The second explosion rattled Guinevere’s teeth and pounded inside her head. The ringing wouldn’t stop, but she could still hear. “Jace.” she shoved the slumped over body sitting in the passenger seat, “Jace, please wake up.”

Guinevere was afraid.

But she continued to drive.

She heard the parley message after Lionel had left. She had no doubt in her mind that things wouldn’t go well. No matter how you looked at it, their situation was hopeless. Guinevere was sure Lionel was trying to bargain with them, but Jace was their only real bargaining chip.

Guinevere wanted to go to her father. This whole situation was too much. Even the thought of turning around and looking at what was left of the city brought her close to losing any composure she had.

Just driving through the city and picking up Jace was horrible in ways she didn’t even think were possible.

All the destruction.

All the fires.

All the shouting.

All the screaming.

All the bodies.

She shuddered. But she knew, deep down, that it was too soon. Her father told her to find an answer. If she ran away now… if she went to that cliff now, she wouldn’t have an answer. No, she would just be running away from the question.

She needed to keep searching. No matter the cost.

When she faced that cliff again, she needed to be certain.

And so, she had a nearly unconscious Jace with her as she sped towards Lionel’s signal.

There weren’t many ways for Guinevere to move forward. There weren’t many options for her to find answers. But Guinevere thought to herself, maybe if she forged on with this design she could discover something that would make MACs more than just killing machines. Or, at the very least, maybe her research could be used for something else.

But would it really be so bad to make the perfect killing machine? A machine powerful enough to rule the world would surely bring peace, as long as it was in the right hands.

Guinevere put these thoughts to the back of her mind, instead focusing on shaking Jace and desperately trying to keep him from passing out. The only thing that was certain was that him and the machine were the only way to show the enemy that there was value in not destroying everything in this city.

“Jace, you need to wake up.” She was shouting now, pleading with the nearly unconscious man, “You need to wake up!”

Jace’s eyes fluttered open. He was in no condition to be traveling like this. He wasn’t in a condition to be doing anything. But, for a brief moment, he saw something that lit a fire in his mind. A fire that forced him upright in his seat and peeled back his eyelids. As the blackness of the depths was prodding its way into his vision, threatening to take him back to unconsciousness, he opened his mouth. It wasn’t very far. Something had gone horribly wrong with his jaw apparently. But it opened just enough for him to get his tongue between his teeth.

He bit down until he felt a dribble of blood sliding down his lacerated and pitted chin.

Before him was a desert coated in the evening sun’s rays. The sand looked hot enough to burn him to a crisp. The shadows of the dunes were cast this way and that, creating strange patterns of darkness on the fiery surface.

In the distance, a cloud of dust rose high into the sky and plumes of smoke floated higher still.

But what truly captured Jace, and what caused Guinevere to speed ever faster over the flowing sands, was the sight of two magnificent MACs, gold and silver, bursting out of the cloud of dust.

The silver MAC, a tank like creature, activated thrusters that made the monstrous thing move faster than anyone might imagine. The bright blue fires that shot out turned the surrounding sands to glass, creating blinding reflections of the sun’s rays in the middle of the desert.

It only barely managed to escape the true horror that was hidden in the dust cloud: a husk of a MAC. It was entirely devoid of armor plating and the internal structure was melted and re-solidified. It made the thing look more organic than mechanical. The melting arm, consisting of a few metallic support rods and cracked containers leaking all manner of fluids, tried to grab at the tank. It barely missed and buried itself into the sand. The arm started to drag the demonic structure out of the dust storm.

The silver tank blasted past their jeep, moving straight toward the city.

Guinevere didn’t slow down.

The golden MAC, some knightly visage of old married with futuristic designs, landed by the melting MAC and raised a long rifle and planted the muzzle firmly on the melting remains of its skeletal enemy.

The dust was slowly sinking back down and filling the crater in the desert.

The machine had managed to drag itself out of the remaining dust cloud.

The molten metal that birthed the plumes of black smoke were now behind it, framing the scene.

The machine, Jace and Guinevere both realized, was Callista’s.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

They were both in a state of pure disbelief.

That was the only way to explain it.

Callista was not someone who would lose. She was not someone who would be held at gunpoint. She was most certainly not someone who would die.

And yet,

before either Jace or Guinevere could truly piece together the scene,

a golden and heavenly stream of light was poured out of the rifle.

It melted Callista’s machine entirely.

It melted her entirely.

The fires, all that molten metal, suddenly vanished. It was all seemingly sucked away by this ray of light.

Steam and exhaust fumes poured out of the golden MAC. For all the evil it was committing, it looked like an angel in that scene.

A canister, one of many attached to the lower back, fell off the machine and crashed into the sands below. And then, as if it didn’t just kill a pilot as colossal as Callista, it turned away and followed its silver companion into the corpse of a city.

“Jace, don’t look at it.” Guinevere kept her head down now. Instead of driving she focused solely on the radio, trying to make some sort of contact with the golden MAC before it got out of range.

Jace didn’t listen. He couldn’t listen. All he could do was stare at the empty spot in the desert where Callista was… used to be.

“Stop looking Jace.” Guinevere was still fiddling with the dials. Her hands were shaking.

