"Don't let them reach the console! Hold the defensive line!" Captain Danu roared, his voice cutting through the freezing, chilling silence of the reactor control room the exact moment Vian Pratama's evacuation lift sealed shut.

Bang! Bang!

Rat-tat-tat-tat!

Full-scale warfare broke out in the blink of an eye. Dozens of elite corporate special forces troopers clad in jet-black armor surged forward from various points along the steel bridge, unleashing wave after wave of plasma fire. Captain Danu and the Arkian forces gave ground to no one, returning fire with pinpoint precision while utilizing massive cooling pipe pillars as protective cover amid the violently vibrating hall.

Red and blue laser fire crisscrossed the air, reflecting off the glass walls of the prisoners' bio-electric containment tubes and forging a blinding, cosmic visual spectacle. The deep rumbling of the core reactor beneath their feet grew increasingly ferocious, as though the iron giant were thrashing about and ready to detonate at any moment.

"Naya! Move fast to the manual terminal beneath the platform!" Zulfa shouted through the roar of gunfire, dropping a corporate soldier attempting to snipe from the upper bridge. "You're the only one who can hack the emergency door lock system before our time runs out!"

Naya nodded swiftly, ducking beneath a streak of plasma fire that scorched the wall near her head. She sprinted through the swirling wisps of thin smoke toward the secondary terminal console tucked beneath the main platform, where the manual door-release system was housed.

"Get away from that console, you little bitch!" barked a burly corporate squad commander, vaulting down from the upper bridge with a shock knife gripped in his right hand, ready to cut Naya down.

"Naya, watch out above you!" Zulfa panicked.

Before the corporate trooper could land his strike, Zulfa hurled himself forward, slamming into the commander's body to hurl him over the bridge's iron railing. Brutal, close-quarters combat was inevitable. Zulfa rained punches down, ducking a shock-knife slash before slamming his enemy's body onto the metallic tiled floor until he passed out cold.

"Zul, keep your head in the game! Don't let Vian take that control core!" Captain Danu shouted from across the room, tossing a stun grenade into a knot of enemies trying to box them in.

Zulfa sprang to his feet, breathing heavily. He looked up toward the main platform. Through the half-open glass gap of the emergency lift, he spotted Vian Pratama scrambling up the uppermost emergency stairwell, clutching a cylinder case glowing with a bright purple aura—the primary control core of the cosmic reactor.

"He's trying to make off with the control core!" Zulfa roared in rage.

"Go after him, Zulfa! We'll handle the troops down here!" Captain Danu yelled back resolutely, dropping three corporate soldiers charging the line.

Wasting not a single second, Zulfa bolted toward the spiral steel staircase vibrating violently from energy resonance, sprinting hard in pursuit of Vian Pratama hundreds of meters above the reactor room floor.

Down below, Naya knelt before the manual terminal console, her fingers dancing at lightning speed across the holographic keyboard as cold sweat poured in sheets down her brow.

"Come on... unlock..." Naya muttered tremulously, reading the high-security passcode continuously rejecting her access. The terminal screen flashed red, throwing up a shrinking countdown timer warning: 15:00 MINUTES REMAINING.

Simultaneously, the battle raging around Naya grew increasingly savage. Captain Danu and the Arkian squad fought desperately to hold back the relentless waves of special forces troops pressing the attack, kicking up a rain of sparks from plasma-weapon impacts across every corner of the steel bridge.