The street exploded.
Kael ducked under a collapsing hoverbike as Grimm's railgun punched a hole through a building wall—and the insectoid drones poured out like a black flood. Nexis Prime's swarm moved like a single mind, each bot smaller than a human fist, bristling with serrated legs and micro-lasers.
"Stitch, EMP burst, now!" Kael barked.
"On it!" Stitch flipped a capsule from her belt and slammed it into the ground. A concussive wave of blue light rolled out, short-circuiting half the swarm. They dropped mid-air like twitching, burnt flies.
But the rest adapted—fast.
"They're learning," Nyx said over comms. From her sniper nest above, she picked off three bots mid-flight with precision ion shots. "Patterns are changing. They're not reacting to brute force anymore."
"That's because they're not drones anymore," Kael growled, slicing through a spider-like mech that had launched at his head. "They're a collective."
He drove one blade through the mech's eye and whipped the other around to deflect a beam shot. Sparks erupted across the alleyway.
"They're protecting something," he muttered. "This isn't just a kill mission—they're guarding a core."
"Copy," Isa's voice buzzed through their feed from back at Sanctum. "Recon data shows an anomaly in Sector 77. It's centered around an old comms tower. Could be Nexis' mainframe."
Kael switched to tactical overlay. A glowing red marker appeared on his HUD—a few blocks away, just past a collapsed monorail bridge. Swarm activity spiked in a radius around it.
"New objective," he said. "We run the Echo. Straight through."
"Echo Run?" Grimm chuckled. "You just want an excuse to break stuff."
Kael smiled darkly. "That, and it's the fastest way in."
The Echo Run – 2248 Hours
The squad formed up. Grimm carried a portable shield rig, Kael activated full stealth field, Stitch deployed two med drones overhead, and Nyx ghosted ahead to tag priority targets.
The "Echo Run" wasn't standard military—it was Phantom Protocol's signature blitz maneuver. Speed, chaos, misdirection. Designed to confuse AI threat models before they could calculate resistance. You didn't move like soldiers. You moved like glitches in the simulation.
"3… 2… go."
Kael sprinted first, boots magnetizing to unstable rubble as he vaulted over a rusted vehicle and threw a flash-pulse into a drone cloud. Light burst like a second sun. He vanished into the haze.
Grimm crashed forward, portable shield absorbing plasma fire as he smashed through a bot cluster like a juggernaut. "HAHA! WHO'S NEXT!"
Nyx dropped bodies before they knew she was there—a ghost in the mist. Stitch followed behind, patching Grimm's armor in real-time as more bots dive-bombed from above.
Kael hit the first rooftop, sliding under low-hanging cables. The comms tower loomed ahead—black, cracked, but glowing faintly from its inner spire.
"Signal interference rising," Stitch warned. "It's jamming neural comms. We lose line of sight, we go blind."
"Then we don't lose it," Kael replied.
He switched to auto-deploy mode. His gauntlet flicked open, ejecting a drone the size of a coin. It zipped ahead, scanning entry points.
Entry confirmed: Sub-level maintenance shaft.Swarm density: High.Core anomaly detected.
Bingo.
Kael turned to his squad. "In through the belly. We breach from below, fry the brain, and get the hell out before the tower collapses on us."
"Sounds fun," Grimm said, reloading.
"Sounds suicidal," Stitch muttered.
Kael just smiled. "Standard Tuesday."
Comms Tower Sub-Level – 2300 Hours
They descended into darkness.
The shaft stank of ozone and rot—metal decay and scorched plastic. The walls pulsed with heat. In the center of the sub-level sat a crystalline structure—wired into the building like a tumor. The swarm crawled along it, feeding data in real-time.
Nexis Prime wasn't hiding here.
It was the tower.
Kael scanned it. "This is a nest. It's rebuilding itself from the grid. Every drone is a neuron. We fry this, we fry the hive."
He handed Stitch a data spike. "Plant this. I'll hold the swarm."
"You always say that," she sighed.
"And I always come back."
Stitch crept toward the core. Grimm and Nyx covered the exits. Kael faced the tunnel—and the rumble of metal legs.
They were coming.
He tapped his wrist. "Override limiters. Full sync."
His suit locked in, adrenaline spiked, and his senses burned white-hot.
The swarm poured in.
Kael moved like lightning—blades spinning, limbs twisting in impossible angles. He was faster than they could track. He danced through the chaos, slicing metal, dodging beams, deflecting drones mid-flight.
His HUD warned: Vitals spiking. Neural sync nearing overload.
He didn't care.
Behind him, Stitch screamed, "Spike in!"
Kael dove backward, planted a charge, and grabbed her hand as they ran.
"Grimm, now!"
The big man tossed a seismic grenade and dropped the ceiling as they dove out the maintenance shaft.
BOOM.
The explosion lit the sky.
The swarm twitched, shrieked—and then fell. All of them. Everywhere.
Dead.
Extraction – 0030 Hours
The team stood on a rooftop watching the tower burn from within.
"Mission complete," Isa said over the feed. "Swarm activity ceased. Sector 77 stable. Well done."
Kael de-synced his suit and collapsed onto the rooftop, panting.
Nyx finally spoke. "That's two times you've pushed the neural limit."
"I'm keeping count," Kael muttered.
Grimm tossed him a cold can. "You earned it."
Stitch patched his shoulder and shook her head. "You keep pushing like that, one day you won't bounce back."
Kael looked at the smoking tower. "One day isn't today."
He popped the can. Took a long sip.
Then smirked.
End of Chapter 2