The door sealed shut behind us as we moved into the connecting corridor, cutting off any chance of retreat. The hallway sloped downward and the air grew noticeable warmer as we descended—thick with a sharp, metallic tang mixed with a cloying sweetness that turned my stomach. Unlike the sterile, scrubbed-white hallways we’d slogged through so far, this place was brimming with life.

  Thick tangles of blue and green vines grew over everything, snaking along the walls and ceilings. Huge violet flowers budded in spots, dripping glowing green sap that pooled on the grated floor. The catwalk was mercifully clear of foliage, but the rest of the corridor looked like it had been overtaken by some alien jungle nightmare that might come alive and eat us at any moment.

  I focused on one of the flowers and a pop-up appeared.

  Violet Crown Lily

  Rare Alchemical Resource

  Type: Harvestable Plant

  The Violet Crown Lily is an alien horror masquerading as a flower, a monstrous blossom from Hydrosyne IV that looks more like a deep-sea predator than your garden variety petunia. Each petal curves inward and is covered in tiny barbs that are sharp enough to shred anything stupid enough to touch it barehanded. At its center lies a glistening core that constantly weeps a viscous, green ooze.

  The ooze itself is laced with psychedelic properties so strong that accidental ingestion will drag your mind into a kaleidoscopic hellscape of shrieking colors and howling faces. It’s not the “find yourself” kind of trip—it’s the “wake up three days later screaming about the teeth in the walls” kind.

  And yet, beneath all the horror, the Violet Crown Lily is incredibly valuable.

  Its leaves can be carefully harvested and refined into alchemical reagents that purge Stage One Blight, counteract hallucinogenic effects, and drastically shorten the duration of active Afflictions. When dried and powdered, the petals can also be brewed into a strong restorative tonic that boosts natural recovery—assuming you don’t mind a side effect or two, like mild paranoia or the temporary sensation of having bugs inside your skin.

  Jakob had already beelined straight toward one of the blooms and was busy harvesting the flower with delicate care, making sure not to touch the petals without his protective gloves.

  “I’m thinking you might be right about the lack of Froyo,” Croc said, as I dismissed the prompt with a wave. “This isn’t even Froyo-adjacent. Unless you count those puddles of goo.” The dog squinted its nose sniffing in curiosity. “I suppose they sort of look lime-flavored”—the mimic wrinkled its rubbery muzzle—“though it smells like rotten goat milk.”

  “Don’t eat the goo,” I replied, never taking my eyes off the path ahead. “In fact, as a general rule of thumb, don’t eat anything in here.”

  “But mimic’s have—” the dog began to say.

  “I know about your industrial strength stomach lining,” I replied, cutting Croc off mid-sentence, “but trust me when I say you don’t want any part of that shit.”

  “Fine,” Croc grumbled dejectedly, ears sagging, “I won’t eat the goo.”

  As we pushed forward, deeper into the corridor, inbuilt loudspeakers crackled to life overhead with a voice that sounded far too calm considering its message.

  “Warning: Biohazard breach detected in Pathogen Containment Vault – Sector 3. Blight corruption at 87%. Recommend immediate evacuation. You have 54:59 seconds before lockdown protocols will engage…”

  A literal ticking clock appeared in the corner of my vision, spiraling inevitably downward toward zero.

  “Does anyone else see a timer?” Harper asked.

  Everyone else nodded.

  “Yeah, me too,” I said, swallowing hard. “That’s probably bad.”

  “No kidding,” Harper muttered, her eyes darting nervously to the vines overhead. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ve seen what Blight can do to a Delver—and it’s not something you can just shrug off with a few medical grade Zimas.”

  “Then I’m guessing that’s our cue to pick up the pace,” I replied softly, already moving faster.

  We followed the plant-filled corridor for two hundred meters or so, before we found ourselves in front of a set of heavy steel doors, partially jammed open by twisted vines and a spattering of Violet Crown Lilies. The sign overhead read, Biomass Containment Chamber: Tier-2 Hazard, which sounded like a place to be avoided at all costs. Even worse, shapes moved behind the half-open doors, lurching in the dark. I caught a flash of glistening flesh and heard a wet, guttural sound like someone gargling nails and raw hamburger.

  “We have company,” Temperance said softly, already stroking her blade in anticipation of violence to come.

  And I was sure there would be violence.

  Problem was, the room beyond was almost pitch black, and though I could hear the scuttle of feet, I couldn’t get a good look at what was waiting for us within.

