“Be careful. Blood is running down your majesty’s outfit.”

The wound on her cheek was wide open, but Erol’s taunts left Maev stone-faced. The clacking of her boots on the metal despite the deafening security sirens was proof of the Sainte’s unwavering advancement. She seemed to be teleporting herself ahead under the aggressive redness of the flashing emergency light. The archaeologist was waiting for his enemy unwaveringly. His long blade was not the most appropriate weapon for this narrow tunnel. Nevertheless, the breastplate made him feel more certain in himself, as Maev had no weapon on her.

“Your arrogance is obviously your last line of defense in the face of fear, Feuerhammer. Your tongue has never proven to be your downfall so far?”

For several minutes, the loudspeakers issued the same warnings on a loop. The ignition of the Josias-01 missile had been reactivated. The silo was being opened.

Damn it, Suzanne. What are you doing?

The Sainte had stopped a few steps away from him. The ignition of the rocket hadn’t bothered her in the slightest. “Why aren’t you using your blade more?” she continued, keeping a wise distance.

Every second lost compromised the plan that he and Suzanne had devised. It was now up to him to sabotage the launch, as Suzanne had done in the past. If Maev was blocking his path at this precise spot, it was because his goal was on the other side.

Erol charged ahead. The blade whistled and suddenly metal resonated against metal. A blade had replaced his enemy’s fist, emerging from her sleeve. She had countered his attack without any difficulty.

Improvement modules? The only thing he needed was for her to be a cyborg…

Vengefully, he took a step backwards and tried to hit his adversary on her right side. She skived the blow again, but this time around, she counter-attacked immediately after. Barely in time, Erol had been able to predict the trajectory of her blow and dodged it. The strange weapon got stuck in one of the concrete walls, pulverizing electric cables and cabinets. A spray of sparks now separated them.

“Here we are, unfortunately out of each other’s reach, Feuerhammer. What a shame, as you might have figured it out, you are on the wrong side.”

Quick-witted, Erol took advantage of the split second of darkness proffered by the security diodes to draw his gun. At the same moment, the electric cabinet spit out a spray of fire.

“Full of resources,” the Sainte sighed, before cracking a wide smile.

The molten metal had reached her face, but she had not moved an inch. The burned skin tore up showing a glimpse of a metallic skeleton. Her melted eyes glowed with a diabolical purple light.

Super… It would have been better if I had shut up.

The cyborg spat. With a gesture, she tore away her inflamed clothing, revealing her artificial body and the thin tears marking where implants had been transplanted during the operations.

Maev continued to stare him down. He was finally getting his wish to see these cyborgs in action.

As the red light turned back on again, his barrel was pointed in the direction of the Sainte. The archaeologist would have preferred to do her justice with his sword. But improved with sophisticated add-ons as she was, the cyborg was too dangerous for body-on-body combat.

“Could you stop a bullet?” His voice was shaking. A shot was fired. Then another. Maev rolled immediately forward amid the incessant shower of sparks. A third shot reached its target and a hole appeared on her shoulder.

The Sainte’s groan of pain was disguised under a snarl of anger and she leaped immediately on Erol who welcomed her with an uppercut that never reached its target. Something had stopped him midcourse. An invisible force was blowing up the joints of his armor. “Wha—what,” Erol stammered.

The sweat dripping from his forehead turned him blind. The infamous crackling sound of bones ceding to metal was covered only by his agonizing screams. The cyborg’s fist had finally hit the mark and Erol was thrown to the side.

The power of the shock propelled him through a door of Plexiglas leading to a maintenance corridor. Still in its sheath, the blade broke into two. His body fell heavily on the floor. Out of breath, he tried in vain to get up. His saliva tasted like blood.

“Dam—da—damn,” he stammered before a warm flow of liquid covered his chin. “I have a hole in the place of the sternum!”

The armor had nevertheless amortized almost the entirety of the choc. The shell’s bracelet was blinking red in unison with the diodes. It was definitely not good news. The archaeologist’s thorax was in pieces. His ribs were not in a better state.

He searched in the back compartment to grab the last of Sileo’s gray pills. Once crunched under his teeth, the combat drug had its effect and he could breathe again.

