The winds above the jagged canyons of Nevada howled like forgotten ghosts. Kairos stood at the edge of a crumbling plateau, eyes narrowed, nanites quietly pulsing beneath his skin. Next to him, Ben—still in her new female form—balanced carefully on a floating piece of metal shaped into a hoverboard by Kairos's nanites.
The sky overhead shimmered. The rift was opening again.
"They're coming through faster now," Ben said, voice softer than usual. Her hand brushed her side where her new form still felt unfamiliar. But she had stopped questioning it. She didn't know if she wanted to know the truth of what Kairos did that night when they fled Providence's ambush. Or why he always looked at her like he knew more than he ever let on.
"I know," Kairos replied. "And this one... this one isn't just another Herald. This is the Second. The one that sees through dimensions."
The rift exploded with violet light. Bolts of nanite lightning spiraled out of the sky and carved deep into the earth. The Herald descended—not as a beast, not as a drone, but as a humanoid being of pure adaptive nanites. Its form shimmered with phasing shapes, neither male nor female, but both. Tall, regal, and inhuman.
Ben stepped back. "It's... reading me. Like it knows what I am."
The Herald's voice spoke not aloud but directly into their minds.
"You are the Shifted One. The Chosen to balance the Paradox of Love and War."
Kairos clenched his fists. "Back off. She's not your target."
"No," the Herald replied. "You are."
In an instant, the Herald's arms morphed into lashing tendrils. The battle began.
Kairos's nanites surged. He threw up a defensive wall, but the Herald's strike shattered it in a blink. Ben transformed into XLR8, circling the Herald and distracting it just enough for Kairos to get close.
He activated the Mamachine core—only partially stabilized. His arms split into twin cannon-forged blades, humming with hyper-density nanite energy.
But the Herald anticipated it. With a motion, it unraveled the very molecules of space around Kairos's attack. Time bent for a fraction of a second.
"Kairos!" Ben shouted, launching a kinetic disk into the Herald's chest.
The blast barely staggered the being, but it was enough.
Kairos blinked into a new form—his skin hardened into crystalline metal, spikes forming along his back. A Mamachine mutation. The first time he'd shifted without triggering full core override.
He moved faster, struck cleaner. He hit the Herald in its weak point—a triangular array of blinking nodes at its side.
The Herald collapsed, its body fragmenting into whirling particles.
Before it vanished, it spoke one last message:
"You delay the inevitable. The Third comes... and she remembers what you forgot."
The rift closed. Silence returned to the canyon.
Ben dropped to her knees, panting. "That thing... was more alive than any EVO I've seen."
Kairos didn't answer. He was staring into the sky, eyes haunted.
"Hey," she said gently, "What did it mean—'she remembers what you forgot'?"
Kairos looked at her for a long moment, then turned away.
"Nothing. Just another shadow from another life."
Ben didn't press him.
Back in the remains of a hidden Providence facility, Dr. Holiday watched the surveillance footage on a secure channel. She paused the image on Kairos's mutated form. Agent Six stood beside her, silent.
"That's not an EVO," she said.
"No," Six replied. "That's something else entirely."
"Start the Level Nine protocol. If he's building Mamachines, the world isn't ready for him."
---
To be continued in Chapter 12: Tunguska Awakens
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Chapter 12: Tunguska Awakens
The cargo plane touched down hard on a frozen runway blanketed by swirling Siberian snow. The engines hissed, and the ramp lowered, revealing Kairos, Ben, and Rex stepping into the bitter wind.
"This place gives me the creeps," Rex muttered, pulling his jacket tighter.
Ben, wrapped in thermal gear and still adjusting to her transformation, scanned the endless white. "This is where it started... the original nanite explosion."
Kairos stared ahead, expression unreadable. "No. This is where something much worse sleeps."
They trekked for hours through dense forest and frozen wasteland until they arrived at a crater half a mile wide. Burnt trees encircled it like twisted claws. In the center, covered in layers of metal scaffolding and ice, was an ancient machine—larger than anything Rex or Ben had ever seen.
"The Tunguska Core," Kairos whispered.
Rex blinked. "This is the thing that started the nanite outbreak?"
"Part of it," Kairos said. "The core was one of seven anchors for the original Mamachine Hive... before the cataclysm."
Ben reached out and touched the icy surface. Her Omnitrix flickered violently.
"Kairos... it's responding to me."
A blast of energy surged outward. The ice cracked and melted in seconds. The machine awakened, ancient nanites lighting up with green and gold.
A holographic interface appeared, and an AI voice spoke in a language only Kairos understood.
"Access code confirmed: Architect. Directive—protect the Core from the Herald."
Rex stepped forward. "Wait... you're the Architect? You made this?"
Kairos said nothing. The look on his face was answer enough.
Suddenly, the wind shifted. Shadows emerged from the treeline—EVOs, but... different. Corrupted. Warped. Twisted by something not of Earth.
Ben morphed into Swampfire. "We've got incoming!"
Rex activated his Build: dual plasma cannons. "About time something made sense."
They fought like synchronized lightning—Kairos dancing between machine precision and organic chaos, Ben burning through frost-laced EVOs, and Rex mowing down waves with explosive bursts.
But for each one they defeated, two more took its place. Then, the sky above turned violet.
A massive tear split reality above the crater. From it descended a creature unlike any Herald before.
The Third Herald.
She was humanoid but wore a mask shaped like a broken clock. Her body flowed like liquid metal mixed with starstuff. But what stopped Kairos cold was her voice.
"You forgot my face, Kairos. But I never forgot yours."
Ben looked between them. "You know her?"
"She was... someone I once tried to save."
The Third Herald extended her hand.
"The memory returns. So shall the war."
The ground shook. The Tunguska Core lit up like a sun.