The Resistance Bunker. 11:07 AM.

  He burst into the room, smashing the door open.

  “Captain, pull back. Now. We’re bleeding bodies in every district. The army isn’t even arresting people anymore. They’re leaving them on the road so everyone can watch them suffer.”

  The captain was sitting on a broken sofa. The room was an underground floor of a residential building inside the dead zone. Holographic screens floated around him, broadcasting multiple news channels. Every screen showed the same thing. The fall of his people. The captain stood up and walked to the center of the room, his head lowered. His sub-captains watched in silence.

  “I think we reached the wall, brothers. We’re fighting a system that absorbs every hit and keeps moving.” He expanded one of the holographic screens so everyone could see. “This weapon is worse than a gun. A gun ends you. This leaves you alive long enough to regret ever standing up.”

  Everyone lowered their heads. Their personal screens flashed red. Not emergency alerts. Images. Red meant only one thing.

  A warning.

  Zzzzt.

  The screens glitched violently. The giant display flickered hard enough to make everyone cover their eyes. Then a familiar voice filled the room.

  “Network override successful,” 05 said.

  Slowly, they lowered their hands. A blue-haired girl appeared on every screen. She was shining. Her white skin felt like the light at the end of a tunnel they had almost given up on. “Hope, first. Warning, second. To anyone choking this country in the name of ‘order’… we see you. The E?UNIT was never gone. You just buried the bodies and called it peace. And we will not fall until we see smiles return to every face.”

  Across the city, every screen lit up with her image. panels. Building displays. Smartphones in trembling hands. Even the highest authority, Tamer himself, was watching. He tried to hide it, but his face had already gone pale. The E-UNIT was his nightmare. And this one was fully operational.

  The screen shifted.

  05 vanished, replaced by Omega. Blue energy flooded every display.

  “My people,” Omega said. “Stand tall. The dark age ends the moment you stop kneeling. Return to your homes and stay safe while the darkness is purged from our streets. This victory requires every one of us. And when the light rises over this city once more, we will meet again as a free people.”

  The broadcast ended. The city fell silent.

  Only the sound of wind and light rain echoed through the concrete jungle.

  Resistance captain looked around the room. “What are you waiting for?” he shouted. “Let’s retrieve our brothers!”

  Cheers erupted. Engines roared to life as cars and trucks rushed into the streets, collecting the wounded and the fallen.

  On the other side of the city, 05 shut down the broadcast.

  “Hope buys time,” 05 said. “But time isn’t victory. We need witnesses. We need records. The whole country can see.”

  Reaper stepped closer. “But that was perfect,” he said. “Now I understand why people loved the E-UNIT. You’re capable, fearless, and willing to risk everything for others.” He paused. “I still can’t believe Father looked you in the eyes and shut you down.”

  05 smiled faintly. “I won’t forgive him for that. But we have a mission! We need you to dismantle every sonic mech you find. They’re a threat to all life. Security cams show they’re regrouping downtown and near military base MA-08.”

  Reaper tilted his head. “That sounds like an invitation. Their confidence worries me.”

  “They have one advantage,” 05 added. “They don’t hesitate to shoot civilians. Technically, they’re designed to disable, not kill, most of the time.”

  Reaper nodded. “True. But we have you and the shells. Your resistance to their weapons is absolute zero. These new systems are pushed to maximum output.”

  “No problem,” 05 said. “I’ll stay here and support you remotely.”

  Reaper frowned. “How will you contact me? I don’t exactly have ears for a comm device.”

  “How about now?” 05’s voice echoed directly inside his system.

  “HOW?!” he shouted.

  She laughed. “If you react like that, I might be forced to show you more surprises. Anyway, I didn’t hack your system. I just asked it nicely.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Reaper replied, folding his arms.

  “Magicians never reveal their secrets, brother,” 05 whispered inside his head.

  “Stop that,” Reaper stepped back. “That’s creepier than the shell sync thing. Why do I have maniac sisters?”

  He dropped onto the couch. Shelly entered the control room.

  Reaper blinked. “Wait. Where’s your original Omega body?”

  “Final touches,” Shelly replied coldly as she sat beside him, arms folded.

  05 returned her focus to the screens, though her eyes kept drifting back to Shelly.

  Reaper wrapped an arm around Shelly and let out a long sigh. “We’ll give the people twelve hours to clear the streets. Transporting the wounded won’t be easy, but the military isn’t attacking them.”

  “They’re cleaning the battlefield,” Shelly said. “They probably saw my attack on that soldier group.”

  “Maybe,” Reaper said, simulations flashing across his HUD. “Shelly, don’t bring shells with you. One or two only, for transport. Just in case.”

  “No problem,” she replied. “I just hope it never comes to that.”

  He pulled her closer. “It won’t,” he said firmly. “I won’t let you fall before me. I promised to protect you, and my words are not spoken lightly. I will erase anyone who even thinks of touching you. We’ve endured enough.”

