Athanasia: My Hacker System-Chapter 261: Cissel and Luke - Part 3

"What?!!" Cissel turned on him, her voice snapping with impatience.

She fully expected him to delay her with yet another stuttering question or a fresh wave of doubt. Her eyes flashed with irritation, ready to dress him down for losing focus at the critical moment.

"Look. The drones are flying exactly as you said," Luke said, motioning with his head toward the horizon. His voice lacked its usual tremor and fear. "They seem to be the only units coming our way. It’s all unfolding just like you predicted. It’s like you got infected with whatever John has!"

Luke had never expected to feel this level of awe for anyone other than John. He had always viewed John as the sole strategist, the only one capable of seeing through the fog of war, the only one capable of standing in front of a tsunami, and knew what to do to overcome it.

But at this moment, it felt as though Cissel had been infected by that same foretelling ability. Reality was mirroring her words with terrifying precision.

High above the den, fifty flying drones had detached from the main swarm. They were the only units venturing out, screaming through the thin air toward their position.

As for the D-1000s and the hulking S-1000s, they remained behind, rooted to the den. They were busy doing exactly what Cissel had foreseen: fortifying the den with a dense, rapidly growing forest of walls, towers, and cannons.

"How did you know?!!" Luke couldn’t help but ask, his eyes wide as he watched the battle unfold in the same way she described.

Cissel rolled her eyes, her daggers performing a sharp, silver flick in her grip. "Consider me infected by whatever John has," she fired back, throwing his own silly excuse from earlier right back at him.

"Now, get ready. Don’t forget the strategy we agreed upon: I attack first to draw the lock-on, then you follow up when they are trying to get close enough."

"I got it," Luke said, cracking his shoulders and swaying his arms in a heavy motion, as if physically shaking off the last of his fears and doubts. He tried to puff out his chest, adding a bit of his old bluster. "What’s so hard about swatting a few flying machines anyway?"

Cissel looked deeply at him, her gaze lingering on his face as she tried to discern if he was truly mentally prepared or just whistling in the dark. Experience told her that Luke’s bravado was a fragile thing.

Yet the consequences this time wouldn’t be losing a match in a competition. To ensure he wouldn’t shatter under the first laser volley, she decided to play it safe and anchor his resolve with something stronger than a fleeting moment of courage.

"Nothing much," she said casually. "Yet, if you fail, they will kill me first. Then they’ll turn and kill you. Once we’re out of the way, they’ll grow to a scale that no one in this trial can stop. They’ll hunt down Ricky, then Elena, and finally... They’ll converge on John while he’s distracted, kill him."

"..."

Hearing her lay it out so coldly made Luke’s face drop. The image of their friends being killed by the metallic swarm hit him like a lightning blow. Cissel didn’t look away; she took a deliberate step forward, her eyes locked onto his.

"John picked you to safeguard me for a reason, Luke. He didn’t do it because you were the only one left. He did it because he knows you are up to the task. So don’t let him down. Don’t let me down. And most importantly... Don’t let yourself down, okay?"

She didn’t wait for a verbal confirmation. She turned around, her entire focus shifting to the incoming flying drones, leaving Luke to chew on the weight of her words.

The first piece of good news was the numbers. There were only fifty of them in this initial wave. To a veteran like John, it would be a warm-up, but for Luke, it was a perfect crucible, a training ground to burn away the last shreds of the fears that had shackled his soul his entire life.

Cissel wasn’t exaggerating the danger, but she was playing psychology. In these early waves, and with such low numbers, she could likely handle the flying drones through pure speed and her abilities. But as the wave count would climb into the hundreds of thousands, she would be powerless alone.

She had known the moment John entrusted Luke to her that her primary mission wasn’t just to defend against what the den would throw at her face; it was to temper the weapon that was Luke. He had a notorious reputation for folding during decisive moments, and she couldn’t allow that version of him to exist anymore.

She was reshaping his resolve, forcing him to overcome his anxiety by replacing his fear of death with a greater fear: the fear of failing and losing his friends, the fear of letting them down.

As she waited for the flying drones to enter the kill zone, she could feel the shift in the air beside her. Luke was pumped up. His blood was boiling the moment he envisioned the corpses of his friends.

Luke perhaps was the perfect one to know what it meant to let someone down, as he was already living through this hell back in his family. And he came to the academy to wash this disgrace, not to repeat it.

The terror was still there, but it had been redirected. The fear of losing John, Cissel, Ricky, and Elena was now far more severe than the fear of losing his own life. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺

The psychological warfare Cissel had executed was working brilliantly. A transformation was occurring inside the tall youngster, one that would fundamentally change him forever. His resolve was piling up, and his grip on the club was turning white-knuckled and steady.

The flying drones acted exactly as Cissel had predicted. After taking a wide, sweeping tour of the sky above the crescent fortifications, they banked sharply. They began their descent, locking into a tight arrow formation.

The five laser guns on their backs began to glow with a lethal, crimson light as they began searching and locking onto their targets’ locations down below.