“HEEEEEEEEEEYYYYYY!”

  I was shouting as loud as I could as I brought my fist down onto the metal shutter over and over to no avail. The warehouse was either somehow completely soundproof, or there was simply no one that could hear my desperate call for help.

  If Freakenstein had been caught in a similar Null Zone, then who else really was there to help me break free? Jon might have known where I was, but I couldn’t even bear the thought of him running out into the chaos just to be stuck trying to break the door down to get me out.

  Logically, I knew I probably should have been panicking, especially since I knew that I no longer had the crutch that was my Acceptance Matrix. But the panic attack, while not completely non-existent, was surprisingly relatively easy to ignore. I wasn’t sure if that was a good sign or not. Like sure, maybe it hadn’t been that long in the grand scheme of my life, but I had to wonder if the near constant barrage of stress since the end of the Phase One had given me just a little bit more resilience than I had once had.

  It had been at least ten, maybe even fifteen minutes since the door had snapped shut, meaning even if I did find a way to break free from here, there was no way I could rewind things far enough that I wouldn’t still be stuck in whatever the hell this trap was supposed to be. The droids I had turned into scrap metal weren’t reforming, nor were there more that were appearing out of thin air to finish the job while I was powerless.

  The entire place seemed like it only existed to trap me, which was almost more infuriating than if it were built to try to kill me.

  “HEEEEEEEEEEYYYYYYYYY!” I yelled out once more, feeling my throat ache as it rasped off just at the end of my call.

  Maybe I was feeling just a little bit insulted, something that I realized must have come from some level of self confidence in my abilities that I must have gained at some point in the last few weeks. If this were any other situation, I might have taken the time to relish that change in attitude toward myself, but I was growing more and more annoyed by the minute.

  I hadn’t been pounding at the door for the entire time either. The moment it truly had settled in that I was trapped I quickly ran for roughly the spot in the corner of the warehouse that I had remembered feeling the Positive Zone in prior to entering the building. My Vibe Anchor ability had made it clear that the zones weren’t dependent on staying in my local area if I anchored it, but I had no idea if that meant it would persist through the system getting nullified. Even still, I ran for the corner and stood there, hoping for something… anything to happen.

  When I was sure that the zone would have decayed, I had proceeded with the only plan I could think of… pointlessly pound at the door and hope for… something.

  How stupid was I to just walk right into a trap even knowing it was a probable trap? Had I really let myself get that overconfident in just a few short days that I had just… ignored it? That I thought I was invincible? It would have been so… so easy to go down that rabbit hole if it wasn’t for the fact that the trap had been a Null Zone. Sure, I had encountered one while in the space that had been designated as SnakeBite’s Safe House, but other than that, I hadn’t even stopped to consider the possibility that they would be so easy to be deployed, or that they would somehow be attached to one of Clockwork Tyrant's bases.

  I had been positive, hell, beyond positive, that I would have been able to just rewind literally anything other than a Null Zone or maybe an attack that was big enough to just kill me with how fast I had gotten with my reflex to use Timekeeper's Control. And thanks to that one, incredibly arrogant bit of mentality, I may have just screwed things up beyond repair. While initially getting trapped didn’t send me immediately into a panic attack, I was apparently doing a pretty damn good job on my own of calling one up and I forced myself to close my eyes as I tried my best to focus.

  “Come on, work the problem, don’t go down that rabbit hole, you’re not dead yet,” I muttered to myself under my breath, my fist still pressed against the cold metal of the shutter. I took in a slow, deep breath before I let it out and opened my eyes once more. A moment later, I let my hand drop, turning back to the rest of the warehouse that had otherwise completely quieted.

  I wandered back into the main warehouse, moving around the big pile of scrap as I took in the racks that they had all been stored on. Unlike the Gold or Platinum Bases I had already seen, there weren’t printers lining the walls, or anything that looked like research benches to complete upgrades. By all accounts, this place seemed like it really was just a storage facility. An incredibly understocked storage facility maybe, but a storage facility all the same.

  The racks, now completely emptied, stood haphazardly lining the side walls as I made my way down and to the far end of the room. Maybe it was stupid for me to have waited all this time before coming to investigate this side of the building, especially given just how large the inside of the warehouse actually was, but even if I wasn’t panicking, that didn’t mean I was thinking completely rationally either.

  There wasn’t a back entrance, something I was sure that probably violated some sort of fire code. Instead, the entire back wall of the building was basically empty sans a single desk sitting at roughly the center of it. Hanging directly over it was a single, large television screen. It wasn’t turned on as I approached, nor did it suddenly spring to life. I couldn’t even find a remote and as I looked around the edges of it, the button that should have been the power button did absolutely nothing, even when I pushed it as hard as I could.

