"Target the machine!" Jax's roar echoed through the cavern, a desperate command born from the ashes of his failed ambush. It was the cry of a man who had lost everything and was now facing his own personal devil. The remaining Forsaken, their faces masks of terror and confusion, hesitated for only a second. Their loyalty to their new leader, forged in the fires of betrayal, held true. They swiveled their rifles from us to the advancing Ghost Enforcer.
The marketplace erupted into a maelstrom of violence. The Forsaken unleashed a storm of lead and energy bolts at the Enforcer. The air, already thick with smoke from Anya's fire pit gambit, was now filled with a deafening roar as their combined firepower converged on the lone machine. Red tracer rounds and blue energy bolts crisscrossed the cavern, creating a deadly, chaotic light show.
The Enforcer, now the target of a coordinated attack from multiple angles, finally stopped its relentless advance. It raised its one good arm, not to fire, but to shield its glowing red optical sensor, its most vulnerable point. The hail of bullets and energy bolts sparked and ricocheted off its hardened chassis. The sound was like a hailstorm on a metal roof. The impacts gouged fresh scars into the dark gray metal, but they failed to do any critical damage. It was a tank shrugging off small arms fire, an unstoppable force of nature meeting a frantic, but ultimately futile, object.
"It's not working!" one of the Forsaken yelled from his cover, his voice tight with panic. "The armor is too thick! We can't punch through!"
"Jax!" I shouted from behind the overturned table that was our flimsy shield. "We have to work together or we all die! Tell your men to aim for the joints! The damaged shoulder! The knees! Anywhere there's a moving part!"
Jax, who had taken cover behind a large pile of scavenged crates, looked over at me. His face was a storm of conflicting emotions: fury, desperation, and the bitter taste of having to take orders from the man he wanted to kill. He hated me. He wanted me dead. But he hated the System's agents more, and above all else, Jax was a pragmatist. He nodded once, a sharp, angry jerk of his head.
"You heard him!" Jax relayed to his men, his voice a powerful bark that cut through the noise. "Aim for the joints! Don't waste ammo on the chest plate! Suppressing fire! Don't let it aim!"
The Forsaken adjusted their fire instantly. Their wild, panicked shooting became more focused, more strategic. They were soldiers again, not just a terrified mob. They laid down a precise web of fire, their shots no longer aimed at the center mass, but at the Enforcer's knees, its elbows, and especially the sparking, damaged ruin of its right shoulder.
This was my chance. This was the moment to use their fragile, desperate alliance to our advantage. "Anya, cover me!" I said, my hand tightening on the grip of the energy rifle I had taken from Jax's table.
"Leo, what are you doing?" she asked, her voice tight with alarm. "Don't be a hero!"
"Creating an opportunity," I replied, my eyes locked on the Enforcer. "He's not just a machine. He's a player. And players have obsessions."
I broke from cover. It was an insane move. I didn't run away. I ran towards the Enforcer, angling to its side. I was deliberately making myself the most visible, most vulnerable target in the entire cavern.
"Hey, Ghost!" I screamed, my voice raw. I raised the energy rifle and fired a shot at its head. The blue bolt of energy sparked harmlessly off its reinforced faceplate, but it did exactly what I intended. It got its attention.
The red eye, which had been sweeping across the Forsaken's positions, swiveled and locked onto me. I could feel the hatred from across the room. The machine's cold, tactical logic, which would have identified the group as the greater threat, was overridden by the Ghost's personal, burning obsession. It ignored the dozen other threats to focus on the one it truly wanted.
It lowered its arm from its faceplate and started to advance on me, its pistol raised. This was exactly what I wanted. It had turned its body, exposing its damaged shoulder and its unshielded side to the main group of Jax's men.
"Now, Jax! Hit it now! Full power!" I yelled, diving behind a pile of rusted engine parts.
The Forsaken, seeing the opening I had created, unleashed everything they had. Their combined fire, now focused and precise, slammed into the Enforcer's exposed, damaged side. I heard the satisfying crunch of metal as multiple rounds found their mark. I saw a hydraulic line in its leg burst, spraying a dark, viscous fluid onto the floor. A piece of armor plating on its hip, weakened by the earlier battle, was blown completely off, exposing the complex machinery beneath.
The Enforcer staggered. Its relentless advance faltered. It let out a roar of synthesized rage, a sound of pure frustration as its own hatred was used as a weapon against it.
It was working. The unholy alliance was working. We were actually hurting it.
But the Enforcer was far from finished. It was a legendary-tier enemy, a boss-level opponent. We were just chipping away at its massive health bar. We couldn't win a battle of attrition. It had the armor and the power. We just had a handful of bullets and a ticking clock. We had to escape.
"Jax!" I shouted, my voice echoing in the sudden lull as the Forsaken reloaded. "We can't kill it! Look at it! It's still coming! We need to fall back! There's a transport hub two levels down, connected to this sector! I've seen it on the old maps. We can get out of the Undercroft there!"
"And how do we get there with that thing on our heels?" Jax yelled back, firing his own rifle at the staggering machine. "It will hunt us through every tunnel!"
"We don't let it," I said, a new, even more desperate plan forming in my mind. "We don't just run. We send it somewhere else." I turned to Anya. "Anya, the grenade! The one I scavenged! You still have it?"
She nodded, her eyes wide, trying to follow my frantic logic.
"Give it to Jax!" I commanded.
Anya understood immediately. She didn't question the order. She pulled the fragmentation grenade from her belt and, with a perfect, underhand toss, threw it across the open space. It landed neatly in the pile of crates next to Jax. He looked down at it, then back at me, his eyes questioning.
"The tunnel it came from!" I explained, pointing towards the gaping hole in the cavern wall. "It's unstable! The whole rock face is fractured from when he broke through! If you can get that grenade into the mouth of the tunnel, you might be able to bring the ceiling down! Trap it! Bury it!"
It was our only chance. Bury the monster and run while it was digging itself out. Jax looked from the grenade in his hand, to the Enforcer which was starting to advance again, to me. His face was a mask of indecision. He had to trust the tactical judgment of the man he had been about to murder just minutes before. He had to bet the lives of his remaining men on my word.