The plan was insane.
Leaving Dharma-Kshetra City was not like taking a trip. It was like escaping a planetary prison. Every exit was a choke point, monitored by orbital scanners, bio-signature sniffers, and legions of AsuraCorp Enforcers. There were no roads leading out; there was only the towering, kilometers-high perimeter wall, a seamless curtain of grey plascrete that encircled the entire mega-city.
"Kali expects a direct assault or a stealthy infiltration of his systems," Atri's hologram explained a day later, in another hidden safe house deep in the city's transport sector. "He does not expect a low-tech, brute-force exfiltration. The sheer audacity of it is our best camouflage."
Kalpit looked at the vehicle they were standing in front of. It was a relic, a pre-MAYA cargo hauler that Atri's agents had painstakingly restored in secret. It was a beast of pitted, rust-colored metal, with six enormous wheels and an engine that sounded like a groaning beast. It had been shielded against EMPs and fitted with a jury-rigged stealth system that Atri called "a prayer in the dark."
"So the plan is to drive?" Kalpit asked, incredulous. "Out the garbage chute?"
"Precisely," Anasuya said, checking the charge on a massive kinetic rifle. She had traded her robes for a scavenger's practical, armored gear. "Sector 72's primary waste reclamation duct. Every twelve hours, the outer gate opens for thirty seconds to expel solid refuse into the wasteland chasms. Scanners are on a minimal cycle during the purge to avoid being damaged by debris."
"Thirty seconds isn't a window," Kalpit argued. "It's a death sentence."
"Then we will have to be fast," she replied, her face grimly determined.
Vashistha was not with them physically, his guidance now coming through a secured comm link only Kalpit could hear—a direct, mind-to-mind connection that was far safer than any radio.
<"This is your journey now, Kalki,">> the sage's voice echoed in his thoughts. <"Anasuya will be your sword and shield. Atri, your eyes in the network. But the path you walk must be your own.">>
The time came. Kalpit took the driver's seat of the hulking vehicle. He had never driven anything so primitive. There were no neural interfaces or auto-pilots. Just a heavy steering yoke and a rumbling engine that vibrated through his bones. Anasuya manned a turret on the roof.
<"The purge cycle is beginning,">> Atri's voice crackled over the comms. <"Gate will open in ten seconds. Your heat signature is masked... for now. Go!">>
Kalpit engaged the clutch. The vehicle lurched forward with a bone-jarring roar, barrelling down a massive tunnel filled with mountains of compacted scrap metal and filth. The air was thick with the stench of the city's refuse. Ahead, he could see it: a colossal circular iris, big enough to swallow a building.
KER-CHUNK... VMMMM...
With a deep groan of ancient machinery, the iris began to open, revealing not a road, but a terrifying, vertical drop into a chasm shrouded in toxic brown clouds. A torrent of garbage began to pour out over the edge like a waterfall of filth.
<"Five seconds until the gate is fully open! They'll have a clear line of sight!">>
Kalpit floored the accelerator. The engine screamed in protest. They shot forward, racing towards the precipice. Automated defense turrets on the ceiling, silent until now, swiveled to face them, their red targeting lights cutting through the dust.
VZT! VZT! VZT!
Plasma bolts began stitching lines of molten heat across their path.
"Faster!" Anasuya yelled from the turret, her own rifle firing back with concussive booms that echoed in the tunnel.
They hit the edge of the gate just as a river of scrap metal cascaded over. The huge vehicle didn't just drive out; it fell, carried over the edge by the trash-slide. For a terrifying second, they were airborne, plunging into the abyss.
Then the rockets fired.
FWOOSH-BOOM!
Atri's engineers had fitted the undercarriage with single-use, high-thrust boosters. They ignited with brutal force, arresting their fall and kicking the heavy vehicle forward in a barely-controlled arc across the chasm. They were a meteor of rust and fire, streaking through the foul air. The iris gate slammed shut behind them with a clang that sealed their fate. They were out.
They landed on the far side of the chasm with a spine-shattering crash that buckled the suspension and cracked the armored windshield. The rockets sputtered and died. The stealth system fried. They were alive, but they were now a very loud, very visible beacon in the middle of nowhere.
"Status!" Kalpit yelled, fighting to keep the damaged vehicle moving.
"We're exposed," Anasuya reported, her voice tight. "Orbital scan will have us in ninety seconds."
