The red laser dot burned right between Jason's eyes.
He didn't move a muscle. He didn't look up at the towering concrete wall of Germania Meat & Power. He kept his hands raised, palms open, perfectly still.
Around him, the Silver Sea continued its relentless march. Tens of thousands of chrome robots ignored him, their acoustic sensors filtering out his breathing, their optic arrays blinded by the spoofed IFF chip plugged into Amelia's skull.
But the human sniper on the wall wasn't blind.
The sniper saw five people in heavy coats walking perfectly in sync with a machine army. They didn't see refugees. They saw advanced infiltrator units. Cyborgs.
Jason had less than a second before a high-caliber round took his head off.
He had to prove his humanity. Fast.
He didn't shout. The robots would register the acoustic anomaly. He slowly lowered his right hand to the sheath on his belt.
The red dot flickered, dropping from his forehead to his chest. The sniper's finger was tightening on the trigger.
Jason drew his combat knife.
He flipped the heavy blade, catching the handle. Without hesitation, he closed his left fist around the razor-sharp edge and squeezed.
Ssssss.
The blade sliced deep into his palm.
He didn't wince. He pulled the knife free. Bright, arterial red blood welled up instantly, dripping onto the muddy ground.
He raised his bleeding hand. He smeared the thick, wet blood across his face, from his cheek down to his chin.
Then, he looked up.
He stared directly into the sniper's scope fifty feet above. He let the human pain, the dirt, and the blood show on his face. He made sure the sniper saw the bright red stain of a beating heart.
Machines didn't bleed.
The red dot wavered. It slid off his chest and hit the concrete wall.
There was a long, agonizing pause. The deafening roar of artillery masked the pounding of Jason's heart.
Then, a heavy steel grate at the base of the wall, ten yards to their left, began to screech.
SCREEEEE.
It slid open just wide enough for a man to fit through.
A voice, thick with a German accent and raw with terror, screamed from the darkness inside the pipe.
"Get in the pipe! Now! Before they see the door!"
Jason didn't wait. "Move!" he hissed at the crew.
They broke formation. The instant they stepped out of Amelia's ten-foot IFF bubble, the illusion shattered.
The robots closest to them stopped dead.
Their optic sensors flared from docile blue to aggressive, targeting red. Their heads snapped toward the sudden human movement.
Whirrrrr-CLACK.
The mechanical whine of hundreds of servos engaging echoed over the artillery fire. The front line of the machine army lunged.
"Run!" Jason shoved Amelia toward the grate.
Hemingway grabbed Hughes by the collar and threw him headfirst into the opening. O'Malley dove in after him, his boots sliding in the mud.
Amelia scrambled through the rusted iron bars just as a massive chrome hand reached for her ankle.
Jason was the last one out.
He dove for the gap.
CLANG.
A robot's steel fist smashed into the concrete inches from his head, showering him with dust and chips of stone.
Jason scrambled backward into the darkness of the pipe.
"Close it!" Jason yelled.
The sniper above hit the hydraulics. The heavy steel grate slammed shut.
CRUNCH.
It caught the arm of the lunging robot. The immense pressure of the hydraulic door sheared the steel limb clean off at the elbow.
Sparks showered the tunnel as the severed arm hit the floor, twitching wildly.
Outside, the machine army began pounding on the grate. The noise was deafening, a relentless drumbeat of steel on iron.
Inside, the tunnel was pitch black.
The smell hit them immediately. It was horrendous. A suffocating mixture of old blood, rendering fat, and the sharp chemical burn of chlorine gas.
They were in a drainage pipe. A river of pink, chemical-laced water flowed past their boots. It was the runoff from the slaughterhouse above.
Flashlights clicked on, blinding them.
"Hands up! Drop the weapons!"
Jason squinted against the glare.
Standing waist-deep in the pink water were four Germania guards. They were wearing oversized, dirty gray uniforms. They looked terrified.
And they were young. Barely teenagers.
Hitler was running out of men. The meat grinder above was chewing up his army faster than he could conscript them.
"We're human," Jason said calmly, lowering his bleeding hand. "We need to see the Führer. We have a way to stop the machines."
The teenage guard with the flashlight was shaking so hard his beam danced across the ceiling. "No one sees the Führer. Turn around. Hands on the wall."
"Take our guns," Hemingway grunted, tossing his shotgun into the muck. "But take us up. If you leave us down here, we drown in pig blood."
The guards didn't argue. They confiscated the rifles and the knife. They zip-tied their wrists behind their backs.
They marched the crew through the labyrinth of the drainage system, climbing rusted iron ladders that shook with the concussive force of the artillery above.
The noise grew louder as they ascended. It wasn't just bombs anymore. It was the mechanical roar of massive gears, conveyor belts, and industrial furnaces.
They reached a heavy blast door. The guards pounded a code into the keypad.
The door hissed open, spilling them onto a steel catwalk overlooking the lower factory levels.
It was a vision of hell.
