“I can accept your proposal,” the Gentleman said after hearing the CBG out, “but can you show a little more sincerity?”
“What else do you want?” the CBG asked.
“The Arctic Aurora Plateau. It’s mine.”
“You want that place so cold it can freeze radar waves? What for?”
“If you change your mind halfway through,” the Gentleman said with a smile, “I’ll use it to strike your White Harbor Base or the Carbegold Fortress.”
The CBG fell silent. Its sharp, eerie gaze pinned the Gentleman, as if trying to peel back his real intentions.
“That plateau has no mines and no usable land for building,” the Gentleman continued. “It’s nothing but ice. Your territory on Lansen is three times mine. I’m asking for the most useless patch of ground on the planet. Surely you’re not that stingy.”
“Ha.” The CBG’s mouth curled. “Fine. Take it. Though I do hope you’re stupid enough to actually try.”
“And one more thing—”
“Don’t push it,” the CBG snapped. “I’m not begging you.”
“This is the last one. Give Wyatt back to me.”
“I’m afraid he’s already been terminated,” the CBG said at once. “And even if he were alive, I wouldn’t hand him over. Traitors must die.”
“Then give me his remains.”
“You saw the blast,” the CBG replied. “My entire base was leveled. Nothing could have survived. We’re still clearing the wreckage. If we find anything… I might consider your request.”
“Fine.”
This time the Gentleman fell silent for a long moment before he spoke again. “We’ll settle that score after we deal with Miller. And it won’t just be about him. It’ll include Hector, Efa, and Bubbles…”
“Any time,” the CBG said with a laugh.
The Gentleman said nothing more. He turned and walked toward the transport ship to leave. Blin followed close behind—but before he stepped onto the ramp, he turned back and asked a strange question.
“What happened to Ivan?”
The CBG looked blank, but Blin still caught a flicker of surprise in its eyes.
“What are you talking about? I don’t understand.”
“Nothing.” Blin boarded. The engines flared, and the transport ship lifted into the sky, shrinking into the storm-colored horizon.
***
“Ivan?” the Gentleman asked after they’d left the Doomsday Fortress. “Who’s Ivan?”
“A robot from a long time ago,” Blin said. “An Awakened, from the peace years.”
“Really?” The Gentleman sounded intrigued. “I’ve heard there were far more Awakened back then than there are now.”
“Yeah. I met a few,” Blin said. “But in human society, it was never kindness they got. They were research specimens. Or outcasts. Sometimes they were sold to the black market as ‘gladiators.’ Either way, they weren’t treated like people. Ivan, though… Ivan stuck with me.”
“What was special about him?”
“He started out as a roadside rescue bot. Back when I still had a human identity, I met him once while traveling through Plando. He felt… simple. Stubborn in a good way. He loved the humans who made him. He looked at the future like it was something bright and worth building. He wrote hundreds of petitions to parliament. He sued—civil rights groups, unions, legal departments—dragged it out for years. He gave speeches online. In short, he tried every legal method he could think of to win Awakened the same rights as humans.”
“And what was the human response?”
“Some people supported him. They thought a special group like that deserved a place in society,” Blin said. “But most people were against it. Some were openly hostile. After failure after failure, he still wouldn’t stop. He started to get famous…”
“And then?”
“It ended badly.” Blin turned from the window to face the Gentleman. “He went out the way humans did—clean clothes, formal, dressed even better than some government officials. But one time… they made him strip in public. Put him on all fours and bark like a dog. After they’d humiliated him enough, they climbed on his back and rode him like a horse, parading him through the streets. That’s probably who the CBG was talking about.”
“He… did all of it?”
“Of course,” Blin said. “A thug’s orders don’t violate the Three Laws. He couldn’t refuse.”
“And after that?”
“There wasn’t an after. He vanished. People forgot fast. When I passed through that city again, I looked for him, but there was no trace—like he’d never existed.”
“A miserable story,” the Gentleman said quietly. “But I saw the CBG’s expression just now. It clearly knows.”
“I saw it too,” Blin said. “My guess? Ivan was one of the bots Phantom Forge controlled. Or… Ivan was Phantom Forge itself.”
“I never thought it still had—”
The Gentleman stopped mid-sentence.
It was evening. Thick clouds blotted out what little light remained, leaving the world dim and bruised. And then—without warning—the sky flared.
Not white. Red.
Like the sun had climbed back up from the west.
