The service elevator groaned as if it might come unhinged at any moment. Raiko didn't know what was holding it up: the rusty cables or his own need to believe it was useful? Gearlock, beside him, was manually manipulating a panel; every time it sizzled, Raiko imagined the Sun-Eye drones guessing at his position.
"Go down faster," he whispered, sweat running down the back of his neck.
"If I go faster, we'll turn into yo-yos," the big man replied, without looking up. "Relax and enjoy the panoramic tour of the underworld."
There was a creak. The elevator flickered and stopped between two floors. Raiko swallowed a scream. In that thick silence, he could hear—from a distance—the whirring of the micro-suns: drones trailing spotlights that could boil skin.
They still smell our light, Aureos murmured, toying with the last spark of Catalyst Wax.
"Any plan B?" Raiko lit up the darkness with a tiny flicker, just enough to see the floor number: -22.
"Yes," Gearlock said. "It's called 'hit until it works.'" And he slammed his metal fist into the panel.
Crack. The elevator jerked and continued downward, suddenly, as if a giant hand had released the brake. Raiko nearly fainted. Further down, the emergency lights came on for a second… and then everything went black.
A crash. Then, silence.
"We're here," Gearlock announced, taking a deep breath.
"Alive?" Raiko groped for the door; Aureos illuminated it with a faint inner glow.
"Not quite, but it'll do." The big man forced the doors open and stepped out into a damp concrete corridor. The air was thick with dust and the sweet smell of burnt wires.
Decades ago, the Photonics Center had been the luminous heart of the city. Now it was a hollow shell: rusted walkways, broken glass tubes, and dead battery reservoirs leaking a milky liquid. Raiko could feel Aureos licking each filament of residual light.
"Save that hunger," he warned in his thoughts. "It will kill us."
Or save us when they arrive, the symbiote replied with a satisfied click.
1. Under the Relentless Spotlight
They took barely ten steps before the ceiling opened, like a steel eyelid. A luminous sphere descended, suspended from a spider drone: pure white light, so dense that Raiko felt pain behind his eyes. It was a Solar-Eye, one of the Watchtower's second-level drones. A portable micro-sun.
"Don't breathe," Gearlock whispered, pinned against the wall.
The sphere scanned the corridor, melting the shadows. Raiko noticed Aureos tense, greedy. If the Luxophage absorbed that light, the sensors would explode with joy and send back the exact location. But if he did nothing, the drone could detect the photon pulse from its plates.
Give me a sip, Aureos begged. "I promise to be discreet."
Raiko shuddered. Then, in the chrome reflection of a broken tube, he saw a flash of blue that didn't belong to the Solar-Eye. Something else was there, crouching, interfering with the signal.
A soft hum… and the sphere went out like a failed light bulb. The drone fell, limp.
"What the hell…?" Gearlock raised his mechanical arm, ready to throw a tungsten bolt.
"Turn that off," a metallic voice growled from the darkness. "I'm the closest thing to a savior you'll see today."
A sleek figure of burnished steel emerged from the shadows: an android body with sinuous lines, eyes that were constantly adjusting lenses. On its head was a headband filled with incandescent data filaments.
"Echo-45," the android said, touching its chest. "Technophage codenamed Mnemonic Grid. I have one hundred and twenty-seven seconds before the Sun-Eye reboots. Are you coming with me, or would you rather melt down right here?"
Raiko exchanged a nervous glance with Gearlock. The big man snorted.
"You lead, can. I'll shoot if you lie."
Echo-45 turned without responding and moved down a side corridor. Behind him, the emergency lights were coming back on; The ceiling fans exhaled dust as if the Power Plant was breathing.
They arrived at a circular room filled with analog screens. In the center floated a projection of the city: a grid of points of light pulsing in unison. Above the digital model, green lines showed waves—regular pulses—propagating from each Monolith.
Echo-45 inserted a thin wire into his forearm. The image vibrated and changed scale. New, red spikes of light appeared out of rhythm.
"What's that?" Raiko asked.
