Chapter 10: The Servo-Skull
Inside the town, the Slashers were still yelling and rampaging, arguing over which hovel would make the best "HQ" and where to set up watch posts. They were completely oblivious that they had triggered an automated defense system far beyond their comprehension. An efficient, systematic purge was already underway.
Inside the garage, Rebecca and Pilar held their breath, listening.
The raucous shouting outside was changing. Some voices were cut off abruptly, as if precisely strangled. The sounds of destruction grew sparse, replaced by a few, short cries that seemed to be forced back down their owners' throats.
On top of that, there was a new, subtle sound they had never heard before—like the high-frequency whine of an energy weapon spooling up, or the low thrum of precision machinery pushed to its limit. It made the nerves in their ears tingle.
"What… what is that?" Pilar whispered, his eyes darting nervously behind his goggles, trying to pinpoint the source.
Rebecca, just as confused, shook her head, tightening her grip on her nearly-empty pistol. A powerful, instinctual alarm was crawling up her spine, as if the air itself was charged with invisible static.
Outside, a high-precision cleansing was unfolding with maximum efficiency.
A Slasher who had just raised a spray-can to graffiti a wall suddenly went limp, slumping to the ground without a sound. Only the clatter of the can rolling on the ground broke the silence.
Nearby, another, his back to his allies while yelling into a comm for backup, suddenly cut off mid-sentence. He wavered, then collapsed.
"Contact! Take cov—!" A ganger who looked like a sub-leader finally sensed something was wrong. He bellowed in terror, diving for cover.
His voice and his movement ceased simultaneously.
Only then did the remaining Slashers realize, to their horror, what was hunting them. A pale, metallic, inhuman skull, glinting like an ancient sculpture, was hovering silently in the air.
Red light glowed in its hollow sockets. Its metal jaw clicked open and closed. A micro-laser emitter extended from its side, operating with chilling efficiency.
It moved with unnatural, physics-defying silence, at one moment flashing past a broken window frame, the next melting perfectly into the shadow of a building, only to reappear from another angle without warning.
"G-Ghost!"
"It's the… the skull! Shoot it! Shoot it now!"
Panic exploded through the survivors. They hysterically raised their weapons, pouring a chaotic storm of bullets at the phantom. The slugs hammered the walls, the ground, and the derelict vehicles, kicking up sparks and dust, but not a single round grazed the skull.
It dodged every wild trajectory with minute, elegant, and precise movements. Every imperceptible pause in its motion was followed by a focused red beam and another enemy falling.
This wasn't a fight. It was the execution of a silent, efficient extermination protocol. It ignored terrain, it ignored crude cover, and it ignored the gangers' superior numbers.
No scream lasted for more than a second, because it was all happening too fast, too precisely, too impossibly.
From the crack in the wall and the hole they had entered, Rebecca and Pilar watched the one-sided, unimaginable confrontation. They saw the mechanical skull move through the street as if in a precisely choreographed drill, and they watched the Slashers, who had been so terrifying moments before, drop one by one.
There was no roaring, no screaming—only the frantic, and rapidly diminishing, gunfire of the attackers and the dull thud of bodies hitting the dirt.
The absolute, cold efficiency of the response was more terrifying than any chaotic battlefield.
In less than two minutes, perhaps even one, the gunfire and the final curses from outside had vanished completely.
A profound silence descended upon the town, broken only by the wind whistling through the hollow ruins, as if whispering of what had just transpired.
Inside the garage, Rebecca and Pilar didn't dare breathe, their bodies slick with cold sweat. The sense of finality in the new-fallen silence was infinitely more unsettling than the gangers' violent rampage.
Pilar was visibly shaking. He mouthed the words to Rebecca, his whisper barely audible: "...Is... is it still out there?"
Rebecca's face was pale. She stared at the faint light coming through the door and the hole, and gave a tiny, jerky shake of her head. She couldn't see anything, but the feeling of being watched by an advanced, automated system hadn't faded with the end of the fight. If anything, it was stronger.
An eternity passed. Still, nothing. Only the wind, carrying a strange, new smell on the air.
Finally, Rebecca worked up the courage. Her limbs numb, she carefully crawled back to the hole in the wall and peered outside.
The street was a scene of the recent, brutal exchange.
The terrifying, nightmarish, pale mechanical skull was gone. It was as if it had never been there.
But just as Rebecca was about to let out a breath of relief, a flicker of movement caught her eye. At the far end of the street, on the broken roofline of a taller building, the skull was hovering. Silent. Motionless.
Its hollow sockets seemed to be aimed precisely, unblinkingly, at the garage they were hiding in.
It wasn't doing anything. It was just… there, like a grotesque piece of art. But after witnessing the slaughter, its absolute stillness radiated a persistent, undeniable, and terrifying presence.
It hadn't left.
It was observing.
Silently, patiently, and absolutely.
Rebecca recoiled as if she'd been shocked, slumping back against the wall, her heart leaping into her throat.
"What? Becca? What did you see?" Pilar saw her reaction and hissed, his voice trembling.
Rebecca's lips quivered. It took her several seconds to force the words out, her voice as dry and rough as sand.
"...It didn't leave."
She looked at her brother, her eyes wide with a complex terror. "It's on the roof… watching us. It's just... watching."