Another light indicator on his fist attracted his attention. The energy reserves of the armor were at its lowest. Still, he had enough juice to get up and joust one last time.

“What was that?” Erol’s thoughts were blurred. A whistle was tearing his eardrums and he thought he would never have the strength to get up.

“Marian never showed you the extent of our powers? What a flabby pencil pusher!” said Maev through the earpiece of her own armor.

He got up, but still kept a knee to the ground. That in itself was a miracle. He had lost a lot of blood, but continued to stand up to the Sainte who appeared at the entrance of the corridor. His broken blade in his hand, he was ready to fight again despite the pitiful spectacle that he might present. “The silo will not sabotage itself!” he grumbled.

Against all expectation, Erol rolled ahead. Striking with his blade the activation lever of the door, he went underneath the Sainte who was imprisoned behind the security portcullis.

On all fours, he raced in the direction of the spray of sparks. Protecting the back of his skull, he crossed the electrical fire fueled by despair.

“Did you forget about me, Feuerhammer!” On the other side of the flames, the Sainted had managed to dodge the portcullis. He saw her rip off her forearm.

A bullet flew by and cut off a cable above Erol’s head and he disappeared in a cloud of concrete dust. A spark burned the back of his casket. The metal and molten plastic gnawed away at his flesh.

He didn’t know how much time it took him to cross the corridors of the compound, but one thing was for certain, Maev was on his heels. The armor guided his steps, making his path faster and less tiring. But the survival system at his wrist continued to flash, reminding him that his reserves would soon dry up. With each step, he felt his sternum pierce his heart and lungs more deeply. Like a trail of crumbs left to help his pursuer, his blood beaded on the floor. Bullets and insults whistled above his shoulders. A bullet hit him in the hip. The armor received the shot. A second hit his left arm. Erol grimaced. Finally, he reached a hall whose center was a yawning abyss so high and so deep, it must end in Hell itself.

The archaeologist had reached his goal. He shut off the guidance system and removed his casket. A part of the flesh of his neck detached with it. He threw it against the closest loudspeaker that stopped its infamous melody.

The walls were covered in retracted pistons as big as a man. A light indicator above each specified that the silo was open. The supply of hydraulic fluid circulated among the pistons. He managed to trace this supply up to its control terminal next to a recently broken door. There, a countdown appeared in the portion of the screen that had remained intact. It was the launch countdown. And it indicated eighteen minutes.

He was choking. The armor had begun to tire him. A gust of fresh air came from the abyss, but this was not sufficient to get him back on his feet. Broken, the archaeologist fell back against the console. Even the combat drug could no longer keep him standing.

“The whore from the past has failed and you will never be able to close this silo in time. After all, this is what the Master wishes. And it will be.” Maev had just come through the door. The canon on her arm was pointed at him.

“You are going to die too.” The countdown was now at fifteen minutes.

“Me?” Maev said. “No. The god that I serve has simply revised his plans, but he will never forget his apostles.”

“What did he promise you a lot for you to follow him so blindly? Why rush towards genocide and your own demise?” Erol articulated with difficulty.

“He has guaranteed us an immortal digitized mind that will be as powerful as a god’s!”

“What do you mean by ‘us’?”

With his last forces, he was removing the pieces of armor around his bionic arm.

“That dumb Byte has told you nothing?” his adversary smiled. “Does she have nothing better to do than fornicate with her computer?”

“You know the technomancer?” asked the archaeologist, surprised.

“I knew Marian too. He was my teacher. He was our teacher. For years, we plundered the virtual worlds … but when the god of the cyberspace finally needed him, Marian betrayed him.”

With one last effort, Erol managed to get up, his back to the console. The Sainte took aim, her barrel straight on his head.

Suddenly, Erol jumped on one of the pistons. Then, thanks to the herculean force of his bionic arm, he tore off the apparent connecting rod.

Maev’s charger emptied in a few seconds, riddling his back with bullets. He felt the steel tips of the bullets perforate his armor and crush his vertebrae.

With all the courage remaining in him, the archaeologist leaped onto a second piston and repeated the operation before Maev tackled him against the wall where she impaled him with her blade. Thankfully, her effort was useless.

