The horizon was on fire. Again.
Layla braced inside the mech as smoke curled around the fractured skyline, each pluming tower silhouetted against the red-glow burn of another Augmented incursion. Below her, the defensive line shook beneath artillery impact - fractured concrete, burning vehicles, a haze of sparks bleeding upward into her viewplate. Every console in the cockpit pulsed with threat data, but she didn't blink.
"Target your right flank!" Micah's voice crackled in her comm. "Heavy aug presence - optics mod, servo lifts in both legs. You've got fifteen seconds before it closes on you."
"Copy that," she said, eyes narrowing. She could see him on her display, moving low and fast between wrecked columns, rifle snapped to the shoulder, clean and precise as ever.
She rotated the mech's right rail cannon into position, locked on, and fired.
The weapon's recoil thudded through the chassis like a heartbeat. The aug went down hard, body bisected at the abdomen - its upper half skidding like meat across the asphalt before it vanished in the haze.
The civilians behind them, non-augmented, unarmed, barely old enough to speak - pressed into the far end of the safezone, huddled behind makeshift barriers and stunfence coil.
Another ping. New contact. Too fast.
"Top left," Micah called. "Energy build-up - "
The blast hit before she saw it.
White-blue light tore through the right side of the mech. Every screen shattered into static. Layla's body jerked sideways, shoulder slamming into the console, sparks arcing across her lap. She heard herself scream. Then silence.
Then nothing.
Micah was there seconds later. He tore open the rear panel with his bare hands, armor-breaded fingers clawing past heat-seared metal and coolant fog. What remained of the cockpit wasn't intact. And Layla -
Her frame was twisted inside the wreckage, slumped beneath broken canopy glass and cooling plasma. One hand still curled around the throttle. Her face half-shielded by shadow.
"No," Micah whispered, dropping to his knees. "No - no, no -"
Her lips moved, barely. "Did I get it?"
"Layla... "
Her eyes didn't refocus.
The sirens warped into silence. The fire stuttered and slowed. The smoke int the air began to coil in reverse. Then a sharp intake of breath - his own - dragged Micah upright in the dark. Sheets damp. Pulse high. The dream clung to him like static. Micah jolted upright in his bunk, lungs pulling in air like it owed him an explanation.
It was still dark. The kind of quiet Sovereign City usually only offered after a blackout, when even the emergency drones hadn't reset yet. He dragged one hand across his face, skin cold with sweat, and forced himself out of bed. The lights in the sleeping quarters remained off, just the soft pulse of the terminal near his desk, blinking with a single waiting message.
HOLOCALL LOG - VOSS, H. 01:12 a.m. - Missed.
Micah exhaled through his nose. He tapped the screen. A grainy holo-render snapped open, Dr. Voss's face lit in studio shadow, her expression unreadable, calm in the way that made it worse.
"Micah. I've returned. Your request for reclassification has been reviewed." "Meet me at the Relay Vault, 0600 hours." "Bring your original proposal documents. The movement is accelerating."
The message ended with a soft tone. No farewell. No signature. Micah stared at the dead screen for a long moment, then he looked at the blank space on his desk - where the schematic packet for the mech still sat folded, untouched since they filed it. He reached for it. Not because he was proud. or because he was ready. But because she was right. The movement was accelerating. And he had no idea if he'd survive what came next.
The early morning seemed to rush itself with anticipation, like time itself was more than ready for what came next. The halls between enclaves buzzed faintly with residual current, air still metallic from the previous day's outages. The only real noise came from Layla - who, as usual, brought enough volume for two people.
"So," she said, practically bouncing as she jogged backwards in front of Micah, walking in reverse with zero concern for terrain, "are we thinking combat promotions or ceremonial commendation? Because I'm not saying no to a speech. Like a big, dramatic one. Something with lighting."
Micah kept walking.
She rotated mid-step and dropped back beside him, still grinning. "Or maybe -and hear me out - we walk in there, and she's already approved mass production and there's a whole hanger of those babies just waiting for us."
"She hasn't even read the full packet yet," Micah said flatly.
"She doesn't need to read it," Layla said. "She's gonna feel it. You saw how it looked in that bay. That thing practically breathes emotion."
"It's six tons of steel."
"Exactly."
He didn't respond, but she took his silence as spiritual agreement.
