The sound was a horrific symphony of screeching metal and Anya's muffled groans of pain. The bolts on her leg, precision-engineered and sealed against the elements, were locked tight. The EMP blast must have fused some of the micro-latches. My hands, slick with sweat and grime, kept slipping off the heavy wrench. I was wasting time. Precious, life-or-death seconds were ticking away with every echoing footstep of the approaching Enforcer.
The rhythmic clang… clang… clang of its metal feet grew louder, closer. It was methodically navigating the debris field, its red eye sweeping back and forth, a tireless, unblinking predator hunting us in the gloom. It was less than fifty meters away now.
"It's not working!" I grunted, my muscles straining. I threw the useless wrench aside in frustration. "The bolts are seized! I can't get them to turn!"
"Use the cutter," Anya gasped, her voice strained and hoarse through the fabric clenched in her teeth. "Just… cut it off!"
It was a brutal, ugly solution. Her cybernetic leg was a masterpiece of technology, a sleek, custom-built limb probably worth a fortune in credits. To destroy it felt like a sacrilege, like smashing a priceless work of art. But her life was worth more. I didn't hesitate. I grabbed the plasma cutter.
"Hold still," I whispered, my own voice tight.
I activated the tool. It hummed to life, a small, intensely bright point of blue-white light appearing at its tip. With a hiss and a shower of sparks that illuminated Anya's pain-contorted face, I severed the last connection points. I cut through the advanced alloy like it was butter, the smell of burning plastic and ozone filling the air.
Anya screamed, a raw, unfiltered sound of agony that was quickly muffled by the fabric. The connection wasn't just mechanical; it was neurological. A web of data ports and nerve endings connected her to the limb. I had just severed a part of her. Her dead leg came off, and I tossed the useless, expensive limb aside into the rubble.
There was no time for finesse. No time for apologies. I grabbed the leg from the Dominion corpse. It was heavier, bulkier, and smelled faintly of burnt electronics. It was a crude piece of military hardware, all function and no form, with scratches and dents from old battles. I slammed it into place against the universal connection port at her hip. As she had predicted, the fittings didn't quite match.
"It's not lining up!" I said, forcing it with all my strength.
"Make it fit!" she choked out, her whole body trembling.
Using the heavy wrench as a crude hammer, I smashed the locking mechanism into place with three brutal, echoing blows. The sound of crunching metal and plastic was sickening. Wires sparked. The leg now hung at an odd, unnatural angle. It was a Frankenstein's monster of a repair job.
"Try it," I said, my voice tense.
Anya pushed herself up, her face a pale mask of pain. She took a deep, shuddering breath and put weight on the scavenged leg. It twitched, then spasmed violently, the uncalibrated motors fighting each other with a loud whirring sound. For a second, I thought it would tear itself apart, or worse, tear itself away from her. But it held. With a final jolt and a loud whir, the leg's internal power source kicked in. It wasn't calibrated. It wasn't efficient. But it was functional. She could stand. She could walk, albeit with a clumsy, jerky, monstrous limp that looked painful with every step.
"It works," she said, her voice a mixture of amazement and profound pain. "You crazy son of a bitch, it works."
Just then, the red eye of the Enforcer appeared from behind a pile of machinery. It had seen us. It had seen me.
"Run!" I yelled.
We ran. Our escape was an ugly, hobbling, desperate scramble across the factory floor towards the massive service elevator at the far end of the plaza. Anya's new leg moved in unpredictable, jerky motions, but it was a thousand times better than being immobile. The Enforcer was in pursuit, moving faster now, its own balance systems fully restored. It fired as it ran, its shots from its one good arm chipping away at the machinery we used for cover, herding us into the open.
We reached the elevator. It was a huge, greasy platform, large enough to carry a heavy truck, its thick metal doors wide open. I slammed my hand on the massive, glowing call button. Nothing happened. The light on the button was dead. Of course. The entire system was dead from my EMP blast.
"It's no good!" I shouted, a wave of despair washing over me. "The power is out! We're trapped!"
But Anya, ever the pragmatist, had seen something else. Her eyes were always scanning, always looking for an advantage. "Look! The emergency release!" She pointed to a large, manual lever on the wall next to the elevator door. It was covered in faded red and yellow warning stripes, a design from a time before HUDs. A small, grimy plaque next to it read: [GRAVITY DESCENT - MANUAL OVERRIDE]. It was a last-resort safety feature, a relic from a time when human workers needed a way to escape a power failure. It would disengage the electromagnetic brakes and let the elevator drop to the level below.
"It'll be a rough ride," she said, her breath coming in ragged gasps.
"It's better than this!" I replied, glancing over my shoulder. The Enforcer was closing in, less than thirty meters away, its stride calm and purposeful.
We both grabbed the massive, grease-covered lever and pulled with all our combined strength. For a moment, it wouldn't budge, rusted solid from years of disuse. I put my foot against the wall and threw my entire body weight into it. With a groan of protesting metal that echoed through the plaza, the lever moved. There was a loud, echoing CLANG from high above us in the shaft as the elevator's heavy, counter-weighted brakes disengaged.
The platform beneath our feet shuddered and began to descend. Slowly at first, then gathering speed. We were escaping.
The Ghost Enforcer reached the edge of the shaft just as we dropped out of its line of sight. It let out a final, frustrated roar of synthesized rage, a sound that echoed down the shaft after us.
We were falling into the darkness of the lower levels, the wind rushing past us, the sounds of the battle fading away. For the first time since Protocol Scorch had been activated, a sliver of genuine hope returned. We had survived. We had escaped. We were alive.
Then, with a violent shudder and a high-pitched screech of metal on metal, the elevator came to a grinding halt. We hadn't reached the bottom. We were stuck, suspended in the darkness of the elevator shaft, maybe ten meters below the factory floor, and a long way from the level below.
A series of bright, powerful floodlights suddenly switched on from below, blinding us. They weren't system lights. They were portable, jury-rigged floodlights, casting long, stark shadows up the shaft and illuminating us perfectly.
We heard voices. Not the synthetic tone of an Enforcer, not the professional chatter of Ouroboros. These were gruff, hungry voices. The voices of the Undercroft. The voices of Exiles.
A familiar, hunched-over figure peered over the edge of the shaft from the level below us. It was Glitch. But he wasn't alone. He was surrounded by a dozen of the toughest, most desperate-looking Exiles I had ever seen. They were armed to the teeth with scavenged, heavily modified weapons. And they were all looking up at us with greedy, predatory smiles.
"Well, well, well," Glitch rasped, his red eye glowing with amusement. "My emergency elevator brake worked perfectly. Funny thing about these old systems. They're not on the main power grid. Look what fell into our trap. The system bounty might be offline for now, kid, but the price on your head is still good with me. And my friends… they're very eager to collect."