Chương 26: Chapter 25: Drone Segment - The Hallway Of Death

The final echo of the sealed door rolled through darkness. Hundreds of red optics hung ahead, motionless, while Ten's breathing came fast and uneven behind Z-69, fighting not to become panic as his fingers locked around the back of Z-69's coat. Then something rotated in the dark. Whirr. Metal blades turned somewhere ahead. Not wind. Rotors. Z-69 stood still and let the corridor reveal itself through everything except sight.

Ozone, old machine oil, dust burned into circuitry, and beneath them all the dry chemical trace of unspent propellant revealed what sight could not. Something inside the blank space where his memories should have been recognized the mixture before conscious thought could give it shape.

"Military drones," he said. Ten stiffened behind him.

"M-military?" His voice shrank further.

"You mean the kind used to fight people like you?"

"More than that." Broken images rose through Z-69's mind like bodies surfacing from black water, battlefields, red targeting dots, men screaming before the sky opened, and machines designed not to fight armies but to erase powerful individuals one by one before ordinary soldiers could understand what had targeted them.

"If the information left in my head is correct, these were built to eliminate ability users." Lumina crouched low on his shoulder, ears angled toward the corridor. Antique anti-superhuman murder machines still functioning after all this time? That is possession-level creepy. A single ceiling lamp blinked on at the far end. Another followed. Within seconds, one became ten, and ten became dozens.

One by one, weak red lamps ignited along the ceiling, staining the hallway with a glow that resembled blood reflected on metal more than illumination. The darkness peeled back. The corridor was long and narrow, straight enough to resemble a cannon barrel aimed into hell, with both walls lined by docking cradles, cracked suspension frames, and hanging racks disappearing into the red-lit distance. Machines rested inside them.

Spider-type drones carried clustered limbs and spinning blades, insect-shaped units folded their wings around stinger muzzles, rotary machines displayed spiral saws and floating orbs waited behind too many optics and too many barrels. Some were rusted wrecks fused into their racks. Most were intact. Most were waking. A wall panel flickered, and a distorted voice crawled from an ancient speaker like a dying man choking on wire.

"Segment Three: Drone Combat Evaluation." Static scratched through the corridor before it continued, "Objective: eliminate intruding entity." Lumina's claws dug into Z-69's shoulder. It means you. Z-69 gave a small shrug.

"Naturally." Thin red targeting points began sliding across the corridor. One crossed Ten's chest. Another passed over Lumina's forehead crystal. Then hundreds converged on Z-69, and the wall display blinked. TEN — RANK 1 — LOW THREAT LUMINA — RANK 4 — ANOMALOUS SUPPORT ENTITY Z-69 — RANK MAX — EXTREME PRIORITY THREAT Ten made a strangled sound.

"It put you at the top of the death list."

"These antiques are smarter than they look." His answer came dryly, almost amused. Then the last illusion of calm died. Click. Click-click. Click-click-click-click. Barrels rotated, blades unfolded, locks disengaged, and weapon systems armed in layered sequence until the entire corridor sounded like a nest of metal jaws preparing to feed. Ten pressed closer to Z-69's back. Lumina jumped to the floor, her forehead crystal already glowing like a small blue flame. I am ready. But do not let them touch you.

Z-69 drew the Heaven-Sundering Short Blade. Violet light slid across the red corridor. Every drone in sight turned toward him at once, like iron filings pulled by a magnetic field made from murder. Then hell began. The first spider drone snapped free of the wall. Four limbs. Four rotary blades. It struck the floor, sprinted two steps along the wall, then launched directly at Z-69's face. He did not retreat. He tilted his head just enough for the spinning blades to pass his cheek by less than a centimeter.

Then his short blade moved. One violet streak crossed the air, and the spider drone fell into two clean, smoking halves before its targeting system could understand that the attack had ended. Its corpse hit the floor. That was the signal. Three more units opened fire. Two launched spiral knives toward Ten, while the third cast an electrified web at Lumina. Z-69 moved first. He reversed his grip and cut the knives from the air, sparks bursting against the wall.

