The world broke apart around him again, dissolving into light that swallowed the last traces of the citadel, the battlefield, the echo of Phase 2's chaos. For a mont he floated in that blank space, weightless, no floor beneath him, nothing to hear except that low rumble the system always made when it stitched a new world under his feet.
In a way, this experience was similar to whenever he was about to witness a new prophecy or had a vision.
Then, the light folded inward, everything snapped back into place like glass rearranging itself, and he found himself standing on a tal platform deep underground.
He didn't need to check the HUD to know the place was huge. The ceiling stretched up into darkness and only the glowing red strips set into the columns hinted at how tall the space was. Giant tro tracks curved around each other like a knot of serpents.
Floodlights flickered across abandoned maintenance depots and derailed cargo trains that still sparked where they'd collided with the rails long ago. Wind rushed sowhere in the tunnels, carrying dust and the hollow screams of machinery still running behind the walls.
Red ergency lights pulsed every three seconds.
His HUD updated, and a tir settled in the corner of his vision. "29:49". This was the last stretch. His death was allowed. The factions weren't bound by rescue or capture rules. This ti it was simple—he escaped, or he didn't.
He didn't even get a full breath before footsteps thundered behind him. A surge of Heroic players dropped from an upper vent like they'd been waiting for the signal. They moved fast, boots hitting the tal with a pattern that made the whole walkway vibrate.
The ones closest to him already had their shields out, forming a tight shell around him. They didn't waste ti talking or posing—everyone rembered Phase 2. The delay had almost cost them everything.
But before they could even form a complete circle, the far end of the station roared with a blast so loud it shook dust off the ceiling. Flas rolled across the tracks as though soone had poured gasoline down an entire tunnel and lit it from the other side.
Evil players poured out of that firestorm like they'd been waiting behind the blast door just to look dramatic. Their silhouettes were black against the flas, weapons glowing in their hands, their shouts echoing through the station as they sprinted across the rails.
The Heroic shield wall snapped tight, dragging Xavier behind them as bolts of energy hamred the front line.
Soone yelled that the left flank was open.
Soone else yelled for dics.
Another scread that snipers were already taking positions on the second platform.
Xavier let himself be moved. He studied the upper rails as they rushed by—a web of tal walkways, narrow ladders climbing between them, huge ventilation fans turning so slow they looked ready to break at any mont. Plenty of blind spots. Plenty of places for a sniper or a whole ambush squad to hide.
'Yeah, I wouldn't want to be stuck in a situation like this in real life. Let's take this as an example and practice the escape.'
Then the entire station trembled like sothing massive was pushing through the tunnels. A hum followed, the sa kind of vibration you felt standing next to a magnetic railgun. His HUD flickered for half a second. A voice rolled from speakers in the walls.
"GM-RAIL TRAM INBOUND. 20 SECONDS."
Heroic and Evil players both froze for a heartbeat.
Nobody knew what that ant.
Then the rails at the central platform lit up with purple electricity—glitchy, flickering, unstable. A train shot past them so fast the air pressure almost knocked him sideways. It didn't even look like a regular train. It glowed with dev-tool effects, textures clipping, sparks bursting from the sides like the code was tearing itself apart.
The first group it hit disappeared instantly.
No explosions. Just instant deletion.
Heroic and Evil players were erased in the sa millisecond.
The entire station exploded into screaming chaos after that.
Heroic squads dragged Xavier up the staircase toward the upper catwalks, yelling for him not to go near the tracks.
Evil squads yelled to push him toward the tracks so the train could do the work for them.
Once they were out of there and entered another rail, a system ssage appeared:
Even the global chat blew up.
So players were cussing the devs, so laughing, and the rest were begging them to turn it off.
Both the Heroic and Evil factions were equally scared, and their end mission had changed from saving or killing Xavier to surviving this sequence to be able to save or kill Xavier.
AsterNova t Xavier on the upper walkway, landing beside him like she'd jumped across half the station to get there. She grabbed his arm without waiting for permission and pulled him into their moving formation, already shouting orders to the shield squad.
Below, the GM-train screeched around the central rail loop and took another fifty players with it.
Heroic players weren't even complaining anymore—they just cursed the devs for being psychopaths.
"This is definitely not coded," soone muttered behind him.
"Nothing in this ga is coded," soone else said. "They're just winging it."
AstraNova yelled for snipers on the upper pipes.
Shots cracked across the station—clean, perfect beams that streaked toward Xavier's head like they'd been aid for hours. AstraNova jumped in front of him and knocked them away with her arm-sheath plate, the tal glowing red from the heat. Three Heroic tanks got hit instead and dissolved into pixel fragnts as the death animations pulled them offstage.
The shield tunnel tightened.
Xavier kept walking in the middle with his hands tucked into his pockets, watching the battlefield unfold with that calm look that pissed both sides off.
The station shuddered again.
At first he thought it was another train. But then he heard the grinding.
tal bending, and scraping. Sothing enormous was forcing its way through a derailed tunnel.
And both factions were equally scared of whatever it was.
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