<"I am working on it,">> Atri said, his voice strained. <"I'm feeding MAYA's satellites ghost signals, creating a phantom sandstorm on their sensors. It won't last long. There's a canyon system ten kilometers east. It's your only hope of breaking line-of-sight.">>
Kalpit swerved the hauler, its massive tires churning through the grey, ash-like sand of the wastelands. The world outside the armored glass was a vision of hell. The sky was a permanent, sickly brown, thick with industrial haze and radioactive dust. The horizon was a jagged line of shattered, ancient skyscrapers, the ghosts of a civilization that had collapsed long before Kali's rise. Strange, mutated vegetation clung to life between dunes of chemical waste.
This was the real world Kali had hidden from his flock. The cost of paradise.
As they crested a dune, they saw them. An AsuraCorp pursuit squadron. Two sleek, insectoid interceptors, the same kind as Koka and Vikoka had piloted, streaking through the brown sky towards them.
"They're fast," Anasuya bit out, swiveling her turret to face them. "Too fast."
<"Your stealth is blown! Evasive maneuvers! Evasive maneuvers!">>
There was nowhere to hide. They were a lumbering beast on an open plain. The interceptors closed the distance in seconds, their engines screaming a demonic note. One of them opened fire, not with plasma, but with a Gatling-style railgun.
RAT-AT-AT-AT-AT-AT!
A stream of hyper-velocity slugs slammed into their hauler. Metal shrieked and tore. The armor held, but barely. One of their massive tires exploded, sending the vehicle into a wild, uncontrollable skid.
"Brace!" Kalpit yelled, wrestling with the yoke.
The other interceptor dove, releasing a payload of concussion bombs. They erupted around the hauler, the shockwaves lifting the massive truck off the ground and slamming it back down. Kalpit's head hit the steering yoke. Blackness nipped at the edge of his vision.
Through the cracked windshield, he saw one of the interceptors swing around for a final, killing blow, its main cannon glowing as it prepared to vaporize them.
This was it. They had escaped the prison only to be executed in the yard.
Then, from the canyon Atri had directed them towards, something impossible happened.
A streak of pure white light, impossibly fast, shot out of the rock wall. It wasn't energy. It looked... solid. It arced through the sky with a sound like a thunderclap.
CRACK-THOOOM!
The white streak slammed directly into the side of the interceptor. The advanced Asura aircraft, a marvel of technology, didn't just explode. It was obliterated, atomized in a flash of light and pulverized metal.
The other pilot, stunned, pulled up, its attack run aborted.
Kalpit, his vision clearing, squinted at the sky. The white object was returning to the canyon, slower now. It wasn't a missile or a drone. It was a weapon from another age.
It was an axe.
A colossal, double-headed battle axe, shimmering with a faint internal power, flew back into the canyon from which it came.
Anasuya was speechless, staring at the empty patch of sky where the interceptor used to be. "What... in the name of the Devas... was that?"
Before the second interceptor could react, a voice, ancient and impossibly powerful, crackled over their open comm channel. It was not Vashistha's calm wisdom. This voice was the grumbling of a landslide, the sharp crack of a breaking mountain. It was filled with millennia of anger and infinite patience.
"The whelps of the machine trespass on my lands," the voice boomed, heavy with disuse and power. "They have forgotten the old laws."
The second interceptor pilot, recovering his senses and likely consumed by rage, banked hard and screamed towards the canyon, weapons blazing.
The ancient voice sighed, a sound like grinding stone.
"So be it. A lesson must be taught."
From the mouth of the canyon, a figure emerged. He was silhouetted against the gloom, but his form was unmistakable. He was a giant of a man, built like a mountain, his shoulders wide enough to block the sun. His beard was a wild, tangled storm of white, and in his hands he now held the enormous, glowing axe.
He planted his feet, looked up at the diving interceptor, and swung his axe, not at the ship, but at the air in front of it.
He cleaved reality itself.
A visible fissure, a shimmering cut in space, appeared in the sky. The interceptor flew directly into it and vanished. It did not explode. It did not make a sound. It simply ceased to be. The fissure sealed itself a moment later, leaving nothing behind but the empty, toxic sky.
The giant of a man rested his axe on his shoulder and turned his gaze toward their crippled vehicle.
Kalpit felt the weight of that gaze, a pressure that was physical, mental, and spiritual. This was not a sage or a politician. This was a warrior. The first and last of his kind.
<"By the Brahman Protocol...">> Atri's awestruck whisper came over the comm. <"It's him.">>
Vashistha's voice entered Kalpit's mind, a quiet statement of fact.
<"You have arrived. Go to him. Learn what it means to wield the power of a god, not just possess it. Go to Parashurama.">>