Skinner did his best to try to mentally map the interior of the alien structure. It seemed to wind downwards like a coiled spring, the corridors descending at sharp angles with rooms branching off. It wasn’t until they’d gone down further that his suspicions were confirmed when they found an open door leading into the center of the ruins.

“Holy crap…” Skinner muttered as he stood at the edge of a very large shaft. “What in the name of sanity…?”

Syyla, for once, didn’t have a comment. She also seemed to be utterly struck dumb by the sheer size of the pit. It was several hundred feet across with rings on each level. Suspended in the center were rotating rings of what looked like glass or crystal with beams of light pulsing back and forth from layer to layer. Bizarre geometric shapes orbited and danced in the middle with more pulses of light beaming up and down. The crystal shapes seemed to pulse and throb as if imbued with a living energy and the whole structure reminded Skinner of a massive beating heart.

“We need to keep moving,” Syyla said at last. “We’re almost to the barriers your CI mentioned.”

Skinner nodded and shouldered his rifle again. “Lead the way,” he said.

They backtracked into the corridors, descending another steep ramp. This was the level Lumos had said had defenses and kinetic barriers. Skinner went first, pointing his rifle down the corridors as he scanned for anything moving. This structure gave him the chills – he wasn’t supposed to be here. No one was. There were moments when he was convinced that he wasn’t in a ruin so much as he was inside a living being. The strange, crystalline heart in the central shaft only served to amplify that feeling. “Clear,” he said as he motioned Syyla forward.

The kinetic barriers he’d been told about were all intact. It was absolute overkill – three of them had been packed into a single corridor. The generator was on this side, implying that they’d been activated as the crew investigating or looting the structure had set them up on their way out. Skinner squinted past the strange, semi-transparent barriers but couldn’t make out any shapes in the darker corridor beyond. “What do you think?” he asked at last. “Should we shut them down?”

Syyla pondered his question, her arms folded across her chest. “I don’t want to,” she said at last, “but I’m afraid we don’t have much of a choice. Your CI even pinpointed the fact that a lot of things are off the network. We might find some rescue gear or a radio station in there… but they worked pretty hard and fast to get this locked down. Those barriers aren’t even in straight. This was a rush job.”

Skinner felt goosebumps on his skin. “Yeah, I was afraid you’d say that,” he said.

“Are you always this cowardly?” Syyla asked, “Or is today just special?”

“Nope. This is pretty average,” Skinner said. “I don’t like trouble, I don’t like near-death experiences and I sure as heck don’t like ruins like this. They give me the creeps.”

Syyla sighed exasperatedly and approached the generator, eyeballing it for a moment. “And of course, I’m stuck with you. I swear, it never fails. Oh well, let’s get on with it then.” She deactivated the barriers, jerking the power lever into the off position with more force than was necessary.

The first two barriers winked out quickly but the third seemed to hesitate. Skinner realized something was wrong a split second too late and opened fire into the corridor just as something lean and white burst through the fading barrier. “Look out!”

Syyla threw herself sideways as Skinner’s rifle spat a line of white-hot plasma down the hallway. The twisted, bizarrely formed creature took all three hits in the chest before crumpling to the ground and twitching about like a dying insect. Skinner shot it four more times until it finally went still. “Oh brilliant,” he muttered as he popped the cooling manifold on his rifle. “That’s why they set them up in a hurry… these things are in here with us.”

Syyla peered down the hallway, her eyes narrowed. “I don’t see any more,” she said. “It’s possible that was the only one.”

“It’s also possible that these ruins are going to have a snack bar with free drinks, but it’s not very likely,” Skinner said as he stepped forward. “Yeah… long, dark hallway with nasties in it? I don’t like this one bit.”

“Can you do ANYTHING other than complain?” Syyla asked hotly, turning to give him a murderous stare.

“I can pick locks,” Skinner reminded her.

