The flatbed cart’s wheels squeaked softly in the alleyway.
Elias leaned against the ruined brick of the corner building, his breath pluming in the cold air. He looked at the hazard-yellow cylinder resting on the cart. It was covered in a thick layer of rime ice, radiating a bone-deep chill that made his fractured ribs ache even more.
"The Wall targets heat signatures," Elias said, his voice a low, raspy whisper. "The nitrogen tank is sitting at negative three hundred degrees. If we just push it out there, the thermal optics will ignore it. It’ll roll until it hits the curb and stop."
Marcus nodded, his face pale under the grime. "It needs a thermal beacon. Something hot enough to trigger the orbital uplink."
Elias reached into his pocket. His fingers brushed against his cheap, plastic lighter. He pulled it out. "Tape," Elias demanded, holding out his hand.
Mara quickly unspooled a strip of the rigid medical tape she had used to bind his ribs. She handed it to him.
Elias wrapped the tape tightly around the body of the lighter, depressing the fuel button permanently. He flicked the spark wheel. A small, steady orange flame flared to life, casting dancing shadows against the ice on the tank.
"Thomas," Elias said, holding out the lit lighter. "Tape this directly over the brass purge valve. When the laser targets the flame, it won't just hit the casing. It will strike the weakest point of the pressurized system."
The cybernetic giant took the lighter delicately between his massive, hydraulic pincers. He leaned over the tank, applying a thick strip of medical tape, securing the small flame mere inches from the frosted brass fitting.
"It is secured," Thomas rumbled, stepping back.
Elias looked at the team. Marcus had his pistol drawn, though it was useless here. Mara was trembling, her hands gripped tight around a piece of rebar. Thomas stood like a coiled spring, his leg servos humming a low, anxious note.
"The second it blows," Elias instructed, his eyes locking with Marcus's, "the temperature in the No Man's Land is going to plummet. The air will turn into a hyper-dense vapor cloud. The thermal optics on the wall will be completely blinded by the ambient cold. But the cloud will dissipate fast. The wind will take it."
"How long do we have?" Mara asked, her voice cracking.
"Thirty seconds," Elias guessed. "Maybe forty. To run two city blocks."
"I will carry you," Thomas said, stepping toward Elias.
Elias didn't argue. He allowed the giant to scoop him up, wrapping his arms around the thick, synthetic muscle of Thomas's neck.
"Marcus," Elias said from his perch. "You're on the cart. Push it as hard as you can into the open, then dive back. Do not let your body cross the threshold of the alley."
Marcus stepped up behind the flatbed cart. He placed his hands on the push-bar. He took a deep, shuddering breath, staring out at the expanse of perfectly flat, black asphalt and the towering, flawless wall of poly-ceramic in the distance.
"For Sector 4," Marcus whispered.
The Flash-Boil
"Go!" Elias barked.
Marcus roared, putting his entire body weight into the push-bar. He sprinted three agonizing steps toward the edge of the alley, shoving the heavy cart with explosive force. Right at the boundary line of the No Man's Land, Marcus let go and threw himself violently backward, crashing onto the dirty pavement of the alley.
The cart rolled out into the open. The small orange flame of the lighter flickered in the wind, moving steadily across the black asphalt.
One second. Two seconds.
BZZZ-POP.
The sound was like a whip cracking next to their ears. High above, the red pulsing line of the Perimeter Wall spiked. A beam of pure, super-heated white light lanced down from the heavens, striking the flatbed cart with pinpoint, terrifying accuracy.
It hit the lighter. And the brass valve directly beneath it.
The thermal shock was instantaneous. The super-heated laser met a pressurized vessel containing liquid nitrogen at -320°F. The liquid flashed into gas in a microsecond, expanding 694 times in volume.
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The explosion didn't produce fire. It produced winter.
KA-THOOOOOM.
A shockwave of concussive force and absolute, biting cold slammed into the alley. Elias was thrown hard against Thomas’s shoulder. The windows of the surrounding buildings shattered inward.
Where the cart had been, there was now a rapidly expanding, terrifyingly dense cloud of pure white vapor. It rolled outward like an avalanche, swallowing the street, the asphalt, and the sky. The temperature plummeted so fast that the remaining rain puddles on the street instantly crystallized into solid ice.
"Move!" Elias screamed over the roar of the expanding gas. "Now!"
The Gauntlet
Thomas launched himself forward. The hydraulic servos in his legs screamed as he hit maximum torque. He plunged directly into the white wall of vapor.
Marcus scrambled to his feet, grabbing Mara's hand, and pulled her into the cloud right behind the giant.
The cold was absolute. It felt like walking into a wall of needles. Elias squeezed his eyes shut, burying his face in Thomas's neck, gasping as the freezing air burned his lungs. He couldn't see his own hands. He couldn't see the ground.
They were running blind.
Above them, the Perimeter Wall was panicking. The automated defense system, suddenly stripped of its thermal telemetry by the massive, sub-zero cloud, reverted to a blind-fire suppression protocol.
BZZZ-POP. BZZZ-POP. BZZZ-POP.
