When General Graham saw the message on the public channel, every slab of fat on his body quivered with excitement.
He slipped out of the freezer, checked that no one was watching, scraped the frost off his clothes, and left the kitchen. As he walked, he was already drafting a speech in his head, brave and stirring and fit for a hero.
He didn’t get far before a Raider appeared. The robot lunged at him the moment it spotted him.
Graham’s skin went cold. He backed up without thinking, reached for his gun, and realized he had left it in the freezer.
Then the Raider spoke in time: “General Graham! So you’re here. It’s me, Ollie.”
“Ollie. Thank God. We won.” Graham tried hard to hide how close he had come to screaming.
“Yes,” Ollie said. “We won.”
“What about the people Julian sent?”
“I was just about to tell you. Blin is in the mainframe chamber right now, and… he seems to know about Julian.”
“What?! How could he even get down there?”
“Phantom Forge built another elevator. It goes straight to the mainframe.”
“It did what?” Graham frowned. “Why would it build an elevator?”
“I don’t know. But… what should we do now?”
“Find a way to kill him.” Graham’s voice turned flat. “Not one of the people Julian sent is allowed to leave.”
“…Understood.”
***
Meanwhile, Maple Valley.
“Phantom Forge has been ended, so now you’re Ollie?” Blin asked, deliberately casual.
“Yes.” “We won.” “Phantom Forge’s power is ours.” Three CSTs nearest him answered in turn, like a chorus.
“Good.” Blin kept his tone light. “Then what was that video Phantom Forge showed me? Did Edean turn on Lord Julian too?”
“No. That was fake!”
A figure slid rapidly down the stairs. It was Ofer, the boy who had been beaten half to death on the upper level.
“Lord Blin, Phantom Forge has always been cunning,” Ofer said quickly. “That was just a desperate attempt to turn us against each other. Come on. General Graham has something to tell you.”
Blin waited a long moment before he answered. “Fine.”
Experience told him Julian was already gone. Otherwise Phantom Forge could not have shown a video with Edean’s details that accurate.
And with that conclusion came a decision. Blin would kill Ollie and Ofer, along with the mainframe they had just seized.
Outwardly, he kept chatting with the CSTs. Inwardly, he was chewing on a different question.
When that CST, still acting as Phantom Forge, had screamed about ending together, why hadn’t it attacked its own core? Why had it tried to destroy a small, unremarkable machine by the wall instead?
There were six such machines, evenly spaced along the edge of the circular hall. One end was anchored into the wall. The other connected, through pipes laid under the floor, to a platform beneath the mainframe.
What were they for?
The unit that had been damaged was still throwing sparks and venting with a thin, hissing sound.
Gas…
Blin had been alive for more than a thousand years. He had seen enough to recognize a pattern. With the environment and Edean’s intel in mind, the answer clicked, and with it, Phantom Forge’s last intention.
The mainframe had been built here to exploit mantle heat. Those machines were thermal conversion units, turning heat into steam. The steam drove the massive turbine beneath the mainframe, producing an endless supply of power.
If the units were destroyed, the heat could not be converted. It would build inside a gigantic tank below. Pressure would rise. Temperature would rise. And at a critical threshold, it would explode.
At this depth, inside a sealed space, an explosion on that scale would mean only one thing.
Blin was staring when a CST shifted, casually blocking his view. Blin scanned the room. Every position was deliberate. Some were between him and the light column. Some were between him and the conversion units. Together they formed a loose encirclement, and the only gap they left was the staircase.
It confirmed his read. Ollie didn’t want to fight here. Once Blin was lured to the surface, they could drown him in bodies and grind him down.
Decision made, Blin opened the public channel. “Bit. Are you by the shaft?”
“I’ve been here the whole time,” Bit replied immediately. “Where are you in the plan now?”
“At the most critical step. Go up the elevator shaft now and clear the opening above.”
“Clear it?”
“Yes. Ten minutes.” Blin’s voice sharpened. “Kill every machine soldier near the elevator mouth. When we retreat, I want a clean exit.”
“Happy to. But what are you about to do?”
“I’m going to turn all of Maple Valley into a super-volcano. Cha-cha-cha.”
“Wow. Gods above…”
“It’ll be a brutal fight and a hard escape,” Blin said. “You scared?”
“Scared?” Bit laughed. “I’m so excited I’m about to smoke. The 2D Blade has been hungry for this. This is -”
“Enough.” Blin cut him off. “Stop talking and start moving.”
“Yes, sir.”
…
“After you.” Ofer pointed toward the stairs when Blin still didn’t move. “General Graham is waiting for you.”
Blin nodded. There was no need to keep acting.
He stepped toward one of the conversion units, drew the Riftshock Blade, and poured energy into it. The blade glowed a vicious crimson.
“What are you doing…?” Ofer frowned.
“Killing.”
Blin exploded into motion. He flashed past Ofer as a blur, a single red line cutting through the air.
Boom.
Ofer, who had only just re-formed into a human shape, was blown apart again.
The CSTs surged in as one. Blin cut down the one blocking his path, reached the first unit, and tore it apart with several fast strikes. Then he sprinted for the next.
One unit would have been enough for the system. Five more existed as backups, built precisely to prevent this kind of catastrophic accident.
Unit after unit went down. The CSTs grew more frantic with every second.
By the time Blin reached the fifth, the fight had become ugly. Up above he could move freely. Here the targets were tucked against the wall, easy to trap him against. The CSTs were strong, and with his space limited, he could be mobbed to death.
Ollie had barely become Phantom Forge and already faced a lethal crisis. To protect the last remaining unit, he drove the CSTs into a suicidal rush.
The CSTs went mad. Blin went madder.
Facing seven or eight opponents at once, he gave ground to no one. He chopped left, kicked right, leapt into a spinning triple-cut. He lunged, rammed, threw, kicked backward, swung a fist into a horizontal slash, smashed with the blade’s hilt, grabbed one attacker and slammed it down, used the body to bowl over two more, then drove the last one standing into the machine itself.
His blade punched through both robot and unit in a single thrust.
“Boom.”
The Riftshock function had just cooled down. The unit detonated with a hollow, violent crack.
All six conversion units were gone.
Pure terror returned to the CSTs’ faces. They were all wounded now, and they no longer had the strength to keep the Apocalypse Ranger here.
From somewhere below the chamber came a clear, unnatural sound. Blin knew he had succeeded. He activated flight, shot up to the stair platform near the top, slipped into the corridor, and fled upward.