Chapter 64: Edge of the Grid

Elias didn't wait for the stalkers to set the pace.

"Hold the line!" the vanguard growled, slamming the base of his tower shield into the gantry floor. The heavy kinetic barrier flared to life in a sheet of electric blue, locking into the narrow metal frame just as the first creature struck.

The impact vibrated through the entire catwalk, a horrific screech of metal against metal as the stalker’s razor-sharp limbs scraped across Elias’s shield.

Behind him, Joshua’s rifle barked—three precise, rhythmic shots. Plasma bursts punched through the stalker’s vulnerable shoulder joint, spraying dark hydraulic fluid across the mesh. The creature reeled back, but two more took its place, leaping from the overhead pipes to pin the team into a killing bottleneck.

"Mei, clear the high beam!" Joshua ordered, his eyes never leaving his reticle as he cycled another round. "Don't let them flank Elias!"

Clear the high beam. In her first life, that would have meant a suicide run—a cold command to throw herself into the crossfire to draw aggro for her handlers. But as Mei glanced back, she caught Shane’s eyes. The Captain wasn't watching her like a piece to be traded; he was moving his warhammer into a defensive sweep to cover her launch point.

"On it!" Mei called out.

She didn't use the narrow walkway. Instead, she bounded onto the outer handrail, her light boots finding purchase on the grease-slicked steel where anyone else would have slipped. Below her, the amber glow of the dying reactor pulsed like a failing heartbeat, deep in the pit. Above her, a stalker crouched on an overhead conduit, its optical sensor flashing a dangerous, hungry crimson.

Mei launched herself upward.

She caught the overhead pipe with one arm, swinging her momentum around in a fluid, acrobatic arc. Her dagger cleared its sheath with a whisper of steel. As she spun over the stalker's back, she didn't just strike—she leveraged the facility's design against it, driving her blade straight into the creature’s primary balance gyro and kicking off its chassis.

The stalker lost its footing on the narrow beam, screeching as it tumbled off the gantry edge and plunged into the dark abyss below.

Mei landed lightly on the far side of the upper support beam, her breathing steady, her dagger dripping dark oil onto the iron grid below.

"High angle clear!" she called down. "Push forward, Elias!"

"Advancing!" Elias bellowed, taking a massive step forward and using his shield to shove the remaining beast backward off the narrow path.

Shane stepped through the gap, his warhammer swinging in a crushing arc that shattered the disoriented stalker's frame against the steel cross-bracing. Sparks rained down onto the lower levels as the path finally cleared.

"Hatch is twenty yards ahead!" Joshua yelled, gesturing toward a reinforced blast door at the end of the span. "Core purge sequence is priming—we've got less than three minutes before this whole section vents heat!"

Mei dropped down from the overhead beam, landing smoothly alongside Shane and Joshua as Elias took the lead once more, his shield raised to sweep the final stretch.

The gantry shuddered under a deep, structural groan, bolts popping like gunshots behind them as the reactor began its cycle. But as Mei fell into position right at Shane's shoulder, her blade ready for whatever waited behind the blast door, there was no hesitation in her stride.

Team Blaze was moving as one—and for the first time across three lifetimes, the path forward felt wide open.