The Industrial Zone lacked the silence of "Dead Water"; here, everything howled, screeched, and spat sparks. Massive magnetic cranes crawled across the ceiling, hauling heaps of mangled metal that looked like the shattered ribs of some steel leviathan. We walked along narrow catwalks, while a hundred meters below us, vats of molten slag bubbled and frothed.
The moment I cast a glance at the scrap heaps, tactical interface grids flared in the corner of my vision:
[OBJECT: GRADE 44-B STEEL. COLLAPSE PROBABILITY: 14%. OPTIMAL ROUTE: CALCULATED]
"Iron, why'd you freeze?" Ephraim touched my shoulder.
I flinched. The grid vanished.
"Watching my step," I lied.
Enough opening up.
"Is the arm overheating?" Tira asked, falling into step beside me. She adjusted her tool bag and eyed my prosthesis suspiciously. "Steam is coming off your forearm."
"It's fine," I cut her off, tucking my arm into the folds of my jacket.
We had almost reached the central hub when the overall hum of the factory sharply shifted pitch. The shriek of milling cutters died down, replaced by a rapid, rhythmic clatter of metal against metal.
"Contact!" Zeno barked, whipping out his carbine.
Quadrupedal, headless machines leaped out from behind a mountain of compressed shavings. They moved in jagged jerks, bounding from one girder to another with a terrifying grace.
"Don't shoot!" Ephraim shouted. "You'll draw the upper patrols!"
"But they're already here," I said.
And in that instant, one of them—the largest—lunged at me straight from the upper tier of the catwalks.
A step forward, and I caught it mid-air with my right hand.
The Centurion's hydraulics engaged with such force that the bones in my human shoulder nearly tore out of their sockets. I clenched my fingers. The beast's chassis crumpled. A flash of light, the stench of burnt insulation—and I hurled the sparking chunk of scrap into the abyss below.
The remaining three machines froze for a fraction of a second.
"Iron, get back!" Tira screamed, raising a stun prod.
The same rhythm hammered in my head: Target. Acquire. Eliminate. I lunged forward. In a split second, I closed the distance to the second beast and drove my fist downward in a savage backhand. The blow punched clean through the armor, pinning the machine to the grated iron flooring.
The third and fourth tried to flank me simultaneously, but Zeno had already recovered, clipping one out of the air with a hard strike from his stock. The last one I simply seized by the "neck," ripping out its main trunk cable along with a chunk of the processor.
I stood in the middle of the catwalk, breathing heavily. My right hand trembled so violently I couldn't unclench my fist. Thick smoke billowed from the metal, and a nervous tic twitched across my face.
"Iron..." Tira approached cautiously, as if drawing near a wounded beast. "Let me see."
I recoiled.
"Don't. It's fine."
"Like hell it's fine!" Ephraim stepped right up to me, roughly grabbing my chin and forcing me to look at him. "Your arm is shaking too damn hard. And your eyes... they've gone completely gray-white again, kid. You're burning yourself out."
"But I destroyed them," I snapped, breaking his grip. "Without firing a single shot."
"Fine, have it your way. But if that thing starts tearing you apart, don't even try calling out to us," Ephraim said.
Without answering, I kept walking.
Later, we reached the end of the sector. A titanic blast door loomed ahead of us. On the wall, a biometric scanner glowed dimly.
Tira plugged her tablet into the access port. Her fingers hovered over the screen.
"There's three-layer encryption here. And... oh no."
"What is it?" Ephraim checked his magazine.
"The system won't accept a brute-force hack. It requires subject authorization. A direct request to the Watcher." She looked at me. "If I press your hand against this scanner, Valerius will know exactly where we are the split second the system reads you. A notification will go straight to his personal terminal."
Without a word, I pressed my palm against the cold glass of the scanner.
The scanner flashed bright red, then clicked, switching to green. The massive door ground aside, revealing a vertical shaft.
"We're coming for you, you bastard," I whispered.
Somewhere on the Upper Level, in a sterile office, a single notification popped up on Valerius's screen:
[SUBJECT IRON-01: AUTHORIZATION PASSED. ELEVATOR SHAFT ENTRY]
Valerius smiled imperceptibly, his gaze sliding down to the warning about the critical overheating of the subject's neural network.
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