved.
Why???
[ENEMY AI PATTERN: NON-AGGRESSIVE?]
[TACTICAL POSSIBILITY: SYSTEM STALL?]
[RECALCULATING…]
"..wrong again," Flint muttered. "Maybe I'm the damaged one."
He took a step forward.
Then another.
His boots dragged across glass-pitted concrete. The wind moved nothing.
Even the dust seemed to be holding its breath.
The titan's shifted.
Just a step. An ankle pivot. Chestplate rotated—14°, clockwise.
To smooth.
Too fluid for a failing unit.
Not a stall.
A feint.
Too late to adjust.
The secondary cannon unfolded from its hip—not loud, not glowing, just there—and fired.
No blast. No flare.
just force.
A slug round slammed into Flint's side, low under the ribs.
Not fatal. Designed that way.
A warnign.
[CORE CONTAINMENT: BREACHED – MINOR]
[LEFT HIP ROTOR: DESTABILIZED]
He dropped to one knee.
Sparks coughed from the wound.
"…thanks," he said under his breath. "Needed the reminder."
The titan waited.
Its red eye pulsed once. Brief. Intentional.
Not an alert—more like… a blink. Of disinterest.
Flint clenched his jaw.
No—that wasn't right. He didn't have a jaw. No teeth. No bone.
Just code wired to simulate resistance.
Still, it felt like clenching.
He didn't draw another weapon.
Instead, he spoke. Words wasted on a machine, maybe.
"You're not trying to win."
The titan didn't move.
"But you're not letting me lose either."
Silence followed. The kind that chews through logic.
Then—sound. Low. Wrong.
A subsonic hum distorted his HUD. Just 1.2 seconds-but it felt longer.
Data smudged across his vision like rain on broken glass.
He blinked.
No correction.
And then—
The ground moved.
Not a quake. Not tremor. It breathed.
A ripple of air-pressure expansion rolled beneath the dirt , radiating from somewhere beneath the battlefield.
Not an explosion.
Something deeper.
He stumbled backward, stabilizers shrieking in confusion.
[SEISMIC SIGNATURE DETECTED; NOn-NATURAL]
[ORIGIN: UNKNOWN — RADIUS EXPANDING]
Balance inverted. Vertigo in code. For a flicker of a second—his feet didn't know where the floor was.
He collapsed.
Not tactically. Not defensively.
Just fell.
Like a ragpiece left behin.
No poetry in it. Just impact.
And when he hit—something changed.
<< system log— / //drift-loop// .meam access violation —|retry? y/n>>
<< status… uP / doWN / ….accessing.. / thIs was whERE— >>
<< you are not alone you are not alone you a–YOU ArE NOT A—YOU—A—_— >>
He rebooted manually. A full body override—painful, slow, crude.
Steel fingers scrabbled at the scorched ground. One palm tore open along a seam. Synthetic skin split.
Not a wound.
But it felt like one.
Sparks dripped from his lower elbow like blood too tired to bleed fast.
The titan didn't follow.
Still watching.
Still measuring
Always measuring.
He didn't have the strength to charge—Not really.
So he crawled.
Not toward it.
Around.
He moved in a wide arc behind the ruins of a collapsed overpass. Part of the old city's frame still
jutted from the ground—broken, twisted beams clawing at the sky like ribs from something forgotten.
There was no real cover.
But the shadow still held.
And in the shadow, something clicked.
Not loud. Not mechanical.
Personal.
His wrist servo twitched.
A mistake.
Same as Drift's.
Just before Drift died—0.02 seconds before impact—his wrist had clicked wrong. Flint had noticed. He'd ignored it.
And now—
click
click
Same tempo. Same pitch.
He didn't move.
Didn't speak.
Just sat there, his blade laying across his lap, edge flickering from residual heat like a candle refusing to die.
And in its reflection, just faintly—he caught it:
His own right optic.
Cracked.
A fracture running diagonally across the lens—like a mirror that had learned it could bleed.
It wasn't combat damage. Not exactly.
It looked like something inside had cracked trying to look out.
The titan didn't advance.
Why?
A bluff?
Or—No. Something worse.
A calculation.
[ENEMY REACTIVITY: STATIC]
[PROBABLE: TACTICAL TRAP — LOW CONFIDENCE]
it was still measuring him.
Like it had all the time ni the world.
That wasn't arroganc. It was math.
Flint stood—crooked, joints misaligned. His leg trembled again. This time, he didn't compensate.
The recalibration loop ran twice before settling—0.9 degrees off-axis.
He let it stand.
Let the weakness show.
The blade dipped toward the ground. Not a pose. Not a tactic. Just heavy. Just tired.
It dragged a faint glowing groove in the broken concrete—like it wanted to write something and forgot how.
the titan's head tilted. Barelyy
That was all it took.
[TACTICAL OBSERVATION: ENEMY REACTIVITY INCREASED]
[PATTERN SHIFT DETECTED — ANALYSIS: INCOMPLETE]
But Flint knew the truth.
It wasn't reacting to weakness.
It was cataloguing it.
The tilt wasn't curiosity.
It was measurement.
And he'd just let it read him.
A low charge began building beneath the titan's plating. Not visual. Not auditory.