“Why am I stuck with you?” she asked, looking skyward as if begging for help before starting down the hallway. “Come on then,” she said. “That gun will prove useful even if you won’t.”

They didn’t even make it past where the second barrier was before Skinner’s flashlight revealed one of the most horrifying things he’d seen all day. He covered his mouth, trying to keep the bile from rising in his throat. “Oh god…” he moaned, his flashlight sweeping across the bodies in the narrow corridor. “They… they sealed them in with those things…”

There were four bodies in the hallway, all of them mangled and bloodied. It indeed looked like they had been sealed in an attempted to hold off their enemies before being overcome. Several of the white creatures lay dead as well, their corpses tattered with bullet holes. Among the dead, Skinner counted two Taeski, an Erythian and a Human. Skinner forced himself to look away, still trying to get a handle on his stomach.

“We can’t do anything for them now,” Syyla said as she examined the bodies. “But one of them may have saved our lives.” She held up a communicator she’d taken off the Erythian. “If this still functions, we may be able to call for help.”

Skinner took the radio from her, turning it over in his hands before switching it on. A roar of static burst from the speakers before he managed to turn the volume down. Both of them looked around the corridor for any more of the bizarre creatures before Skinner began to slowly cycle through the active channels. “Let’s hope someone’s listening,” he muttered. “I’d really love a rescue right about now.”

The first several channels were nothing but static. One of them was the repeating distress signal Skinner and the Senate Hunters had received which had led them here. Skinner was about to give up hope entirely when he finally hit channel 259 and heard a familiar—if not staticky and broken—voice on the other end.

“…read? Maxwell Skinner, this … Senate … Aksak, do you read me?...”

Skinner almost sobbed in relief. “Aksak, this is Captain Skinner of the Dangerous, I read you. We need extraction immediately!”

He heard a cheer on the other end of the radio. “Under….od. We are… acking… oordinates…” A rush of static cut off anything else for a few seconds. “…ake… urface…”

“Sorry, say again?” Skinner said. “You want us to make for the surface?” Nothing but static answered him. He tried a few more times, but nothing made it through. He sighed resting his head against the top of the communicator. “Oh well… that’s something at least… we know they know where we are.”

“We’ll make for the surface immediately,” Syyla said. “With any luck, we can reactivate the barriers and keep those things from gaining any more ground.”

“Good plan,” Skinner said, snapping his fingers. “Let’s go.”

They raced back out of the hallway, pausing only to reactivate the generators. Skinner waited until they had flickered back to life, refilling the corridor and sealing off access to the bodies and any more of those grotesque monsters. As soon as the barriers had solidified, Skinner breathed a sigh of relief. “Hopefully that’s the last we see of those things for a while.”

To their credit, the pair made it up a whole floor without incident. That was when they became aware of a rhythmic shaking in the structure. Skinner paused, his hands tightening on the rifle. “Uh, Syyla? W-what was that?” he asked, turning to look in the direction of the central shaft. “Do you feel that shaking?”

“I do,” she said, closing her eyes. “It feels like it’s coming from the central shaft we saw earlier.”

Skinner was about to tell her to forget it but she’d already taken off, racing towards the doorway they’d taken earlier. “Syyla, no—ah, beans… what’s the use…” He took off after her, keeping his rifle armed just in case. Once again, he had a feeling they were running from a bad situation into a worse one. “Wait up!”

He burst through the doorway into the central chamber and froze, his brain going momentarily blank. The shaft had been dark before, lit only by that creepy crystal heart. It was lit up like the inside of a lightbulb now, bright enough for him to see every detail of the chamber. Pulses of light now arced out and connected with conduits running up and down the pit, disappearing into the darkness below. Skinner could now clearly see that the sides of the shaft weren’t smooth, like he’d initially thought. Instead, they were lined with hundred and hundreds of tiny white orbs. The same drone-like aberrations that he’d seen on Schunston; except instead of dealing with three or four, he was dealing with three or four hundred.

