They are everywhere.Jax hit the ground hard, his boots sinking into six inches of frozen slush. The drop pod had barely stabilized before the first wave of automated fire tore through the hull. He rolled left, scrambled behind a rusted excavator, and counted his breaths. One. Two. Three.Behind him, the other eight members of Beta squad scattered into the ruins of what used to be a factory complex. The sky was black. Not night black. Smoke black. The kind of black that came from endless burning, endless industry, endless death.Unit Two took a round to the shoulder and went down hard. Unit Three dragged him behind a collapsed wall, her face tight with concentration. She didn't scream. None of them screamed anymore. They just moved.Jax peeked around the excavator. The trench stretched ahead of him, a winding scar carved into the frozen earth. It was filled with debris, broken machinery, and the skeletal remains of workers who had died long before

They didn't deserve to die. The words echoed in Jax's skull as he dug through the rubble with his bare hands. His fingers were bleeding. His vision was blurry. But he kept digging. He had to find them. Unit Four. Unit Three. They had to be alive.He pulled a chunk of concrete aside and found Unit Four's hand. Cold. Still. He grabbed it and pulled. Her body came free, limp and lifeless. Her eyes were open, staring at nothing.He let out a sound he didn't recognize. Half scream. Half sob.He kept digging.Unit Three was deeper. He found her pinned under a steel beam. She was breathing. Barely. He lifted the beam with a strength he didn't know he had and pulled her out.Her eyes fluttered open. "Jax?""Don't talk. Save your strength."She coughed blood. "The core?""Destroyed. The factory is shut down. But we need to get out of here."He looked around. The tunnel was blocked in both directions. R