Mantle?

  What the hell did that even mean?

  Maya could hear her heart pounding in her ears.

  Blood surged through her veins—hot, loud, relentless.

  All she could feel were her feet slamming against broken pavement.

  Each step drowned beneath the rhythm in her head.

  What even was that!?

  She kept running—

  even though it felt like her heart might rip out of her chest.

  She rounded a corner—

  just as a chunk of concrete came flying.

  It crashed into the ground behind her,

  blasting a crater where she’d been seconds before.

  The metal man stomped after her.

  Never running.

  Never slowing.

  Just a methodical, inhuman march.

  Shit.

  A dead end.

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  The small gap she’d managed to create was closing fast.

  Where do I go? Where do I run?

  Damn it—not like this.

  She wouldn’t let this... thing take her.

  Her thoughts spiraled, echoing louder than her breath.

  “Surrender, Mantle. You will be extracted,” droned the mechanical voice.

  No malice.

  No sympathy.

  Just mechanical precision.

  The voice sent a shiver down her spine—

  like a train station announcement in a ghost town.

  Light glinted off the glossy, blue metal of its arm,

  catching on rivets that looked like angry eyes.

  Maya flinched as the armored giant closed in—

  and grabbed her hard by the collar.

  The impact shook her, forcing the air from her chest.

  She could see the darkness.

  Black. Inky. Like a thick, viscous liquid,

  creeping in from every corner of her vision.

  Then—

  A sound of thunder.

  Her vision gave.

  The edges blurred.

  A wave of disorientation washed over her,

  pulling her down

  into the murky dark.