The single red eye of the Enforcer was like the eye of God, staring down from the heavens and finding them all wanting. The Exiles were in a panic. Their undisciplined ranks, held together only by greed and the authority of their leader, began to break. A few of the smarter ones were already backing away from the edge of the shaft, their rifles lowered, their desire for a legendary crate forgotten in the face of a direct, undeniable threat from a System agent.
"Hold your ground, you idiots!" the scarred man, Zane, roared, trying to maintain order. He was brave, I had to give him that. Or maybe just stupid. "It's one machine! We're a dozen! We can take it!" But fear was a more powerful motivator than leadership. The line was faltering.
Glitch, however, was still staring at me, his red optic glowing with an intense, calculating light. He wasn't panicking. He wasn't looking up at the descending monster. He was analyzing the new situation. He was looking for an angle. He was a creature of opportunity, and the board had just been completely rearranged.
"You're insane," he rasped, his mechanical voice a mixture of fury and a strange, grudging respect. "You brought hell down on all of us just to prove a point."
"I told you," I said, raising my hands slowly to show I was no longer a threat to him. My pistol was still in my hand, but I held it loosely, barrel pointed down. "You trapped yourselves with me. But there's a way out of this. For both of us."
This got his attention. His red eye flickered, focusing entirely on me. "I'm listening," he said, waving his men to stand down for a moment. Zane shot him a look of disbelief but obeyed, silencing his protests with a low growl.
"That thing wants me, and only me," I said, pointing up with my chin at the Enforcer, which was now beginning its slow, controlled rappel down the side of the shaft, its metal claws scraping against the concrete walls. "You can't fight it head-on. It will tear your crew apart before you can scratch its paint. But you can give it what it wants."
Anya looked at me, her eyes wide with alarm. For a second, she must have thought I was about to sacrifice myself, to offer myself up to save her.
"You have the controls for the elevator brake," I continued, speaking quickly, laying out the plan before she could protest. "You release the brake, let us drop to your level. We run. The Enforcer will follow us. It will ignore you completely, because you are no longer in its way. You get to live. You get to keep your crew."
The scarred man, Zane, scoffed loudly. "And let you go? Let the biggest bounty in the history of the Undercroft just walk away? Never. I'd rather take my chances with the bot."
"Shut up, Zane," Glitch snapped, not taking his eye off me. "He's not finished. Let the man talk."
"You want a prize?" I said, looking Glitch directly in the eye. I had to appeal to his core nature. He was a merchant. A broker. He wanted profit. "I'll give you one. Better than my bounty. Much better."
I pointed up again. "Up there," I said, "is a brand new, custom model System Enforcer with a legendary-tier Phantom SR-90 sniper rifle. Its right arm is damaged. Its chassis is probably compromised from the EMP I hit it with. But its core systems are intact. When it comes down here after us, it will be focused entirely on us. It will have tunnel vision. It will leave itself exposed."
I let the words sink in, painting a picture for him.
"You and your crew can ambush it. An Enforcer's power core, its memory banks, its weapon systems… that's worth ten times my bounty on the black market. Maybe twenty. You could retire on that kind of salvage, Glitch. You could buy your own level of the Undercroft."
I was offering him a new deal. A Devil's Deal. He helps us escape, and in return, I deliver a priceless, incredibly dangerous prize right to his doorstep. He would be trading a high-risk bounty for an even higher-risk, higher-reward salvage operation. It was a gamble that would appeal to the very heart of a man like Glitch.
Glitch was silent for a long moment. I could practically see the calculations running behind his red eye. The profit margins, the risk factors, the potential losses. The Enforcer was halfway down the shaft now, its descent speeding up. We had maybe twenty seconds before it reached our level.
"How do we know it will ignore us?" Glitch asked finally. It was the first sign that he was considering it. He was looking for assurances.
"Because I'm going to make sure it has no reason to look at anyone else," I said. I turned to Anya. "Give me the rifle."
She looked at me, then at the Enforcer, then back at me. She understood. Without a word, she handed me the massive, empty Phantom SR-90. It was heavy, useless as a firearm, but as a symbol, it was priceless.
I held it up for Glitch, and more importantly, for the descending Enforcer, to see. The dim light glinted off its sleek, black frame.
"This is a personal fight," I declared, my voice echoing in the shaft. "It's between me and him. This is his prize."
Glitch made his decision. The calculation was complete. The potential profit was too great to ignore. "Zane! Get your men ready for an ambush! Target the machine, not the kids!" he barked. He turned to the Exile at the elevator controls. "Release the brake! All the way! Now!"
The man nodded and slammed the lever down. With a loud groan of protesting metal, the brake disengaged completely. Our elevator platform plummeted. We dropped the last ten meters in a gut-wrenching free fall, hitting the bottom of the shaft with a bone-jarring crash that sent us sprawling.
We stumbled off the platform onto the cold, concrete floor of the Undercroft level. "This way!" Glitch pointed down a dark corridor. "Get out of sight! Lead it to the old scrapyard! We'll make our stand there!"
We ran, our footsteps echoing in the tunnel. Anya's limp was pronounced, but she was moving with a desperate, determined speed. Behind us, we heard the heavy clang of the Enforcer landing at the bottom of the shaft. It paused for a second. We heard the Exiles open fire, a sudden, deafening cacophony of a dozen different weapons.
Then we heard the Enforcer's return fire, the clean, professional crack of its pistol, followed by the sickening, wet thud of a body hitting the floor. And screams.
We had escaped the elevator. But we had just led a monster into the heart of the Undercroft and ignited a war between two of its most dangerous factions. And we were running right into the middle of it.