Darkness.
Absolute. A thick, suffocating blanket that swallowed sound, sight, and sense of direction. The brilliant, silent flash had stolen everything, leaving a void. Leo's ears rang with a high-pitched whine, the ghost of the energy wave. The air, once chilled, was now still and warm, heavy with an electrical tang, like the air after a lightning strike. He tasted it on his tongue. He had been thrown against a server rack, and the sharp edge of a metal panel was digging into his back. He registered the sensation, a dull, grounding pain in the disorienting blackness.
For a moment, there was nothing. Just the ringing in his ears and the frantic, silent hammering of his own heart. The relief he'd felt was gone, replaced by a new, more primal fear. The fear of the unknown.
Then, the squeals. A chorus of high-pitched, agonized shrieks from the hallway, quickly fading into nothing. It had worked. Ben's insane contraption had actually worked.
A shaky breath hissed out next to him. Chloe. "Everyone… okay?"
"I'm here," Ben's voice was a shaky whisper from across the room. "The backup power is… it's fried. Everything's fried."
"Maya?" Leo called out, his own voice sounding rough and alien in the total silence.
No answer.
A cold dread, far sharper than the fear of the goblins, gripped Leo. He fumbled in his pocket, his fingers closing around the smooth plastic of his phone. The screen flared to life, a blinding rectangle of white in the oppressive dark. He squinted, his eyes watering, and swept the beam across the room.
The server room was a wreck. The racks were scorched, the lights dead. Chloe was picking herself up off the floor, a dark smudge of dust on her cheek. Ben was staring at the dead, smoking remains of his motion sensor, a look of profound loss on his face.
And Maya was gone.
The heavy steel door was a mangled ruin, ripped halfway from its hinges. The gap it left was a perfect square of blackness.
"She was right by the door," Chloe said, her voice tight.
Leo's light found her. She was lying in the hallway, just beyond the threshold, tangled in the wreckage of the door. She wasn't moving.
Leo scrambled over the debris, his phone's light bouncing wildly. "Maya!"
He reached her side, his heart in his throat. She was breathing. Shallow, but breathing. A dark bruise was already forming on her temple where her head must have struck the metal frame. The two kitchen knives lay on the concrete beside her.
And then the new sound began.
It wasn't a goblin. It was a slow, heavy, metallic scrape. The sound of something impossibly heavy dragging itself across the concrete floor at the far end of the hallway. It was rhythmic. Unthinking. And it was getting closer.
"Ben, what is that?" Chloe whispered, her voice trembling as she came up behind Leo.
"I… I don't know," Ben stammered, his face ghostly in the upward glow, confusion plain. "The pulse… it shouldn't have just killed the goblins. It should have scrambled any simple system. But this… this sounds big."
The scraping stopped. For a terrible, drawn-out second, there was only the sound of their own breathing. Then, a single, baleful red light blinked on in the darkness at the end of the hall, maybe fifty feet away. It wasn't a pair of eyes. It was a lens. An optic.
It swiveled, the motion accompanied by the grinding of unoiled gears, and fixed on the light from Leo's phone.
A low, distorted burst of static erupted from the shape. It sounded like a corrupted audio file. [Unauthorized… light… source… detected.]
The thing began to move toward them. It wasn't shambling. It was a lurching, dragging motion, each step a heavy, metallic impact that vibrated through the floor. As it drew closer, Leo's light began to pick out details. It was huge, easily eight feet tall, a hulking monstrosity of scrap. A shattered office water cooler formed its torso. Thick bundles of network cables were its muscles. Its arms were made from bent steel server racks, ending in crude, pincer-like hands of twisted metal. Its head was a shattered computer monitor, the single red light of a security camera glowing from the hole in its screen.
It was a golem. A junk golem.
And it was blocking their only way out.
"We need to move her," Leo said, his mind racing. He and Chloe grabbed Maya under the arms, dragging her back into the relative darkness of the server room. Her body was a dead weight.
Ben was already backing away, his eyes fixed on the approaching monster. "Its armor… Maya's knives won't even scratch it."
Leo propped Maya against a scorched server rack. She was stirring, a low groan escaping her lips. Not fast enough. The golem was halfway down the hall now, its red eye unwavering.
He tried to use [Inspect Element], but his power was useless in the dark. He needed to see it. He looked at the phone in his hand, its battery at a miserable 18%. It was their only light. A terrible, reflexive idea formed. A helpdesk solution.
"Chloe, your phone," he snapped. "Flashlight on. Throw it down the hall. Away from us."
She stared at him, confused. "What? But—"
"Just do it!"
