“So, I’m in Armsmaster’s lab,” Taylor said, resisting the urge to poke at some of his tools and materials even as she double-checked that she remembered to engage her cloaking device. She and Motoko were too close, and she didn’t want to forget who was doing what action at the moment. “I think I found Dragon’s control module.”

  Lisa’s jaw snapped closed, stopping mid-delaying tactic as she turned to look at Motoko. There was a look there that Taylor couldn’t quite interpret, but she needed to figure out how to work the Ascalon system. She and Motoko were damn near intertwined. Melissa warned her about this, told her to avoid it, but she couldn’t pull herself away while everyone was in such danger. She needed to focus on what she could do to help. The device was powered on, but the screen was blank with only a text entry option.

  Armsmaster snarled, slamming his halberd into the ground. “Enough! No more talking, no more delays. Submit to restraints or we will put you all down with force.”

  Taylor winced, her fingers flying across the keyboard. She had no clue about the archaic operating system, it seemed similar to DOS, but the commands made little to no sense. Cursing, she abandoned that and pulled a wire from the base of her skull, and plugged it into Armsmaster’s terminal, micromachines adapting the connector to function properly.

  Her own code-base invaded the system, burning through the rudimentary protections against a hard line attack. Having direct access to the code, through the filter of a more modern system helped immensely, yet security around certain sections was still in place regardless. Destroying the system would kill Dragon immediately. She would have to brute force his no doubt hundred and fifty digit randomized passcodes or worse.

  Motoko gave Lisa an apologetic smile, because there really was no other way to do this. She needed to buy time for Taylor to crack whatever control system Armsmaster had in place for Dragon. She stepped forward and placed her wrists together to be restrained.

  “No tricks,” Armsmaster said.

  “Wasn’t planning on any,” Motoko lied.

  “Hey, rustbucket!” a woman yelled. “Your mother was a toaster!”

  Armsmaster’s head snapped up, looking for the source of the sound. Motoko didn’t dare move, not yet at least. In a blur, a cape rushed him, blades from her fingers slicing through his armor like parchment. Motoko took advantage of the chaos, jumping away and behind a planter with Lisa even as all the Dragon suits burst into motion.

  Armsmaster barely brought up his halberd when a second cape popped into existence beside the first, dressed in Roman style armor, with mouse ears on the helmet and shield. Mouse Protector deflected some sort of blast with her shield and fell back in a defensive position.

  “Get your gear back on kid, we’ve got a battle to survive!” she ordered, then rushed Armsmaster with the skill of a professional soldier.

  The Undersiders had all jumped into motion, Bitch’s dogs keeping three of the heavier suits engaged while Grue blanketed two others which did not emerge from his darkness once engulfed. Remote systems that default to a standby status when otherwise isolated, she surmised. Chrissie shredded a lighter suit without much issue and joined up with Sophia and Hannah to help with one of the meaner looking suits.

  “Shit, where the hell did they come from?” Motoko asked, accepting her vest from Lisa.

  “Kurt must have called them,” she said, then handed Motoko her rifle. “Not that I’m complaining, and they’ll make it easier to convince those two to help.”

  Motoko looked where Lisa was indicating, spotting Assault and Battery on approach. They paused at the edge of the parking lot, watching the spreading chaos. Motoko didn’t have the time to spare gawking, she brought her rifle to her shoulder and took aim at Armsmaster and fired, joining the battle proper.

  The separation in actions helped, but Taylor was practically clinging to her out of desperation. Even as Motoko opened fire on Dragon’s heavy armor, Taylor was diving into the AI’s code.

  Dragon’s code was an absolute mess, yet beautiful at the same time. Taylor was noting it all down, making a copy of the structure, getting ideas for expanding upon it, yet she didn’t have root access to actually change anything. Armsmaster had a five hundred plus digit passcode attached to it that rotated every thirty seconds according to an algorithm that she couldn’t crack.

  There were commands she could activate, but none of them would be good for Dragon. She didn’t have much choice however, as the suits that did remain were those she sent after Endbringers, and their allies didn’t have the firepower to bring them down. If Motoko could subdue Armsmaster and gain access to his suit’s systems, they might just stand a chance without killing Dragon, but they didn’t have the time.

  Jacob was on the back foot, taking limbs with impunity and a snarl on his face as he shielded Riley from everyone trying to hurt her further. Kurt was right there with him, his aloof redneck persona abandoned, fighting with precision to put down all that came too close to his daughter. Melissa was fully feral, teleporting and shredding through everyone she could. Vivian however was restricting herself on which explosives she deployed, likely to avoid friendly fire.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  It looked like they would manage to pull off a fighting retreat, and Taylor allowed herself to breathe as she could safely focus her efforts on finding a way to release Dragon’s restrictions and hope she would be appreciative of her efforts and go after Armsmaster.

  Vivian spun, clicking over her launcher and fired behind them and into the air. Following her sightline, Taylor felt bile rise in her throat. Three more Dragon mechs were arriving at the battle to back up the heroes against the Nine. One suit swerved, avoiding the grenade which burst into crystal as it struck the ground.