Pillars of white-hot light began to rain down indiscriminately into the fog. Every time a laser hit the asphalt, it superheated the moisture in the air, creating a secondary, localized explosion of steam and a flash of blinding lightning.
The No Man's Land became a chaotic strobe-light nightmare.
"Keep right!" Elias yelled, trying to orient himself by memory. "The transit tunnel is on the right axis!"
Thomas adjusted his trajectory, his heavy steel boots pounding against the frozen asphalt. The ground was slick with fresh ice. He slipped slightly, his massive frame swaying, but the servos compensated, driving him forward.
A laser beam struck the ground not ten feet to their left. The heat wave washed over them, instantly countered by the freezing vapor. Mara screamed in terror, but Marcus yanked her forward, refusing to let her slow down.
"Almost there!" Marcus shouted, his voice muffled by the dense fog. "I can see the shadow!"
The fog was beginning to thin. The biting wind of the storm was tearing the edges of the cloud away.
Through the swirling white mist, the massive, imposing structure of the Transit Gate materialized. It was a huge archway built into the base of the flawless black wall. But true to Marcus's word, the tunnel wasn't open. It was plugged solid with a massive, grey block of quick-curing duracrete.
"The wall is intact!" Mara cried out in despair.
Thomas didn't slow down.
The Human Jackhammer
"Put me down!" Elias ordered.
Thomas slid to a halt ten feet from the duracrete plug, dropping to one knee. Elias rolled off the giant's back, landing hard on the slick asphalt. Marcus and Mara crashed into the wall beside them, gasping for air, their faces blue with cold.
The fog behind them was rapidly dissolving.
"The cloud is failing!" Marcus yelled, drawing his pistol and pointing it uselessly into the thinning white mist. "Ten seconds until the thermal optics re-acquire us!"
Thomas stepped up to the massive slab of grey duracrete. "Elias," the giant rumbled, turning his head slightly. "Duracrete is reinforced with titanium micro-mesh. It is designed to withstand kinetic bombardment."
"It's just rock, Thomas!" Elias shouted, leaning against the cold wall, clutching his ribs. "You are the strongest thing in this sector! Break it!"
Thomas looked at his hydraulic gauntlets. He looked at the duracrete. He didn't just punch the wall. He planted his feet, engaged the locking mechanisms on his leg braces, and bypassed the safety limiters on his arm servos.
The alarms inside Thomas's chest began to shriek—a continuous, high-pitched wail warning of catastrophic mechanical failure.
Thomas pulled his right arm back and threw it forward with the force of a freight train.
CRACK.
The steel gauntlet struck the duracrete. A shockwave rippled through the grey stone. A spiderweb of fractures appeared around the impact point, but the plug held.
"Again!" Elias screamed. "Five seconds!"
Thomas pulled his left arm back. CRACK. Right arm. CRACK. Left arm. CRACK.
The giant Warden turned himself into a human jackhammer. He hammered the wall with terrifying, rhythmic violence. The duracrete began to crater. Chunks of stone and sheared titanium mesh flew through the air, clattering against Marcus and Mara.
Behind them, the fog broke.
The black asphalt of the No Man's Land was visible again. At the top of the wall, a hundred and fifty feet above them, the red pulsing line suddenly stopped. It locked solid.
"It sees us!" Marcus screamed, throwing his body over Mara to shield her.
"Thomas!" Elias roared.
With a final, guttural scream of pure human exertion, Thomas bypassed the last hydraulic limiter. Sparks showered from his elbow joints as the internal seals blew out. He drove both gauntlets directly into the center of the cratered duracrete.
KRRR-OOOM.
The plug shattered. The sheer kinetic force finally overwhelmed the structural integrity of the stone. A massive hole, six feet wide, blew outward into the dark transit tunnel beyond.
"Go!" Thomas yelled, grabbing Elias by the collar and hurling him unceremoniously through the jagged hole.
Marcus grabbed Mara, shoving her through the breach, and dove in right behind her.
Thomas was the last one on the asphalt.
High above, the laser fired.
Thomas threw his massive body sideways through the hole in the duracrete. The beam of super-heated white light struck the ground exactly where the giant had been standing a millisecond before. The heat flashed through the breach, singing the edges of Thomas's boots, but it couldn't penetrate the angle of the thick transit tunnel.
They tumbled into the darkness, crashing onto the cold, dusty floor of the tunnel.
For a long moment, the only sound was the heavy, ragged breathing of four people who had just outrun light itself.
Elias lay on his back, staring up at the curved ceiling of the transit tunnel. He tasted concrete dust and blood. He hurt everywhere.
But he was alive.
"Marcus," Elias wheezed, a slow, exhausted smile cracking his dirty face. "Where does this tunnel go?"
Marcus sat up, coughing dust from his lungs. He clicked on his tactical flashlight, shining it down the long, dark corridor ahead of them.
"Welcome to Sector 5," Marcus whispered.
The Breach is successful.
The Cost: Thomas blew out his hydraulic seals to make that final punch. The team is battered, freezing, and exhausted.
Next Chapter: The Other Side. Sector 4 was the "Happy City." What exactly is the theme of Sector 5? We are about to find out, and the answer might be worse than starvation.