  “How’s about we get a little looksee before we blunder in there like a bunch of assholes,” I whispered, raising one arm to stop her. “Jakob?” I asked quietly. “Don’t suppose you have anything that might be able to help us?”

  “I could always just hurl a fireball, if that would help?” Temperance suggested.

  “I have something that might be a touch more subtle, Kleiner Hase,” Jakob replied. He reached into his bandolier and pulled out a thin glass vial filled with a glowing blue substance. “Ghostlight Tonic,” he said. “Once the vial is broken, it will shed spectral light that only allies can see. The things inside won’t even know we’re here.” He offered me a lopsided grin. “Very handy for sneaking through places where we’d rather not announce we’re on the menu.”

  He tossed the vial through the gap in the door, and it shattered against the floor. The substance inside the vial exploded outward covering the floors in a glowing liquid, illuminating the room beyond with a ghostly, azure light.

  And that’s when we saw what waited for us.

  There was an entire platoon worth of them—twenty on the low end, thirty on the high end—and they weren’t human. Not even in the same ballpark.

  Each creature stood on three long, jointed legs, balanced like grotesque tripods, their bodies hunched and asymmetrical. Where their heads should have been, there was only a flower of fleshy petals peeling back to reveal a circular mouth filled with teeth like obsidian knives. Their bodies were carpeted in the same twisting vines that covered the walls and ceilings. The closest one turned toward the sound of breaking glass, its petal-maw opening in a silent scream before snapping shut again with a wet clap.

  I immediately recognized them from the holo-vids I’d seen in the Splicer chamber.

  Drekhnaar Drones. The same invasive species that seemed to be responsible for spreading the Blight in the first place—though the ones in the vids weren’t cover in plant life. They must’ve assimilated the foliage after a containment break. Or maybe these were assimilated mutations of some sort.

  A notification quickly confirmed my suspicion.

  Dweller 0.750345C – Drekhnaar Drone – Hive Construct (Blighted) [Level 45]

  Born from the blasphemous assimilation of whatever unlucky biomass the hive can get its claws on, assimilated Drekhnaar Drones are a Frankenstein patchwork of chitin plates, twitching sinew, and whatever organic or inorganic material the hive found lying around. They don’t just wear armor—they grow it, their outer shell hardening into a glossy, black carapace that looks like a roach and a crab had a baby and then immediately dunked it in acid.

  Drones aren’t subtle. They’re fast, nasty, and single-minded, sprinting and skittering across walls and ceilings like giant spiders on Bath Salts. You don’t get the sense they’re hunting for food—they’re hunting for building materials. Your face, your legs, that shiny new VRD-issued security golem? All just future components for the hive’s next ugly upgrade.

  And don’t let the word “drone” fool you. These things think. Not in the “reading Proust” kind of way, but in the ambush predator kind of way. They react to threats with an uncanny, coordinated precision that makes a pack of wolves look like disorganized toddlers.

  The only good news is that they’re relatively lightly armored, at least compared to the Sentinels and Hive Minds. A few well-placed hits will put them down. Unfortunately, keeping them down is a lot harder. Since all Drekhnaar are inherently infested with Blight, their cells regenerate faster than Stripper Glitter—no matter how often you scrub, the glitter just keeps coming back. Unless you burn what’s left, you might find the pieces slithering back together, even stronger than before.

  One of the creatures lurched toward the door, its tripod legs scraping against the glowing blue liquid Jakob had tossed, oblivious to the light but curious about the sound of breaking glass. More creatures shuffled and swayed behind the first, several of them crawling along the walls like that hadn’t read the memo on gravity.

  “They don’t look very nice at all,” Corc said, its googly eyes tracking the strange creatures. “But they also say you should never judge a book by its cover. Maybe they know something useful about this level? If you want, Dan, I could try talking with them? Dweller to Dweller?”

  “Yeah… I don’t think that’s such a good idea, bud,” I replied. “And also, that’s a stupid saying. The one about covers. Book covers are literally designed so you can judge books. Would you have picked up Twilight if the cover was a couple of hand-drawn stick figures on lined notebook paper?”

  “I’d like to think that Twilight transcends mere cover art,” Croc replied, before hesitating. “But no, I probably wouldn’t have tried it. That apple on the cover just looked so delicious. Plus, those hands.” The mimic’s ears drooped in shame. “I wanted to eat those, too.”

  “See? Covers matter,” I said. “And this cover screams I’m going to peel off your skin and eat your organs, then give you incurable, hemorrhoids.”

