Late at night…
At the highest point atop the Twin-Tower Fortress, Wyatt sat alone on a steel crossbeam of the radar scaffold, staring up into the endless ocean of stars.
Up here the altitude was high enough that the sky felt closer. The stars looked brighter—denser—like someone had spilled glitter across black glass.
A voice came from behind him.
“So this is where you were hiding. I’ve been looking everywhere.”
Wyatt glanced back. Bit rose on his thrusters from below and settled onto the beam beside him.
“I told you I was on the tower,” Wyatt said.
Bit snorted. “This isn’t the tower. This is the tip of the tower. What are you doing up here?”
“Watching the stars.”
“Why? It’s just stars. Haven’t you seen them before?”
“Not this close,” Wyatt said. “Grayrock Mountain is tall enough to rise above the clouds too. Every night the sky up there must look like this. But I was never allowed to climb to the summit.”
“Why didn’t you just go?” Bit asked.
Wyatt gave him a look. “You’re used to freedom. You don’t understand what it feels like when even your actions aren’t your own.”
He stared back out at the sky. “If I’d tried to sneak up Grayrock Mountain to watch the stars, I wouldn’t have made it halfway before my body was taken over. In Plando, it isn’t just your actions they control. You’re not even allowed to think.”
Bit’s jaw slackened. “My god. How did you survive that? If it were me, I’d go insane in a day.”
“Why are you here?” Wyatt asked.
“Nothing,” Bit said. “Just came to tell you your precious little toy arrived.”
Wyatt started to rise. “Then wait. Sunrise is almost here.”
Bit hesitated. “One more thing—Little White came too.”
As Wyatt stood, a crisp, bright voice carried up from the tower-top platform below.
“Don’t come down! I brought your sword!”
Little White stood there in a brand-new combat suit, grinning as she held up a blade longer than she was tall.
“Heh,” she said. “I was just wondering if you’d be green.”
Bit looked between them. “You’re all here to watch sunrise?”
“Of course,” Little White said. “Sunrise is beautiful.”
Behind her, Bubbles made a quick hand sign, and even Merc—who almost never spoke—answered quietly, “Yeah.”
The five of them crowded onto the narrow beam until there was barely room to sit.
Not long after…
The darkness began to retreat. Deep indigo softened into blue, then pale cyan. The surrounding sea of clouds caught a thin gold edge—and the sun rose, slow and red, spilling fire across the sky.
***
An hour later, Lord Julian summoned them back into the combat simulation room.
Wyatt entered with his long sword on his back—and froze. Three Avengers were already waiting inside. They weren’t standard models. Their armor was heavier, their frames broader, built like walking siege shields.
Bit and the others stared too, confused.
A moment later, the Gentleman arrived and began laying out the details of the coming battle.
“The forces attacking Grayrock Base are gathering outside now,” he said. “We leave near dusk.”
He didn’t sugarcoat the reality. “I don’t expect we’ll push the front line close to the base. If my read is correct, we’ll meet Phantom Forge’s main force in the middle of the Silent Plains.”
He continued, “Grayrock Base’s defenders should be drawn out. How many, I can’t say. Next, I want all of you—except Wyatt—to infiltrate underground…”
Bit couldn’t contain himself. “Great plan! You draw out the garrison, and we slip in and rescue them—”
The Gentleman shot him a look and sighed. “If you try that, none of you’ll come back. Don’t interrupt me.”
He raised his voice. “You’ll infiltrate Level Two. You’ll open the passage into Zone X—and you won’t enter.”
They all went still. Only Merc nodded once, as if he’d expected it.
Bubbles signed, puzzled. “I don’t understand. Then what?”
“Then you withdraw at maximum speed,” the Gentleman said. “From there, the next phase belongs to them.”
He gestured to the three heavy Avengers.
“They’re Avenger EP-types,” he said. “Custom-built for this operation. Each has four times the armor of a standard Avenger.”
Then his tone sharpened. “And each carries one triphasic high-density microcharge.”
“Those three triphasic charges are far weaker than the one we used at the Doomsday Fortress,” he said. “But if even one of them can make it into Zone X… then we remove our greatest long-term threat.”
Bit and the others exchanged looks.
Little White’s expression turned tight and uneasy. “If we do that, then Dad and Master…”
“Yes,” the Gentleman said quietly. “And I suspect that’s exactly what he wants now.”
Silence stretched, long and suffocating.
Wyatt finally spoke. “Then what about me, Lord Julian? You said ‘everyone except me.’”
The Gentleman stepped aside, revealing the big wall display. A map of the area around Grayrock Base bloomed across it, with several routes and a few blinking yellow markers.
“At first you move with them—up to here,” the Gentleman said. “They peel off and infiltrate Grayrock Base from this point. You exit alone here, circle around the base, and head into the Blackstone Wasteland beyond.”
Wyatt focused on the marker ahead of Grayrock Base and nodded. He’d been there before.
Little White nodded too, fast and decisive. “Got it. I almost forgot—Ant Nest really is a perfect entry point. That way we don’t have to expose ourselves on the surface.”
…
By late afternoon, before the sky had fully darkened, the machine army assembled outside the Twin-Tower Base lifted off in a vast tide and flew toward Grayrock Base.
Wyatt carried two mini inertial-confinement reactor cores. Along with Bit, Bubbles, Merc, and Little White—and the three EP-type Avengers—he boarded one of the transports and set out on a long, unknown journey…
***
One day earlier…
Plando. The Bodalawa Mountain Range.
Even in the human era, this barren, remote region had seen almost no footprints. Over the past thousand years, not even the most far-ranging mining drones had ever come this way.
Time had erased the brutal traces of the Sunflower’s crash. The mountain she’d slammed into had collapsed over her wreckage, burying it. After centuries of tectonic shifts and landslides, the crash site had come to look almost natural. From the surface, nothing suggested that an ancient behemoth lay entombed beneath the wasteland.
No one would have guessed that inside this buried warship, there were still… “people.”
Above, the communications satellite had just moved out of position. The Sunflower’s connection to Julian went dead.
“Wyatt…” Starling repeated the name under her breath. “I’ve never dealt with an Awakened robot before. When he realizes he’s been deceived… will he be reasonable?”
She drifted in thought for a moment. Then she removed Janiel’s headband from her own head, stood, and left the ruined bridge.
She passed through several dead corridors and silent compartments. Through a blasted-open doorway, she entered the Human Embryo Vault—and paused.
This bay had been damaged the worst. Even after a thousand years, the burn marks and blast scars remained. The “million embryos” had already been destroyed before the ship ever crashed.
Starling shook her head and left the dreadful chamber behind.
She walked on until she reached the hibernation bay, stopping before a pod whose indicator light blinked yellow.
Inside lay a little girl, sunk in deep sleep. One small hand clutched the end of another arm—hugging a battered mechanical forearm to her chest like a stuffed toy.
Starling looked down at her gently. “Hold on a little longer, Linneya. Someone’s coming to save us.”
(End of Volume Two)