A decision, sharp and immediate as a freshly honed blade, carved through Panya’s mind. There was no time for contemplation, no luxurious pause for fear. Zaidu and Tarek were connected to *her*. Her 400% neural sync wasn't just a conduit for control; it was a lethal bottleneck. If she could overwhelm it, burn out the core programming that tethered them all to Vance's deadly failsafe, then maybe… just maybe. The thought ended not in hope, but in action. “No,” she rasped, her voice a raw static over the comms, a ghost of her usual bored drawl. “I’m not ejecting.” Zaidu’s voice, thick with desperation, exploded in her ears. “Pan! What are you doing? The override, it’s-” “There is no override, Zaidu!” Panya cut him off, her gaze locked on the digital clock melting away in her HUD. *02:47. 02:46.* “Not for a hardwired military protocol. Not from the outside.” “Pan… Pan, what does that mean?” Tarek’s voice was uncharacteristically small, stripped of its usual bravado. He could see the energy readings on Panya’s mech spiking wildly, an impossible, dangerous surge that had nothing to do with propulsion or weapon systems. “It means I’m pulling the plug,” Panya muttered, more to herself than to them. The internal feedback loop was a torrent, a thousand data streams trying to pour into her brain at once. She opened her neural pathways, not just to receive, but to *absorb*. To become the circuit breaker. Agony bloomed behind her eyes, a white-hot nova expanding through every nerve. Her vision fractured into static and screaming code. She felt her mech’s internal systems shriek in protest, the control pod vibrating with the sheer, raw power she was funneling through her own mind. *02:20. 02:19.* “Pan! Don’t you dare!” Zaidu yelled, his voice laced with pure, unadulterated terror. “Pan, I don’t care about the war, I don’t care about anything! Just get out! I love you! I love you, Arani! Please!” The name, her true name, ripped through the burning chaos in her skull. It was a lifeline, a whisper of a life she’d almost forgotten. A flicker of warmth in the inferno. Her mech, the powerful ‘Anvil-Reaper’ frame, began to glow with an unstable, cyanic light. Sparks erupted from the exposed wiring behind her headrest. Blood, dark and thick, trickled from her nose and ears, staining the inside of her helmet. The pain was beyond anything she had ever experienced, worse than Vance’s illegal torture, worse than the scorching core. This was her brain, her very self, being consumed by pure information, burned away by the digital deluge. *01:58. 01:57.* On Zaidu’s and Tarek’s HUDs, their own countdowns wavered. The numbers blurred, hesitated, then, with a final, violent jolt, went dark. The threat of the self-destruct collar vanished. They were free. But Panya’s mech was no longer glowing. Its cyanic light guttered, then died. Her entire frame went dark, a silent husk drifting amongst the ruined spires of Neo-Kowloon. The comms channel went dead. “Pan?!” Zaidu’s scream was a raw wound, echoing across the open channel. “Pan! Answer me!” Tarek, witnessing the horrifying sacrifice, felt a cold, hard rage crystallize in his gut. Vance. His father. The man who had reduced his childhood hero to a mangled mess, who had orchestrated this entire bloodbath, who had just forced the bravest person he knew to burn herself alive. “No more,” Tarek growled, his voice a low, guttural rumble. He diverted all power to his mech’s thrusters, ignoring the protests of the frame. The ‘Gladius-Shrike’ screamed through the ruined cityscape, a blur of crimson and bronze, aimed squarely at the glittering, arrogant hull of Vance’s flagship. “Tarek, what are you doing?!” Zaidu cried out, watching his teammate’s trajectory. “Ending this,” Tarek spat. There was no hesitation, no thought of consequence. Only a single, burning desire for retribution. He slammed his mech into the ship’s bridge, a devastating, metallic shriek of tearing adamantium and shattering glass. The impact ripped through the flight deck, a gnarled, crimson fist punching straight into the heart of Vance’s operations. The warship buckled, groaning under the impossible stress, its primary control systems going dark. Far below, the alien drones, suddenly untethered from their master’s relay, drifted aimlessly for a moment, then began to fall, lifeless husks plummeting towards the cracked streets. Zaidu didn’t spare a glance for the falling drones or the crippled flagship. He propelled his mech towards Panya’s dark, silent frame, ignoring the alarms blaring in his pilot bay. He landed with a sickening thud, his own mech groaning under the impact. His gauntleted hand, trembling, clawed at the emergency release on Panya’s cockpit hatch. It groaned, jammed, but Zaidu ripped at it with a strength born of pure panic, tearing the reinforced metal away. He threw open the hatch, a cloud of acrid smoke boiling out. Inside, Panya was slumped in the pilot’s seat, utterly still. Blood crusted around her nose and ears, her face pale, almost translucent in the dim emergency lighting. Her breathing was shallow, barely there. He reached in, his hands shaking violently, and pulled her unresisting body from the seat, cradling her close. “Pan… Arani…” he whispered, his voice cracking. She didn’t respond. Her eyes were closed, her lips faintly parted. He felt her faint, unsteady pulse against his thumb. From the sky, the piercing whine of approaching turbines grew louder. A swarm of gleaming white medical evacuation choppers, emblazoned with the emblem of the unified planetary defense force, descended towards them, their searchlights cutting through the smoky twilight. Vance’s reign was over, but the price… the price was too high. Zaidu held Panya’s unresponsive body tighter, tears streaming down his face as her stillness pressed against his chest like lead.

Carrying the Team