The air vibrated with a deep, metallic hum as the ancient machinery embedded in the walls groaned to life. "We are all going to die," Rona shouted, his voice cracking with terror. He frantically grabbed Cassia's hand and made a desperate dash for the exit. Pipes and cables shifted like living veins, pulsing with a sickly green light. The room stank of ozone and decay. The altar crackled with energy, arcs of static flickering over the rusted metal.
A distorted voice echoed, emotionless yet deafening: "Begin extraction."
The group immediately scrambled back, weapons drawn. Before they could escape, massive slabs of metal slid down from the ceiling, trapping them inside. Cassia let out a panicked breath, her eyes darting around for an exit.
As Rona started looking around, it all came rushing back to him. "The altar, the choir… this is where they were." A low, grinding noise filled the chamber, as the metal floor hissed and opened. Several containment chambers emerged from the floor, inside them the modified corpses of some of the city residents, some of whom Rona recognized: Karis and some of his comrades. "No, no no," he repeated to himself, tearfully trying to look away from the chambers. The pile of corpses began to shift.
They weren't dead.
Rona watched in absolute horror as the bodies of his former friends lurched upward, revealing metallic spines, exposed wiring threaded through decomposing skin. Their eyes glowed with the same sickly green as the machines.
Lorian attacked, throwing his glowing red tubes at them, the explosion tearing through rotten flesh—but the creatures kept moving, limbs snapping unnaturally as they advanced.
"Karis!" Rona shouted, tears welling up his eyes. He grabbed one of the creatures by the shoulders, forcing it to look him in the eyes. "It's me, please stop." The creature hesitated for an instant, an instant Rona could have sworn he could have seen a glint of humanity in her eyes, an emotion he had never seen from her: anger, rage at him. He knew why, after all it was him who led them down here, he was the one who led them to their death. The creature leaned close to whisper the word "Penance" in a low guttural whisper. Rona helplessly looked up to the creature's face, he immediately knew what he had to do, he had to pay for his mistake. Slowly he knelt, looking down, ready to receive the final blow. The grinning creature raised its clawed hand, ready to bring it down on his head.
Izari then came swinging a rusted pipe at it, sending it crashing against the containment chambers. The creature twitched violently, then began reassembling itself.
"They're part of the system!" Cassia gasped, her gaze darting toward the cables feeding into their spines.
"What system?" Izari asked as he dodged a swipe from one of the abominations, his phase ability allowing him to pass through it. "What the hell are you talking about?" But for the first time, something grabbed him. "Wait what!" He immediately tried to phase out of its hold but he couldn't. "I can't phase, that's impossible!" Mechanical tendrils shot from the wall, latching onto his wrist. The altar glowed brighter. The system was trying to pull him in as he let out an agonized scream.
Without hesitation, Lorian threw one of his explosive red tubes at the cables feeding into the wall, causing sparks to fly. The tendril released Izari, retracting violently.
"Move!" Lorian shouted, tossing an explosive toward the altar.
The resulting detonation shattered parts of the wall, exposing a maintenance shaft leading further down. The corpses convulsed violently, their glow flickering as if disrupted as they collapsed onto the floor.
"That's our way out!" Cassia yelled.
The group dove into the newly revealed tunnel and that was when they saw them: more of the mechanical abominations in their containment chambers all lined up on the walls of the never ending corridor as they began to stir. The floor shifted beneath them as the entire structure began to reconfigure. Walls twisted, metal grinding as the facility triggered an emergency maneuver to get rid of the intruders. The floor beneath them opened. "Crap!" Lorian muttered as they all began to scream as they fell into the darkness below.
Meanwhile, deeper within Machine City's underbelly, Amara and Tamisra continued their hunt. The seer strode ahead, silent, his expression unreadable. Tamisra lingered behind, her fingers tracing the bloodstains on the walls. She suddenly overheard a distant explosion as the ground they were standing on slightly shook.
"They're close," she whispered, looking at the direction of the commotion. "I can feel it."
