The lights dimmed across Proteus as night-cycle rotated in. Not that it ever truly slept, its sky always churned with sparks and ash, but below the surface, beneath the humming foundries and corporate towers, darkness had a different flavor.
Ethan descended into it willingly.
The access panel to Maintenance Sector 9-E gave way with a soft click, and a rush of warm, chemical-tainted air swept over him. The lower hangar sublevels were forgotten places, choked with steam, lined with rusting conduits and leak-sealed pipe networks. Flickering hazard lights strobed along the corridor in uneven intervals, revealing shapes that shouldn't move but sometimes did.
He adjusted the collar of his jacket, the fabric layered over lightweight armor woven with responsive fiber tech, capable of anticipating impact vectors and hardening just enough to blunt kinetic trauma without sacrificing flexibility.
On his hip sat a slimline laser pistol, dull gunmetal with brushed grip panels. Compact enough to holster discreetly but carrying a full eight-cell discharge capacity. Modular mounting ports lined the barrel frame, adaptable for silencers, smart sights, or enhanced output stabilizers.
On his other side, his trusted Astral Slayer. And clipped to his belt: EMP gel mines, non-lethal suppression charges, and two precious energy cells he'd rather not waste.
"Iris," he whispered, activating his helmet's HUD.
"Mapping initiated," she responded calmly. "Thermal and audio sweeps active. Recalibrating ambient noise filters... now."
A translucent overlay slid into his vision, painting the halls with ghostly echoes, heat blooms in orange and red, vibration trails flickering in blue. One ping to the east, fading quickly. Another to the south, slow... steady... mechanical.
There.
"The drone's near the cooling conduit corridor," Iris said. "Quadruped pattern. 1.8 meters tall. Estimated weight: 420 kilograms. Weapons unknown. It is not idling, Ethan. It is hunting."
"Of course it is," he muttered, checking the mine adhesive. "Why would this ever be simple?"
The first sign of the drone's wake was a servitor unit, crushed flat against a bulkhead.
The synthetic's body had been torn open at the torso, its spine coil twisted like wet wire. Nearby, a maintenance hatch had been melted shut, slagged in precise, arcing patterns.
Ethan crouched low and studied the scorch marks. Plasma-grade. Controlled.
"This thing's smarter than you let on, Caro," he said quietly.
"I warned you," her voice crackled over a localized link. "It's got pieces of my old neural mesh. It adapts."
Ethan moved forward. Slowly. Every footstep measured against the creak of metal and hiss of steam vents. The air thickened with humidity the deeper he went, and the pressure sensors in his boots registered uneven gravity, decay in the stabilizers.
Then he heard it.
Click-hiss… click-hiss…
A low, metallic breathing. Not literal. Not alive. But rhythmic, measured.
Iris highlighted a dim signature moving beyond a row of coolant tanks. Too large for a scavver. Too precise. It paused, lifted, turned.
The sound passed.
He exhaled.
Keep moving.
He reached the loader bay, a cavernous chamber of stacked parts and stripped hauler components, where shadows gathered like predators. Half the overhead lights were dead, the rest flickering sporadically.
Steam hissed from a cracked conduit in the far corner, diffusing the air into a murky haze. One old loader frame stood upright, deactivated and fused in place. Its legs bent like a kneeling sentinel, stripped of its armor but sturdy enough to hold.
It would do.
Ethan vaulted onto the chassis with practiced grace, his boots clanking softly against its ribbed plating. He slid inside the hollow cavity, crouched within the decayed metal like a parasite inside a corpse. With careful, precise movements, he embedded two EMP gel mines along the inner cavity of the frame's chest panel, syncing their pulse-timers to his neural HUD.
"Iris, confirm signal strength," he whispered.
"Signal clear. Drone approaching from corridor 7B. ETA: ninety seconds. Neural reinforcement standing by."
"Standby override: active," Ethan said. "Let's make this fast."
He inhaled once, then let the air flow out slowly. Then again. With each breath, he dipped beneath the surface of his own thoughts, touching the psionic current he usually kept dormant. Not full activation, just enough to thread his awareness through the noise.
His heart slowed. Blood flow adjusted. Focus tightened.
The world expanded.
Every creak in the metal, every droplet striking the coolant pools nearby, every minute vibration along the deck plating...he felt them now, threading through his body like tensioned wire.
Not sight. Not hearing. Just knowing.
He drew the Astral Slayer, letting the blade hum faintly with latent energy, and crouched behind the loader's inner wall.
And waited.
It entered like a nightmare given form.
A quadrupedal frame, long and sleek, crawling with a fluid grace that looked disturbingly biological. The joints moved without sound. Its adaptive plating shimmered, phasing through a cascade of camouflaged patterns as it passed through beams of light. Its optical lenses pulsed in sync, glowing faintly blue, then red, then empty black.
Not just stealth. Learning camouflage. Evolutionary patterns.
Ethan's jaw tensed.
This wasn't a salvage unit cobbled together from leftover scrap. This thing was designed, refined even.
