E-UNIT: The Blue Angels of Death.

Chapter 111: A Walk Through Frostholm.

V O L U M E F I V E

Chapter 111: A Walk Through FrostholmThe border was quiet in the way that only open land at night can be, the moon sharp and high, stars scattered without interruption, no city glow bleeding into the sky from any direction. The grass fields had never seen this much activity. Mechs moved in steady formation, constructing what needed constructing.

Robots planted holographic infrastructure across the ground, freeing the screens to float at whatever height the operators needed. What remained of the E-PHONEUS trained in clusters nearby, working through drills after losing their last distorter device.

The AC-130 touched down on a landing strip that had been asphalt and intention and very little else, laid in a rush across flat ground between Elysium and the Western State, long and wide enough to be functional, surrounded by prefabricated plastic cube buildings where the operation ran its numbers.

The plane's door hissed open. Mechs snapped into line.

Reaper raised one hand as he stepped out. "Continue your assignments. No need to stop on my account." His voice dropped slightly. "This won't take long."

11 followed with her hood down, barely concealing the fact that she was looking forward to this. A stealth mission with him, just the two of them. She had no idea yet how a machine his size intended to hide.

He crossed to the farthest building and entered as the door slid aside. Chrome was inside with a small group of robots in clean black suits, all of them gathered around a holographic map rendered in three dimensions above a central table. They turned and bowed.

"Lord Reaper." Chrome straightened. "An unexpected visit."

"I'm here for a mission. Details to follow." Reaper moved to the map and studied the border layout. "What's the current situation?"

"The worst it's been." Chrome reached into the display and zoomed toward the energy barrier separating the two territories. "At first, the border was a standard energy wall, same hexagonal shield technology we see on the E-PHONEUS and E-UNITs, extended roughly a hundred meters into the sky. The engineer behind their shield design is on the other side. Jason Rezzac."

"That follows," Reaper said.

"It was manageable initially. We sent drones across to map their internal layout and used wall jammers to punch temporary gaps, increasing resistance until sections of the wall collapsed under the load."

Chrome moved toward the far wall of the room and back, working through the briefing as he went. He slid two hovering chairs toward the table and returned to his position. "That window closed quickly. They built a three-dimensional scanning system, a single large camera that merges layered heat imaging to produce a full blueprint of any area, with or without light. The drones stopped being useful the moment that went live."

He sat. Reaper took the other chair.

"Now they've extended the wall into a full dome, a red half-sphere covering their major cities, with the smaller cities outside reinforced by human guards and upgraded sonic weaponry. They moved ninety-five percent of their security forces into those cities. They're confident enough in the barrier that they stripped the perimeter almost entirely." Chrome pulled the map wider. "We ran the jammers against the new wall. They held for a fraction of a second before failing. The voltage increase was significant."

Reaper processed this quietly. "The human capacity to adapt is something else. They find the crack in anything, given enough pressure." He looked at Chrome. "How many new weapons are in development on their side?"

"Thirty confirmed new designs, ten more upgraded from existing models." Chrome leaned forward. "Competing with their development pace isn't a winning approach. We've already lost E-PHONEUS units inside the dome. No charging stations in the other side, they powered down in place before they could extract." He marked a building on the map. "They went dark here."

Reaper pulled the view out to show the full span of the energy border. "An installation this size doesn't happen quickly. When was this built?"

One of the room's robots answered. "By our calculations, it began the moment your campaign on Metromania started, Lord Reaper."

Reaper nodded slowly. "They had this planned long before Altea fell. They just found a more useful application for it once it did. The West was neglected by the old regime for years, that kind of isolation produces exactly this."

Chrome turned sharply to the room. "Open a new investigation thread on their independence timeline. If they've been planning this long, there are seams we haven't found yet."

One of the robots saluted and left.

Reaper stood. "Pull back any planned offensive action against them. Let them keep developing, it's research we don't have to pay for." He turned to 11. "I need direct access to one of their senior engineers. We're going in."

11 straightened. "We attempted infiltration before, Lord Reaper. No jammer held against the updated voltage."

Reaper walked over and pulled her hood up over her head. "Cover yourself."

"What?"

"I know a way through."

They reached the red dome in silence, 11 a step behind him, cloak drawn. Up close, the barrier wasn't the flat wall it appeared to be at a distance. Millions of tiny hexagonal shapes pressed against each other in an interlocking pattern, forming a surface so dense it looked almost solid.

"11." Reaper pulled her closer. "Open your shields."

"Y-Yes, Lord Reaper." She brought them out, the same hexagonal geometry, each piece larger than the ones in the wall but the same underlying structure.

