Floor 70

The City of Metal

Checkpoint 7

We spent only a few days at our little forward base, the entire time spent waiting for the drone to be repaired. Alexia yelled at me for a few hours straight, mostly because the mechanism in the arm was the hardest part of it to fix.

Yet she put her back into it and had the drone repaired quick enough. So once more I had my daughters dirty themselves up, and then I asked them to put their detestable collars back on.

When we returned to the seventieth floor Trium was still there, waiting for us in the arrival chamber. The defense grid made no move to attack, and as the Architect led us outside I started to wonder if it even functioned in the first place.

The city was as when we first went through it. Desolate, for the most part devoid of any activity, and the structures around us were unfinished. As we walked the streets I made a mental note of how there were even less Architects or humans, as though someone had plucked them from the city.

When we reached the portal building Trium called a halt, and looked at me with a worried expression. “I am uncertain if the floors between here and seventy-five are as I recall,” he said.

It was a thought I had anticipated, and overall didn’t fear. “Don’t worry,” I told him, “if we have to fight our way through the next few floors we can handle it.”

He looked at me, a look of disbelief on his face, but he wisely chose to not argue. Instead he led us into the building and once more to the portal.

Once we arrived at it Trium went first, and then Lisa followed him after that. Mika reached out and grabbed my hand, but leaned in close.

“Can we trust him?”

I tried my best to not laugh. “No. But we won’t do anything to him until he betrays us.”

Floor 71

The City of Metal - Smelting Zone Gamma

The shift to the next floor had come with no warning, and I had to hastily adjust my balance when we appeared. Mika let go of my hand and turned to look around, an act that I already knew was pointless.

That was because the imagination of the Architects was consistently dull. We were in the midst of another city much like the prior, though it had more fully constructed buildings.

The only drastic change from the previous floor were the plumes of smoke on the horizon, a sign that the factories were still active. Unless something had changed since my last venture into the heart of the city, I knew that those factories were fully automated.

“Smelting zone?” Lisa asked, as she forced her hand away from where her sword normally was. It was a habit I’d ingrained into her over the last few years, and one I was proud to see she had retained so well.

“They take scrap and anything else from the other floors and bring it here,” I told her as I glanced at Trium, waiting for him to either interrupt or otherwise do something, “then they process it into useful material.”

Trium seemed far too distracted to care about our small conversation, and instead he was looking around with that same worried look from before. “Where are they?” he muttered, though the shell was more than capable of picking up those quiet words.

That question put me on edge, as I thought he meant there was supposed to be an ambush. It as only when I looked around that I realized what had caused his concern.

There was nobody.

I had spent a somewhat disheartening length of time murdering the Architects in the past. In that time I’d gone through their city floor by floor, and all that I’d left behind were ruins and corpses. Even then I knew that some of them had survived, as I didn’t feel the urge to hunt down the more innocent of their kind.

But somehow the feeling that we were alone was far stronger. There were no sounds of the city, no hum of machinery nor pitter-patter of footfalls. There were no signs of movement, nor did we even see a single drone standing guard. Even all of the human slaves were gone, the people who were kept merely to do the most disgusting and servile of work.

Yet the city still ran itself. The lights along the streets were lit, the signals that marked where transports were supposed to carry things flashed, and I could even hear the sound of music in some far off place.

“I am tempted to investigate the transit facility to see if a coordinator is still deployed here,” Trium admitted to us, “but I believe such an interaction could prove negative in the long run.”

“You don’t have any nanites,” I said, “or so we’ve been told. Which means a transit is useless unless you have an ally on this floor?”

Trium’s brow furrowed as he looked around the empty city plaza. “Perhaps one or two, normally, but given the current scenario I am somewhat doubtful of that.”

“Then let’s go to the portal.”

Trium nodded his head, as he started to walk through the plaza. His footfalls echoed, bringing a bit more noise to the hushed city, and soon we were moving through the streets. No machines moved to stop us, nor did any drones emerge.

Lisa and Mika hovered near me, clearly on edge due to the lack of any other living beings. Though they were arguably the two strongest entities in the entire labyrinth, aside from their siblings, even they knew that we were in a situation far beyond the norm.

We walked past buildings that were designed to hold scrap, as well as a few buildings which were clearly dormitories of some sort. We passed near one of the furnaces, the heat of it still warm enough to remind one of the desert.

With the floor being one of the regular ones, and not a checkpoint, we didn’t find the portal inside a building. Instead it was out in the open, nearby what I could only call a junkyard.

As we walked over to the portal some of the machines continued to work, sifting through the pile of scrap for anything usable. It was a task that would prove pointless, as the sorted out material would never leave if an Architect showed up.

Nothing appeared to stop us from using the portal, and so our group of four continued on to the seventy-second floor. It was another part of what the labyrinth called the city of metal, a hydroponics facility.