She fumbled for her phone, turned on the light, and gave it a desperate, underhand toss. It skittered across the concrete, casting wild, dancing shadows, before coming to rest near the far wall. The golem paused. Its head, the broken monitor, swiveled with a screech of metal. It processed the new light source, its single red eye blinking. [Primary… threat… designated.] It changed course, lurching toward Chloe's phone.
It was a temporary distraction. A patch, not a fix.
"Ben," Leo said, his voice low and urgent. "Talk to me. What is that thing?"
"It's… a manifestation," Ben breathed, his fear mingling with a manic sort of glee. "The EMP didn't just wipe the goblins. It must have… coalesced the building's security protocols. Mixed them with the corrupted data from the System. It's the building's immune response. A rogue antivirus."
Leo's mind snagged on the word. Protocols. Antivirus. That meant it had rules. It had code. And if it had code, he could read it.
He crawled to the doorway, staying low. The golem was bashing Chloe's phone into pieces, the red light of its eye reflecting off the shards of glass. He had a clear line of sight. He activated [Inspect Element].
His mind flooded with information. It was a mess, a horrifying fusion of corporate security software and raw, chaotic System energy. But underneath it all, he found the core logic.
[Primary_Directive: NEUTRALIZE_UNAUTHORIZED_PERSONNEL] [Sub_Routine: AUTHORIZED_USER_ID_LIST] - ceo_marcus_stone - cto_eliza_beth_cho - sec_chief_d_murphy
The names of the company executives. They were the only ones on the list.
The golem finished pulverizing the phone and the hallway was plunged back into darkness, save for Leo's light and the creature's own glowing eye. It turned back toward them. [Threat… neutralized. Resuming… sweep.]
"Leo?" Chloe whispered from behind him. "What do we do?"
He had a plan. An insane one. More than untying a shoelace. This was rewriting a permission slip. The headache from his last [Minor Edit] felt like a distant memory compared to the migraine this would cause. But it was their only chance.
"I'm going to try something," he said, his voice tight. "Maya needs to wake up. Now. She's the only one who can buy me enough time."
He crawled back to her side. She was blinking, her eyes unfocused. "What… what happened?"
"No time," Leo said, his voice sharp. "Big robot. Very angry. We need you to distract it. Just for thirty seconds. Don't try to hurt it. Just stay alive and keep it busy."
Maya pushed herself up, wincing as she touched her temple. She saw the red eye in the hallway, the hulking shape. Her fighter's instincts took over, her eyes clearing with a watchful focus. She grabbed her knives. "Understood."
"Ben, Chloe," Leo ordered, surprised at the authority in his own voice. "When she goes, I need light. But keep it moving. Don't let it lock on."
Maya didn't wait for another command. She exploded into motion, a blur of silent grace. She ran out into the hall, not at the golem, but past it, drawing its attention. The golem swiveled, its heavy body slow to react. [New… unauthorized… entity… detected.]
"Now!" Leo yelled.
Ben and Chloe scrambled, their phone lights cutting through the darkness, playing on the walls, the ceiling, anywhere but on the two combatants. The golem was confused, its primitive sensors overwhelmed by the moving lights and the fast-moving target. It swiped a massive metal arm where Maya had been a second before, the claws scraping deep gouges in the concrete wall.
Leo ignored it all. He focused on the authorization list in his vision, the lines of code shimmering in his mind. He activated [Minor Edit].
Pain. White-hot, immediate, and blinding. It felt like a railroad spike being driven through his skull. His vision swam with black spots. The text flickered, resisting him. It was a protected file. System-critical.
Come on, Leo. You're helpdesk. You always find a back door.
He ignored the pain, pouring every ounce of his concentration into the task. He wasn't just changing a property. He was adding new lines. He visualized his own name, typing it into the code.
+ user_id: leo_maxwell
The resistance was immense. The golem roared in frustration, a blast of static as Maya danced just out of its reach. The pain in Leo's head intensified, a supernova of agony. He felt something warm and wet trickle from his nose.
He pushed harder.
+ user_id: chloe_tanaka + user_id: benjamin_carr + user_id: maya_lin
With a final, reflexive surge of will, he hit the mental equivalent of the 'enter' key.
The world went white.
He was vaguely aware of falling sideways, of Chloe shouting his name. The last thing he saw before the darkness took him was the golem. It froze mid-swing, its massive arm poised to crush Maya.
Its red eye flickered. Once. Twice. Then it turned a soft, passive blue.
A new line of distorted text crackled from its speaker. [User… Maya… Lin… Authorized. Stand… down.]
The Scrap Golem retracted its claws, turned with a grinding of gears, and began to drag its way back down the hallway, its single blue eye casting a calm, steady light in the oppressive dark.