  “Are your hemorrhoids flaring up again, Dan?” Croc asked, clearly concerned. “Because there’s a whole section at the store with creams. Maybe you’re not getting enough fiber?”

  “I don’t have hemorrhoids,” I snapped, “and yes, I’m getting enough fiber. I’m pretty sure pizza and beer are full of fiber. Point is, I think Temp had the right idea. Let’s slow roast these fuckers with a giant fireball. Anyone have Charbroil Inferno equipped?”

  “No,” Temperance replied, “but I can easily swap it in, if that will help things along.”

  “Yeah, that should do the trick,” I whispered. “I’ll form an ice barrier and spam balloon bombs. Jakob, you get ready with Quantum Entanglement—just in case they get too close. Harper, Shadow Eagles. Let’s tear these things a couple of new assholes.” I paused. “But from a safe distance, okay?”

  “What about me, Dan?” Croc asked, tail waggling in excitement.

  “Uh… You could always use Remy, I guess?” I replied. “Just wait for the initial blaze to die down.”

  With the orders set, I cast Frostfang Spire at the mouth of the door, conjuring a barricade of razor-sharp ice javelins that would be a bitch and a half to climb over. Then, without waiting for the others, I sent half a deck of Balloon Menagerie Spell Cards flying forward on strings of telekinesis. The cards fanned out through the room in a rough arc, then exploded on impact, filling the room with squeaky neon balloon animals which promptly exploded in the unholy conflagrations to end all unholy conflagrations.

  The room erupted with searing flames and the Drekhnaar Drones shrieked in agony as the blaze licked over armor plating and engulfed the vines carpeting the room.

  Several Drones shot toward us like blazing homing missiles, but Temp and Jakob managed to lock ’em down with ease, using a combination of Quantum Entanglement and Puritanical Chains. Temperance rotated to the front of the formation and unleashed a fresh round of Charbroiled Inferno, adding even more fuel to the already raging fire. Harper triggered Arcane Jumper Cables, allowing the furry war-machine to pull mana straight from the healer’s formidable spell pool.

  After a solid two minutes, Temp slipped to one side, her body trembling from the exertion, and Harper took her place, firing off round after round of Shadow Eagles which shrieked through the enclosed room before detonating in clouds of inky shrapnel, which mowed down foliage and tore through hardened carapaces with equal ease.

  If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  Experience points started rolling in as the Drones died along with a new Research Achievement.

  Research Achievement Unlocked!

  Bug Zapper

  Hey, look at you go! You’ve just killed your first Drekhnaar Drone, and you didn’t even lose a limb. That’s moderately impressive, considering these things were custom built to dismantle combat constructs, flay armored targets, and play Jenga with your vertebrae. Most first-time encounters end in screaming, flailing, or assimilation into the ever-expanding Hive.

  Well, that’s one less flesh-cobbled nightmare skittering around the walls… though, there are probably twenty more already on the way. Did I mention these things are pack hunters with a physic link to the rest of their brood? Because, yeah, they totally are. And you’ve officially earned your place on the Hive’s shit list. Word of advice? Don’t stop moving. The others felt that one die and the Hive knows how to hold a grudge...

  Reward: 2,500 Experience Points, 1 x Gold Blight Killer Loot Token

  Title: Bug Zapper – Gain +10% bonus damage against all Hive Constructs and

  +10 Preservation when in areas with an active Swarm Presence. Nearby Hive creatures are also 10% more likely to prioritize you over lower-threat targets. You’re officially that guy now.

  When Harper’s Mana eventually started to dwindle, she scooted to one side and Croc and I replaced her by the door’s entrance. Between the blue glow coating the floor and the raging inferno lighting the room, it was easy to see what was left.

  It wasn’t much. Of the original swarm, only ten or so remained.

  “Time for Remy?” Croc asked hopefully, desperately wanting to contribute to the fight.

  “Yeah,” I confirmed with a nod, “time for Remy.”

  Croc opened its maw and vomited a gross blub of wriggling red tissue onto the far side of the ice barricade, which was already starting to melt under the intense heat of the flames.

  I used Hydrokinesis to reinforce the barrier as the slug—easily as long as my forearm—crawled across the flame scarred floor with frightening speed. Remy launched itself at one of the Drones and began to chew through its abdomen, quickly burrowing its way inward. With a snarl, I unleashed Hydro Fracking Blast as the slug ate, splitting the beam into three separate strands that sliced and diced, punctured and ruptured.

