I raced down the aisle of platforms to get ahead of Akilah. This time, I was gonna rely on my HUD more. The data that ticked past was invaluable. I’d done better last time, but...

  A gleaming cable slashed at me. I launched up, bringing my knees up, and felt the violent rush of air beneath my feet. Heat shimmered past. Where it hit, sparks danced merrily away. Love that.

  I came down running. A bolt of plasma lanced over my head. I swerved to keep out of line of fire before jumping to put a hand on the ledge and, using momentum, bounced from the floor up onto the riser. The construct loomed three times my height, floating at knee height.

  The construct radiated heat, but I had to get close. The spray that launched from above didn’t hit the platform. I could stay in the clearance of the lashes if I got skin-tight with it.

  The shell cracked open.

  The form within was different, armored, its multiple branched arms unfolding to reveal glittering bright cable wound with spikes. Another arm pivoted from its center with a crackling plasma blade. The metal shell disappeared.

  Flashbacks of having been trapped in the Broodmother’s mandibles chose this moment to invade. My breath caught, and I froze, staring up at the thing.

  “Burn it down!” Akilah yelled, her voice thick with purpose. “Get it to reset and hit the core when it’s open!”

  It snapped me out of the momentary spiral. Cables whipped out over my head, and I lunged in, Baneheart scraping against armor. Did this thing even have any vitals?

  Didn’t matter. I just had to divide its attention. I hoped we had enough firepower between all of us to destroy the core.

  The plasma sword slashed down. I sidestepped, twisting with the fast footwork I’d been drilling with Voj’Kasak. [Perfect Dodge] scrolled across my HUD. That triggered a skill, but I was too distracted to think of what it was.

  Heat seared past my face, my tactical vest protecting the rest of me, sizzling with the faint stink of burnt synthetics. Above my head, plasma bolts traced arcs through the air, glancing off lenses or sinking into the narrow gaps of plating around the elongated construct.

  A metal arm fell beside me, whip still thrashing like a lopped-off lizard’s tail. I jabbed at the arm joint, but it was ineffectual. No HP drop. The sword whirled, gliding around its whole body in a deadly spiral, dropping a foot every time it came back around. I skittered back to the edge of the platform and dropped off the edge, crouching beside it. The plasma blade whirred by, hot wind sweeping over my head.

  Shields materialized again. The HP wasn’t low enough for it to go into a reset, or so I assumed. Just part of its sequence.

  The whips dropped. One flopped to the ground and sizzled through my shirt, branding my arm. I flinched away from the barbs, hissing with anger. Snapping a glare at the dangling cable, I lopped it off with a vicious slash. Sparks scattered across the ground.

  The construct’s sword rose and slashed at nothing, stopping a few inches above the platform, blade snapping and crackling. The mechanical arm retracted, as if it had to reset its attack sequence. Shields started rotating around it, faster and faster; plasma bolts ricocheted off them. Someone screamed. I didn’t look to see. No one on my HUD got hit by the redirected friendly fire. Must have been the technomancer.

  Blackfire crackled down a shield, fading sections to striate the glossed metal. The whirr of spinning shields slowed, and I twisted to pounce back up on the platform, landing in a crouch. The cables lashed out again, flailing overhead.

  My eyes jerked in their sockets, looking for a gap wide enough to dive through and get at the construct. It tried to swing a few of its lashes at me, but the angle was poor. I had an advantage. If only I had a weapon suited for this.

  Akilah’s entropic magic had done the most damage, fading gaps into the construct’s armored components. One of Elora’s arrows soared over my head, plugging into one of the holes in the armor. It gave me an idea.

  One of the shields Akilah hit with her magic was almost gone. Slender bars of warped metal hung in the air in place of a shield. I slashed at it as it flew by, shattering one of the metal slivers, and the next time it spun around, I struck again, shattering the rest of it.

  An arrow skittered harmlessly by my foot. We did not come equipped for a machine monstrosity, but I believed we’d get through it. Or die. Again. Ugh.

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  The next time the gap in the shields swung around, I surged forward, slipping between the rotating barriers and the armored machine itself, scanning for a good spot to dig into it. The seams, except for the joints, were tight. I rammed my blade into the crack beside the servo-arm, anchoring the plasma sword.

  It sank in a few inches. Hopefully enough. The shields dispersed, and the whips rose again to slash down at the ranged attackers. I groped for a handhold over the hot metal. The exterior, while armored, was nothing like smooth, giving me enough grip to start climbing.

