The silence was the worst part.
Above them, Nero's frigate was likely bombarding the hull. The carrier's rusted CIWS turrets were firing back. Thousands of scavengers were panicking in the market.
Down here, there was only the sound of Marcus's own ragged breathing inside the brass helmet.
Hahhh... hahhh...
The air tasted like stale pennies. The lead-lined suit was a rubber coffin, heavy and stiff. Every step down the spiraling metal staircase took effort.
Below them, a massive, glowing blue pool dominated the cavernous room.
The reactor core.
Heavy water. It cast rippling, sickly light across the rusted pipes and bulkheads. It was beautiful, in a terrifying way.
[AMBIENT RADIATION: 450 ROENTGENS.]
[TIME TO LETHAL DOSE: 38 MINUTES.]
The Gold UI flashed across Marcus's retinas. A ticking clock of his own mortality.
"Galen," Marcus said into his suit comms. The radio crackled with static. "How you holding up?"
"I can't feel my fingers," Galen's voice trembled back. "The suit is too thick. I can't work a wrench like this."
"You won't need a wrench," Marcus said. He pointed down. "You need your back."
At the bottom of the stairs, suspended over the blue water on a rusted catwalk, was the Control Console. It was a massive steel box, half-melted from a previous flare-up.
Beside it were four physical, analog crank wheels. They looked like the steering wheels of old ships.
"The control rods," Marcus said. "They're jammed above the core. We have to crank them down manually to cool the water."
They reached the bottom of the stairs. The grating of the catwalk groaned under their combined weight.
Marcus's combat knife was drawn. He kept his eyes on the shadows.
[Thermal anomalies detected.] JARVIS warned. [Three targets. Ten meters. Moving.]
"Stop," Marcus ordered Galen.
Galen froze.
Marcus raised the knife. The heavy glove made his grip clumsy. He couldn't use the energy shield. It would drain his battery and light them up like a beacon in the gloom.
From the tangle of pipes near the console, a shadow detached itself.
It wasn't a Board machine. It wasn't a Sentinel.
It was human. Or it had been.
It stepped into the blue light of the reactor.
Galen let out a strangled gasp.
The creature wore a rusted mechanic's jumpsuit, melted directly into its flesh. Its face was gone, replaced by a respirator mask that had fused to the bone from severe radiation burns.
One of its arms ended in a whirring, rusted circular saw blade, powered by a scavenged battery pack bolted to its spine.
"The Melted," Marcus whispered. Scavengers who came down here years ago and never left. Mutated. Insane.
The creature's head twitched. It didn't have eyes, but it sensed their heat.
It let out a wet, gurgling shriek.
It lunged at Galen.
"Move!" Marcus yelled.
He tackled the creature.
The impact was clunky. The lead suits made Marcus slow. He hit the Melted in the chest, driving them both into the metal railing.
The railing bent outward. Below them, the blue water hissed.
The creature's saw blade spun to life. Sparks showered as the rusted teeth ground against the steel floor.
It swung the blade at Marcus's helmet.
Marcus ducked. The saw sparked off the brass dome, leaving a deep gouge. The noise was deafening inside the suit.
Marcus brought his knife up, driving it hard into the creature's fused respirator.
The blade punched through the plastic and bone.
The creature went limp. It slid off the knife, slumping onto the grating.
Before Marcus could catch his breath, two more shadows dropped from the pipes above.
"Get to the cranks!" Marcus roared at Galen. "Go!"
Galen stumbled past the dead creature, his heavy boots clanking toward the console.
Marcus turned to face the new threats.
One swung a heavy pipe wrench. The other had a welding torch grafted to its wrist.
Marcus parried the wrench with his knife arm, the thick rubber suit absorbing the blow. He grabbed the attacker by the throat and threw him bodily over the railing.
SPLASH.
The creature hit the glowing blue water. It didn't surface.
The third one thrust the welding torch forward. A jet of blue flame scorched the chest of Marcus's suit.
The rubber began to melt instantly. Heat seared Marcus's skin underneath.
He stepped inside the guard, ignoring the heat, and drove the knife into the creature's ribs, twisting the blade until it stopped moving.
He ripped the knife out, breathing heavily.
[CORE TEMPERATURE: CRITICAL. MELTDOWN IN 12 MINUTES.]
"Galen!" Marcus turned.
Galen was at the first crank wheel. He had both hands on it. He was straining, his legs braced against the console.
"It's... stuck!" Galen grunted. "Calcified rust!"
"Push!" Marcus yelled. He ran over, grabbing the opposite side of the wheel.
"One. Two. Three!"
They heaved.
With a sickening CRACK, the rust broke. The wheel turned an inch.
Then two.
Slowly, agonizingly, they began to force the heavy control rod down into the reactor. The blue light flared slightly, then dimmed a fraction.
One down. Three to go.
They moved to the next wheel.
"Again!" Marcus ordered.
They pushed.
Snap.
Galen cried out. He stumbled back.