  05 leaned in beside them. “I deserve some attention too.”

  Reaper glanced at her. “Even the smartest minds act like cats.”

  He stared at the ceiling, lost in simulations and thought.

  ‘Now I understand why I was born.’

  Metromania's Streets. 11:03 PM.

  The rain refused to leave the city.

  Mechs circled Metromania in wide formations, sweeping district by district. One platoon, twenty units, advanced through the shopping district in tight formation. They could feel his presence approaching.

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  Earlier, the group captain had ordered constant scanning of every corner. Especially now. They already knew the shell swarm tactics and how silently death could arrive.

  As they reached a large intersection, the captain suddenly raised his arm. The formation stopped. Confusion spread through the unit. The captain tilted his head upward. A tiny black dot hung in the sky.

  It grew larger.

  Faster.

  CLAANG!

  The Reaper landed, shaking the entire street. The asphalt beneath him never stood a chance. It spiderwebbed and collapsed under him, unable to endure the weight of a 250-kilogram machine meeting gravity head-on. Reaper straightened himself slowly, scanning the area at extreme speed. Every variable was already calculated. The cold February rain helped keep his CPU temperature optimal.

  “It is remarkable,” Reaper said coldly, “how the doomed rise to fight, believing they can overcome what ended every soul before them.”

  Fear entered the hearts of several soldiers. Others felt something else.

  Excitement. A chance to prove themselves. Confidence surged from wielding the latest weapon humanity had ever created. But the Reaper was the latest weapon humanity had ever created.

  They fired immediately.

  The sonic assault was devastating. Shockwaves slammed into Reaper’s frame, pushing him backward through sheer force. Street poles were torn from the ground and hurled toward him as the waves distorted the environment.

  Maximum output. His HUD glitched violently. His systems did not.

  Military-grade engineering held firm. Wallmore’s calculations were correct. Reaper could handle far more.

  The captain’s mouth moved. Reaper didn’t hear it, he read it. “Die already, you damn monster.” The weapons drowned out every other sound. Even the rain bent and scattered under the pressure of the waves. Reaper stood his ground. He had a plan.

  A sub-captain shouted through comms, “Sir! We need to lower the output! Three more minutes will drain eighty percent of our batteries!”

  The captain refused, watching Reaper being forced back step by step. “Not yet! We’re close! He can’t defy the waves! Keep pushing! We can free the country from this monster!”

  “Roger!” the unit answered in unison, gripping their weapons tighter.

  Reaper had endured worse. ULTRA DENSE waves from the sonic chamber. A system designed to liquefy the internals of every robot humanity had ever built. Still, he knew one direct hit was enough to erase a shell. Or worse. A weakened Omega, overloaded through shell resonance.

  The soldiers began to tremble as their battery indicators turned red. Weapon frames cracked and warped under sustained maximum output.

  Then it happened.

  System overload.

  Not Reaper’s system.

  All of them. The mechs locked in place simultaneously. Power died. One by one, they collapsed onto the soaked road, silent and helpless.

  Reaper stepped forward. His eye burned blue. Each heavy step echoed through the empty streets. “I granted you every chance to walk away,” he said calmly. “Yet you chose to waste five futile minutes striking me with children’s weapons.”

  He stopped ten meters from the lifeless machines. Inside the cockpits, soldiers drowned in terror. There was nowhere to run.

  Reaper began to hover. The rain curved away from him, forming a perfect sphere of empty space around his body. A visible force field pressed outward. He raised his arms.

  “Graveyard protocol initiated.”

  The air tightened, silent, patient, like the city held its breath.

  Confusion spread through the trapped soldiers. Then one of them turned his head to the left. He screamed.

  The road itself was moving. Layers of asphalt and concrete peeled away from the earth like skin, rising slowly from both sides of the intersection nearly one hundred meters away.

  Then they accelerated.

  A tidal wave of city infrastructure surged toward them and stopped a hand’s width from the cockpits, pinned by an invisible boundary. Reaper told physics to stop.

  A soldier stared through his cockpit glass. The asphalt stood inches from his face. The unit slowly turned their heads toward Reaper.

  Waiting.

  One voice whispered in horror.

  “What are we facing…”

  Reaper heard him.

  “Your word,” he replied. “Not mine.”

  “A monster.”

  He lowered his hand.

  CRAAASH!

  The road collapsed inward.

  Concrete and steel slammed down, crushing the mechs beneath sheer mass alone. Reaper added force, dominating both metal and flesh without resistance. Metal, glass, and everything inside became one sealed block

  When it was over, a perfect cube of asphalt sat where the military unit once stood.

  A monument.

  There were no screams left.

  Reaper landed and walked forward. He placed his hand on the surface of the cube. “This was avoidable,” he said. “Yet your blindness to the gulf in power led you here, to witness your end.”

  He raised his head.

  Then vanished into the rain, leaping toward Omega.

  North Shore. 11:10 PM.

  Omega reached the north shore. She floated toward the mech platoon of nineteen soldiers, her body moving while her mind drowned in thought.

