Jason stared at the dead radio console.
The silence in the control room was absolute. The digital face of his father had vanished from the screens, replaced by the static hiss of a severed connection.
He had won. He had taken the Tower. He had shut off the Siren Song.
But the victory tasted like ash.
Gates is marching on Chicago. Sarah's voice echoed in his head. He's asking for you by name.
He couldn't go back to Detroit. He couldn't save his wife from the Cartel siege. He had to cross a thousand miles of hostile wasteland to fight an invincible robot army.
"Boss," O'Malley's voice broke through his thoughts.
The big Irishman was standing in the doorway. He was pale, sweating profusely, gripping the doorframe to stay upright. The withdrawal from the pacification wave was hitting him hard.
"Boss," O'Malley repeated, his voice tight. "You need to look outside."
Jason shook his head, clearing the fog. He turned to the security monitors lining the wall.
The desert wasn't silent anymore.
A new sound was bleeding through the thick concrete walls of the bunker. It wasn't the roar of chainsaws or the mechanical hum of drones.
It was human. And it was massive.
It sounded like a stadium full of people screaming in agony.
Jason zoomed in on Camera Four.
The graveyard of rusted cars and sitting skeletons was gone. The thousands of "pacified" civilians who had been staring blankly at the Tower for days, weeks, or months were waking up.
And they were waking up to hell.
The sudden absence of the signal didn't bring clarity. It brought reality.
People were collapsing in the sand. They were clutching their stomachs, vomiting dry dust. Days of suppressed hunger, blistering thirst, and muscle atrophy hit them all at once. The dopamine high was gone, replaced by the agonizing crash of a starving, dehydrated body.
"Mother of God," Hemingway whispered, stepping up to the screens. "They're dying out there."
Jason watched a man in tattered clothes try to stand, only to fall back, his legs too weak to support him. A woman nearby was frantically digging in the dirt with bleeding fingernails, looking for a drop of moisture.
It was a sea of writhing, suffering humanity.
"We turned off the anesthetic," Amelia said softly, leaning against a server rack. "But we didn't cure the disease. Ezra kept them numb. Now they feel everything."
"They're going to tear each other apart for a drop of water," Hughes said, wiping grease from his face.
Then, the situation got worse.
Hemingway pointed to Camera Six. "The wolves are waking up too."
On the far edge of the camp, near a cluster of heavy transport trucks, the Timber Baron guards were recovering from the feedback loop.
There were two dozen of them. Cyborgs. Chainsaw arms, rivet guns, and hydraulic legs.
Without the Tower's signal keeping them docile, their brutal programming and wasteland survival instincts slammed back into place.
They saw the chaos. They saw the weak, thrashing civilians.
And they did what wolves do. They started to cull the herd.
A cyborg raised a heavy rivet gun.
THWACK.
A six-inch steel bolt tore through the chest of a screaming man. He dropped instantly.
"Quiet!" the cyborg roared through an external speaker. The mechanical voice echoed across the camp. "Return to your positions! Compliance is mandatory!"
The Barons didn't care about the signal being gone. They only cared about order. And to a cyborg, order meant obedience or death.
They formed a loose perimeter around their supply trucks—the only source of food and water for miles—and began herding the civilians back into the dirt using the flat sides of their chainsaw blades.
"They're slaughtering them," O'Malley growled, his knuckles white on his rifle. "We have to go out there. We have to stop them."
"With what?" Hughes snapped, his panic rising. "We have ten bullets left! The War Rig is dead! The battery is fused slag! If we walk out that door, we're target practice!"
"How long to fix the truck?" Jason asked, his eyes never leaving the screens.
"I can't fix it!" Hughes threw his hands up. "I need a new power source! A massive one! I'd have to physically pull the Tower's main generator from the sub-basement and jury-rig it to the drivetrain. It will take thirty minutes, minimum!"
"We don't have thirty minutes," Jason said. "The Barons are going to breach this bunker looking for whoever turned off the music. They'll be at that door in five."
Jason looked at the terrified civilians cowering before the cyborgs. He remembered his father's cold, calculating voice. Freedom is inefficient. I brought order to the chaos.
Ezra had turned these people into sheep. And when the shepherd left, he left them to the wolves.
Jason felt a cold, familiar rage burning in his chest. It was the same rage that had made him unleash the Logic Bomb years ago. The rage against systems that crushed people for the sake of "efficiency."
