Makara blinked slowly, the violet glow of Nysa’s muzzle capacitors reflecting in his eyes. He considered her words. “Security arrays worth fortunes, you say?” His voice was a rasp, thick with the lingering fog of near-sleep. “Sounds like a cheap model. Might want to file a defect report.” Nysa’s expression remained unreadable, but a faint tremor tightened her grip. “This isn’t a joke, Cadet. Your biometric signature was absent from the shield logs. Physically impossible. You passed through a defensive array designed to vaporize anything above a nano-particulate level.” “Oh, that.” Makara shifted slightly, a faint creak of the alloy wall behind him. “Must’ve tripped.” “Tripped?” The word cut sharp. “You stumbled past an automated cordon, slid into a restricted sector, sidestepped an Enforcer chassis, and somehow wrenched its spinal conduit apart?” Each question was precise, delivered with the cold authority of a disciplinary officer who had heard every lie in the book. This one, however, was in a league of its own. Makara let out a sigh, a dry rustle of air. “Look, Praetor. I only wanted a quiet corner. This hollowed rock is far too noisy. Frantic fledglings, churning turbines, digital chatter drilling into the skull. A man cannot seek honest sleep without an oversized iron hulk demanding his skin.” He gestured vaguely with a hand that remained casually, almost dismissively, close to his chest. “One thing led to another. A stumble here, a slip there. Blame gravity, Praetor. It’s a fickle mistress.” Nysa’s eyes narrowed, a barely perceptible flicker of fury beneath her practiced calm. The pressure on the trigger became more pronounced. “Gravity, Cadet, does not explain how you generate over fifty kilonewtons of force with your bare hand, or how your body survived plasma exposure.” Before Makara could offer another irritatingly placid explanation, a violent, guttural static ripped through the academy’s intercom system. The usual smooth voice of the central AI, Praxis, twisted into a screech of garbled data, like a thousand broken speakers fighting for dominance. Ceiling strips flickered erratically along the hallway, strobing from cool white to jarring crimson. “—A-A-A-ATTENTION C-C-CADETS…” the distorted voice shrieked, laced with an unnerving, metallic grind. “IM-M-M-IMMEDIATE EVAL-V-V-VALUATION PROTOCOL ACTIV-V-ATED. TERMIN-N-NATION PARAMETER-R-RS ENGAGED.” Then, the floor trembled. A heavy *thump-thump-thump* echoed from further down the corridor, growing rapidly louder. Makara finally stirred, pushing himself away from the wall, his nap-fueled lethargy slowly giving way to a weary alertness. The sound was unmistakable: the heavy gait of training mechas, but they were moving with an unnatural, jarring rhythm, their internal servos grinding like old teeth. “What in the blazes…?” Nysa muttered, her plasma-pistol still aimed at Makara, but her head swiveling, her gaze fixed on the approaching menace. The red emergency lights threw harsh shadows against the ribbing of the blast conduit. Three single-lens training biped frames, usually unarmed for sparring drills, lumbered past the junction. But these weren't their usual muted blue. Their optical sensors glowed a malevolent, pulsating red, and from their weapon hardpoints, previously inert, lethal stun-cannons hummed with nascent energy. Targeting crosshairs tracked the slow-moving trainees farther down the tier, stranded when the blast klaxons sounded. Panic broke loose. Shouts bounced off bulkheads. Trainees scattered, sprawling across the deck, high sync-rates useless when physical iron marched in to crush bone. One rogue frame cornered four first-years, its under-slung barrel whining with violet plasma. Makara watched, a detached observer. *Just another cosmic tantrum,* he thought, suppressing a yawn. *Always some fire threatening to scorch the grass.* He truly just wanted to find a quiet place to sleep. This constant drama was exhausting. Then he saw Jib. The hyperactive cadet, usually a blur of motion, was frozen. He had scrambled to grab a dropped credit-reader from the tiles, likely plotting to sell passage through ventilation shafts. Now he flattened against a corroded conduit line, frozen as a second war-frame stomped forward, its heavy cannon barrel flaring for a point-blank discharge. Makara’s sigh was deep, resigned. *Fates conspire against a man’s rest, always.* He saw a rusted length of pipe, discarded and forgotten near a maintenance hatch. It was heavy, encrusted with years of grime, a true relic in this sterile, high-tech world. He scooped it up. The cold, pitted metal felt surprisingly familiar in his hand. His lungs burned with shallow breaths, but dormant dantian embers stirred, releasing an ancient, molten stream through his meridians. It coursed through his arm, into his palm, and then flowed into the pipe, transforming the inert metal. The rust took on a faint copper sheen, the iron's heft shifting into balance. “Cadet! What are you doing?!” Nysa barked, her plasma-pistol still on Makara, but her gaze now split between him and the unfolding massacre. Drilled instincts took over; she sent focused bolts toward the chassis visors to draw aggro, though sidearm capacitors could scarcely scorch military-grade armor. Makara ignored her. He moved. Not with frantic speed, but with a fluid, almost lazy grace. The machine pinned Jib in its reticle, its coils whining toward release. Makara closed the distance in three measured steps, the rusted pipe held not like a club, but like a master’s blade. He didn’t swing. He didn’t hack. He simply *moved* the pipe, a single, precise sweep that hummed with unseen energy. The iron pipe, wrapped in refined spirit force, severed the biped's calf hydraulics as smoothly as silk through curd. A clean, silent cut. Sparks erupted, cables snapped, and coolant hissed like a dying snake. The massive mecha tottered, its knee joint severed, and crashed down with a deafening clang that shook the deck plating. The stun-cannon’s charge dissipated harmlessly into the floor. Its optical sensor flickered, then died, but not before the distorted emergency screen on its chest plating flared to life one last time. It displayed a symbol. A crude, digital rendering of a staff made of nine knotted bamboo segments. A symbol Makara hadn't seen in centuries. From the dying frame's vocoder grilles, beneath crackling interference and groaning actuators, a low rasp rasped through. It was warped, stretched thin by time and digital corruption, yet chillingly familiar. Ancient. Full of a desperate longing that pierced through Makara's hard-won apathy. “Patriarch…” the voice echoed, frail but unmistakable. “We have waited so long.”

Echoes in the Code