  The remaining Drones were already badly damaged from the murderous firebomb, and though they fought desperately to get at us, the odds were stacked against them.

  Quantum Entanglement and burning blue Puritanical Chains continued to hold, and my Hydro Beams cut ’em down like a scythe blade swinging through a field of wheat. The single Drone who did manage to break through the crowd control spells, met a swift and gristly end as Remy wriggled up its back then unceremoniously chewed through the creature’s spine, dropping it on the spot.

  The slug grew the more it ate, and now it was roughly the size of a pitbull with inch long spikes covering its back and sides like a sentient cactus. I just sort of stood there in a mixture of mute horror and fascination as I watched it bodily slide over one of the Drone’s tripod legs like someone throating a Costco hot dog, before clapping down with enormous mandibles. The entire limb vanished, and the Drone toppled over, suddenly unbalanced, as Remy swelled in size again.

  The Drones were weak, almost dead, and I probably could’ve finished them off without too much trouble. A round of StainSlayer Maelstrom, a few Hydro Blasts, and a couple of Balloon Menagerie Spell Cards would’ve done the trick.

  But I didn’t kill them. This was the first time I’d ever run across the creatures, so instead I waited. Biding my time as I watched how they operated.

  The handful of remaining Drones turned their full, nightmarish attention on the massive slug.

  Moving with eerie unspoken coordination, they circled Remy like a pack of wolves, snapping and striking in perfectly timed waves meant to overwhelm and wear him down. Some hurled sizzling globs of acid that hissed and ate through leathery hide where they landed, while others darted forward to slash with serrated claws or ram the monstrous worm with jagged, chitinous spears. A few of the bolder ones lunged forward with their petal-like mouths, tearing off chunks of flesh in wet, meaty bites.

  But Remy was built for punishment. He wasn’t just a slug. No, he was a certified siege engine, designed to soak up damage like a sponge. Every blow the Drone’s landed barely made a dent, and even as chunks of his flesh were bitten away, the big guy just kept on rolling forward, eating its way through the Drones in retaliation. Remy continued to grow at an astonishing rate, and once it got big enough the slug had another nasty surprise waiting for these floral shitheels…

  There was one rather concerning thing, though. Something I’d never seen before.

  As Remy grew, giant tumors started to bloom across its wriggling body—even the smallest growth was the size of my fist, while the large ones were bigger than my skull.

  I’d seen Blight before, and those tumors were its calling card.

  “Here it comes,” Croc said excitedly, googly eyes wide with wonder.

  A second later Remy reached critical mass—now even larger than the Drones—and exploded in a shower of blood, guts, and spikey bone fragments, dishing out fifty percent of the damage it had already dealt. Which, in this case, was a metric shitload.

  The Drones nearest the blast were turned into ragged corpses, while those further back were hurled against the walls with bone breaking force.

  It was a thing of grisly beauty.

  There were only two left alive after the meat eruption, and both were below ten percent, so I quickly sent my hammer flying forward, triggering Gavel of Get Fucked as it obliterated the flowery head of the first Drone. The monster dropped dead as Killing Blow procced and triggered Wave of Justice, dropping the second Drone below 5%. I finished that one off with a quick blast of Hyrdo Fracking Blast, leaving the room beyond silent and motionless.

  “Well, that was easier than expected,” I said, melting the spikey ice barricade then slipping sideways through the door.

  “We Germans have a saying,” Jakob muttered, as he followed me into the room. “Man soll das Unglück nicht heraufbeschw?ren. You shouldn’t tempt fate.”

  “We make our own fate,” I replied, padding forward to the nearest corpse, which was badly burned and still smoldering.

  I’d earned a decent amount of experience for the massacre, but not enough to push me up another level. These things were Dwellers, though, which meant they had Spatial Cores—and Spatial Cores meant Relics.

  But the clock was ticking, so we didn’t have time to putz around, twiddling our collective thumbs. Still, despite the time crunch, I didn’t summon the Rat Pack. These things were all clearly infected with Blight and after witnessing the tumors on Remy, I didn’t want to gamble on accidentally infecting my Horrors.

  “Everyone, take what you can,” I barked. “And try to be quick about it. We don’t have long.”

  I crouched down beside the first Drone, burnt almost beyond recognition, and accessed its Core, looting the handful of Relics within. I grimaced when I saw all of them were Blighted. That wasn’t a problem, unless you wanted to end up as an inhuman drone with tentacles and a bunch of extra limbs growing from places they didn’t strictly belong. The worst part was, the Relics were good, but completely unusable.

