T-10, or Ten as most called him, looked all around him, his head fuzzy and ears ringing. Dust clouded his vision no matter where he looked, a dull thumping fading in and out. His head foggy, he struggled to recall where he was at.

Suddenly, a strange taste entered his mouth. A strong metallic taste flooded his taste buds as a warm liquid began to fill his jaws. He felt his jaw drop as a rush of bright red came spilling out, splattering across the ground under him. He felt his lungs begin to grow heavy as his senses came back to him.

Just a ways in front of him lay his weapon. He stared at the rifle for a moment before he began to reach for it. To his surprise, its distance from him remain unchanged. As he shifted his gaze to his arm, a chill came over him.

The reason he didn't move, or even see his hand, was that there was nothing to reach with. Instead of his arm, he was greeted with an avulsion at his shoulder. A thick and meaty stump rotated about as it attempted to work in conjunction with what should have been his arm.

As blood oozed from his shoulder socket, he felt a panic set in. His mind flashed back to his first memories. A large and dark room, tubes with bare people inside lined up alongside him. He remembered the pressure he felt in his lungs, the same as he felt now.

Then it all began to come back to him. His beginnings, his birth, had began from Helix. He had been one of their soldiers, grown in a lab and manipulated to do their bidding. When he had been ordered to gun down a woman and child, he had felt something inside him telling him to resist. In a flash, he had turned on his squadmates and gunned them down.

He remembered how the woman had stared at him, cowering in fear. Both her and the child had eased away from him, their reflections staring back at them in the red tint of the lenses of his mask. He couldn't remember how long he had stayed there before someone else came across him.

He remembered the woman who had found him. She had said her name was Lyria and that they could use people like him. He had been confused, but once again that feeling came back to him. A sort of calling telling him it was the right thing to do.

That feeling came back to him once more as he gazed out in front of him. Taking in his surroundings, he recalled where he was. Above him, a crumbled staircase had collapsed on him, trapping him underneath it. He remembered seeing the intense light barreling at him and his squad when it had struck the stairs beside of him.

T took a moment to see who had survived the initial blast. All around him, more soldiers like him crawled from inside the rubble, their black and yellow uniforms covered in dust and blood. Some had lost their helmets, masks were cracked, uniforms ripped and yet they still pushed forward, weapons blazing in hand.

Suddenly he felt his head grow light. Everything around him began to grow dim and hazy. He may have lived a short life, but he knew what was coming for him. Despite this, he felt proud for what he had done in what little time he was given. He had proven that he wasn't just meant to be someones puppet but instead, had found something to fight for just like those around him.

As this thought lingered in his mind, he closed his eyes. Within moments, the sound of the world around him had faded away. He was left alone with only his thoughts. As he felt himself begin to drift away, he took one final breath. Letting out a deep exhale, he left the world not as a number to a corporation but as a person who had made a difference.

Lyria began to pace her mech forward, the hydraulics of the machinery groaning from the strain. As more survivors poured from the wreckage on her right, she pushed up across the plaza. Helix members were attempting to take advantage of the chaos the cannon had caused, desperately trying to uproot the W.R.A. from their headquarters.

Directly ahead of her, smoke still poured from the barrel of the canon on the gunship. This told her that it would probably take a bit of cooldown time before they could use it again. Seeing an opportunity, she charged, the machine gun on her mech's right arm ripping through the air. While none of the shots were accurate, it did a good job of keeping the gunfire off of her.

The pings off the hull of the gunship mixed with the stomping of her machine created a parade of deafening sounds. As she grew close, the gunners began to pick up on her approach path. Heavy gunfire peppered the ground around her, cracking and splintering the concrete.

Lyria quickly put the mech into a strafe, aiming to avoid a crossover with the turrets line of sight. Taking advantage of her quick thinking, she qued her comms channel up once more.

“Marcus, where the hell are you at?” At this rate, she wouldn't be able to shut down the gunship and the headquarters would fall. If they lost the HQ then they were going to lose it all. There would be no vengeance or anything of that matter. The thought put a damper on her rush of adrenaline.

After a few seconds there was still no response. What could be taking them so long?

“We read you loud and clear little miss.”

“Briggs? Is that you?”

“Loud and clear miss. I assume you're struggling with that mammoth of a gunship?”

“How could you tell?”

“Just a hunch. Stand clear, we're on it.”

Lyria heard the comm channel fall silent and wondered what they were up to. Suddenly one of their own gunships flashed across her view, smashing into the enemy in a t-bone fashion.

Glass flew everywhere and the sound of tearing metal could be heard. As the smoke cleared, Lyria saw a hopeful sight. On its side sat the enemy gunship, tipped over from the impact of Brigg's vessel. The downside was that Briggs had wrecked his own by smashing it into the enemy, the front firmly wedged in place.

