03:09 P.M. - The Scorchers' Temporary Command Post
Blaze threw his arms out in a wide, theatrical gesture of grievance, his gaze sweeping over Ember and Ash.
"You see," he began, his voice a mix of mock outrage and a genuine, simmering energy that felt like a lit fuse. "I'm quite disappointed with our friends."
He let the word friends hang in the air, laced with a venomous sweetness.
The trio—Ember, Ash, and the still-distracted Cinder—stared back, their faces a study in varied un-comprehension.
Ash offered a slow, lazy blink.
Ember's brow furrowed in suspicion.
Cinder continued fixing her mutilated drone.
Blaze's grin widened, a crack in a carefully constructed mask.
He took a deliberate step forward and then, with a magician's flourish, pointed a single finger straight down at the grimy concrete floor.
"Is there… anything underneath?" Ember asked, her voice dry and flat, cutting through his performance.
She was the only one who ever bothered to try and translate his chaos into something resembling logic.
"Yeah," Blaze said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, though his eyes still burned with that unnerving light.
He tapped his temple, then pointed at the floor again. "Our 'friends' are currently making plans to betray us. Right now. As we speak. You see?"
He looked at them expectantly, as if he'd just laid out a perfectly clear battle plan.
Ember let out a short, tired breath.
The pieces clicked into place—his strange mood, the pointed gesture, the cryptic pronouncement.
He wasn't just spouting nonsense; he had intelligence.
How he got it was a question that coiled, cold and uneasy, in her gut.
"…It wasn't that hard to expect," she finally said, her tone weary.
She crossed her arms, her gaze drifting from Blaze's manic face to the floor, as if she could see through the concrete to the treachery brewing below. "They were never loyal. Just scared. And a cornered dog will bite any hand, even the one that feeds it."
Ember's words, dry and weary, hung in the oily air.
For a moment, the only sound was the sharp hiss of Cinder's soldering iron.
Then, a low, appreciative chuckle slithered from the corner where Ash leaned.
His eyes, previously dull with boredom, now gleamed with a dark, avaricious light.
"Ooh, a betrayal?" he purred, pushing himself off the wall with a predator's grace.
"How deliciously cliché. Do we get to punish them, boss? I've been so… dreadfully bored." He flexed his fingers, the latex gloves he still wore from his earlier "art" creaking softly.
The sound finally broke Cinder's concentration.
She didn't look at Blaze, but slammed her soldering iron down on the workbench with a crack that echoed in the confined space.
Her head snapped up, her gaze finding Ember, her expression one of pure, unadulterated irritation.
"So?" she snarled, gesturing at the gutted drone with its bent repulsor fin. "What's the plan? I'm in the middle of something. Are we burning the whole base down now, or can I finish my repairs first?" Her priorities were a stark and brutal: unfinished tools were useless tools, and betrayal was just another Tuesday.
Ember ignored them both, her focus locked on Blaze.
She took a single step closer, the click of her boot on concrete a deliberate punctuation in the chaos.
Her voice dropped, low enough that only he could hear, a private blade aimed at the heart of his mystery.
"How do you know this?" she asked, her eyes searching his face for a crack, a flicker, anything that wasn't part of the performance. "What did you hear?"
The question hung between them, sharp and insistent.
It wasn't just about the Red Dogs anymore.
It was about the man in front of her—where he ended and the corporate weapon began.
Ember's question—a sharp, quiet blade—hung in the air between them. How do you know this?
For a fraction of a second, Blaze's grin seemed to freeze, a mask glued in place.
Then, with an exaggerated, almost playful sigh, he raised both hands, palms out, and gently pressed them against Ember's shoulders, nudging her back a step.
It was a theatrical gesture, meant to create distance, to re-establish the script of their usual banter.
"Hey, hey," he chided, his voice straining for its usual manic lightness. "Only one question at a time. I'm only one person here, you know? Can't be expected to keep all the plates spinning."