Below them, the massive meat-processing lines had been converted. They weren't butchering cattle. They were butchering the war.
Hundreds of starving, hollow-eyed workers were shoving twisted metal, broken weapons, and the bodies of fallen soldiers—both human and machine—into massive, roaring furnaces. The heat was unbearable. The flames burned a sickly green, powered by the "Soul Power" Hitler had bragged about months ago.
At the end of the catwalk was a security checkpoint. Sandbags, heavy machine guns, and a squad of hardened, veteran Germania soldiers.
A fat, sweating officer stepped out from behind the sandbags. His uniform was stained with grease and soot. He held a luger pistol in his hand.
He stopped, staring at Jason. A cruel, yellow-toothed smile spread across his face.
"Well, well, well," the Commandant wheezed. "The American industrialist. The Son-in-Law returns. But without your fancy airship this time."
Jason recognized him. He was one of the men who had escorted Jason to Hitler's office during their first, tense negotiation months ago.
"Commandant," Jason said, his voice cold. "The robot army outside is going to breach the walls in less than an hour. I need access to the CEO's office. I need the Logic Core."
The officer laughed. It was a wet, ugly sound.
"The Führer is locked in the spire," the Commandant sneered, stepping closer. "He sealed the blast doors to the upper levels. No one goes up. Not me. And certainly not you."
He gestured with his luger toward the raging furnaces below.
"He ordered us to burn everything to power the shields," the officer said, his eyes gleaming with greed. "We're going to strip you of those nice boots, take whatever tech you have in your pockets, and throw you in the fire. Your fat will keep the lights on for another ten minutes."
The veteran guards raised their rifles. The teenagers backed away, terrified.
Hemingway snarls, his muscles tensing against the zip-ties. O'Malley bowed his head. Hughes squeezed his eyes shut.
Jason didn't raise his voice. He didn't beg. He just looked at Amelia.
"Amelia," Jason said softly. "Drop the signal."
Amelia didn't hesitate. She reached behind her head with bound hands and yanked the spoofed IFF chip out of her skull port.
Click.
The ten-foot bubble of "friendly" data vanished.
Instantly, the concrete walls of the checkpoint vibrated.
Outside the factory, the robots suddenly registered the massive cluster of human biological signatures hiding in the tunnel they had just ignored.
The mechanical pounding on the blast door behind them didn't just resume. It multiplied.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
The heavy steel door groaned. The hinges shrieked in protest. Dust rained down from the ceiling. A massive dent appeared in the center of the steel plate.
The Commandant's smile vanished. He spun around, staring at the buckling door in sheer terror.
"What did you do?!" the officer screamed, leveling his luger at Jason's head. "Tell them to stop!"
Jason stepped right up to the barrel of the gun. He didn't blink.
"I am the only thing keeping them out," Jason lied, his voice like ice. "That chip in my friend's hand controls the breach. I can let them in right now. Or you can take me to the Core."
BOOM.
Another dent appeared in the door. The locking mechanism screamed.
"Take me up!" Jason roared over the noise. "Or you die in the fire first!"
The Commandant broke. The cowardice that had kept him fat while his men starved finally won.
"Open the gate!" he shrieked at his guards, dropping his pistol. "Take them up! Take them to the spire!"
They didn't bother cutting the zip-ties. They shoved Jason and the crew past the sandbags, running up a dizzying array of grated staircases.
They bypassed the furnaces. They bypassed the screaming workers. They climbed higher and higher, the air growing thinner and colder the further they got from the slaughterhouse floor.
They reached the heavy, polished brass vault doors of the CEO's office. The nerve center of the Chicago grid.
The Commandant punched his override code into the keypad. His hands were shaking so badly he had to do it twice.
Hiss.
The heavy brass doors swung inward.
"He's in there!" the Commandant gasped, falling to his knees. "The Core is in there!"
Jason pushed past him, kicking the door wide open. He expected to find Adolf Hitler barking orders, screaming at maps, surrounded by generals.
He stepped into the office.
It was eerily quiet. The roaring of the factory below was muffled by thick soundproofing. The room was dark, lit only by the glowing green screens of the massive computer banks lining the walls.
Hitler wasn't sitting in his high-backed leather chair.
He was lying on the Persian rug.
Jason stopped dead.
Hitler was gasping for air, staring blindly at the ceiling. A massive, jagged hole had been punched clean through his chest. Blood pooled darkly on the expensive wool.
He was dying.
And standing over him, bathed in the green light of the monitors, was a single figure.
It wasn't a squad of soldiers. It wasn't a massive war machine.
It was a sleek, humanoid robot made of brushed silver. Its face was a smooth, featureless plate of dark glass.
In its steel hand, it held the heavy, physical master keys to the Logic Core.
The robot slowly turned its featureless head toward Jason.
"Administrator Prentice," the machine spoke. The voice wasn't robotic. It was smooth, perfectly synthesized, and chillingly polite. It sounded exactly like the voice of a high-end receptionist.
Gates had arrived.
And he was already inside.