Amara knelt, inspecting the ground. "Those runts seem to be heading down."
The seer nodded once. "Then so are we." They hurried towards the source of the sound. The calm attitude of the seer seemed compromised as he walked faster this time. Tamisra followed last her heightened senses catching the faint sound of crawling and scratching right above them. She hesitated for as second looking up, "Hey!" Amara's voice interrupted her forcing her to bring back her attention to a puzzled woman staring at her.
"Are you okay?" Amara asked as she approached her concern etched on her face.
"No." Tamisra replied looking over Amara's shoulder, the seer was still hurrying away his quick strides had broken into light jog. She grabbed Amara's arm pulling her close before she pushed her on to the wall. "listen!" She barked at Amara. After a long period of silence Amara's eyes widened "What the hell is that?"
"Exactly." Tamisra added looking over to where the seer disappeared. "Who is he?"
"I don't know; the lieutenant is the one who's ever talked to him apart from us." Amara whispered. "He' a part of some cult I guess something to do with Xex-umbra, that's all I know about him."
"We need to get out of here." Tamisra lowered her voice as she looked up. "I don't want to find out whatever's making that noise." Amara shrugged off Tamisra's hold on her "No way! Not while that mutt that nearly killed me is still alive somewhere there." She pointed out to the darkness where the seer had disappeared into. "For goodness sake Tamy he is the reason krell, vargas and the lieutenant are dead. We need to get the job done, we need to make those aberrations pay."
Tamisra grabbed her shoulder "We don't need to worry about that, whatever those things are they seem to have already taken care of them."
"From what I can tell he doesn't need us for this job…"
Amara's gaze landed on her "What are you implying." But Tamisra had long stopped looking at her, her attention was on something behind her fear registered on her face. Amara slowly turned to look behind her bracing for the worst. It was the seer his face twisted in anger as he stood behind her.
He wiped off a black smudge on his cheek before he walked past them. "Come on, the passage there's blocked we have to find another way around." His calm demeanor was replaced by an angry tone. Tamisra shot Amara an uneasy look as they both followed the seer.
Izari opened his eyes and immediately sat up to look around him. He was lying on top of a massive pile of old junk, they seemed to have broken everyone's fall. Cassia was still not awake. Lorian was already up and tending to a badly injured Rona who used himself as a shield to protect Cassia during the fall.
"Mind lending a hand?" He called out to Izari who immediately rushed to his side asking him "what happened?"
"Isn't it obvious?" Lorian gestured to Rona's left arm which was twisted in an unnatural way. He scanned for further injuries, he finally looked up to Izari. "I want you to hold him down okay?"
"Okay." Izari replied holding down Rona by his shoulders.
"Here goes." Lorian expertly wrenched Rona's arm back into place as Rona screamed and arched his back in pain. The scream was loud enough to wake up Cassia. Cassia immediately ran up to Rona as she cried "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."
Rona raised his other good hand to her shoulder. "No kid, this is my fault." He averted his gaze to look up from where they had fallen and with a sad look on his face he muttered to himself "This is all my fault."
Moments later they finally emerged into a massive underground reservoir, long abandoned. Rona's left hand was encased in a makeshift cast but he still had a tired, haggard look on his face. The ceiling was so high it vanished into darkness, massive rusted pipes stretching across the expanse like broken ribs. Water dripped from above, pooling into stagnant puddles thick with filth. Distant machinery groaned, as if something deep within the earth was still breathing.
Cassia, her voice barely above a whisper, asked "Where are we?"
Izari stepped forward, scanning the area. "Definitely somewhere we shouldn't be."
The reservoir extended into an abyssal void, the other side barely visible. A single bridge stretched across it—but it was crumbling, sections missing, barely held together by rust and age.
As the group cautiously crossed the bridge, Izari stopped. Something was beneath them. Watching.
A shape moved in the water below. Not just one. Dozens.
Then, a deep, metallic rumble emanated from the abyss, shaking the bridge they were on, causing them to scramble for support.
A massive silhouette rose from the depths.