Three of them. Bio-mechanical constructs similar to the one they'd fought in the earlier levels but more advanced, sleeker, covered in glowing script arranged in active patterns that shifted and rewrote themselves like living things. Each stood seven feet tall, humanoid but wrong—too many joints, wrong proportions, smooth featureless heads except for a single central sensor that tracked them with cold, unblinking precision. The kind of precision that didn't blink, didn't waver, didn't miss.
The constructs didn't attack immediately. That was somehow worse than if they had. They simply stood blocking the corridor three abreast, making passage impossible without engagement, patient in the way that only machines could be patient—without anxiety, without doubt, without any awareness that waiting was something to be endured.