  The only thing that was out of the ordinary about the television, if you could even call it that out of the ordinary, was the cordless webcam that was mounted at the very top of the screen, pointed down and toward me with a single little blue dot turned on at the top corner of it.

  “Hello? Are you gonna threaten me or what?” I asked tentatively, relatively positive that the lit blue dot meant the camera was activated. Almost on queue, the ground shook and I heard a barely muffled explosion that caused me to look back toward the door. Only a second later, the shaking stopped. I gave it another few beats, expecting maybe some sort of follow up before I turned back to the screen. “Heeeeelllllooooo?” I called out again.

  Yet again, nothing happened. I looked off to the sides, wondering if there was just something I was missing before I crossed my arms and stared directly into the webcam.

  “Come on you British dick, you’re obviously watching, get on with the fucking monologue already,” I snapped.

  This finally seemed to do the trick as the television sprang to life, revealing Clockwork Tyrant, sitting back in his chair and smiling like the cat that caught the canary.

  “You Americans really have no patience, do you?” he said, his smile never even breaking. “Or do you really feel so self important that you honestly believe that you were my first priority? I mean honestly, I already knew you were a lost cause, though the big one… he would have made quite the Enforcer for my army had he just complied.”

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  “What the fuck did you do to Freakenstein?” I demanded and he actually laughed.

  “Are you as deaf as your ego is inflated? I blew him up,” he said, reaching up to wipe at the small bit of his eyes that were visible. “But what, no concern for that other friend of yours that I’ve taken care of? That’s rather cruel of you Loophole.”

  “Yeah well you blew Hydramental up before you locked me in here, Freak was still fine,” I shot back, my ire raising when he let out yet another laugh.

  “Oh Hydramental. Now that’s a face I won’t miss anytime soon,” he said, stopping to reach forward to grab an actual small cup of tea. “If you’re just some overly self important fool, then that man thought he was a god and I’m glad to be rid of him. He did his part and that sort of mentality simply does not make for a good underling.”

  This stopped my retort in its tracks as I took his meaning.

  “Hydramental was… working with you?” I asked, wanting to clarify. I had been so convinced that he had just gotten overtaken by TechWarden that I hadn’t even begun to think he might have turned to Clockwork Tyrant. Though… if Clockwork Tyrant had had access to Null Zones the entire time, wouldn’t he have been using them?

  “He was a messenger at best, though as I said, the man had certain delusions of grandeur when in truth, he was nothing more than a useful tool.”

  “Pot calling the kettle black,” I muttered under my breath, although by the look of derision Clockwork Tyrant shot me, I was relatively certain he had heard it. My eyes narrowed as I stared through the screen at him. I already knew the answer, because I had been suspicious of it for a while now, but I needed the confirmation all the same. “Who was he a messenger for?”

  “Oh just another one of you obnoxious Americans. One working with your feckless government that believes, much like Axio has, that I’ll sit by and be some lowly puppet for them,” he said, letting the sneer fall from his face as he set his cup of tea down. “Though, I do suppose I owe him recompense for eliminating one of his puppets. Thankfully I have a small stock of them that I’m sure he’ll happily take, some of them quite powerful all things considered. It was rather a good thing I didn’t simply put Pinneedle down after the complete pain in the ass he has been. And you certainly could be considered the cherry on top of the sundae, trapped and unable to escape. I don’t know what it is that makes you so special Loophole, or why both TechWarden and Hydramental were both making moves directly motivated by you, but it certainly hasn’t helped with your ego one bit.”

  “Fuck you, you can’t just sell Pinneedle into slavery to make up for killing someone,” I spat. “Do you even fucking know what TechWarden does to people!? The way he treats them?!”

  “I truly do not care,” Clockwork Tyrant said and shook his head. “We Augments are the next step in our evolution, we may have had to prompt it with technology, but everything about our existence is the pinnacle of what we can be. Nature evolves us into what it thinks we need to be and Axio’s faults notwithstanding, he is the nature that has evolved us to be the dominating force on this planet. Survival of the fittest. It’s been true of our species since the beginning and although I hate how Axio has attempted to force me to go along with his plans, his shortsightedness has allowed me to do exactly what I’ve needed to do.”

  “Then doesn’t that just make you a puppet?! How are you any different than just a tool he’s using just like you called Hydramental?”