“Syyla, we need to get out of here right now!” he said, his eyes traveling over the energy pulses. “Whatever this place is, it’s waking up. We need to get topside so Aksak can save our bacon before we get turned into dust by these things.”

“They aren’t what I’m worried about,” Syyla said, pointing downwards. “That is.”

Skinner looked down the shaft, trying not to let the dizziness consume him. He immediately stiffened, realizing what the source of the shaking was: an enormous drone was climbing up the shaft from the bottom towards them. Unlike the small oval ones, this one had a wide, flat body like a disc. A single lens was set in the top, staring up at them like a glittering red eye, and five long legs extended outwards from the edges. Unlike hydraulics or pistons, these legs were comprised of floating sections held together by arcing purple energy. It crawled upwards like a spider, periodically pausing and looking around with the lens.

“We need to go!” Syyla said, grabbing Skinner’s arm and yanking him back away from the edge. “Come on!”

They turned and bolted back through the doorway, moving higher through the structure. Skinner didn’t even bother looking back, keeping his head down as he charged after the Heil. He didn’t want to know if something was following them. He wished he’d never agreed to come here. He wanted out, his ship and some solitude.

A deep, rumbling roar came from somewhere within the core of the structure. It was a low, reverberating sound that set Skinner’s teeth on edge. Inorganic but not mechanical, it seemed to pass through his body like a wave. “Oh no,” he said, trying to keep his voice from wavering. “I… I don’t like that.”

Syyla grabbed him before he could falter, yanking him through the doorway he’d lockpicked earlier. “You can ‘not like it’ all you want once we’re out of here. Let’s go!”

The entire building seemed to shake, as if it were perched on the back of some great beast, and then the hallway seemed to come apart. It wasn’t a violent, ground-shattering kind of separation. Instead, the corridor seemed to unzip itself from one end to the other, the two halves of the hall parting organically. Syyla grabbed Skinner and jerked him over to one side, keeping him from falling into the breach. He looked down, horrified, into the darkness below them.

There was a long, shadowy tube running beneath them, the sides lit by blinking red lights. Marching single-file through it were dozens, if not hundreds, of the saucer-shaped drones. They stalked forward with insect-like precision, their steps in perfect synchronization. At the far end of the corridor, before Skinner and Syyla’s path would have sloped upwards towards the surface, was a circular object that glowed with a vivid blue light. Skinner’s first impulse was that it was flat, like a vertical plate. As he watched, though, the surface of the object began to ripple and pulse like water before giving way to something resembling a portal. The drones were walking through it, the gateway resetting after each one.

“Where are they going?” Syyla asked, watching the drones from above.

“We’re not gonna know unless we go through that thing – and I’m not even sure we can,” Skinner said. “But that’s bad news – the ones I saw on Schunston were bad enough. This isn’t a recon force or an unmanned rover team. This is an army!”

“I can see that,” Syyla said. “But it would be helpful to know where they’re heading. Those things are going to cause some chaos when they pop out on the other end if there are people around. We could warn them.”

“Right now, we need to make sure we survive,” Skinner said. “Let’s keep moving to the surface. Aksak and Nehuasta can some back down here if they’re feeling suicidal – this wasn’t in my job description.”

Syyla looked as if she was going to say something but thought better of it. “Agreed,” she said at last. “Let’s keep moving. We’re almost out.”

They sidled along the corridor, staying above the marching drones as they did. At the end, the pathway sloped upwards towards the surface and the artificially darkened area. The gloom that had been smothering their lights on the way in had dissipated as the structure had activated, and Skinner could see the bright excavating lights on the surface. He could also hear noises outside – the sound of engines and voices.

Syyla raced forward first, Skinner on her heels as they bolted upwards and out into the glare of the lights. Skinner collided with someone as they stepped into his path and he went down on his rear with a yelp of surprise before looking up into the familiar face of Aksak.

“Good to see you alive,” she said, grinning. “How was your adventure?”