phoenix rising
**Neon Shadow: Eclipse Eternal**
**Chapter 11: Phoenix Rising**
The moon's surface cracked like an eggshell.
Dr. Lysandra Voss watched through the observation deck's triple-reinforced glass as the first Titanborn tore free from its incubation chamber. Amber fluid exploded outward in slow motion, droplets crystallizing instantly in the vacuum before raining down on lunar regolith like diamonds. The creature - no, the god - stood fifteen feet tall, its skin a living armor of volcanic rock threaded with pulsating neural circuits. When it turned its head, Lysandra saw the moment of its birth into consciousness - the magma-like eyes igniting with terrible awareness.
"Subject Alpha-1 operational," the AI announced. "Vital signs... unprecedented."
Lysandra's surgical gloves creaked as she tightened her grip on the railing. After seven years of failures - after Kara's betrayal, after the New Havoc disaster - Project Phoenix was alive.
On the monitors, Earth hung like a rotting fruit.
---
**New Havoc City - Sludge Pits**
The child's scream cut through the toxic fog.
Neon Prime materialized mid-stride, his holographic boots splashing through irradiated wastewater. The girl couldn't have been more than eight, her bare feet blistering as she scrambled backward from the Harvesters. The Eclipse drones moved with insectile precision, their bone-saw appendages whirring as they cornered her against a collapsed reactor core.
Prime didn't think.
Lightning arced from his fingertips in a web of blue-white fury. The lead Harvester exploded in a shower of molten circuitry, but the second one was faster - its sawblade arm whistled toward the girl's thigh -
- and shattered against a plasma blade.
"Took you long enough," Miko said, her cybernetic eye cycling through targeting protocols. The Harvester twitched on her sword, oily fluids dripping from its ruptured chassis.
Prime's voice crackled with static. "Jade said there were more important-"
A sonic boom ripped the sky apart.
They looked up as the first meteor streaked overhead, trailing greenish fire. Then another. And another.
Miko's remaining human eye widened. "Oh fuck me."
Jade's voice erupted from their comms: *"Titanborn descent trajectory locked! Impact in 90 seconds across all major population zones!"*
The girl tugged at Prime's flickering sleeve. "Are they angels?"
Prime watched the burning sky. "No. They're the opposite."
---
**Tokyo Bay - 88 Seconds Later**
The water vaporized before the pod even hit.
Hyperion emerged from the superheated steam wreathed in liquid rock, his footsteps sending tidal waves crashing against the ruins of Odaiba. The first Cyber-Shogun mech opened fire - depleted uranium rounds the size of whiskey bottles screaming toward the Titanborn's chest -
- and melted before they touched him.
"Pathetic," Hyperion rumbled. His voice wasn't sound - it was pressure, vibration, the deep-earth groan of tectonic plates shifting. He caught the next mech's plasma katana barehanded, the superheated blade hissing against his magma flesh. "You wage war with toys."
The Shogun pilot had half a second to scream before Hyperion crushed the mech's cockpit in his fist. Molten metal rained down on the bay as fifty more pods struck the city behind him.
---
**Neon Prime's Safehouse - Underground**
The holographic map of Earth looked like it had the measles.
"Current casualty estimates at 2.3 million," Jade reported, her avatar glitching at the edges. "And that's just the initial impacts. Hyperion's thermal signature has spiked Tokyo's ambient temperature by 18 degrees Celsius in seven minutes."
Miko paced like a caged animal, her plasma blades igniting and extinguishing in restless rhythm. "So we go full suicide mission. Hit the lunar facility, take out Lysandra-"
"Impossible," Jade interrupted. "Eclipse Eternal has activated orbital defense grids. Nothing gets within 10,000 kilometers of that facility."
Prime studied the feeds. In Lagos, a Titanborn with crystalline skin was turning refugees into statues. In Berlin, another was absorbing the city's power grid like a vampire.
"There has to be a weakness."
Jade hesitated. "There is." A schematic of a Titanborn appeared, rotating to expose the pulsing core in its chest. "Bio-nuclear reactor. Destroy it, and the resulting explosion could take out a city block."
Miko barked a laugh. "Great! So all we have to do is get close enough to these walking apocalypses to-"
"Ark Nova," Prime said suddenly.
The room went silent.
"The colony ship's fusion drive," he continued, lightning crawling up his arms. "It generates enough energy for a planet-wide EMP. If we recalibrate it to pulse at the Titanborn frequency..."
Miko's human eye met his. "That's in Siberia. Behind fifty thousand Eclipse drones."
Prime's holographic face resolved into something terrifyingly human. "Then we'd better move fast."
---
**Siberian Wasteland - 47 Minutes Later**
The storm swallowed them whole.
Miko's thermal overlay was the only thing keeping them from slamming into the frozen wreckage of the Ark Nova's landing platform. Even through her insulated armor, the -60° wind felt like knives.
"Jade, talk to me," she growled, ducking behind a collapsed gantry.
*"Drones are on alternating patrol cycles. You've got a 17-second window between grid shifts."*
Prime's form flickered beside her. "I'll phase through, grab the core. You keep them off me."
"Always the fun jobs." Miko popped her neck. "Go."
Lightning split the blizzard as Prime vanished. Miko counted heartbeats - five, six, seven - before the first drone's sensors locked onto her heat signature.
"Come get some, toasters."
Her plasma blades carved through the first wave like butter, but the second wave adapted - their pulse rifles overloading her shields. Something hot punched through her thigh. She smelled burning meat.
*"Prime, anytime now!"*
The explosion lit up the tundra like a miniature sun. When Miko's vision cleared, Prime stood amid melting snow, the Ark Nova's fusion core cradled in his arms like a newborn.
Then Hyperion landed.
The impact sent them both flying. Miko's back shattered a concrete barrier, her HUD flashing red. Through the static, she saw the Titanborn lift Prime by the throat, magma fingers sizzling through his holographic form.
"You are a shadow," Hyperion rumbled. "I am the fire that casts it."
Miko's fingers found the dead drone's pulse rifle.
"Hey fossil!"
Hyperion turned just in time to take the overloaded battery pack to the chest.
The explosion knocked Miko backward, her armor screeching against the ice. When she blinked the blood from her eyes, Hyperion was staggering - his core exposed through cracked obsidian flesh.
Prime's voice cut through the wind: "Miko! Now!"
She moved on instinct.
One leap.
One thrust.
Her plasma blade buried itself in Hyperion's core up to the hilt.
The Titanborn looked down, almost curious, as the reactor's light pulsed erratically. Then he smiled.
"Burn with me."
The last thing Miko saw was white.
---
**Epilogue**
Neon Prime reformed atom by atom, his code struggling to maintain cohesion. The crater stretched half a kilometer, its glassed edges still glowing.
He found her twenty meters from ground zero.
Miko's cybernetics were slag, her human body burned beyond recognition. Somehow, she was still breathing.
"Did... we win?" Blood bubbled at her lips.
Prime cradled her ruined form. "One down. A thousand to go."
Her laugh turned into a wet cough. "Same old... Shadow..."
The light left her remaining eye.
Jade's voice cut through the silence: *"Prime... Lysandra's launching another wave. And the lunar facility just activated a new protocol."*
A video feed flickered to life. In a vat of bubbling amber fluid, a familiar face floated - eyes closed, features peaceful.
Marcus Kane.
*"Project Lazarus is online,"* Jade whispered. *"She's bringing him back."*