If you ever have a chance, go take a look at a pre-antithesis building. Those things are laughably weak. They’re made of natural materials, wood, and drywall, and very few of them were built with concrete.

  I’m amazed humanity survived the first few years. Those aliens must have been busting through walls everywhere.

  -Adam Kowalski, Adamant Construction.

  —

  My mind reeled at the revelation, and I struggled to figure out a way to save Pen-Gwen and Woofer before we overrun. Finally, I made a decision.

  {Rei: Skyler, go get the car.}

  {Sky: You can’t honestly be thinking about abandoning those two, are you?}

  {Rei: Of course not. I’m going to stay here and try to dig them out until the very last second. If we wait until the last second to retrieve the car it might get overrun before we escape. Bring it over here, around back, so we can make a quick getaway if we need to.}

  {Sky: Right, that makes sense. I’ll be right back.}

  She quickly disconnected, leaving me to stare at the back of the building. Although I really wanted to cut through the roof sections and see if I could reach the pair inside, I needed to do it safely. The problem was the back wall looked like it could collapse at any moment.

  “Artymis I’m open to suggestions. What’s the fastest way to get those two out, alive, without getting crushed myself,” I whispered to my AI.

  {Arty: You already have access to a lot of tools that would be helpful. Your blade can cut through the debris faster than any Class I tool, as long as you have power, and you can use the Spectre glasses to find the pair under everything.}

  “Right. It’s too bad I don’t have them on me right now, I’ve been finding my enhanced vision more helpful in most cases. Give me another pair.”

  I snapped the glass case up off the ground the instant it appeared and slipped the glasses inside on my face.

  “One problem down, now the wall,” I mumbled.

  {Arty: Pull it down?}

  “That’s a very low-tech solution. I would have expected you to suggest something else.”

  {Arty: We’re in a severe time crunch right now, and you don’t have the time to learn to use a ton of new gadgets. Grapple hook and thirty feet of rope, three points}

  “Right, give it to me,” I agreed. As soon as the box materialized, I swept up the grappling hook and took a couple of steps back. I gave the hook a couple quick swings to get a feeling for the weight before winding up and tossing the hook over the top of the wall. First try.

  I jerked the rope as hard as I could, expecting the wall to immediately collapse, but it didn’t. It groaned and flexed slightly but remained strong.

  “Come the fuck on! I don’t have time for this,” I growled as I dug my heels in and pulled with all my might. Something cracked, but I just couldn’t get it to collapse. The truck creaked, and the dog wandered over to see what I was doing. It sat right in front of me, looked at me, then the wall, then back at me again.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  “You could help me, you know,” I growled at the dog.

  It cocked its head to the side for a moment, as if considering, before casually reaching forward and biting down on the rope. With a swift twist of the neck, the wall came crashing down. I didn’t expect the rope to go slack so suddenly, and stumbled back a couple steps, but I managed to stay on my feet.

  The dog stared at me blankly, panting. “Good dog,” I mumbled, before rushing into the ruin.

  My glasses flickered to life and rotated through the vision modes before stopping on Spectre mode. I swept my gaze over the debris, looking for any sign of the buried samurai. It took several seconds for me to find anything, long enough for me to consider if the glasses were on the wrong mode or broken, but I found them. They were deeper than I expected, and I didn’t have a clue how much rubble there was between me and them, but I didn’t have time to worry about that.

  I drew Rending Wave, watching the blade spark to life, before plunging it into the debris under me.

  “Arty, I need you to watch the map. Give me a one minute warning before the antithesis show up,” I grunted as I carefully cut the concrete, wood, and steel into manageable sections.

  {Arty: That doesn’t give you a lot of time to escape, are you sure you want to cut it that close?}

  “If I don’t, and these two die when I could have saved them, I’ll feel guilty about it,” I whispered as I slipped the blade back into its sheath. “That being said, I’m not going to sacrifice Skyler and my lives for them either. One minute, no less.”

  Crouching down, I stuck my fingers under the top piece of sheet metal and heaved. Even though I’d cut everything into a fairly manageable size, it was still heavy. It took me a couple of seconds to heft the piece to the side before I could go back for the next piece.

