Cybertron is still slaughtering.
Rocky calls up a holographic display and pulls the feed Lissandra just breached.
Bafil's personality-collapse index has reached eighty percent.
It keeps climbing with no sign of leveling off. He does not have ninefold inhibitor doses strapped to his body, ready to jab himself when the needle goes red.
This one-way ticket to hell never offered a return.
Watching the rising numbers, Rocky opens the rest of the experiment brief.
"Bafil. Militech captain. Captured by Arasaka during a recent operation…" He skims once, then nods. "No wonder. He is beating his former employer like it owes him rent."
"Maybe he finally understood Militech and Arasaka are the same kind of animal," Lucy says, dry as sand. "You bleed for corps, and this is where you end up. He should have seen it coming."
Rebecca, bored with text but interested in Rocky, leans her head into his chest and pretends to read. He pinches her cheek once and lets her stay. Lucy rolls her eyes and lets it pass.
On the other side, David sits on Droso's hood and never looks away from Cybertron. His eyes shine. He is strong now, but a rig like that still hits a nerve.
As the fight deepens, the joint load from Cybertron and Sandevistan pushes toward a limit.
This is not David's case back then. Today's Bafil has no ninefold inhibitor safety net. And after Militech pulled Tanaka's data, they doubled down on Cybertron, so Arasaka sent a heavier force to meet them. With all those factors stacked, even Bafil's super-soldier serum and higher implant tolerance cannot slow the slide.
Ninety-nine percent. One hundred.
The panel peaks. The meaning is simple: Bafil is now fully cyberpsychotic, and he is wearing Cybertron while it happens.
Reason drains out of his eyes. What is left looks like a wild animal.
His attacks go savage. The few Militech units still moving blink out in seconds.
Only a single Basilisk is still in the air.
Bafil does not intend to let it live. He snaps his Sandevistan, kicks his hover thrusters to full, and meets it head-on.
At that speed, his steel fist hits the Basilisk like a piledriver. The armored hull lurches sideways through open air. Inside the cockpit, the pilot scrabbles for control, but the blow has crippled the lift system. The Basilisk begins to fall.
Even in the middle of a break, Bafil keeps the good habit of finishing his target. He angles for another strike.
What none of them expect is the vector. The crashing Basilisk is coming straight at Rocky's group.
It keeps growing in the view. Bafil runs even closer to the edge of Rocky's invisibility field, pressing his advantage.
Rocky glances at David. In his head: Not again. You and Cybertron have some weird karmic knot?
Being here in person has risks. He only wanted to let Rebecca and Lucy see the show and collect Cybertron's telemetry. Now the scene is getting messy.
David triggers Sandevistan on instinct and looks for a plan, then hesitates. With Rocky standing still, it is not his call to grab everyone and run.
Rocky is not rattled. Aside from David, a falling hull cannot kill them. One of them can absorb impact. One can lift a telekinetic shield. One will live even after getting smashed to pieces. David can outrun the drop with Sandevistan if he has to.
The Basilisk drops hard.
The instant it crosses her range, Lucy slides it sideways with a telekinetic shove, bending its path farther out.
It slams into the ground behind them in a blast of dirt.
Bafil is almost inside the field.
Rocky drops the invisibility at once.
The sudden reveal snaps Bafil's attention to them. Rocky studies him back. Blood is everywhere on the man, most of it his own. His mouth leaks it without pause. His nose, ears, and even the corners of his eyes seep red.
Implants do not only eat minds. At this intensity, they shred bodies. No one can run a rig like this without paying for a reinforced frame. If Arasaka does not show up to put him down, his organs will.
The psychosis does not care. He sees four living targets and only one next step.
Sandevistan flashes again. Bafil spits more blood and drives forward with a raised fist.
This time, the iron fist will not have it all its way.
Rocky has never shied from a clean trade.
The Tyrant System comes on in an instant. Time feels tight as wire.
Rocky moves faster than Bafil and lifts his left fist to meet him.
Two knuckles lines converge.
One is a massive steel fist. The other is a prosthetic arm that looks small by comparison.
The result will not be the expected big crushing the small. It will be the opposite.