May 4nd 2011, 8:21 AM
Wendy's Restaurant, Suburbs of Brockton Bay, Solar Dominion of Brockton Bay
The distant roar of artillery rolled over the battered outskirts of Brockton Bay, shaking the air like the growl of some ancient, waking beast. Morning light filtered weakly through the smoky haze, a sickly gold that cast long, broken shadows across the ruins. Gunfire snapped and cracked in bursts, sporadic but sharp, like the cracking of an endless whip. Occasionally, the earth trembled under the blunt force of shells striking home, sending fountains of shattered concrete and twisted rebar into the air.
Only a week ago, this part of the city had been alive with commuters and shoppers, suburban families hurrying through drive-thru lanes and tree-lined streets. Now, the roads were gouged with craters, the sidewalks fractured into jagged puzzle pieces. Buildings still stood in broken ranks, most stripped of glass and dignity. Some structures had collapsed outright, reduced to skeletal remains; others burned fitfully, smoke curling up to join the low-hanging cloud of war that choked the sky. One, shattered beyond recognition, had a helicopter wreck rammed into it, belching thick black smoke out curling into the air.
Major Alice Park stood within the hollowed-out shell of what had once been a fast-food restaurant. The faded remnants of a cartoon mascot smiled grotesquely from a scorched wall. Overturned tables and scorched plastic chairs lay strewn around her boots. She methodically scanned the battlefield with her binoculars, tracing the sluggish advance of the enemy lines, noting where government soldiers and armored vehicles pressed forward under the protective umbrella of suppressive fire.
As she observed, the radio strapped to her chest continued to sputter out: "...enemy forces approaching from 7th Street, multiple armored vehicles…"
The destruction didn't faze her. If anything, it stirred something in her chest… a grim satisfaction. This… this was the necessary price of transformation. The weak were being winnowed out, and from their ashes, only the strong would rise.
She lowered the binoculars and turned to face her squad. Legion troopers formed up before her: a ragged mix of hardened Dawnguard veterans and wide-eyed recruits whose armor still gleamed from the replimat. They clutched their rifles and checked their gear with nervous, jerky movements. Beside them stood Patrick and Rob – parahuman assets on loan from Major Dallon. Patrick's fists gave off a low, menacing hum, while Rob's massive frame seemed barely contained by his reinforced armor, muscles coiled tight like a bomb waiting for the trigger.
Useful tools, Alice thought, her expression unreadable. Tools that would soon be spent in service to a purpose far greater than their limited minds could comprehend.
Her voice cut through the rising noise of distant fighting, calm and razor-sharp. "Listen up."
Every head turned toward her.
She pointed out across the rubble-strewn landscape, to where the enemy's main force pushed forward behind a line of battered APCs. Their discipline was admirable. Their firepower, formidable. But their caution would be their downfall.
"We're going to feint an assault on their left flank," she said, her tone clipped and cold. "Patrick, Rob, Squad Alpha… you're the tip of the spear. Hit them hard. Make them believe we're trying to cut them off. Make it convincing."
She left the rest unsaid: Convincing enough that it would cost lives. Maybe all their lives. But that was the price of victory, and these soldiers had already sworn to fight for the Mistress's will. Fight… and if need be, die.
Patrick grinned, adjusting his gauntlets with a hiss of energy. "Time to paint the town red."
Rob cracked his knuckles, the sound sharp as snapping branches. "'bout time we got to break something."
Idiots, Alice thought, but valuable idiots. Brutes who would buy her the precious minutes she needed.
She shifted her gaze to Squad Beta, her real weapon. The best soldiers she had left, loyal and lethal. They would be the ones to carve a hole through the chaos.
She turned and pointed to the horizon, beyond the lines of ruined buildings and smoking wreckage, to where the massive shape of the quantum drill loomed against the wounded skyline. Its concentric rings spun slowly, humming with a palpable, malignant energy. The heart of the enemy's invasion force.
Her voice dropped to a near-whisper, intimate and dangerous. "While they're distracted, we move. Straight to the drill."
Alice unhooked two smooth, dark spheres from her belt and held them up. The morning light caught on their polished surfaces, making them gleam with a cold, lethal beauty.
"Antimatter grenades," she said, her pride evident despite herself. "Handcrafted. Perfected. Absolute. Mine."
She saw the ripple of understanding, of awe, in her soldiers' faces. Good. They needed to believe in this. In her.
"Their little battering ram," she said, letting the word drip with contempt, "won't survive these."
She slid the grenades back into place with a soft click, a ritual both comforting and final. Around her, the city moaned under the weight of battle. Somewhere nearby, a building sagged and collapsed with a deep groan of surrender.
"Once the drill is down," she continued, sweeping her eyes over her assembled force, "we disengage. No heroics. No hesitation. Hit them fast, hit them clean, and fall back."
The sky was growing lighter, but the sun barely pierced the grime-choked atmosphere. The battlefield stretched before them, ugly and raw and unfinished. Perfect.
"Any questions?"
Patrick raised a hand, his mouth already halfway open with some smart remark. Alice silenced him with a glance sharper than any blade. This wasn't the time for jokes. It was the time for blood and fire and triumph.
Satisfied, she gave a short nod.
"Good," she said. "Move out."
No more words. Only action.
Victory was waiting for her… and she would seize it, no matter the cost. And when I prevail… Mistress will raise me to heights unseen…
——————————————————————————————————————————
The battle raged under the climbing morning sun, casting long, broken shadows across the ruins of Brockton Bay's once-proud outer suburbs. The air was a suffocating miasma of smoke, burning metal, and the iron sting of blood. Explosions still peppered the skyline, sending up pillars of dust and fire that clawed hungrily at the pale, corrupted sky.
Alice moved like a wraith through the devastation, her squad ghosting behind her with silent, practiced efficiency. Every step over the fractured asphalt and crater-pitted streets was a calculation, a dance across a minefield of broken glass, twisted rebar, and smoldering wreckage. In mere hours, the familiar landscape had been mangled beyond recognition – a monstrous parody of what it had once been.
The sunlight, filtered through thick smoke, painted the battlefield in a sickly, jaundiced hue. Fires burned unchecked in half-collapsed buildings, windows shattered and walls cracked wide open like the broken ribs of a dying beast. Here and there, gutted armored vehicles lay abandoned, some still smoldering, others silent tombs for the unlucky souls trapped inside. The stench of death clung to everything, thick and inescapable, worming its way into the deepest recesses of the mind.
