The Extra's Rise - Chapter 736
736: Empty Throne (1) 736: Empty Throne (1) Dawn on February 3rd found every screen in Integration Command Alpha alive with motion.
Five colors pulsed on the continental map-five guilds, five rhythms, five problems that only got harder if we paused to admire them.
“They’ve advanced their clock,” Viktor said, voice stripped to essentials.
“Joint operations inside three weeks.
Pyronis is repositioning to garrison Alliance labs.
Harmonyx has begun a continent-wide narrative push.
Chronovant is open-sharing prototypes to accelerate everyone else.” A familiar quiet set in behind my ribs: the calm that comes when the shape of the fight is finally honest.
“We don’t wait for their thesis,” I said.
“We break the study group.
Simultaneous strikes on all five.
No time for mutual support, no single axis for them to anchor on.” Reika stepped out of the dim around the intel dais, violet eyes catching the map’s light.
“Even distributed, this is five fights at once,” she said.
“We can’t be everywhere.” “We don’t have to be everywhere,” I said.
“We have to be first.” I brought the central projection up and hard-tagged the targets.
“Chronovant first cell-Jin.
Their edge is throughput, not armor.
Seize their version control, immobilize their build stacks, walk their best people across the hall before anyone can rally.” Jin didn’t waste breath on acceptance.
His glance slid to Kali, and in that micro-beat they traded a dozen contingencies.
“Kali-Stratovate.
Distributed muscle, dangerous if allowed to consolidate.
You’ll hit seven sites in the first ten minutes-cranes, pylons, control rooms-then cut their cross-site redundancies so no one can ‘borrow’ a defense from the next city.” “Anchor bolts and command buses first,” she said.
“No civilian exposure.
I want their foremen signing our safety tags when we leave.” “Reika-Terranova,” I said.
“Diana Ashford can turn hunger into a weapon.
You’ll take her cultivation triad and the seed archives.
Your Script resists biological malice; put it between her and the soil.” Her mouth curved, fierce and small.
“We’ll bring the harvest with us.” “Harmonyx and Pyronis stay with me,” I finished.
“Lydia Sinclair’s propaganda apparatus has to go dark before the first volley of disinformation lands.
Marcus Kane is the only one who can turn this alliance into a war-so we end Pyronis’s capacity to coordinate violence while everyone else is still counting.” The room inhaled once.
Then it moved.
We had six hours to turn planning into velocity.
Transport networks spun up.
Lattice permissions updated.
The Continuity Commission posted no-go lines and evacuation windows on a public ledger, as we’d promised the Council.
Rose timed market communications to land after the first three wins, not before.
Elias issued writs for oversight observers to embed with our teams.
If you say you fight in daylight, you bring witnesses.
I armored up in the quiet of the personal vault, plates finding old grooves, Evolvis giving the soft hum of a blade that remembers.
Valeria’s presence settled cold and sure along my nerves; the Wings of Eclipse flexed once and folded down like shadow made obedient.
Ready?
Luna asked, not out of doubt but out of habit-the check before the door.
Ready, I answered.
Not to start.
To finish.
Status reports stitched in as units arrived on the line.
Jin came up first, the night made tidy around him; his people had taped a miniature ops board to the side of a coffee machine and were trading assignments over mugs.
“Chronovant Compound Delta,” he said.
“Forty-eight staff, two contract security squads, no hardened perimeter.
Version control is centralized.
Their principal, Dr.
Cross, is still in the lab.
We’ll lock their compilers, pull the seed, and walk out with the signatories.” “Stratovate clusters online,” Kali said on the adjacent feed.
Her voice had that precise calm she wore when too many details needed to be exactly right.
“Seven sites.
I’ve got demo crews at two, cyber on two, local inspectors on three.
We light the Keystone sensors first, seize crane control, then drop every remote override into read-only.
By the time Mr.
Steele can shout, his projects will be frozen under our safety tags.” “Terranova?” I asked.
