Oppressive silence wrapped around me, only breaking with the guttural growls of unseen predators, their echoes threading through the hollowed-out structures, mourning the lost city.
My throat burned with each breath, but I pushed on, forcing each step through the haze, until a smell hit me, burnt, sharp. Not the usual city rot. I froze, instincts prickling, then followed it like a trail of bad decisions.
The fog parted just enough to reveal an open square. A battlefield, scorched and gutted. Craters and debris marked the spot, like the city had gotten fed up and gone to war with itself. And right in the middle, the twisted remains of a military droid, a giant that had seen better days. Its armor was mangled, scorched, and something about the way it slumped there felt almost... defeated.
A faint pulse of light flickered from its chest, the last whispers of its systems dying. Around it, half-cooked monsters twitched in their final death throes, like nature hadn’t figured out they were done yet.
“Hell of a party,” Arvie’s tone was slick with sarcasm.
I pushed aside one of the droid’s limbs. Something glowed under it. A plasma rifle, battle-scarred, warm, and humming like it had still fight left in it.
“Well, well,” Arvie quipped. “Looks like someone just leveled up.”
I didn’t answer. My eyes were on the beasts. A few were still moving. Not much, but enough. I gave the gun a once-over and turned to the twitching remains. My finger found the trigger before my brain had fully caught up, bolts of plasma carving through the fog. One by one, the beasts went down, flashing and crumbling like bad ideas.
Only one left. Huge. Ugly. Milky eyes locked onto me, blind yet aware. I fired again, the last shot putting it out of its misery.
“Nice shooting, sir,” Arvie's offered. “Now let’s see what this new toy can do.”
I inspected the gun. The interface flared in my head, quick flash of numbers, energy levels holding steady at a third. Enough to last a while or to function as a cutter in close quarters. I holstered it, the weight of it a quiet promise that the rules had just changed.
The ruins spread out ahead of me, jagged bones of forgotten systems, steel and concrete left to rot. The city's ghosts weren’t its people; they were the machines. Rogue defense turrets snapped to life as I passed, confused old sentries who’d forgotten what they were guarding.
Their sensors jittered, glitching hard, spitting out bursts of fire in random staccato. I didn’t bother with stealth, no point when the city was throwing a tantrum. I weaved through the chaos, every step a dance with danger, every pause a calculated risk.
The streets below were worse. Sludge and shattered tech. Razor shards that bit through boots. Caverns where the ground had given up and let gravity win. I stayed above, climbed rusted walkways, sidestepped nests of glowing acid.
The real threat wasn’t the turrets or the terrain, it was the fog. Things moved in it. Creatures emerging from the caverns, their shapes just out of focus, darted between broken walls and fallen spires.
Some of them got close. Too close. I shot a few. The rest learned.
“Steady as she goes,” Arvie piped up in my head, her voice a soft hum of humor that cut through the tension like a dull knife.
“Aye,” I muttered, dodging another crumbling overpass. “Smooth bloody sailing.”
I avoided the collapsed sectors. Too many shadows, too many bodies. Higher ground gave me angles, let me pretend I had control. I climbed. Then, of course, everything went sideways.
A turret suddenly remembered how to aim. I felt the heat before I heard the shot. The air sizzled past my head, leaving the acrid scent of burnt ozone and close calls.
My heart tried to escape my ribs. I dove behind a wall, the next barrage rattling the stone, sending dust and debris raining down.
"Time to work on stealth moves," Arvie said, breezy.
" Yeah, let me patch that in, real quick," I growled, catching my breath.
The turret spasmed again, went haywire. I slipped away while it screamed at shadows.
More movement in the fog. Watching. Waiting. But not attacking. Not yet, they waited. Biding their time, circling, waiting for the right moment to strike.
I kept my pace tight, the rifle’s weight a reminder that I wasn’t helpless, just close. Arvie hummed a tune, probably just to annoy me.
“By the Divines,” I said, stepping over a pile of melted conduit, “you ever get the feeling this city wants to eat us alive?”
Arvie laughed. “Oh, it absolutely does.”
A low growl echoed from somewhere behind the ruins. It seemed the local wildlife had become restless again. I growled myself, scanning the wasteland.
“I’d keep moving,” she said, far too chipper. “The local wildlife has boundary issues.”
"Noted," I said dryly, picking up the pace. Right now, survival seemed like the more pressing concern.
Up ahead, I spotted a narrow passage leading to higher ground. Maybe safety, maybe a trap. Either way, it was forward. I climbed, boots scraping on the rusted metal.
By the time I reached the top, the creatures were gone. That made the climb worth it. The whole ruined city sprawled out below, a maze of decay and danger. I could see the path now, cutting through the chaos, leading to… something.
“Think that’s where our fate’s hiding?” I asked.
"Let’s hope," she replied. "Because I’m not keen on sticking around here much longer."I wasn’t either. I tightened my grip on the plasma rifle, its weight a spark of confidence that kept me going.
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