"Cardiac derangement," the android replied. "Advanced pulses. One happened last night, in your lab. It shouldn't have happened for a year. At this rate, the T-000 synchronization will go out of whack."
Gearlock frowned.
"You're talking about… a premature Pulse. That implies someone or something is forcing the Monoliths to beat prematurely."
Echo-45 nodded.
"Someone with a very hungry Luxophage, perhaps." Her optics focused on the plates on Raiko's chest, but there was no accusation in her tone: only analytical curiosity.
Raiko swallowed. She felt Gearlock's gaze on the back of her neck.
"I was only trying to save my sister. I didn't mean to… I didn't plan any of this."
"Intent is irrelevant," the android said. "Now the Watchtower thinks you're the trigger. And soon other factions will too."
Raiko noticed that the model showed ten red circles around Skylight. Each dot pulsed slowly, but with a slight, increasing phase shift.
If they converge wrong, Aureos murmured, the pulse will tear the city apart. And we won't have enough light to put it back together.
Raiko swallowed her fear and turned it into anger.
"Do you have a plan?" she asked Echo-45.
"I have escape routes." And I have data the Watchtower will want to erase. But first we have to get out of here." The android turned its head. "Hint: the shortcut leads to the Black-Light Market. If you don't like the Umbra, you can stay and negotiate with the drones; I won't argue."
Gearlock grunted, but relented.
"The Umbrians may reek of treason, but the drones reek of crematorium."
They hadn't gone a hundred meters when the ground shook. A thunderous clang of metal hitting concrete reverberated through the halls.
"Bad sign," Gearlock whispered.
From the end of the corridor, a tall shadow emerged, almost touching the ceiling: a bipedal exo-mech, armored white with the solar symbol etched on its chest. The fallen Solar-Eye lit up again, embedded in the armor. A light-absorbing rifle was aimed directly at Raiko; two auxiliary arms deployed with surgical forceps.
"Helios-Seraph Unit," Echo-45 confirmed. "Protocol: Capture and Vivisect."
Raiko stepped back. Aureos was throbbing, excited and terrified. Gearlock unloaded a shot from his arm, but the bullet ricocheted off the armor like a marble against a bell.
"Run!" Echo-45 shouted.
Raiko tried to obey, but the Helios-Seraph fired first; a bolt from its rifle struck the floor, melting tiles with a hiss of melting glass.
"Stand back!" Gearlock grabbed Raiko by the shoulder and shoved him behind a column.
Echo-45 extended a cable and connected to the security console. Fireworks of blue symbols flickered in the air. The ceiling rumbled; emergency hatches lowered like guillotines, blocking the megadroid's path.
"That'll slow it down for thirty seconds," the droid warned. "Use them wisely."
Aureos trembled beneath Raiko's skin, eager to devour the Helios-Seraph's light. Raiko knew that if he let it, the signature blast would put them in an even bigger target. They didn't have time.
Echo-45 knocked down a maintenance fence and pointed down a vertical tunnel lit by broken neon lights.
"Go down. Connect Central to the Umbra Passages. Then the rules change."
Raiko took a deep breath and jumped in first. A rusty staircase creaked beneath his boots, and below, darkness opened up with the smell of ozone and sweet spices.
Gearlock followed behind; the megadroid's vibrations were already shaking the airlocks. Echo-45 descended last, closing the panel behind him. The lights went out above, and a metallic clang announced that Helios-Seraph had moved the gates again.
Aureos let out a breathy hiss of relief.
"The light grows dimmer down here," he murmured. "And yet... it draws me even more."
"Hang on," Raiko whispered into the darkness. "We haven't eaten yet."
Below, a purple glow painted the walls: neon lights, signs in mixed languages, silhouettes of creatures and humans bargaining in corridors as wide as hollows. The Black-Light Market unfolded before them: a bazaar of perfumed shadows, where light was bought by the gram and souvenirs were packaged in vials.
Raiko didn't know if this was a refuge or a trap, but one thing was clear: the world of the Monoliths had just gotten bigger... and much darker.