The crown of pistons suddenly exploded. An immense draft made him levitate above the floor. The Sainte was aspired to the bottom of the abyss when he crushed her arm with the vestiges of his implant, broken by his last effort.

“Your end is near,” Maev cried.

Steel claws erupted from her shoulders and stopped her path. With her back to the ground, her head was the only thing hanging in the void.

“What is approaching is most certainly the immense counterweight, you miststück.”

With a metallic clash, several thousand tons of iron hit the face of the Sainte. The decapitated body of the cyborg was then violently drawn into the depths of the compound.

The silo was now closed and would never again move. If it did happen, the explosion would eventually be contained under the earth among its destructive gases.

Let’s die up there, Erol sighed, ripping off the blade with his organic hand.

Activating the door’s airlock, he climbed the stairs towards the main corridor. The waters of the lake were pouring behind the archaeologist, cleaning the blood and the oil that covered the floor. One thousand years too late, the chant of the sirens resonated in the corridors of the underground compound.

Time kept flowing, and this alert was now nothing but a crackling sound coupled with the sputtering that shook the walls. The rocket was about to explode.

“Suzanne? The alarms are still ringing! Were you able to deactivate the armament of the missile?” he spat out. But he received no response.

Erol walked as fast as he could in the now empty and semi-dark corridors. Lost among the glacial maze without a navigation system, he tried to find his way towards the research center. He finally got rid of the rest of the armor that was slowing him down.

After a few false trails, he finally managed to reach the office that stood in front of old Suzanne’s death cabinet. Out of breath, he reached the cryo-tube prototype. It was getting hotter and hotter and even the small effort required to raise the cover of the glass casket seemed to him inhuman. As he engulfed himself inside, the dust devoured his flesh raw.

Once the transparent lid had closed on him, the noise of the sirens and the savage screaming of the dust tornadoes faded away. He took advantage of this moment of calm to place his hat on his head for the last time. Unfortunately, Erol had no idea how to turn on the module. He only knew about the alimentation system with its white liquid.

“Are you finally safe?” whispered a familiar voice from the loudspeaker situated by the side of his head.

“Suzanne? Suzanne! Is that really you? Were you successful?” He had never been so happy. He almost forgot the gaping wound on his stomach from where his blood was flowing uninterrupted.

“Erol, I am so sorry. There is nothing I can do. Despite my attempts, the ignition of the missile was activated regardless…” He swallowed. His vision blurred. “You managed to close the silo mechanically. But despite your best efforts, the charge is just too powerful.” She paused again. “Based on my calculations, the losses will be minimal on the surface, but the Josias itself will explode. And Renaissance with it.” Erol coughed, but sufficiently far from the supposed mic that the young woman was unable to hear him. “It was not Tom. At least not Tom how I knew him.”

“Ho—how?” Weaker and weaker, the archaeologist could no longer articulate himself properly.

“Behind all this. It was not Tom, but an image of his fused with his AI, Jéricho.”

“It’s for this reason that I have always hated AIs. They’re nothing like humans. Like you and me.” He could no longer get enough oxygen in his lungs. With a trembling hand, Erol tried desperately to put on the iron mask. “Did you make him pay?”

“I am going to make sure of it.”

It was what he wanted to hear. But another thought came quickly to mind. “I am assuming that if everything blows up, this is the last time you and I are going to talk.”

Suzanne remained silent. He thought he had lost contact, but she gave another sign of life. “I’m really sorry, Erol.”

“Bah!” he said, “I had no intention of continuing to waste oxygen on the surface of this good Old Earth when I decayed…” He smiled, alone in the darkness. His face faintly illuminated by the backlight of the screens of the control module. At least he hadn’t stained those with his blood-soaked fingers. “Take care of that AI, that’s all I ask for. As for the rest… I hope something remains to remember us by.”

“Thank you for everything Erol.”

“Farewell, Suzanne.”

He put on the mask with his last remaining strength and the temperature of the module suddenly fell.

In the space of an instant, Erol thought he could see the face of the young woman float above his, beyond the glass lid. His eyes closed the moment when the ground began to shake, he felt his mind beginning to slip away and he was bathed in silence.

Octave, you damn fool of a student… I wished you would have seen all of this…