The Etruscan tomb smelled of cooked meat.
It wasn't pork. It was the Liquidator.
The machine lay in a heap of broken ceramic and twisted metal. Narcissus stood over it, his chest heaving. Steam rose from his skin, curling in the blue light of the Fusion Core embedded in his sternum.
Marcus stared at the dead hunter.
A flicker in his vision. The mental overlay glitched into existence.
[LOOTABLE CORPSE DETECTED]
[ASSETS: Class-4 Ceramic Plating. Vibro-Blade. Encrypted Comms Chip.]
"Strip it," Marcus said. His voice was hoarse.
Galen blinked, still pressed against the wall. "What?"
"We don't leave scraps," Marcus snapped. He walked to the corpse. "It has armor. We have tunics. It has weapons. We have sharp sticks. Take everything."
Galen moved. He was shaky at first, but curiosity overrode fear. He knelt by the machine's shattered arm.
"The plating is composite," Galen muttered, tapping the black shell. "Light as leather. Harder than iron."
He picked up a heavy rock and smashed the locking pins on the chest piece.
CRACK.
The breastplate came loose.
"Fit it to me," Marcus ordered.
Galen used leather straps cut from a dead gladiator's sandal. He lashed the black ceramic plate over Marcus's torn tunic. It covered his heart and lungs.
It was crude. A scavenger's patchwork. But when Marcus knocked his knuckles against it, the sound was dull and solid.
He looked like a knight of the wasteland. Mud, blood, and high-tech carbon fiber.
"The weapon," Marcus said.
He pointed to the Liquidator's hip. A sheath was magnetized to the thigh armor.
Marcus reached down. He pulled the handle.
HMMMMM.
It didn't ring like steel. It hummed. A high-frequency vibration that made his teeth ache.
The blade was short, serrated, and matte grey.
[ITEM ACQUIRED: VIBRO-KNIFE (Standard Issue)]
Marcus walked to the stone altar. He slashed downward.
There was no resistance. The blade sank into the granite like a hot spoon into lard. He pulled it out. The stone sizzled.
"Better than a gladius," Marcus whispered. "It's a can opener."
He sheathed it.
"The head," Lucilla said.
She was standing by the entrance, watching the sky. Her voice was tight.
"Give me the helmet," she said.
Narcissus kicked the shattered dome toward her. It rolled across the floor, trailing wires.
Lucilla picked it up. She didn't put it on—it was crushed. Instead, she dug her fingers into the neck seal. She pulled out a small, rectangular chip.
"The comms mesh," she said. "If I slot this into my datapad... I might catch a signal."
"Your datapad is dead," Marcus reminded her. "The battery died in the sewer."
"Not anymore," she pointed at Narcissus. "He's a walking power station."
She walked up to the giant. Narcissus looked down at her, his blue electric eye buzzing.
"Touch me," Narcissus rumbled, "and you burn."
"Just the wire," Lucilla said, her hands trembling.
She pressed the datapad's charging port against the exposed copper lead in Narcissus's chest.
SPARK.
The screen flickered to life. The cracked glass glowed green.
Lucilla slotted the chip. Her fingers flew across the screen.
"Searching local frequencies," she whispered. "If they are coordinating a sweep, they'll be talking."
STATIC.
Then, a voice cut through the noise.
Clear. Bored. Corporate.
"Unit 734, report. Biometrics indicate stress levels exceeding parameters."
Lucilla froze. Her face went pale, illuminated by the screen.
"I know that voice," she whispered.
"Who is it?" Marcus demanded.
"Vane," she said. "Executive Vane. Head of Asset Liquidation. He... he enjoyed the layoffs."
Marcus snatched the datapad from her. He held it to his face.
"734 is scrap," Marcus said.
Silence on the line.
Then, a chuckle. Dry as dust.
"Commodus," Vane said. "The anomaly. The algorithm predicted you might survive the flush."
"I didn't just survive," Marcus growled. "I'm looting your corpse."
"Property theft," Vane tutted. "That's a Class B felony. We'll add it to your tab."
"Come down here," Marcus said. "I'll pay you in person."
"Tempting," Vane said. "But I prefer a clean suit. Besides, you have other problems."
"What problems?"
"The weather," Vane said. "Phase Two begins now. Enjoy the rain."
The line went dead.
BOOM.
Thunder shook the tomb.
Marcus ran to the entrance. He looked out.
The sky had turned a sickly yellow. Clouds boiled over the ruins of Rome, heavy and low.
Rain began to fall.
It wasn't water.
It was thick. Oily.
A drop hit the stone threshold.
HISS.
