October 12, 1927.
Evening before deployment. Command Outpost V/9, Eastern Front.
Joseph sat alone beneath the amber lantern light of the barracks, sharpening the edge of his bayonet more out of habit than need. His hands moved steadily, his thoughts less so. His journal—unopened for weeks—sat on the cot beside him like a wounded comrade, patient and accusing.
He glanced at it.
Then, with a quiet breath, he opened to a blank page.
It's the twelfth. Tomorrow I turn sixteen. That means I've spent one-third of my life in this war, and more than half of it underground. I still hear the scratching in the walls when I try to sleep. Maybe it's rats. Maybe it's memories.
Tomorrow, we move into Sector K-57. Locals call it No Man's Tunnel. Last patrol that entered never came back—no signs, no bodies, not even blood. General claims there's tech buried down there. Real old stuff. But if it's really that important, why send just five of us? Maybe they think we're disposable. Or maybe the brass want silence more than success. i haven't i damned bloody clue, but this may very well be my last day alive, and if it is, i may as well die fighting, so wish me luck.
He closed the book quietly.
Three hours later — Access Shaft Delta-6, Sector K-57
The descent was slow. Metal hooks bit into his gloves as Joseph rappelled down the narrow shaft, one gloved hand after another. Cold seeped through every inch of his uniform coat. Above, the tunnel hatch sealed with a clang, drowning the team in shadow and the smell of old rust.
Sergeant Tanya's voice cut through the dark. "Check masks. Filters tight. Eyes forward. No chatter unless it's useful."
Joseph checked his mask, it was shaped like one of those plauge doctor mask he saw in a book when he was younger about the 1600's. he hand-made his mask himself, simply because he didn't like the look of the standard issue masks.
They all complied. Joseph could barely hear Emil over the hiss of his respirator.
"Tunnel splits just ahead," said Alden, his shield slung across his back. "Movement on sonar. Probably old echoes, but… don't lower your guard."
The team advanced cautiously. The old tunnel walls were scorched in places—blast marks from mines or grenades—but overgrown with pale moss, glowing faintly under their flickering lanterns. Strange markings, neither Empire nor Royal, had been scrawled along the wall in grease.
Joseph's boot crunched over spent casings. Then something softer.
He looked down. A helmet. Empire make.
Still had the skull inside.
The team moved in a staggered wedge formation, boots pressing into mud-soaked gravel, the ceiling groaning above them like some ancient beast asleep and dreaming. Joseph took point beside Sergeant Tanya, rifle at the ready, nerves coiled like wire under his skin.
Alden, the Vanguard, held rear guard with his shield up, sweeping the shadows behind them. Emil, the Mortician, was already mixing a stim vial—half nervous twitch, half preparation.
"Still nothing on sonar?" Tanya asked quietly.
Alden grunted. "Echoes only. It's like something's jamming the deeper signal." He looked back down the path. "...Or eating it."
Joseph clicked on his helmet light.
And saw the wall twitch.
He raised his rifle on instinct—"Contact, right wall!"—but it was only a curtain of roots pulling back into a crack. At least, that's what it looked like. Until he noticed they weren't roots. They were cables. Human-made.
"Eyes on this," Joseph called. Tanya came over, frowning at the exposed wires. Some were frayed. Others looked… melted.
"That's Old War tech," she muttered. "Pre-Empire. Royal recon teams went crazy trying to trace this stuff ten years ago."
"Looks like someone tried to tap into it," Emil said, crouching beside it. "Then something ripped it out again."
They didn't linger.
Further down, the tunnel opened into a wide chamber—collapsed tram tracks, shattered crates, and a pile of bones wearing a Soldat vest. Royal colors. Three dog tags scattered across the floor.
Joseph knelt to collect them.
"CLANG."
A violent echo rang from deeper inside—metal against metal, followed by the slow creeeeeak of a pressure door opening. The squad froze, weapons raised. Tanya made the silent gesture: stack up.
The team moved in, hugging the wall, rifles aimed forward.
The air was colder here. Too cold for this depth.
As they stepped into the next chamber, floodlights burst on—ancient, blinking, flickering erratically from generators long-abandoned. Something large sat in the center, covered in a Golden Empire tarp.
"Secure perimeter," Tanya ordered. "Joseph, Emil—get that cover off. Carefully."
They approached, stepping over the black cables that pulsed faintly underfoot.
Then, Joseph pulled the tarp.
Beneath it stood a hulking machine—six feet tall, reinforced legs, a rotating barrel of rusted gunmetal and tubing, arcane symbols etched across the casing. It wasn't Golden Empire tech. It wasn't Royal, either.
It was something else.
"...That's not a turret," Emil said. "That's a—"
The lights went out.
Screams followed.
Something moved in the dark.
