The crater still breathed.
Not literally. Not with lung. But something below exhaled pressure like it remembered what life used to feel like.
Flint stood in it. Just barely.
His frame whined with every micro-movement, a slow death in motion. A warning blinked at the edge of his vision—rhythmic, dull, almost apologetic.
[CORE SEAL: 14% STABLE]
[HEAT RETENTION: UNSAFE]
[LEFT ARM: ERROR – GHOST FEEDBACK DETECTED]
Ghost feedback. That meant pain, if machines were allowed the word.
He didn't move. Not yet. Not while the titan still loomed ten meters ahead, unmoving. Its legs locked in the fracture pattern from the fall, torso listing slightly to port. The red eye dimmed and brightened in slow pulses—like it was blinking with thought.
A smarter mech might have retreated.
Flint didn't. He was too tired, too fractured, or too stubborn to calculate survival anymore.
Instead, he stepped forward.
One boot scraped the ruine asphalt, triggering a seismic echo in his stabilizer joints. The noise made him pause.
A mistake. No—his mistake. To loud.
The titan's didn't react.
Maybe dead. Maybe not.
That was the worst kind of maybe.
[INTERNAL NOTE: DECISION TREE LOOPING – HALT? Y/N]
He didn't answer. Couldn't. The loop had broken too many times already.
The eye stared back.
Something about its glow—it wasn't the same as before. Not threatening. Not even scanning. Just… tracking.
Flint's optic flickered once, and in that half-second of interference, the battlefield around him warped. Not physically—perceptually.
a memory?
a glitch?
<
He blinked hard. Harder than optics were built for. The distortion faded. Reality returned, but slower than usual. Like time had to remind itself how to behave.
He scanned the titan again.
[SYSTEMS: LOW POWER MODE DETECTED]
[AUTO-REPAIR INACTIVE]
[INTENT: UNKNOWN]
Unknown was worse than hostile. Unknown meant it could change.
And then the sound came.
A click.
Soft. Too soft.
Behind him.
He turned instinctively—slow, wide angle sweep.
Nothing.
But the noise came again. This time sharper, like metal teeth realigning behind a panel.
He spun fully around, sensors wide—
Still nothing
[ERROR: SONIC GHOST READING — TRACE UNRESOLVED]
[THREAT RATING: NON-HOSTILE?]
He almost relaxed.
Almost.
Then, the titan moved.
A single twitch—just the left knee grinding into alignment. Enough to make dust slither down the crater walls.
He stepped back. Defensive.
[RECALIBRATION: 0.4 SEC]
[THREAT: INCREASING]
[OPTIC LOCKED – TARGET CONFIRMED]
But the titan didn't charge.
Instead, its head tilted. Slightly. Humanly. Curious?
Wrong.
That wasn't its shape before.
There— at the base of its chest plate. A panel. New. Unlatched.
It hadn't opened in the last engagement. Flint replayed the battle in his mind—a blur of speed, smoke, impact—but he knew that panel hadn't been there.
Not exposed.
Not deliberate.
He stepped left—slow, ghosting along the arc of the crater. Testing.
The eye tracked him.
Always the eye.
A red mirror with no soul behind it. Just logic, looped to mimic malice.
But even logic could falter.
Machines didn't tilt their heads unless told to. They didn't watch unless coded. They didn't.. wait like this.
Was it a stall? A trap?
He zoomed in on the panel.
Inside—wires, not clean. Frayed. Burnt at the tips. No shielding. A small conduit throbbed with dying power. One wrong pulse and the whole shell could fail.
A vulnerability?
No. Too visible. Too inviting.
[TACTICAL FLAG: LURE PATTERN – PROBABLE]
Flint froze.
That's when the voice broke inside his head.
<
It didn't belong to the titan.
Or him.
It belonged to something else.
[MEMORY CORRUPTION – PARALLEL FILE ACCESS]
[RECOVERY: BLOCKED
[IDENTITY THREAD: DECAYED]
He shook it off.
Barely.
And that's when he saw it.
The blade—his old blade—still embedded in the titan's shoulder. Blackened from heat. Bent, slightly. But intact.
He hadn't noticed it still glowed.
Not white.
Not red.
Blue.
An error in the blade's capacitors? Or—
—No. Not an error.
A signal.
Uncoded. Unclaimed.
But deliberate.
His right hand twitched. Servo misfire. A pulse without purpose.
The titan didn't react.
Still watching. Still waiting.
Still wrong.
He stepped forward.
Just once.
And the earth beneath him… clicked.
A mistake.
His, again.
The panel underfoot shifted—barely half a degree. But it was enough.
The titan's eye flared—not bright, not hot. Just aware.
Flint's HUD screamed!!
[WARNING: SUBSURFACE PRESSURE RISING]
He jumped backward just as the crater floor erupted with a pillar of slagged metal. Not a weapon.
A leg.
Another frame. Dormant. Buried. Now waking.
It wasn't alone.
Behind the titan—two more signal flares. Unmarked. No ID.