Smoke curled up. The stone pitted instantly.
"Acid," Galen breathed, coming up behind him. "The lasers... they vaporized the chemical plants. The sulfur depots. The tanneries."
"It's raining poison," Lucilla said.
"We can't stay here," Marcus said. "The fumes will fill the tomb. We'll choke."
"Where do we go?" Galen asked. "The rain will melt our skin."
Marcus looked North.
Beyond the hills, the dark canopy of the ancient forest loomed. The trees were old—oaks and pines with thick, interlocking branches.
"The forest," Marcus said. "The canopy will shield us. We move tree to tree."
"And then?"
"The mines," Marcus said. "Underground. Deep enough that the rain can't reach."
He turned to Narcissus.
"Iron Dog. Can you walk?"
Narcissus flexed his arm. The ceramic plates of the Liquidator armor Galen had strapped to his shoulder clinked.
"I can run, Caesar."
"We need a shield," Marcus said.
He pointed to the heavy stone slab covering a sarcophagus.
"Rip it off."
Narcissus walked to the slab. It was limestone, three inches thick, weighing easily four hundred pounds.
He gripped the edge. The servos in his arm whined. The blue light in his chest flared.
He lifted it.
He grunted, hoisting the slab over his head like a massive umbrella.
"Get under," Narcissus growled.
Marcus, Galen, and Lucilla huddled beneath the stone roof.
They stepped out of the tomb.
The rain hit the stone with a sound like frying bacon.
Sizzle-pop.
Smoke drifted down from the edges of the slab.
"Move," Marcus ordered. "Stay in the center. Don't let a drop touch you."
They marched into the wasteland.
The ground was mud, turning to sludge under the acid rain. Grass wilted instantly, turning black and slimy.
"My feet are burning," Lucilla whimpered. Her expensive shoes were dissolving.
"Keep moving," Marcus said. "Pain is information. It tells you you're still alive."
They reached the edge of the woods.
The trees were screaming.
Leaves curled and fell, dissolving into gray mush. But the branches held. The thick canopy caught the worst of the rain, letting only a fine, stinging mist through.
Narcissus lowered the slab. He leaned it against a tree trunk, his chest heaving.
"Hot," the gladiator rasped.
Galen touched Narcissus's back. He pulled his hand away instantly.
"He's overheating," Galen whispered to Marcus. "The Core... it generates plasma. His body has no radiator. No coolant system."
"He's cooking?"
"He's boiling," Galen said. "If we don't cool him down, his brain will liquefy."
Marcus looked at the rain.
"Iron Dog," Marcus said. "Step out."
Narcissus looked at him. "Into the acid?"
"Just for a second," Marcus said. "Let the rain hit the armor."
Narcissus stepped out from under the tree.
The heavy, oily rain struck his shoulders. It struck the ceramic plates Galen had salvaged.
Steam erupted.
WHOOSH.
A cloud of white vapor enveloped the giant.
Narcissus groaned. It was a sound of relief. The acid ate at the metal, but the evaporation pulled the heat from his body.
He stepped back under the canopy, dripping and smoking.
"Better," Narcissus grunted.
"We have to keep moving," Marcus said. He checked the stolen vibro-knife. The battery indicator on the hilt was green. "Vane knows where we are. He'll send something bigger than a drone."
"What's bigger than a drone?" Lucilla asked.
The ground shook.
THOOM.
A tree fifty yards away snapped in half.
Through the gray mist, a shadow emerged.
It was the size of a house.
It had three legs. It didn't walk; it stomped. A rotating saw blade the size of a chariot wheel spun on its underbelly.
"A Harvester," Lucilla whispered. "Level 5 Industrial Unit. It mulches forests for bio-fuel."
The mental UI flashed red.
[WARNING: LEVEL 50 TITAN DETECTED]
[THREAT: EXTREME]
[ADVICE: RUN]
Marcus watched the machine crush a hundred-year-old oak tree. It chewed the wood into pulp in seconds.
"It's blocking the path," Marcus said.
"We can't fight that," Galen said. "It's a building with legs."
"We don't fight it," Marcus said. "We walk under it."
"You're insane," Lucilla hissed.
"It has no sensors on the ground," Marcus said, watching the machine's pattern. "It looks up at the trees. It ignores the dirt. We crawl."
He dropped to his stomach in the mud.
"Follow me. And for the love of God, cover that light."
He pointed at Narcissus's glowing chest.
Narcissus smeared a handful of black mud over the Core. It hissed and dried instantly, forming a crust.
"Let's go," Marcus whispered.
He began to crawl toward the feet of the god.