If their alteration of the previous two floors had seemed interesting, it was on the seventy-second floor where it proved awe inspiring. At some point they had converted the once flat world into an entire building, one in which row after row of plants grew within protective bubbles.

Yet even on this floor we saw no other Architects, and the plantlife had started to wilt. Without a guiding hand the system could only work as normal, and so it could not handle the constant change that came with any living creature.

The plants that were worse off had even begun to rot, a sign that the place had been abandoned for quite a while. Within the bubble there should have been minimal interaction with any decomposing bacteria.

We hastened our pace in order to get out of the floor. Unlike the previous two floors since it was fully enclosed we were under constant watch, and if there were any hostile Architects observing they could utilize the defense network against us.

Yet we arrived on the seventy-third floor unmolested, and I had started to grow as worried as Trium. There was no reason that I could think of for what was happening, but I had started to also realize a fact.

Wye had told me to watch the state of the floors, and this was indeed something worth paying attention to. If it was in any way linked to a new assault on the lower floors, perhaps even some way to get them past the sphinx, it would make for a threat worth stopping.

The seventy-third floor was a bit different from what my daughters might’ve expected. Though it was labelled a farm by the labyrinth that was perhaps the worst term, a fact that Mika made note of as we walked slowly past various glass tubes.

Within each of them grew an Architect, or more precisely a drone, and they were as always identical to one another. I knew from past experience that further into the city we might find the more unique Architects, the ones grown to flesh out their society

I also knew that somewhere on the floor should be tubes that held humans, as outside of the tribe we’d met in the desert all slaves were grown. No humans lived naturally on the floor, and the Architects had no interest in allowing them to self-propagate. It could cause what they considered minor annoyances, such as wasting resources on babies.

Unlike on the previous floors there weren’t even machines moving, as the growth chambers required constant supervision in order to properly function. Though the Architects had the knowledge to create an intelligent machine, one that could do such a task, they had balked at the idea of birthing such a thing.

We, once more, reached the portal in short order and moved on.

Yet floor seventy-four was all the more unsettling. It was an extensive dormitory, one designed to house all of the drones when they were not active. The floor was also able to serve as a place to house their normal slaves, but in the tens of thousands of rooms we could detect no life.

There was no noise on that floor aside from what we made, and even the power systems had started to fail. Whatever had plucked the people on seventy-four had done so long before we arrived.

We found no sign that they’d been killed, nor any damage to the dormitory itself, and so I could only guess they’d been escorted away. That or perhaps some form of magic had been used, but the idea of the Architects with magic was one I preferred to not have.

That was what brought us finally to the portal leading on to the next floor, and so we progressed to seventy-five even more confused than before.

Floor 75

The City of Metal - Station Gamma

The random spawn deposited on a rocky crag, one that overlooked a silver spire. Around it sprawled a small complex of rectangles, squares, and domes which housed either Architects or hardware.

The darkened sky, one covered in black clouds, blotted out any potential sunlight. Instead the only source of light on the floor was found at the spire itself. Flickering lights, as though the power could barely hold on, cast unreliable illumination everywhere.

“There should be an executive on guard duty,” Trium said as he peered down at the facility.

I barely glanced at the place, as my interest was more on Trium himself. “Maybe you should use that device?”

Trium looked at me as his eyes widened, and then he pulled out what Samara had given him. He held it carefully, as though afraid it might break, and started to manipulate the device with quick presses of his fingers.

He put it away, yet I couldn’t tell if anything had happened. “Did you get a response?” I asked, as I studied his face for any telltale signs of anything.

“Uncertain,” Trium replied, and returned to studying the spire, “I recommend awaiting potential reinforcements for at least a portion of time.”

The idea of waiting even longer when our way to the ninety-ninth floor was right in front of us bothered me, but I kept silent in that regard. If we could shed some light on the oddities we’d witnessed I could wait.

So we settled down for a few hours, not moving away from the arrival point. If anything hostile arrived my daughters could kill it instantly, and if any allies arrived it’d prove beneficial to wait for them there.

Trium returned Lisa’s sword to her during the wait, but for the most part spent his time studying the spire. I didn’t try to engage in a conversation with him, far more interested in thinking about what could have removed all the Architects.

A short while after two hours there was a flicker in the air nearby us, and then two people appeared. At a glance we could tell they were Architects, but none of us made a move to attack until they proved hostile.

One of them, a woman with short cut hair, looked at us and then noticed Trium. She lifted one hand up slowly in greeting, though she didn’t step closer.

“Unbelievable personage present,” she said, “I am incapable of believing it.”

Trium walked over and did something quite unlike an Architect, as he hugged the woman. “Rubi, I have missed you,” he said before turning to the other Architect, “Boros!”

The one named Boros was a tall Architect, far taller than most I’d run across before, and he had a few scars on his face. It was a bit of an oddity, since I knew that Architects had the technology to remove them, but I supposed he preferred to keep them.