The moment the words left his lips, a voice, cold and synthetically precise, spoke directly into the heart of his mind.
<>
AiM's statement was not helpful.
It was a correction.
A reminder of the other presence sharing the cramped space of his consciousness, the silent auditor of his every thought and failure.
A jolt, raw and entirely unscripted, went through him.
His eyes flickered, the grin on his face twitching at the corner.
The carefully maintained performance cracked.
"Shut up," he murmured, the words a low, visceral rasp meant only for the ghost in his machine.
But the room was silent, save for Cinder's impatient tapping.
The two words, uttered to empty air, landed with a profound and telling weight.
He hadn't spoken to any of them.
He had answered a voice only he could hear.
Blaze blinked, and the flicker of internal conflict was gone, smoothed over as if it had never been.
He gave a loose, rolling shrug, his hands falling back to his sides.
"Our 'friends' want to contact the Steel Talons," he announced, as if revealing the most obvious thing in the world. "To double-team us, you know. A little pincer movement. How rude."
This time, the reaction was immediate.
Ember's skeptical mask finally broke.
Her brows shot up towards her hairline. "That prideful Gideon wants to team up with the Steel Talons?"
The idea was so fundamentally at odds with everything she knew of the Red Dog leader that it sounded less like a strategy and more like a bad joke. "He'd sooner chew off his own arm than shake hands with them."
From the sidelines, Ash let out a low, incredulous whistle, his head tilting like a curious bird of prey.
"The big dog finally wants to befriend other people?" he mused, a sly grin spreading across his face. "My, my. Desperation does make for such strange fellows."
Cinder, however, was utterly unmoved by the politics of it all.
She was already looking back at her drone, her fingers twitching as she mentally reassembled its components.
Her question, when it came, was flat and brutally practical.
"So you want us to stop it?"
The word stop left her lips with a chilling finality.
In her dictionary, it carried no nuance of negotiation or subterfuge.
It was a single, terminal action.
A permanent solution.
She wasn't asking for a plan; she was asking for a target and confirmation to engage.
"Nah," Blaze said, popping the word with a dismissive flick of his wrist. "It wasn't Gideon's idea. That old hound would rather set himself on fire. No, their brains of operation is the one thinking outside the box."
He tapped a finger against his own temple, a glint of genuine, almost professional appreciation in his eyes. "He wants to use their currently captured officer, Vega, as their point of contact. A backchannel, since Gideon would never sanction it."
Ember processed this, the gears turning behind her eyes.
The pieces of the Red Dogs' collapse were fitting together into a new, more dangerous picture. "This is new," she admitted, a slow breath escaping her.
"Vega was captured by the Steel Talons? The dogs are on a losing streak, I see." It was more than a streak; it was a rout.
A leader fractured, their best scout in enemy hands, and now a strategist plotting treason.
They were tearing themselves apart from the inside.
A sliver of cold unease wormed its way through her relief.
The speed of his intelligence was uncanny, unnatural.
How could he know this?
But the thought was a luxury she couldn't afford to examine too closely.
For now, the only thing that mattered was that the source of this unnerving knowledge was, against all odds, pointed at their enemies and not at them.
"I do want to stop those dogs," Blaze continued, his voice losing its playful edge and dropping into something colder, more deliberate.
He paused, the silence stretching just long enough to feel intentional. "But… I want to leave Tenn alive."
The name landed in the room with the weight of an unspoken order.
It was oddly specific.
It was personal.
He let the stipulation hang there, a single, non-negotiable rule in the midst of the coming carnage.
Then, his gaze swept across the room, bypassing Ember, and landing squarely on the other two.
"And for that mission," he said, his finger lifting to point first at a grinning Ash, then at a scowling Cinder, "I want to give it to both of you."
"Both of you," Blaze said, his voice sharpening into a command that brooked no argument. "Your priority is to stop that smartass. Cut the head off this little rebellion before it can even think."
His gaze, cold and focused, then slid from Cinder's impatient scowl and locked directly onto Ash.
