The Duskfall Central Communications Tower was a needle of black steel and blinking red lights that pierced the perpetually overcast sky. It was the mouthpiece of the city, the hub from which all official broadcasts, emergency alerts, and Pale Hand propaganda were disseminated. To control the tower was to control the voice of the city.
Ravi stood at its base, looking up. The rain fell, tracing paths down his face and the collar of his uniform, but he paid it no mind. The streets around the tower were eerily empty. The chaos of the lower districts had not reached this sterile, corporate plaza. The only sound was the hum of the tower's massive power converters.
"Ravi, this is a terrible idea," Ayla's voice crackled in his head. She had managed to re-establish their tenuous comm-link. "This place is a fortress. Liora will know you're heading there. It's the most obvious trap in the world."
"A trap is only a trap if you are the one being caught," Ravi replied, his voice calm. He started walking towards the main entrance.
"The entrance is sealed with a magnetic lock that requires Archon-level clearance," Ayla warned. "There are automated defense turrets in the lobby, and the entire structure is reinforced to withstand a military assault."
Ravi reached the towering glass and steel doors. He placed his palm flat against the surface. He didn't push or send a pulse of energy. He simply… connected with the building. He felt its structure, its power systems, its security grid. He perceived it not as a building, but as a body. And he knew where its nerves were.
With a soft chime, the magnetic locks disengaged. The doors slid open.
"The door is open," Ravi stated.
There was a moment of pure, dumbfounded silence from Ayla. "...How?"
"I asked it nicely," Ravi said, stepping inside.
The lobby was a cavernous, three-story atrium of polished granite and steel. Just as Ayla had said, a dozen sleek, automated turrets descended from the ceiling, their barrels swiveling to aim directly at him. Red targeting lasers painted a web across his body.
[ UNAUTHORIZED BIO-SIGNATURE DETECTED. CEASE AND SUBMIT TO IDENTIFICATION. ] a synthesized voice boomed through the atrium.
Ravi ignored it and continued walking towards the central elevator.
[ WARNING. LETHAL FORCE AUTHORIZED. ]
The turrets opened fire. A storm of high-caliber, armor-piercing rounds converged on his position, the sound a deafening roar that echoed off the granite walls. The floor where he stood was chewed apart, spitting up chunks of stone and dust.
When the firing stopped, the dust settled. Ravi stood in the center of a newly formed crater, completely unharmed. Not a single bullet had touched him. Each one had been deflected by the invisible, oppressive aura that surrounded him, curving in the air as if hitting a frictionless, intangible shield.
He looked at the smoking barrels of the turrets, a flicker of annoyance in his eyes.
"Noisy," he murmured.
He raised a hand, and the air in the atrium seemed to thicken, growing heavy and charged. The metal casings of the twelve turrets began to groan, the sound of stressed metal echoing through the hall. Then, with a series of concussive bangs, they were simultaneously crushed into balls of twisted scrap, their internal mechanisms imploding under an invisible, overwhelming force. They dropped from the ceiling, crashing to the floor like metallic fruit.
Ravi proceeded to the elevator and pressed the button for the top floor: the broadcast spire.
On the roof of a building across the plaza, Archon Liora watched the events unfold on a tactical tablet. She saw the locks disengage. She saw the turrets being turned into scrap metal without him laying a finger on them.
A slow, hungry smile spread across her face. This was exactly what she had hoped for. Power on a scale she had never witnessed. A force worthy of being her opponent.
"He's in the elevator," a Reaper captain reported beside her. "Ascending to the spire."
"Let him," Liora purred, her grip tightening on the hilt of her monomolecular katana. "Lock down the tower. Everything below the 80th floor. I want him trapped at the top. This will be our arena."
She looked up at the sky. The clouds were growing darker, swirling in an unnatural pattern directly above the communications tower. The air was thick with the smell of ozone.
"Metis," she spoke into her comm, addressing the Pale Hand's chief scientist. "Is the 'Stormcaller' ready?"
"Affirmative, Archon Liora," Metis's clinical voice replied. "The atmospheric ionizer is at full charge. On your command, we can induce a Class-5 electrical storm localized directly over the tower. A hundred million volts, waiting for a target."
"Excellent," Liora said. She turned to her elite guard, the ten Reapers who stood silently behind her, their black armor seeming to drink the light. They were the absolute pinnacle of the Pale Hand's soldiers, each one a master assassin who had survived augmentation processes that would have killed lesser men. "Our target is a god. Let's see if he bleeds when struck by lightning from a sky we command."
She leaped from the edge of the roof, her long black coat billowing behind her. She landed gracefully on the spire of a lower building, her Reapers following like a flock of dark angels, making their way towards the communications tower to meet Ravi at the summit.
The elevator ride was silent and smooth. Ravi stood unmoving as the numbers climbed, his senses extending throughout the building. He felt the lockdown protocols engage below him. He felt the energy building in the atmosphere above. And he felt the ten predatory signatures making their way up the side of the tower to intercept him.
"Ravi, the whole building is a cage!" Ayla's frantic voice returned. "And something is happening to the weather! The atmospheric pressure above you is… it's impossible. It's like they're building a hurricane in a bottle right on top of you!"
"I know," Ravi said.
The elevator chimed, and the doors opened to the broadcast spire. It was a large, circular room, its walls made entirely of reinforced glass, offering a breathtaking, 360-degree view of Duskfall. In the center was the broadcast antenna, a massive pillar of humming technology that rose through the ceiling to the very tip of the tower.
Ravi walked to the edge, looking down at the city lights twinkling like a fallen constellation through the rain and fog.
The silence was broken by a soft thud behind him. He turned.
Archon Liora stood there, her katana held loosely in one hand. Her ten Reapers materialized from the shadows around her, forming a deadly circle. They had entered through the maintenance hatches on the roof.
"Black Crown," Liora said, her voice dripping with predatory amusement. "I am Archon Liora. I must admit, you've made quite the mess in my city. I almost respect it."
Ravi's gaze was not on her. It was on the katana she held. "That blade," he said, his voice flat. "It cuts through molecular bonds. An impressive weapon."
Liora's smile widened. "A gift from the Oracle. It can cut through anything. I wonder… can it cut through a god?"
As she spoke, a deafening crash of thunder shook the entire tower. A bolt of brilliant, violet lightning struck the spire just above them, and the entire room was bathed in an otherworldly light. The broadcast antenna in the center of the room began to glow, humming with a terrifying amount of raw, stolen power.
"You came here to send a message," Liora continued, her voice rising above the storm's roar. "Allow me to provide the punctuation."
She pointed her katana at Ravi. "This is your end. You fight me, my ten Reapers, and the wrath of a god we built in the sky. What hope could you possibly have?"
Ravi looked from her, to the Reapers, to the raging storm outside the glass walls. He showed no fear, no concern. His expression was one of almost clinical detachment.
He raised his hand and pointed a single finger at Liora.
"You brought ten assassins and a thunderstorm," he said, his voice cutting through the gale with chilling clarity. "A flawed strategy."
Liora's smile faltered. "And why is that?"
Ravi's eyes began to glow, the crimson light so intense it seemed to push back against the lightning's glare. The oppressive aura around him swelled, pressing down on everyone in the room, making it hard to breathe. It was the pressure of the deepest ocean trench, the gravity of a dying star.
"Because you should have brought more."