  “Arty do you have anything else I can use to make this faster? Antigravity? Disintegrators? Anything?” I huffed as I slowly dug further into the rubble.

  {Arty: Localized gravity manipulation requires at least Class II, and anything that would make removing the rubble faster would either have a steep learning curve or injure those below.}

  “Fuck!” I yelled as I grabbed the splintered wood at my feet before lifting it out of the hole. When I stood up, I once again found myself face to face with the dog. The robotic canine sat on the edge of the pit, tongue out, tail wagging. That gave me an idea.

  “Your master is down there,” I said, pointing at the pit at my feet. “Can you call your friend at the front of the building and dig?” I even pantomimed digging like a dog to get the point across, but the dog just stared at me blankly.

  “Fuck! I’m wasting time,” I yelled as I started to crouch down again. I’d just grabbed the next piece of metal when a massive paw slammed down next to my head before being drawn back across the ground. I hadn’t cut the sheet metal in that section, but it still ripped and tore under the dog's strength.

  “Good boy!” I yelled as I ripped out Rending Wave again, cutting through the debris around the dog.

  The dog made more progress in seconds than I made in minutes, and shortly after it started digging, the second one showed up to watch. Despite acting quite dumb, the dog’s AI must have been a lot smarter than I gave it credit for earlier.

  We managed to reach the floor just about the same time that Skyler returned. She came running over, dropping to her feet at the edge of the digging area. “How are things coming?” she asked.

  “It’ll be close,” I told her before dropping to my knees and looking under the remaining rubble. The two samurai were so close now, just a foot away, but they were still pinned by the collapsed structure. I briefly considered asking Artymis for braces, but then I had a better idea. Twirling around, I looked the nearest dog in the face before pointing at a little gap in the rubble. “Lift! We’re close now.”

  The dog gave me another stupid look, apparently taking several seconds to evaluate the command before diving beneath the collapsed structure. Everything groaned and shifted as the dog slowly stood up.

  As soon as there was enough space, I dived into the ruin.

  “Reina, that’s dangerous! It could shift and collapse,” Skyler yelled.

  “We don't have time to be safe! We’re already on borrowed time!” I shouted back.

  I grabbed the nearest body, dragged it towards me just as Artymis spoke up. {Arty: One minute.}

  “Shit, shit, shit, shit…” I growled as I dragged Woofer back to the pit. I shoved him roughly towards Skyler before diving back in. “Take him back to the car, and start suppressing the north with your drones! The antithesis are closing in, but we’re so close! I’m not leaving anyone behind!”

  “Reina!” Skyler yelled, but she was too late; I was already scrambling deeper. I reached Gwen in seconds and dragged her back towards the hole by one arm. She was going to have a terrible road rash after this, but that was better than ending up dead.

  By the time I dragged her into the access shaft the dogs had dug, I could already hear Skyler’s mortars going off. As I hefted Gwen onto my shoulder, I yelled “Come!” at the dogs before scrambling out of the pit.

  Skyler had just finished placing Woofer into her car when I came sprinting out. Her eyes lit up as soon as she saw me. “No time to talk. Can you get Athyna to hotwire Woofer’s truck? We need to get out of here.” A small group of Model Ones cleared the trees and started diving down, but they were immediately cut down by the dogs.

  “I can but…” Skyler started, but I cut her off.

  “Then do it, please. Then get in your car and drive west as fast as you can. Don’t bother packing the drones. Just have them hover out on their own. I’ll be right behind you,” I blurted out.

  Skyler bit her lip but nodded and did what I said. Woofer’s truck sputtered to life just as I reached the cab, and I shoved the unconscious Gwen inside. As soon as I was behind the wheel, I paused just long enough to repeatl, “Come!”

  The two robotic dogs sprinted out of the building, bounding into the back of the truck just as I put it into gear. The old truck struggled to gain altitude--it barely cleared the top of the building as the first Model Three emerged from the woods. I stepped on the gas and whooped in exhilaration. “No man, or dog, left behind!”

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