  The first was one called Viscera Assimilation. Whenever an ally or enemy died within thirty feet, the user automatically “assimilated” a portion of the victim’s biomass, restoring 10% of their Max Health, and gaining a Biomass Stack, which increased all melee damage and Blight Afflictions by an additional 10%.

  Hive Link was another Passive, which operated similar to Insurance Pact, allowing all Drones within 50 meters of one another to share 25% of their total Health and Mana Pools. And when one Drone died, the surviving members of the Link gained Hive Frenzy, increasing Attack and Movement Speed by 15% for 30 seconds. Something like that would be incredibly useful for my Horrors, assuming I could find a way to strip the Relic of Blight first.

  The last Relic I found—at least on this corpse—was a Rare-grade Attack Relic, called Blighted Vines.

  Rare Relic – Level 1

  Range: 15 Meters

  Cost: 50 Mana

  Duration: 25 Seconds

  Cooldown: 2 Minutes

  Turn the forces of nature into your bitch by summoning a writhing nest of corrupted plant life that sprouts from the ground like living razor wire. Each vine is slick with black-green sap and covered in barbs sharp enough to peel skin from bone. Once ensnared, targets find themselves rooted in place, quite literally, struggling against the crushing grip of the vines while being slowly infected with the creeping corruption of the Blight.

  Every 10 seconds, all enemies bound by the blighted vines gain 1 stack of Blight Corruption. The stacks themselves don’t deal any direct damage, but the infection begins gnawing at the target’s essence, transforming them in unspeakable ways. If the number of stacks exceeds the target’s Preservation Stat, they’ll contract Stage One Blight—a delightful condition where the body starts mutating in ways best described as horrifyingly non-Euclidean.

  While stage one Blight is treatable with proper antidotes or cleansing magic, failure to address it can escalate to more advanced stages where you’re less “person” and more “Cronenberg nightmare.” As an added bonus, enemies who attempt to struggle free take 5 points of Piercing Damage per second from the barbs, making the whole experience a painful, anxiety-inducing mess—unless you enjoy being bound and slowly choked. If that’s your kink, enjoy!

  This Relic enables Mana usage.

  I sent all three Relics off to Storage then quickly moved on to the next body as the others did the same. The whole while, I kept one eye glued to the countdown timer in the corner of my vision.

  Forty-three minutes and change left to go.

  I wasn’t sure what everyone else collected, but the rest of the Drones I looted each had both Viscera Harvest and Hive Link, though the third Relic was typically a tossup. A few more had Blighted Vines, while there were a handful of other varieties mixed in—Chitin Spike Barrage, Corrosive Bloodletting, and an ultimate AoE called Viral Outbreak which increased the number of Corrupted Stacks a target had by 2% for every second they remained inside the area of effect.

  Like the others, those were all Blighted and seemed to specialize in dealing Blight-related damage. In other words, utterly useless. Hell, I wasn’t even sure if I could safely sacrifice them to power my other Relics.

  But that was a worry for later.

  Working fast, it took us all of five minutes to loot the corpses—everyone was moving with a certain speed and intensity they didn’t usually have, and it wasn’t hard to guess why.

  Knowing we could compare notes later, we left the pile of Drone corpses behind and exited through the far door, which dumped us into another yawning corridor, filled with even more foliage. Harper equipped the stripped candy cane staff I’d taken off the Snowmaw Hag and cast Blessing of the White Hunt to increase our base Athleticism and movement speed by 20% for the next ten minutes—which was great because we needed all the extra endurance and horsepower we could get our hands on.

  We sprinted along the catwalk, boots clanging with every step, though the sound was quickly swallowed by the humid, oppressive air. I’d deployed with the MEU, and on our way over to Iraq, we’d stopped briefly in Thailand—this felt a lot like that.

  Hot, sweaty, and uncomfortably moist.

  Several sealed doors lined the passageway, each one stenciled with ominous warnings, including one particularly charming label that read DANGER: ACTIVE HIVE ZONE. Through the reinforced glass of some doors, I caught glimpses of more Drone-like shapes skittering around in the dark. Most of these chambers were single-entry death traps—one way in, no way out—which meant easy Experience if we had the time to spare.

  We didn’t.

  Not with the countdown clock ticking away.

