The brute hit me like a landslide wearing armor.
We met in the center of the chamber with a force that made the containment frame behind it tremble. Metal groaned overhead. Dust burst from the ceiling. My boots skidded half a meter across the floor before I dug in enough to stop.
Its hands clamped onto my shoulders, heavy, crushing, hydraulics whining as it tried to drive me into the ground.
Cadence's voice flared sharp in my ear. "Force output exceeding the Model Forty by over forty percent. Brace."
"Already bracing," I grunted.
The brute pushed harder. I pushed back. Sparks spit between our legs as friction fought physics. My HUD screamed something about torque limits and skeletal strain.
I ignored it.
Instead, I leaned back just enough to free my left knee, then drove it into the brute's abdomen. The impact made the thing flinch, its plating crumpling inwards like dented sheet metal.
But it didn't stumble. It adjusted. Recalibrated. Then shoved me away with a burst of power that felt like being hit by a cargo hauler.
I flew backward, hit the floor, rolled, and came up to one knee.
The brute didn't charge.
It walked.
Deliberate. Heavy. Studying me the way a butcher studies cuts of meat.
Cadence murmured, "It is not reacting instinctively. It is evaluating. Expect adaptive response."
"Meaning it learns."
"Yes."
"Why me ?"
The brute raised one arm. Servos along the forearm locked and realigned with a series of metallic clicks. A weaponised movement. Predictable only until it wasn't.
It swung.
A wide arc, brute force instead of finesse, meant to separate my torso from my legs. I ducked under it, slid forward, and drove an uppercut into its jaw.
The punch travelled up my arm and down my spine like I had struck a metal wall pretending to be a face.
The brute's head snapped back.
But its other hand snapped forward.
A clamp of mechanical fingers closed around my throat.
Cadence yelped, "Lift vector engaged..."
Too late.
The brute hoisted me off the ground with one hand, lifting me until my feet dangled. My HUD flashed airway obstruction warnings even though I didn't technically need one.
I grabbed its wrist with both hands and strained against the grip. The servos dug into my neck plating.
"Cadence," I rasped.
"Yes."
"I'm about to do something stupid."
"Again?"
"Always."
I rotated my left shoulder, engaged the stabilizing servos, and slammed my elbow down into the brute's arm. Once. Twice.
On the third strike the plating caved, but the brute didn't drop me. Instead it hurled me sideways into a wall panel.
I crashed hard enough to leave a crater and bounced off before my body decided to stay down.
Cadence hissed, "Damage threshold rising. Iris, adjust strategy."
"I'll try."
The brute didn't give me a full second to breathe. It advanced, gait accelerating, footfalls shaking the floor.
I shoved myself up and met the charge halfway.
We collided again. Less like two fighters, more like two machines testing which one would break first.
This time I slipped under its left arm, grabbed its forearm, and twisted the joint with a full rotational torque spike. Something snapped. The brute staggered, optics flickering.
Good.
Then it headbutted me.
My vision exploded in static for half a second.
Cadence shouted, "Recalibrate. Do not let it reposition"
The brute grabbed my torso, hauled me upward, and smashed me through a stack of old storage lockers. Metal screamed. Boxes scattered. My body did everything except stay cooperative.
I rolled to my feet in time to see the brute lift half a locker like it weighed nothing and throw it at my face.
I sidestepped. Barely.
The locker smashed into the wall behind me, embedding itself like a badly chosen decoration.
The brute charged again.
"Iris," Cadence said, tone level but urgent, "you cannot out-muscle it at this baseline. Slow it down. Break its legs."
"Working on it."
"Work faster."
The brute swung low. I jumped. It swung high. I ducked. It lunged. I pivoted and kicked at its knee with everything I had.
A crack. A real one.
The brute stumbled, one leg grinding against itself like broken machinery refusing to die politely.
I pressed the advantage. A punch to its side. Another to its throat plating. A third to its rib framework.
Each hit dented something important.
But the brute was still standing. Still adapting. Still analyzing me the way Nova would have wanted, through calibration, not emotion.
It backhanded me across the room.
I tumbled, rolled, and caught myself on one knee again. My ribs protested despite being reinforced with synthetic bracing.
"Cadence," I said, "how close are we to the core lab."
"Two more chambers. One primary access hall. Iris, this brute is not meant to defeat you."
"It's doing a good job pretending."
"It is meant to measure you. Nova wants data. The others were early prototypes. This is the performance evaluation."
"So I am the final exam," I said.
"Yes."
"Bad news for the exam."
I sprinted.
The brute braced. Too slow.
I dove low, sliding across the floor, and swept its remaining leg from under it. The brute crashed onto its back so hard the floor dented.
Before it could get up I climbed onto its torso and hammered a fist into its faceplate.
The metal cracked.
Again.
The optical lens shattered.
Again.
The jaw collapsed inward.
Again.
Cadence whispered, "It is regenerating movement mapping. You need to disable the spinal actuator."
"Where."
"Below the main shoulder pivot."
I raised my arm for one final strike.
The brute grabbed my wrist.
Its strength surged.
It rolled, flipping me beneath it, pinning me against the floor. One hand clamped onto my mechanical arm, the other onto my chest.
Cadence calculated something I felt rather than heard. "Iris. It is preparing to tear your arm off."
"I noticed."
"Do not let it."
"I'm trying not to let it! I just got it refitted"
I jammed my knee upward into its torso. The brute shifted its weight. The pressure on my arm increased. My HUD blinked red at the joint.
Then something occurred to me.
Not clever.
Not tactical.
Just something deeply petty.
I stopped resisting in that direction.
The brute pulled harder.
And I shoved the opposite way.
The sudden reversal threw its balance off completely. The brute lurched forward.
Exactly where I wanted it.
I twisted my torso, jammed my left forearm up into the cavity under its arm, and activated the torque burst meant for heavy-load lifting.
My arm shot upward like a battering ram.
Straight into the spinal actuator.
The brute spasmed violently. Limbs jerked. Optics strobed red-white-red in panic.
Cadence snapped, "Now. Strike again. Hard."
I drove my fist into the actuator a second time.
It shattered.
The brute convulsed once, then collapsed onto its side like a puppet with its strings cut.
Silence swallowed the chamber.
My breathing came heavy. Too human. Too alive.
Cadence scanned. "Unit immobilised. Core still active. It is not dead."
"Good."
"Iris, what are you...."
I tore out the brute's core housing.
The brute went still.
Cadence exhaled quietly. "Efficient."
"Not everything is a test," I said. "Sometimes you end it because it needs ending."
We stood in the dim chamber, the corpse of the brute cooling on the metal floor.
A faint vibration came through the ground. A hum. A power line coming to life somewhere deeper inside.
Cadence paused, then spoke softly. "There is movement ahead. Secondary chamber. Something different."
"Another brute."
"No. Something else. Something stored."
"Great," I said. "This place is a matryoshka doll of bad ideas."
"We continue."
I nodded.
"One chamber at a time."
She projected a faint map overlay. "Next room is a staging area. Minimal threat probability."
"That's what you said before a Sentry Nine dropped on my face."
"Correct. And you lived."
"Just."
"Yet you did."
I stepped over the brute's body and moved toward the next door.