NOVEL NEXT Chapter 7: A Held Note Before the World Breaks Apart
The refinery lit up around him—bursts of hellish blue plasma tearing through steel and stone. Fen bolted.
He sprinted into the ruins, boots hammering cracked concrete as the mech's cannons screamed behind him. Pulse fire shredded the yard in molten arcs, vaporizing cover like a wrecking ball. The ground trembled with each thunderous step, dust cascading from the rafters in choking waves.
He dove behind a crumbling wall—one of the last still standing—and pressed flat, chest heaving.
"Perfect," he muttered. "Walking death engine shows up, and of course it's pointed at me."
He didn't believe his own bravado—and he sure as hell didn't want that mech anywhere near the people who mattered to him.
He ducked deeper into the refinery as another blast lit the air behind him, diving for harder cover. Sparks rained across his back, searing into his jacket as he rolled against a pillar that hadn't yet collapsed. He crouched, weight on the balls of his feet, scanning for paths through the wreckage.
Auri's voice hit his ear like a slap—staticky and strained. "Hate to break it to you, but that mech's about to be the least of your worries."
Gone was the usual charm. No quips. No bravado. Just raw, tight-edged pressure.
"Whatever's coming through the rift… I've been slowing it down, Fen, but—" Static cracked like a whip across the channel. "I can't hold it much longer."
He froze.
The air shifted. Heavy. Warped. Like something underneath reality was writhing, pressing outward through invisible seams. The mech's thunderous steps outside seemed to sync with the rising weight in his chest—the gravity of the moment pulling at him like a collapsing star.
Then he heard it.
An engine. Low and rough. Familiar.
His head snapped toward the sound.
Through the swirling haze of smoke and plasma, the outline of the beat up old red truck pulled into view—rolling forward, sluggish but steady, emerging from the wreckage of the yard.
"What the hell…" Fen breathed, eyes locked on the truck as it lurched into motion.
The comms crackled. Seraph's voice slipped through—quiet, shaken, almost drowned beneath the chaos.
"I'm sorry, Fen."
He went still.
"That thing's... going to... tear us apart…"
A sharp crack of gunfire cut across the signal.
Then silence.
Only static followed.
The truck revved hard, grav plates whining as it kicked up a cloud of dust and ash, disappearing into the haze.
A cold knot twisted in Fen's chest. Seraph...? The thought hit hard, unwelcome and sharp. No. She wouldn't leave. Not like that. Not her.
But the comms flared again—just long enough to raise more questions.
"It was coming... nothing I could do in there... good luck. I'm— out."
Then nothing. Just white noise, swallowed by static. Then silence.
That's jamming, he realized. Comms are down. Damn it. I can't reach her.
His gaze tracked the trail of dust left by the truck, doubt worming its way in. No. That's not her. That can't be her.
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For half a breath, it almost felt real. The kind of betrayal that carved deep. But then another thought rose up, steady and fierce.
She pulled me out of the grave. Stood her ground against worse than this. That's Seraph. She doesn't run.
He shoved the doubt down, burying it beneath instinct and trust—just in time.
A grinding shriek of metal tore through the air. Fen snapped toward the sound, ducking low as the mech rounded the corner, carving a wake of sparks where its frame scraped rusted steel. The thing moved with a simian grace, crouching low and coiled like a predator ready to strike.
It was massive. Brutal. The squat combat mech—built like a gorilla forged from old war metal—crashed into view. Twin guns spun to life, locking onto him with cold precision.
For a heartbeat, he saw the pilot inside.
Grinning. Confident. Too close.
The ground trembled with each step as the mech advanced, the stench of scorched oil and burning metal choking the air. Fen backed off fast, boots skidding over cracked stone.
Too close. Too exposed.
Time stuttered and then it shattered.
The world around Fen fractured like glass under pressure. Sparks hung suspended in the air, frozen mid-flight like militant fireflies. The whine of the whirring plasma guns, the hum of targeting servos, even the pounding in his own chest—all of it halted, stretched into unnatural silence.
No... not again. Please,not like before, his thoughts screamed.
But deep within the glitch, something had changed.
Where the first time had felt alien and violent—like the world cracking open beneath his feet, this felt deliberate. As if it knew him.
There was a thread humming beneath the silence. Not comfort, exactly, but connection. The shimmer in the air wasn't just static or system noise, it felt like a hand reaching through the dark. Reassuring. Responsive.
It was still terrifying. Still impossible. The implications twisted through his mind. But even through the fear, he could feel it—this time, the glitch was with him. Amid the maelstrom of sensation, a familiar presence urged him to let go. To lean in and embrace it. To Trust.
And when he did, it resonated within him.
At the training grounds, it had been a ripple—like the simulation twitching at the edge of awareness. This was something else entirely. A rupture. Space bent around him in kaleidoscopic flickers, each edge sharper, each fold deeper. Shadows peeled away from his body—dozens of them—each one a different version of Fen reacting to the ambush in their own way. He turned. So did they. Some bolted. Others dropped low, drawing weapons. A few charged the mech head-on, blades flashing, fire in their eyes.
Most didn't make it.
Gunfire stitched across the space, catching alternate Fens mid-sprint, mid-leap, mid-scream. Claws tore others from cover and dashed them to pieces against steel and concrete. Each death landed like a shockwave in his chest—his deaths, over and over, unraveling in front of him with grotesque precision.
He flinched. What the hell is this? Why do I see this?
Then, through the storm of slaughter, something flickered at the edge of his vision.
A few—just a few—saw it. The answer.
A structural beam, thick with rust, stretched from the concrete beneath his feet through the cracked ceiling above. Within the strange resonance of the glitch, he could see it fully—its anchor points embedded in every floor it pierced. Sublevels below. Support beams above. It wasn't just part of the structure. It was the structure. Load-bearing. A pressure point. A keystone buried in decay.
In the fractured strands of reality, he saw how it failed. What it crushed. Who it saved.
That's it, his mind whispered, elated within the resonance.
The glitch narrowed. Threads snapped. The surviving echoes collapsed inward, sucked back into him like code merging at a branching commit. The moment tightened—everything converging into a single, focused point.
He moved.
The blade was in his hand before the thought had finished forming. One step. Then another. He raised it high—focusing not on the beam itself, but on the fault lines running through it, the weak spots glowing faint in his mind's eye.
He moved.
The blade flashed—drawn, cut, and gone in a single breath.
Steel split cleanly down the center, rust and metal screaming apart in perfect symmetry as the sword found its sheath before the debris even began to fall.
Time snapped back.
Sound returned like an explosion. The mech's guns roared, spitting plasma where Fen had been moments earlier. Bullets chewed through stone, the pilot's aim scrambling to catch up. Fen rolled, boots skidding through debris as the air filled with fire and plasma.
The pilot's grin collapsed. Confusion flashed to panic, then to rage—but it was already too late. He saw the truth—cold, inexorable, already in motion, carved into the moment. It unfolded with a dreadful elegance, not sudden but certain, like a held note before the world breaks apart.
Both Fen and the pilot turned in unison to the beam—cleanly sliced, impossibly so.
Dust rolled from the ceiling as the beam gave out, its severed anchors tearing loose one by one. The upper structure groaned, then collapsed, sending a cascade of steel and rubble crashing down in a deafening roar. The floor beneath the mech shuddered under the impact and then buckled entirely, the last of its support giving way. The world heaved, the ground opened beneath them, and Fen fell into the thunder of falling stone, into the fractured dark, into the jaws of the unknown.