They had built something here. A sanctuary. A marvel. Brockton Bay had been reborn under the Mistress's hand… a city of iron discipline, of order carved from chaos, where Alice had thrived, where her brilliance had been nurtured, respected, feared in the way it deserved.
And now… now it was all coming apart.
A knot tightened in her gut, something sharp and venomous. Not sorrow, she wouldn't grant the invaders that satisfaction. No, it was rage, pure and searing, pounding in her veins like war drums. She clenched her jaw so tightly it ached, grinding her teeth as she crushed every trace of weakness beneath the iron weight of her fury.
This was the doing of the old world's remnants… the parasites who refused to accept the new dawn. They hurl their shells and fire at this shining city, seeking to tear it down, to drag it back into the filth from which it had risen. They had spat in the face of progress, of destiny.
Alice's fingers curled tighter around the stock of her rifle until the synthetic material creaked in protest. She could feel her inventions humming at her belt, ready to unleash devastation at her command. The temptation to abandon strategy, to unleash all-consuming fire upon the enemy and drown them in their own blood, clawed at her. But she shoved it down.
She was no rabid beast. She was the Mistress's blade: sharp, deliberate, lethal.
She raised her hand, signaling to Patrick and Rob. Without hesitation, they peeled away, taking Squad Alpha with them into the smoke-shrouded ruins. They were the bait, the storm that would draw the enemy's eyes and guns. They would die, perhaps. Likely. But that was their role.
Alice watched them vanish into the smoke without a flicker of emotion. They were sacrifices already made in her mind. They would buy her the time she needed to strike where it mattered.
Turning back to her squad, she let her gaze linger on each of them, seeing the fear hidden behind discipline, the grim determination barely masking the knowledge that this mission was almost certainly a death sentence.
Good. Fear was a tool as much as any weapon. It sharpened instincts, stripped away illusions.
She let her voice carry, low and fierce, vibrating with the raw, burning certainty that filled her every fiber.
"For the Sun Arisen," she said, her voice cutting through the smoke and crackle of distant gunfire like a blade.
Her soldiers echoed her words in a rough, broken chorus. Not a shout of bravado, but a vow. A grim covenant.
For the Mistress.
And for herself.
The thought burned in her chest, unspoken but omnipresent. She would ascend from this carnage. Her name would be etched alongside the legends of the Dominion. She would stand at the Mistress's right hand, untouchable, revered.
Alice felt the familiar surge of clarity. Cold, diamond-hard resolve. Victory was not optional. It was inevitable.
Ahead, the quantum drill's rings glowed like a monstrous heart through the smoke, pulsing with malevolent energy. It called to her – the keystone of the enemy's assault. Destroy it, and their momentum would falter. Destroy it, and the Sun's dominion would hold.
Destroy it, and her future would be secured.
"Move," she ordered, voice sharp as a gunshot.
They slipped forward into the smoke, shadows among ruins, racing the rising sun toward destiny.
The terrain ahead twisted into a broken wasteland, a no man's land of churned soil, shattered asphalt, and the skeletal remains of what had once been a bustling suburban stretch. This was the boundary, the place where Invicta's shield had once blazed, an unbreakable wall of light and power. Now, only a scorched, blackened line etched into the earth marked where it had stood before the Mistress had allowed it to fall, baiting the invaders forward into the jaws of death.
Alice and her soldiers passed the burnt line without hesitation, stepping into the wreckage with grim purpose. The ground sucked at their boots, thick with mud, ash, and blood. Smoke twisted and curled around them, dense enough that even a few meters away, visibility faded into a choking, gray void.
The squads split as planned. Patrick and Rob, flanked by the bulk of Squad Alpha, veered westward, slipping past the skeletal wrecks of downed helicopters. Their twisted frames jutted from the earth like the bones of some fallen mechanical beast, smoke seeping from shattered fuselages. Without a word, they disappeared into the fog of war, a living hammer poised to fall.
Alice pressed onward with Squad Beta, dropping low, crawling where necessary through the blackened muck. Their bodies were almost invisible against the scorched landscape, phantoms moving with ruthless precision.
Ahead, through the shifting smoke, movement caught her eye.
The stumbling figures of enemy soldiers. A scattered US Airborne squadron, lost and broken. Three men. One limped heavily, blood soaking through the makeshift bandage tied around his thigh. The other two hovered near him, their movements frantic, their heads jerking around in panicked vigilance.
Alice lifted a hand, fingers slicing the air in sharp, deliberate commands. Her squad froze, then began to spread out, moving like wraiths among the debris. Silent. Patient.
They slithered up behind the shattered husk of an Abrams tank, the once-invincible machine now little more than burnt-out wreckage. The metal was still warm beneath her gloved hand as she crouched behind it, peeking around its blasted turret to mark the position of each enemy soldier.
A distant eruption of gunfire and shouted orders cracked through the smoke to their left. The distraction had begun. Patrick and Rob were doing their part.
Alice didn't hesitate.
She gave a final hand signal – a clenched fist thrust forward – and her squad moved.
Muffled gunfire tore through the stillness. Short, controlled bursts. One shot. One kill.
The enemy soldiers barely had time to react. One dropped instantly, a clean hole punched through his forehead. The second crumpled to his knees, a spray of red misting the air as another shot found his throat. The wounded man tried to raise his rifle, his mouth opening in a silent cry, but he was cut down before he could fire.
Three lives ended in less than five seconds. Efficient. Necessary.
Alice allowed herself a brief nod of satisfaction. No hesitation. No waste.
Without a word, she signaled her squad to move. They melted away from the corpses, leaving them cooling in the dirt, forgotten.
Ahead, the enemy encampment loomed, barely visible through the choking haze. A lattice of sandbags, hastily constructed defenses, and the hulking, monstrous silhouette of the quantum drill dominating the landscape beyond. Its rings spun with unnatural grace, each rotation throbbing with a pulse of power that made the very air hum with tension.
Alice could feel it now… the closeness of the objective. The proximity to victory.
"Stay low," she hissed, her voice barely audible over the distant din of battle. "No mistakes."
The squad moved forward, shadows weaving through ruins, closing the distance to the heart of the enemy's ambition… and to Alice's destiny.