Jace opened his mouth, but no sound came out. His body was an absolute wreck, but now his mind was following suit. Jace, though the word was garbled and messy and hardly even understandable, said, “Callista?”

Of course, a corpse cannot answer such calls.

“Jace!” Guinevere reached one hand over and grabbed Jace’s hair. She forced his head down and held him there, “Don’t think about it Jace! Don’t think!”

Jace tried to follow her advice.

But he couldn’t.

Nothing but garbled nonsense and internal fluids poured out of his mouth. Guinevere kept shaking him. She had no idea what else to do. What sort of situation is this in the first place? She was in no condition to try to soothe others. She was just as broken as any of them, maybe even more so. Everything, everything was falling apart so quickly. She continued to spin the dial one way and the other, her shaky hands making the minute changes nearly impossible.

All she could do was hope.

“Callista?” Jace continued to dredge out the same word over and over again.

Guinevere hit him.

She hit him again.

Before she came to her senses she was halfway on top of him and hitting his broken and gouged face as hard as she could, “Shut up! Shut the hell up!” She had no kind words or comforting actions. What kind of person could possibly be like that in this situation?

Finally, as she continued to scream into the radio, a voice came through, “If you’re allies of that pilot, don’t bother with body recovery. She’s gone. Just like Alexi.” He sounded slightly annoyed. Guinevere decided to assume this was the leader, “Run if you want. If our encirclement doesn’t get you, The Alley’s reinforcements will.” He paused for a moment. His voice was clearly becoming more emotional, and Guinevere understood well enough that the man had to finish these thoughts before she could get him to listen to anything. “How stupid. All of that for no damn reason.”

Guinevere started to speak, but Jace’s mangled voice broke in, “You all-” The rest was unintelligible. Guinevere was glad for that, she was sure Jace was trying to say the sorts of things that would get them all killed.

Guinevere tried to calm herself. With all that had happened to her the past few days, that was easier said than done, “We have an experiment. It’s very important and… and it’s something you’ll want to see. I-” Guinevere had no idea how to attract the attention of these people, all she could say was, “I can help you.”

Yes, all she could say was ‘I can help you’ to the people that had destroyed and depopulated the city she’d grown up in. The city she loved. She choked back tears and continued to make sure Jace would shut up. She pressed on, hoping to convince the man of her value, “We’re developing a system that connects the pilot to the MAC directly through the brain.” This… this begging was her only way forward right now. She was sure of it, and so she tried to hold back her hatred of the people that destroyed her city.

“Oh yeah? Do you have a nice little warehouse of charred bodies to show me? Successful but slightly burnt experiments, right?”

“No, I found a way to-”

“Of course you did. You’d be surprised how many people are suddenly geniuses when they’re trying to save their asses.” Clearly he’d dealt with people begging for their lives before and he was in no mood to hear Guinevere’s attempt at survival.

“I can prove it!”

“Listen,” there was still a hint of anger in his voice from losing a comrade, but he was trying to calm down. It was obvious he held no ill-will for Guinevere, he simply had a job that needed his attention, “your pilots did well. Pretty impressive all things considered. Maybe if that psycho didn’t throw her life away back there I would have hired her on. But neither of your pilots were fighting on a level that would make me believe you.” He paused for a while before continuing, “All I can say is this: if you’re trying to save your city or your life or anything, I’m not the guy you need to convince. Go contact a representative for The Alley. That’s your only choice. I can’t help you.”

“It’s better…” A voice that was clearly in immense pain broke into their conversation. It was Lionel.

“Oh, the guy from our parley. I’m surprised you lived. I wonder if you were a part of that little disaster. Was that your plan all along? Kill us all and hope that changes things? I’ve seen a lot of stupid people in my day, but you guys are certainly up there.”

“This canister… a good idea, but it’s still,” Lionel grunted loudly as some sort of pain assaulted him, “it can’t compare to what we did.”

Lionel’s voice was followed by a long pause. This man had been talking to them just fine up to this point. Guinevere wondered what about this canister made him suddenly so quiet. “You saw the canister?” Guinevere watched as the golden MAC that had disappeared into the city came bursting out at full speed. A trail of exhaust struggled to keep pace with the machine.

“Give her a chance Ukko. I’m one button away from getting these images to our research lab. From there they can go anywhere. The main lab can still send out messages to Atlantea easily enough.” Lionel’s voice was still shaky and obviously drenched in fear, but the words came out clear.

The golden MAC came to a halt and hovered for a moment, “Fine. But I hope you realize that uploading those images won’t do a damn thing.”

“As long as they convince you to give Guinevere a chance, they’ll do more than enough.”

The golden MAC started its way towards Guinevere’s jeep, “Well then, let’s go see your ‘proof’. By the sound of your friend, sooner may be better if you want him to live through all this.”

Guinevere took another look at Jace, who was now entirely unconscious. Guinevere didn’t think he could be used to convince this Ukko anymore. Hopefully his machine is intact enough to prove a point. Then she can convince this murderer to let her talk to The Alley. She can agree to work for this man. She can make advancements that will change the world. She can build herself into the sort of person that will face that cliff and live. And, most importantly, she can save this city. When she comes back, the city will be whole and things can go back to normal.

If she could just save the city, then…