The moment the data crystal went dark, the entire facility seemed to wake up. Red emergency lights pulsed across the control room, casting everything in a harsh, hellish glow. A high-pitched metallic shriek blared from hidden speakers.
"What's going on, Jonah?" Seraph's voice yelled in his ear. "I'm reading a massive power surge!"
Before Jonah could answer, a calm, automated voice echoed through the chamber, speaking in the clear tones of an ancient language he shouldn't have understood – but now, thanks to the Artificer's knowledge, he did.
"Security Protocol Initiated. Purging organic contaminant."
Organic contaminant? Jonah thought. Oh no. That's me.
The metal doors he had entered through slid shut with a definitive clang. All around the circular room, hidden panels in the walls retracted with loud hisses, revealing dark, square tunnels.
From the tunnels came a chittering sound. The sound of a swarm.
Dozens of smaller constructs poured into the chamber. They weren't the grand, towering Golems from the assembly line. These were smaller, faster, and built for one purpose: killing. They were about the size of large dogs, with agile, insect-like bodies and six spidery legs ending in razor-sharp points. Their heads were smooth, metallic domes, each fitted with a single, glowing red lens that fixed on Jonah. Cutting lasers whined as they powered up.
The Golem at the gate had warned him. The workshop's other guardians. For centuries, these maintenance drones and scavenger constructs had been the only things moving in this place, and now their master's workshop had an intruder.
"Talk to me, Jonah!" Seraph shouted.
"The security system is active!" Jonah yelled back, his heart hammering against his ribs. "It thinks I'm an intruder! It's sending drones!"
There was no time to think. He was in a fight for his life.
"Maul! Nyx! Shard!" he mentally commanded.
His full team of Progeny appeared around him in a swirl of light. Maul, the Rage-Hide Brute, let out a furious roar, its tusks glinting in the red emergency light. Nyx, the Glimmer-Wing Striker, shot into the air, its wings a nearly invisible blur. Shard stood its ground, its crystalline shell reflecting the pulsing alarms.
The battle was instant, a chaotic symphony of violence.
The drones swarmed forward. Lasers sliced through the air, scoring molten lines on the floor where Jonah had been standing a second ago.
"Pulse now, Shard! Jam their targeting!"
Shard stomped its leg, sending out a high-frequency sonar blast. The drones' red-lens eyes flickered, their laser fire going wide as their targeting systems were flooded with disruptive noise. One drone fired blindly, slicing one of its own comrades in half.
"Nyx, confuse them!"
Nyx swooped low, wings scattering a cloud of shimmering dust. The sparkling motes twisted light and shadow into flickering ghost – Jonahs that blinked in and out of existence. Confused, the drones opened fire on the illusions, wasting their shots on thin air.
Maul, ATTACK!!!
Maul needed no complex instructions. It was a living battering ram. It charged straight into the swarm, fists hammering like wrecking balls. One drone crumpled under the blow, crushed against the wall. Blades scraped uselessly against its stone-armored body.
The drones showed no fear. For each one Maul destroyed, two more scuttled in to take its place, trying to drown him in numbers.
A laser sliced through the air, narrowly missing his head as Jonah threw himself behind the Artificer's console. Gritting his teeth, he reached out, trying to read the drones' essences, to decode whatever force drove them. But there was nothing. No life-force, no psychic echo. Just cold, hard programming. They didn't feel pain. They didn't feel fear. They were just machines following their last order.
This was a different kind of fight. His usual tricks wouldn't work.
He needed a new plan. And he needed it now.
His thoughts raced as he sorted through the flood of information pulled from the data crystal. Diagrams, schematics, power-flow charts… he had a complete blueprint of this entire facility in his head. He knew its weaknesses. He knew how it breathed.
He spotted it. High above, running along the ceiling of the control room, was a thick, armored cable, identified in the Artificer's diagrams as the primary power source for all auxiliary security systems. If he could sever that…
The cable was twenty feet up. Too high to jump.
He peered over the console. Maul raged like a storm, but the weight of numbers was dragging him down. Shard and Nyx were buying them time, but their tricks wouldn't work forever.
A crazy idea sparked in his mind. It was risky. Stupidly risky.
Maul! he projected, his thought sharp and clear. Launch me straight at the power line!!
Maul, in the middle of crushing a drone's head, received the order. It didn't hesitate. It turned, grabbed Jonah by the back of his Shrouded Path suit with one of its massive, stone-knuckled hands, and with a guttural roar, it launched him towards the power line.
Jonah flew through the air, everything around him turning into a fast-moving red blur. He sailed over the skittering drones, his eyes locked on the armored cable. Time seemed to slow down. He could see the individual bolts holding the cable's housing to the ceiling.
As he reached the apex of his arc, he stretched out his hands, his fingers wrapping around the cable. His momentum slammed his body against the ceiling, the impact jarring every bone in his body. For a second, he thought his arms would be ripped from their sockets.
But he held on.
Ignoring the pain, he hooked his legs around the cable for leverage and pulled with every ounce of strength he possessed. He roared, not with his voice, but with a raw, guttural effort that came from the depths of his being.
Metal groaned. Sparks rained down.
With a final, desperate heave, the cable tore free from its housing with a deafening screech of tortured metal.
And just like that, everything stopped.
The red emergency lights went out, plunging the room into the dim, soft glow of Vanessa's light charm still floating near the floor. The piercing alarm cut off mid-shriek.
The skittering drones all froze, their red-lens eyes going dark. They stood for a moment, inert and lifeless, before collapsing to the floor in a silent, metallic heap.
Jonah hung from the ceiling for a second, his breath coming in ragged gasps, before letting go and dropping to the floor. He landed hard but rolled with the impact.
Silence.
"Jonah… report," Seraph's voice whispered in his comms, quiet and awestruck. "What was that noise?"
Jonah pushed himself to his feet, wincing. "Security system is down," he said, his voice raspy. He stared at the wreckage, at the brilliant storm his Progeny had unleashed and the clever solution his own mind had provided. "I, uh… I turned it off."
And as the last of the sparks from the broken cable fizzled out, he heard a new sound. The slow, heavy slide of stone.
From the wall behind the Artificer's throne, a hidden vault door, one he hadn't even noticed before, was grinding open.