20

The floating holographic words faded out of existence, dissolving into light blue motes of light and disappearing forever. It was a neat effect, although completely unnecessary since Charles knew that the words were being constructed inside the digital space of his optical implants. It was probably the LAI having some fun, a thing that reminded him of the fact that the machine was behaving strangely as of late.

What he read just now was not something that he could take lightly. It was a lot of information about a variety of things, and the entry of the diary was something that he would probably have to read again at least once. He collected the tape and put it back in its casing, then stored it in the ring. He immediately took another one off the wall and inserted it in the large computer block, which started to whirr. The screen soon played another block of text, and Charles went back to reading.

As he read, Eereen just paced around the room patiently. Her sensitive ears, however, allowed her to hear sounds much better than even Charles could with all his enhancements. Something was starting to change within the Factory, and sounds that just weren’t there before were now coming from the floors below.

It began as a low hiss. It was the sound of gas coming out of somewhere, probably one of the smaller pipes that were connected to the central boiler below. She remembered seeing that they were coming out of it and spreading throughout the underground base, and she knew that it was the boiler where all the high temperature steam was produced.

The hiss slowly increased in pitch, until a muffled clang put a stop to it. Then, the sequence repeated itself again over the course of an hour, until there was an orchestra of sounds coming from all around them.

A small tremor shook Charles out of his reading.

“What was that?” He asked out loud, warily looking around.

“I’ve been hearing strange hissing sounds for a while and I…”

“Why didn’t you tell me!”

She could not tell him the real reason, of course.

“You were so busy, and I thought they were nothing bad… I’m sorry.” The elf said.

She made a sad face, and her ears twitched slightly. Charles looked at her as he paced around the room. Another tremor came and went, lasting just a few moments. The hissing sounds got louder, loud enough for Charles to actually pay attention to them.

“Shit. The Metalmancer mentioned that there was instability, and he was afraid it would become so serious that he would have to abandon the place...but as far as I read, he never mentioned actually having experienced a critical failure. I fear that, after all these years, the situation is now a bit worse.”

“What do we do?”

“We make a run for it.”

Eereen immediately ran out of the door, but as she reached the middle of the room adjacent to the computer room, she noticed that Charles was not following her. She turned around and went back in, and saw him stare at the large computer with a somber expression. There were no more tapes on the walls now, she noticed.

“Shit.” He muttered. “I can’t take the computer away with me, it’s too massive. LAI, can we scan it?”

The elf watched intently. Every time that word came up, LAI, something odd was about to happen and she wanted to see it. And she was right, because Charles just put his gloved hand on the cold metal surface of the computer until a low and piercing sound enveloped the whole room. She knew that she was hearing it only because of her ears, and did her best not to show anything on her face. It was not the first time that she heard the sound, the first time actually being back when Charles tried to open the door.

It lasted for a while. Cold sweat was now dotting her forehead in little beads, as the piercing wail coming from the hand resonated inside the metallic structure of the computer and invaded first the room and then her ears. It didn’t seem to ever end, and when it did, the silence that followed felt like an eerie thing that was unnatural and odd.

She realized why, soon after. It was because for a moment, her hearing was impaired and she actually was hearing silence for what probably was the first time in her life. Gone were all the sounds of the factory, gone was the ever-present background noise of the world. If she closed her eyes, she could be alone, for a moment, inside her head.

“What are you doing standing there! Let’s move!” Charles yelled, the muffled sound coming to her like it was from underwater.

She picked up the pace and followed behind him, who studied the whole place with his special eyes and projected lights here and there as he went. Behind the door of the lab, something was moving. She could hear it; she could feel it now that her earing was back. She knew that it meant danger, as her senses all screamed at her that her very life could be in peril. And those senses, refined over the centuries, were rarely wrong when they were this intense.

This was the moment she was waiting for. The real test, the show of strength.

Charles opened the door of the lab, which was closed shut. It slid to the left and disappeared inside the wall without a sound, revealing the mess of noises and moving parts of the other room. She saw him react with inhuman speed, a speed that went well beyond what he should have been able to do at his level. Like a honed sense, a premonition gained over many years of practice. Or actually much better than that.

He threw himself towards her, and sparks erupted from the floor right behind where he was just a moment before and the sound of bullets ricocheting engulfed the metallic hallways. The burst was short and not very precise, but the hard floor made the bullets rebound everywhere unpredictably.

Another tremor. This time, it didn’t stop after a few seconds but actually grew in power and shook the whole place from its foundations. Behind the two, the computer room sunk into the ground, a large hole left behind where the massive mechanical calculator was before. Steam was coming out of the hole in large clouds, and the air was heating up rapidly.

“LAI?” Eereen heard Charles yell, over the noise.

There was little time to waste, because the tremors were making everything fall down below. The hole in the floor was expanding, and whole sections of it were falling down as the metal bent and warped until it was no longer able to sustain its weight. And yet, Charles was immobile and staring into the distance, while light blue lines appeared and disappeared frenetically. She knew that this was his special power, or tool, or magic artifact working alongside him, and so she waited.

A cloud of fire came from the room behind the door, and then another burst of bullets. Then, for an instant, nothing.

It was then that Charles took initiative.

Immediately, he sprinted away from the door. Eereen felt herself be dragged away before she could even react, and she was then placed right in between his left arm and his body, and he hugged her tight as he ran in a zig zag pattern in order to avoid the enemy fire.

The enemies were two automatons, which came from somewhere that was hidden before, the guardrooms she supposed. Both armed with a flamethrower and a machine gun. They were armored and heavy, but they moved following a certain pattern. They seemed to be able to move fast in order to aim and fire, but then they needed a few seconds to recover before being able to attack again.

