Chapter 407: First System Failure

After the surge of activity, the facility went quiet, and Kai noticed the silence before anyone else.

The ancient complex had been humming ever since they arrived. Machines had been waking, energy had been flowing through the walls, and blue lights had been spreading across the enormous space. Even when the machines went still, there had always been a faint vibration beneath the floor. Now there was nothing at all.

Kai stood still, and Sera noticed. "What?"

Kai looked around. "The machines stopped."

Lily lifted her head from her tablet and listened, and her expression changed. "You’re right."

Aren looked toward the central platform. "The energy flow just dropped."

Gabriel stepped closer. "Why?"

No one had an answer.

BOOM.

The whole facility shook, and dust rained down from the ceiling.

Sera drew her sword. "That wasn’t the network shutting down."

"No," Kai said, looking at the floor.

A second vibration hit, stronger than the first, followed by a deep mechanical groan. Something enormous was moving.

Lily checked her tablet, and her eyes widened. "Something’s activating. The system is rerouting power."

Kai turned to her. "Where?"

Lily’s expression grew confused. "Up. Toward the surface."

Aren understood immediately. "A defense system."

The words had barely left his mouth when every ancient light in the facility turned red.

Sera looked around. "That’s probably bad."

"Very," Kai said.

...

Above Nexus, people in the streets looked up as a deep vibration rolled through the city. Windows rattled, cars stopped, and airships slowed. Then the ancient towers that had been glowing blue all over the city began to turn red, one after another, and a warning siren started to wail, then another, and then dozens.

A woman stared at the sky. "What is that?"

"Everyone get inside!" a Hunter shouted.

Another Hunter raised his weapon. "What’s happening?"

Nobody knew.

Then the ground beneath the western district began to rise. A massive section of the street lifted, buildings shook, and cars were shoved aside as emergency crews ran from the area. Stone cracked, ancient machinery groaned, and a circular structure pushed up from beneath the city, followed by more of it, and more.

It was enormous, hundreds of meters across, a colossal construction of ancient metal and stone with several rotating rings surrounding its center and energy channels running across its surface. It looked like a cannon, except no modern weapon in Nexus came close to its size.

A news drone swung toward it, and the reporter inside began speaking rapidly. "We’re receiving reports of a massive ancient structure emerging beneath the western district. Authorities have not confirmed whether this is an attack."

The weapon kept rising, and the ground opened beneath it as a massive support structure extended toward the sky.

The reporter’s voice tightened. "Whatever this is, it appears to be charging."

Inside the Hunter Association, alarms blared with warnings about a defensive system activating in every district and an unknown weapon in the western sector. Hunters grabbed their gear, officials shouted orders, and engineers scrambled to figure out what was happening, but nobody had control.

A commander stared at the screens. "Can we shut it down?"

"No response!"

"Cut the ancient power connection!"

"We can’t! It’s bypassing the modern grid!"

The command center fell into chaos until the commander finally got a line through to Kai, who was still underground. "City Leader Kai!"

"We see it," Kai said.

"Do you know what that thing is?"

"No."

The commander swore under his breath. "We need to stop it."

Kai looked at Lily, who was staring at her tablet. "Can you shut it down?"

"I’m trying." Her fingers flew across the screen. "No. It isn’t responding to anything."

"How long until it fires?"

Lily checked the numbers, and her face went pale. "Thirty seconds."

Sera was already moving toward the elevator. "Then we’re going up."

"Let’s go," Kai said.

The elevator shot upward, much faster than before, and the walls shook around them as Lily gripped the railing. "This wasn’t supposed to happen. The defense system was dormant."

"Until now," Kai said.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I don’t know."

Aren studied the readings. "It’s pulling power from every active reactor."

Kai’s expression hardened. "How much?"

Aren shook his head. "All of it."

The elevator lurched, and Sera grabbed the wall. "That’s reassuring."

