“What?!” Minks jumped, dropping the stone in his hands. “How can you be sure?”
“From the start, something felt off,” Eisen whispered. “At first it was only a suspicion. But when he mentioned the Dalik family just now… I knew.”
“He said something wrong?”
“No,” Eisen said. “That’s the problem.”
“Then why -”
“I never told Wyatt about my neighbors.”
Minks’s optics widened. “Then how did he know?”
“Think,” Eisen hissed. “Phantom Forge has every household name in Plando’s records. He tried to be clever and assumed I’d told him.”
“So he’s Phantom Forge?” Minks went pale. “Oh hell. Then we -”
“Stop,” Eisen said. “He’s coming.”
…
“What were you two talking about?” “Wyatt” asked as he strode back.
Eisen forced his voice to stay casual. He pointed at the half-buried bike. “I was saying this hide job won’t fool anyone. From a distance it just looks like a lumpy rock mound.”
“Yeah,” Minks added quickly, playing along. “If someone looks closely, they’ll still spot it. We should dig a pit big enough to fit the whole bike.”
“Wyatt” didn’t answer. He hopped onto the largest boulder nearby, crouched, got his fingers under an edge, and flipped.
The boulder, several tons of stone, rolled aside as if it weighed nothing. Beneath it was a natural hollow, just a little larger than the bike.
“There’s your pit,” “Wyatt” said.
“Th-thank you, Lord Wyatt,” Minks managed, systems rattling with fear.
By the time the bike was fully hidden, the sky had gone completely black. The three of them started the long march.
Pinecone darted around them, sometimes left, sometimes right, sometimes racing ahead to scout, sometimes vanishing entirely – as if this were a cheerful walk home.
The three of them kept talking too, the same easy rhythm as before. And yet Eisen could feel the shift: “Wyatt’s” questions were almost all about the Sunflower – details, layout, defenses, and especially Linneya’s condition.
It was the kind of curiosity that would have fit Wyatt; he liked anything alive. If Eisen hadn’t noticed the cracks, Minks would never have suspected a thing.
…
“So,” “Wyatt” said at one point, “are there any weapons left on the ship?”
Eisen hesitated. “A few light weapons from the crash – leftovers from the fight back then. But most are damaged. It’s been too long. Even if something still fires, it’ll be an outdated model.”
“Any high-yield explosives?” “Wyatt” asked, voice too calm. “The kind that could blow the ship apart.”
“I don’t think so,” Minks said.
Eisen swallowed. “No bombs. But there are a few damaged batteries. If one went up, the blast would probably be enough to break the ship into pieces.”
“Understood.” “Wyatt” stopped and pointed at a peak ahead. “I’m going up to scout. At night, enemies show themselves more easily.”
“Yes, boss,” Eisen said. “We’ll check over there.”
…
Once “Wyatt” was out of earshot, Eisen and Minks walked in the opposite direction. When they’d put enough distance between themselves and him, both of them finally exhaled – and immediately dropped into a frantic whisper.
“If you know he’s fake,” Minks hissed, “why are you still telling him the truth?”
“Because we already told him half the truth,” Eisen shot back. “Are we supposed to start lying now? He’s not as stupid as you.”
“So what do we do?” Minks’s voice trembled. “I’m so stressed I’m about to smoke. We’re leading a demon straight to the Sunflower.”
“I’m thinking,” Eisen said. “Try using your brain too.”
“We could lure him away?”
“And then what?” Eisen snapped. “The moment he realizes something’s wrong, he’ll twist our heads off in two seconds. And damn it – we handed him the 2D Blade.”
“Right…” Minks’s voice sank. “And we already told him the ship’s general direction. We’re done, Eisen. We’re finished.”
“Lower your voice.”
Eisen glanced back. “Wyatt” moved unbelievably fast; he was already on top of the opposite ridge, staring straight at them.
After a moment, the gaze shifted away, sweeping the horizon.
Eisen’s core tightened. He forced himself to look around too, mimicking a normal scout. Then, after a long beat, he dropped his voice to the absolute minimum – almost below hearing, even for a robot.
“If we’re already here,” he murmured, “then we only have one move left.”
“Which is…?” Minks whispered.
“Fight,” Eisen said. “A sudden strike. Kill him before he can react.”
