The rhythmic clank of the Janitor's approach was a sound from a different kind of nightmare. The Aberrations were chaos, a breakdown of reality. This was order. This was the city's original, brutal logic reasserting itself, a relentless machine designed for one purpose: to sterilize any unauthorized life. To sanitize the system.
They were the filth to be cleaned.
The drone was a hulking brute of black alloy, its form brutally utilitarian. It moved not with the grace of a living thing, but with the unflinching, inexorable certainty of a hydraulic press. A single, glowing red optical sensor, the color of a dying star, swept across the ruined chamber, and the low hum of its internal reactor was a far more terrifying sound than any monster's shriek.
"Oh, void," Silas breathed, his voice stripped of its usual bravado. He scrambled behind the scorched remains of a data bank. "A Series-7 Janitor. We're dead. This is worse than the glitches. You can't trick a machine."
Ren's mind, still foggy from the catastrophic lag, was slowly piecing together fragments from old Gamma tech manuals he'd once skimmed out of boredom. Series-7: Urban Pacification and Sanitation. Standard armament: high-energy plasma cutter, kinetic bolt launcher. Armor: triple-hardened alloy plating. It was designed to put down riots and purge entire sectors. Valeria's sidearm would be as effective as a thrown rock.
His theory was proven a moment later. Valeria, her face a pale mask of exhaustion and defiance, took a knee and fired three precise shots at the drone's optical sensor. The slugs sparked against the armored lens, ricocheting off into the darkness without leaving so much as a scratch. The red eye didn't even flicker.
"Get down!" she yelled at Silas, her voice echoing in the ruined chamber as she took cover. Even drained and outmatched, her training held. She was a soldier, and a soldier held the line.
The Janitor's sensor locked onto her position. Its synthesized voice, devoid of malice or anger, echoed with chilling finality.
Organic anomaly detected. Caste: Beta. Unsanctioned. Sterilization protocol commencing in ten seconds.
Ten seconds.
Ren's headache was a physical, pulsing thing, a remnant of the sky he had just unmade. Using his power now, so soon after a catastrophic drain, felt like pressing on a fractured bone. It was a risk that could leave him a mindless husk. But what choice did they have?
He closed his eyes, ignoring the throbbing pain, and looked.
The Janitor's Covenant was nothing like the chaotic, corrupted knots of the Aberrations. It was a perfect, intricate machine of golden light, a testament to the Alphas' mastery. The weave was impossibly dense, a fortress of pure order. He could never hope to unravel the whole thing in his current state. He would be dead ten times over before he could even fray a major thread.
So don't attack the fortress, a cold, pragmatic voice in his head whispered. Attack the window.
He narrowed his focus, pushing past the overwhelming complexity of the machine's core Covenant, searching for the smaller, more isolated systems. The weapon actuators. The locomotion drivers. The optical sensor.
There. The Covenant governing the sensor was a separate, smaller weave, connected to the main chassis by a handful of data-threads. It was still strong, still perfect, but it was a target he could comprehend. A target he could unmake.
Nine… eight…
Valeria was shouting something, a desperate battle plan. Silas was returning fire with some kind of scavenged pulse rifle, the bolts of energy dissipating harmlessly against the drone's armor. They were buying him moments, paying for them with the last of their resources and courage.
Ren focused everything he was, every scrap of his will, on the single, golden thread that gave the sensor its function.
Seven… six…
He reached out. The pain was blinding. He felt a warm trickle of blood from his nose.
Five…
He pulled.
The world went silent. The Covenant, pristine and perfect, held for a terrifying eternity. It was not frayed, not corrupted. It fought back with the pure, unyielding logic of its design. For a moment, Ren felt his own consciousness start to fray, his mind threatening to dissolve under the strain.
Four…
With a final, silent scream of effort, he ripped the thread from the tapestry.
The Janitor's red eye did not explode. It did not shatter. It simply went dark. The machine halted its advance, its head swiveling from side to side in a blind, confused search. Its targeting system was gone.
They had neutered it.
A wave of relief washed over Ren, so potent it almost buckled his knees. He had done it.
The drone, however, was not finished. Its metallic voice echoed again, colder than before.
Visual sensors offline. Defaulting to contingency protocol: Area Saturation.
Weapon ports slid open on its shoulders and chassis, the barrels of a dozen kinetic launchers powering up with an ominous hum.
Ren stared at the blind, heavily armed machine as it prepared to obliterate the entire chamber. The relief curdled into fresh dread.
"Okay," he muttered, wiping the blood from his lip. "New plan."