Chapter 15: The Five-Minute Eternity
The door didn't just open; it ceased to be. A hulking, scythe-armed guardian, larger than any I had seen, filled the shattered frame, its multi-faceted eyes burning with crimson reflection. The air itself grew cold with its presence.
Time stretched. Adisa's frantic typing became a distant, frantic rhythm. Mama's prayers were a whisper against the creature's guttural roar.
It charged.
I didn't think. I moved. The fire axe was pitifully small, a toothpick against a bear. I didn't swing for its armored carapace. As it lunged, I dropped and swung low, putting all my weight into the blow. The axe bit deep into a multi-jointed leg.
The creature shrieked, not in pain, but in outrage. It was a sound that cracked the remaining monitors in the room. It backhanded me with a limb that wasn't a scythe, a crushing blow that sent me flying into a bank of servers. Sparks rained down. Agony bloomed across my ribs.
"Two minutes!" Adisa screamed.
The guardian limped toward me, its injured leg dragging, its focus absolute. This was my five minutes. A series of desperate, losing seconds.
I scrambled back, grabbing a metal stool. I threw it. It clattered harmlessly off its head. I was a gnat. An annoyance. It raised its primary scythe for a final, cleaving strike.
A shrill war cry echoed in the room.
Ngozi.
She stood there, small and trembling, but her face was a mask of fury I had never seen. In her hands was the fire extinguisher I had used in the basement. She pulled the pin and unleashed the white cloud directly into the creature's face.
It was the same trick. But this time, it was my little sister saving me.
The creature recoiled, blinded and choking. It was the opening I needed.
Ignoring the fire in my side, I surged to my feet, the axe high. I didn't aim for the body. I aimed for the neck, a narrow gap between the chitinous plates of its head and body.
I brought the axe down with every ounce of strength, every memory of Papa's fall, every image of Ade's sacrifice.
The blade bit deep. Black, viscous fluid erupted, spraying across my face, hot and acidic. The creature's shriek died in a wet gurgle. It staggered, its limbs twitching, and collapsed in a heap of twitching chitin and leaking darkness.
I stood over it, panting, the axe trembling in my hand.
"Three minutes!" Adisa yelled. "The sequence is initializing! The energy spike—"
He was cut off as the entire building shook. Not from an explosion. From a presence. A wave of psychic dread that made the downed guardian seem like a pet. Through the large observation window of the control room, we saw it.
Outside, the sky was turning crimson. But this was different. It was concentrated, a swirling vortex of bloody light centered directly on the lab. From the tear in reality around the machine, shapes began to boil forth. Dozens of them. Hundreds. Drawn by the energy surge Adisa had warned us about.
We were at the eye of a man-made storm.
Then, a new sound. A familiar roar. Through the vortex of monsters, a single black motorcycle sped down the ravaged campus road, weaving through the chaos with impossible grace. Courier. He was followed by the lumbering form of Brawler, who simply walked through the lesser creatures, swatting them aside like flies.
They had come. They had felt the beacon.
"They're here for the machine!" I yelled. "They're going to try and stop you!"
"Thirty seconds!" Adisa's fingers were a blur. "I can't stop! The collapse is irreversible now!"
Courier skidded his bike to a halt at the building's entrance. He looked up, his helmeted gaze seeming to lock directly with mine through the third-story window. He raised his rifle.
He wasn't aiming at me. He was aiming at the control room window.
"Get down!" I screamed.
The window exploded inwards. A high-caliber round shattered the main console in a shower of sparks, just feet from Adisa.
"NO!" Mama screamed.
Adisa flinched, but his hand slammed down on a final, large red button. "Initiated!"
A deep, resonant hum filled the room, so powerful it felt like it was vibrating our bones. The machine in the other room flared, the white-hot core at its center blazing like a newborn star. The red tear around it began to waver, to flicker.
From outside, a scream of pure, undiluted rage. Not from a creature. From Cutthroat, who had appeared beside Courier, shaking his fist at the sky. Their weapon was being dismantled.
But it wasn't over.
The machine, overloading, began to tear itself apart. Alarms blared. The floor heaved.
"The building is going to collapse!" Adisa cried. "The energy feedback—!"
The stairwell door, which I had barricaded, burst open. Not from the Execution Division. From the horde. A flood of smaller creatures, desperate and enraged by the dying of their world's light, poured into the room.
We were trapped. The horde in front. A three-story drop behind.
Courier stood amidst the chaos below, a statue of cold fury. He raised his rifle again. This time, it was pointed at me. A final, petty act of vengeance for ruining his empire.
I looked at Mama, at Ngozi, at the terrified Dr. Adisa. We had won. We had broken the world to save it. But we would not live to see the dawn.
As Courier's finger tightened on the trigger, a massive shape fell from the roof above him.
It was Brawler. But he wasn't attacking.
He landed directly in front of Courier, his massive back taking the point-blank rifle shot meant for me. The big man grunted, staggering, but stood his ground. He turned and looked up at me, his expression unreadable. Then, he looked at Courier and gave a single, sharp shake of his head.
In that moment, I understood. Brawler wasn't protecting me. He was acknowledging a debt. We had fought the same monsters. We had both lost. And in the face of the true, world-ending abyss, some lines even the Akudama would not cross. Vengeance was a luxury for a world that had a future.
Courier lowered his rifle. He gave one last, long look at the crumbling lab, at us, then turned his bike and vanished into the storm of dying monsters.
The floor gave way.
We fell into light and noise and pain.