The Architects had completely given up. They had looked at the prison riot in Tartarus, they had looked at the Anomaly breaching their firewall, and they had decided the Ethereal Plane was no longer worth saving. They were pulling the plug.
In exactly nine minutes and fifty-something seconds, a wave of absolute, unformatted white light was going to erupt from the Core OS. It would wash over Tartarus, instantly deleting the trillions of newly freed souls fighting the Sanitizers. It would flood the Juncture, wiping out the floating debris and the Dead Servers.
And then, it would hit Earth.
Prometheus had warned him. A firewall only protects the software. If they wipe the physical hard drive, the golden barrier of the Sovereign's Aegis would just pop like a soap bubble. Earth, the refugees, Sanctuary, Galleon, Wraith... and Valerie. They would all be reduced to empty, unwritten void.
"Not on my watch," Sebastian snarled, his hands balling into fists.
