Silas let out a low, strangled laugh. "Cut the strings? Kid, that thing's sitting in a fortress of ghosts. We'd be unmade before we got within fifty meters." He shook his head, already backing away from the railing. "No. This is a bust. The relay is lost. We write it off, find another way up."
Valeria didn't take her eyes off the chamber below. As a soldier, she saw the tactical reality: an entrenched enemy command center with an army of invincible sentries. Conventional warfare was useless. Unconventional warfare was all they had left.
She turned to Ren, her voice low and tense. "What do you propose?"
For the first time, it wasn't an order. It was a genuine question. The Beta officer was asking the Gamma technician for a strategy. The power dynamic, forged in desperation, had been inverted.
"Your barrier is useless against them," Ren stated, not as an insult, but as a fact. "And I can't deconstruct them one by one. The lag would get me killed. A direct assault fails."
"So we run," Silas insisted.
"No," Ren said, his gaze drifting upward to the cavernous ceiling. "We don't attack the puppets. We don't even attack the Conductor directly." He pointed. "We drop the ceiling on it."
Hanging directly above the central spire were several massive, multi-ton broadcast arrays, suspended from the superstructure by thick, load-bearing support struts. They were a testament to the city's old, robust engineering. They were also a sword waiting to fall.
"There are secondary catwalks near the ceiling," Ren continued, his mind already mapping the path. "I can get up there. From that vantage point, I can get a clean look at the Covenants holding the primary supports for that central array."
Valeria's eyes followed his, a flicker of understanding—and horror—on her face. "You want to collapse it."
"It's the only way," Ren confirmed. "It's heavy enough to crush the Conductor and sever its connection to the puppets. It's a single, decisive strike."
Silas stared at him, aghast. "And what are we supposed to be doing while you're up there playing god? Playing patty-cake with the ghosts?"
"A diversion," Ren said, his gaze locking with Valeria's. "But not to fight them. You just have to draw the Conductor's attention. Its eye. If it's focused on you, on the other side of the chamber, it won't notice me working above it. I'll need at least a minute, maybe more. I need you to keep it looking away from me for that long."
The plan was insane. A high-wire act over a pit of monsters. Ren would be alone, isolated, and completely vulnerable during the deconstruction. The [System Lag] afterward would be catastrophic. For Valeria and Silas, the diversion was a suicide mission. They had to be a big enough threat to hold the Conductor's focus, but without any effective means to fight back if the puppets swarmed them.
"No," Silas said flatly, shaking his head. "Absolutely not. I survived this long by not picking fights with boss monsters. We run. That's the deal."
"We run, and we die in the dark a week from now," Valeria countered, her voice cold as steel. She looked from the chamber below to Ren. Her military training, useless against the Phantasms, could recognize a sound strategy when it heard one. It was a targeted strike against an enemy's command-and-control. It was a desperate, long-shot gamble. And it was their only move.
She looked at Silas, her expression leaving no room for debate.
"We're doing it. I'm not dying in this sector because you're a coward."
The scavenger's face tightened, but he saw the resolve in her eyes and fell silent. The decision was made.
They split up, a silent, three-person army preparing for an impossible battle. Valeria and Silas moved along the catwalk to the far side of the chamber, two small figures preparing to challenge an army of ghosts.
Ren turned and found a service ladder leading up into the darkness of the ceiling's superstructure. He looked down one last time at the Conductor, its single violet eye pulsing with malevolent energy.
He began to climb, the cold, hard resolve solidifying in his chest.
Time to bring the sky down.