WEE-OOO! WEE-OOO!
The silence of the fifty-fifth floor was shattered by a piercing siren that sounded like the scream of a dying metal beast. The once-dim corridor was instantly bathed in a rhythmic, blood-red strobe light.
"You have got to be kidding me," Murphy growled, shielding his eyes from the glare. "I thought you said the power grid was dead!"
"It was!" Philip shouted back, his fingers flying across his wrist console. "The reactor must have kick-started the emergency protocols. The building thinks it's under attack!"
As if on cue, the floor beneath their boots trembled violently. Dust and concrete chips rained down from the ceiling.
KRR-CLACK.
From the dark recesses of the ventilation shafts, mechanical limbs emerged. Rusty, spider-like droids with singular red optic sensors skittered onto the walls. Their metal plating was corroded, but the rotary saws attached to their forelegs spun with a deadly, high-pitched whine.
"Security Sentinels..." Philip's face went pale. "Run! Towards the stairwell! Now!"
Murphy didn't hesitate. He grabbed Philip by the back of his collar and shoved him forward, positioning himself as a shield against the mechanical swarm.
"Go! Don't look back!"
They sprinted down the hallway, leaping over fallen debris. Behind them, the screech of metal on concrete grew louder as the spider-droids gave chase.
But the internal threat wasn't the only problem.
Through the shattered windows, the sound of engines roared. Makeshift hover-skiffs, piloted by men in ragged leather armor and gas masks, were circling the building like vultures spotting a carcass.
"Look at that flare!" one of the scavengers yelled over a loudspeaker, his voice distorted and cruel. "Someone tripped the alarm! Someone found something good!"
"Block the exits!" another voice commanded. "Whatever they found, it belongs to the Iron Vultures now!"
Philip glanced out the window and cursed under his breath. "We're trapped. Sentinels inside, Vultures outside. Murphy, the stairs are going to be a choke point. They'll be waiting for us."
Murphy slammed his shoulder into a jammed door, forcing it open as a laser blast from a spider-droid scorched the wall right where his head had been a second ago.
"Then we don't use the stairs," Murphy panted, a wild grin forming on his face despite the desperate situation. He looked at the elevator shaft, the doors of which had long since rotted away, leaving a gaping hole into the abyss.
"Murphy... no," Philip shook his head frantically, realizing what his brother was thinking. "That cable is hundreds of years old. It won't hold us!"
"Calculated risk, little brother!" Murphy fired his compressed-air pistol at the lead droid, blowing its leg off, before grabbing Philip's arm. "Trust me!"
Murphy yelled, gripping Philip's hand. Before Philip could protest, Murphy yanked him toward the gaping void of the elevator shaft.
With his free hand, Murphy snagged a nondescript grey sphere—no bigger than a marble—from his utility belt. He thumbed the activation switch and lobbed it over his shoulder, straight at the horde of skittering Sentinels crowding the doorway.
"See ya!"
They plunged into the abyss together.
KA-BOOM!
A blinding flash erupted above them, followed by a thunderous roar that shook the shaft walls. The miniature thermal detonator did its job perfectly, collapsing the entrance in a shower of concrete dust and twisted mechanical limbs, sealing off pursuit from above.
But gravity was now their enemy. The wind screamed past their ears as they plummeted through the crushing darkness at terminal velocity.
"Murphy! The bottom! We're gonna splatter!" Philip screamed, terrors gripping his heart as the dark ground rushed up to meet them.
"Not today, little brother!" Murphy gritted his teeth against the rushing wind.
With precision born of countless desperate escapes, he drew a handful of metallic hexagonal discs from his pouch and flung them downwards, scattering them against the shaft walls at strategic intervals.
Chink. Chink. Chink.
The magnetic discs bit hard into the ancient steel girders.
Instantly, crisscrossing beams of azure light shot out from the hex-discs, weaving together in microseconds to form multiple layers of glowing energy safety nets just fifty feet below them.
They hit the first energy field hard. ZZZAP! It stretched violently, groaning under the impact and slowing their descent, before breaking through to the second and third nets, which finally caught them like a giant, humming blue spiderweb. They bounced dramatically, leaving them breathless, dizzy, but miraculously alive, suspended above the dark unknown.