Chapter 31 - Echoes Of War - I

Neo-ilka's city shook and trembled as Zypher and his crew forcefully pushed out from the underworld, their breaths brief from sprinting through endless tunnels and abandoned subways. They had made it past the first wave of the enforcers; however, the shiver within the air was something greater—something more ominous. Sirens beyond the horizon wailed in the darkness, and the skyline hurled red with emergency lights, an omenic glow over the metropolis.

Zypher pressed a finger to his comms, trying to reach Nyra. "How much time before the enforcers regroup?"

Nyra's voice crackled back, strained but steady. "Minutes, maybe less. They've activated their high-level defenses—they know what we have, and they won't stop until we're either dead or captured."

In the misty veil of a deserted factory on the outskirts of town, dead machines once great lay like little more than skeleton rubbles. Orion looked around, pistol in hand, eyes narrowed. "They're coming hard, with everything they have. Better we have a plan if we're staying.".

Above them, a wave of drones buzzed like mechanical vultures circling in for the kill. Kiera's eyes darted around. Her fingers tapped out a rhythm against her sidearm. "And something tells me that plan doesn't involve us making a quiet escape.".

Zypher nodded, still clinging to what was left of the Divinitas, which pulsed with a faint light in sync with his heartbeat. "We're not leaving now. The memory of Neo-ilka is written in war. There's no way to avoid that. But we have to rewrite it—and to do so, we need the last part of the Divinitas."

"Do we even know where it is?" Orion asked, his voice skeptical.

Nyra accessed her console, and a map of Neo-ilka flashed onto the screen. "I reckon I can boil it down to just the one location. There's a vault in the Core District, high security, back in the heart of corporate territory. That is, the signal for the last piece is the strongest there, that's the winner.".

The Core District was notorious—a heavily fortified corporate stronghold packed with layers of almost impenetrable defenses. It was here that the corporations stashed their most prized treasures, from prototype weapons to the city's most classified data archives. People didn't come in, or out, without suffering near-certain death.

Orion smirked, his eyes darkening. "You mean to say we are stepping into the belly of the beast?"

If we want the Divinitas, that's exactly what we have to do. Zypher's jaw clicked together.

But as they stood there, a slight rumble under their feet caught everyone's attention. The ground trembled, and from the distance a dull roar rolled through the city—echoes of battles long etched into Neo-ilka's streets. But this wasn't the city's memory. It was the sound of war machines revving to life, a mechanical army rising to meet them.

The team exchanged a look, the weight of the situation stark in their eyes.

Kiera clenched her fists. "It's not just the corporations coming for us, is

it?"

Nyra's eyes roamed upwards to the sky, a frown etched into her face. "No. I intercepted a signal. They're mobilizing old military mechs, the kind they used in the Tech Wars.".

The Tech Wars were the stuff of legend—an age when the gods had granted the early corporations monstrous machines to crush revolts. Neo-ilka's very foundation had been laid upon the blood and metal of those battles. Those mechs, some sustained by the flickering essences of gods, had lain silent for decades, their cold hulks rusting in forgotten warehouses.

Until now.

His heart pounded as he gazed into the distance, where the first of the mechs emerged—a towering figure, its limbs sleek yet bulky, clothed in leftovers of divine script that glowed faintly as it moved. It was like some giant from years back, awakened now to protect the corporations' iron grip on Neo-ilka.

Orion tightened his grip on the weapon in his hand, a look of defiance set across his face. "Well, I've always wanted to take one of those down."

Nyra's fingers danced over her console. Pulling up data streams and scans of the approaching mechs, she worked quickly. "We have to disable their control systems. Each of them is linked into the central AI controlling the Core District. If we can cut that link, they'll be useless as a whole.".

But to get there, we'd have to go through enemy lines and breach into the core of their command post," Kiera said, her voice tight yet firm.

"That's what we'll do," Zypher declared, the flames in his eyes burning brighter. Survival was just a basic instinct now; this was a matter of knocking down the walls they had built around themselves.

And with one final nod, the team prepared to merge into night as shadows. The road ahead became a battleground as corporation's forces closed, flank guards upon flank guards of mechanized soldiers, and rows of ancient mechs-power up-the low hum rumbling through air-as everywhere they could go, gunfire broke loose around them, stray bullets ricocheting off walls, and the thud of heavy artillery echoing like the beat of a war drum.

Zypher ducked behind a fallen pillar, his breath short, his mind racing. "Nyra, how much time do you need to access their systems?"

"Too much unless you can give me a distraction," she said as she was already tapping furiously on her console.

Orion beamed and leveled his gun, peeking over their rickety barricade. "I got this." He opened fire without any warning, firing perfectly aimed shots at the nearby mech's weak joints. Sparks flew as the metal succumbed to the pressure of bending and crunching, sending the monstrosity thudding on the ground, its soldiers nearby scrambling to safety.

Zypher leaped forward in a rush, riding the chaos like a cloak. In his hand, he gripped a sliver of the Divinitas: the divine script blazed its way through the darkness of night itself as if it led him on. The sliver throbbed; for a moment, the ghosts of the gods seemed to stand alongside him, their power spurring to fill his veins.

He sprang for one of the mech's legs and extended a probing device to access its system. It was just a couple of seconds, but as he reconnected wires and re-routed circuits, he felt the machine jolt with response, as if acknowledging him. For a split second, the ancient code etched on the mech shone brighter, and a sonorous voice bellowed through his mind.

Remember, child. This war was never ours to win or lose. It belongs to those who walk among the living."

The voice faded, and the mech buckled, kneeling under Zypher's control. He leaped back as it toppled, colliding with the forces around it in a thunderous crash. His team, now fully engaged, maneuvered through the chaos, weaving through enemy lines as Nyra's fingers danced on her console.

"I'm in," she bellowed back, her voice nearly drowned out by the chaos. "Sending the override now."

As her code uploaded, one by one, the mechs began to spasm, their motions sputtering. The battlefield stilled and an unnerving quiet fell across the city, pierced only by the crackling fires and hissing metal.

With the corporations' advantage lost, its forces retired slowly, echoing their footsteps through empty streets. Side by side, battered but victorious, stood Zypher's team as they gazed out across the darkened mechs, the ancient energy spent, divine markings faded to cool to room temperature.

Zypher clutched Divinitas tight against him, and he could feel the power settling in, ready for the next battle. Neo-ilka stood on the cusp of change and became the spark that would ignite her revolution. With war's echoes dying into night, Zypher knew it was only a start.