  Eventually, the corridor funneled us toward a doorway that stood open and unguarded, like a yawning mouth daring us to step inside. It was much larger than the other doors we passed and looked more like some kind of receiving bay than a research lab. We slowed, and I instinctively glanced through the opening as it lit up with a hazy red aura, courtesy of the Spelunker’s Sixth Sense.

  The breath caught in my throat the second I saw what was waiting beyond.

  The room was massive and lit by a half-dozen flickering overhead lights that were on their last legs. What little illumination they provided revealed the skeletons of old transport ships and dismantled VRD security golems strewn across the floor. Most of them were stripped for parts, their chassis cracked open like broken ribcages, while others were nothing more than rusting hulks. A graveyard of futuristic tech and iron skeletons.

  But despite the desolation, the room wasn’t empty.

  There was a swarm of lesser Drekhnaar Drones crawling across the wreckage, skittering over metal beams and shredded hull plating like ants dismantling a carcass. That was bad enough, but the thing lurking in the corner of the room was a whole new category of oh, shit.

  It was enormous—easily three times the size of the lesser Drones.

  Part centaur, all nightmare-fuel, its lower body was built like a rhino on an overdose of growth hormones, while its upper half mimicked a grotesque parody of a human torso, packed with slabs of corded muscle.

  Three fleshy, petal-lined flower heads sprouted from a thick neck, identical to the smaller Drones but scaled up to match the beast’s monstrous frame. Overlapping chitin plates covered its body like tank armor, the gaps between them wriggled with thick vines and clusters of pulsating Blight tumors. Two heavy, shoulder-mounted plasma cannons—salvaged straight from the VRD security golems—rested on its back, humming faintly with lethal energy.

  Dweller 0.750879B – Drekhnaar Sentinel – Hive Behemoth (Blighted) [Level 79]

  If the lesser Drones are the Hive’s rabid hunting dogs, the Drekhnaar Sentinel is the armored war elephant they call in when they really want something—or someone—reduced to a pile of smoldering paste. Built like a nightmare fortress on legs, Sentinels are beefed-up monstrosities, forged from the same vile Blight corruption as the Drones but dialed to eleven.

  On the plus side, Sentinels are slow, though only compared to their smaller cousins. When a Sentinel charges, you’ll feel the ground shake long before you hear the bone-rattling impact. They don’t bother with skittering across ceilings or walls—they flatten them. The three petal-maws on its neck work like industrial meat grinders and are more than capable of chewing through bone, steel, or whatever else is unfortunate enough to be caught in its grip.

  Oh, and it heals. A lot. Hack it apart, and the flesh just wriggles back together. Unless you burn it, blast it, or nuke it into chunky salsa, this thing is going to keep coming—and it’s not the forgiving type.

  Holy hell. Level 79? Yeah. There was no way we were beating that thing. Not on our best day.

  My real question was how in the world had this thing gotten so strong? As I understood it, the ambient Mana Levels grew stronger the deeper down you ventured—but the inverse was also true. The closer you moved toward the Lobby, the weaker the ambient Mana and the weaker the monsters. Sure, this was the 75th floor, but I had it on good authority that the Franchisor was only in the mid-sixties, and he was on the 99th floor.

  This thing too powerful to be here…

  Then a terrible idea occurred to me. I already knew the Research floors were different than other floors, so what if the ambient Mana here was much higher than its respective level indicated?

  Assuming that was true, it meant we could stumble across damned near anything if we wandered around long enough.

  Regardless of the reason, though, I knew we couldn’t beat this thing in a fight anymore than we could beat the Polaris Vora. We had to pass the receiving bay, but if that thing got wind of our presence, I had no doubt it would murder us with extreme prejudice.

  We tried to slink past the doorway, hugging the wall and moving like ghosts to avoid drawing its attention, but the soft crunch of a boot on scattered debris echoed just enough to ruin everything. The Sentinel’s head—or heads, I suppose—swiveled in our direction with a low rumbling growl, and the petals of its maw peeled back to reveal rows of gleaming teeth. Every single one of the Drones also stopped what they were doing, swiveling to focus on the doorway.

  “Aw, shit,” I muttered.

  The Sentinel let out a deep, guttural roar that shook the walls, and the plasma cannons rotated toward us like vultures spotting roadkill. The hairs on my arms stood up, and the timer in the corner of my vision suddenly felt like it was moving way too fast.

  “What do we do?” Croc asked, its googly eyes darting between me and the monster.

  “We run!” I barked, already turning on my heel. “We definitely run!”