"Why doesn’t matter right now."
John firmly interrupted Cissel, his voice cutting through the rising tension like a blade. He didn’t have the luxury of explaining the suffering, the dirty sches, and the killing attempts Mark had tried against him.
"What matters is that we are facing a lethal threat. That den out there isn’t just a normal den; it’s a portal linked to Earth. It’s going to unleash machines the sa way the Fog Seeker dens unleashed the yellow monsters, but with a terrifying difference. These won’t be the standard D-1000 units we’ve crushed before..."
"There will be S-1000s and perhaps even deadlier units coming," Ricky added, his brow furrowed as he pulled from his knowledge of machines.
"We heard enough of Mark’s gloating to understand that much. Still, we’ve upgraded our gear, attributes, and abilities. We’ve fought against the Fog Seekers, the Fog Wrathers, the yellow monsters, and the Bulltors. I doubt they’ll be able to evolve quickly enough to bypass the heavy fortifications you just built, or bypass us, right?"
He looked toward Cissel and Elena for confirmation. The two won nodded solemnly, their faces tight with concentration and different thoughts, but they remained silent.
As for Luke, he leaned against his massive club, the sheer complexity of the discussion clearly drifting beyond his usual blunt-force comprehension. He stayed quiet, his eyes darting between his friends, trying to absorb the gravity of the situation through their reactions.
"That’s not all," John said, shaking his head as he pulled up the map and checked it. "The problem isn’t just what’s in front of us. There are two other dens exactly like this one, situated in the neighbouring territories.
And you saw it yourselves, Mark can mobilise hundreds, maybe thousands, of human shells. We have to assu more dens will start appearing across different territories in a short ti."
"That’s not a problem we can’t solve," Luke interjected, finally finding his voice. He waved his club in a short, violent arc. "We stabilise this zone, then we march to the next territory and smash those dens too. We just do it one by one."
"That won’t work either," John countered, his expression darkening. "If we leave a territory unattended, if there’s no one there to suppress the spawned machines, the den will accelerate. It will skip ahead ten waves every hour.
Rember how we nearly got overrun by those three dens in the Hiveminds territory because of that exact chanic? We can’t risk letting even one of these territories untouched for many hours."
"..."
The realisation hit the four friends like a lightning strike. Their expressions dropped as the grim reality of their situation beca clear. They weren’t just fighting a battle; they were fighting a ticking bomb ready to explode if they made the wrong move at any given mont.
"Then... what are we supposed to do?" Cissel asked. The calm in her voice was a thin veil over the growing dread everyone felt. "We can’t be in three places at once, and we can’t let the waves escalate."
"We’ll have to work with exactly what we have," John said, shrugging his shoulders to loosen the tension in his back. "The top priority is the Bulltors. We have to send word to them imdiately. They think they’re marching to a simple cleanup operation against the Hiveminds, but they’re walking straight into a trap and a slaughter."
"The Hiveminds are setting a trap?!" Elena exclaid, her eyes widening in surprise. "I didn’t hear that program say anything about a coordinated ambush with the Hiveminds."
She turned to her friends, and the others shrugged, as they had no clue about what John just said, just like her.
"He didn’t have to," John calmly explained, pointing to the different directions as if he were pointing at the entire world. "Look at the layout. We have two territories with active machine dens sitting directly south of the Hiveminds new base, and the third is directly to the west.
Machines aren’t mindless monsters; they are highly intelligent bastards. The mont those dens hit a certain threshold, those machines won’t stay in their own territories.
They’ll make a run toward the Hiveminds new base to reinforce them and take the Bulltors army from the rear, killing them all and depriving us of the only source of reinforcents."
"This changes everything..." Elena whispered, her face pale. "What’s the plan, then? How do we stop a pincer move like that?"
"The distance between here and the Hivemind territory is several hours at a high speed run," Ricky said, his voice laced with frustration as he calculated the travel tis. "Can we even make it in ti to warn Blakar before the first wave of reinforcents hits them?"
"We can," John paused, a heavy silence falling over the area as he sighed. "I can. But that ans I’ll have to leave you four alone to handle the incoming machines. And we still have the other two territories to suppress. So..."
He moved his eyes slowly among his friends, letting the unspoken reality of the situation sink in. To survive this, they had to divide their strength, and they had to do it perfectly.
"Fine. I’ll go with Ricky then," Cissel said, cutting the debate short. She had anticipated this move. If John was going to save the Bulltors and then strike the southern-most den, the remaining four had to split into two-person teams to cover the remaining dens. By habit and past experience, she assud John would pair the two together.
"Not this ti," John said, shaking his head, much to her surprise. "You and Ricky are the two mbers most familiar with machine types, their combat habits, and their weak spots. I cannot afford to put the two of you in the sa team. We need that knowledge spread out."
"..."
John had spent the last few minutes weighing the pros and cons of every combination. The most comfortable option would have been to let the girls stay together, and the boys form the second team. However, being in the comfort zone wouldn’t win this war.
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