Dodging destroyed androids and fallen soldiers—some barely clinging to life, others dead—Juzo and Vicky hurried through the hallways of Bellatrix.

  Vicky kept her eyes fixed ahead, hoping they wouldn’t encounter anyone who might stop them. Dressed in civilian clothes, she’d be a magnet for questions that could lead to her arrest.

  “I should’ve brought my wig,” she muttered humorlessly.

  Juzo, gripping the straps of his backpack, focused on following the route Rigel had recommended to get them to their destination safely. However, just as he was about to turn left as instructed, something caught his eye in the opposite direction. He stopped, glancing back.

  On either side of the right-hand corridor, around fifteen infantry soldiers sat on the floor, leaning against the walls, shoulder to shoulder. All of them wore blank expressions, their weapons resting in their laps.

  He approached the nearest one—a young man, maybe his age. His gaze, like the others’, was just as vacant as the soldier they had found earlier in the guard booth outside.

  Then something else on the soldier’s face caught his attention—a disturbing glint just beneath the nose. He touched it. The color was unmistakable. Blood.

  He looked at the soldier sitting across from him and saw the same thing under his nose.

  It was possible Vicky’s theory about an ultrasonic weapon causing this state was correct. Such attacks often disrupted blood pressure, which would explain the nosebleeds. But Juzo had a gnawing feeling that there was something more to it—something that unsettled him more than he cared to admit.

  Footsteps grew louder behind them, accompanied by shifting shadows on the walls of the corridor they’d just left. More soldiers were coming.

  “Juzo!” Vicky whispered urgently.

  Wiping the blood off his finger onto his uniform pants, Juzo hurried back to join her.

  “Is everything okay?” she asked.

  He shook his head. He didn’t want to think about what the bleeding might mean.

  In the massive dome lit by fire, the Grenadiers continued to circle in formation, hovering above the aftermath of their first attack. They knew it had merely been a warning—one that wouldn’t be enough to stop the intruder.

  And they were right.

  The Cyclops emerged from the flames with an incredible leap, his arms spread wide like an eagle launching into flight. He extended a hand toward the soldiers, and the electronic system of their thrusters exploded on the occupant’s back, wrapping him in arms of fire and silver lights. The first casualty of the squad.

  The second attack came swiftly.

  The fins on the green armor lifted, showing off the full speed of their thrusters; the roar of their antigravity jets sharpened so much it turned into an unbearable screech. Being inside the geodesic dome felt like standing in the engine turbine of a jet about to take off.

  And so, the nine Grenadiers became a single cyclone of blurred lines, from which slices of light rained down.

  The intruder dissolved each one with electric strikes. Wherever he aimed, a laser ring disintegrated, while with spins as masterful as those he had shown several floors above on the fort’s surface, he dodged the rings that slipped past his aim.

  The soldiers broke formation. Zigzagging across the dome, they launched a new round of fire that triggered a frenzied clash of machines, a rising and falling hum, and a string of flashes that cracked in the air.

  So much bold movement seemed to distort space itself; the walls buckled like waves in a dark ocean, the hexagons reflected more light than was there, and the center of the dome turned into an impenetrable whirlpool.

  The A60 claimed another soldier’s life, and the fire grazed the others.

  Attack formations, cannon fire, and lasers that sliced through the air. The Cyclops’s answer: the annihilation of two more Grenadiers—the first one obscured by an explosion, the second slammed against the crystal walls.

  The geodesic dome watched its best men fall.

  The remaining soldiers changed strategy and, gliding through the air, repositioned themselves along an imaginary horizon, with the captain in crimson armor and black wings leading the front. A sort of martial court, ready to pass sentence.

  With arms raised, the Grenadiers curled their fingers, triggering the firing order on their wrists and channeling their energy through their gauntlets. This time, the blue electric threads didn’t form orbs in their hands. Instead, they rose above their heads and merged into a single, massive sphere of power—an immense ball of lightning that crackled with destructive intent—a blue sun that floated directly above the A60.

  Six soldiers. One giant Fotia. One target.

  The expressionless intruder watched the overwhelming force descend upon him.

  The Grenadiers pinned their hopes on that surge of electromagnetic vibrations.

  The Cyclops tried to defend himself by spreading his arms out, fingers extended like antennae, generating an electric field.

  Both forces collided.

  A dry sound—and then, a second later, a blast of translucent fire expanded, unleashing a shockwave so violent it peeled the hexagonal panels off the walls, rattled the fallen men, and slid the wreckage of destroyed thrusters across the floor.

