The Phoenix of the Slums

The silence that followed was not peace but pressure—a vacuum where fear tried to crawl in. Tianming stood tall as the behemoth before him, Prototype 07-A, let out a mechanical growl that buzzed through the warehouse like the hum of an electric storm. Its body was monstrous, its skin a patchwork of synthetic muscle and steel, glowing veins pulsing blue beneath translucent armor plates. Its visor scanned Tianming and flashed red.

TARGET LOCKED.

Then it moved.

Not lumbering—not slow—but fast. Faster than anything that size had the right to be. It lunged with its left arm, aiming to crush Tianming’s chest with a piston-powered punch. Tianming threw himself to the side, rolled across the slick floor, and came up into a crouch. The floor where he stood exploded into a crater of crushed metal and concrete.

He didn’t wait. He rushed in.

His fist snapped out like a whip, landing a sharp jab into the thing’s side. The impact jolted through his knuckles like punching a wall, but he shifted weight and twisted into a roundhouse kick that struck the creature’s knee joint. The limb buckled slightly. A human would’ve fallen. Prototype 07-A merely turned.

Its right arm swept sideways like a wrecking ball.

Tianming ducked, barely missing the blow, then came up inside the monster’s guard. He hammered four lightning-quick punches into its torso—left, right, left, right—targeting the seams in its armor. Sparks flew from the impact zones, but it wasn’t enough. A backhand from the monster caught him in the ribs and hurled him ten meters into a wall.

Crack.

Pain lanced through his side like a knife. Tianming slid to the floor but pushed himself up, coughing. Blood dripped from the corner of his mouth. Fang shouted from behind a shipping crate, “Tianming!”

He raised a hand. “Stay back!”

The creature came again. This time with both arms extended. It charged like a bull, seeking to crush Tianming against the wall.

He waited until the last moment. Then he sidestepped, twisting his body into a perfect evasive spiral. As it passed him, he jumped, landing on its back. His arms wrapped around its neck, and he drove his elbow down into the visor with pinpoint strikes.

“Hè!" he roared, putting every ounce of rage into his blows.

(Hè! — a battle cry, meaning “Strike!”)

The visor cracked on the third hit.

But the creature howled and flung itself backward, slamming Tianming into the ground. The impact knocked the breath out of him, but he gritted his teeth and reached into his belt—pulling a compact pulse-charge bomb. He jammed it into the crack in the armor and rolled away.

Click. Flash.

BOOM.

The explosion blew the creature off its feet and into the air. It hit the ground in a shower of metal shards and smoke. The lights above flickered from the energy discharge. Tianming rose slowly, limping, breathing hard. His ribs were probably fractured. But he moved.

The Prototype twitched.

Still alive.

It began to rise on one elbow, one red eye flickering.

Tianming didn’t hesitate. He sprinted forward with everything he had left, leapt into the air, twisted his body mid-flight, and drove a flying knee straight into the visor—shattering it in an explosion of glass and circuitry.

The creature spasmed once.

Then lay still.

He landed beside the twitching machine, chest heaving. “Stay down.”

Fang ran to his side and caught him before he fell. “Are you insane? You nearly died!" she snapped.

He grinned through bloodied lips. “Just warming up.”

Zhao arrived seconds later, jaw hanging. “That was a damn tank.”

Tianming looked at the half-destroyed Prototype. “That was Lu Qingshan’s message.”

Zhao handed over a data stick he recovered from the command console nearby. “Here’s ours.”

Back at the safehouse, Tianming sat shirtless on a stool as Fang stitched the gash on his shoulder, muttering under her breath.  "You’re going to get yourself killed one day."

He chuckled. “Not before I finish this.”

She paused. “And what is ‘this,’ exactly?”

Tianming’s gaze darkened. He stared out the rain-streaked window as thunder rolled in the distance.

“This is the war to burn every rotten root that raised me.”