Chapter Thirty-Seven

“This is Strike Team 202. We have eyes on the target, closing two kilometers,” said the voice on the comms.

Edmund ran back into his office to answer, astonished to see Eneco still there.

He was about to say something when Edmund interrupted.

“Strike team, this is Halikkon Director Edmund, ID 0990484841,” he said.

“Voice pattern and ID accepted, Edmund, sir.”

“Take down the target. Immediately!”

“Copy that.”

Eneco turned to him and stared, the words ‘Take down the target’ replaying in his head.

He moved behind Edmund, waiting for the inevitable.

Aura hastily pressed the code to open the secondary panel, but they had already locked her out. She dug into her bag and placed another micro-charge on the panel plate, rolled away to the side, and blew the door’s panel away with a percussive explosion.

As the strike team drew nearer still, they had engaged their weapons, but they could not use their heavy guns if they hoped to leave TITAN undamaged.

“We’ve surgical strike-locked on the target, sniper engaged,” they announced.

“Firing in three, two, one.” they counted down, and the shot released.

Blinding pain.

The pain in her shoulder immediately grew even more intense, throbbing like a persistent drum, announcing that she was about to die.

“I’m dying. I’m… I wish I could—”

“Target hit. Confirmed—target hit,” he announced.

Aura crawled to the open panel, reached in, and connected the chipset tether from Z’s tablet to the auxiliary tower port, uploading the code into TITAN’s mainframe to reconfigure it.

She rolled back over to see how the progress was going.

“At least I’ll die with the peace of knowing that we’ve reversed this monster.”

Then she stared at the tablet screen in shock, in horror.

She began muttering to herself, “What—what is this? What is… what code is that? This isn’t ours. It’s not even, it’s not a compiled language, it’s… So, what has Azid done here? Where did this come from? These characters aren’t even; it’s like they are some sort of strange symbols.”

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

Aura was panting now.

Unbearable pain.

Chaos.

She yanked the tablet’s cable out of TITAN’s port.

“TITAN alert. We just had a system-wide corruption alert!” Eneco shouted, staring at his tablet.

She began muttering to herself, “What… what is this? What is… what code is that? This isn’t ours. It’s not even, it’s not a compiled language, it’s… So, what has Azid done here? Where did this come from? These characters aren’t… It’s like they are some sort of strange symbols.”

“What?” Edmund asked.

It was a rhetorical question, but Eneco answered.

“Sir, the shot went through Aura’s shoulder, but she is still alive. She uploaded some kind of low-level system code; it is an unknown algorithm and—it has corrupted the Core as it’s flowing into the TITAN Collective. It somehow overrode the AI! It has made it down to the Core and is replicating,” he said, pulling off his glasses.

“Oh my God, it’s too late; the corrupt code has taken hold and spreading… like an autonomous, self-aware virus. TITAN’s systems are crashing, left and right. I think, I think she’s… she’s going to drop.”

“Sir. What do we do?” the leader of the strike team asked.

Edmund had just ordered the kill, but now he was in shock, speechless.

Watching TITAN begin to fall was too much to take in. Everything was overwhelming; his legs felt weak.

“Sir,” they called him again.

“Shoot her again and again and again! Kill them all, kill the rest of their team, every damn one of them,” he said, staggering out of the office.

Eneco rubbed his eyes, then put on his glasses again. They slid down the bridge of his nose from the heavy sweat covering his entire face.

There was nothing he could do.

That was the end of it.

Azid had fooled them all. He had never intended to save the planet. He was only after his own selfish ends and dishonest gains, the very thing that he claimed to defend the world against.

His code wasn’t designed to reverse or fix anything.

It had one purpose.

Destroy TITAN.

Aura knew her death was only a few moments away. She struggled to make her way to the top of the tower, hoping that if she could leap from there into the void at a trajectory toward her dropship, Joel may get to her, and she could survive.

But it was not to be.

The strike team had locked and fired on her ship, destroying it instantly right before her eyes with a huge explosion, scattering debris in every direction.

202 turned and plotted toward her, but TITAN gained distance from them as it descended.

She was headed to Earth on a one-way hellevator. Picking up speed, TITAN lost more altitude and began to list, spinning while gravity took over.

Blood ran down her shoulder freely, along with all her visions of the world and all the people she failed, covering the tablet, so nothing was even discernable on it any longer.

Her sister, Evata, Choe, and Viktoriya.

If only she could see them one more time and apologize for it all. But sadly, she couldn’t, and worst vision of them all, her end did not justify the means.

She had been taken advantage of yet again, like she had been all her life and had become the fool—used as a pawn for a villain’s own greed instead of a part of a savior’s plan to heal the world of all that was wrong.

And suddenly, the sensation of falling vibrations overwhelmed her, and at that moment, she knew there was no hope, only a hopeless descent toward Earth.

She closed her eyes and pressed her head to TITAN.

She had failed.

They had all failed.

TITAN has fallen.

Everyone on Earth would die, and the world would freeze.

They were all doomed.

Tears rolled down her cheeks.

“I wonder if you could play me a song, Nixx,” she called out, crying to her AI.

“Which song, please?” the voice came out mildly as if nothing was wrong.

“‘Castles Made of Sand’ by Jimi Hendrix,” she replied as she clung to the tower, staring out into the clouds.

The familiar tune played as she mustered a tearful, reminiscent smile of her memories and her lips quivered uncontrollably.

It was the end for her. All that remained for her was to say goodbye to her memories and wish that she had never fallen prey to any of the lying wolves of the world.

Especially the ones in sheep’s clothing.