BRRRT—KRAANG!
Wyatt set a heavy rotary gun on the roof rack of a loading truck. The burst of fire ripped a jagged hole in the blast door, and the truck smashed straight through. An instant later, robot soldiers flooded in behind it.
Beyond the door was the corridor to Level -1. At the far end, a long spiral ramp dropped toward Level -2. Level -3 was built the same way: a central passage more than ten meters tall and wide, with broad parallel branch corridors on both sides.
As he drove, Wyatt caught glimpses of dismantled production lines for Rampagers and Bloodthirsters. This place had been designed as a large-scale robot factory from the start—no wonder the halls felt like highways.
Dancer was still running for the Level -3 exit, a long stretch ahead of Wyatt.
The footsteps behind him grew louder until the floor itself seemed to tremble. He spotted a loading truck nearby and dove under it without thinking.
Less than twenty seconds later, a group of “people” thundered past his face. From his angle he saw only their feet—more than enough. Each foot was almost as long as his forearm. Only Giants wore boots like that. One of them brushed the truck as it ran by and nearly flipped the vehicle over.
They didn’t slow. They didn’t look down.
Only when the tremors faded did Dancer crawl out and run again.
It didn’t last. More noise rolled in—this time not just behind him. It came from the left branches, the right branches, everywhere at once. And he was slowing. His battery read 4%.
“Wyatt…” Dancer’s voice cracked over the link. He was ready to give up.
“Keep moving,” Wyatt shot back. “I’m almost there.”
“No. Don’t come. I…” Dancer forced the words out. “Don’t waste yourself. The monsters all went upstairs—there are a lot of them. Run while you still can. Anyway… thank you.”
“Idiot. Run. I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it.”
Dancer stopped completely.
“I can’t get away,” he insisted. “If you come too, you’ll just die with me.”
Wyatt didn’t argue. He pushed a viewpoint-share through the link.
Dancer froze.
Behind Wyatt ran a tide of armored robot soldiers—around a thousand of them—packed shoulder to shoulder in the corridor, their synchronized strides shaking the whole underground like a quake.
A few armored CBG jumped from cover on both sides.
They didn’t even raise their rifles.
The incoming fire shredded them into scraps before the swarm slowed by a single step.
“See?” Wyatt said. “And I’m being honest with you—I’m not just rescuing you. I want this base cleaned out. That research wing reminded me of… things I don’t want repeated.”
“All of that’s… yours?” Dancer sounded dazed.
“Yes. Don’t ask questions. Move.”
Wyatt didn’t have time to explain. Dancer’s hesitation made sense—every corridor around him carried some new sound: glass shattering, blast doors opening, steel buckling, wet howls, even the flutter of something winged.
Wyatt couldn’t let the enemy reach him first.
He centered his consciousness field on Dancer and spread it outward, searching for any nearby units he could commandeer.
“All right,” Dancer said at last. “But be careful. A lot of Giants rushed upstairs. You’ll hit them soon.”
He started running again.
The noise only grew. Any branch ahead could vomit enemies into the main corridor. Dancer found himself wishing he’d stayed under that truck forever.
Then Wyatt’s message snapped through.
“Forward. Second junction—right. Now.”
***
Wyatt had barely finished sending it when a rolling, thunderous stomp rose from the corridor ahead—closer, heavier, like a landslide with legs.
He ordered an immediate halt.
The loading trucks swung sideways and lined up shoulder to shoulder as makeshift cover. Behind them, the robot soldiers snapped into a defensive formation, weapons charging and cycling in practiced rhythm.
The first Giants burst around the corner.
Wyatt wasn’t surprised. He’d seen these four-meter monsters before, back on the Hope. One wrong decision that day and the swing of a massive warhammer would have ended him—he’d survived only by cutting off his own arm.
Back then there had been one.
Now there were at least a hundred.
They spotted Wyatt and surged forward in a frenzy, raising spiked, ball-headed warhammers as if they’d been waiting for this.
Wyatt fired first. The rotary gun roared, stitching straight lines of rounds down the corridor.
The soldiers behind the trucks opened up with him.
The front Giants hit the barrage and came apart like they’d stepped into a grinder—but their bulk shielded those behind them. When one fell, another charged over the wreckage, and another after that, fearless, stupid, relentless.
The distance kept shrinking.
“Switch to area weapons,” Wyatt ordered.
Grenades, incendiaries, explosive rounds, rockets—everything arced into the oncoming mass. The corridor vanished into fire and concussion.
***
Dancer took the turn Wyatt called and nearly collided with a shadow.
He recoiled—then realized it was only a small engineering unit: CTR-5.
The little robot turned and hurried away.
“Follow it,” Wyatt messaged.
Dancer did, because at this point nothing about tonight felt normal anymore.
CTR-5 popped a narrow service door and squeezed into a maintenance passage so tight it looked designed for cables, not bodies. Pipes and conduit stacked along one wall in layers. The space was barely wide enough for CTR-5; Dancer had to crab-walk sideways to fit.
After a short distance, unease prickled through him. He compared their route to the base map and blurted, “Where are we going? This is hidden, sure—but it’s the wrong direction. It’s away from the exit.”
His answer came as a series of dull, quake-like booms. Concrete chips rained from the ceiling.
Then Wyatt’s voice cut in, glitching with interference—or with effort.
“The main route’s blocked. But I… found a lift.”
“A lift.” Dancer’s tone went flat. “You think they’ll politely take me upstairs? What are you doing, anyway?”
“Fighting.”
Wyatt had burned through four full ammo crates. The Giants were closer than he wanted. He braced a heavy rifle and fed fist-sized explosive-incendiary rounds into the swarm. After cycling through half a dozen weapons, he’d learned one thing: those rounds worked best.
His soldiers followed suit.
For a moment, the Giants’ charge stalled.
But in a sealed underground corridor, fire and explosives came with a price. Smoke had nowhere to go. It thickened, spread, and pooled until visibility collapsed.
Targets vanished. The soldiers started firing blind into gray.
The smoke rolled toward the defensive line like a living thing.
Wyatt felt it in his processors—a wrongness, a pressure.
Then a massive shape leapt out of the smoke, warhammer raised high, and brought it down toward his head.