Lyria quickly charged over, using the utility arm of her mech to wrench the side door off its hinges. She lined the cockpit up to the door and opened the hatch of her W.O.L.F., dropping down inside the wrecked gunship.

Up front, Briggs was holding himself up on the wall, a slight grin on his face as blood oozed down from a laceration on his head. Much to her surprise, nobody else was inside.

“Briggs?”

“Yeah, I told you. We're on it.”

“You said we're as in we are.”

“Yeah and?”

As if they were waiting for her to ask, everybody else suddenly came crashing down from above. It seemed as if Germaine was the only one to not land on their feet, as he hit face first.

“Sorry, but we had to buckle up for the impact.” Marcus had been the first to speak, but it was clear he was in no mood to chat. He was ready to clean up this mess and clear everything out so he could go after Maple.

“We need to get out there and start pushing them back so we can make sure everybody gets out of the city.”

“I get that, but how do you even plan on evacuating everybody?”

“Oh, did I fail to mention that not only did I dispatch Kane and his men after your daughter but also called for Amelia, David and Mint to arrange for evacuation orders?”

“Wait, are you telling me you had a plan for this all along?”

Everything suddenly felt suspicious to Marcus and his team. Lyria had seemed surprised by the quickness of the Helix response yet she was this confident in an evacuation order?

“I wouldn't exactly call it a plan but I knew Helix wouldn't let it slip by so easily. Let's just call it being prepared. I had everybody on standby in case something went wrong and now I'm glad I did.”

“If that's the case then where are they at?”

Everybody's comm links suddenly began beeping. It seemed that everybody was getting the same incoming call from outside the wall. Lyria was the first to answer the call, her action greeted by a disturbingly cheery voice.

“Mint here. Everybody's in position now on the East, South and West entrances.”

“Good job Mint. When those gates open, I want everybody to begin loading the residents up. Make sure that all the members in families stay together. They're our priority right now.”

“Yes 'mam.”

The young girl seemed too eager to be assigned such a task, especially in such critical times as now. Marcus approached Lyria, face to face, a determined gleam in his eyes.

“So that's just it? We get them out while we fight the good fight and hope we make it out? Your plan seems to be lacking in conciseness.”

“No, we get them out and then we extract. The civilians will be going to the corresponding cities while we meet up with Kane and pursue your daughter.”

“At this rate they'll be so far ahead of us that we'll never catch up. It's pointless unless we leave now.”

Lyria braced her posture and delivered a sharp slap to Marcus's face. He staggered back, startled by the sudden impact and the sting. His cheek tingled from the slap, causing his temper to start to flare up.

“You need to quit your whining. I'm aware of the situation but if you hightailed it now what would be so different from when you were forced to flee Marlow? Was it not your original goal when you started Generation to try and save people to show them Alphas were not the enemy?”

Marcus felt his frustration begin to simmer down. No matter what argument he wanted to make, she was right. If he were to abandon the people of Celestia now, it would be no different than back in Marlow.

“We'll simply hold our ground here until everybody's out then we'll use our secret weapon to catch up?”

At this point Amanda felt her curiosity pique up, “Secret weapon? You're not talking about what I think you are, are you?”

Lyria gave a quick grin before pulling her comm link up again, “Dr. Sukomoto, are you there?”

Almost instantly she heard a response, “Dr. Sukomoto here. Awaiting your instruction Lyria.”

“It's time. I want you to start preparing it for flight.”

“I thought you would never ask.”

Marcus watched as Lyria cut her comm channel and began to reproach her mech. It was pretty clear as to what her intentions were. With a shrug the rest of the team followed suit, weapons in hand. Lyria climbed back into the pilot compartment of her mech, leaving the hatch up.

“I want everyone to try and relieve some of the pressure points of this firefight for our men. I'll take frontline with Briggs and Germaine. Amanda, I want you to stay back and pick off our targets from a distance. Marcus, Akatsuya, you two are to flank any squads giving us resistance.”

Marcus felt a little chaffed at his team being given orders, but this wasn't the time to make a fuss. From this point on, they would be operating as one solid force, not a team doing favors. It was time to buckle down and push back.

“Give me a second. I need to wrangle up a weapon. I'm gonna hop in that enemy gunship.”

Briggs slid down the side, keeping himself covered from the firefight raging outside. He brought himself around to the side of the gunship, pulling himself through the damaged hatch.

Inside, Helix soldiers lay unresponsive, either killed from the crash or incapacitated from injuries. As he peeked around, a shot suddenly rang out. The bullet ricocheted off the metal wall next to his head and skipped further down in the transport. In the corner, one of the soldiers lay slumped against the wall, his left hand clutching at a bloody area in his chest, his right right clutching a now jammed up pistol.