——————————————————————————————————————————
The quantum drill loomed ahead, a monstrous cathedral of Tinker engineering, humming with a resonance that set Alice Park's teeth on edge. Its concentric rings spun with a chaotic grace, each layer a whirl of crimson, violet, and searing electric blue, the colors bleeding into one another in a frenetic dance. Heat distortion shimmered around it like a living thing, warping the air, making the very ground vibrate with a deep, angry growl that rattled bones and frayed nerves.
Crouched behind an outcropping of rocks, Alice wiped a smear of soot from her cheek, her uniform already ruined by the crawl through ash and blood-soaked dirt. Her heart hammered against her ribs, not from fear, but from the raw, electric anticipation surging through her veins. Her grin was a slash of feral triumph across her grimy face.
This was it. The moment everything turned.
Squad Beta clustered around her, each soldier wound tight with tension, their eyes fixed on her, awaiting the signal. The world shrank down to this: the ruined camp, the humming abomination of the drill, the thin thread of time slipping away as the enemy scrambled, blind to the doom racing toward them.
Alice lifted her hand and, in a silent command, motioned them forward.
They moved as one, low and fast, shadows darting from crater to crater. The US Army camp sprawled before them, a maze of trenches, sandbags, and machine gun nests hastily erected around the mechanical heart of their assault.
The soldiers within bustled in a state of organized chaos, still coordinating artillery strikes, moving equipment, shouting orders. None saw the predators creeping towards them.
Every step closer magnified the oppressive hum of the quantum drill until there was a tangible pressure in Alice's skull, a keening edge gnawing at her focus.
Then, as if on cue, the left flank erupted.
Gunfire cracked in furious bursts, distant but sharp. Explosions flared against the rising smoke. Patrick and Rob, leading Squad Alpha, were making their assault known in no uncertain terms. Shouts rose from the trenches as soldiers scrambled to reinforce their embattled lines, abandoning their posts in the inner camp in chaotic droves.
Perfect.
Alice's fingers tightened on her rifle.
"Go," she hissed, and the order was a blade slicing through the tension.
Squad Beta surged forward.
Gunfire tore through the stunned guards, precise and brutal. The sharp crack of rifles punctuated the stunned screams as bodies collapsed into the dust. Alice moved with the same ruthless grace she always did, every motion measured, deliberate, deadly. Her rifle barked once, twice – each burst planting a soldier face-down in the mud.
The camp was a hive thrown into disarray. Soldiers scrambled for weapons, some ducking into bunkers, others running blindly toward the source of the diversion, unsure where the true threat lay. Medics dragged the wounded, leaving thick, wet trails across the churned ground.
Alice wove through the chaos like a needle stitching a tapestry of ruin. Her boots kicked up clouds of ash and grit, her rifle never wavering, each shot purposeful, ending a life with mechanical precision. An enemy soldier rose from behind a Humvee, weapon clutched in shaking hands, and Alice cut him down before he could even shoulder it.
No wasted motion. No wasted ammunition.
No mercy.
She was a force of nature, cold and surgical, the Mistress's will made flesh.
The air around the quantum drill crackled, saturated with the scent of burning ozone and the sharp, metallic tang of blood. Every breath scorched her lungs, but Alice pushed onward, driving her squad forward with ruthless efficiency.
"Forward!" she barked, her voice a whip-crack over the cacophony of battle.
Squad Beta responded instantly, moving with the fluid precision of soldiers who no longer thought, only acted.
The Dominion's soldiers were outnumbered, outgunned, and surrounded by an enemy entrenched in desperate defense. But none of that mattered. Numbers had never been the deciding factor. Not when conviction burned brighter than fear.
The Legion fought with a fury that conventional soldiers could not match, a devotion so raw it was terrifying. Each step they took was a prayer of blood and fire to a cause that demanded everything. Each fallen comrade fueled the rage and resolve of those still standing.
The quantum drill loomed ever closer, its monstrous rings howling louder now, vibrating the air, the earth, the very marrow in Alice's bones.
She could feel it. The moment approaching like a thunderclap.
They would destroy it. Or they would die here.
There was no other outcome.
And Alice Park would see to it that the Mistress's will was fulfilled. No matter the cost.
Alice raised her grenade launcher in one smooth, practiced motion, her eye snapping to the sight without conscious thought. She calculated the shot on instinct, the variables of wind, distance, and arc clicking into place with mechanical precision. The launcher thumped against her shoulder as she fired.
The grenade soared through the smoky sky in a perfect arc, a glimmer of hope cutting through the chaos, aimed squarely at the vulnerable underbelly of the quantum drill.
For a heartbeat, time seemed to still.
And then the shield came alive.
A blistering dome of energy flared into existence, blinding blue and rippling like disturbed water. The grenade struck the barrier and detonated in a brilliant cascade of light and heat, but the shield absorbed it effortlessly, the explosion dispersing across its surface like a pebble thrown into a pond.
Alice's grin vanished, replaced by a sharp, narrow-eyed scowl.
Of course it had a shield. Of course they would protect their precious machine.
She'd misjudged them. A rare, bitter miscalculation that seethed in her gut like acid.
And now the battlefield was shifting. Fast.
"They're adapting!" one of her soldiers – Richter, maybe – shouted, ducking as a heavy machine gun shredded the wall above his head in a roar of splintering brick and dust.
Alice turned her head slowly, surveying the battlefield with fresh, critical eyes. What had been chaos only moments ago was solidifying, hardening into a coordinated counteroffensive. Soldiers moved with disciplined purpose, falling into formation, bringing overwhelming firepower to bear with lethal precision.
The confusion that had been their ally was dissolving, replaced by the iron will of a battle-hardened military machine.
This wasn't a scattered rabble of gangsters, like the ones who melted against the Dawnguard months ago...
This was the United States military.
And they were pissed.
Alice felt a flicker of frustration, a hairline crack in the unshakable confidence she wore like armor. She crushed it ruthlessly.
"We need to break that shield," she snapped, her voice slicing through the rising din. "Generators. Find them. Destroy them. Now!"
Squad Beta responded immediately, scattering into cover, scanning the battlefield with sharp, practiced movements. Brief comm bursts. Sharp hand signals.
Ash swept across the battlefield, a sudden gust like a sandstorm from some dead world. It turned the world gray and blind in an instant.
