The orbs attacked without warning—silent precision weapons darting through the air like predatory insects. One split into six smaller segments mid-flight, each armed with plasma-thin tendrils.
Fenrir didn't wait.
With a low snarl and a leap, he intercepted the first wave midair. His claws glowed with kinetic charge as he tore through one of the orbs, sending fragments flying into the darkness. The others responded, adjusting flight patterns instantly.
Elira moved with clinical grace, blades humming to life. She ducked a volley of tracer rounds, then pivoted and sliced clean through two drones in a single arc. Her processors calculated thousands of microtrajectories, every movement refined to a dancer's poise and a soldier's lethality.
But there were too many.
More drones emerged from hidden recesses in the walls—scouting types, shield types, disassembler types. These weren't just relics of war. Someone had activated them recently.
Fenrir shouted through the comms, "These aren't wild scavengers. They're on a grid—tactical, structured. Someone's watching us."
"Elira!" came a voice in her ear.
It was the corp link—Command Override access blinking on her HUD.
"Activate remote shutdown?" a Virex handler asked. "These drones are standard hybrids. You can disable them."
Elira hesitated.
Fenrir caught her eye in mid-combat. "Don't you dare," he growled, hurling a drone into a column hard enough to rupture its casing. "I want the fight."
"They're tracking us," Elira said coolly. "Fighting will only alert more."
"Then they'll come," Fenrir grinned, "and I'll break them too."
She sighed—then leapt back into the fray.
The battle burned through corridors of rust and flame. Finally, after what felt like a full system cycle, silence returned. Smoke trailed from scorched metal. The last drone spasmed and collapsed, its core blinking out.
Elira approached a control terminal partially embedded in the wall. "These units were not factory-maintained. They've been patched together—reprogrammed with crude hierarchies."
"Scavengers?" Fenrir asked.
"No. A local command network. But unregistered. Almost... hand-coded."
She scanned the debris, pausing over a symbol etched into a drone's chassis—a circle with four lines radiating outward. Not Virex, not Spiridion. Something else.
"Whoever did this doesn't want us here."
"Rian," Fenrir said. "He led us right into it."
Elira's face remained unreadable. "Or he's trying to warn us."
They pushed forward.
Through collapsed halls and static-soaked stairwells, they followed the residual trace of the second identchip. It led them beneath the ruins—into an old maintenance core overgrown with fungus and cable rot. It was there they found the signal's source.
A room sealed by forcefield mesh, flickering in and out of stability. On the far side: a torn jacket. Blood trails. A small emergency datapad blinking red.
Fenrir bent beside it and tapped the screen. A scrambled voice burst through:
"Not just logistics… not just transport… buried code… hive-routed…"
Then silence again.
Elira crouched, scanning the walls. "Fenrir… this room was a listening post."
He looked up. "Whose?"
"Not VirexCorp."
Before she could say more, her HUD blinked—Incoming Signal – Encrypted – Unknown Origin.
She accepted the handshake.
For a moment, nothing.
Then a single line of text appeared:
"You're closer than you realize. But if you open that door, you may not survive what follows."
Fenrir snorted. "Now I want to open it twice."
Elira stood still, watching the blood smear on the floor.
"Rian knew," she whispered. "He knew something. And he didn't run… he walked straight into it."
The door hissed as the forcefield powered down.
Behind it: a tunnel, pulsing with light.