Crimson armored sentries formed a tightening ring around Zakar, their poleaxes vibrating with pale charge. Each weapon hummed higher, a prelude to a volley. Iona, face cold, lunged forward, her silver lance intercepting the initial bolts before they struck. He stumbled back under the harsh blue glyphs burning overhead. [ALERT: Unauthorized Access. Threat Imminent. Glitch Eradication Protocols Active.] “Zakar! You fool! What have you done?” Iona muttered, parrying an enforcer's thrust, her weapon deflecting the steel with a spray of chronal sparks. Though venom laced her tone, her shaft still whipped out to guard his ribs. He had no time to explain, no words to counter the venom in her tone. The plaza shook. From obsidian paving, segmented automatons, bulky and multi-legged, surfaced with dry clicks. Opal optic clusters locked on him in unison. Zakar’s mind raced. He was a cartographer, not a fighter. But his cartography now extended to time itself. He strained his perception, pushing his basic scan past the present into the structural histories of the machines and the guards' plating. He needed an edge, a weakness, a ghost of a past flaw. [Appraisal: Enforcer Armor Plating – Left Shoulder Guard. Material Integrity: 87%. Stress Fracture: Unit 734’s prior engagement, Skirmish of the Twin Spires, 3 cycles prior. Impact from Krysian Ravager claw. Structural weakness: Micro-delamination along lower-most rivet.] “Iona! Left shoulder of the squad lead! Lower rivet!” Zakar barked. He didn’t wait to see if she heard. He was already reading the next foe, a crawling unit with dense black plating. Iona, mid-spin, didn't question. Her lance, instead of sweeping wide, narrowed its strike. A precise, focused jab. The sentry stumbled as his defensive field flickered along his bicep. The rivet Zakar had called out sparked, then popped, his armor segment momentarily flaring bright orange before dimming. [Appraisal: Arachnid Unit ‘Skirr-Unit 3’ – Articulated Foreleg Joint. Material Integrity: 92%. Strain: Fabrication defect, 12 cycles prior. Impurities in electro-forged alloy. Weak point: Central hinge pin.] “The crawler! Foreleg, central hinge!” Zakar shouted, pointing. He ducked an arcing haft, clearing the pavement an instant before steel shattered the flagstones. These troopers were faster and sharper than standard patrols. Iona drove her tip forward. She gave the machine no room to leverage its weight. She was using its own momentum against it. As the Skirr lurching forward extended its limb, she slammed her butt-spike down, anchoring a brief time-eddy into the stone. The walker's momentum froze along a rigid vector. She drove the spearpoint straight through the seam Zakar had flagged. Metal sheared with a sharp scream; the limb collapsed, throwing the chassis onto its side. “What are you reading?” Iona demanded, breathing hard through clamped teeth. She didn’t look at him, her eyes constantly scanning for threats, her body a whirlwind of controlled chaos, but her strikes were now guided by his calls. “The cracks! The moments when they were broken before!” Zakar gasped, his head swimming from the intense focus. He pushed harder, past the micro-fractures, past the historical damage. He needed something deeper, something systemic. His gaze settled on the leader's breastplate, zeroing in on a sapphire pulse behind the lattice: an internal power cell. It fed their shields, their limbs, and the conduits in their arms. [Appraisal: Enforcer Internal Cell – Model Aethel-7. Current Output: 98%. Stable Threshold: 110%. Anomaly Detected: Irregular delivery signature. Origin: Installation event, 5 cycles prior. Component Flaw: Kryll-alloy regulator shim. Trace Echo: Malkas, inserting component. Intent: Deliberate sabotage.] Malkas had rigged it. Zakar traced the etched imprint of Malkas's fingers seating that bad shim into the casing—likely across the entire detachment. “Iona! Their batteries! Malkas rigged the regulators!” Zakar yelled. “Strike the squad leader's chest! Overload it!” She hesitated, then pivoted without waiting for a second thought. Leaving two snapping walkers behind her, her spear erupted in an ultra-thin violet line humming at harmonic pitch. She drove the tip straight through the sapphire light on the leader's chest. The tip pierced the housing. The sapphire core flashed dull crimson, screamed in a rising pitch, and popped internally. The officer's pole dropped, dead weight, as his plating lost all charge. But it didn't stop there. The resonant frequency Zakar had perceived, the flaw Malkas had engineered, created a chain reaction. Across the tiles, the resonance jumped; every suit in the line shuddered, discharging harmless pops of blue static until the harnesses died. Their weapons dropped dead and heavy. Only the Skirr clattered on the stones. Deactivated visor plates revealed flushed, bewildered faces—an entire strike team stripped clean of augmentations by a single identified flaw. [ALERT: Critical System Compromise. Warden Unit Performance Degradation. Re-evaluating Threat Matrix.] [Emergency Protocol: Direct Intervention Required. High-Value Assets Dispatched.] A dark shape blurred into the courtyard edge. Malkas. Bypassing the helpless line, his heavy polearm smashed through two Skirrs, grinding their carapaces into the pavers. He plowed a direct trench through the clattering machines. “The underworks. Now!” Malkas’s voice boomed, cutting through the din of System alerts. He didn’t look at them, but his meaning was clear. He was fighting *for* them, carving an escape. “Don’t linger, Glitch. They’ll adapt.” Iona, her shock momentarily overriding her anger, hesitated only for a heartbeat. She grabbed Zakar's arm, pulling him with surprising force. “Move!” They sprinted behind him until his final strike blasted open an iron storm grate at the plaza border. Dark, stale air wafted up from the chasm beneath. Malkas dropped into the blackness without a second thought. Zakar and Iona followed, plunging into the drop as the air overhead screeched with incoming reinforcement relays. The grate clanged shut above them, plunging them into absolute darkness. The air grew heavy, smelling of damp earth and forgotten things. But even in the pitch black, Zakar felt it—the faint tremor of the System’s rage vibrating through the very stones around them, screaming for his erasure. [FATAL ERROR: Glitch_Chrono_001. Location: Undetermined. Status: ESCAPED.]

An Unlikely Alliance