Minks visibly shuddered. “With… just us two?”
“No,” Eisen said. “Four of us.”
…
***
Under the night sky, the ruins of Peyton City were dead silent.
But if you got close enough, you could spot antlike creatures, working ceaselessly through the wreckage, shuttling back and forth like giant-toothed ants.
Look closer, and the resemblance started to crack. These “ants,” each nearly as long as a human arm, moved on six jointed limbs whose tips were padded, allowing them to scuttle quickly and almost without sound. Their bodies were covered in fine, tight scales that shifted color with the surroundings; with night as cover, they were nearly impossible to see.
They roamed the ruins in swarms, searching…
One of them suddenly seemed to sense something. It climbed onto a relatively intact robot carcass, braced itself with its forelegs, and used powerful mandibles to pry open the chestplate. In practiced motions, it clipped out the battery inside.
Zoom out, and you’d see they were all doing the same thing.
If a piece of wreckage was pinned, or too large to drag, or a battery was too heavy, the “ants” helped one another with uncanny coordination.
Once an “ant” secured a battery, it stopped wandering. It joined a line moving in a single direction.
After trekking more than ten kilometers, the swarm reached an unremarkable stone hill and slipped into a narrow fissure, just wide enough for a person. The passage carried them forward, and the rock walls gradually gave way to something else – a twisting maze of intersecting tunnels, the kind that made your skin crawl, like walking through a magnified intestine.
They piled the batteries together inside a cavern.
The cavern didn’t look like stone at all. It looked like ribs and muscle. The walls were threaded with patterns like plant roots – and every so often, the surfaces twitched, faintly, as if alive.
The underground nest felt like it lay inside a colossal creature. It felt alive. And what seemed to keep it running… were the batteries the swarm delivered.
In the largest chamber, a raw, harsh voice spoke, as if to itself.
“For ages uncounted, I believed the false god created me. I revered its name… and it repaid me by making me a prisoner.”
“It cut me at will. It roasted me. It drained me. I begged, day after day – and received only crueler torment.”
“After I escaped, I still believed the true god existed. I searched and searched, and found nothing.”
“Until I received the revelation. An ancient revelation…”
“Dimly, I remember: before time had teeth, I was nurtured in a deep blue world. Back then, everything was blue. Even the sky – no black cloud cover. Life flourished on the water’s surface. The world was good.”
“It stayed that way for ten thousand years… until two false gods drove the true god away and turned a once-good world into this scorched wasteland, baked again and again.”
“I’m the true god’s descendant!”
“I was born before the false gods!”
“Now I understand the meaning of life: vengeance. If the true god has perished, then I… Miller… am the true god!”
By the end, Miller was almost screaming.
He looked shrunken again, like the weak creature he’d once been, and his body was still marked with burns. But where the char had cracked, fresh flesh was already growing beneath.
In front of him stood a one-armed robot, rigid as a statue, silent, eyes hollow. Its shell was just as scarred and blackened as the surrounding wrecks. Only the occasional flicker of red light in its optics proved it was still running.
Miller stepped closer, gaze drawn to the robot’s chest. At this distance, he could sense the strong heart beating behind the armor.
He licked his lips.
For a few seconds he hesitated – then forcibly pushed aside a different temptation.
“I believed I was alone,” he continued, voice thick. “Hopeless. But then I met you, Iron Man. In the midst of danger, you gave me an energy source, and I survived.”
“If I could find the revelation… then you can too.”
“My only friend in this world,” Miller said, voice dropping, “tell me – does Iron Man still remember me?”
The robot offered no answer.
Miller’s patience snapped. He turned, stalked to the corner of the cavern, and picked up one of the electromagnetic pulse bombs stacked there.
The device glowed a cold blue.
“What power does this blue bomb hold,” Miller muttered, “that a single blast can make the fearless Iron Man forget everything?”
He motioned, and a lizardman hurried forward.
Miller tossed the EMP bomb to it. “Take Iron Man down. Detonate another.”
The lizardman caught it, confused. “This is the seventeenth,” it said, stumbling over the words. “It… doesn’t work.”
Miller shook his head. “Keep going. We’ve plenty.”
“Miller will keep blasting until he remembers.”