The wind screamed over the frozen freight pass, cutting through sheet-metal canisters and armored convoys like serrated breath. Somewhere near the Texas-Mexico border, the Eclipse Hide Convoy snaked its way through the icy switchbacks, its cargo swaddled in blackout tarps and high-grade frost seals. The world around them was white noise—until it wasn't.
Inside a salvaged desert crawler, jury-rigged with signal scramblers and patched exhaust coils, Mandark and Tye rode in silence. A storm of nerves lingered between them. The kind of quiet reserved for gamblers with everything on the line.
Tye flexed his fingers, his black eel-glove twitching subtly, like it was stretching before the real sprint.
"You think it'll work?" he asked, not looking away from the cold-lit readouts dancing across the glove.
Mandark grinned from under the hood of his patchwork scarf, eyes glued to the glowing holo-map that flickered with proximity pulses.
"If we play this just right? It won't work. It'll unravel." He exhaled. "Glorious, glorious chaos."
The mic in Tye's ear buzzed with a familiar, sharp voice.
Martinaz's voice chirped in: "All channels hot. Party chat enabled. You're all live. Welcome to the dumbest plan you've ever loved."
Soule: "Damn right. I even brought a playlist. Lemme know when I can drop track one: 'Boom Boom Sneak'."
"Absolutely not," Martinaz snapped. "You trigger my neural gag reflex."
The crawler hit the throttle, rumbling over frost-slicked gravel as its engine bellowed like a dying beast. Snow blasted backward. HUDs blinked. Heartbeats synced. This was it.
They were wolves under ice—about to strike.
Phase One: Hit the Convoy
Cuh dropped from the crawler roof like a meteor in a shark-vest. His boots crunched on the armored top of the rear transport as his gills flared with heat-sink pulses. With a grunt, he gripped the frost-slick hatch and tore it open like a sardine lid. A guard inside yelped, barely raising his rifle before Cuh tossed him headfirst into a crate of cryo-boxes.
"Rear's clear," Cuh grunted. "Smells like wet socks and fear back here."
High above the ridge, Wavi dashed like wind-blur in his grip-hardened GEAR boots, every step calculated and fluid. "Forward runners spotted. Three. I'll handle 'em. Ten seconds."
Soule, crouched behind a busted outcropping of rock and rebar, grinned. "Guess who brought glitter bombs?"
He tossed a small silver sphere into the air. It popped—pop-hiss!—sending a crackle of violet EMP waves spiraling outward. Cameras fried. Alarms hiccupped. The central surveillance grid blinked off.
Martinaz: "Tye, now. Get inside while everyone's blind."
Tye dove through a side hatch and into the belly of the lead truck. Cold, sterile, and humming with static.
"This feels too easy," he whispered.
Martinaz: "No such thing. Keep moving."
Echoes in the Snow
Snow exploded as if the mountains themselves had sneezed, and all hell broke loose.
The convoy, already fraying at the seams from the earlier EMP burst, collapsed into a full-blown war zone.
Eclipse soldiers shouted encrypted commands into malfunctioning comms as laser fire split the fog. From above, the sky shimmered with flashes of bio-light—The Wayfarers had arrived, gliding down in patterns that mimicked schooling fish, landing with eerie, synchronized grace.
"Party crashers," Mandark muttered, ducking a plasma round.
Gilashot landed in the chaos like a meteor, platinum wings snapping open with mechanical fury, eyes scanning for Tye.
Mandark, Cuh, and Wavi fell into formation—three scars on the battlefield pushing against impossible odds.
Barracuda Lancer lunged at Cuh with a spinning harpoon strike, only for Mandark to blast the shaft aside with the pistol shrimp gauntlet, sending sparks across the snow.
A tank of a man—Urchin Core—thundered forward like a battering ram, catching Wavi and throwing him across the snow in a tumble of steam and blood.
"Hold the line!" Mandark shouted.
But there were too many lines, and too many enemies, and everything was breaking at once.
The Wayfarers dropped in like ocean ghosts, landing hard on Eclipse guards.
Cuh, Mandark, and Wavi fought back-to-back.
"Where's Tye?" Wavi shouted.
"Occupied!" Mandark yelled. "Watch the spear guy!"
And through the fog, like wolves answering a silent call, Dustwalker and Gilashot swept in from the ridge, flanking both the Eclipse soldiers and Salt Choir fighters. The air turned electric.
Wavi didn't hesitate.
"Dustwalker!" he shouted.
Their eyes locked, and the world faded around them.
Wavi vs. Dustwalker
They weren't strangers.
Five years earlier, before they were agents or in factions, Wavi had entered the underground martial circuit in Eclipses Hide. The scene was brutal—GEAR-enhanced fighters with no rules and no mercy. Wavi fought clean, fast, precise.
Dustwalker had been different then. Known only as 'Ash' back in those days. Silent. Surgical. The only person who had ever dropped Wavi in under three minutes. A clean knockout. No words. No gloat. Just vanishing smoke.
Wavi never forgot that fight—the hit that knocked him out, the audience's silence, the way Ash walked off like it was nothing. No glory. Just efficiency.
Now, staring across the snowy battlefield, Wavi didn't see an Eclipse agent. He saw the ghost of his only loss.
"Been waitin' for this," Wavi muttered.
Dustwalker tilted his head, visor glowing. "You remember."
"Every damn second."
Speed met precision. Wavi's jackrabbit bursts and sonic strikes couldn't land clean.
Dustwalker phased left, blurred right, caught Wavi with a brutal coyote-claw uppercut.
Wavi spat blood. "You hit like an drunk stepdad."
Dustwalker didn't smile. "You talk too much."
He dove forward—but Wavi anticipated the flicker, let the hit pass through, and dropped a thunder-kick to Dustwalker's temple knocking his helmet off.
Dustwalker hit the snow.