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  Silence, heavy as lead, dropped with its full weight, dragging down every other sound except for the soft hiss of Daedalus wings.

  For a moment, there was no movement. Nothing.

  A gust of wind swirled the clouds of smoke and dust, sweeping them into the slits hidden between the hexagons. The dome’s air ducts swallowed them along with the gas leaking from the damaged underground pipes. Only tiny flecks of metal remained in the air—like diamond motes swimming through the devastation.

  The dome’s floor was now scarred by the impact of colliding forces—cracks spiraling outward from a single smoking figure: the A60-R8.

  The six Grenadiers hovered around him, stunned. Behind their helmet visors, their eyes were wide open; their mouths, agape. The multi-user technique had never failed. The Great Fotia had always wiped its target off the face of the planet. And yet, there he was.

  The Cyclops may not have looked as imposing as before, but he was still standing. The blast had shredded more of his outfit—ripping off the coat’s buttons, tearing his pants, and scorching the soles of his black boots. And still, he didn’t fall; his vacant face hadn’t lost an ounce of its coldness.

  The Grenadiers should have attacked right then, before he could fully recover, but they were too stunned to move.

  The captain let out a groan; his helmet cracked like an eggshell, exposing a face twisted in pain. A thin line of blood ran down his forehead, and the man, already dead, fell from above like a fallen crimson angel. The wings of his armor, shredded like a pile of black feathers.

  The A60 tried to summon cannons from the palms of his hands. The one on the right jammed before the barrel could emerge; the one on the left sparked and pulled back in, spitting smoke. Like blood, a dark oil began to leak from his wrists and elbow. The Great Fotia had done damage after all.

  He looked down. One of the thruster wings had been blown to his feet by the explosion. He quickly picked it up with one hand and raised it high, intertwining his fingers with the exposed wires of the chrome plating, activated its cannon, aimed at the five remaining Grenadiers, and opened fire.

  Rings of light scattered across the dome. Clouds of splinters and flame burst from the floor in the wake of the blasts.

  The soldiers fled from their own weapons—a complete humiliation—until one ring of energy caught a soldier and took him out with a scream of death. Then another.

  The last three Grenadiers charged at the enemy.

  The A60 hurled the thruster wing like a frisbee, propelling it with an electric impulse, and knocked down one of the soldiers along the way. The last two of them created Fotias in their hands—not as a calculated strategy, but as a desperate suicide attack.

  The android held them off with a wall of energy; his antenna-like fingers were still functional and could generate electric discharges. The Grenadiers increased the force of their attacks, starting a battle of energy grenades versus an electromagnetic shield.

  Both sides, face to face.

  A lifeless metal face; one large, red, glass eye.

  Two furious, sweat-soaked faces behind futuristic helmets; wounded, enraged eyes behind the visors.

  The soldiers’ green armor creaked, the tips of their Daedalus fins shot off. The energy strain was tremendous. Their black helmets started breaking into pieces, the small wings rising from their sides were the first to go; then, their visors split apart. The communicators on their ears short-circuited, and static deafened them. But they didn’t stop. Both Grenadiers kept their swarms of lightning pulsing in their hands, trying to push back the A60’s force. They were the only two in the squad who had managed to get this close to the intruder—less than ten feet away—but judging by his cold composure, the outcome was clear.

  The Cyclops expanded his shield. Oil splattered from his arms.

  Energy boiled. Then—crack! crack! The sound of breaking. The sound of death approaching.

  Finally, the soldiers’ strength gave out. The intruder won the power clash and blasted them away in a wave of lightning. Their bodies skidded across the floor, their armor shattered, and their lives were snuffed out.

  Silence returned to the geodesic dome.

  The hall had gone from architectural marvel to a scene of death, destruction, and defeat.

  Though damaged, the trench-coated android turned toward the entrance to Level Five. Nothing stood between him and what lay inside. He walked forward, slightly unsteady, his boots disintegrating completely; his silicone-and-metal feet crunched against the floor.

  Pushing aside the doors, he opened them.

  A hand appeared inches from his face, and—BOOM!—a burst of blue lightning exploded across his head, knocking him backward.

  For a second, everything froze. Silent.

  The A60-R8 rose again; his knees screeched and sparked. His glass eye wept dark oil, and from the top of his head to his chin, a long black streak slid down his chrome skin. Even in that state, he focused on the one who had just unleashed that blast.

  “Sorry,” Vicky said from the doorway. “No androids allowed in here.”