The emergency launch hangar of Archon Global lay hundreds of meters beneath the main facility, resembling a metallic womb that housed humanity’s final weapon.Yellow floodlights illuminated the gleaming silver hull of the command capsule that would carry Matthew beyond the atmosphere, where his thirty warships lay hidden in stealth mode.The air roared with the thunder of engines being primed. The sharp scent of ozone and hydrogen fuel saturated the space. Yet near the boarding ladder of the capsule, time itself seemed to stand still.Viviane stood there, her eyes red, but her gaze sharp. In her arms, she held Dominic, their two-month-old son. The infant was wrapped in a thick, bulletproof blanket, whimpering softly, disturbed by the harsh, deafening noise around him.Matthew approached slowly. His tactical combat suit clung to a body that now felt significantly weaker after the brutal toll exacted by the ARC System.His right arm remained us

The sky above New York City was no longer blue or gray. It had turned into a sickening black, streaked with flashes of purple from gravitational storms tearing through Earth’s atmosphere. Deep within the underground Monolith headquarters, the primary command center of the Archon Consortium felt as cold as a morgue.The massive screen on the main wall displayed a single image, the hull of the enemy Vanguard ship, so vast it obscured part of the moon’s orbit. At the center of that colossal steel body, a ring of deep crimson energy began to rotate."Energy report!" Viviane Lane’s voice shattered the suffocating silence. She stood rigid before the holographic projection table. Her fingers gripped its edge so tightly her knuckles turned white, hiding the tremor in her hands.Veronica Wu rushed to the main console. The usually composed woman now looked pale as paper. "Massive energy fluctuations detected from the Vanguard’s core, Mrs. Lane! Thi