Alice's instincts screamed before her mind caught up.
Movement above–
Cinereal dropped from the sky like a spear hurled by an angry god, her cape billowing, her body a blur of deadly grace. She landed in the thick of Squad Beta, her ash-forged blade gleaming wickedly.
One of Alice's soldiers, barely more than a boy, didn't even have time to scream. The blade cleaved through him with surgical precision, his body collapsing into the dirt in a limp, boneless sprawl.
Blood soaked into the ashen soil, vanishing almost as quickly as it appeared.
Alice snarled, a guttural, animal sound tearing from her throat. Goddamned heroes!
Cinereal's ash storm surged around her like a living thing, a swirling miasma that stripped visibility to nothing, that corroded flesh and metal alike. It flowed with an eerie intelligence, carving the battlefield into kill zones and blind spots, disrupting formations, forcing Legion into defensive crouches.
The heroine wasn't just fighting them. She was reshaping the battlefield itself.
"Blast the shield!" Alice roared, her voice raw with fury and command.
Jensen broke from cover, explosives clutched to his chest, a desperate prayer made flesh. He sprinted toward a barely-visible generator tucked behind a nest of sandbags. His body moved with reckless determination, heedless of the gunfire snapping past him.
Twenty meters.
Ten.
Five.
His fingers fumbled with the detonator–
Cinereal moved faster than thought, a gray blur slicing through the storm. Her blade caught Jensen in mid-motion, the hardened ash carving a clean, brutal arc across his throat.
Jensen's eyes went wide with a stunned, almost childlike bewilderment, as if he couldn't quite believe what was happening. Blood sprayed from the wound in a gruesome fan, his knees buckling before he crumpled forward, his detonator slipping from lifeless fingers.
Alice's stomach twisted into a knot of white-hot rage.
Her teeth clenched hard enough she thought they might crack.
Alice sneered, cold rage flaring white-hot behind her eyes. "At least plant the damn thing before dying, you useless sack of meat!" she hissed through clenched teeth, though the dead man could no longer hear her contempt.
Cinereal turned toward her with deliberate slowness, her eyes unreadable beneath the constantly swirling ash that shrouded her features like a living veil. There was something in that steady gaze – not quite pity, not quite disgust, but something that made Alice's skin crawl with fury.
Alice didn't hesitate. Hesitation meant death.
She fired.
The specialized Tinker-tech ice bomb left her launcher with a distinctive thump, arcing through the ash cloud before bursting at Cinereal's feet. Its payload expanded with violent force, a wave of absolute cold that flash-froze everything in its radius. The very air itself crystallized, moisture particles becoming microscopic shards of ice that hung suspended for a heartbeat before raining down like diamond dust. The ground transformed instantly, encased in thick, glacial frost that spread outward in concentric circles of pure white.
The heroine leapt back with enhanced reflexes, twisting mid-air to avoid the worst of the blast. But even she wasn't completely untouched… a spray of frost caught her left side, immediately hardening into a rigid crust that slowed her movement, forcing her to shed the affected ash and generate more to replace it.
But for the first time since her dramatic entrance–
Alice saw hesitation in those silver eyes. A momentary calculation, a reassessment.
And that infinitesimal pause was exactly what she needed.
She smirked, her confidence flickering back to life like a pilot light reigniting. "Not so invincible, are you?" she called out, voice carrying across the battlefield with mocking clarity.
Cinereal didn't respond verbally.
She didn't need to.
——————————————————————————————————————————
Alice's breath came in ragged, burning gasps, her lungs struggling against the ash-laden air. Her fingers tightened around her last remaining grenade until the knuckles threatened to burst through skin, white and strained with desperation. Blood—some hers, most not—had dried in patches across her tactical gear. A deep laceration above her right eye intermittently blurred her vision with crimson droplets that she wiped away with furious impatience.
It wasn't supposed to be like this. She had anticipated a struggle, sure – military installations were never easy targets… but not this. Not this hellscape of shifting ash and coordinated counterattack, where every inch of progress was paid for in blood and lives, where every momentary advantage was ruthlessly countered.
Her squad was dwindling with alarming speed, their numbers reduced to less than a third of their original strength. More and more of her soldiers lay scattered across the rubble-strewn battlefield, their bodies contorted in ways that human anatomy was never meant to assume. Some had fallen to conventional weapons, riddled with bullets or shredded by fragmentation. Others bore the distinctive wounds of Cinereal's ash blade. Clean, cauterized cuts that somehow seemed more obscene in their surgical precision.
The US forces were swarming in from multiple vectors now, their suppressing fire creating a lethal pattern that tightened like a noose with each passing minute. Every potential route of escape was methodically being cut off, and the swirling, ever-shifting clouds of Cinereal's corrosive ash made it nearly impossible to maneuver without stumbling directly into a kill zone.
Alice gritted her teeth so hard she tasted enamel dust, forcing herself to focus through the pain and exhaustion. She wasn't going to let this operation fall apart. Not now. Not when she was so tantalizingly close to the objective. The quantum drill loomed barely fifty meters away, its rings still humming with raw, otherworldly energy, a looming behemoth of technology that shouldn't exist in this reality. Its Tinker-made shielding gleamed with cold, unbreakable precision, deflecting bullets and explosives with contemptuous ease.
If they failed to destroy it, if it remained intact…
No. That wasn't an option she was willing to contemplate.
A sudden, concentrated burst of gunfire from a newly established machine gun nest forced her to dive behind a ruined barricade, her shoulder slamming into the concrete hard enough to send lightning bolts of pain down her arm. Dirt and debris kicked up around her as bullets shredded the air mere centimeters above her head, the sound a constant, deafening hammer that made tactical communication almost impossible.
"This is bad!" one of her few remaining soldiers, Janis, shouted from beside her, having to practically scream to be heard over the cacophony of battle. Her voice was pitched high with undisguised tension, her hands gripping her rifle so tight the knuckles had gone white. Sweat and grime streaked her face, and a shallow graze along her jawline leaked a thin trickle of blood down her neck. "Major, we can't push through like this! We need a new approach, or we need to–"
Her words cut off with a sickening, wet crunch as Cinereal's power lashed through the air without warning, a tendril of hardened ash striking like a scythe, cleaving through Janis's midsection with horrifying ease. For an surreal instant, Janis's face registered only surprise, not yet understanding what had happened to her body. Then her eyes widened in delayed comprehension, her mouth opening in a silent scream as the top half of her torso slid sideways from the bottom, viscera spilling forth in a steaming cascade.