He wasn't going to run. And he wasn't going to let Ezra win.
"We aren't running," Jason said, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. "We're going to give them some efficiency."
He sat down in the command chair. He pulled the heavy microphone headset toward him.
"What are you doing?" Hemingway asked.
"Starting a fire," Jason said.
He flipped the master switch on the PA system. He cranked the gain dial to maximum. He tied the feed not just to the bunker, but to every loudspeaker, siren, and comms relay in the valley.
He didn't offer comfort. He didn't offer a prayer.
He offered a target.
"Listen to me!" Jason's voice boomed across the desert. It echoed off the canyon walls, rolling over the camp like thunder.
The screaming stopped. The civilians froze, looking up at the Tower. Even the cyborgs paused, their saws idling.
"They stole your minds!" Jason roared into the mic. "They stole your dreams! They kept you numb while they starved you in the dirt!"
He slammed his fist onto the lighting control panel.
CLACK-CLACK-CLACK.
Massive stadium floodlights around the Barons' supply trucks snapped on. They cut through the pre-dawn gloom, illuminating the cyborgs in harsh, unforgiving white light.
And behind the cyborgs, the light hit the water tanks. Thousands of gallons of clean, blue water. Pallets of military rations.
"There is the water!" Jason shouted. "There are the monsters who took it from you! They have guns, but they bleed! Take it back!"
He didn't say another word. He let the mic drop.
For one second, there was total silence in the desert.
The cyborgs raised their weapons, preparing to fire a warning volley.
But they were too late.
A starving mother, her clothes rags and her face sunken, picked up a jagged rock. She didn't scream. She just threw it.
CLANG.
It bounced off a cyborg's armored chest plate.
The cyborg leveled its rivet gun at her.
Before it could pull the trigger, the dam broke.
Thousands of starving, desperate people surged forward. They didn't run away. They ran straight at the guns.
It was a tidal wave of human desperation.
"Jesus," O'Malley breathed, watching the monitors.
It was like watching army ants take down a beetle. The cyborgs opened fire. Rivets tore through the front line of the crowd. Chainsaws ripped through flesh and bone. Blood sprayed across the sand.
But the crowd didn't stop. They didn't care about dying anymore. They only cared about the water.
They swarmed over the cyborgs. Hundreds of hands grabbed at the machines. They tore at exposed wires. They jammed rocks into hydraulic joints. Starving men bit into rubber coolant lines, tearing them out with their teeth.
A cyborg swung his saw, cutting three people in half. A second later, fifty more piled on top of him, burying him under a mountain of bodies. The saw whined, choked on flesh, and died.
Jason watched the massacre on the screen. His face was a mask of cold stone.
It was brutal. It was ugly. And it was necessary.
He had turned victims into a weapon.
"The distraction is set," Jason said, turning away from the screens. He looked at Hughes. "The Barons are busy. Go get my battery."
Hughes swallowed hard, staring at Jason with a mix of awe and horror. "Sub-basement. There's a freight elevator down the hall."
"Lead the way," Jason grabbed his rifle.
They left the control room, the sound of the riot echoing through the bunker's ventilation shafts.
Hughes found the heavy steel doors of the freight elevator. He hit the override switch. The doors groaned open, revealing a dark, utilitarian shaft.
They climbed in. The elevator descended with a shuddering jolt, taking them deep beneath the Tower.
"The main generator should be right below the Wetware floor," Hughes said, checking his datapad. "It's a high-yield Gates-Cell. It'll have enough juice to fry our tires if we aren't careful."
The elevator stopped. The doors hissed open.
Hughes stepped out into the dark. He cracked another chemical flare.
The red light washed over the room.
Hughes stopped dead. The flare dropped from his hand.
"Oh, no," Hughes whispered.
Jason stepped out behind him.
They hadn't found a machine room. They had found the heart.
In the center of the room sat a massive, glowing blue reactor. It was beautiful, humming with raw power.
But it wasn't just a battery.
Thick, transparent umbilical cords ran from the top of the reactor directly up into the ceiling. They pulsed with blue light, pumping aerated fluid and power upward.
Directly to the Wetware tanks on the floor above.
The power source they needed to escape was the life support system for the hundreds of human brains trapped in the Tower.
"Boss," O'Malley said softly. "If we take that battery..."
"I know," Jason said, staring at the pulsing cords. "We kill them all."