Charles took cover behind a steel table, and the two waited there until the enemies fired their burst and had to reload. But, as soon as they were behind the perceived safety of their cover, a cloud of fire erupted from the other side of the room and made its way towards them. It split in half horizontally, while a third plume of fire went up and hugged the ceiling.

Drops of liquid fire began to rain from it, and went all over the forge and the pile of coal next to it. It caught on fire, the bright yellow flames illuminating the whole room in a light much brighter than before. The heat was already almost unbearable, but now that the coal was on fire, it only got worse.

Charles was completely calm, at least on the outside. His blue lines appeared again and as soon as they were gone he sprang into action again. He got up, fast and steady, cursing under his breath while he moved.

“Fuck this. Fuck them. Fuck everything.”

He fired his weapon, and the loud clang of metal was just like when he shot at the impenetrable door.

“Dang it!” He crouched behind the cover again, heedless of the heat. “Armored. And I’m low on power. Alright, let’s try this. LAI, you ready?”

He immediately started running in random directions, while looking at the enemies and trying to aim his weapon. He was about to fire, when three metal bullets hit him in the chest and sent him back flying. He managed to crawl back behind the cover, muttering curses once again.

“Fuck!” He yelled, and examined his suit with his left hand. It was still intact.

“This will bruise, and bad.”

The two automata were closing in. They were trying to box them in; a situation made all the more critical by the raging fire going on behind them. And by the tremors. Eereen looked behind her, and saw that the laboratory was no more. There was no more time.

Charles saw a large metallic plate on top of the assembly table and took it. Using it as a shield, he managed to land a few solid hits on the enemies without getting hit himself, but the situation was not getting any better. The enemies were heavily armored and covered in something that, he feared, was very similar to the indestructible door. If that was the case, then all the pounding in the world would not make a dent on it.

His energy levels, on the other hand, were reaching critical. He just didn’t have any more power to waste here, unless he decided to fight bare handed.

The problem was his LAI. He was not feeling too confident in letting it do all the work, not after the strange joke it told when he entered the place. It could be compromised, and it would cost him his life if that were true.

“Wait!” He exclaimed. “Look, am I wrong or they never expose their backs to us?”

The elf looked at them from the edge of the cover. “You’re right!”

“Perfect. Distract them.” He commanded, and then formulated a plan.

Eereen began to throw some random skills at the enemy. Charles was too busy to spare enough time to take a good look at them, but they seemed all variations of fire and lightning magic. As they were trying to cover themselves, he took aim and let the LAI assist him. He fired two precise, high energy, high piercing rods.

The two robotic arms that supported the flamethrowers landed on the ground, exposing the red-hot metal cores and the leaking tanks of combustible. Greek fire.

The two automata slowed down by a fraction. Charles only smirked.

“Alright, you’re on.” He said.

LAI hyperfocus mode; enacting pre-programmed plan. Parameters: follow user instructions; maximum allowed autonomous deviation: 33%. WARNING: operating with these parameters can be dangerous.

“Don’t care. You follow my lead for now.”

Accepted. Leaping forward, charging gun to maximum power. Gun charged; compressed air tanks located. Aiming. Elf distraction worked; automata are too slow to react in time. Firing gun. WARNING: power levels critical.

Explosion detected, taking cover from metal shrapnel. Ending hyperfocus mode.

[Level up! New level: 166]

Eereen saw Charles crouching, like a cat ready to pounce on its prey. With the same inhuman agility that he displayed earlier, he leaped forward and extended his whole body towards the gap between the two automata. They tried to hit him, but to no avail: he was already behind them, gracefully turning in midair and landing on his back with his gun pointed at one of the robot's backs. He fired, before they could turn, two shots so precise that even an elven master archer would have been astonished.

The backs of the robots exploded in slivers of steel and broken gears as their bodies were shaken by the hit. As their circuits ran dead, they bent towards one another, like a final salute before death.

With the two enemies destroyed, Charles ran back to fetch Eereen and make a run for it. The pipes all around were leaking high-pressure steam and exploding, while the whole room was shaking continuously.

The elf was struggling to move, amidst all the debris and upturned machinery. The robotic arms at the tables were moving frantically and ominously under the red and yellow lights of the room, the overloaded systems sending convulsive motions through the precise mechanisms.

“Run! Come on, dammit!”

He extended a hand, waiting for a moment that seemed to never end as she got closer and closer to him. It felt like a limit approaching a number but never actually reaching it, and when the two hands touched and the fingers joined together, Charles felt a rush of emotion that he had not felt in a long time.

“LAI, all energy to servos, get me outta here!”

The railgun was drained of all its power, but the suit once again came to life. Charles ran up the ramps, with speed, uncaring of the obstacles and the walls. He hit his arms and his shoulders against the walls because he was going too fast, but he didn’t care.

The door. And a loud noise from behind.

Eereen was being pulled around by the arm, and was thankful of the fact that she was not just a simple elf at level one, or she would have been dismembered. She saw the light of the outside, the setting sun faintly illuminating the plains next to the hill, when the loud noise reached her ears.

And then she was flying.

Charles landed just next to a puddle of boiling mud. Eereen could hear the bubbles exploding right under her, and feel the killer gases on her face. She was dangling above the pit, held only by the hand of the strange man in the suit.

Her lifeline.

He saved her.

She could have died here. But he was there to save her.

He pulled her up, in silence, and smiled faintly before turning around.

She turned too, and saw the tower collapse onto itself. Bent, broken. Damaged forever, beyond repair.

Charles was just staring at it. Immobile. His eyes a bit misty, perhaps. His heart pounding in his chest.