For Me,There Is Only You |18+|

ANSEL

4 years ago

Location: Private Aegis Armaments Testing Site

Time: 3:17 p.m.

The desert always felt dead.

No scent. No sound. No sign of life.

Just dry wind scratching across concrete and steel, like the earth itself was trying to peel away its own skin.

I stood behind the reinforced viewing glass, arms folded, watching the K-4A prototype roll onto the platform.

Karson has named it the "Wrath Engine." Dramatic. But not inaccurate.

Its casing shimmered under the sun... sleek, angular, hungry.

Ezra shifted beside me, tapping the datasheet.

"They've upgraded the capacitor timing and removed the valve lag. Should hold under pressure this time."

I didn't look away.

"Should."

Noel was in the control booth, focused, fast, alert.

He was a damn good at his job. Sharp logic. Clean coding. But he trusted code too much.

Karson was pacing below in the test field, recalibrating the sensor array. His helmet hung loosely in one hand, the other gripping the diagnostic tablet.

Young. Brilliant. But he always gets anxious when the stakes rise.

And it was their first ever project together.

"Charging core," Karson's voice crackled through the intercom. "Cooling cycle initiated. Capacitor sync in five seconds."

The hum started.

Faint at first. Then building. Vibrating underfoot. The machine was waking up.

And I tilted my head slightly.

The rhythm was wrong.

The lights pulsed too early. The core spun too fast.

The coolant flow wasn't matching the capacitor rhythm.

"Ezra."

He looked up at me, brows furrowed.

"They buried the delay with a bypass loop. Software override. Probably Noel's work. Clean, smart... but it won't last."

Ezra frowned. "It looked stable."

"It's not. The capacitor's spinning at 540 RPM. The lag's still there—it's just being masked. The moment the coolant loop falters, the software will feed a false override."

"And that means?"

"It'll keep running. No failsafe. No shutdown. It'll just keep heating. Until it eats itself from the inside."

Ezra paled. "We need to stop them—"

But Karson's voice cut in over the intercom, right on cue:

"Initiating Test Sequence. Cooling system engaged. Plasma core charging."

And just like that, the countdown began.

The K-4A roared awake. The desert trembled.

Then—

The pitch changed. Sharper. Frenzied.

Noel's voice broke through static.

"Wait—thermal sensor isn't responding—"