After almost forty-eight hours down here, the tunnels felt like a slow, empty prison made of rust, steam, and whatever anomaly one could find in here.
Kane sat against a collapsed pillar, chewing what was left of a ration bar. It tasted like metal shavings and ash. He forced it down anyway.
[Elapsed Time: 47 h]
[Integration: 2.0 %]
[Stability Level: 61 %]
"Great," he muttered. "Stable enough to keep walking. Not stable enough to feel good about it."
His throat was dry. He'd been drinking condensation scraped off coolant pipes. The water tasted like old wiring but it kept him alive.
He dragged himself to his feet and checked a bent sheet of steel leaning nearby. It worked as a mirror if he squinted hard enough. His reflection stared back; pale skin, hair stiff with tunnel dust, and eyes that flickered silver every few seconds, like a glitch.
He pressed a thumb under his eye.
"Still me… mostly."
The Predator System didn't speak. It had been quiet since the evolution spike. It only hummed quietly in the back of his skull, running reports, adjusting vitals.
[Hydration Level: Low]
[Muscle Fatigue: Moderate]
[Recommendation: Rest Cycle 3 h]
"Not yet," he said, wiping sweat from his forehead. "Need to plan first."
The tunnels hadn't let him sleep well anyway. Every distant sound, pipes groaning, metal popping, something crawling, jerked him awake.
He'd tried going deeper once. Last night. It had ended with a migraine strong enough to make him drop to his knees and vomit bile. Something down there twisted the air and the code around him. Not friendly.
He shook the memory away and strapped his gauntlet tighter. No real idea where he was going, but staying still felt like dying.
"Alright," he muttered. "Let's move before the ceiling decides to fall on my head."
He pushed forward, stepping over broken cable coils and dead terminals.
Kane followed the tunnel until the walls started bending in ways they shouldn't.
Pipes twisted like veins. Heat signatures crawled under the metal, pulsing slow and uneven.
His HUD flickered a warning.
[Warning: Unknown Signatures Detected]
[Energy Distortion: High]
[Environmental Stability: Compromised]
He stepped forward anyway. The ground vibrated under his boot, just once.
Then another message appeared, bigger, bold, and way less polite:
[Recommendation: Do Not Proceed Further]
[Host Destabilization Risk: 73 %]
Kane exhaled through his teeth. "Yeah, no kidding."
He glanced behind him. Darkness. Dead ends. Collapsed shafts. He wasn't going back.
He looked forward. More darkness. Probably worse.
"Can't go up," he muttered. "Can't stay here. So… somewhere in between it is."
He rubbed the back of his neck, feeling the tension sit deep under the skin, right where the silver threads sometimes twitched. Going deeper set them off last time.
Not happening again.
He tapped the side of his temple.
"Interface. Any better options?"
A faint ripple slid across his vision.
Not a map, just a web of soft lines drifting through the air, like glowing spider silk.
His Adaptive Interface was translating raw energy into paths.
One thread tugged gently to the right.
[Identified: Residual Energy Path]
[Origin: Collapsed Maintenance Sector]
[Potential Resources Detected]
Kane tilted his head. "Resources? As in… parts?"
The thread shimmered.
[Probability: 62 %]
"Close enough."
He adjusted his grip on his gauntlet and headed toward the faint trail. The deeper path behind him pulsed once, like something disappointed he wasn't coming to visit.
He ignored it and kept walking.
The energy thread led him through a narrow crawlspace and into a wide chamber.
Kane stopped at the entrance.
"...Whoa."
What used to be an Ascendant repair bay stretched out in front of him, half-buried under ash and collapsed ceiling plates. Every corner looked frozen in time, like someone paused the place mid-disaster.
Rusted exo-frames hung from overhead rails, limbs dangling like dead animals strung for storage. Drone bodies were scattered everywhere; split open, drained, gutted. Some were melted into the floor. Others had fused together into one big metallic knot.
The whole room felt like a graveyard for machines.
[Scanning Environment…]
[Ascendant Workshop — Designation Unknown]
[Residual Power Detected — 18 %]
[Viable Materials Detected]
Kane stepped around a pile of broken servos and knelt near a half-collapsed workbench. The air hummed faintly. Not a lot of power left, but enough to keep one thing breathing.
A forge unit sat in the corner, its casing cracked, vents clogged with dust, but the internal coils still pulsed with a weak orange glow. Barely alive.
Like the last heartbeat in this dead sublevel.
Kane reached out and pressed his hand to the shell. It vibrated under his palm, a slow, steady thrum.
"Guess you and I have something in common," he muttered. "Still running on scraps."
The System chimed back:
[Environmental Analysis Complete]
[Forge Unit: Operational | Efficiency 14 %]
[Recommend: Material Acquisition]
He let out a small laugh; tired, dry.
"Yeah, yeah. I get it. Build something. Stay busy. Don't think."
He looked around the room again.
He wasn't sure when the idea clicked.
Maybe it was the silence.
Maybe it was the smell of metal dust.
Maybe it was because everything lately had been about running, bleeding, or breaking.
But now, standing in this forgotten place…
Picking up tools felt right.
He exhaled softly.
"Alright," he said to the empty room. "Let's see what you've got left."
He pushed aside debris, cleared a space near the forge, and set his gear down.
And for the first time in days, maybe weeks, Kane felt a flicker of something he thought he'd lost.
Purpose.
Kane rolled up his sleeves and moved through the workshop slowly, scanning the wreckage piece by piece. Almost everything was ruined, but not completely worthless.
His HUD highlighted each item with faint blue outlines.