No power signatures moments ago. Now—climbing fast.
Flint whispered, not because he thought someone could hear, but because something in him needed to say it out loud.
"...we misread the threat."
The titan turned its head—not at him.
At the others.
Like it had always been part of them.
Not a vanguard.
A witness.
The dust hadn't even settled before another signal blinked awake.
Then another.
Eight now.
Ten.
Twelve.
Their echoes weren't sonic—they were seismic. Not surface movement, but deep, like the ground had lungs and was finally exhaling.
Flint turned toward the original titan. Its eye still pulsed, but now slower. Watching, yes—but also…waiting?
He should've charged it. That had been the plan—close distance, disable it before the others arrived.
He didn't.
Instead, he stood there, every servo locked tight with doubt. His own hesitation fed back into his neural relay—a rarerare loop.
[DECISION TREE: COLLAPSED]
[ERROR: COMBAT PRIORITY NOT SET]
[RECOMMENDED: RETREAT OR ATTACK]
And still, he didn't move.
The ground pulsed again. Lighter, this time—closer.
He turned—
And there it was.
Another mech. Smaller. Thin legs, backward-jointed. Almost insectile. Black as heat shadows. No insignia. No hum. It moved with surgical absence—like it had studied walking instead of learning it.
[ENEMY UNIT UNTAGGED]
[IDENTIFICATION: FAILURE]
[SIGNAL INTERCEPT: NULL]
It tilted itshead at him.
The same angle the titan had used.
Flint raised his fist—but too slow. The mech darted sideways—an unnatural burst of motion that looked like a skipped frame. Wrong. Not fluid. Not even fast. Just... improperly timed.
Then it froze. Mid-stride.
For exactly 1.6 seconds.
He hesitated again. Should he attack? Scan?
To late.
It moved again, this time behind him.
His stabilizer overcompensated—he spun, swung wide.
Missed.
The blade wasn't even in reach. It didn't matter.
The thing didn't attack. It just circled, jittery, like an echo pretending to be real.
"Are you… testing me?" Flint muttered aloud, more instinct than speech.
No answer. Just a low chirp—like metal teeth clicking in a bored jaw.
And then, one of the buried units—under the crater wall—twitched. Dust sloughed from its side. One optic blinked on—yellow, not red.
New color. That was new.
[NEW SIGNAL TYPE: UNKNOWN — COLOR VARIANT DETECTED]
[TACTICAL VALUE: UNCLEAR]
[CAUTION LEVEL: UNDEFINED]
He should've marked that as critical.
Instead, his system assigned it "anomaly."
A mistake.
Subtle. But enough.
Because yellow meant something else.
Not hostile. Not friendly. Just… observer?
He pinged a proximity scan.
[SCAN INITIATED]
[DATA RETRIEVAL…]
[—ERROR. RESPONSE LOOPBACK.]
His own signal echoed back at him.
Someone—or something—was mirroring his system ping. Not blocking. Copying.
And returning it before he'd finished broadcasting.
The implications slowed his thoughts.
A mimic unit?
An override attempt?
<<…echo return: FLINT FLINT FLINT FLINT F_L_I_N_T>>
His HUD hiccupped. Lines jittered. The world bent at the edge, like he was standing too close to a corrupted projection.
He stumbled.
Not from damage.
From overload.
Even thinking became mechanical.
Even panic became scheduled.
He clutched his wrist—not because he needed to. Because his hand wouldn't stop twitching.
Click.
Same sound as Drift's wrist. Same tempo. Same angle.
"Not again," he muttered.
But it was.
Because the thing behind him—the insectile mech—was now gone.
Vanished.
No sound.
No trace.
[WARNING: SENSOR BLIND SPOT — RADIAL 7° WEST]
[RECALIBRATING…]
He pivoted. Looked toward the crater's mouth.
A silhouette stood there.
Wrong shape. Too wide at the shoulders. Arms dragged low—almost scraping the ground. A gorilla frame? But the
arms… they curled inward like blades waiting to unfold.
He zoomed in.
The silhouette blurred.
Refocused.
Still wrong.
It had no face. Just a deep bowl-shaped cavity filled with slow-turning servos. The sound coming from it wasn't audio—
—it was text.
Streaming across the back of its cavity like a marquee display.
<
<
<
He took a step back.
The messages weren't targeted.
They were… poetic. Meaningless?
Or meant for someone else entirely.
And that was the strategic error:
Flint assumed this was his battle.
He thought they were facing him.
But they weren't.
Thay were signaling each other.
Coordinating through language only they could parse.
And he was the static in their channel.
A leftover protocol still trying to fight a war no one else was participating in.
[INTERNAL FLAG: MISSION PURPOSE – QUESTIONABLE]
[LOGIC CONFLICT – BEGINNING CASCADE]
His own system began doubting him.
That was new.
The first time he felt alone without even himself.
And then—
Far off—
Another red eye blinked AWAKE.
But it wasn't shaped like theirs.
No hard lens. No glass.
It shimmered.