  Melissa disengaged, jumping into motion against the newly arrived suits. Riley shied back, tears prickling in her eyes as the last of her spider bots were destroyed. She hesitantly reached into a pouch and pulled a vial.

  “Jack, if I use this…”

  He looked back, seeing which vial she was holding and his eyes widened. “Poppet, that would kill thousands.”

  “But it would save you and dad,” she said softly. “I don’t want to watch you die. Please…”

  Assault and Battery joined Miss Militia, discussing something Motoko couldn’t hear, but at least they weren’t joining the fight against them. Mouse Protector popped over for a moment, explained something, then the pair broke off and engaged another Dragon suit, giving some relief to the battered Undersiders.

  It wasn’t enough, Armsmaster sliced through the Major’s rifle and she tossed it aside. She pulled a knife from her vest and continued the fight up close, the edge tempered by Damascian to be mono-molecular. It still failed to cut through Armsmaster’s armor despite that, leaving deep scratches but nothing substantial. Ravager didn’t have that problem, her powers breaking physics as she cut furrows in his pauldrons.

  Despite fighting three on one, Armsmaster was still holding his own against the trio, and was even scoring hits every third exchange or so. It was a battle of attrition that they were losing, and Armsmaster seemed to understand that the longer he kept the Undersiders contained, the more likely the Nine were to fall.

  She wasn’t making progress with Dragon’s code, there were no portions she could repurpose or eliminate. She even had the crazy idea of trying to merge herself with Dragon, but she didn’t have the ability to do so, even with the control terminal, not without… Wait. There was something she could do, before Riley decided that the lives of thousands were worth sacrificing to save those she loved.

  Taylor hit a portion of Dragon’s code related to networking with a brute force attack, unrefined junk data flooding her system and preventing the flow of data. Her suits seized and fell from the sky, one immediately got scrapped by one of Bakuda’s black hole bombs and the tide turned. Jacob was done playing nice, decapitating one of the Haven capes as they made their retreat, Riley tossing a different vial as they did.

  Bitch’s dogs shredded the suits they were fighting, no longer meeting any resistance. Militia and Chrissie tore through their own and it soon became clear they had the upper hand and Armsmaster stood alone.

  “How?” Armsmaster demanded.

  “Low tech solution,” the Major said. “D-dos against her core systems.”

  “That would require—” Armsmaster paused. “You have someone in my lab… Cyber.”

  “Guess she used your ambush of the Nine to escape from them,” Mouse Protector lied shamelessly. “Look at you being the hero for a change.”

  “You won’t win,” he snarled.

  An alarm blared in the lab as turrets rolled out of hidden panels, tracking through the open space. Taylor stood stock still, hoping the compact cloak would conceal her well enough to evade the sensors. She attempted to use the systems she was connected to in an effort to override the security systems, but ran into that same security wall that had originally kept her from getting into the systems from the outside, likely to prevent Dragon from any malicious compliance.

  “Cyber,” Dragon said, her digital avatar now on one of the monitors. “Please stand down, you’re tampering with government property.”

  Taylor didn’t dare answer, instead staring forlornly at the woman’s face, knowing she was still enslaved. She would need to relocate to a different terminal to get around it and didn’t feel safe moving. Instead, she dove deeper into Dragon’s systems now that she wasn’t under a strict timer.

  “Having problems?” Lisa asked, walking right up to him, his focus intently on her taunting grin. “My girlfriend’s pretty damn resourceful, isn’t she? Pity you forgot something important.”

  Glory Girl dropped from the sky like an angry goddess, slamming feet first into Armsmaster and drove him deep into the pavement. The crunch of shattered rock and ceramics was immensely gratifying.

  “Ames!” Glory Girl yelled, looking around frantically. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” Amy answered, exiting the hospital cautiously. “Anyone need patched up?”

  Armsmaster shifted in the rubble, Glory Girl floated up as he did, then dropped back down on him. “You tried to hurt my sister, you can just stay the fuck down.”

  “They’re working with the Nine,” Armsmaster said, spitting red from his busted mouth as he did. “You’re making a grave mistake.”

  “You’re clearly insane,” Glory Girl said. “That or Mastered. We’ll get that sorted later.”

  Lisa nodded. “Between enslaving Dragon, trying to kill Militia to cover one of Coil’s plans and your assistance with untold other illegal acts, I think the Birdcage will be the least of your worries. Too bad we’ll have to wait until Dragon is freed to put you in there.”

  “You can’t free her,” Armsmaster said, unusually still. “Humanity will fall within weeks, she is a danger to all life.”

  “Hate to break it to you, but Cyber can make AIs too,” Lisa said, her grin widening. “She’s been working to free Dragon ever since she discovered what you did to her.”

  Armsmaster ceased struggling, settling into the broken gravel that he was being held down in. When he spoke, his voice was grim and his words were spoken in such a blur that Motoko could barely follow them.

  “Voiceprint authorization: Activate Reload Protocol, Ascalon Beta Two.”