Divorced on Monday, Bought the City on Tuesday: The Infinite

The March of Goliath

Chapter 49

The Kremlin was heavily fortified, but Lord Romanov didn't trust government walls. He trusted his own.

Hidden deep within the frozen tundra of Siberia, Romanov’s private fortress was a monument to brute force and paranoia. Built entirely of reinforced titanium and buried beneath thirty feet of permafrost, it was designed to withstand a direct nuclear strike.

Inside the central command bunker, Romanov paced furiously, his heavy boots echoing off the metal floor. He was a massive, scarred man, his thick beard bristling with raw fury.

"Roth’s bunker went completely dark," his Chief of Security reported, his voice tight with barely suppressed panic. "Our recon satellites confirm the banking syndicate has collapsed. The armada in the Mediterranean is unresponsive. My Lord, Vance isn't fighting a corporate war. He is systematically eradicating the bloodlines."

"He thinks he can eradicate me?!" Romanov roared, backhanding the security chief across the face, sending the man sprawling. "I am not a weak old man hiding behind bank ledgers! I command the largest standing private army on Earth! Activate the Siberian Defense Grid! Scramble the interceptor jets! I want every anti-air battery locked onto the airspace!"

"My Lord," a radar technician interrupted, his eyes wide as he stared at his glowing terminal. "We don't have any incoming aircraft. There are no thermal spikes in the stratosphere."

Romanov scowled, marching toward the monitors. "Then how is he attacking?"

"He... he isn't in the air, sir," the technician swallowed hard, pointing a trembling finger at the seismic readout. "He’s on the ground. And he's moving fast."

On the screen, a massive, singular red dot was rapidly approaching the fortress coordinates. It wasn't a tank. It wasn't a mechanized walker. The biometric scan indicated a single, bipedal entity.

"A single man?" Romanov sneered, spitting on the floor. "He sent one man to breach my fortress? Deploy the heavy mechanized infantry! Grind him into the snow!"

Outside, the Siberian tundra was a frozen wasteland of howling wind and blinding snow.

Marching through the blizzard, completely unaffected by the sub-zero temperatures, was Goliath.

The ten-foot-tall Apex Vanguard wore jagged, asymmetrical dark-matter armor that absorbed the ambient light. He carried a massive, double-bladed battleaxe that burned with intense thermal energy, melting the snow into steam with every step.

Over the ridge, fifty mechanized walkers—bipedal tanks armed with twin-linked rotary cannons crested the hill, aiming directly at the lone giant.

"Target sighted!" the lead tank commander shouted over the external speakers. "Open fire!"

A deafening barrage of armor-piercing depleted uranium rounds tore across the tundra, tearing up the snow and slamming into Goliath’s chest.

Goliath didn't flinch. He didn't even slow his pace.

The rounds shattered against his dark-matter armor, flattening into harmless kinetic dust. The Vanguard simply raised his massive thermal battleaxe and slammed the blunt end into the frozen earth.

BOOM.

The impact triggered a localized tectonic shift. A massive fissure ripped through the permafrost, racing directly toward the line of mechanized tanks. The earth opened up beneath them, swallowing twenty of the walkers whole before slamming shut again, crushing them into scrap metal.

"Mother of God..." the lead commander whispered, staring at the carnage.

Goliath didn't stop. He broke into a terrifying, earth-shaking sprint.

He collided with the lead walker like a freight train, his shoulder dropping into the chassis. The fifty-ton tank was launched completely off the ground, spinning through the air before crashing in a fiery explosion. Goliath swung his burning axe, cleaving two more walkers completely in half in a single, devastating arc.

Inside the bunker, Romanov watched the live feed in absolute horror. His invincible mechanized army was being dismantled by a single entity swinging a glowing axe.

"Fire the heavy artillery!" Romanov screamed, his face purple with rage and terror. "Nuke the grid! I don't care about the collateral! Kill it!"

"Sir, the artillery batteries are offline!" the technician cried out, typing frantically. "Something is overriding the automated targeting systems! It's a localized digital virus!"

Romanov froze.

From the shadows in the corner of the bunker, a sharp, electronic snap echoed in the quiet room.

Nyx stepped out of the darkness.

She wasn't physically there, of course. She was thousands of miles away in San Marcos. But her holographic projection, generated by a microscopic nanite drone she had snuck into the bunker’s ventilation system, stood casually near Romanov’s command chair. She was chewing her pink bubblegum, her neon-green eyes glowing with digital malice.

"You guys have terrible firewalls," Nyx chirped, popping a bubble. "I've been in your system for twenty minutes. Boss says it’s time to surrender."

"Shut it down!" Romanov roared, drawing a heavy revolver and firing a shot directly into the holographic projection. The bullet passed harmlessly through Nyx’s image and shattered a monitor behind her.

Nyx sighed dramatically. "Okay. Hard way it is. Goliath, the doors are unlocked."

Above ground, Goliath didn't bother with the main entrance. He walked to the exact center of the fortress footprint. He raised his burning battleaxe high above his head and drove it downward with every ounce of his Apex-tier kinetic strength.

The blow shattered thirty feet of permafrost and reinforced titanium.

The ceiling of the command bunker violently caved in.

Massive chunks of concrete and steel rained down on Romanov's men. The alarms shrieked as the sub-zero Siberian wind howled into the underground facility.

Goliath dropped through the hole, landing with an earth-shattering crash right in front of Romanov's command desk. The giant stood slowly, the thermal energy radiating from his armor melting the snow that drifted in through the breached ceiling.

Romanov dropped his revolver. His massive frame trembled as he looked up at the towering Vanguard. He had spent his entire life bullying the world with military force. Now, he was staring at the physical embodiment of absolute destruction.

"I... I surrender," Romanov choked out, falling to his knees. "Tell Vance... tell him I yield."

Nyx’s holographic projection smiled cheerfully. "Good choice, big guy. I’ll draft the paperwork."