Reaper crouched to study them. He stayed there for a moment, reading something in the pattern that wasn't visible. Then he stood. "I may pull from your energy reserves. Are you fully charged?"

"Yes, of course!" She dropped the hood, extended both arms, and spread her shields wide, a red arc, piece by piece, angled toward him like an open hand.

Reaper reached out and touched them gently.

Then the shields came apart.

Dissolved, breaking into individual hexagonal pieces that drifted apart and faded. 11 lost her footing, dropping into the grass in a slow, uncontrolled descent. Her vision dimmed. Her eyes stuttered.

"What—" Her voice came out thin, scraped of strength. "What just happened?" Her battery read half capacity. It had been full ten seconds ago.

Reaper caught her and pulled her in against him, covering most of her frame. Only her face was exposed. "Your shield isn't a single continuous energy source, it divides itself to sustain the pattern. I used my own resistance to absorb it faster than it could regenerate."

He looked up at the massive red dome. "Jason used the exact same hexagonal tech to build this wall. I needed to test if my theory worked on a smaller scale first." He stepped toward the barrier with 11 held in one arm and stretched his free hand toward the dome. He applied the exact same technique.

A hole opened in the wall where he touched it, wide and clean, already beginning to close.

He walked through and set 11 down on the other side carefully. "Systems stable? Any glitching?"

She stared at him for a moment longer than she meant to, then pulled herself back. "Sorry, yes. I'm fine. Half capacity runs me two weeks minimum."

"Good." He stood and started toward the city ahead.

Frostholm.

11 watched him for a second, then caught herself. "Wait, Lord Reaper!" She jogged to catch up. "We need a stealth route planned before we enter."

"No we don't." He kept walking, following the highway toward the city entrance. "Code Red, initiated."

He stopped at the main gate. The soldiers stationed there froze at the sight of him. He stood in the road and faced them, 11 tucked behind him.

"Impenetrable Paralyze Protocol, initiated."

Everything stopped.

People mid-stride. Cars holding position in the air. Animals caught between steps. A leaf turning in a current that no longer existed. The entire visible world held completely still, a photograph of a city that had been alive one second ago.

11 stepped out from behind him and walked slowly toward the nearest soldier. She waved a hand in front of his face. Nothing. She looked to her left, a leaf suspended in the air at chest height, perfectly frozen. She reached for it. Her hand met resistance. Solid, immovable, like it had been set in glass.

She climbed on top of it.

Stood on one leg.

Looked down at herself standing on a frozen leaf in the middle of a frozen city.

"No way." She turned toward Reaper, who was simply walking down the street at his usual pace. She climbed off and fell into step beside him, mind still working through it. "Lord Reaper, what is this exactly?"

"I froze everything within a five-hundred-meter radius." He didn't slow. "Anything under two hundred kilograms is held in place. Since everything here requires a human operator, effectively everything is frozen."

11 looked into the cabin of a hovering car as they passed it. The engine was still running, the sound, the vibration, all of it normal. The driver sat with both hands on the wheel, mid-blink, going nowhere.

Reaper tapped the top of her head. "Lead. You have Albert's location."

She smiled to herself. ‘A machine capable of this is on my side. There's no version of unlucky that applies here.’ "Of course, Lord Reaper." She paused. "One question."

"Hmm."

"Why do you need me here? I've seen what you can do. I've seen what Shelly can do since the test." She kept her eyes on the road ahead. "I don't have anything close to that level."

His pace slowed for a fraction of a second. Then a short, dry laugh. "Her words are getting to you."

"What words?"

"I monitor your conversations. Shelly can be cutting, don't let it settle in." He kept walking. "Your efficiency and your capability within a standard E-UNIT chassis is genuinely remarkable. I recognize hard work. Yours specifically. You may be better at it than I am."

"Don't say that—"

"I'm saying it. You are one of the pillars this country stands on." He paused briefly. "And I was going to keep this back, but your clarity of mind matters more right now. The reason we're testing the energy brace on Shelly isn't because I trust her more. It's the opposite. If you go down, our intelligence network fractures, we repair you immediately and the damage is contained. If Shelly goes down..."

His processor held for a moment.

11 burst out laughing, full and unrestrained, the kind that didn't happen often. "There's no way she has no defined role."

"She has a role," Reaper said carefully. "She… monitors the streets." He shook his head once, almost imperceptibly. "She's a contingency. A significant one. We need the brace finalized as soon as possible, and when the production version is ready, you'll have one too."

11's CPU stalled completely.

She was still walking, still following the road, still heading in the right direction, but the processing behind it had gone somewhere else entirely, somewhere warm and entirely off-mission.

Reaper's hand rested on her head as they walked.

"11?"