12 Miles Below

It was about half an hour into the trek that one of those large sealed doors did something Father hadn’t ever seen before. We were traveling through another open pocket when the random door ahead suddenly turned bright gold instead of the usual lighting that doors had.

And then it flashed, on and off, as if trying to catch our attention. Father drew out his rifle, considered for a moment, and then decided to just ignore the doorway and continue the path, gun still at the ready. The blinking increased frantically, but soon we were too far into the chamber and other rocks obscured our sight.

They didn’t stop winking. Each room we reached had one door glow bright gold and begin winking. The pattern and frequency sometimes changed, and each and every time, Father stubbornly ignored the call.

“I’ll not take chances.” He said when I asked about the blinks. Apparently he’d never seen that happen before. “The less encounters with the machines, the better our chances of survival is. There’s no need to add more unknowns. We’re not here to explore.”

I, of course, wanted to see what was behind those doors all the more. Was it a good idea? No. Absolutely not. I’d rather take a shower under the sun. Father had sound reasoning.

Still, that part of me that wanted to touch everything was trying to convince me about pulling something. A friendly reminder to myself: Everything happening right now was the direct result of the last time I pulled something.

More time into the climb, the air started to feel drier and colder. Discomfort built up in my ears and I’d have to move my jaw to clear out the air in my ear. We were making our way closer to the surface now.

Artificial sunlight seemed to be more and more sparse, as if power was beginning to be disconnected the further up we went. Our headlights soon became one of the few sources of light guiding our path up, mine still strapped on the right side of my chest, just under my neck.

Moss stopped growing and the rustle in the bushes also became a distant memory. It was getting colder now. I even started to notice the occasional clump of frostbloom appearing wherever the cavern light still worked.

Frostbloom was notoriously weak to the competition of other plants from what we’ve found in the bunkers. If they were starting to appear here… we might be running too close to the surface.

And that would be my dead end so long as I didn’t have a spare rebreather.

I wasn’t sure what the plan was once we got closer to the surface. Maybe he’d go ahead and make contact first, then have the rescue team return with a spare rebreather for me. That’s how I’d go about it, were I in his shoes. The issue was that I’d have to be left alone for a few hours, and those screamers were clearly designed to hunt down solo targets. Machines could have looked like anything, yet they seemed to have been built from the ground up to terrify first.

Still, if it had to be done, it had to be done. Screamers didn’t have specialized eyesight like he’d mentioned before, I might be able to find a crevice and hide inside, out of sight.

It was in one of these murky, more empty chambers that Father raised his hand to signal enemy contact.

“They’re not usually in the main chambers like this,” He muttered to himself, but shook his head and slowly backpedaled.

“Machines?”

He nodded gravely. “Up ahead, on the ceilings. Don’t make too much noise.”

“They didn’t spot us?”

“No, these are dormant in their nests. They wait for prey to walk under them. We’ll just search for another way up and sidestep them completely.”

Plan in motion, we turned and backtracked. As much as I’m sure the machines would love our company, I think I’m good for one lifetime.

I got to see a goat, eventually. The large animal chomping down on shrubs with a few others of its flock. They looked way bigger than I’d expected, filled with hair and creepy eyes.

They watched us warily, preferring to turn and go down another tunnel rather than stay and risk the pair of strangers. Watching how they effortlessly hopped around on the rocky shelves, finding any small perch, I could see why they’d done well down here. Plenty of plant life to eat, too big for the swarms of pipe bats, and no issues with mobility.

Supposedly there must have been predators down here too that hunted them. Though like Father had said, they clearly stayed out of our sight.

But besides the goats, we’d found no other way around after two hours of walking. It looked like the nest of machines had picked this part of the cave system specifically since it was the only path within several miles, a crosspoint of sorts. Everything else had been either a blue tunnel, the wrong direction, a cave in, or red and dark.

Machines aren’t stupid, clearly.

And so we found ourselves back where we’d started from. If I were more superstitious, I’d say somebody had jinx’d me.

“Keith, you need to listen to me very carefully now.” Father said.

He pointed to the ceiling, where I saw white spike-like shapes that bloomed over everywhere he pointed the helmet lights at, almost like massive spiky flowers. “Those are all machines, three different kinds make up these nests. They have next to invisible lines of string layered around the chamber. You won’t be able to see them, but the relic armor can. I’ll tell you how to navigate and you need to make sure you replicate all of my motions exactly.”

There’s so many of them. Maybe two or three dozen shapes. Ratshit, I could see why he called it a nest.

“Do we have a plan if there’s a mess up?” I asked

“No.” He answered curtly. “This breed fights with far more coordination than previous ones you’ve seen. It takes a full team to hold off even a smaller nest like this. Alone, we can’t even reliably run. Their only weakness is that they sleep until something triggers their trap, and they’re greedy.”