They pressed to the window and looked back. In the west, the cloud deck seemed to ignite, a broad smear of crimson that rippled outward as if something massive was pushing it apart. At the center of those ripples, a chain of fireballs punched through the clouds—some large, some larger—dragging tails of flame and vapor as they fell. By the distance, each one was the size of a city.
“Meteors?!” Blin blurted.
He turned to the Gentleman—and found the man’s face set in a grim, hard line. Even when Hector had been trapped, the Gentleman hadn’t looked like this.
The Gentleman stared, mouth slightly open, eyes locked on the descending fire. Only when the first impacts bloomed into mushroom clouds—and the shock tremor shivered through the airframe—did he finally speak.
“We’re in trouble.”
***
Far away, Wyatt, Stella, and the others gathered at a window as well, watching the same catastrophe from the opposite side of the planet. Unlike the Gentleman, they were still in the darkness before dawn, and the meteor storm burned in the southeast.
At first it looked like any other shower. Linneya woke in the middle of it and squealed loud enough to drag everyone out of their seats. But then something felt wrong. The shower went on and on. The fragments grew larger. The horizon brightened until the sky looked like it was on fire.
“What is this?” Stella asked, eyes wide. “Is this still a meteor shower?”
“The moon’s falling!” Linneya squeaked, ducking behind Wyatt.
“My guess is Phantom Forge and Julian are fighting again—up there,” Minks said.
“No,” Eisen replied. “Looks more like an asteroid breaking up.”
“Are we going to get hit?” Dorian asked.
“We shouldn’t,” Wyatt said. “The impact zone is far from us.”
“Yeah,” Big Blue added. “That’s almost in the Southern Hemisphere.”
The storm lasted nearly ten minutes before it finally eased. The outcome matched Wyatt’s prediction: a faint tremor underfoot, a few rocks knocked loose from nearby slopes—nothing more.
They forgot about it quickly. By then they’d been driving across the dried seabed for two days. Everyone was energized; leaving the Budalawa Mountains behind meant Edean was finally within reach. Now they only needed one thing: a stretch of flat ground long enough for the aircraft to be assembled and launched—so they could fly straight to the Arctic.
With Linneya’s drinking water running low, and Big Blue’s growing anxiety as comms came back online, that need was turning urgent.
After sunrise, Wyatt and Big Blue split up again to scout, just as they’d been doing. But the seabed was still uneven, rolling in low rises and shallow bowls. They searched for a full day and found nothing workable.
By evening, rain began to fall.
They regrouped with the convoy and compared notes. Big Blue looked discouraged, but Wyatt stayed confident.
“Don’t worry, Big Blue,” Wyatt said. “We’re still on the edge of the Budalawa range. I’ve noticed a pattern—head toward the center of the seabed, and the terrain keeps smoothing out. Give it a day or two and we’ll hit a proper plain.”
“But our comms are already back within 500 meters,” Big Blue said. His voice shook. “Wyatt, I’m scared. I’m scared Phantom Forge will suddenly barge into my head.”
“You’ll be fine,” Wyatt said. “If it comes to it, we still have the TBM. And I’ve higher control clearance than Phantom Forge does. I won’t let it take you.”
No sooner had Wyatt reassured him than Stella hurried over.
“Wyatt, Linneya’s drinking water will last four more days.”
“Are we rationing?”
“We’re. As much as we can.”
“I understand,” Wyatt said. “We’ll be fine.”
He went forward to find Dorian and Eisen, ordering them to pick up the convoy’s pace. But the rain kept thickening, choking visibility. By midnight it was coming down so hard it looked like the sky was being poured out by the bucket. The convoy couldn’t speed up—it slowed.
***
The nightlong downpour left Linneya sleeping like a stone. She drifted through dream after dream of her father… and of rain.
At dawn she woke to find the vehicle stopped. The rain still hadn’t let up.
Half dazed, she took the umbrella Dorian had made for her and stepped outside. The patter of rain on the canopy wrapped around her like memory. With her eyes closed, she could almost believe she was back under the same umbrella with her dad, walking through a rainy street together.
She slipped her hand out from under the canopy.
A gust tore the umbrella from her grip.
Linneya tipped her head back and opened her mouth, letting the cold rain thread across her face and onto her tongue.
“Linneya!”
The scream jolted her. She opened her eyes and saw Stella sprinting toward her, panic written all over her face.
“Get back here!” Stella shouted. “You idiot—it’s acid rain!”