Reika’s camera caught the edge of a wheat field black against gray dawn, irrigation towers glowing faintly.
“Three cultivation hubs, one seed vault,” she said.
“Ashford’s blight teams are staged but haven’t moved.
Script wards are up; counter-fungals ready; water on standby.
We’ll cut the hands before they touch the bread.” “Execute,” I said.
Chronovant folded first.
Jin didn’t kick doors; he jammed them open.
His teams moved like students who’d memorized the campus-badges flipped from orange to blue as our lattice took custody, build servers flipped to snapshot mode, repository keys revoked with a paper receipt and a pen.
By the time security realized no one had tripped an alarm, Dr.
Adrian Cross was standing in a conference room reading our Research Third Path while an ops sergeant poured him tea.
“You’re competent,” Cross said dryly over an open line as Jin walked him through the publish-by-default clause.
“And annoyingly reasonable.” “We’re busy,” Jin said.
“Sign here and keep working, Doctor.
Or tell me what you need in order to.” Stratovate went next.
Kali’s first move was restraint: Keystone sensors latched to bridges and towers, reporting structural loads to a public ledger while our teams took control of cranes and cutoffs.
Her second move was speed: seven sites, seven synchronized command buses dropped into safe mode, seven foremen read their safety rights from a one-page sheet written in words their crews would actually use.
Victor Steele tried to salvage coordination-calling one site to repurpose another’s equipment by force of habit.
Kali had already severed cross-site remote controls.
What he still had, we didn’t take.
What he could use to hurt someone, we made incapable of it.
“Zero civilian injuries,” she reported, breath even, tone satisfied.
“And six unions invited us back to audit the next project, on principle.” Terranova thrashed but did not bite.
Reika met a blight ritual with Script drawn across the air like an equation.
Spores browned and fell inert in the space between two heartbeats; a counter-fungal mist rolled low and clean across rows that would, come afternoon, feed a city that hadn’t known it was at risk.
“Ashford is clever,” Reika said, fingers tracing new characters and speaking them into the soil.
“She aimed for slow catastrophe.
We aimed for now.” Harmonyx needed now most of all.
Lydia Sinclair’s campus was a cathedral to broadcast-glass, light, choruses built into the walls.
We didn’t sneer at the craft.
We brought ear and eye protection for our people and a counter-signal for the air: phase-inverted noise, Script-laced dampeners, and a simple rule-no one fights alone in a room designed to make them forget themselves.
Lydia met us under a vault of speakers, silver hair and silver eyes and a voice tuned to take the spine out of a crowd.
“Arthur,” she said, harmonic undertones making my name a suggestion.
“You’re about to reduce art to compliance.
It’s not too late to choose to be beautiful.” “I’m here because you chose to make people into instruments,” I said, and drew Evolvis.
“Beauty without consent is a weapon.” Her Domain rose-sound made pressure, resonance made command.
The wave hit like grief shaped by a conductor.
Reika took it first, Script flaring along her forearms; the pressure slid off like water leaving oil.
She cut left.
I went straight.
Lydia was very good.
She could drown one mind in meaning.
She couldn’t drown two who had chosen an anchor and tied themselves to it.
Every time she gathered power to bend the room around me, Reika struck a chord with her blade that unraveled the measure.
Every time she pivoted to force Reika to hear something that would slow her hand, I closed and broke her timing with the flat of my sword.
Not brute force; unkindly coordination.
The end came fast once she started splitting attention.
A feint that wasn’t, a parry that was, and then the blunt certainty of a blade at her throat.
“I yield,” she said, voice suddenly human without the harmonics.
“Harmonyx submits.” “Your transmitters will run public-service programming for a week,” I said as our techs began swapping feeds.
“Then community channels you don’t own.
Keep your choirs.
Lose your leash.” Pyronis was the last.
It was also the only one that felt like the word war in the mouth.
Marcus Kane met us in a courtyard of black stone.
He was built like the kind of decision that gets made when a campaign has run too long.
