The beast was dead, but the cold was still hunting them.
Marcus watched as Galen and two refugees climbed onto the carcass of the Sentinel. They looked like ants swarming a dead beetle.
"Hurry!" Marcus yelled. "Before the core cools!"
Galen had a plasma cutter—a small, handheld tool running on its last battery charge. He sliced through the Sentinel's chest plate.
Blue sparks showered the snow.
"Got it!" Galen shouted.
He reached into the machine's chest cavity with insulated tongs. He pulled out a cylinder the size of a beer keg.
It glowed a sickly, vibrant green.
[OBJECT: NUCLEAR ISOTOPE BATTERY.]
[STATUS: UNSTABLE. LEAKING RADIATION.]
[HEAT OUTPUT: 400°C.]
"It's hot!" Galen yelled. Steam rose instantly from the snow around him. "It's radioactive!"
"We'll take the cancer over the frostbite," Marcus said. "Put it in the lead truck. Center of the bed. Don't touch it."
They hoisted the glowing core into Narcissus's truck.
The refugees crowded around it immediately. They held their hands out to the green light. It was a poisonous campfire, but it was life.
"Mount up!" Marcus ordered. "We move."
The convoy rolled out.
This time, the mood was different. They had killed a monster. They had stolen its heart.
Marcus sat in the cab. The heater was still broken, but the heat from the nuclear core in the bed behind them was radiating through the metal wall. It was enough to stop his teeth from chattering.
"Marcia," Marcus said. "You good?"
She was cleaning soot off her shotgun.
"I jammed a flare in its eye," she said. A small, grim smile touched her lips. "I'm good."
"Narcissus?"
The giant was driving. His movements were stiff. The nitrogen blast had damaged his servos. Every time he turned the wheel, his shoulder joint made a grinding noise. Crunch. Crunch.
"I need oil," Narcissus grunted. "And a fire hot enough to melt the ice in my gears."
"We'll find it," Marcus said.
They drove for an hour.
The snow got deeper. The ruins thinned out.
Ahead, a single light pierced the darkness.
It wasn't a flare. It was a steady, red pulse. High in the sky.
"Target sighted," Marcus said.
Relay Tower 4.
It was a monstrosity. A spire of black metal rising five hundred feet into the storm. Thick cables anchored it to the ground.
At the base of the tower, floodlights illuminated a massive fenced compound.
But it wasn't the tower that made Marcus grip the door handle.
It was the piles.
Surrounding the base of the tower were mounds. Under the floodlights, they looked like garbage dumps. Colorful. Chaotic.
"What is that?" Marcia squinted.
Marcus zoomed in with his HUD.
[OBJECTS: TEXTILES.]
[ANALYSIS: WINTER COATS. BOOTS. SCARVES.]
Thousands of them.
Piles of empty clothes.
"Stop the truck," Marcus whispered.
The convoy halted at the edge of the light.
"Why are we stopping?" Decimus asked over the radio.
"Look at the ground," Marcus said.
He got out. He walked toward the perimeter fence.
The snow here was trampled. Dirty.
He reached the fence. He looked at the nearest pile.
A child's pink snowsuit. Empty.
A man's heavy wool coat. Empty.
A pair of leather boots, still laced up.
There were no bodies. Just the clothes. As if the people had vaporized inside them.
"Where are they?" Marcia asked, walking up beside him. Her voice was thin. "The people of Plovdiv. Where are they?"
Marcus looked at the base of the tower.
There was a large industrial building attached to it. A low hum came from inside. A conveyor belt ran from the outside yard into the building.
On the belt... bones.
White, clean, processed bones.
Marcus felt bile rise in his throat.
"JARVIS," Marcus said. "Scan the building."
[SCANNING...]
[STRUCTURE: BIOMASS CONVERSION REACTOR.]
[OUTPUT: HIGH-DENSITY FUEL.]
"Fuel?" Marcia asked. "Fuel for what?"
[FOR THE ROCKET.]
Marcus looked up at the tower.
It wasn't just a relay. It was a launch pad.
Attached to the side of the spire was a sleek, silver projectile. A single-stage orbital lifter.
"Vane," Marcus realized. "He's not just hiding on the station. He's sending something up."
"Or bringing something down," Lucilla said. She had joined them at the fence. Her face was pale, terrified. "Protocol Zero."
"What is it?" Marcus grabbed her arm.
"The Rods," Lucilla whispered. "The Kinetic Bombardment platforms. They need a localized guidance beacon to target specific coordinates. If that rocket launches... it deploys the beacon."
"And then?"
"Then he drops a tungsten rod on us. On the Vatican. On everything."
Marcus looked at the clothes.
"He processed them," Marcus said. "He turned an entire city into rocket fuel."
Rage.
It wasn't the hot anger of the desert. It was cold. Absolute.
He drew his sword.
"Narcissus," Marcus said.
"Yes, brother?"
"Tear down this fence."
Narcissus walked to the chain-link gate. He grabbed it with both hands.
He ripped it off its hinges. He crumpled the metal like paper and threw it into a snowbank.
"Legion!" Marcus turned to his army. They were watching from the trucks. They saw the clothes. They understood.