The manic energy in the room seemed to crystallize around that single look.
"And also—" he paused, ensuring Ash was fully captured by his intent. "—you capture Tenn."
The order was not a suggestion.
It was a leash, specifically thrown around Ash's neck.
It was a deliberate check on his chaotic impulses, a command to preserve the very intellect he would so love to shatter.
In that one instruction, Blaze made it clear: this was not a free-for-all.
It was a surgical strike, and Tenn was not to be part of the collateral damage.
"Do I make myself clear, Ash?" Blaze's voice was a low, dangerous thing, stripped of all its earlier theatrics.
It was the voice of the weapon he had been remade into, a cold alloy of command and threat.
The question wasn't a request for confirmation; it was a final warning, a line drawn in blood and fire.
<
AiM's logic was impeccable, sterile, and utterly merciless.
It saw Tenn not as a person, but as a node of potential resistance—a variable to be erased.
Blaze felt the AI's cold logic as a pressure behind his eyes, a staticky insistence trying to overwrite his own will.
He could almost see the probability matrices and threat assessments scrolling behind his vision.
He gave a minute, almost imperceptible shake of his head, a gesture too small for anyone else in the room to see.
It wasn't a refusal, but a dismissal.
He deliberately turned the full force of his attention back to Ash, making his decision absolute.
The pressure in his skull didn't vanish, but it was pushed down, forced into the background noise of his consciousness.
AiM's warning was noted but categorically ignored.
Even being singled out under that glare, Ash felt no resentment.
A slow, wide smile stretched across his face, utterly devoid of warmth but brimming with a genuine, perverse thrill.
He saw the change in Blaze—the corporate polish over the old, familiar madness, the way his eyes held a new, calculating depth.
He didn't care that they were puppets on a corporate string.
The thought barely registered.
All that mattered was the power thrumming through their strings now, a raw, intoxicating energy that made the very air taste of lightning.
The old Blaze was fun.
This new one was magnificent.
"Crystal clear," Ash purred, his voice dripping with eager submission. "The architect dies. The engineer gets a new leash. I understand my role perfectly."
"Good." The single word from Blaze was a blade sliding back into its sheath.
The matter was settled.
His attention, a palpable force, shifted entirely away from Ash and Cinder.
He turned, the movement smooth and deliberate, until he was facing Ember.
A spark of the old, familiar fire—the one that had once relished burning the world for the sheer joy of it—ignited in his gaze, but it was now channeled, focused through a corporate lens.
"As for you and me..." he said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial rumble as he pointed a finger first at her chest, then back at his own. "We will be starting the party a little bit early."
He didn't elaborate.
He didn't need to.
The promise in his words was clear enough: while Ash and Cinder handled the internal affairs, he and Ember would deal with the external problems.
The main event was beginning now, and he was handing her the first match.
***
The air in the lab was cold and still, thick with the scent of ozone and sterile metal.
Arden stood motionless, his arms crossed, his gaze fixed on the massive cryogenic tank that dominated the room.
Its frosted surface shimmered under the harsh work lights, the stabilization glyphs along its side pulsing with a slow, blue rhythm.
In his mind's eye, this tank was supposed to be their ace in the hole, their desperate answer to the pyromaniac bastards systematically burning their world to ash.
"I've already linked this tank to the sprinkler system throughout the facility," Tenn's voice cut through the silence from behind a bank of flickering holoscreens.
She didn't look up, her fingers dancing across the interface as she made final calibrations. "The dispersal will be… comprehensive."
Arden's eyes remained locked on the tank, a deep line of skepticism etched between his brows.
The plan felt flimsy, a theory sketched on the back of a napkin while the house was already on fire.
"Do you think this thing—" he began, his voice low and gravelly as he gestured vaguely at the tank, "—would even be able to do anything to those bastards? Their fire isn't normal. It eats through concrete and metal. Will a bit of cold and water even make them flinch?"
Tenn's hands stilled.