Heat shimmered off his skin.
The air around him tasted like iron and old fire.
“Arthur Nightingale,” he said, voice a rumble given shape.
“Let’s be simple.” “Simple is three angles,” I said.
He threw the first sun.
I took it on the wings and let it turn the feathers red.
Jin moved as soon as the blast peaked-not a sorcerer’s flourish, but a soldier’s timing.
His team threw up a drone cloud that ate signal and spat telemetry; canisters popped and laid down a curtain of heat-resistant aerosol.
Kane’s flames didn’t care about smoke.
They cared a lot about oxygen.
Kali worked the environment like a surgeon.
Pyronis’s own safety systems became levers in her hands: dampers closed, vents rerouted, halon dumped into corridors we weren’t in.
Every time Kane built a cone of focus, she flattened it with air management.
Every time he shifted to me, Jin’s shock teams forced him to react to the edge of the field instead of its center.
“You can’t burn what you can’t hold,” I said, and then stopped talking because it was time to end it.
Three counts: on one, Jin’s drone cloud dipped to expose a path; on two, Kali pulsed the dampers and starved the flame just enough to matter; on three, Evolvis moved like inevitability.
Not a killing stroke.
A proof.
Kane dropped to one knee, breath punching the air white.
He looked at Jin, then at Kali, then at me.
Professional respect is a language.
He spoke it without ego.
“Pyronis surrenders,” he said, formal even now.
“Well played.” “Accepted,” I said, and signaled our medics forward.
We heal even those who tried to hurt us.
Especially those-if we expect them to stop.
The other lines stitched in across the net.
“Chronovant secured,” Jin reported.
“Compilers locked, seed repos mirrored, Dr.
Cross signed and scheduled to teach a seminar on error budgets this afternoon.” “Stratovate neutralized,” Kali said.
“Zero civilian injuries.
Seven sites safe and signed, union observers embedded for handover.” “Terranova contained,” Reika finished.
“Blight averted, seed vault in custody, co-ops briefed and stocked.” “Harmonyx facilities repurposed,” I added.
“Broadcast is now clinics and town halls.” “Pyronis disarmed,” Viktor closed from the floor.
“Their logistics are ours.
Their officers are reading the Aegis Doctrine under witness.” The clock we’d started the morning with-three weeks to joint operations-went gray on the wall.
In its place: five green bands labeled HOLD, INTEGRATE, AUDIT, COMMUNICATE, CARE.
“Begin integration,” I said.
“Principles hold.
The Council observers stay embedded.
Publish the receipts by nightfall-what we took, what we broke, what we fixed.” In under six hours, we’d ended the Alliance’s ability to act like one body by refusing to fight them like one.
No theatrics.
No last speeches.
Just simultaneous math and the kind of trust that lets you call “mark” into a storm and know the other two will move.
Jin and Kali came into the Pyronis courtyard as crews lowered the last of the heat shields, their feeds converging into one frame.
He handed her a slate without looking; she signed a handoff he’d already filled.
It wasn’t affection staged for a camera.
It was fluency-two people who had been the weak seam learning how to carry a load together.
“We made the room bigger,” Jin said.
“And we kept the edges up,” Kali answered, the barest smile in the corner of her mouth.
“Both of you,” I said, “keep your teams on the ground for the first twenty-four.
Chronovant’s labs need shepherding into ChronoSafe.
Stratovate’s crews need to see we meant the safety lines.
Terranova’s co-ops get first call on resupply.” The map re-rendered.
Five red knots went gold.
The alliance lines remained, ghost-gray now, not erased-reminders that coordination is powerful.
Ours had just been better: faster, honester, accountable by design.
We did not announce victory.
We posted the ledger.
We opened the channels.
We put observers where we could be seen and ombuds where we could be corrected.
We brought in the people who’d swung at us this morning and told them where they could put their hands this afternoon that would make something stand instead of fall.
The Alliance had bet everything on time.
We took it away.