The first point-blank shot ripped through the thing’s head. The second shot ripped another hole as the creature shook. The third shot went wild as he slipped off the creature’s chassis. While jumping off, three more shots rang out in quick succession, peppering the already battered head with expert precision. The gun clicked empty.

Lights flickering to darkness, the machine slumped to the ground, finally dead. Father's feet landed back on the ground, the only one in the room still left standing somehow. He instantly rushed to my side next.

The machine’s hand on my ankle had slipped in the final blows, but it had locked the one around my throat in a dead man’s hold, still preventing me from drawing a breath. Father was at my side, prying off the dead thing’s fingers, one at a time with whatever strength was left in his relic armor. He worked without stopping, finding ways to pry the fingers with one hand. Darkness ebbed at the edge of my vision until enough fingers had been ripped off that I could draw a single ragged breath. Soon, hacking and coughing, I found myself somehow still alive.

“Stabilize your… yourself,” Father rasped out. He didn’t wait to see if I had, instead stalked on an unsteady path to the body of the second automaton he’d partially destroyed earlier. One of the two he’d taken out with his rifle. The thing was still twitching, trying to get back up.

I couldn’t stop looking at it, violet lights flickering at the side while it struggled.

Father paused on his way and turned a glance at me, then spoke out. “Listen to… to me boy. Do you still… still have your kit?” He asked while struggling to reload the pistol with one hand. I looked at my belt and fished out a metal container at the side, it had a dent on the side but otherwise looked intact. I confirmed it to him.

“You are in shock,” He said. “You have a few hours before trauma settles permanently in your brain. Pick out the propranolol-7 and set it for quarter vial’s worth. It will block stress neurotransmitters on the… on the amygdala. Do this right now.”

I glanced down at the pack, then hit the release tab and opened it without issue. A few different drugs and first aid kits were snuggly bundled together next to the field repair gun. The padding had done its job, and the contents were all still in one piece despite the hits I’d taken.

The appropriate marked vial was removed, twisted for a quarter dose, and then primed. I’d read about what this thing did. They weren’t to be used lightly. I’ve had this metal vial for years now, sitting unused in the kit since the day I'd gotten them.

“Keith. Look around and describe every object in the room to yourself. Take a deep breath at each object. I don’t care what you damn see, just… whatever you do, don’t let your mind free until the propranolol hits your system.” There was an urgency to his voice in this.

I numbly put the syringe to my throat, then clicked the release. I felt a prick, but the adrenalin was still going strong in my system. The vial beeped, signaling it had delivered the payload.

The movements were mechanical on my end. It seemed, now that everything was over, the training I’d done with my sister was finally kicking in.

Shots rang out in the room and I looked up in time to see Father making sure that one automaton from the start of the fight had been completely destroyed. Job done, he holstered the gun and walked over unsteadily to the dead automaton his knife had ended up in. “You don’t have time to waste.” He growled out in anger, “Do as I ordered, or you’ll be seeing this day again and again years from now, boy.”

I nodded, then took a deep breath of the ice cold air. I could see the vapor leave my mouth, heat fading out.

I took a breath. Father wrestled his knife out of the thing’s head, then moved to the automaton’s chest, cutting into it with the recovered weapon.

I took a breath.

The walls here were half metallic and half concrete, the gaps between both were stark and had no pattern that I could spot. It looked like metallic cancer with a geometric style.

I took a breath.

Father sheathed the knife back in his boots with that usual flourish. The knife slipped his grasp halfway and clinked to the floor. He stared at it for a moment, before reaching down and sheathing it plainly this time. His hand now free, he reached into the thing’s mechanical guts, rifling through until he drew out a power cell. It was connected by a mass of black wires.

I took a breath.

The wires grew taunt between the dead automaton and the heart he was pulling out. In moments, they snapped away, releasing the power cell with a jolt. Father pocketed it, moving to the next automaton to repeat the process, picking up his unspent grenade as he passed by it. We’d have a small stockpile of power cells after this.

I took a breath.

There were lights on the walls with some closer inspection, tiny, and without any pattern. Teal. The mites were still here, fixing up any damage that was caused by the fight, and almost pointedly ignoring everything else.

I continued with the exercise, hyperfocusing on something - anything - and taking a deep breath in between. My mind grew fuzzy and then almost detached from the world. As if I was existing outside it but still controlling a fleshy avatar. It felt like such an odd thing to inhabit, so filled with chemicals and noise. Was this what I was? The sum of all my parts? Just flesh and chemicals in the end? It felt like I was something that existed separate from my body, only inhabiting it temporarily.

“I think it’s kicked in. I feel... disconnected.” I said instead of pondering further.

“The dissociation will pass in a few more seconds. The neurotransmitters will remain blocked for a day or two depending on your system. You’ll remember details from today, but they will feel abstract, as if they were someone else’s memories. That’s normal.”

“And you?”

