The silence persists for a while, the Five and One remaining in consideration of his words.

Samuel requests the answer, continuation from before. “To confirm your previous statement: the GOD GUN has been destroyed by your hand?”

“The incomplete iteration of it has been destroyed.” Ar efficiently notifies.

A capture avoided, taken away from the hands of destroyers in a mutually assured destruction. The remnant fragments now once more the sole remainders in the world.

A gust of wind rattles their bones, the cold draft from an evening beyond boarded up windows almost threatening to extinguish the still burning remnants of chemical lamps. They all stare, humanity grasping for any hope of their salvation.

“To avoid its capture?” Judge Murphy holds.

“To prevent its usage, correct.” Ar restores.

He doesn’t expand upon the point, instead leaving the Five to derive meaning. From faith, survival, justice and order they all find their own reasonings, own justifications for actions.

The continuation of logic by the Mage, Samuel continuing inquisition as his perfect mind finds the specifically chosen word. “This iteration?”

There is too much information in Ar’s chosen words, a documentation of history gone too far as the quantum soul races against time. “Its creation was intended to be modular, its manufacture specifically allowing the distribution and independent usage of its major component parts. The necessity for its complete reassembly lies in the framework; this framework’s purpose is to…”

It's a prophecy, preserved through religious dogma and human stubbornness. Those exact words, the greatest simplification of the task given to them all.

“... is to unite the Five fragments.”

Alto immediately finds the contradiction. “But the framework has been destroyed?”

“The framework for the fragments is replicable, with the correct equipment.” Ar informs quietly. “I was not supplied with the exact knowledge of its creation process… until now. The individual now known as Arsa has brute force discovered the correct iteration, a knowledge that I have now derived from visual inspection.”

In the depths of the world, a constant goal of creation. A ceaseless custom fabrication of iterations, of every single possible combination of parts and doctrines created through a massive dynamic database through eons of human violence; driven by his vengeance.

Madeline burps. “So Arsa was trying to manufacture his own… weapon?!”

“Partially correct.” The One continues. “The framework is not meant as a weapon, its purpose is the maintenance of the major component parts. Without them, the framework has no use.”

“The sixth fragment.” Alto Carrin says the words, a religious translation spoken in the heresy of the southlands. “And you can create it? Here?”

He’s tempted to make the scan, tempted to reach deep into the depths of March to diagnose the damage; a hope for repair dashed as he acknowledges the probability of hostiles.

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There’s another monster in the world, waiting for his mistake.

Waiting to kill him the moment he reveals his own presence.

Ar omits it. “The fabrication facility within this location has been destroyed.”

Their world is dead, a fate of dust and starvation guaranteed by the death of their savior. The Five holding in utter silence, individual breaths and heartbeats bridging almost a full fifteen seconds.

Samantha pulls herself from the pit, a question aimed with utterly simplistic hope. “Are there other facilities?”

He makes the count, a diagnosis of the damage of a long forgotten conflict and the subsequent fall. Probability tuples for the scattered remains, taken from his wanderings beneath the world of five suns.

Forests of disposed trench lines and ancient war machines, mountains of armor and trees of steel rusting in the eroding sands of desert winds. Shattered bunkers and emplacements once built in the defense of a single facility, now nothing more than monuments of slagged rubble to a war brought to stalemates.

The great cities of humanity have long stripped the world of its usefulness; their vast empires built in the shadows of gigantic towers. Dying technology cannibalized, subsequently destroyed by both simple mishaps and nefarious sabotage, the collective memory of mankind eventually removing all traces of a glorious legacy for their wars of hatred and desperate pangs of hunger.

He narrows the history of the world, a diagnosis of the planetary replication found through a trillion samples of data. Every biome, both created and destroyed by their hands, given a rating of probable survivability; every single probable survivor returning an unwanted output.

In the southlands, amongst the burning salt flats and sand blasted mountain peaks; one stands amongst its eleven brethren. Worshiped by ancient churches for its sleeping savior, the capital of an empire fallen by the might of humanity. Kings ruling with the whisper of a god within their ears, their palaces of fear built upon starvation and death by the poisonous suggestions of a destroyer.

A tower that stands at the very peak, an enslaved function destroyed by the hands of promise and salvation from the sleeper in the depths of its manufacture. A dead end, the most probable solution’s irreparability confirmed by the allotted exhaustion of power from the lethal device now folded into his right arm.

A second probability exists.

Humanity calls it the midlands, a geographical feature defined by battles fought between now revered gods and saints. A landscape preserved in its greatest, most pristine state against his kind; their oasis turned to a sprawling urban development by the vermin of intelligence.

A breathing, teeming, living mass of concrete, glass, and steel: the continuation of endless civilization built upon a continuously evolving mountain of rubble and looted treasure from its ever expanding empires. From grand republics fallen to feudalistic kingdoms and urban warlords, built again in revolutions to the people and state; a polymorphic society ever changing yet never improving itself upon a history of blood.

They call it Centralis, the city of humanity.

A name derived from the linguistic drift taken from the ashes of a long forgotten war, the home of the patron saints of mankind during their great battles against their own creations.

And it sits beneath five towers, the abyssal black structures built on an incomparable scale. Miles upon miles rising above the sprawling city, a partitioning by the pentagonal sides providing the lifeblood of survival and a beacon of civilization in the lawless wastes.

And censorship. The massive, unseen disruption field is still projected by the ancient constructs, jamming systems veiling the scrying eyes of his kind. A primary fabricator system assumed long lost under the imperfect governance of humanity, his mind taking an unwanted detour to a desperate measure beyond practicality.

It's a place spoken of in legends and stories, a civilization of islands from an ocean of sand under the blaze of five great light sources. A land of an already known savior, the augmented humans worshiping just a single protector amongst five more.

She, her very namesake, must still live amongst her saved collective.

And she would do anything to protect them.

Especially from him, especially if he came with the Five fragments.

Especially if it was him to try and unite them.

Only one, the only possibility in this broken existence for their salvation.

Ar dictates the answer to Samantha, and by extension, to them all in cold, dead words. “A fabrication site remains.”