  “Because unlike him, I have free will. He may have been dancing to TechWarden’s tune, but I am not so easily overtaken, especially once I knew what to defend myself from,” Tyrant explained and then laughed yet again. “You know, I am quite surprised though, so much concern over Hydramental, who was actively trying to kill you in some unnecessarily complicated way just so you know, and yet you still haven’t shown even an ounce of compassion for your other friend. The one you left all on her lonesome while you went running off to fight the scrap I had set aside.”

  “My other-” I started to say as he reached up and clicked a button. The screen flashed, changing from the shot of him to a room I had seen only once before.

  Pinneedle was still chained to the wall, his head dipped though his chest was still moving with slow breaths. The microwave-sized box that had once swirled with mist was still there, though through the small window it didn’t seem like the haze that was Miss Mist was moving at all. But it had been neither of them that had actually kept my attention and I felt my jaw and fists clench with fury as I looked at Swansong, chained to the wall with a metallic clamp firmly over her mouth.

  “And see, this is what Axio has missed by trying to insist that I only act on certain days. I mean, to allow you all to prepare just to have me crush you? To waste my time as if I don’t have grander plans? No, this is-”

  “Fuck you and fuck your plans,” I snarled, cutting off his inane boats as I stepped closer to the screen. My stare was hard as I looked right at Swansong.

  She was clearly still awake, her eyes looking around with clear panic in them. The clamp over her mouth must have been just to prevent her from singing… something he shouldn’t have needed if he did have access to Null Zones. It was an assumption at best, but knowing that he only seemed to be recently aligned with TechWarden, and only in the barest of ways, it was possible that he was only able to set it up once… Or he didn’t want to have a Null Zone activated in the same place that he was in.

  “She has nothing to do with this. You want to hand people off to TechWarden? Fine, give me to him, but leave her the fuck out of this, she’s helping kids… she’s healing people… what the fuck is wrong with you that you’d stop her from that?” I said, the screen blinking as it changed back to Clockwork Tyrant.

  “She provides hope. And hope is a disease that needs to be stamped out,” he replied with a sneer. “And besides, why exactly would I just give you to him?”

  This caught me off guard and though I could still feel my anger building, the confusion must have leaked out into my expression because he let out another laugh filled with derision.

  “Like I said, you certainly could be considered the cherry on this sundae, but if you really are so important, then it would truly be in my own best interest just to kill you now. Not only would that prevent you from becoming a further thorn in my side, it will send the message that I am no one’s puppet.”

  “If you were just going to kill me, why the fuck didn’t you just blow me up like you did to the others? Why the fuck actually go through the effort of all this pointless monologuing?”

  “Because you requested it of course, plus it helped me to kill some time until I had everything in position to clean up the last of this. I must say, it is rather nice seeing my efforts come to fruition, even if it did nearly all get ruined because of Freakenstein. Hydramental was a fool to have pushed forward with everything when that oaf showed up. I barely had the time to stand up the extra base, let alone provide an extra explosive with enough force to wipe the place off the map. I had to make a judgement call, one that would have truly worked out for me either way. It would have been preferable had you just gone into the base that Hydramental ended up with, that one had both the Null Zone and a bomb attached to it, but I would have to be a fool not to have a back up plan. My droids should be-” He stopped short of finishing his thought as his head snapped to the side, looking well off camera. “What? How is that-” he started to say before both the television and the light on the webcam went dead.

  There was another explosion that rattled the ground and this one felt even closer than before. I looked away from the blank screen, wishing that there had been at least one window somewhere in the building that I could use to see what the hell was going on. I started to move to get back across the warehouse, jogging my way back toward the door.

  I only made it about half way across, just around the scraps of droids still sitting where I had left them after destroying the defunct gorillas when three more explosions happened in rapid succession. The last one must have been right near the building because the overhead lights all went dark in an instant. I nearly tripped in the sudden darkness when I heard a loud BANG!

  The sudden sound of ringing metal alongside the darkness in the room did make me stop. I briefly looked at the edges of my vision, annoyed that the Null Zone didn’t seem to be tied to the building’s power. Stopping had been a bad choice and I had no idea just how close to the front doors I had gotten.

  Luck must have been on my side though. Before I could take another step and stumble my way through the building, there was a second loud BANG! that echoed through the warehouse. The shutter covering the front door was knocked back, only moving a few feet before falling down to the ground with a scary amount of force.

  There was only a single form standing in the doorway, his fist still outstretched from knocking the shutter and doors inward. Several fires were clearly going behind him and I could make out plenty of scrapped metal littering the pavement behind the man that I practically could have kissed in that moment.

  “Hey Loopie, your buddy Codex said you could use some help.”

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