The third projectile struck the flat of his blade and ricocheted upward, carving a black scar into the ceiling. Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings. A fourth knife slipped through the exchange, and Z-69 twisted left and raised his arm. The blade meant for Ten buried itself in his back. Metal punched through undead flesh and stopped only when it struck something harder beneath. Ten choked.

"Your back—" Z-69 did not turn. A drone had detached from the ceiling behind him, its impaling spike aligned with the base of his skull. He leaned aside and swung upward. CRACK. The rotor cluster shattered like a steel flower crushed before it could bloom. Z-69 kicked the falling carcass sideways, sending it into two more drones and knocking both off target. Lumina released a psychic pulse. Blue light flickered across the electric web.

The net bent by the smallest possible margin, missed her forehead crystal, and slammed into the floor. Metal exploded beneath her paws. She hissed. Too close. The corridor became motion. Drones dropped from the ceiling, launched from the walls, and crawled from maintenance vents with broken limbs that had not weakened their desire to kill, while shattered metal legs, spent cartridges, spinning sparks, and the smell of burning machine guts transformed the corridor into a moving scrapyard.

Every red optic tracked Z-69. Every weapon followed the crystal in his chest. His violet light had become a lighthouse, and these machines had been built to destroy anything that shone too brightly. A spider drone broke formation. Fast. Too fast. It sprinted along the wall, claws punching through rusted plating as its rotors screamed like nails dragged across glass. Its target was Ten. The boy froze. Breath, voice, and movement vanished together as the machine closed on his throat.

Z-69 stepped between them before Ten's mind finished becoming afraid. The Heaven-Sundering Short Blade flashed. The drone split open and collapsed at Ten's feet. The instant Z-69 lowered the weapon— ZAP. A violet anti-ability beam struck his shoulder from behind. Scorched flesh filled the corridor with a bitter smell. A black-purple crack spread from the wound and climbed his neck like lightning trapped beneath dead skin. Ten's voice broke.

"D-don't keep protecting me!" His hands shook, not only from fear now, but from anger and helplessness, from watching someone else absorb damage meant for him while he remained behind, alive and useless in exactly the way he had promised not to be.

"You'll—" Z-69 turned his head. His expression remained calm. Too calm.

"You live," he said.

"I continue." No reassurance or heroic performance softened the words. Only fact. Ten's breath caught because something hollow lived beneath that calm, not simple kindness, but the emptiness of someone who had already died while doing this exact thing. Lumina saw the wound. Her eyes sharpened, and the crystal on her forehead flared from blue to green-white. I am jamming all of them. Psychic force erupted through the corridor. For one instant, the drone swarm twitched.

Targeting systems glitched as several units fired into the ceiling, two crashed into the wall, and three clipped one another before spiraling into the floor in showers of sparks. Smaller drones dropped outright, their optics blinking dead. The corridor stuttered, and Z-69 moved through the opening without wasting a breath.

One slash divided a rotary drone through its center, a kick broke a ceiling unit's stabilizer and sent it spinning into a wall rack, and one broken machine became both projectile and cover as Z-69 crossed five meters before the swarm fully rebooted. But there were too many—too many machines, targeting minds, and overlapping systems for Lumina to jam at once. Her glow flickered. Then her front legs nearly folded. I… cannot… Her voice blurred inside their minds. There are too many…

Z-69 bent and caught her before she struck the floor. She weighed almost nothing. Too little. Too fragile inside his hand.

"Sleep." Lumina tried to raise her head. N-no… I do not want you fighting alone… The sentence dissolved as exhaustion crushed the rest flat. She curled into his palm like a tiny dying star and went limp. Still breathing. Still alive. Barely. Z-69 handed her to Ten.

"Do not let her fall." Ten received her instantly, both arms closing around her as though she were something breakable and sacred.

"I won't." His voice still shook. The promise did not. Then the ceiling split open. A larger chamber unlocked overhead with a deep mechanical groan, and something descended from it. Not like the others. The drone was man-sized and covered in black titanium armor, six thrust turbines surrounding a frame equipped with four high-frequency laser cannons and two articulated arms ending in plasma blades whose vibration made Ten's teeth ache. Its optics burned blue-white. Ugly. Cold.