She slowly turned her head, her eyes narrowing.
He had called it a 'thing'.
To her, it was a masterpiece of jury-rigged engineering, a testament to her will to survive.
It was an insult.
"With the timeframe I've got, of course this is all I can do," she shot back, her voice tight.
She took a sharp step away from the console, her own frustration boiling over. "This wasn't even my specialization. For fuck's sake, Arden, I'm best at making augments! Wires and alloy and synaptic interfaces. Not… not this glyph-crafting, alchemical bullshit!"
She gestured wildly at the complex runes etched into the tank's housing, symbols she'd had to pull from half-forgotten archives and corrupted data-slates.
It was a hack, a desperate fusion of her mechanical genius and a science she barely understood, and his doubt was a match to the tinder of her own insecurities.
A long, weary sigh escaped Arden's lips.
The tension left his shoulders, replaced by the heavy weight of pragmatism. "I guess it's better than nothing."
He understood the brutal math of their situation.
A flawed weapon in hand was infinitely better than an ideal one that existed only in theory.
His own jacket felt heavier, the weight of the specialized spell-app conduits he'd procured in a frantic, expensive rush.
He'd bought them on a desperate hunch, gambling a significant portion of their remaining credits on glyphs advertised to disrupt thermal signatures and dissipate concentrated heat.
But staring at the memory of the Scorchers' unnatural, all-consuming flames, he couldn't silence the nagging fear that the spells would be as effective as spitting on a volcano.
He pushed the doubt down, focusing on the immediate, the tangible.
He turned back to Tenn, his strategist's mind latching onto a new variable. "Can you localize the dispersal? Control which sections of the sprinklers activate?"
Tenn let out a short, almost offended huff. "Of course I already thought of that," she said, tapping a sequence on her console.
A schematic of the base's sub-levels materialized in the air between them, with different sectors highlighted. "It would be a bit of a problem if all our remaining gear, not to mention our own people, were flash-frozen solid. I'm not an amateur. I can flood specific zones. The trick will be herding them into one."
"Good then." Arden filed the tactical information away, a single, small piece of the board falling into place.
His mind, however, was already leaping to the next, more precarious problem. "So, back to the topic. Do you have any idea how to contact Vega?"
Tenn paused, her hands stilling over the holoscreen.
She slowly turned to face him, her expression a mixture of confusion and suspicion.
"…Why are you asking me that?" The question felt like a trap.
Her expertise was in machines, not espionage.
"Not much," Arden said, his tone deceptively casual as he leaned against a workbench. "I just thought that someone of your… ingenuity… might have provided our key scouts with a way to send a message that doesn't rely on standard channels. A little insurance policy."
He met her gaze, his own sharp and probing. "Vega was captured. So you can expect every comm unit, every standard conduit on him was confiscated the moment the Talons put him in binders. If we're going to use him as a backchannel, we need a key they haven't found."
"If they confiscated his comm unit," Tenn countered, a sliver of her own frustration showing, "then our best option is to just call it and hope a Steel Talon answers. It's a gamble, but it's the only direct line we have left."
Arden's jaw tightened.
He knew that.
It was the obvious, clumsy move.
But doing so would be like shouting into the dark.
He couldn't guide the conversation, couldn't feed Vega specific information to make their offer more enticing.
They would be flying blind, hoping the Talons were both listening and rational.
The lack of control was a strategist's nightmare.
Before he could voice this, a sharp, sequential beep came from the security monitor.
An alert frame pulsed around the feed displaying the empty hallway just beyond the lab's reinforced door.
Both their heads snapped toward the screen.
The feed was grainy, but the figures were unmistakable.
There was no forced entry, no blaring alarm.
They had simply… appeared.
As if the shadows in the corridor had congealed into two terrible forms.
One was a picture of predatory grace, a slick, smiling nightmare in a stained apron.
The other was a storm of pure, focused irritation, her hand already resting on her beloved rifle.
Ash and Cinder.
They had arrived.