"DOWN!" Joseph shouted as a searing arc of red energy tore through the dark, slamming into the wall behind them with a metallic shriek. Sparks and molten concrete rained from the ceiling.
Something inhuman let out a garbled mechanical roar.
Tanya's voice cut through the panic: "FLARE OUT!"
A split-second flash of orange light bloomed mid-chamber, illuminating the horror.
The machine—the thing—was alive. Legs uncoiled into insect-like struts, its central chassis rotating with a whine that sounded like a choir of old radio signals. A green eye blinked to life in the center of the barrel. Then another. Then eight.
"WHAT IS THAT?!" Emil screamed, pulling Joseph behind a toppled crate as the thing opened fire again—no bullets, just streaks of sizzling plasma that melted a steel beam in half.
"Back line, suppress it now!" Tanya ordered, diving behind a support column. "Alden! Cover shield—move forward!"
Alden surged, shield up, gritting his teeth as beam after beam hammered into the steel, each one leaving glowing craters along the edges.
Joseph gripped his rifle tight, slipped a fresh magazine into place, and peeked out.
The machine had tracking delays. About half a second between target acquisition and shot.
He leaned out—saw the green eyes lock on—and fired into them.
Glass shattered.
The machine flinched.
Emil took the chance, hurling a stim bottle full of Synaptizine and Mephedrone into their cover. The concoction exploded in a fine mist. Joseph's arms trembled—then felt lighter. Faster.
"Push now!"
Joseph and Tanya rushed the machine from two angles while Alden kept its attention. It began to shift, back legs clicking and hissing as it started turning too quickly.
Too late.
Tanya vaulted a crate, slamming a satchel charge against the lower chassis. "DETONATING!"
They dove away.
BOOM.
Shrapnel and scorched cables scattered the chamber. The lights flickered once, then steadied. Smoke rose from the mechanical ruin in the center, still twitching.
Joseph stumbled to his feet, coughing. "Status?"
"Alive," Emil said, limping with a scorched shoulder. "Barely."
Alden lowered his ruined shield. "That wasn't Empire tech."
Tanya knelt by the machine's remains. Her hand brushed over the etchings on its armor. "That wasn't Royal either."
Joseph stepped closer, brushing away ash.
There—beneath the soot—was a symbol. Circular. Ancient. And inside it, two things: a crown, and a gear.
"We need to report this," Tanya said, standing. "Now."
Joseph stared at the machine's ruined eye, still faintly glowing.
And felt like the tunnel wasn't done with them yet.
Command Post: Two Hours Later
Rain smacked the tin roof of the forward command dugout, a rhythmic tapping that did little to calm Joseph's nerves.
He stood stiffly in front of a broad steel desk, across from General Radek Volkov, a veteran of the first year of the war—now half-metal from the waist down. His artificial hand scribbled something into a black ledger as Joseph and Tanya stood at attention.
Emil sat nearby, arm in a sling, grimacing quietly.
Volkov didn't look up. "You encountered resistance."
"Yes, sir," Tanya answered first. "Automated combatant. Unknown make. Hostile. Deployed within neutral tunnel zone between Sector L and the undercity."
Volkov raised one thick brow. "Royal?"
"No, sir," Joseph said, stepping forward. "Not any class we've seen. Not Empire. No IFF. Prototype tech. It was… waiting for us."
Volkov finally looked up, dark eyes sharpening like drawn bayonets. "Describe."
Joseph took a breath. "Bipedal frame, secondary stabilizers. Eight visual sensors. Beam weaponry. Recoilless. Markings match neither Royal Nation nor Golden Empire. However…"
He hesitated.
"Spit it out, Soldat."
"…the armor had a symbol. A crown over a gear. Almost like someone forged a union between the empire and the bandits faction... But—impossible."
Tanya nodded. "The unit acted autonomously, General. Precision targeting. Tactical priority logic. That thing was guarding something deeper inside that tunnel."
Volkov leaned back. "You think there's more."
"We know there's more," Emil muttered.
Silence. The rain outside was joined by distant shellfire, echoing through the trenches like thunder.
The general finally stood.
"You're dismissed. All three of you. You'll be debriefed again at command in 12 hours. Understood?"
They saluted.
As Joseph turned to leave, Volkov added:
"And Aslanov… good work."
Joseph blinked. That was the first praise he'd heard in months.
Joseph Aslanov's Diary — October 13, 1919
I turned sixteen today.
No cake. No candles. Just an after-action report and a hunk of bread from Tanya. Emil sang an off-key birthday song in the med-bay. I think that was worse than the machine in the tunnel.
We found something today. Not just an enemy. A question.
What if there's someone else down there, beneath the dirt and rusted steel? Someone who doesn't fly the banners of either side, but builds machines to protect their secrets?
I think the tunnel wasn't empty. I think it was a warning.
We weren't supposed to come back.