“Greedy?”

“They don’t like to share their targets. They get especially sloppy when victory seems assured.”

I nodded, understanding the gravity of it. “Like fighting two lost humans.”

“Exactly. But there’s very few ways to make use of that in our situation. The best and only plan forward is to not wake them in the first place. We’ll take our time and move through this room as slowly as we need to. There’s no time limit.”

No time limit except for the drugs inside his body. We still had to get him to the surface before a day went by.

“What about explosives?” I asked, glancing down at his utility belt. There was one unspent grenade he'd wisely saved during that first fight. He knew they'd avoid any explosion after they learned from the first one, so he hadn’t bothered wasting it.

“The ones that can be killed by an explosive stay far up on the ceilings. The ones that come down… they’ll survive an explosive like this one. It’ll be a waste. No, assuming we make it past this room, the grenade needs to be saved for later.”

The room was large, filled with different nooks and crannies, some wide enough to easily walk and others too thin that even my slimmed down environmental suit would get caught on. I wasn’t worried about rips in the weave anymore, I had bigger issues with this suit then that.

There was a stark and absolutely clear difference between this cave compared to the others. The entire place was littered with steel spikes as long as my arm, bedded into the rock, all at different angles. It reminded me of a ring of swords - the traditional dueling grounds of surface clans. A massive empty circle of dirt, with a ring of cheaply printed metal swords embedded everywhere at the edge.

Occult weapons could cut through armor and permanently cripple a knight. Anything less powerful than an occult weapon would bend and break with the sheer force behind a swing in armor. So duels were fought with simple and cheap metal swords. Part of the skill was to reach the edge of the arena and pull out another sword, when the one in use broke.

But the ring of swords was far more organized and densely packed. This landscape was simply chaos incarnate. The metal spikes were everywhere, with no rhyme or rhythm, but sporadic enough I could traverse through them.

They had no relations to the trip wires as I quickly found out. I suppose that would have been too obvious.

Plants and moss still grew haphazardly around in the dim light, but there wasn’t a single rustle of shrubs or any frantic rats running out.

The chamber was silent as a grave save for the water leaking through on it’s way down. I had a feeling machines hunted more than just humans.

As planned, we moved methodically through.

Occasionally Father would crawl forward and I’d have to repeat the same, each time praying under my breath nothing would trigger.

Sometimes we’d have to turn back and retrace our steps as Father got sight of what was around the corner. I got a feeling he was picking the easiest possible route, even if it came at a cost of time.

A few tracts of land were clear of traps so that gave us a moment to collect ourselves and bypass quickly.

Things were progressing well enough until we heard the panicked sound of a goat, far behind us.

Father froze, then swore under his breath. I turned to look at the source of the noise to see a lost youngling. Red stained it’s wool, and it staggered around, hooves clopping on the solid rock with feeble purchase. It looked exhausted, as if it’d been chased up here.

“It’s going to trigger the room.” Father hissed, drawing his rifle up. It would be a hard target at this range, and even harder shot without another hand to stabilize the weapon.

The goat continued to move, baying and approaching where we’d started. Had it followed us here? Or more probably, whatever was chasing it knew better then to come into this room.

Father took a deep breath and held the rifle, aiming down sights as best he could with one hand. No shot came. I could tell he was second guessing himself, and he couldn’t afford to miss the shot here.

He lowered the rifle a moment later and scanned around, then ran over to a large rock. There he took a kneeling stance, using the rock to stabilize the rifle, replacing his useless left hand. Like this he had a much better chance of hitting the target.

He’d have to pull off an expert shot at this distance. I raced through my mind for possible ideas or ways to even the odds. “Maybe we can hit somewhere in front of the goat, to spook it away?” That would be a lot easier to hit.

Father shook his head. “Can’t take that chance. It could run the wrong way and trigger a trap at the side of the cave.”

“Can we make a run for it?”

“No, if they wake up, they’ll chase us down. Winterscar is a powerful armor, compared to the other armors, but even it can’t outrun this foe.”

He breathed in, held it, and aimed down sights.

The crack of the rifle resounded in the chamber, a three burst shot that flashed through my vision.

The bullets hit the rock just behind the goat, making a loud crack echo back. It was too far away for me to see how far he’d missed by, but I had a hunch it was a really close thing. Father swore, and aimed again, taking another shot immediately after.

The goat on the other hand, didn’t know it was being attacked, but knew dangerous sounds were not to be trusted. So the stupid thing bolted straight forward just as the next round of bullets fatally caught it’s flank.

I saw flashes of light illuminate ghostly wiring leading right up the ceiling, as the goat tripped on them, baying and screaming in panic. Not quite understanding just how doomed it truly was now.

Dozens of violet robotic eyes flared to life and peered down with glee.

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