Sera plummeted through forty feet of boiling steam, ozone, and blue fire, her silhouette framed against the blinding, hellish glare of the reactor core.
She caught the thickest muscle-cable with her left hand, the hot, wet tissue tearing open her palm as her momentum yanked her around in a brutal arc. She swung hard, her boots slamming with a sickening thud against the titan’s exposed, pulsating torso.
Without a second of hesitation, Sera drove her combat knife up to the hilt into a primary nerve cluster feeding the machine's tail, twisting the blade ruthlessly into the wet, fleshy mass.
The titan shrieked. The sound was an ungodly, ear-splitting mixture of tearing steel, shattered bone, and a distorted, screaming human voice blasting through every speaker in the pit.
The massive bladed tail—poised to bisect Vesper and Cassian on the gantry—jerked violently mid-strike, veering off course and smashing into the cavern wall with a deafening crash. Chunks of concrete, steel, and severed wiring rained down into the plasma sea below.
"Sera!" the protagonist roared, her voice tearing her throat as she sprinted to the edge of the catwalk.
On the gantry, Vesper used the distraction to throw her full weight against the rusted valve. The metal groaned, snapped, and finally gave way.
A sharp, deafening hiss echoed through the bay as a torrent of liquid nitrogen blasted out of the secondary bypass conduits. White frost raced down the feed lines, enveloping the titan’s chest frame in a frozen crust.
The machine's blue core began to sputter violently, turning from brilliant neon to a dull, fracturing ice-blue.
NO— the woman's psychic voice rattled inside the protagonist's teeth, glitching and fragmenting. YOU FUCKING BITCHES—NOT AGAIN—
"Now, Cassian! Shoot the goddamn core!" the protagonist screamed.
Cassian lined up his final, overcharged plasma round and pulled the trigger.
The superheated bolt struck the frozen glass covering the core. The impact shattered the reinforced barrier into a million glittering shards, tearing through the flesh of the woman fused inside.
The titan shuddered violently, its massive limbs going limp as internal arteries ruptured. Thick, black, foul-smelling bile geysered from its chest, drenching Sera as she dangled from the dying cables.
"Sera, let go of the fucking thing!" the protagonist yelled, dropping her knife and throwing herself against the railing. "Jump now!"
Sera kicked off the dying machine’s chest, launching herself through the smoke toward the catwalk. The protagonist reached dangerously far over the abyss, catching Sera by her forearms just as her boots missed the slick metal below.
The force nearly dragged them both into the pit, but the protagonist locked her legs against the rusted mesh railing and hauled Sera up over the ledge with a desperate, gut-wrenching heave.
They slammed down together onto the iron grating, gasping for air while the cavern around them began to disintegrate.
Above them, the titan tore free from the ceiling and fell backward, plunging into the boiling plasma pit below with a thunderous explosion that sent a wave of blistering heat washing over the catwalk.
Sera lay flat on her back, drenched in black grease, sweat, and blood, her chest heaving violently. She looked up at the protagonist hovering over her.
A slow, exhausted, wicked grin spread across Sera's lips.
"Told you," Sera panted, her voice a rough, bloody whisper as she reached up to grip the back of the protagonist's neck, pulling her down until their foreheads touched. "Watch my back... I'll watch yours."
The protagonist let out a shuddering breath, pressing a hard, filthy kiss to the side of Sera's mouth, tasting salt, iron, and ash.
"We need to move," the protagonist growled against her skin. "Before this whole godforsaken place buries us."
"Lead the way," Sera whispered, her bloody fingers locking tightly into hers. "I'm right fucking behind you."