The darkness inside the vault was suffocating—thick with ancient rust, scorched circuitry, and the reeking, metallic stink of fresh blood.
The voice still vibrated violently inside the protagonist’s teeth.
Welcome back.
"Light!" Cassian barked, his voice raw and harsh. "Get a fucking light up right now!"
Vesper slapped a tactical flare and threw it hard. Brilliant, punishing white light flooded the chamber, exposing the godawful horror standing ten feet away.
Or what was left of her.
Thick, dark blood plastered her pale, nude body where industrial tubes had been brutally torn from her flesh, leaving ragged, gaping holes in her neck and arms. Viscous fluid dripped from her black-crusted fingertips, pooling around her bare feet among the shattered glass. Her pitch-black eyes locked onto the protagonist with absolute, unyielding malice.
Sera’s fingers dug ruthlessly into the protagonist's arm, her knuckles white. "She fucking knows you," she hissed, breath ragged. "How the hell does she know you?"
"I don't know." The lie tasted like bile.
Something massive stirred behind the woman. A grotesque, segmented limb tore out of the shadows—a monstrosity forged from blackened alloy and fused human bone. It dragged across the concrete with an ear-splitting screech.
Cassian slammed his rifle up. "Step the fuck away, or I put every goddamn round I have into your chest!"
The woman’s lips twitched into a terrifying grin. The corners of her mouth tore open, splitting wider until the skin ripped down her jaw, sending a surge of blood over her chin.
"You brought them to the slaughterhouse, little bird," her voice echoed, booming simultaneously from every shattered, flickering monitor. "Just like last fucking time."
"Fuck this," Cassian growled.
Kaelen screamed, "Shoot the bitch!"
Cassian laid on the trigger. Heavy plasma bolts slammed into her chest—and sank straight into her flesh. Blue electrical fire coursed through the black veins covering her body, and the impact wounds stitched shut instantly.
Cassian froze. "What the actual fuck?"
Vesper jerked her flare upward. "Movement!"
The ceiling was crawling. Dozens of skinless hunters clung to the rusted girders, their glowing orange eyes snapping open until the darkness turned into a grid of predatory light. They weren't hunting the mechanical horror behind the woman—they were waiting for its command.
"We need an exit! Now!" the protagonist shouted, pointing toward the blast door. "Kaelen!"
"The containment fail-safe locked everything down!" Kaelen yelled, ripping paneling away from the terminal. "I need thirty fucking seconds!"
A hunter detached from the ceiling, diving straight for Kaelen. Sera intercepted it mid-air, driving a combat blade through its eye socket with a wet crunch before kicking the twitching corpse away.
"We don't have thirty fucking seconds!" Sera spat.
The protagonist stepped shoulder-to-shoulder with her. "Stay behind me."
Sera whipped her head around, eyes blazing. "Not a fucking chance! We live or we rot together."
The protagonist locked eyes with her and nodded. "Together."
The ruined woman stepped forward, crushing glass beneath her bare feet, and tilted her head up. "Awaken."
Every orange eye flared. The roof rained meat and iron.
"Kill them all!" Cassian screamed.
The vault erupted into chaos. Plasma fire ripped through the first wave while Vesper’s blade cleaved another beast clean in half. The protagonist ducked beneath a sweeping claw, drove her blade upward into a creature's jaw, and shoved its collapsing weight back into the oncoming swarm. Beside her, Sera fought with whirlwind precision, slicing open a hunter's gut and kicking the husk into two more.
A massive beast lunged between them. The protagonist caught its forearm, and Sera slammed her second blade through the top of its skull.
"Still fucking breathing?" Sera panted.
"Barely."
Sera flashed a blood-stained grin, yanked a frag grenade off her vest, and pulled the pin with her teeth. "Get down!"
She tossed it dead center into the horde. The protagonist tackled Sera, shielding her body behind a slab of reinforced steel as the detonation shook the facility to its foundation. Superheated plasma and shrapnel tore through the chamber.
When the smoke cleared, Sera was still pinned beneath her, face caked in soot and blood.
"You're on top of me again," Sera panted.
"You were about to blow your stupid self up."
"Technically, I was blowing them up."
The protagonist pushed off her, but Sera grabbed her wrist, pulling her close. Her voice stripped away all the noise. "Don't you dare get killed out here."
"I won't," the protagonist promised.
A guttural roar shattered the air as something titanic stepped into the light. It was a goddamn war machine—black steel encasing exposed muscle, with a glowing blue reactor core pulsating in its chest.
THUD.
The floor cracked.
A heavy, bladed tail shattered a concrete pillar nearby, showering them in rubble.
Cassian stared in horror. "What the absolute fuck is that thing?"
Directly beneath the core was a hollow, human-sized socket. The protagonist's stomach turned to ice.
The mutilated woman floated off the ground, jerked upward by invisible wires. "The host unit is complete," she rasped through static. "Rejoin the fucking system."
The machine's chest split open with a mechanical screech. The woman was yanked backward into the opening, and the heavy armor plates slammed shut. Blinding blue light surged through every seam.
"She's the fucking battery!" Kaelen yelled, slamming his bloody palm against the console.
The wall behind them violently unsealed, revealing a maintenance chute plunging into a black abyss.
"Go, go, go!" Kaelen yelled.
Vesper, Cassian, and Kaelen dove in headfirst. The protagonist grabbed Sera's hand, lacing her fingers tightly through hers. "Jump!"
"Together," Sera squeezed back.
They bolted as the machine's core flared to sun-bright intensity. Behind them, the woman's voice boomed one last time: "You can't run from what you fucking built."
The core discharged a catastrophic shockwave. Plasma fire engulfed the room, throwing Sera off balance. The protagonist tackled her into the chute just as a wall of fire swept over them, plunging them into the suffocating dark as the vault above detonated in a massive fireball.
They hit freefall down the maintenance slide. Sera clung to her, screaming over the wind, "Don't let go of me!"
"Never!"
They slammed onto a jagged, blood-slick steel girder near the bottom, dangling precariously over an endless pit. The air reeked of rotting offal, fried insulation, and fresh blood.
Beneath them, something colossal and godless churned. The low vibration rattled their teeth and made bile burn the back of their throats. A violent surge of neon-blue light detonated fifty feet down.
THUD.
Furnace-blasts of superheated air slammed up the tunnel. The shaft walls weren't just metal anymore—they were a horrific fusion of calcified spinal columns and writhing bundles of raw muscle tissue.
Sera slammed hard against her, chest heaving violently. In the blinding pulses of blue light, her eyes were wide, wild, and desperate. Her free hand shot up, fingers burying into the back of the protagonist's neck, yanking her down until their bloody foreheads slammed together.
"Don't you dare," Sera gasped, her voice cracking over the deafening mechanical roar. Her lips brushed the protagonist’s cheek—hot, frantic, and tasting of salt and copper. "Don't you fucking dare let go of me."
"Never," the protagonist swore against her skin.
She pulled Sera tight, pressing a hard, ruthless kiss to the corner of her mouth—a desperate anchor in the middle of the horror. Sera let out a shuddering breath, her grip tightening until it bruised.
The protagonist looked down into the screaming furnace of bone and iron below, then locked eyes with Sera.
"What the fuck do we do now?!" Sera yelled.
"We find the rest of the crew," the protagonist roared back, her voice cutting through the dark like a blade. "And then we burn every last piece of this fucking nightmare to the ground."