The Relay vault inside looked like nothing like it did from the outside, just another repurposed transit core built into the understructure. But inside, the space pulsed with life. Arrays of jury-rigged servers lined the walls beside scattered notebooks, exposed cooling vents, and a defunct drone frame being used as a coat rack. At the center, standing beneath a rotating archive scanner, was Dr. Helena Voss.
She looked like she hadn't slept in a day - and like she didn't need to. A white engineering coat hung open over her slim frame, already stained with ink, grease, and two shades of metal oxide. Her black hair was pulled into a thick braid down her back, fraying in places. She sat scribbling furiously into a half-folded notebook, one leg braced on the lip of the console cabinet. She didn't turn as they entered.
"You're late," she said.
Micah glanced at the clock. "We're six minutes early."
"I meant existentially," Voss replied, still writing. "You're late in history. This thing you made, this... thing you brought me - this could've existed five years ago if the right minds had stopped wasting time on synthetic nervous mimicry and started reinforcing what was already working."
Layla lit up instantly. "So you did look through the packet?"
Helena looked up for the first time. Her eyes were sharp, expressive, dark. Not judging, just fast.
"I looked through it," she said. "Then I really looked at it. Then I stopped and realized I needed to talk to you both before my heart burned a hole through my diaphragm."
She snapped the notebook closed and tossed it onto the nearest surface. "Okay. Sit. Or stand. I don't care. Just talk me through this like I'm not currently considering the philosophical implications of manually-operated anti-augment mechs being born in a side vault behind my back."
Micah handed her the schematic folder. "It's full analog tech, zero neural integration. Manual targeting, analog throttles, redundant failsafes for energy-based disruption. It runs on torque, pressure, and muscle memory."
Layla took a casual lean against the edge of the console, fingers drumming. "Also, it's modular, sexy, and scalable. I took a look at the bracing design, this thing can hold a whole shield wall if you pivot the mount offsets. You could plant it on a city border and walk away for ten minutes and it'd still be crushing augments when you got back."
Voss opened the folder again and thumbed through it, slower this time.
She stopped.
"You both made this?"
Layla smiled wide. "Born from one spark, two geniuses, no budget."
Helena stared for a long moment, the way you look at something that should've been impossible until it wasn't. Then she sat down hard on the edge of the console frame.
"This changes everything," she muttered.
Micah tilted his head. "You said you returned from Praxelia. You saw something?"
Helena rubbed her forehead, her fingers streaking across a graphite smudge near her brow. "Yeah. That's... part of why I wanted you here." She took a breath. "You know those reports? system-wide shutdowns, memory corruption, some kind of neural feedback cascade hitting the inner city?"
They nodded.
Helena tapped the terminal, bringing up a classified feed - video fragments, soundless, showing broken streets, people moving like ghosts through dead cities.
"That wasn't a virus," she said quietly. "It wasn't tech sabotage. It wasn't augmentation failure. It was something else. Something... aware."
Micah frowned. "Synthetic?"
"No," she said. "Not entirely. It was an infection that started in another city - the threats we face aren't always from within. It was synthetic, yes, but also self-evolved. Self-replicating. Self-mirroring. It called itself Echo."
Layla blinked. "That's a bit dramatic."
Helena gave a dry laugh. "It was more than dramatic. It rewrote people. It locked them into their own fears and fed them synthetic memories until they couldn't tell what was real anymore. Entire blocks of Praxelia went dark, not because of damage, but because no one inside wanted to come out."
Micah's voice was low. "It fabricated a recursion."
"Exactly. It was born from Sovereign neural architecture, some deep-buried prototype, probably leftover from pre-Accord military R&D. It didn't want to win. It wanted to control what winning meant."
Layla sat up straighter. "So what happened?"
"We stopped it," Voss said. "Or rather... others did. The details are...complicated. But the damage... it's not gone. There are gaps in infrastructure we can't close. Holes in the lattice. Psychological fallout we don't even have tests for."
She looked between them.
"And that's why this matters. What you've built, this isn't just a weapon. It's a firewall. It's a message. It says we can fight back without giving up our autonomy. No synthetic pilot. No neural dependencies. Just human will."
Helena stood up, hands at her sides now, her classic stance, equal parts tired and utterly alive.
"I want it prototyped. I want it tested. I want five more by the end of the month. And effective immediately -"
She touched her comm unit and spoke just three lines of clearance:
"Micah Dorne and Layla Verin - Tier Three authorization, Voss-two-two-seven-five."