Lily looked at Kai. "If it fires..." She swallowed. "I don’t know what will happen."

Kai looked at the elevator doors. "Then we’ll find out before it does."

The elevator reached the surface, and the doors opened. The first thing Kai saw was the weapon, towering over the western district and pointed at the sky, with bright blue energy spiraling around its glowing core. People were fleeing the streets, Hunters had formed defensive lines, airships were pulling away, and emergency crews were shouting instructions.

Kai looked up as the weapon kept charging.

Sera stepped up beside him. "That’s big."

"Very," Kai said.

"I’ve never seen anything like this," Aren said, staring.

Lily didn’t answer. She was looking at her tablet, and then she froze. "Kai. The targeting system."

A thin beam of light emerged from the weapon’s center and slowly swept across the city, over the buildings and past the towers, and then turned upward, straight into the sky.

It wasn’t aimed at the city or the ground. It was aimed at something above them.

"It’s not targeting Nexus," Lily whispered.

Sera looked up. "Then what is it targeting?"

Kai stared into the sky. "Something."

Aren frowned. "I don’t see anything."

"Neither do I."

The sky was clear except for a few clouds along the horizon. There were no monsters, no airships, and no portal, nothing visible at all. The targeting beam climbed higher, then stopped. It had locked onto something.

Kai’s eyes narrowed. "Can Starbreaker see it?"

He pulled the relic from his coat. At first nothing happened, and then it came to life, blue light spreading across its surface as a circular map formed, showing the sky above Nexus. For a moment, the map was empty. Then a small distortion appeared.

"There," Kai said.

Sera looked at him. "What?"

"Something is there."

She looked up again. "I don’t see anything."

"Neither do I. But Starbreaker does."

The relic highlighted a patch of empty sky, where a faint outline slowly appeared. It wasn’t a creature, a ship, or a portal. It was harder to understand than any of those, a distortion, a presence occupying space without being visible.

Lily stared at the projection. "That’s impossible."

"Apparently not," Kai said.

The weapon charged faster, and energy flooded its core until the whole city trembled and a deep sound rolled across the sky. The news drones backed away, Hunters raised their shields, and people watched from behind the barriers. The weapon reached full charge, and for one second, everything went silent.

BOOM.

A massive beam of blue energy erupted from the weapon and tore through the clouds. The shockwave rolled across the city, rattling windows and knocking airships sideways, and the beam vanished into the sky.

Then there was nothing. The clouds slowly drifted apart, the beam was gone, and the weapon stayed pointed at the sky as silence returned.

Sera looked at Kai. "Did it hit?"

Kai didn’t answer. He was looking at Starbreaker, which was still glowing, but its map had changed. The highlighted patch of sky was gone, and the distortion had disappeared.

Lily stepped closer. "What does that mean?"

"Something was there," Kai said.

Aren looked up. "And now?"

Kai shook his head. "Nothing."

The ancient weapon slowly powered down. The red lights across the city faded back to blue, the sirens stopped, and people started talking again. Nexus had survived. Nothing had fallen from the sky, no monster had appeared, and no explosion had followed. To everyone watching, it looked as though the ancient weapon had simply fired into an empty sky.

Kai knew better. Starbreaker had seen something, and as he looked down at it, a message appeared.

TARGET DETECTED.

A second line followed.

LOCATION: UNKNOWN.

Lily stared at it. "Unknown? If Starbreaker can’t identify it..."

"Then it isn’t part of any system it recognizes," Aren finished.

Kai looked up. The sky was completely normal again, blue, quiet, and empty. But something had been there, something invisible that an ancient civilization had considered dangerous enough to build a weapon hundreds of meters tall to fight.

Kai tightened his grip on Starbreaker. "What did it see?"

The relic didn’t answer. Only one word remained on its display.

UNKNOWN.

For the first time since arriving in Nexus, Kai wasn’t sure whether the ancient network was protecting the city, or protecting the world from something the city couldn’t see.