Briggs slowly approached him and gently pulled the pistol from his hand. The soldier offered no resistance but instead, began trembling. Briggs didn't know if it was from fear or from going into shock, but he did the soldier a favor. In one fell swoop, Briggs brought down his heel into the soldier's head, crushing his skull underneath it. Blood gushed out from behind his mask, his body sliding over onto its side, lifeless.

As Briggs went to resume his search, a loud beeping suddenly caught is attention. He followed his ears, stepping over the dead bodies and debris, finding himself standing in front of a large slide lock steel door. He tried to open it but instead, found firm resistance. Yep, it was definitely locked for a reason.

He took one moment to brace himself, then smashed into the door full force, using his weight to his advantage. Not many Alphas were built like Briggs, but those that were possessed immense strength. Fortunately, the door couldn't withstand it.

The door fell straight back with a loud thud, the metallic ring echoing throughout the vessel. As Briggs stepped through, his eyes were drawn immediately to the source of the beeping.

In the middle of the room sate a large steel crate. It seemed to have some sort of technology integration, the seams of it glowing a pale blue. On top of the crate there was a digital display, a sequence of bright blue numbers being displayed. Briggs watched for a second, “00.15.14, 00.15.13, 00.15.12.”

As he read the numbers aloud, it suddenly became clear to him what he was looking at. This was no crate but appeared to be something much worse.

“Hey guys, we got a problem here.”

“What do you mean? And what's that beeping?”

“That beeping is the problem.”

Lyria quickly hopped out of her mech once again and made her way over to the gunship. Following the same route, she made her way to Briggs, the rest of the team directly behind her.

Lyria eyeballed the crate as soon as she stepped into the room. It was indeed a problem. One that was going to grow in size in the next 15 minutes.

“Please tell me that isn't what I think it is?” Briggs tried to contain the nervousness in his voice but it was obvious that he was unsettled. Surely they wouldn't blow up their own soldiers.

“I believe it is a bomb indeed.”

“You're telling me that they had a bomb inside this thing and I rammed it?”

“It's a thousand wonders it didn't detonate right then.”

The news was beyond unsettling. Fighting a firefight was one thing, defusing a bomb another. Even with Lyria's intelligence, they didn't have the equipment on hand for such a task. Besides, one as complicated as looking as this one was would take more than 15 minutes to defuse.

Marcus stepped forward, cautiously approaching the bomb, “So what now? We only have 15 minutes to not just get the civilians out but ourselves as well?”

“That seems to be the case. I'm afraid we're going to have to do something even more drastic than planned now though.”

“How can you get more drastic than this? Besides, how do we know that we can escape the blast radius of this thing?”

“This bomb... it's blast radius will engulf the city but the dome should keep it from extending past that.”

“So what you're saying is if we can make it out of the city before 15 minutes are up then despite the fact that Celestia will be wiped off the face of the planet, we'll still be ok?”

Lyria took a moment, not sure if she should give them such a false reassurance. While she had planned on Helix taking many actions to thwart the W.R.A. and the revolution, she never expected them to go far as destroying an entire city.

“Honestly, I'm not even sure then if we'll make it. Our best bet now is to go ahead and give the others the go ahead to take off with the residents in the next 10 minutes while we make our way to the air field.”

“So that's it. We're being forced to run again.” Marcus slammed his fist into the wall as the words left his mouth. It was all going wrong again. Just as they had renewed themselves for a fight, the option was stripped from them before their very eyes. It was run or die, take care of yourself before others.

“Trust me, we're not running. We're retreating to a safe point and then we'll rain down on them from there.”

The rest of the team gave Lyria a quick nod and proceeded to leave the vessel, Briggs snatching up a rifle from the corner of the room. Lyria took a quick moment, placing her hand on Marcus's shoulder, “Listen, I know this isn't ideal. Every since your arrival it hasn't been, but we've got a fight to carry on. The whole world, not just the people of Celestia, are depending on us right now.”

“I know, but nothing seems to go right for us. Every since I started Generation, we were supposed to be the good guys but it seems like we're losing at every turn.”

Without responding, Lyria continued on past and back to her mech. She knew nothing she could say would comfort that feeling. They had always been fighting a losing battle, but she wouldn't give up hope. She couldn't.

As Marcus stared at the timer counting down, it was as if it was mocking him. Not only was it a countdown to destruction, but it also meant that with each passing second, Maple was getting further and further away from him and closer to the clutches of Helix. Turning away in frustration, the timer continued its rhythm. Tick tock, tick tock...