Chapter 120 – We need a Base.

Chapter 121 – We need a Base.

The wind swept low across the ruins of New York City, dragging ash like falling snow. Skyscrapers, once monuments of human progress, now stood hollow and broken, half-eaten by time, war, and the relentless fury of the Sentinels. Twisted rebar reached toward the gray skies like fingers pleading for salvation. Smoke curled from distant rooftops, while the streets echoed with the faint hum of metal giants still prowling the world.

Ardent stood atop the cracked edge of a ruined parking structure. From there, he could see everything, the ghost city, the half-buried roads, and the lifeless ruins where humanity once thrived. His emerald power armor hissed quietly as vents expelled heat, and the flame emblem on his shoulder glowed faintly in the dull afternoon light. This wasn’t Terra, not the one he remembered. But it was Earth. And it was dying.

Storm stood beside him, silent, her silver hair catching what little breeze made it through the ruined steel and glass. She looked out with a gaze hardened by survival, not fear. A few paces behind them, Charles Xavier sat in his hoverchair, fingers steepled beneath his chin, his eyes half-closed in thought.

Ardent took in the city’s silence, the ruins below, the mutants clinging to shadows and despair. This place needed more than weapons, it needed a symbol. He turned to the others, voice firm and heavy with purpose.

“We need a base. Not just shelter, a stronghold. Something permanent. A fire in the dark to remind them this world still has defenders.”

Storm gave a quiet nod. “It will give them somewhere to run to… instead of away.”

Xavier’s voice was calm but tired. “We’ll need it built fast. Before the Sentinels find us again.”

Ardent didn’t hesitate. “Then we begin now.”

Thule, the Tech-Astartes of the squad, was already moving, scanning the wreckage with keen machine-augmented eyes. He tapped a few commands into his vambrace and turned to his brothers.

“This place will do,” he said, surveying the skeleton of a collapsed school and half-crushed apartment blocks. “Steel, concrete, power nodes… We can work with this.”

The Salamanders spread out, and within minutes, the work began. They had no cranes. No servitors. No mechanized support. They didn’t need any. They were Astartes, giants forged in war and tempered in fire. And when Salamanders built, they did so with their own hands.

Kassor and Arran tore steel girders from a collapsed overpass. They heaved them upright, using telephone cables and stripped elevator wire to anchor them in the cracked pavement. Every movement was practiced, smooth, efficient.

Idras raided a nearby police station and stripped the generators for wiring, hauling it back and lacing it through car batteries and scavenged panels. Soon, lights flickered to life, casting pale glow over the courtyard.

Thule oversaw it all, his eye lenses scanning through heat maps and structural stability. He welded salvaged doors together to form walls, turning buses and armored vans into barricades. Wrecked ATMs were turned into reinforced shutters for firing points. Scrapped vending machines became armor plating for the gate.

Ardent moved through the work zone with precision, directing layout from the center. He used the bones of the ruined buildings around them to shape a defensible funnel, one that would draw any assault force into overlapping fields of fire. At the bastion’s core, he marked a space for command: a central hub with vox receivers, observation points, and room for leaders to plan.

Storm coordinated small teams of mutants, guiding them to clear debris and salvage tools. Xavier used his powers sparingly, locating scattered survivors with low-level telepathic nudges, just enough to draw them closer.

Within hours, the framework stood. Before nightfall, they had constructed something real: solid concrete walls reinforced with metal plating, a heavy blast gate forged from a crushed fire engine, and lookout platforms bolted to steel scaffolding. Power coursed through their cobbled-together grid, running salvaged spotlights, basic sensors, and a central command light.

By sunset, it wasn’t a ruin anymore.

It was a fortress.

Word spread quickly through the ruins. Whispers moved like sparks through dry grass. Mutants hiding in sewer tunnels and burnt train cars began to emerge. Some came hesitantly, dragging injured friends. Others arrived with makeshift weapons, pipes, broken bats, rusted blades. Their eyes, sunken and tired, lit up at the sight of towering warriors moving with purpose and power.

“They built it in a day,” one boy whispered to another.

“I saw them lift a bus like paper,” said an older man, scarred and missing fingers.

“They’re from space. From some other world…”

“They’re Like The X-Men.”

They weren’t gods, not even close. But to a dying people, five sons of Vulkan standing tall in power armor looked like divine intervention.

The Salamanders took no pride in the awe. They worked without complaint, without arrogance. For them, this was duty. And duty required no praise.

Later that night, under the humming lights of the new bastion, mutants gathered around fire pits made from old oil drums. The cold was still bitter, but it was the first night in years they hadn’t slept in terror.

Logan leaned against a slab of concrete, sharpening one of his claws slowly on a rusted crowbar. Kassor stood nearby, watching the flames.

“You people build like machines,” Logan muttered.

Kassor didn’t look away from the fire. “We build like sons of Vulkan.”

Logan looked up at him. “That your boss?”

“Our Gene-Father,” Kassor said simply. “He taught us the forge is as sacred as the battlefield.”

Across the yard, Ardent stood beside Xavier and Storm. A projection flickered before them, a mix of salvaged tech and Salamander scanning arrays. Sentinel patrols blinked on the map, red dots sweeping across city blocks. The layout was crude, but effective.

“We’ll start training them tomorrow,” Ardent said, nodding toward the gathering of resistance fighters.

“You think they’ll listen?” Storm asked.

“They want to survive,” Ardent replied. “That’s enough.”

Xavier tilted his head slightly. “You mean to turn them into soldiers?”

“Not Astartes,” Ardent said. “But warriors. Together. Disciplined. United.”

Xavier looked away for a moment, watching a small girl sleep beneath a thermal blanket near the wall. “They’ve never had unity,” he said softly. “Just hope and desperation.”

“Then we give them something stronger.”

Storm folded her arms. “I think they’re ready.”

Ardent’s gaze returned to the city beyond. Smoke still rose in the distance. Sentinels still roamed. But something had changed. There was now a place to defend. A flame that would not go out.

He looked toward the dark sky, remembering Terra, the golden light of the Emperor, the endless halls of the Palace… and the fire of Vulkan’s forge.

This world had no Emperor. No Imperium.

But as long as he stood, he would be His will made flesh.

And in the ruins of a dead city, the fire had returned.