[Component Scan Initiated…]
[Servo Coil × 2 — Condition: 31 %]
[Micro Capacitor × 1 — Condition: 22 %]
[Adaptive Filament × 3 — Condition: 44 %]
[Scrap Alloy × 5 — Condition: Variable]
"Not great," he said, picking up a bent alloy plate. "But beggars and all that."
He tossed it into a metal bin and continued searching.
The silence helped. No drones. No alarms. No collapsing ceilings. Just the quiet buzz of dying circuitry and his own footsteps shifting dust around.
It wasn't peaceful, but it was simple. He could work with simple.
He gathered everything he could find and dragged it toward the forge. The unit gave a weak glow, brighter when he approached.
"Alright, old girl," Kane muttered, "don't die on me yet."
He lifted his gauntlet and angled his wrist toward the forge's depleted power port. A thin connector extended automatically, part of the recent reinforcement he barely understood.
He pressed it in.
A low surge ran up his arm.
[Energy Transfer Initiated]
[Power Level: +9 %]
[Forge Unit Operational — 23 % Efficiency]
The coils brightened. The air warmed around him.
Kane nodded.
"That's better."
He set the scrap on the worktable and began sorting pieces. Muscle memory took over. Strip the rust. Test the filaments. Check the capacitor for cracks. Fit a coil to match the chamber pattern.
His hands moved faster than his thoughts.
[Subfunction Unlocked: Modular Adaptation (Tier F)]
[Linking Mechanical Design to System Interface…]
[Success.]
Kane paused mid-motion.
"So now my brain is a workshop too," he muttered. "Not creepy at all."
He kept dismantling, refining, aligning. Each movement felt smoother than the last.
A cracked servo joint split wrong, but he caught the problem before it snapped completely. Another piece needed reshaping; he hammered it flat. A filament coil refused to align, so he heated it and reshaped the path manually, sparks reflecting off his eyes.
Hours passed without him noticing.
Kane set the last piece of scrap on the table and pulled his rifle toward him.
The thing looked miserable. Scratched. Hairline fractures near the chamber. It was a miracle it hadn't blown his arm off the last time he fired it.
"Alright, buddy," he muttered, "time for a makeover."
He popped the chamber housing open. Bits of broken filament rolled out. One good shake and a fragment of capacitor fell to the floor.
"Wow. No wonder you were coughing smoke."
He took a breath and got to work.
First step: strip everything down to the core frame.
Second step: rebuild the power chamber using the salvaged micro-capacitor.
Third step: thread adaptive filaments through the internal slots.
His hands moved steadily. This part was easy. The same kind of thing he used to do before the world went sideways.
Kane grabbed one with tongs and shaped it quickly, reinforcing the chamber housing.
Sparks flew.
Metal hissed.
The rifle's skeleton came back together in his hands.
[Component Alignment Verified]
[Micro Capacitor Linked]
[Filament Path: Stable]
Each confirmation window flickered quietly in his HUD. Just clean diagnostics.
He liked that.
When he finished closing the housing, he stepped back.
The weapon gave a soft pulse, blue light traveling the length of the barrel.
Not flashy, nor elegant.
But solid nonetheless.
[Weapon Upgrade Complete]
[Designation: Coilburst Rifle (Prototype)]
[Function: Charged Shot]
[Efficiency: 42 %]
[Cooldown: 9.3 seconds]
Kane raised an eyebrow.
"Forty-two percent? That's more than I expected."
He aimed at a rusted wall panel across the room and powered the trigger. The rifle hummed, then, without sound, a thin blue pulse fired.
A glowing line carved itself into the wall, steaming slightly.
Kane lowered the weapon.
"Yeah. That'll do."
He placed it on his back harness and turned to his gauntlet next.
The plating was cracked in two places. Joints loose. Stabilizer off-center.
He stripped it down, layered spare alloy plates over weak points, tightened the servos, and realigned the stabilizer with the remaining adaptive filament.
A soft vibration ran through the gauntlet as it synced with him.
[Pulse Gauntlet (E) — Reinforced]
[Stability: +12 %]
Kane flexed his fingers.
The gauntlet responded smoothly.
"For something built out of trash," he said, "you're not half bad."
He set both pieces of equipment aside and exhaled long.
It wasn't perfect. Not even close.
But it was his work.
His hands.
His choices.
And after everything that had happened below, that felt important.
Kane reviewed the projected map hovering in his vision.
[Exit Path Located — Sector 74 Access ≈ 38 % Probability]
It wasn't great, but it was the only option that didn't involve going deeper.
He looked around the ruined workshop one last time.
"Thanks for the parts," he said. "Sorry for the ghosts."
He adjusted the rifle strap, checked his gauntlet, and stepped toward the vertical shaft.
The climb was slow. The shaft walls were coated in grime, and some of the rungs were loose, but he made steady progress. As he climbed higher, the light from above grew brighter, shifting from dim red to a pale, washed-out gray.
By the time he reached the final rung, he paused to steady his breathing.
The surface was close.
Kane forced the corroded hatch open. Metal scraped loudly, then gave way. A wave of ash-filled wind rushed into the shaft and hit him in the face.
He climbed out and stood on a cracked concrete platform.
[Integration: 2.1 %]
[Corruption Load: 4.7 %]
Another prompt followed:
[Objective: Evade Ascendant Patrols / Secure Shelter / Establish Base]
He looked across the skeletal skyline. Broken towers. Half-collapsed bridges. Empty walkways.
That's when his Interface blinked again.
[Unidentified Signature Detected — Range: 612 m]
[Signal Origin: Moving]
Kane's grip on the rifle adjusted automatically.
"…what now?"