  “Guys, hold fire. Gonna try something.”

  Jake: “I’m not holding your beer, dude. Don’t fucking die!”

  No answer for that one. A hiss escaped my bared teeth; the handholds felt like grabbing a pot of boiling water with bare hands. A plasma bolt from the stranger struck, hissing spray burning at the thing’s neck joint. Geometric sections of its outer casing faded under the influence of Akilah’s entropic magic, showing inner workings. Beneath hydraulics and servos, chipsets glittered and pulsed, an arrow already lodged inside from one of Elora’s attacks.

  Multiple struts sliced up and down, and though I was in the umbrella of clearance, the scissoring motion made me wary of climbing higher. Instead, I pulled sideways—gritting teeth against the searing handholds—to reach the gap and the arrow inside. I’m not the praying sort, unless I’m in trouble, but I held a thought in my mind as I thrust my hand into the open compartment.

  Tan’Fukshan, keep my dumb ass safe while I do crazy shit.

  I grabbed the arrow, pulled it free, and stabbed it into the machine innards, thrusting at the chip sets and ports and whatever else solid I could smash, over and over until the shaft cracked. The construct hitched, and the rhythm of its scissoring joints went out of sync.

  Even with thick orcish skin, I was struggling to bite back the pain of my hands blistering. Every instinct told me to let go, so I gave in and dropped, feet hitting the platform, and collapsed to flatten myself. I bellycrawled out from under the swirl of shields, barely clearing it.

  “Shoot for the gap!”

  I crawled to the edge, then rolled over it, landing in a crouch. The others had barricaded themselves behind the next platform, the floor riddled with barbs from the construct’s whips. I gulped in air flavored with plasma burn and the faint stink of my own seared flesh as I stilled to watch a rain of fire streak over my head in hues of dazzling red, black flame, and silver-tipped arrows.

  The snap, crackle, and hiss of impacts slowed the stuttering whirr of the construct’s limbs. The symphony of battle raged to the beat of my heart, blood thrilling through my veins. A grating squeal and the loud thud of the shields slamming shut signalled the halfway point. It was burned down to reset.

  Sparks of plasma fell like rain, and I tucked my legs up tight against me to avoid the fallout. Across from me, at the barricade, the pulse of shots came at intervals, picking off shots when the broken shield revealed itself, waiting for the end.

  “Now!” Akilah shouted, and they resumed fire. I twisted and pressed up against the base, sliding up enough to see what the machine revealed. The mass of cables twisted into rifles on branched arms, the threads still open, weaving around its glowing core.

  They focused fire.

  It was over in a millisecond. The construct’s HP bar went from full to empty, 600-0, its unarmored heart left exposed, and everyone went for the kill shot. I grinned, swiping sweat from under my eye with the back of a knuckle.

  Blowing out a hard breath, I pushed to a stand and turned, expecting to see a heap of cable and metal plating. There was nothing. I scanned the platform for any sign of it. Plasma had scored and pitted the surface, but there was no evidence that anything had been there trying to kill us.

  Only Baneheart remained, lying by itself in the center of the riser.

  “Aww, no loot?” Jake said, rising from his crouch. He grimaced as he stretched, wings twitching. One of them had a nice-sized hole burned through it.

  Elora stood up next to him, fingers grazing over a cut on her cheek that had trailed blood down to her chin. She elbowed Jake and pointed at her face. “Will this scar?”

  “Probably,” he shrugged, “but the magetechs at Symbiot can probably fix it, if you want.”

  “I want,” she said firmly.

  Akilah had stood and was turning slowly, her gaze sweeping over the vast lab and its rubble of discarded constructs and inactive NPC shells. I’d seen that glimmer in her eye before. She was already coming up with ideas.

  My attention turned to the two strangers. I looked them over. The technomancer leaned into the platform, head drooping, hand on her shoulder. She looked like she’d come from the Heartland, but—not. Her skin had a wood-grain pattern on it, so I guessed she was something like a dryad.

  Her companion stood there silently, as if on standby. He reminded me of a cyborg concept, but I’d never seen anything quite like him. Milky white skin glowed with symbols that twisted over his neck and cheeks and traced down his exposed hands.

  “Help,” the technomancer sighed.

  Jake bounded over, his kit equipped in his hand so fast it almost gave me whiplash. He bent over the girl, murmuring softly.

  How come he was nice to strangers when treating them, but not to me? That wasn’t the important question, though.

  I tilted my head and caught the man’s calm stare. Who are these guys?

  -ARCHIVE-