Marcus looked.
A jagged piece of the control console had caught the arm of Galen's suit. A tear, three inches long, opened in the thick rubber.
"No!" Galen gasped. He grabbed his arm.
Immediately, Galen began to cough. A deep, wet, hacking sound.
[WARNING: SUIT BREACH.] JARVIS stated clinically. [Subject: Galen. Ingesting lethal dose of radioactive isotopes. Mortality in 4 minutes.]
"Get out!" Marcus yelled, pointing to the stairs. "Go back to the airlock! Decontaminate!"
Galen fell to his knees. He looked at the tear in his suit. He looked at the blue water.
He stood up. He grabbed the crank wheel again.
"What are you doing?" Marcus shouted over the comms. "You're dead if you stay!"
"I'm dead anyway," Galen wheezed, blood flecking the inside of his glass visor. "I can't outrun the rads now. Turn the wheel, Marcus!"
"No." Marcus grabbed his shoulder.
"For the giant!" Galen screamed. "Turn the damn wheel!"
Marcus let go.
He grabbed his side of the crank.
They turned. The second rod slid down. Then the third.
Galen was failing. His movements were weak. He was coughing blood continuously now, the inside of his helmet painted red.
They reached the fourth wheel.
It wouldn't budge.
"It's the software," Galen gasped, leaning heavily on the console. "The physical lock is down, but the ship's OS won't engage the coolant pumps. The Board code is fighting the override."
Marcus looked at the half-melted console. A bundle of exposed, glowing fiber-optic cables hung from the side.
"JARVIS," Marcus thought. "If I plug in... can you override the pumps?"
[Boss, that is raw data from a nuclear reactor. It will fry your synapses. You have 8% battery left.]
"Can you do it?"
[...Yes. But it will hurt.]
Marcus pulled the heavy lead glove off his right hand.
The radiation hit his bare skin like a sunburn. It instantly prickled and tightened.
He reached into the console. He grabbed the exposed data cable.
He jammed it directly into the port at the base of his skull.
The Neural Link engaged.
BZZZZT.
Marcus screamed.
It wasn't data. It was an explosion.
He didn't just read the reactor. He became the reactor.
The Gold UI shattered, expanding infinitely.
He felt the heat of the core in his chest. He felt the cold ocean water rushing through the intake valves. He felt the rust in the pipes.
He could "see" the entire ship.
Level 14 to the Flight Deck.
He saw Scylla yelling into a radio. He saw the mob outside the safe house, scattered by her shot.
He saw the exterior hull.
He saw Nero's frigate, painting the carrier with a targeting laser. He saw the flame-skiffs hooking onto the rusted armor plates.
"JARVIS," Marcus thought. His voice wasn't a sound. It was a command that echoed through three thousand miles of wiring.
[I have the helm, Boss.]
"Route the reactor's reserve power. Bypass the command tower. Put it all into the CIWS automated defense grid."
[Routing...]
[Power grid stabilized. Turrets online.]
On the Flight Deck, three massive, rusted Phalanx cannons—dormant for years—suddenly whined to life.
They spun on their mounts. They didn't need human gunners. They had a God-Tier AI.
BRRRRRRT.
A wall of depleted uranium shells tore through the fog.
They shredded the incoming flame-skiffs. Fiberglass shattered. Jet fuel exploded in a chain reaction, lighting the sea on fire.
The CIWS tracked the frigate. They chewed into the matte black hull.
The frigate broke off its attack, banking hard away from the carrier, streaming smoke.
A cheer erupted from the slums, vibrating down through the ship's frame.
Marcus had saved them.
He pulled the cable from his neck.
He collapsed onto the grating, gasping for air. His head pounded with a migraine that blurred his vision.
The blue light of the reactor shifted. It turned a steady, calm green. The water stopped boiling.
"Galen," Marcus whispered, pulling his glove back on. "We did it."
He looked up.
Galen was on his knees. He wasn't moving. The blood inside his visor was thick and dark.
"Galen." Marcus crawled toward him.
The grating suddenly shook violently.
Not an explosion. Footsteps. Massive footsteps.
Marcus looked toward the stairs.
Something was coming down from the shadows.
It was an "Alpha" Melted.
It wasn't one man. It was an amalgamation of three cyborgs, fused together by a catastrophic meltdown years ago.
It had four arms. Two legs. A chest cavity glowing with its own miniature, unstable power core. It carried a heavy, lead-lined blast door like a riot shield.
It blocked the only staircase up.
"JARVIS," Marcus croaked, gripping his combat knife.
[Suit breached. Galen mortality imminent.] JARVIS flashed on the UI.
[Boss. You cannot fight that. You have 4% battery. You have to leave him.]
The Alpha roared, a sound of grinding metal and wet tearing. It raised the heavy blast door.
Marcus looked at Galen. He looked at the monster.
He didn't run.
He stood up, putting himself between the dying mechanic and the beast.
He raised his six-inch knife.
"I don't leave my people," Marcus said.