Alice barely had time to register the ghastly spectacle before her body moved on pure survival instinct. She ducked low, rolling sideways as another arc of ashen death carved through the space where she had been crouching just milliseconds before. The blade missed her by mere centimeters, close enough that she felt the displacement of air against her cheek, heard the whisper of its passage.
Damn it! Fuck!
They were running out of time, running out of options, running out of bodies to throw at the problem.
She whipped another specialized bomb from her tactical belt – a disruptor grenade, its violet core pulsing with unstable energy that made the air around it waver like a heat mirage – and hurled it with perfect aim into the densest part of the ash cloud. It detonated on impact with a sound like reality itself tearing, a concussive shockwave of dispersing energy surging outward in all directions, temporarily forcing the choking gray fog to part like a curtain ripped aside.
For a split second, no longer than a heartbeat, she caught a clear glimpse of Cinereal through the momentary window. The Protectorate heroine stood like a wraith amidst the wreckage, eerily still while chaos erupted around her. Her costume, once white and silver, was now stained with soot and crimson spatter. In her hand, the blade of condensed ash still dripped with the fresh blood of Alice's soldiers, the liquid sizzling as it met the corrosive material.
Their eyes met across the battlefield.
But the disruption was fleeting, the advantage momentary. The ash storm thickened again almost immediately, swirling back into place with unnatural speed, cutting off her line of sight as effectively as a wall of solid steel.
Alice's pulse pounded in her ears, the rhythm rapid and irregular. Adrenaline could only carry a human body so far, and she was reaching her physiological limits.
This isn't working. We can't keep this up. Conventional tactics are useless against this combination of cape powers and military response.
Her remaining squad members – three of them, where once there had been twenty – were pinned down by relentless enemy fire, scattered across different cover positions, unable to coordinate effectively. The chokehold around their position was tightening with each passing minute, the window of opportunity closing inexorably.
There was no clever maneuver left, no tactical ace up her sleeve.
And then…
A lucky break. The kind that no amount of planning can account for, that no strategy can reliably produce.
One of her grenades, launched in the chaotic exchange of fire, had missed its intended mark. Alice barely had time to curse her degrading accuracy before she heard it: a low, corrosive hiss that cut through even the thunderous cacophony of gunfire.
Her eyes snapped toward the source of the sound, adrenaline sharpening her senses to preternatural levels.
The acid bomb had landed on something. Not just something…
The shield generator.
The reinforced metal casing of the device began to buckle instantly under the chemical assault, the corrosive compound eating through hardened alloys like they were made of tissue paper. Sparks erupted from the compromised circuitry, and the distinctive humming blue energy of the barrier flickered, pulsed erratically…
And then died with an audible power-down whine.
For a single, breathless moment, there was silence. A frozen tableau of combatants all registering the same critical development simultaneously.
Then, Alice's lips twisted into a manic grin that held nothing of joy but everything of savage triumph.
"FIRE!" she screamed, not wasting a precious second of opportunity. "ALL REMAINING UNITS, CONCENTRATED FIRE ON THE DRILL!"
Her hands flew to her utility belt, fingers closing around the two antimatter grenades she had been saving for this precise moment – weapons so dangerous that merely carrying them was a calculated risk. Each contained enough destructive potential to level a city block. With a single, powerful motion born of desperation and absolute commitment, she hurled them toward the now-exposed quantum drill.
"WITHDRAW! MOVE, MOVE!! GET CLEAR!" she bellowed to her remaining men, already backpedaling, knowing exactly what was coming.
She barely registered Cinereal's reaction through the chaos, the heroine's momentary hesitation, the split-second of uncertain calculation. The cape's stance shifted, her body tensing as she prepared to make an impossible choice:
Chase down Alice and her retreating forces…
Or somehow stop the antimatter grenades now tumbling end-over-end toward the exposed quantum drill.
Alice smirked savagely through blood-crusted lips. No real choice to be made at all.
She detonated them remotely before they even reached their target.
The world erupted into apocalyptic light.
The quantum drill was annihilated in an instant, its intricate structure collapsing into nothingness as a vortex of golden-white destruction consumed it whole, reality itself seeming to bend and distort around the epicenter of the blast. The explosion rocked the battlefield with concussive force, sending a rolling wave of heat and pressure through the army camp that flattened everything in its path.
But that was only the prelude.
The drill's power core, now catastrophically destabilized by the antimatter reaction, ignited in a chain reaction that defied conventional physics.
The second blast was exponentially worse than the first.
Alice barely had time to brace herself before she was violently thrown skyward, her body flung like a ragdoll in a hurricane as the shockwave hit with the force of a freight train. She felt herself spinning uncontrollably through debris-filled air, her breath forcibly ripped from her lungs, her consciousness flickering as she tumbled into the rubble.
For a long, disorienting moment, there was nothing but void and silence.
Then…
Darkness.
——————————————————————————————————————————
Pain.
Searing, all-encompassing pain lanced through every fiber of her being, her vision swimming with black spots as she groggily pushed herself onto her elbows. The coppery taste of blood filled her mouth, mixing with dirt and ash as she spat weakly onto the ground. Her eardrums had ruptured, the world around her muffled and distant, as if she were underwater. Her mind sluggishly attempted to reconstruct what had just happened, piecing together fragments of memory through the haze of shock and trauma.
She had survived.
Against all odds, against all rational expectation, she was still breathing.
She let out a breathless, disbelieving laugh that quickly transformed into a wet cough, her ribs protesting with white-hot agony at each involuntary movement. Blood speckled the ground before her – her blood, this time.
Luck.
No…
Her Mistress watching over her, protecting her chosen instrument.
Through the settling dust and smoke, through the ringing in her damaged ears, Alice could see the utter devastation they had wrought. Where the quantum drill had stood was now a smoking crater, reality itself seeming wounded around its edges. Bodies lay strewn across the battlefield: American soldiers, Legion warriors, perhaps even Cinereal herself, though Alice couldn't be certain through her compromised vision.
She had done it.
The drill was gone, its threat eliminated.
And if the cost had been high…
So be it.
Some prices were worth paying.