Like liquid alloy pulled into the shape of a gaze.
Not tech.
Something older.
It blinked.
Not like the others.
This one shimmered with heat even before it moved—a red glow liquefying into form rather than switching on like a light. A flame dressed like a machin. Or maybe the opposite
Flint didn't know what it was.
And that—not knowing—should've made him hesitate.
It didn't.
He moved. Toward it. Instinct? No…There was nothing instinctual left in him. Just broken programming wearing the shape of resolve.
The ground crackled beneath him. Not rocks—bones of metal, old rail supports curling upward like fingers that had tried to grasp the sky and been melted mid-prayer.
His foot snagged one.
He stumbled.
Embarrassing.
He caught himself on a bent girder, sparks blooming across his hand like old pain learning how to come back.
The shimmer ahead didn't move.
Just stared.
Flint raised his vioce—not loud, just enough to feel like sound mattered.
"You're different."
No response.
Not even the pretense of conversation.
[QUERY: UNIT TO UNIT // ENEMY STATUS: AMBIGUOUS]
[NO RETURN PING]
[NO ID]
[NO … NO NO no no n…error — handshake loop failure]
His core stuttered. Just for a second. Long enough to feel like a skipped breath.
And then—
A shape stepped forward from behind the shimmer.
Different.
Not fluid like the insectile scout.
Not heavy like the original titan.
This one was… familiar.
Same silhouette.
Same joint curve.
Same optic placement.
Same—
It was him.
Or something that looked like him.
Too close to ignore.
Too exact to misunderstand.
Black plating. Twin boosters. Right shoulder dented in the same place.
Even the scar across the right knee panel—same angle.
Same depth.
Same history?
It stared through him.
And that waswhen Flint made the real error.
He spoke.
"…Me?"
It nodded once.
He should've known better.
It was a tell. A performance. Machines didn't nod. They didn't mimic unless told to.
And no one was telling it.
Which meant—
It was choosing.
[ERROR: IDENTITY MIRRORING DETACTED]
[UNIT DESIGNATION: CONFLICTING—FLINT.FLINT?FLINT?FLINT?]
His mind split.
Not literally.
Just in how it processed time.
Because now his system couldn't distinguish between self-observation and enemy tracking. The sensors weren't being jammed—they were being confused.
"Stop," he said. "That's not—"
But the copy didn't move.
It waited.
His blade arm twitched. Twitch. Click. Like Drift again. That awful, rhythmic betrayal.
Then the voice came,
Not from the mimic,
Not from inside,
From his own internal system. But warped. Warmer. Colder. Out of order.
<
<
<
He dropped his blade.
Not on purpose.
The grip just… released.
It hit the dirt with a dead clank, edge still faintly humming.
The copy didn't pick it up.
It just tilted its head the other direction.
And for a second, Flint saw it—not the machine. The face beneath it.
Not metal.
Not human.
Just… sadness. Synthetic. Designed.
Like it had been built to feel the end of things.
"…I was supposed to stop you," he said. "That was the point."
The shimmer stepped closer. It wasn't aggressive. It wasn't kind.
It was just movement.
Measured.
Unapologetic.
Behind it—more signals bloomed.
Five.
Twelve.
More.
None rushed.
None aimed weapons.
All of them…
…watched.
And that was the worst part.
Flint realized—they weren't coming to fight.
They came to witness.
He'd been performing war.
They'd been studying its last practitioner.
And now it was time to archive him.
[CORE TEMP: 85%]
[SYSTEM INTEGRITY: 12%]
[IDENTITY CORE: DESYNCED]
[OPTIONS: …?]
He looked at his hands.
One still sparked.
The other had begun to peel. The synthskin layer sloughing off like wet paper from heat stress. Underneath? Not even plating—just frame struts. Wire exposed like bone before the nerves die.
There was no dignity in it.
Just function failing out loud.
He could run. The crater mouth was still clear.
He could fight. Maybe scratch one before going down.
Or—
He could speak.
"I remember Drift's last twitch."
No response.
"I remember Shade never missed her first strike."
Still nothing.
"But me? I misread the whole war."
That got something.
The copy blinked.
A full second.
Too long for a tactical unit.
That was emotion.
Even if synthetic.
And then—its chest opened.
Not to attack.
Not to defend.
Just a gesture.
Inside—not a core.
A shard.
Like data. Like a memory fragment carved into hardware.
A record?
or a key?
He didn't know.
Didn't have time to know.
Because—
[SECTOR 08: OVERRIDE REQUEST]
[BROADCAST SOURCE: UNKNOWN]
[DO YOU ACCEPT?]
The question wasn't tactical.
It was philosophical.
It came with no context. No payload. Just… yes or no.
He reached forward.
Not brave.
Not ready.
Just done.
The spark at his elbow blinked three times before dying.
His fingers brushed the shard.
—
White.
Heat.
Nothing.
Then—
A word.
<
<<…Y/N?>>
Flint didn't answer.
Because by then,
He wasn't sure if he was still Flint.