Winning your first battle is dangerous.
It makes you believe survival is possible.
"PRIMARY SUBJECT LOCATED."
The gunship's voice thundered across the burning highway cold and yet absolute. Missile ports opened beneath the aircraft with a metallic hiss as red targeting lasers swept through smoke and chaos below and then locked directly onto Jasper.
"MOVE!" Stacy screamed.
The world exploded.
Missiles slammed into the interstate in violent succession as the highway shattered beneath them, vehicles launched into the air. Flames rolled outward like tidal waves while metal screamed apart across burning asphalt.
Mercer jerked the truck sideways violently just before an explosion consumed the road behind them.
The shockwave nearly flipped them anyway.
Kane slammed against the side rail hard.
"That thing's trying to erase the entire convoy!"
"No," Jasper said through gritted teeth.
"It's trying to erase me."
The battlefield transformed instantly as it was no longer prisoner recovery but extermination. Dominion units flooded the highway from both directions while more armored transports appeared across distant ridgelines.
The gunship circled overhead like a mechanical predator and through all of it the Hollowed advanced relentlessly through fire and debris.The smiling prisoner stood inside the moving truck as if chaos meant nothing as bullets ripped past him and explosions shook the road, still he watched Jasper carefully, studying him.
"You still don't understand what you are," he said quietly.
Jasper snapped back instantly.
"I'm not one of them."
The prisoner's expression shifted slightly.
"…That answer may become a problem."
Mercer barked savage laughter while firing toward approaching Dominion vehicles.
"COME ON THEN!"
A Free Men truck beside them rammed directly into an escort transport, forcing both vehicles through burning guardrails and into the wasteland below. The explosion lit the entire highway orange.
"They fight like they want to die," Stacy muttered.
"No," Kane corrected darkly.
"They fight like freedom matters more than living."
The ruined interstate became an endless line of fire stretching across dead land as smoke climbed into storm-dark skies as abandoned cities loomed in the distance like silent witnesses and somewhere beyond it all the Dominion kept expanding unless someone finally stopped them. The gunship made another attack run as targeted systems shrunk overhead.
"Three seconds!" Jasper shouted suddenly.
Everyone looked at him.
"What?!" Stacy yelled.
"It fires in three-second lock intervals!"
Mercer grinned instantly.
"You can read it?"
Jasper didn't answer.
Because he wasn't sure how he knew but he just did.
"LEFT NOW!"
Mercer jerked the truck hard left.
A missile slammed exactly where they would've been. The explosion flipped two Dominion escorts behind them instead.
Kane stared at Jasper.
"That's not normal."
"No," Jasper replied quietly.
"It really isn't."
The hum in his skull pulsed harder now.
The same systems the Dominion used externally—Jasper somehow processed internally and the Dominion commander clearly realized it too.
Stacy pointed toward the gunship overhead.
"As long as that thing's flying, we're dead!"
Mercer slammed fresh shells into his shotgun.
"Then we knock it down."
Kane looked at him like he'd lost his mind.
"With what exactly?!"
The smiling prisoner finally spoke again.
"There's an old military tunnel beneath Highway Nine."
Everyone turned toward him.
"How do you know that?" Jasper demanded.
The man smiled faintly.
"Because I helped build it."
After some moment of silence
"What are you?" Stacy asked carefully.
The prisoner looked toward the burning horizon.
"Someone who made mistakes."
It was not an answer but honest enough to feel worse. Another missile barrage tore through the highway behind them and the convoy scattered further as Dominion forces closed aggressively. Time was running out.
"The tunnel," Jasper said quickly.
"What about it?" Kane asked.
"If it still has old defense systems…"
Mercer's eyes widened slowly.
"Ohhh."
Stacy caught on instantly too.
"You want to bait the gunship lower."
Jasper nodded.
"Forcing it into tunnel range."
Kane stared at all of them.
"This is the dumbest thing I've ever heard."
Mercer grinned proudly.
"Which means it might work."
Their truck accelerated harder through smoke-filled highways while Dominion vehicles pursued relentlessly behind them. The gunship tracked above was like death itself targeting systems locked repeatedly as missiles screamed downward.
Jasper's instincts moved faster now making every movement around him felt readable and predictable like the battlefield itself slowed slightly inside his head.
And honestly?
That terrified him.
"There!" the prisoner shouted suddenly.
A shattered military checkpoint appeared ahead beneath collapsed overpasses with half-buried concrete bunkers lined the roadway while massive blast doors sat partially open underground.
Mercer accelerated directly toward it and then the Dominion forces immediately followed. The gunship descended lower for attack positioning exactly as Jasper had hoped or feared. The truck smashed through debris and plunged into the underground tunnel system beneath the interstate and darkness swallowed them instantly. Old emergency lights flickered weakly across massive concrete corridors as Military symbols covered the walls with cold War infrastructure and forgotten war shelters.
The gunship roared overhead outside searching for entry angle. Jasper jumped from the moving truck while Stacy and Kane secured the tunnel entrance.
The mysterious prisoner led him deeper underground urgently.
"Hurry."
"What exactly are we looking for?"
"Power."
They entered a massive underground command chamber buried beneath decades of dust as broken terminals lined the walls and old missile systems with rotary defense cannons and emergency generators and somehow part of it still worked.
The prisoner moved directly toward one terminal with hands flying across ancient controls with disturbing familiarity.
"You really built this place," Jasper realized.
The man glanced at him briefly.
"I helped design contingency systems before the Collapse."
That phrase hit hard before the Collapse, Meaning that he came from the old world. Gunfire erupted from tunnel entrances above as Dominion forces pushed inside. Mercer and the Free Men answered immediately with brutal close-range violence as the underground tunnel became another battlefield.
"We're out of time!" Stacy shouted.
The prisoner slammed one final switch downward and wmergency power surged alive as the entire bunker shook with ancient defense systems awakened after decades of silence. Outside— The gunship locked onto the tunnel entrance for final missile deployment and then underground missile batteries erupted upward from hidden silos. The Dominion gunship barely turned before the first missile hit as the explosion split the night sky apart.
Flaming wreckage spiraled downward across the wasteland as Dominion forces froze in shock.A second missile destroyed another incoming aircraft moments later and the highway erupted into chaos and for the first time—the Dominion lost.
Free Men fighters screamed triumphantly through the tunnels.
Even Kane looked stunned.
"We actually did it…"
Stacy stared upward at the burning sky beyond tunnel entrances in disbelief and dangerously hopeful. Jasper breathed heavily confirming to his first and real victory against the Dominion and somewhere deep inside of him it changed everything.
The hum inside Jasper's skull suddenly surged violently again and much stronger this time. Pain exploded behind his eyes as he staggered hard against the console.
The mysterious prisoner grabbed him immediately.
"Jasper!"
Visions slammed into him instantly with underground acilities, subject rows, testing chambers and burning cities. It was the Dominion command structures and one phrase repeating endlessly.
OVERRIDE CANDIDATE CONFIRMED.
Then Jasper saw something worse, it was a face of someone else, watching him from inside a dark control room filled with hundreds of surveillance screens like an older man, he was calm and smiled faintly and behind him—One symbol covered the walls repeatedly; OBSIDIAN DIVISION.
The man looked directly through the vision and directly at Jasper and quietly said:
"So the prototype survived."
Jasper's eyes snapped open violently with blood running from his nose and his breathing broken. The mysterious prisoner stared at him in horror because Jasper had spoken out three words aloud during the vision.
"I know him."
Then every light inside the bunker suddenly shut off as complete darkness swallowed the tunnels and somewhere deep below them something massive moved.