Alive in the way weapons became alive when murder was the only purpose they still remembered. Its armor remained too clean, too intact, and too purposeful after three centuries of neglect, making it look less like a surviving machine than a weapon that had never once forgotten its profession. Z-69 studied it with visible interest.

"This is familiar." Ten's face twisted.

"Familiar is bad, right?"

"According to memory, this class was deployed against high-grade superhumans."

"How severely?"

"I will confirm." The heavy drone locked onto him. Every surviving weapon in the corridor swiveled toward Z-69. Ten screamed, "MOVE!"

"No." Z-69 shoved Ten backward and out of the central kill lane.

"Stay." Then he charged. The first clash struck like a cathedral bell hit by a war hammer. Plasma met the Heaven-Sundering Short Blade, and violet lightning collided with compressed blue heat hard enough to burst into miniature thunder along the entire corridor. The hallway shook, and dead drones rattled across the floor like bones kicked from a grave. The heavy unit rotated and fired directly into Z-69's chest. He twisted. Not far enough.

The beam carved a diagonal wound across his ribs and sent smoke rising from the opened flesh, but Z-69 neither screamed nor staggered because pain had already become another measurement in the calculation. He calculated. If I continue forcing output, I will lose control again. The drone rushed him with both plasma blades. Change strategy. This time, Z-69 did not meet force with force. He dropped low and moved inside the machine's upper sensor range. The drone adjusted quickly. Quickly was not enough.

Z-69 slipped beneath its center mass and drove the Heaven-Sundering Short Blade downward in one brutal arc, punching through titanium plating and burying the edge in the energy housing beneath the torso before the drone could lower its weapons. Then he released Thunderlight inward. Not through the corridor. Into the machine. Contained. Directed. Mean.

The purifying current still burned through the undead hand conducting it, opening new black cracks beneath Z-69's skin while the violet crystal spent energy rebuilding the damage. The drone spasmed. Its turbines sputtered, and its blue-white optics flashed once, then twice. BOOM. The machine exploded. Burning shrapnel spread through the corridor in a wide fan. Ten ducked and curled around Lumina's unconscious body. Z-69 stepped in front of the worst of it.

Fragments struck his shoulder, chest, thigh, and neck, each impact punching into an already damaged body with a dull metallic thud and a fresh burst of pain the crystal would later have to rebuild. He remained there until the debris stopped flying. When the smoke cleared, he was still standing, burned, split open in places, and smoking from his shoulder and ribs, but upright. Ten stared through watering eyes. He had not realized he was crying until the tears were already there. Lumina stirred weakly in his arms.

Half-conscious and furious by instinct alone, she dragged herself onto Ten's head, raised one tiny paw, and smacked the air in Z-69's direction. Are you insane? Z-69 looked down at the charred ruin of the heavy drone and considered the question.

"…That was fun." Ten nearly collapsed.

"You are deeply not normal."

"I know." The destroyed war drone toppled with one final grinding crash. Red warning lights flickered once, then died. The surviving machines powered down together, rotors stopping, optics dimming, and targeting beams vanishing as the hallway exhaled the final breath of its dead machinery. At the far end, a display panel lit. SEGMENT THREE — COMPLETED A steel door opened beyond it, revealing the next chamber across a narrow bridge.

The chamber was circular and lit by a pale green glow, with an ancient stone pedestal standing at its center—far too clean after everything they had crossed and too carefully placed to promise anything simple. Two crystal keys rested on top, glowing quietly like dormant bullets made from condensed light. Ten forced himself upright. His knees were still shaking, and his voice barely rose above a breath.

"That's the final segment." He looked toward the chamber.

"The Core Room. Only two teams remain." A pause followed.

"And there are only two keys." Z-69 placed one hand on his shoulder.

"Calm." Lumina had crawled back onto Z-69's shoulder by then. She pressed her head weakly against his neck as though confirming that he was alive, real, and not about to fall apart in front of her. I hate drones. Z-69 stepped onto the bridge with the Heaven-Sundering Short Blade still in his hand. Its violet reflection slid across the crystal keys, making them resemble two watchful eyes at the end of the path. Behind them, the steel door slammed shut.

The Gauntlet locked all three of them inside the final challenge standing between them and Level Nine.