"This isn't a raid!" Marcus shouted. "This is an execution!"
"KILL THEM!" Decimus roared.
The refugees poured out of the trucks. They didn't care about the cold anymore. They charged.
Alarms blared.
WOOP. WOOP.
Floodlights swiveled toward them.
From the tower base, Sentinels emerged. Smaller ones. Security drones.
They opened fire.
Red lasers cut through the snow.
"Forward!" Marcus sprinted.
He deflected a laser bolt with his energy shield.
He reached the first drone. It was a wheeled unit with a chaingun.
He sliced it in half. The vibro-blade cut through the chassis like butter.
"Burn it all!" Marcus yelled.
The Legion hit the compound like a tidal wave. They threw Molotov cocktails at the fuel tanks. They shot out the floodlights.
Marcia was firing her shotgun one-handed, reloading with a practiced flick of her wrist.
"Clear the yard!" she yelled.
Narcissus found the conveyor belt. The one feeding bones into the reactor.
He grabbed the machinery. He roared and pulled.
The belt snapped. Gears flew. The machine ground to a halt.
Marcus ran for the control room at the base of the tower.
He kicked the door in.
A single technician was there. A human. A Board employee in a clean white uniform.
The man scrambled back, knocking over his chair.
"Don't!" the tech screamed. "I'm just maintenance!"
Marcus grabbed him by the throat. He lifted him off the ground.
"You processed them," Marcus hissed.
"I... I just monitor the mix!" the man choked. "I don't make the policy!"
"You watched," Marcus said. "That's enough."
He threw the man through the glass window. The tech landed in the snow outside, right at the feet of the Legionnaires.
Marcus didn't watch what happened next. He turned to the console.
[ROCKET STATUS: FUELING COMPLETE.]
[LAUNCH INITIATED.]
[T-MINUS 60 SECONDS.]
"JARVIS! Abort!"
[I CAN'T. IT'S HARDWIRED. THE SEQUENCE IS LOCKED.]
Through the shattered window, Marcus saw the rocket engines ignite. Blue flame licked the launch pad.
"It's going up!" Marcia yelled from the doorway.
"No," Marcus said.
He looked at the control panel.
There was no abort button. But there was a manual release for the docking clamps.
"If it launches," Marcus said, "it deploys the beacon."
[CORRECT.]
"What if it launches... sideways?"
[BOSS, THAT WILL DESTROY THE TOWER. AND PROBABLY US.]
"Do it."
Marcus smashed his fist onto the manual release.
CLAMPS DISENGAGED.
Outside, the rocket groaned.
It wasn't at full thrust yet. It was just hovering, held by gravity and friction.
Without the clamps, the wind hit it.
The storm wind caught the silver needle.
It tilted.
"RUN!" Marcus grabbed Marcia and dove out the door.
They hit the snow.
The rocket tipped over.
It crashed into the tower.
BOOM.
The fuel tanks ruptured.
A ball of fire consumed the night. It was brighter than the sun.
The shockwave hit them. It threw Marcus and Marcia ten feet.
The tower groaned. The steel buckled.
Slowly, majestically, the massive spire collapsed. It fell onto the Biomass Reactor.
CRASH.
Explosions rippled through the compound. The bone grinder, the fuel tanks, the control room—all gone.
Marcus lay in the snow, covering his head. Debris rained down. Hot metal hissed in the ice.
Silence returned.
Just the crackle of fire.
Marcus stood up. He brushed ash off his shoulder.
The rocket lay in ruins. The beacon was destroyed.
"We stopped it," Marcia coughed, standing up beside him.
"For now," Marcus said.
He walked to the edge of the crater.
The firelight illuminated the piles of clothes. They were burning now. A funeral pyre for thousands.
Lucilla walked up. She held a datapad she had salvaged from the control room.
"Marcus," she said. Her voice was shaking.
"What?"
"I downloaded the flight manifest before the terminal melted."
"And?"
"The rocket wasn't just carrying a beacon," she said. "It was sending data."
"What data?"
"Biometrics," Lucilla said. "DNA sequences. From the people they processed."
She showed him the screen.
[PROJECT: LEGION 2.0]
[DESTINATION: THE VATICAN CLONING FACILITY.]
Marcus stared at the words.
"They aren't just fuel," Marcus whispered. "He's recycling them."
"He's building an army," Marcia realized. "Out of the dead."
"Hollow Men," Marcus said. "But smarter. Faster."
He looked south. Toward the mountains. Toward Rome.
"He's waiting for us at the Vatican," Marcus said. "And he has reinforcements."
He turned to the Legion. They were cheering, looting the burning compound for food and weapons.
"Let them celebrate," Marcus said softly. "Tonight, they are warm."
He looked at the burning tower one last time.
"Tomorrow," Marcus said, "we go to hell."
He turned and walked back to the trucks.
The fire cast his shadow long across the snow. A shadow of a king. A shadow of a destroyer.
And deep in his mind, the Gold UI pulsed.
[LEVEL UP.]
[NEW ASSET UNLOCKED: ORBITAL COMMS.]
[MESSAGE INCOMING...]
[SENDER: VANE.]
[MESSAGE: "COME HOME, MARCUS. DADDY IS WAITING."]