The drone paused, claws clicking softly on the deck. Its head shifted, rotating in slow degrees. Then it sniffed, not through any biological sense, but through multi-spectrum sensor arrays.
He remembered Kynara. The Black Sun Syndicate's drones, dumb brutes with blunt AI routines and predictable paths. Brutal, but beatable.
This one wasn't the same.
This was elegant death.
It turned toward the loader frame.
Ethan stilled every muscle.
The drone padded forward, its weight barely pressing the deck plating. It reached the frame, raised a clawed forelimb, razor tips gleaming, and began to extend into the cavity.
Ethan's fingers twitched against the detonator.
Now.
He triggered the mines.
A burst of white-blue light erupted from the loader's chest. The chamber filled with a sonic shriek and electromagnetic shockwave, searing static through the air. The drone screamed in modulated code, staggering backward, smoke pouring from one side of its skullplate.
Its legs buckled...but it didn't fall.
"Damn it," Ethan cursed, leaping free as the drone lurched toward him. It was damaged, but still terrifyingly fast.
It swiped wide with its claws. Ethan bent backward, just barely escaping the arc of destruction as a nearby crate was split in half. Sparks and debris scattered.
Rolling into a crouch, Ethan flung a suppression charge. It burst against the drone's flank, exploding in a strobing detonation of light and kinetic force.
The drone stumbled sideways.
Ethan closed the gap, psionically reinforcing his stride, channeling microbursts of kinetic focus into his legs. His sprint became a blur. He slashed with the Astral Slayer, the blade biting into the drone's armor.
But not enough.
The plating contracted and hardened as it sensed damage, like musculature reacting to pain. The cut wasn't clean. Metal reformed almost immediately along the edges.
The drone countered with brutal precision.
A hind leg slammed into Ethan's side, sending him flying across the room. He crashed into a stack of crate shells, smashing through two before collapsing into a heap of tangled limbs and pain.
Ribs. Bruised. Maybe cracked.
He groaned, rolled, and pushed himself up, vision swimming.
"Iris, diagnostic."
"Moderate contusion to lower thoracic region. Rib stress registered. Mobility compromised but within acceptable combat thresholds."
"Lucky me," he hissed.
The drone didn't wait.
It came again, lower, more aggressive, a blur of metal and killing intent.
Ethan let the psionics bloom. Just a little.
His senses flared. The world slowed.
He felt the shift in the drone's weight, saw the twitch of its hind limbs before it pounced. He ducked and rolled, sliding between its legs and drawing a gel mine with his free hand.
In one fluid motion, he slammed it onto the neural cluster beneath the drone's thoracic panel and rolled clear.
"Do it," he snapped.
The mine detonated, releasing a focused spike of dissonant psionic and electromagnetic energy. A sound like a dying star erupted in Ethan's skull.
The drone howled, a warbled screech of code and pain, and convulsed. Limbs spasmed. Claws flailed. It staggered forward three steps, collapsed to its side, and thrashed wildly.
Ethan approached, blade ready, ribs screaming.
The drone tried to rise again.
Too late.
With one final surge of focus, Ethan drove the hilt of the Astral Slayer into the drone's exposed neural socket and released a calibrated electric charge.
It spasmed once more.
Then stilled.
Steam hissed from the joints. Lights flickered along the frame. Then… darkness.
"Iris," Ethan breathed, chest heaving. "Status?"
Her voice returned, quiet but firm. "Unit offline. Permanent stasis confirmed. AI integrity is neutralized."
Ethan leaned back against a support pillar, taking of his helmet and blinking sweat from his eyes, the dagger still humming in his hand.
"Let's… not do that again."
Dragging the shell up the shaft was agony.
The drone weighed nearly half a ton, and Ethan's ribs screamed with every pull. He looped a tow cable through its hind legs, guided it through the low-clearance tunnels, and nearly collapsed when the final bulkhead opened into Caro's forge.
She was already waiting, flanked by a mess of tools and floating scanners.
She stared for a long moment. Then let out a slow whistle.
"You're either lucky," she said, stepping forward, voice caught between awe and dry amusement, "or good."
Ethan dropped the scorched core module at her feet. "I make my own luck."
She grinned, something like genuine respect in her expression.
Three hours later, he stood beneath flickering lights again, holding a slim, obsidian case. Inside sat a Brion Dynamics clearance badge, retinal key, and a forged profile:
Navren Cole, Systems Analyst, Retired. Clearance Level C5. Auction Access: Granted.
"You burn this once you're in," Caro said, crossing her arms. "They catch even a hint of this being fake, and they'll do worse than revoke your access."
Ethan pocketed the case. "Thanks for the confidence."
As he stepped out into the corridor, Iris pinged softly in his neural implant.
"Entry secured. Risk factors remain… elevated."
Ethan smirked.
"It's not entry I'm worried about," he said aloud, eyes narrowing toward the dark horizon of Proteus' skyline.
"It's what comes after."