  ‘Why did she just stare at us while we planned the attacks? Why did 05 reveal herself now? What was she doing all these years? And why is she so close to my brother?’

  The thought didn’t hurt. It infected, and the crystal answered it with heat. Energy flared violently around her frame, but she didn’t resist it. She needed a target. Somewhere to pour the anger burning in her core.

  The platoon just didn’t know it yet.

  Omega descended gracefully, facing the mechs as they detected her from nearly a kilometer away. She glowed so brightly that nearby residents thought dawn had arrived early. Her eyes carried only one emotion.

  Fury.

  The soldiers trembled. They had been warned. She was the most dangerous of the duo. They had studied her data endlessly, yet found no weakness beyond the shells. There were no shells here. They scanned rooftops, alleys, and corners in panic while keeping their weapons aimed at the figure before them.

  Omega opened her wings. The soldiers stepped back instinctively. The captain opened his mouth to issue a retreat order. No sound came out. Fear. They tried to aim, but Omega was an upgraded E-UNIT. Even the targeting systems couldn’t keep up.

  Before a single order escaped their captain’s mouth, Omega’s wings shed. Twelve diamond-feathers tore free and hung around the platoon like a halo of knives. A clock of death.

  Omega snapped her fingers. The constructs stretched taller, sharper. No longer feathers.

  Spears.

  The soldiers froze. Energy surrounded them on all sides. No escape.

  Omega said nothing.

  Her system did.

  Twelve Bells of Heaven.

  Initiating RING SEQUENCE.

  A symbol appeared beside each spear.

  Greek numerals.

  The system began counting, soft, ancient syllables.

  A thin metronome began to tick inside the link, sharp, sterile, unstoppable.

  1 – ?να (éna).

  2 – δ?ο (dío).

  3 – τρ?α (tría).

  4 – τ?σσερα (téssera).

  5 – π?ντε (pénte).

  6 – ?ξι (éxi).

  7 – επτ? (eptá).

  8 – οκτ? (októ).

  9 – ενν?α (ennéa).

  10 – δ?κα (déka).

  11 – ?ντεκα (éndeka).

  12 – δ?δεκα (dódeka).

  One by one, every second spear ignited brighter than the rest.

  The soldiers didn’t understand what they were witnessing. Reality felt distant. Like a myth unfolding in front of them. As it reached the last number, a sound of a bell echoed.

  Omega lifted her head. Her eyes burned blue, anger fueling her more than the crystal ever could.

  “Initiate.”

  The spears launched without sound, then the sound arrived late, like the world catching up.

  Sleek.

  They crossed the mechs in an instant, piercing armor and flesh alike. Each strike was precise. Each return was clean. Blood splattered the cockpits, for the first time these machines had ever tasted it. The spears pinned the mechs to the road behind them before snapping back into position.

  Omega snapped her fingers again.

  She wasn’t finished.

  The spears rose above the corpses.

  With a single downward gesture,

  SLEEK.

  All twelve dropped at once.

  What remained of the platoon was erased under continuous plasma impact. Metal melted. Bodies burned. The street glowed.

  A lone mech arrived late. The soldier stopped.

  This was not the battlefield he expected.

  Omega noticed him.

  He ran.

  Cling. Cling. Cling.

  Metallic footsteps of pure terror echoed through the street. Civilians peeked from broken windows. Some had lost brothers. Some had lost parents. Most had lost their freedom. Omega was here to reclaim it.

  The mech tripped.

  A body lay beneath it. A resistance member. Forgotten.

  The soldier looked up.

  Omega descended before him.

  “Ironic,” she whispered. “What was once a life of purpose has become nothing more than an obstacle for a coward of steel.”

  She stepped closer. The soldier screamed inside his cockpit.

  Omega lifted the mech like a leaf and tossed it upward.

  Twenty meters.

  She was already there.

  She extended her hand.

  “Return to the realm of the doomed,” she whispered, “and carry word that more are coming.”

  A focused energy blast struck at point-blank range.

  The mech and its pilot vanished in a millisecond. No silhouette. No ash.

  Erased.

  As Omega lowered her hand, the ground shook.

  “What?” she muttered.

  Behind her, a skyscraper trembled. Her earlier burst had cracked the tower’s spine. She’d felt it, ignored it, and now it collected its debt The top section had been severed and began sliding downward under its own weight.

  “No!” Omega shouted.

  She surged forward, catching the falling mass. Her grip was too strong. The section she held split apart.

  Now the entire top plunged headfirst toward the street. People fell from shattered windows. Others clung desperately, swinging in the open air.

  Omega froze, overwhelmed.

  Then,

  CLANG!

  The air dropped.

  Gravity changed its mind.

  Reaper landed beneath the falling mass, boots punching the street.

  “Code Red,” he said, and the rain hesitated.

  “Initiated.”

  ? STARFALL: A NEW AGE ?

  by Slothful_Dragon626