Before Liv could respond, a crash of splintering metal interrupted them, John burst into view from around the corner, staggering back, grappling with two combat droids locked onto him like hunting dogs. His coat was torn, his face bloodied, one arm pinned by a droid's vice-like grip while the other struggled to keep his sidearm leveled.
"Company!" he shouted, voice ragged with strain.
But there was no time to be worried for him. A sharp series of mechanical whirs echoed from above and behind them, then from the flanks. Red targeting lasers lanced through the haze.
They were surrounded.
The machines moved with cold efficiency, spider-limbed and armored in matte composites. At least six more emerged from the alleyways and breached walls, their movements inhumanly fast and perfectly coordinated. The ground quivered under the weight of their synchronized advance.
Everything went to shit.
Kali didn't flinch.
He moved like a man who'd done this a hundred times before. His coilgun barked short, tight bursts—one shot to the optics, another to the power junction. Each pull of the trigger dropped a droid with surgical precision, sparks erupting from shattered visors and ruptured servos.
One lunged at him with bladed limbs, and he ducked beneath the arc, coming up with a shot straight into its underside. The machine spasmed and folded into the ground.
To his right, Liv screamed again, shorter this time, focused. A wave of sonic force rippled outward, knocking two droids back into a crumbling wall, their joints dislocated from sheer vibrational overload. She dropped to one knee, clutching her skull, bleeding more now.
Thomas was firing cover rounds, shielding John as he finally broke free, slamming a charged baton into the neck joint of the droid still clinging to his arm. But there were too many.
"They're not after us," John shouted over the chaos, taking down another droid with a double-tap. "They came to erase the evidence. We're collateral!"
Another bot launched itself from the rooftops, crashing down between them with a thunderous impact. Kali rolled, raised his weapon, and fired point-blank. The air stank of ozone, melted alloy, and blood. And still, more were coming.
The air was chaos, thick with smoke, scorched metal, and the scream of high-frequency alarms bleeding from the downed shack's gutted systems. Droids moved with relentless precision, their black carapaces gleaming under flickering security lights, red optics sweeping like hunting beams through the haze.
Kali dropped to a crouch behind a toppled waste container, one arm steady, his other guiding the muzzle of the M10 coilgun like an extension of thought. He exhaled. Time dilated. Another bot surged forward, ducking low and skittering on reverse-jointed legs, faster than the rest. Kali waited half a second longer than instinct advised, then fired directly into the joint where head met torso. The round cracked through alloy like brittle ice, and the droid collapsed mid-sprint, limbs twitching.
To his left, John wrestled free from the second droid, his baton now glowing bright with an overcharge pulse. He slammed it upward into the thing's thorax, sending a burst of EMP energy flaring out. The bot seized and dropped, smoke curling from its seams.
"Flank right!" Kali barked.
Thomas moved, suppressing with his heavy autocaster, a brute of a weapon that spat molten rounds in a wide cone. The street lit up like a warzone, tracer rounds cutting through smoke as chunks of wall and synthetic limbs burst apart. One droid lost half its chassis and still tried to crawl forward before Liv silenced it with a focused shriek that shattered its cranial casing.
But they were still outnumbered.
Two more units dropped from above, one landing squarely atop a rusted out car with enough force to cave it in. The shockwave knocked Liv off her feet. She rolled, gasping, trying to center herself before her next blast. Blood now poured freely from her ears. Her eyes were glassy, haunted.
"They're adapting!" she cried. "Dampeners… they're running counterfreq—!"
Her warning cut short as one of the newer units fired a concussive blast from a forearm-mounted cannon. The shockwave hit Kali like a hammer, flinging him into a wall hard enough to knock the air from his lungs. His vision whited out for a moment. He heard nothing but the high-pitched ring of trauma through his skull. A droid approached, slow and deliberate, like it knew it had the kill. Its mono-optic flickered with recognition. It raised an integrated spike to plunge into his chest.
Kali reached. Not for his weapon—he couldn't feel it. But for the emergency detonator clipped inside his jacket. Thumbed the switch.
Flash.
A blinding pulse erupted, heatless but overwhelming. The droid's optic overloaded, its systems stumbling just enough. Kali surged up, driving his boot into the bot's midsection, sending it reeling and then caught his gun again, still hot, and fired point-blank into the thing's exposed internal bay.
It collapsed in sparks. He turned.
Across the battlefield, Thomas was wounded, dragging himself behind cover, blood streaming down one leg. John knelt beside him, firing precision bursts to keep their flank clear. Another shriek rang out, weaker this time, but still deadly. Liv dropped a droid in mid-leap. She was pale as death, shaking, her entire body trembling from feedback.
The last droid dropped with a hiss of venting coolant, its ruined chassis twitching on the cracked pavement. Smoke hung heavy in the air, the acrid scent of ozone and burning synthflesh clinging to every breath. For a heartbeat, there was stillness, just the distant wail of sirens and the hum of spent weapons cooling.
Kali exhaled, lowering his weapon slightly.
Then he saw it.
A glint. High above. The unmistakable flash of glass catching the dim light—a scope.
Instinct screamed. He twisted hard to the right just as the crack of a high-caliber round split the air. Concrete exploded inches from his skull, fragments grazing his cheek. Had he reacted a fraction later, it would've cored straight through his head.
He didn't hesitate. "Wait for the AFD," Kali barked, already sprinting. "I'm going after them."
He disappeared into the maze of alleys without another word, his coat snapping behind him, footsteps fading into the smoke-veiled distance.
Liv watched him vanish, her hands trembling as she wiped blood from under her nose. "That had to be Colt, right?"
"Has to be," John muttered, kneeling beside Thomas. He pressed his hands to the wound, applying pressure as best he could. "Sniper profile fits. And only Colt would try something that brazen with droids already down."
Liv's expression tightened, pale and drawn. "Do you think the inspector will be alright? He might need backup."
John shook his head, a flicker of grim respect in his voice. "He's the only one out of the four of us still standing straight, and the only one Colt ever missed." He glanced up toward the rooftop where the shot had come from, smoke still curling lazily from the shattered wall. "That speaks for something."
Kali reached the ground floor of the derelict building, his boots crunching over shattered glass and windblown debris. The air inside was stale, thick with the scent of mold, rust, and old rot, like the structure itself had been left to decay long before the war came to Kirel's streets.
The doorway had no lock, just a crooked slab of rusted metal hanging on one hinge. He nudged it open with the barrel of his gun, every movement controlled, silent.
Inside, shadows clung to the walls like mildew. A single shaft of light cut through a crack in the roof, casting a pale beam across the hollowed-out lobby. Dust hung in the air, swirling in slow motion.
Kali took it in quickly, no movement, no sound. But the silence was the kind that watched.
He moved toward the stairwell, sweeping each corner with the muzzle of his coilgun. A missing railing gaped like a broken jaw along the side of the stairs. Scorch marks ran up the walls, old firefight, or maybe some squatters tried to burn something out.
He ascended one floor at a time, boots gliding rather than stepping, weight placed carefully on the edges of each concrete stair to avoid noise. He adjusted his grip, leveled his weapon higher.
Three more flights.
If Colt was still up there, he wasn't going to stay idle for long.
Kali's voice murmured low, not aloud, but into the private line in his head. "Rizen, if you're listening... can you access the building's infrastructure."
A whisper of static. "Completely dead. Even if it were not, crownless logics were built for strategy and war, not infiltration."
"Fine," Kali muttered. "Guess we're doing this old school."