The battlefield still burned around Alice, a hellscape of twisted metal and shattered concrete. Thick, oily smoke choked the air, clinging to her blood-soaked uniform as she forced herself to stand. None of the devastation mattered anymore. The quantum drill was destroyed.
She had succeeded. She had prevailed. And now, all she had to do…
Was make it back alive.
Alice's vision swam violently as she pushed herself upright, the world lurching beneath her feet. The taste of copper flooded her mouth, thick and metallic, clinging to her tongue and coating her teeth. Each labored breath felt like inhaling ground glass, her lungs burning as she coughed a fine spray of crimson mist onto the scorched earth.
Her body rebelled against every movement, screaming in protest as though every nerve ending had been flayed raw. Pain lanced through her in overwhelming waves, radiating outward from her left arm - broken. White fragments protruded through torn flesh, visible even through her shredded uniform. Each shallow breath sent daggers of agony through her ribcage, at least three fractures making themselves known with merciless clarity.
But she was alive.
That was more than she could say for most of her squad.
She blinked through the haze of pain and smoke, forcing her dust-coated eyes to focus. Bodies lay scattered across the cratered landscape like broken dolls, their tactical armor split open, limbs twisted at anatomically impossible angles. Some had been caught in the blast radius, others cut down by Cinereal's blades of ash. Their vacant eyes stared skyward, accusatory in death.
The antimatter explosion had claimed them all.
All except her.
Something like genuine emotion – not quite grief, but perhaps its distant cousin… flickered briefly behind her eyes. She swallowed hard, her throat parched and raw. They died for Her. They died for the Sun Arisen… she tried to reassure herself. But despite herself, a sliver of guilt bubbled up. And suddenly, her ambition tasted like ash in her mouth.
They were supposed to win. Clean. Efficient…
Together.
A distant mechanical whine cut through her momentary introspection, armored vehicles approaching. The U.S. military regrouping, recovering from the shock of the explosion. They would sweep the area, eliminating any remaining Legion troopers.
"RUN!" she shouted to the few survivors she could spot in the wreckage, her voice cracking like thin ice under pressure. There was no time for strategy now, no clever tactical maneuvers. Only the raw, primal imperative to survive.
Two battered soldiers scrambled toward her from different directions, their eyes wide with unmasked terror, their movements frantic and uncoordinated. Recognition flickered through Alice's pain-addled mind… Reyes and Bergen. They sprinted across the broken ground, stumbling over debris and corpses, the air around them thick with pulverized concrete and the unmistakable sweet-copper stench of fresh death.
Then…
A mechanical whining screech pierced the cacophony of battle. A sharp metallic grinding of gears and hydraulics under extreme tension.
Alice turned her head toward the sound – and froze.
An Abrams tank, its armor scorched but intact, had emerged from the smoke barely fifty meters away. Its turret rotated with methodical precision, the massive cannon adjusting with microscopic calibrations, tracking her heat signature through the haze. The barrel locked onto her position with cold, mechanical certainty.
Oh, shi–
Her boot caught on a jagged chunk of exposed rebar. Her already compromised balance wavered precariously. She pitched forward, falling hard onto the unforgiving ground-
And in that precise, serendipitous instant…
The tank fired.
A depleted uranium shell screamed through the exact space her torso had occupied a split-second earlier, the atmospheric compression of its passage tugging at her hair and clothing as it missed her by centimeters.
The burnt out shell of a convenience store behind her disintegrated in a cataclysmic eruption of concrete, glass, and structural steel. The concussive force slammed into her prone form like a giant's hammer, lifting her bodily and hurling her across the broken terrain. Her ears registered nothing but a high-pitched whine, the world around her reduced to a muted, underwater distortion. Her vision tunneled, darkness encroaching at the edges, her thundering heartbeat the only clear sensation remaining.
She should be dead. By all rights, by any rational probability, she should have been atomized by that shell.
Not skill. Not planning. Not even her vaunted combat reflexes.
Just sheer, dumb luck.
Her two soldiers were less fortunate, as her eyes found the mangled remains of the last two survivors of her squadron. God damn it! Fuckers…
She hoisted her grenade launcher and pointed it at the tank. The tank was readjusting its aim, turret turning towards her again, but this time she was faster. A soft *fthump* as her disruptor grenade arced towards the armored vehicle, before detonating and consuming the tank in a fireball. I'm running out of bombs… she thought to herself, before leaning back on the shattered wall for a second to breathe.
And then, the ash came.
Cinereal.
Fuck, what does it take to kill that fucking bitch!
Alice's stomach clenched with a cocktail of fear, rage and hatred as the distinctive gray particulate flooded the street, swirling with unnatural purpose. The heroine's storm smothered the battlefield like a living shroud, blotting out light, vision, thought. The roiling cloud moved with malevolent intelligence, hunting, searching, probing every crevice and shattered window, seeking out its prey with implacable determination.
Alice scrambled to her feet, ignoring the shrill protests of her battered body. She raised her grenade launcher with trembling hands, her good arm barely able to support its weight. She fired blindly into the advancing fog…
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
Each shot disappeared into the ash cloud without visible effect, the explosions muffled and impotent within the smothering gray mass.
Nothing.
A whisper of movement behind her .. her instincts screamed danger a millisecond too late. A concentrated blast of compressed ash slammed into her from behind with the force of a battering ram, sending her hurtling forward.
She crashed into a partially collapsed wall, the impact driving what little air remained from her lungs. Her already fractured left arm snapped fully at the midpoint, the broken ends grating against each other with a nauseating scrape that she felt more than heard.
A scream tore from her throat, raw and animalistic, the sound barely human. The pain transcended ordinary experience, becoming something almost transcendent in its totality…
Too much. Too all-encompassing to process.
She choked on her own breath, barely managing to stay upright as her body swayed like a sapling in a hurricane. Her grenade launcher clattered from her nerveless fingers, skittering across the rubble, now as useless as her shattered arm.
And then…
She saw her.
Cinereal emerged from the shifting haze with deliberate slowness, almost theatrically, like death itself taking physical form. The heroine's costume, once pristine white and silver, was now stained with soot and blood, yet her posture remained perfectly upright, her expression impassive behind her partial mask, utterly unshaken by the apocalyptic destruction surrounding them. Her blade of condensed ash materialized in her right hand, its edges impossibly sharp, constantly shifting and reforming in a slow, menacing dance of particulate matter.