“I’m moving forward on the assumption that I’ll live through today.” Frustration radiated from him, as if too many things were going wrong and he couldn’t do anything about it.

“Your left arm,” I said almost in a daze. “It’s not just injured isn’t it?”

“Yes.” He said after a moment of silence. “The muscles were cut.”

He reached for his own kit and drew out a syringe of his own. It didn’t look like the same thing I’d taken either, the fluid inside was a pale blue, and a warning sign was etched on the silver metal sides. This wasn’t part of the normal kit. Something only relic wielders were allowed to use?

“What does that do?” I asked him.

He paused, glancing over me. “It will trick my body into letting me move as if nothing was wrong with it and cut pain completely. If we make it back to the expedition in under a day, I’ll be fine.”

I didn’t ask what would happen if we didn’t make it in time. I wasn’t that stupid.

The syringe primed, he stared at it, contemplating. Then he raised it to his neck and took a breath. His hand shook, holding the syringe at the ready. One breath. Two breaths. "Talen, guide me." He whispered, and with a jerk slammed the syringe against his suit until it beeped satisfactorily. Then he threw it aside, almost as if disgusted by the thing. It clinked hard on the ground, bouncing off and rolling away to join the rest of the detritus.

“Get up,” He hissed. I wasn’t sure if he was talking to me or himself at this point. “We need to get moving, before more arrive. These things move in packs and quickly swarm any area that resists.”

The armor even groaned as he stood, crackling sounds of electric failure lit up inside as the inner servos strained to move, but Father pushed past and up, limping to his rifle. I could see more clearly those glowing lines under the plate. It reminded me of an occult knife glow, except it was clear these lines weren't for cutting. I'd heard there were a lot more occult items then just knives. Could these armors also have parts of the occult inside?

“That terminal, are you positive it will work if powered?” Father said, cutting through my wandering mind.

Terminal? The mite terminal. Before we’d been ambushed. My mind felt fuzzy, but the details flowed back.

I needed to make it back to that terminal, trace the power line to the switchboard, and then turn it on. And pray it would work. “I’m not sure. I only think it does.” It could go any direction.

He grunted. “We don’t have another option. They’re coming for us, we can’t stumble around for another chance. It either works and we have a chance to live, or it doesn’t and we die.”

He walked over to my cracked backpack and slung it over his shoulder, placing the pilfered power cells into it.

“Power cells are not our limiting resource now. Time is.” He said. "Get on my back, the suit can carry us both faster around the city." He walked over, and lifted me up with his free hand. I wrapped my hands around his neck to hold myself still on his back.

“My environmental suit’s broken." I said. "Even if we make it out, I can't go back top level. I'll freeze to death.”

He shook his head. “There is still one way to get you to the surface. We can deal with that later, once we’re out of danger. Terminal first.”

He began a brisk jog that would have been more of a sprint for my speed. The steps were unsteady, and his direction didn't follow a straight line. A few times he stumbled but continued forward. Soon we’d come back to where the dead terminal had been. The mites had already repaired my earlier slices. No trace of damage was left.

“How much time do we have until they come back?”

He grunted. “Half hour at best. They’re already on our trail at worst. But the armor would notify me if it had been pinged. We haven’t yet been.”

There was still some time to escape. “What’s our plan?”

“If the terminal works, we’ll make use of it. After that, I’ll carry you out. At my speed we’ll be able to avoid patrols and slip out of their search radius.”

A moment later, we had made it back to the switchboard, now knowing which one of the wires was ours from the hundreds that connected here.

By then I was feeling a lot more lucid. Felt more like myself now, everything before seemed like I had read it from one of my books rather than lived it. Gods above, it felt like everything had happened months ago even. Father's footsteps had also visibly improved, the stride returning to normal and no more stumbles. Whatever drug he took was doing its work.

I was dropped off within the structure. Despite my mind feeling free of this whole ordeal, my body clearly reminded me it had all happened minutes ago. Father held my shoulder, and we both limped to the switchboard.

Turning on that light was almost trivial. Oddly enough, the example light Father had asked earlier, before the fight, had been harder to turn on. The whole process took three switches on different sides of the board and quarter turned a valve. The terminal wire lit up as predicted within seconds of me touching the whole contraption.

I waited for a moment, thinking something inside this room would change, or a hidden door would open. Nothing of the like happened. The solution had been anti-climatic, but what had I really expected?

The only way forward was to trust what I've done so far and check at the terminal itself. Again, he carried me back to the terminal, Father’s relic armor reducing the time taken to mere minutes.

When it came into sight, a crushing wave of utter defeat followed behind. The thing was still black and lifeless, even with the wire clearly powered on. “All that for nothing.” I chuckled. "I guessed wrong."

"No." Father said, dropping me down and walking to the terminal. Then tapped on the black screen. "Look."

There, on the bottom right of the black screen, was a small line of white text. Complete with a text line divider, slowly blinking.

- The way home