Chapter 2: Blizzard
The air in the collapse zone tasted of powdered concrete and ozone. Rena’s stabilizers whined, correcting for the unstable ground as Hiro led the gray exos through a canyon of broken glass and twisted steel.
“Life signs converging twenty meters ahead, behind a collapsed load-bearing wall,” Rena reported, painting a schematic on his display.“Structural integrity is at twelve percent and dropping. Recommend micro-charge breaching.”
“Do it.”
He didn’t look at the squad icons hovering in his peripheral vision. He knew what he’d see there: the tight, professional tension of soldiers executing an unsanctioned op.Carter’s breathing, over the comms, was a little too fast.
A sharp, contained explosion—more a deep thump—echoed from up ahead as one of the grays placed the charge. The wall shuddered and fell inward, revealing a pocket of hollow space beneath a grotesquely bent girder. A dozen faces, pale and streaked with dust, looked up.Civilians.Huddled together. One woman was holding two children so tightly their small faces were buried in her coat.“Satou, Carter—form a corridor.Others, start extraction. Fast and tidy,” Hiro barked, the Ottawa moving to brace the girder with its shoulder. The metal screamed in protest, but held.
He could feel the subtle vibration through the suit’s frame, the shared strain. A warmth, almost like a muscle stretching, bled into his limbs from the neural link.Rena was compensating, distributing the load.
The first civilians were being passed hand-to-hand through the exo squad when Carter’s voice cut through the operational chatter, sharp with sudden dread.
“Movement.Bearing two-seven-zero.Fast. Too fast.”
On the tactical map, a new icon flashed into existence.It didn’t pulse like a standard Shade signature. It streaked, a jagged line of corrupted data shooting towards them from the heart of the forming dead zone. It was smaller than the titan they’d downed, but its energy output spiked into the red, a staccato heartbeat of wrongness.
“Specialized pattern,” Rena said, her voice flattening into pure data-stream.“Kinetic-priority hunter. It’s seen us.”
“Shift positions!Cover the civilians!” Hiro ordered, his own voice cold.
It crossed the last two hundred meters in three heartbeats.
It moved like a series of bad film cuts, a blur that resolved into something solid only at the moment of impact. It was all sharp angles and articulated violence, a carapace of iridescent black that drank the light. It didn’t screech.It was silent.It targeted Carter. The young pilot was turning, his Blazer coming up too slow. The creature’s claws, like polished obsidian scythes, extended for his cockpit.Hiro didn’t think.The Ottawa disengaged from the girder. The world dissolved into a rush of g-force and crimson-hued data. He threw the suit into a lateral dash, positioning himself between Carter and the incoming blur.
He got the vanes up in a guard position.The impact was a planet cracking.
Alerts detonated across Hiro’s vision in a fireworks display of catastrophic damage. The Ottawa’s left arm took the full force of the blow. He heard the sickening crunch of actuators shredding themselves, felt the jolt physically smash into his own shoulder despite the dampeners.The world upended.He was airborne. Then he was falling.The ground met him with a thunderclap of noise and dust. His display flickered, systems fighting to reboot.Pain, hot and precise, lanced up his neck.
“Left arm articulation at eighteen percent.Neural feedback spike. Recommendation: Disengage.”
“Negative.”
He forced his optics online.The gray exos were in motion, a storm of panic and protocol. Blazer fire traced lines of superheated blue across the rubble, chasing the creature as it ricocheted off a facade, untouched.“Lead’s down!Lead’s down!”
“Flank it! Don’t let it re-engage!”
Carter’s exo was standing over him, firing wildly. “I’ve got you, sir!”
Command’s voice sliced through the chaos, crystal clear and utterly devoid of warmth.“Squad Leader Shimizu. Aerial threat assessment classifies the entity as a ‘Reaper’-class Shade.Your squad is not equipped. Evacuate immediately.This is a direct order.”
On the ground, Hiro watched the Reaper. It was toying with them.Dodging fire.Closing distances only to leap away. It was evaluating, learning their patterns.He could see it in the unnatural, fluid pauses.He shoved the Ottawa upright. The left arm hung useless, dripping hydraulic fluid like black blood.
“Carter, Satou, fall back to the extraction point with the civilians. Now.”
“Sir, we’re not leaving you—”
“The mission,” Hiro growled, cutting him off, “is the twelve souls.Get them clear. That’s an order.”
The Reaper stopped its dizzying dance. It perched on a crooked streetlamp, its head cocked.It was looking directly at him.At the crimson suit.
A new voice, strained and frantic, buzzed on a separate command channel. “Shimizu, this is Air Support Viper-Two.We are thirty seconds out. I have eyes on your position and that thing.You need to disengage now. We are weapons-hot for cleansing.”
The civilians were moving, shepherded by the gray exos towards a waiting transport beyond the fire. The squad was retreating, step by step, their weapons still trained on the Reaper.
Hiro stood his ground. The Ottawa’s good right hand flexed, the built-in plasma cutter shimmering to life with a low whine.“Rena. Redistribute all power from the left arm to mobility and the cutter.”
A flicker of warmth, or perhaps just an error in the pain-feedback loop.“It will void the safety interlocks. A hit to the core will be fatal.”
“Understood.”
The Reaper launched itself from the perch. Not at the retreating squad.At him.He didn’t try to block. He dropped, letting the thing pass over him in a whisper of cutting air, and spun, dragging the white-hot plasma cutter across its lower limb.It screamed then—a high, piercing sound that shattered remaining windows. Iridescent fluid, thick and smoking, splattered across his canopy.It landed, favoring a leg. It turned, and for a second, there was something in its faceless gaze—a calculation, an acknowledgment.
Viper-Two’s voice screamed in his ear. “Shimizu, get out of the blast radius! We are committing!”
He saw the contrails of the fast-movers cutting across the slate sky.He saw the gray exos reach the transport, shoving the last civilian inside. He saw the Reaper coil, preparing to finish him.He took a step forward, not back.
The Ottawa-1, the obsolete prototype, the funeral-red machine named for a ghost, settled into its only possible stance. The whine of the overloaded plasma cutter mixed with the growing roar of the approaching jets.The world narrowed to the space between him and the monster.Incoming payload.
He raised the cutter.The Reaper tensed. The sky began to burn.
(Author note: next scene is a completely perspective change, so do not use any info from this)