Alice snarled, teeth bared in a rictus grin, her breath coming in ragged, desperate pants. Blood and saliva mingled on her chin, dripping onto her tattered uniform. Every instinct screamed at her to flee, but her body was at its breaking point, held together only by adrenaline and stubborn pride.
This wasn't how it was supposed to end.
She was meant for more than this! She had been promised glory, elevation, transcendence. She was supposed to stand at her Mistress's side, bathed in her Radiance, basking in divine approval!
She had been so close… so agonizingly close to victory, to proving herself worthy, to rising above the faceless ranks!
NO!
A primal refusal rose from the depths of her being, a rejection of the fate unfolding before her.
I refuse to die here, broken and alone, forgotten amidst the rubble!
With a guttural, broken growl that contained no language but all meaning, she staggered forward, her right hand fumbling desperately at her utility belt, searching for something – anything – that might forestall the encroaching death.
Cinereal didn't even blink at this final, futile display of defiance.
The heroine raised her ash blade with methodical precision, preparing to deliver the killing stroke—
An ear-splitting shriek of metal tore through the battlefield, cutting through even the muffled silence of the ash storm.
BOOM.
An explosion rocked the ground between them as a high-caliber shell slammed into Cinereal's hastily erected ash barrier. The heroine staggered back, momentarily forced to pivot away from Alice, her focus diverted by this unexpected threat.
Alice's head snapped toward the source of her salvation-
An APAFV.
Its distinctive angular silhouette was visible through the drifting smoke, its main cannon already adjusting for a second shot, its Legion crew rallying to support their commander.
The opening was there… ephemeral but real.
Alice didn't think. Didn't hesitate. Didn't waste a single, precious millisecond on deliberation.
Pure survival instinct took control. She pivoted and ran, her feet barely finding purchase on the unstable terrain, her breath coming in tortured, uneven gasps that felt like swallowing razor blades. She didn't care where she was going – only that it was away, away, away from certain death.
Cinereal's ash lashed at her heels like a living thing, the heroine already recovering, already refocusing on her primary target. Alice could feel the malevolent presence surging behind her, gaining with every second.
She dove through the shattered doorway of a collapsed building, her body screaming in renewed agony as she half-crawled, half-dragged herself through the debris-choked interior. Her broken arm hung uselessly, every jostle sending fresh waves of nauseating pain through her nervous system. She moved like a wounded animal, operating on instinct, propelled by the most fundamental desire – to survive.
She couldn't stay here.
She was still behind enemy lines, deep in hostile territory. If she got caught, if she was captured, she would face something far worse than a quick death. The Birdcage…
But if she moved?
Cinereal would find her. Would kill her.
Alice pressed herself against a partially collapsed wall, her heart hammering so violently she feared it might burst. Her mind raced frantically, panic bubbling up from beneath her carefully constructed persona of control. Bile rose in her throat, acidic and burning.
What do I do? What do I do?!
Her pulse thundered in her ears, her vision narrowing to a tunnel, the weight of imminent death pressing down on her with crushing force, suffocating, smothering any rational thought.
Something hardened within her. A crystallization of will, of sheer obstinate refusal to yield.
Her teeth clenched so tightly a molar cracked, the pain not even registering against the background cacophony of her injuries.
One last try. One last push. One final, desperate gambit.
She wasn't going to die here, forgotten and broken in enemy territory.
She was going to make it back… to report her success, to claim her due reward, to rise.
One last charge.
She braced herself against the wall, gathering what pitiful reserves of strength remained in her battered body…
And ran for her life.
The world reduced to a blur of motion and pain, each footfall sending shockwaves of agony through her nervous system. Every cell in her body screamed for relief, for cessation, for the sweet release of unconsciousness. But Alice rejected this with feral determination, forcing herself forward through sheer will.
Her left arm swung uselessly at her side, a grotesque pendulum of shattered bone and torn muscle. Her ribs protested with each labored breath, white-hot needles of pain suggesting at least two had splintered into her lung tissue. Blood dripped steadily from a dozen wounds, leaving a crimson trail across the rubble beneath her boots as she staggered forward, refusing to collapse.
She could hear Cinereal's footfalls now, not running but walking with measured, confident steps. Each deliberate footfall was a grim countdown to execution, unhurried because the outcome was inevitable. The ash clouds swirled around Alice, reaching tendrils of fine gray particulate extending toward her like spectral fingers, eager to ensnare and consume their prey.
Alice growled, the sound low and feral, barely human. Her breath came in ragged, inconsistent gasps, her vision blurring at the edges… but her fury burned brighter than ever, incandescent with desperate denial.
No. She was so close. So tantalizingly close to glory. So near to her Mistress's approval, to proving her worth, to claiming the elevation she deserved among the highest echelons of the Her faithful. I will NOT die here. Not to this self-righteous cape. Not now, not when victory had been achieved at such terrible cost.
Cinereal materialized from the ash storm, standing directly in her path, impassive and unaffected by the chaos of battle. The heroine's posture radiated absolute control and certainty. She harbored no doubt about the outcome of this confrontation. That silent confidence, that unshakable assurance of victory, only fueled Alice's rage to new heights.
She snarled, her voice a feral, incomprehensible sound of pure defiance. Her remaining functional hand gripped the final explosive device on her belt—a last-resort weapon she had been saving. If she was going to die here, she would take this cape bitch with her, go out in fire and blood rather than surrender…
Another unexpected interruption shattered the deadlock.
A blur of motion shot past her peripheral vision, slamming into Cinereal with enough force to knock the heroine off-balance. The figure moved with preternatural speed, body twisting in ways that suggested enhanced reflexes or perception.
Patrick. One of Victoria's enhanced subordinates. A low-level cape with kinetic manipulation abilities.
He dodged Cinereal's retaliatory strikes with milliseconds to spare, using his power to generate concussive kinetic blasts that kept her momentarily staggered, forcing her to split her attention between defense and offense. His movements were desperate but effective, creating the chaos Alice needed to escape.
Alice gritted her teeth, her survival instincts screaming at her to run, to abandon this fool to his fate. She came first, right? Her survival mattered above all others. Her mission, her duty to her Mistress transcended any obligation to this expendable asset. Everyone else was a tool to be used and discarded when necessary.