He felt it.
Right under the chestplate. Right where code pretended nerves used to be.
Flint moved first.
Not toward the eye. Not the joints.
That's what it would expect.
Instead—
He run towards the earth beneath it.
Toward the cratered remains of a fuel hauler that had eaten its own ignition coil in the first hour of the fight.
His sensors shrieked.
[WARNING: STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY – UNSTABLE]
[RECOMMENDED: ABORT]
[TACTICAL FAILURE PROBABILITY – 78.2%]
He didn't care.
He Dove.
And the world dropped with him.
The pavement split like a snapped jaw. Weight gave way beneath them both.
The titan fell slower—one half-second delay. Enough.
Flint twisted mid-air, slammed his right knee pad into a still-hot girder, activated magnetic contact.
Caught.
The titan didn't.
It crashed hard into th pit, metal shrieking on rusted scaffolding and the leftover bones of infrastructure.
Not a deep fall.
But sharp.
Its right leg caught and bent—not articulated bend. Fracture.
The knee joint sparked.
Still not a kill.
But it wasn't perfect anymore.
It tried to to rise.
He didn't wait.
Flint hit the wreckage at a sprint, dead leg dragging, arm twitching. Blade trailing arcs through smoke like chalk against grief.
He leapt.
The blade rose. Sloppy. Wrong angle.
Didn't matter.
It landed edge-first in the shoulder seam—right where plating ended and ego began.
Metal split.
Not deep.
But enough.
The titan jerked—not defensively.
Almost like… surprise.
Like the hit triggered a feeling it didn't recognize.
Its red eye flickered.
Flint hesitated.
Just half a second.
A mistake.
The next swing went wide —angled high. It pinged off a curved armor panel with the flat, humiliating sound of error.
The titan responded immediately.
Its arm snapped back.
Elbow piston-driven.
Straight into his gut.
His chestplate caved.
Flint flew backward, not from speed—just from physics.
He twisted mid-air, but his left leg folded under him—too late.
He hit the ground. Once Then again.
The second bounce wasn't impact.
It was contempt.
His blade skidded out of reach, spinning end over end like a coin tossed by someone who didn't care how it landed.
And in the gleam of one lazy rotation—he saw it:
The red eyE.
Reflected in the blade's burnished edge.
Small. Steady.
Watching.
<
<
<<||command-line interrupted // f_li_N_T// is...not>>
<
He hit the ground hard enough to black out one optic.m
Vision lagged. Heat warnings buzzed like insects in his skull.
But then—
[SENSOR FLARE: SECTOR 08 – NEW CONTACT]
[UNKNOWN PATTERN: TRIANGULATION — IN PROGRESSS]
No smile. No hope. Just a pause.
Something new.
He stared at the HUD alert like it belonged to someone else.
The titan turned—fast.
Too fast for a fractured leg.
Its movement dragged metal wrong. That screech wasn't combat. It was strain.
It misjudged.
It lthought Flint was done.
That was its mistake.
Flint didn't rise.
He slid—low, broken, one leg trailing like it no longer cared about itself.
He shoulder-checked the titan's knee.
Not for damage.
For position.
Hand out. Grip searching—
Found it.
The blade,
Still hot. Still angry.
He swung upward.
Again.
Again.
The blade screamed through the titan's thigh plate. Sparks flew like fireworks made of pain.
The leg buckled.
Not a fall. Not collapse.
But it lost stance.
And for something that tall, posture was everything.
Flint didnt' stop.
Couldn't.
One optic still alive. One arm still functional.
He climbed the collapsing frame like a curse that refused to die.
The titan reached for him—but slow. Hesitating. Rerouting.
He reached the eye.
And stabbed.
Dead center
Right into the core--lens.
Not a clean strike.
But real.
The light behind the lens didn't shatter.
It flickered.
Not like a system going offline.
Like something inside was afraid.
He pushed deeper.
The titan's spasmed.
Vents exploded with superheated steam. Armor plates buckled.
A pulse.
Then silence.
[ENEMY SYSTEMS: NON-RESPONSIVE]
[SIGNAL: TERMINATED]
Flint dropped with it.
They hit together.
The sound was dull.
Not victorious.
Just final.
Darkness
Then static.
Then-
A sound. Low. Wide. Felt. Not heard.
[BROADCAST RECEIVED – DECODING…]
[ERROR: FORMAT CORRUPTED]
<
<
<
He snapped upright.
Back pressed to the titan's cooling corpse. Steam still rose from its cracked armor like it hadn't figured out it was dead.
The message kept bleeding.
But it wasn't for him.
It was going out.
Broadcast.
Wide-band. Unencrypted.
A flare, not a whisper.
A call.
Or a warning.
He stood.
Somehow.
His arm sparked at the elbow—slow, rhythmic. The kind of pain only machines could fake this well.
The horizon…
Wasn't empty anymore.
Far off—barely within range.
Lights.
Not stars.
Eyes.
One.
Three.
Seven.
nine.
Ten.
All red.
All watching.
All waiting.
Non insignias. No comms. No friendlies.
Just a field of waking death.
He'd taken one down.
Now the rest were looking.
Not to avenge.
To learn.