“Your request for assistance is fortuitous,” Boros said, with a glance at my daughters and I, “the executives have abducted or otherwise escorted everyone.”

“Everyone? The humans as well?” I interjected, my curiosity in what was going on winning out over caution.

Rubi looked at me as she put her hands on her hips. “Battlesuit?” she wondered, but shook her head and continued to talk, “humans included. Most drones were also taken. Everyone was transported to one of the stations.”

One of which was near us, yet from what we’d seen there were no signs of movement. The building itself looked to be falling apart, as though the daily maintenance had been given up on.

“What about the rest of you Samara followers?”

“Forcefully kidnapped.” Rubi glared at the nearby spire. “Rescue operation commencing?”

“Something like that. Trium, is this everyone? Or are you going to make us wait longer?”

Trium sighed at my question, but gave a nod of his head. “We shall proceed. Strategy?”

“Strategy? You’re only coming along because I thought there’d be more defenses,” I replied honestly, “just try to stay out of our way. Maybe look around inside to see if some of your friends are there.”

It was a bit of a rough way to handle him, but it was the truth. I walked away from the trio of Architects, picking my way along a path that curved down to the nearby complex. My daughters followed after me without questions, accustomed perhaps to my brusque personality.

As we approached the sprawling maze of buildings I made note of the absence of security. There were no visible turrets, nor even cameras, and it made me wonder how lax the Architects had become over the last millennia.

We walked past storehouses that were left wide open, each of them devoid of anything inside, and eventually arrived at the base of the spire. A gateway stood in front of us, one made of platinum and covered with a shield of light.

I frowned at that, as it looked to be some type of blockade meant to ward off intruders. I turned to check if Trium had followed, and when I saw that he and his friends had I jerked a thumb at the door.

“How do we get past that?”

Trium looked past me, and then shook his head. “Energy field requires executive privilege to revoke.”

“You want me to punch it?” Lisa asked, perhaps a bit too eagerly for my preference.

“Kinetic force will only be absorbed and redistributed,” Trium told us, “power generation is located within the spire as well.”

The light of the shield flickered, and then vanished. With almost no noise the gateway itself split open and revealed the interior, within which a golden portal hung. The portal looked entirely mechanical, with visible cogs and wheels turning inside.

None of us went for it.

“That is the most obvious trap I have ever seen,” Mika said.

Trium’s face showed only shock, as did the other two Architects, and I could only guess they weren’t part of what had happened. Either that or the three of them were amazing actors.

“We don’t have any choice.” I strode through the open gateway. “Come on, we should use the portal now.”

My daughters hesitated, but when nothing happened to the shell they followed me. Mika and Lisa both put their hands on the portal, and Mika offered her other hand to me. I took it, but glanced at the trio of Architects.

“Coming? We’re going to floor ninety-nine.”

“Insane, certifiably insane,” Boros said, a claim that Rubi echoed.

Trium didn’t, though, and instead walked through the gateway. He put his hand on the Architect-designed portal. “Samara trusted you, so I will too.”

The other two came in after him, though they didn’t seem altogether happy with his choice. Meanwhile Mika looked at the sphere, and then looked at me with one upraised eyebrow.

“Father, does this work like a regular portal?”

“Yes, just think of going to the ninety-ninth floor and it should do the rest,” I told her.

With my reassurance she focused on the portal, and there was a slight flicker of a light within it. The machine pulsed and began to churn, the interior shifting even while the spire around us seemed to shut down.

Floor 99

The Stronghold Of Death

Unlike with the regular portal there was far more of a jarring effect, and so when we arrived on the ninety-ninth floor all of us fell to our knees. Lisa started to retch, a common side effect for new users of the Architect portal.

I stood up, and helped Mika stand up as well, while I studied our surroundings. We had arrived in a wide open space, yet the ground beneath us was a smooth stone.

The area we stood in was easily five hundred feet wide, if not more, and walls made of the same stone as the floor stretched up a hundred feet. The area was encircled by the walls, within which numerous alcoves were spaced every five feet.

Far above us a dull red light served as the only illumination, barely allowing for visibility if one couldn’t see in the dark. I concentrated on the crystals in the shell and produced balls of energy, which I then threw up into the air.

Each of the balls burst and created a curtain of light. The particles floated in the stagnant air, allowing all of us to see everything. That was when I noticed what was within the alcoves.

Somewhat misshapen blobs that were covered in some type of leather pulsed inside each recess. As I looked at them a few seemed to even move, as though in response to my sight.

“Mika, Lisa, don’t hold back at all!” I shouted at my daughters, as I started to focus on the magic system of the shell.

That was when I heard a whisper in my ear rather than the audio system of the shell. “I see you.”

The sensation of being ripped through the air over came me, and when I fell to my knees I could feel the cold stone beneath. I braced myself against the ground, my body screaming in protest at the use of frayed muscles, and coughed up blood.