Angling his gun downward, he moved as fast as he could. The pain in his knees had melted away in the adrenaline coursing through his body.
Layla, I’m on my way…
He pressed down the stairs, passing landing after landing with no door to the facility.
On the sixth floor, he froze.
Static crackled in his helmet.
“Commander, something’s moving topside.”
It was Erin, and her voice was shaky—in itself a rare thing.
“What do you see?”
“I’m not sure… too far away to tell.”
“Stay out of sight, Erin. That’s an order.”
As if in reply, a screech sounded, but it wasn’t coming from outside or over the comm.
Michael rounded the landing, pointing his rifle down into the darkness. Around the next corner, an orange glow pulsed like a heartbeat, growing brighter by the second. The same clanking sound he had heard earlier came from the depths of the stairwell.
This didn’t sound like a single Siren—it sounded like a pack of them.
He moved his finger inside the trigger guard, ready to blast the mutant freaks back into whatever hell had spawned them.
Another wave of static rushed over the channel.
“Michael, we’re on the move, headed topside.”
This time it was Layla.
His eyes darted back to the HUD. The beacons were moving faster. Les and Layla were running.
“I’m on a stairwell about five floors down,” he whispered. “I see something… a red…”
“What? Commander you’re breaking up,” Les said.
“I see a red—”
The electronic screech that followed shut him up. Clanking metal and claws on concrete echoed up the stairwell, and Michael gripped his rifle tighter.
Come on, you freaks. Show your ugly faces.
The pack of Sirens was right around the corner now.
Layla’s voice flooded the channel again. “Michael, get out of there!”
He knew that running would just delay the inevitable, assuming he could even run up the stairs at all. It hurt worse to climb than to run.
He was going to have to face them sooner or later.
“I’m standing my ground,” he said. “You two get topside with Erin. She’ll cover you.”
“Michael, you can’t fight!” Les said before another wail cut him off. This one was different from the electronic shriek the Sirens made back on the surface.
Michael stared at the orange glow. What the hell was giving off that light?
He moved his finger onto the trigger, ready to unleash a flurry of automatic fire. The light intensified, spreading over the walls. A shadow bounded up the stairs, and he got his first glimpse of the monster.
The image of an elongated head with horns, a humanoid torso, and long claws moved over the walls.
This was no Siren.
Michael pulled the trigger as soon as the beast came into view—
a humanoid figure wearing the skull of a cow. The orange light blazed out of the bone eye sockets, emanating from an orange visor behind the open mouth of the cow skull.
Bullets shattered the bone armor the creature wore, and punched into metal behind it. The skull reared back, and the beast let out a roar that sent a shiver prickling over his flesh.
He continued firing, the muzzle flash mixing with the eerie orange glow. Empty casings bounced off the stairs as the rounds broke off more and more of the bones covering the metal body.
The din of gunfire cracked and echoed, mixing with the electronic sounds of rage.
By the time he emptied the magazine, the skull was halfway broken off, revealing a humanoid metal skull. The creature, whatever it was, stumbled backward, hitting the wall so hard, the front plate of bones covering its chest fell and shattered on the ground. A battery unit—the source of the orange light—glowed in the center of its chest.
The sight played tricks on Michael’s mind, and for a moment he thought he was staring at some demon Hell Diver who had come back from the dead.
But this was no man. This wasn’t even a beast.
The orange light glowing from the center of the metal skin was an engine powering a machine.
An AI…
The defectors that had killed Dr. Diaz and his team weren’t human after all, and they had been here all this time, waiting for the next humans to murder.
“Michael, run!” Layla shouted over the comms.
Her words snapped him back into action. He took a few backward steps up the stairs while reaching for another magazine. Before he could punch it into the carbine, a second machine emerged behind the first. This one wore the bones of multiple animals and humans. A reptilian skull crested the top of a humanoid face.
It raised a black weapon with a curved olive handle and thin muzzle. Michael brought his rifle up to fire, but the robot got in the first shot.
A dazzling blue bolt sizzled through the air. He felt something cold rip through his arm. His mind sent a message to his finger to pull the trigger, but his finger didn’t respond.
The gun fell in two pieces.
It took him a few seconds to understand that the bolt had sliced the weapon in two, and another second to realize that the same blue bolt had severed his right arm a few inches below the shoulder. He watched the weapon clatter onto the stairs, with his finger still in the trigger guard.
Another blue bolt blasted the air next to his helmet and sliced into the wall behind him. He moved to his right just in time to avoid a third bolt, which hit the overhead, shattering a light and darkening the stairwell above him.
More bolts sizzled through the air.
A voice yelled out, followed by muzzle flashes from behind the two machines. The stairwell lit up with red and blue flashes.
Rounds slammed into the bone-covered machines. The machine with the broken cow head fell to the floor, and Michael crashed to his knees on the landing above it, looking down the stairwell in horror.
At the bottom of the next landing, a tall figure emerged with a blaster.
Les…
Les put the gun muzzle against the head of the robot that had shot Michael. The fiery blast took off the top of the skull, and sparks erupted off the metal beneath.
Layla ran past Les and bounded up the stairs toward Michael.
“Michael. Oh, my god!”
She bent down and put a hand under the armpit of his good arm while Les continued firing at the other hostiles. The second one wouldn’t go down, and the first was starting to get back on its feet. Their metallic shells deflected the 5.56-millimeter rounds as if they were rocks flung by a child.
“Run!” Les yelled. “Get him out of here!”
Michael pulled the blaster out of his holster as she helped him up. Though he wasn’t used to shooting with his left hand, he managed to fire both shotgun rounds into the struggling machine on the landing below.
The buckshot slammed into the neck and torso, sending it careening past Les and crashing down the stairs. An electronic wail followed as it toppled down into darkness, the orange light fading like a guttering candle.
Michael dropped the gun, his vision fading in and out as Layla helped him to his feet. Time seemed to slow to an agonizing pace, and his vision grew blurry as if he were looking through ice.
He looked down at the stump where his arm had been. He could see that well enough.
The skin was glowing red, still hot from the laser bolt. The heat had cauterized the wound, but he had lost all the blood in the arm that now lay on the landing.
“My arm,” he mumbled. “We can’t leave my arm.”
“Move!” Layla yelled as she helped him up the stairwell.
More gunfire cracked behind them, and Michael heard Erin’s voice over the channel.