The transit tunnel, once a potential escape route, had become a deathtrap.
The Stalker Mechs – sleek, bipedal machines about ten feet tall, bristling with sensors and armed with high-intensity cutting lasers – advanced relentlessly, their heavy footfalls shaking the very ground, their optical sensors casting baleful red glows that swept the darkness.
"Split up! Confuse their targeting!" Kai yelled, shoving Crows towards intersecting maintenance tunnels. "Rendezvous at Junction 4-Alpha if you make it! Lena, with me! Voss, Alex – stay together!"
Panic threatened to overwhelm Alex. He was still drained from the rocket rebound, the Echoes a chaotic storm in his skull. His absorbed powers felt like hollow shells.
The Stalker Mechs were mechanical, unfeeling – he couldn't intimidate them, couldn't outsmart their programming with human unpredictability.
One mech swiveled its torso, its laser slicing through a rusted support pillar as if it were synth-butter. The pillar crashed down, narrowly missing a fleeing Crow.
Voss pulled Alex into a narrow alcove, little more than a recess in the tunnel wall. "They're designed for pursuit in confined spaces," she breathed, her scientific detachment warring with palpable fear. "Their sensors will be prioritizing heat signatures and movement."
Alex pressed himself against the cold plasteel, trying to control his breathing. The faint Echo from the charcoal-armored officer surfaced – tactical analysis, threat assessment, efficient neutralization.
It was chilling, but also… insightful. He began to see the mechs not as monsters, but as predictable machines following a program.
"Their joints… the actuators…" Alex muttered, a fragment of the officer's knowledge flickering. "They have to have weak points."
"Probably reinforced," Voss countered, "but yes, every machine has vulnerabilities."
A Stalker Mech stomped past their alcove, its red sensor beam sweeping agonizingly close. Alex held his breath, trying to channel the fading memory of Kai's Stealth Core, to feel invisible.
It was a pathetic attempt, but the mech moved on, its attention drawn by another group of Crows creating a diversion further down the tunnel.
They needed a plan. A desperate one.
"Voss," Alex whispered, "that officer… you said he had a Null-Field Emitter. To disrupt Gene Cores?"
She nodded, her eyes sharp. "Yes. Short range, usually. Drains power quickly. Why?"
"If I could absorb that…" Alex began, the audacious thought forming. "If I could turn their own defensive tech against them… or at least understand it."
Voss stared at him. "Absorb a Null-Field? Alex, that's incredibly dangerous! It's designed to negate energy like yours. It could overload your system catastrophically, or even permanently damage your Absorber Gene!"
"We don't have many options," Alex said grimly. The sounds of battle were getting closer again. Some Crows were fighting back, but their small arms fire was mostly sparking harmlessly off the mechs' armor.
Another alien vision flashed, brief but intense: the glyph again, but this time, energy seemed to flow around it, not through it, as if the symbol itself represented a focal point or a… conduit. It was still indecipherable, but the feeling it evoked was one of control, of channeling.
"The transit interchange hub Kai mentioned," Alex said, pushing the vision aside for now. "If we can get there, there might be more complex machinery. Power conduits. Something I can use."
They waited for a lull, then darted from their alcove, moving deeper into the transit network. The tunnels were a labyrinth. Alex, relying on his scavenger's knack for navigation and the faint spatial Echoes from the tunnel itself, took the lead.
They rounded a bend and found themselves in a wider section of the tunnel where a Stalker Mech had cornered two Crows. The mech was systematically blasting their cover apart with its laser.
"We have to help them!" Voss said, her pistol already out, though she knew it would be mostly useless.
Alex saw his chance. Or rather, his only chance. The Stalker Mech was focused on the trapped Crows. Its back was momentarily exposed.
He recalled the faint Echo from the officer, the sense of an energy-dampening field. If the Stalker Mechs were UGF tech, they might have internal fail-safes, or energy regulation systems he could disrupt, if not absorb directly.
"Voss, create a diversion! Loud as you can!" Alex hissed. "I need to get close to it!"
Voss didn't question. She fired her energy pistol at a cluster of unstable conduits on the ceiling above the mech. They exploded in a shower of sparks and a loud crackle, drawing the mech's attention upwards for a crucial second.
Alex sprinted. He moved with a desperate agility he didn't know he possessed, fueled by adrenaline. He reached the mech just as it began to turn back.
He didn't aim for a Core this time – he doubted it had one in the conventional sense. He slapped his palm flat against a large access panel on its torso, a spot he instinctively felt might house key internal systems, focusing on that half-remembered sensation of the Null-Field.
He wasn't trying to absorb power in the traditional sense. He was trying to understand its absence, its negation.
The jolt was unlike anything he'd ever experienced. It was like plunging his hand into a void. A wave of intense nausea and vertigo washed over him.
His own meager internal energies felt like they were being sucked out, extinguished. The Echoes in his head screamed in protest, then went eerily silent for a terrifying moment.
Overload… System conflict… Paradox…
He gritted his teeth, clinging to consciousness, trying to parse the torrent of incomprehensible data flooding his senses – not emotions or memories, but pure, raw schematics. Energy flow charts. Circuit diagrams. The mech's operational programming.
And then, a flicker. A weakness. A feedback loop in its primary weapon systems, designed to prevent catastrophic overload if its own laser reflected back at it.
His vision was greying out. He had seconds.
He didn't try to control the mech. He tried to confuse it. He focused on that feedback loop, and with a desperate surge of will, amplified by a residual Static charge he hadn't even realized was still there, he pulsed a chaotic energy signature into it.
The Stalker Mech shuddered violently. Its cutting laser sparked, then sputtered, the beam flickering erratically. Its targeting system went haywire, its optical sensors flashing random colors.
It stumbled, disoriented, then its leg actuators seized, and it crashed to the ground with a deafening clang, limbs twitching.
Alex collapsed beside it, every cell in his body screaming. He'd done it. But the cost…
The two Crows stared, stunned, then scrambled towards him and Voss.
"What… what did you do?" one of them stammered.
"I… broke it," Alex gasped, his voice barely a whisper. The Echoes were returning, but they were muted, hazy, as if viewed through thick fog. The Null-Field absorption, though temporary and incomplete, had done something to his perception of them.
Suddenly, a voice, cold and familiar, cut through the momentary reprieve. "Impressive, Chimera-Alpha. You continue to exceed even the most… optimistic projections of Project Echo-Five's potential."
The charcoal-armored UGF officer stood at the end of the corridor they'd just come from, his sidearm steady. The second Stalker Mech was just behind him, its laser humming ominously. They were trapped.
"But adaptability," the officer continued, taking a slow step forward, "is a trait we value. And study."
He raised his other hand. It was encased in a complex gauntlet Alex hadn't noticed before. The gauntlet glowed with a faint, sickly green light.
"Let's see how you adapt to this."
From the gauntlet, a beam of green energy shot out, not at Alex, but at the downed Stalker Mech beside him. The mech, which had been inert, began to twitch again. Its optical sensors flickered back to life, but this time, they glowed an eerie, malevolent green. It slowly, stiffly, began to rise, its movements jerky, unnatural.
The officer wasn't just hunting them. He was turning their own victories against them. He was puppeteering the disabled mech.