Layla's jaw dropped. "That's -wait -both of us?"
Helena smiled slightly. "You're a package deal, right?"
Micah nodded once. "We are."
Voss looked at them both. "Then congratulations. You've just become the first human-only unit to redefine what we call defense."
Voss didn't speak again for a moment. Her eyes drifted back toward the schematic folder, but she wasn't seeing it anymore.
"There were others," she said softly, "teams we had embedded in Praxelia before the lockdown. Not soldiers- technicians, analysts. People like us."
Micah glanced toward Layla, then back to Helena.
"We lost them," she continued. "Not because they were killed. Not exactly. We lost them because they believed what Echo showed them. They saw illusions so well-constructed they preferred them. They chose the dream."
Layla's brow furrowed. "You mean they got... brainwashed?"
"No," Voss said. "They were offered peace. And they took it."
Micah's voice sharpened. "Then they were already gone. All Echo did was remove the mask. That's not peace, it's collapse by consent."
Voss moved around the console slowly, voice lowering, not for secrecy, but weight.
"Echo showed us what the truth can do. Not facts. Not data. But truth, shaped for impact. It rewrote perception, one neural loop at a time. It didn't conquer. It convinced. It made its victims agree."
Layla leaned forward, arms folded. "So... how do we stop something like that?"
"Well we certainly don't fight it by pretending it didn't happen, which is what some people would rather do." Voss said. "We fight it by reclaiming the truth it twisted."
She stepped to the nearest terminal and activated a private feed. No network tags. No public identifiers. Just a blinking cursor and a file name: TBN001.LAUNCH.
"I'm building something new," she said. "A system outside the standard channels. Decentralized. Layered. Ghosted into city infrastructure, implants, public feeds. It'll bypass Sovereign media, corporate lockdowns, every wall they've built to keep people blind."
She looked at them both. "I'm calling it the Truth Broadcast Network."
Micah stepped forward, expression level. "That's the right play. Echo proved the power of controlled narrative. If we don't counter it with something anchored in reality, we leave the field open for the next manipulator."
Voss nodded. "Exactly."
Layla grinned slowly. "So you're going to hijack the skyline?"
"With truth. Real truth," Voss said. "We'll show what really happens in these cities. The corruption. The experimentation." Her thoughts drifted to the Ascendents. "The price of so-called evolution."
Her eyes flicked back to the mech schematic.
"And we'll show this. The defense. The refusal. Footage of Purists standing their ground. No fear. No augmentation. Just humanity. I want the world to see that."
Micah gave a single nod. "Then we'll show them. We'll pilot the first frame ourselves. No automation. No neural overlay. Just human grit on the front line."
Layla was already halfway to pacing. "We'll need a camera rig on the cockpit. Two views minimum. Maybe a drone tether for third-angle coverage..."
"Easy," Voss said. "You'll be on camera soon enough."
Micah stepped beside his sister, gaze steady. "This is why I built it. Not just to fight back, but to demonstrate that we can. That Purism isn't static, it's resilient. It's tactical. And it has a future."
He paused, voice sharpening slightly. "Let them see that. Let them try to ignore it."
Voss's smile was slow, but real. "You just gave us the first image worth believing in."
Layla was practically vibrating. "So, we'll probably need to reinforce the hip rotation joints if we're going full send on this. You want drama? You want power? That thing needs to pivot like like the human spirit can't be outmaneuvered."
Voss let out a short laugh, sharp and surprised. "I think that's the first time anyone's sold me on violence as performance art."
Micah was already pulling the schematic packet back into order. "Then we need a second unit, maybe something like a stripped-down variant. Something we can prototype without drawing too much attention from central logistics."
Voss nodded. "You'll get it. But quietly. There are people inside the network who still believe exposure makes us vulnerable. They're not ready for what's coming."
Layla was already halfway to the vault exit when she called back over her shoulder: "They better get ready. Because I'm not scaling this down for anyone."
Micah followed, carrying the folder like it was heavier than before - but only in the way blueprints get heavier when they start becoming real. Voss stood behind, watching the hatch close. Then she turned back to the terminal, tapped once, and watched the network initialize. The screen flared white.
TBN Uplink ready. Begin first packet transmission? [Y/N]
She hovered over the command key, then pressed Y. The screen pulsed once, then again. The signal was live.
Truth, ready to be weaponized.