And yet…
She couldn't move. Her feet remained rooted in place as she watched Patrick struggle against the vastly more powerful cape, each second bringing him closer to inevitable defeat. He was barely keeping ahead of Cinereal's relentless attacks, his enhanced reflexes gradually slowing as exhaustion took its toll.
Alice groaned in genuine disbelief at what she was considering. She couldn't comprehend her own hesitation. For once, perhaps the first time in her blood-soaked career, she was contemplating something approximating selflessness.
Her right hand fumbled at her utility belt, fingers closing around her final tactical option. A timestop grenade. Her last ace in the hole.
She armed it with practiced motions, clenching her jaw against the waves of agony as she forced herself upright, steadying her aim.
Cinereal had Patrick in her grasp now, an ash tendril coiled around his throat, lifting him bodily from the ground. His face darkened to an alarming shade as oxygen deprivation set in, his limbs jerking in increasingly feeble attempts to break free. Cinereal was seconds away from executing him, her expression still unnervingly calm behind her mask.
Alice took careful aim despite her trembling hand…
And then let her mouth run wild, a deliberate distraction.
"Hey, you dumb slut! Yeah, you, you sand-for-brains whore!" she bellowed with what little breath her damaged lungs could muster.
Cinereal's head snapped toward her, eyes narrowing in obvious irritation at the crude taunting. The momentary distraction was all Alice needed. She hurled the grenade with her remaining strength, the device arcing through the ash-filled air directly toward the heroine.
Cinereal reacted with superhuman speed, catching the object instantly with another tendril of manipulated ash. The heroine raised a protective barrier between herself and the device, assuming it was just another conventional explosive like the ones Alice had deployed throughout the battle.
She was wrong.
The timestop bomb detonated with a distinctive warping sound, like reality itself being stretched and folded. The air shimmered with distortion as a bubble of warped temporality expanded outward from the epicenter–
Cinereal froze in mid-motion, her body suspended between moments, trapped in a pocket of drastically slowed time. The swirling ash storm collapsed all at once, the countless particles dropping to the ground as the will controlling them was temporarily removed from the timestream. The tendrils dissipated into ordinary dust, releasing their captive.
Patrick fell unceremoniously, tumbling onto the debris-strewn ground, his hands immediately clutching his bruised throat as he gasped desperately for air. His wide eyes fixed on Alice, taking in her battered appearance with undisguised shock. For the first time, he was seeing the true extent of her injuries: the mangled arm, the blood-soaked uniform, the visible bone fragments, the unhealthy pallor of her skin.
"Holy shit," he wheezed, his voice a ragged whisper. "Major, you look…"
"Like I got hit by a truck? Save it," Alice snapped, her voice brittle with pain and impatience. "Status report. Now."
Patrick struggled to his feet, swaying slightly as he regained his equilibrium. "The US troops drove off our diversionary force at the western perimeter. Squad Alpha made it back to our defensive lines with minimal casualties. I came back out here to–"
"Shut up," Alice cut him off, her tone razor-sharp despite her labored breathing. "You're a fucking idiot for wasting time and resources on a retrieval operation." She gestured weakly toward the frozen Cinereal, her entire body trembling with exhaustion and blood loss. "That timestop effect won't last more than three minutes. We need to haul ass now. The barrier is about to slam down, and if we're stuck on this side when it does… we're both dead."
Patrick didn't argue. He moved immediately to support her less-damaged side, offering his shoulder as a crutch. Together they ran… or rather, stumbled at the fastest pace Alice could maintain. She could barely keep her feet under her, her body failing with each step, but she forced herself forward through sheer stubbornness, her lungs burning, her vision swimming with dark spots.
The barrier line was ahead – the scorched strip of land that marked the delineation between territories, where the golden wall of energy normally stood as an impenetrable divide between Legion-controlled territory and the outside world. They were seconds away from relative safety.
With a final, desperate surge of effort, they threw themselves across the boundary just as Alice's watch emitted a high-pitched beep. The signal indicating the barrier's imminent reactivation. Alice collapsed onto the ground on their side of the line, gasping for air that seemed too thin to sustain life – then began laughing with delirious, manic hysteria. They had actually done it. Against impossible odds, they had destroyed the quantum drill and made it back alive.
"We... fucking... did it," she wheezed between painful bursts of laughter, half-delirious from pain, blood loss, and the conflicting cascade of stress hormones flooding her system.
But…
Where is the barrier?
The golden wall of energy should be materializing now, rising like an aurora of protective force, sealing them off from pursuit, cutting them off from the enemy, creating the defensive perimeter that was their only real protection against the overwhelming conventional forces arrayed against Legion.
But… nothing happened. No shimmering wall, no crackling energy field.
The barrier wasn't materializing.
Alice's laughter died in her throat, replaced by cold dread. Something was catastrophically wrong.
She turned sharply to Patrick, her breath still coming in uneven gasps. "You have a working radio? Mine's destroyed."
Patrick's expression darkened as comprehension dawned. He reached to his belt with quick, precise movements, yanking his communication device free – only to see the cracked display, the exposed circuitry sparking weakly from impact damage. He cursed under his breath, shaking his head in confirmation of their predicament. "Dead. Must have broken when Cinereal slammed me into that wall."
Alice gritted her teeth, fresh pain shooting through her jaw as another wave of adrenaline hit her system. "Shit."
They had to move. They had to locate any Legion forces in the area, find someone, anyone, who knew what the hell was happening with the defensive systems. If the barrier wasn't activating, the entire city was vulnerable to conventional military assault or cape incursion. If they were still exposed, the temporary victory they'd achieved would mean nothing in the face of the retribution that would follow.
"Come on," she ordered, forcing herself upright once more through sheer will, every movement an exercise in agony. "We're running for the Legion command post. Now." And that's when her body finally gave out. She stumbled and fell to the ground.
"Major… you need a medic. Now", Patrick exclaimed. Alice could feel her vision dimming – pain and exhaustion catching up to her now that the adrenaline rush was fading. She could barely make out the other cape's words, "Your arm is… Panacea at the hospital… need to report…"
Alice felt herself be hoisted onto the shoulder of the other cape before the bliss of unconsciousness claimed her.
And the battle raged on around them.
Turns out even the Ice Bitch of Bombs herself isn't immune to war-forged camaraderie, no matter how much she tells herself that she doesn't care about the lives of her soldiers...