When Is It Time to Die?
Orion was conflicted, but this decision had been his—a final act of redemption. He intended to honor the choice made long ago. Kieran saw the fatal resolve settle within Orion's crystalline gaze and smiled, a sly, terrible thing that crinkled the syntho-skin around his pink eye.
"If you feel you can do this, come, and do it, old friend."
Orion's complex hydraulic systems hissed noisily—not just from stress, but from deliberately overloading the chassis. He brought his cybernetic arms forward and his hands clapped together, metal grinding against metal. A blinding ring of blue-white energy, unstable and wild, erupted, blasting across the space with arching, uncontrolled energy. The strike was powerful, a full energy-dump, but there was a catastrophic cost: blood vessels burst in his face and grayish-white syntho-bodily fluids began to seep from his nose, ears, and mouth.
Kieran's syntho-skin suit shimmered—the specialized polymer vibrating, attempting to absorb the kinetic energy. It was repelled instantly, rebounding the wave back to Orion. The chaotic feedback hit his cybernetic body, and Orion groaned—a deep, mechanical sound—as he was knocked to his knees. His HUD lit red as catastrophic system alerts, written in urgent, flashing Aegis-Nexus script, began dominating his vision.
Kieran chuckled, his cold metallic smile unfazed. He reached up and slowly sucked his teeth. "Why would you use an unstable discharge? The Crysalite is too experimental, and those Crysalite nanites of yours are an even greater unknown variable for energy containment."
As he spoke, a whip of shimmering, venom-green energy extended from his hand. He began to crack the whip over his head. The air around the whip charged further, releasing a concentrated cloud of nanites into the air—nanites specifically programmed to bypass security protocols and attack Orion's synthetic organs.
Orion began coughing immediately, a dry, racking sound, and more of the grayish-white fluid spewed from his mouth. His systems were being poisoned from within. He narrowed his eyes at Kieran, his voice strained.
"This is your decision? Sacrificing all you and your family have built? The power, the profit?"
Kieran's smile was final. "Shut up and die—for good, Orion."
Orion pursed his lips and strengthened his resolve. It has to be enough, he thought, for Sara, and for the girl. He stepped forward, dragging his failing systems with sheer will. A compartment in the center of his torso audibly detached and all of his remaining stored energy, gathered from years of reserve, shot forward in a wide, concentrated blue-white beam.
Kieran's smile finally fell away. He had anticipated a fight, not this suicidal surrender. He could not avoid the focused strike. He braced himself, taking the hit head-on.
The heat was immediate. Kieran's syntho-skin—the pink-smoothness of Kieran suit—began melting from his cybernetic frame like candle wax down the side of a hot candle. Orion, once again on his knees, watched. All of his systems were shutting down, yet his final moment of sight was clear: he saw the synthetic skin pool in a hot, acrid puddle around Kieran's feet, smelling like a mix of burnt rubber and ozone.
Orion smiled. He looked upon Kieran in his true form—a sleek, lethal cyborg with a natural blue eye and a cortex housed in a clear, faceted crystal box.
Orion's focus wavered. His sight dimmed as he fell to the ground before Kieran. Kieran knelt, taking his old friend—his mentor—into his arms. Metal intertwined as they looked into each other's faces.
Then, a final, cold alert registered on Orion's dimming HUD: SARA VITALS: TERMINATED.
Simultaneously, the central sphere of Stratus Bastion imploded. The detonation was internal, muffled, and then the entire structure—the breeding facility—ejected up and out from the battle dome, launching itself like a morbid orbital vessel. Both Orion and Kieran watched the burning sphere arc and exit out of the protective perimeter.
As Orion died, he looked up at Kieran with a smile. "I have finally learned to stop being so selfish. She is gone, and this world can be damned."
Kieran placed his friend gently on the ground. All the lights within Orion's cybernetics powered down and went dark. Kieran stood and looked down on Orion's lifeless form for a long, silent moment.
He looked to the projected trajectory of the imploded sphere and then he thought about Jackie and smiled—a genuine, unmasked expression of anticipation.
"Now she will know of Trench Fossa and the new substance found there," he whispered.
He looked to his HUD, which was now cycling green. "Everything is moving forward just as it needs to."