Secondary Story - Chapter 6

Probably when this story gets released I'm going to bundle the first 10 chapters each into a double, so the intro will only be 5 chapters then to allow a 'quicker' introduction. My long rambling ways coming back to haunt me again haha

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Two dim, old-world lamps shine out before her with a pale, cold white light from their square fixtures high up on the smooth concrete walls. The dull, buzzing hum of the strange devices is barely audible however, over the crash of each of the booming steps of the heavy bot approaching from the far distance. Each rattle sends a shake through her body from bottom to top, her already chattering teeth smashing together. Standing on the precipice of the room, Pen looks inside with wide eyes, scanning for anything that could pose a threat. For any other bots.

But there is nothing to see. Just darkness. The light from the hallway strains and fades away just past the archway she stands inside of; into the room on the other side where it dissipates and vanishes into the overwhelming lightless void after only a few feet. Heavy thudding steps continue to ring out from behind her, growing closer and closer with every second she stands there and delays.

Mustering her resolve she steps inside the room, and then takes a step towards the heavy shadow that seems to have swallowed everything in here eons ago. Into a slumbering darkness that had been waiting for anything, for anyone for eons.

‘THOOK’,‘THOOK’ a series of loud, impact sounds ring out from the room ahead which suddenly comes to life the second her foot steps into the darkness. From the rows of hundreds of downward streaming white lights which are perched up high on the ceiling, that activate one after the other, shines a bright conjoined ray that illuminates a new segment of the floor beneath. Each row coming to life with the heavy metal clicking of the machinery illuminates a further new segment of the giant room. The great, large rectangular room lined with catwalks, lined with dusty windows far up in the heights that look down on the large open space before her that is filled with collapsed rubble and debris.

Pen had never seen a room like this before, but the girl knows she has little time to examine it as a fresh step of the coming machine returns her to action. Hobbling in as quick as she can she looks around for a place to hide, for a place to duck into. Rubble is everywhere, parts of the collapsed ceiling. Of broken windows and broken electronics. Dead machines fill the space, great mechanical limbs sticking out of piles of rubble. Shredded and mutilated bodies of old bots that look as if an animal had torn into them. That look like skeletons of the dead, ravaged by a hungry beast; she can’t help but look at them in morbid curiosity as she ducks into the empty warehouse of a chamber. The lights continue onward, still row after row activating as they vanish down into the distance, further than she can see, the echoes of their birth resounding around the hall like the clap of so much thunder in a summer storm.

Something catches her attention in the fray, something familiar, a hum. The buzzing sound of a crystal nearby. There’s a crystal in here, somewhere close, judging by the sound of it. But the hum of the treasure is overpowered by the crash of the heavy step now behind her. Pen drops down to the side and slides behind a fallen pile of rubble, ducking down as low as she can to the ground behind it and holds her breath.

The heavy steps grow louder and louder, the debris shaking, tiny rocks tumbling downward from the heaps of collapsed rubble all over the space as the thudding steps of the pursuer come closer and closer. A single, shining reflective eye of a long since dead bot shines out at her from her side and she looks at the shattered red glass orb. Looks at the reflection of the entrance of the chamber, without having to peer out over the rubble herself.

‘KSSSCH’ the pursuer emits a loud hiss as it comes to a slow, a thick cloud of piping steam jets out from its front, creating an almost nebulous smokescreen. Pen looks in horror at the reflection she sees in the dead, glossy, red fish-eye before her. The distorted reflection of the giant, four legged bot. Its low hanging body is roundish and flat, hanging down beneath its arched legs spread wide like that of a spider. The head attached to the front by a series of large struts and thick black cables is thinly rectangular and tall, the fore-side of which is covered in round, red glass eyes. The head sharply turns from left to right in quick jolts that only take a second each as it looks over the entire room. The spasming motions give it an otherworldly appearance like that of a twisted apparition, its movements are janky and unnaturally sharp like many of the older bots were.

Pen can feel her heart beat faster and faster with every second longer that she looks at the reflection of the giant with fearful eyes. This isn’t an F-class, it’s not even a D-class. It’s massive, taking up the entire span of the gargantuan hallway it now blocks. Its legs pulled together to squeeze in. Easily she can see that if it spread itself wide that it could span the cylinder, span the vertical tube from before that she could barely see across. No, this was worse. Is this a C? She’d never seen a C-class before, only heard stories from the divers. Horror stories. Even they had no chance against a C-class, she would die. There was no hope if it saw her, if it found her.

Another hiss of steam escapes the pursuer like the exhalation of a long held breath and slowly it lurches to life again; having scanned the room and found nothing by the looks of things. Pen silently thanks whatever powers that be as it lurches a step back into the tunnel. The creature opting to walk backwards rather than take the effort of turning around. With another sharp snap, the long rectangular head of the bot pivots around in an almost full turn to look behind itself, the many cables stretching taut as it does so and it vanishes back down into the darkness of the passage.