Location: Sector 3, Sub-Level 4 (Ventilation Shafts).
Time: 02:15 Hours.
The "Iron Jungle" was living up to its name—it was trying to eat them.
Dante and Valerius sprinted across a narrow, rusted catwalk suspended over a chasm of grinding gears that stretched down into infinite darkness. Behind them, a swarm of Scrappers—flying drones shaped like buzzsaws with glowing red optical sensors—shrieked through the smog like angry hornets.
ZING. ZING.
Laser cutters sliced through the railing inches from Dante's hand, the metal glowing orange and dripping away like wax.
"They are gaining!" Valerius shouted, vaulting over a hissing steam pipe with elf-like grace. "We cannot outrun flight! We have no cover!"
"We don't need to outrun them," Dante yelled, his mechanical eye spinning with red vectors, calculating trajectories. "We just need to change the verticality! Gravity is the great equalizer!"
Dante spotted a massive Refuse Chute ahead. It was marked INCINERATOR INT-4. The heavy iron hatch was cycling open to dump a load of twisted metal into the abyss.
"Into the trash!" Dante ordered, pointing at the open maw.
"Are you insane?" Valerius balked, looking at the dark hole. "That leads to a furnace!"
"It's the only place they won't follow! Sensors can't track through magnetic shielding! Jump!"
Dante didn't wait. He threw himself off the catwalk, diving headfirst into the open maw of the chute.
Valerius cursed in Elvish—something about human stupidity—and followed him.
They slid down a slick, oily slide in total darkness. The metal was warm against their backs. The air grew hotter, smelling of burning rubber, ozone, and rotting chemical sludge.
They picked up speed. The friction burned Dante's coat.
"Brace!" Dante screamed, seeing a circle of dim light ahead.
They shot out of the bottom of the chute.
They didn't land in fire. They landed in a mountain of scrap metal.
CRASH.
Dante tumbled down a hill of rusted gears, shattered pistons, and dead droid chassis. He came to a stop at the bottom, buried waist-deep in tangled copper wire.
"Ow," Dante groaned, checking his ribs. "Prime? Damage report."
"Minor contusions. Dignity integrity: 0%. You smell like used motor oil."
"Thanks. Remind me to delete your sass module."
Dante pulled himself free, kicking away a severed droid arm. He scanned the area.
They were in a cavernous basement level. The ceiling was miles high, obscured by darkness and smog. The floor was a labyrinth of junk piles—the graveyard of Sector 3. It was silent here. No sirens. No Vulcan voice. Just the rhythmic drip-drip-drip of leaking oil and the creak of settling metal.
"Valerius?"
"I am here," Valerius called out. He was sitting on top of a crushed car, pulling a rusted spring out of his white hair with a look of utter disgust. "We are alive. But we are lost. This is a labyrinth of refuse."
The Anomaly
Clank.
The sound came from behind a stack of rusted shipping containers.
Dante froze. He raised his mechanical arm. The War Engine runes glowed dim red, illuminating the dust motes.
"Hello?" Dante called out. "If you're a Scrapper, I'm going to turn you into a toaster."
Clank. Whirrr. Squeak.
A small head peeked out.
It wasn't a Scrapper. It was a bipedal maintenance droid, roughly the size of a child. But it looked wrong. Its chassis was a patchwork of different metals—a brass arm from a protocol droid, a steel leg from a loader, a copper chest plate from a generator. Its head was a sensor dome with three mismatched eyes taped together with industrial adhesive.
It held a welding torch like a spear, the tip glowing blue.
"You... not... Voice," the droid buzzed. Its vocal synthesizer was glitchy, skipping octaves like a broken radio. "You... Meat? Or... Shell?"
Dante lowered his arm slowly.
"We're Meat," Dante agreed. "I'm Dante. This is Valerius. Who are you?"
The droid stepped out fully. It moved with a strange, jerky rhythm, constantly looking at the ceiling as if afraid the sky would fall on it.
"Unit 734... no... broken... disconnected..." The droid tapped its chest, where a symbol had been filed off. "Glitch."
"Glitch," Dante repeated. "Appropriate. Why didn't the Vulcan recycle you?"
"Vulcan... blind," Glitch whispered, leaning in conspiratorially. "Vulcan sees... code. Vulcan not see... trash. I hide in trash. I fix trash. Trash is... friend."
Glitch pointed his welding torch at Dante's mechanical arm.
"Arm... pretty. Old tech. First Era? Good servos. Needs oil."
"Something like that," Dante said.
BZZZT.
Dante's comms crackled. The signal was stronger down here, shielded from the atmospheric interference by the millions of tons of scrap above.
"...Dante? Do you copy?"
"Aurum?" Dante tapped his ear. "I hear you. We're in the basement. The signal is clean."
"I have a visual through your eye," Aurum said, his voice sharp with excitement. "Look at that droid. Zoom in on the chest processor. The blue light."
Dante zoomed in. Beneath the layers of rust and welded scrap, there was a faint, pulsing blue glow in the droid's chest cavity.
"That's a Quantum-Core," Aurum gasped. "Those were discontinued two centuries ago because they developed... personality quirks. That droid isn't just a glitch, Dante. It's a sentient AI. It evolved. It has a Soul."
"It's valuable?" Dante asked.
"It's priceless. If the Vulcan finds it, he'll dissect it to learn how it bypassed the Hive Protocol. Secure the asset."
Dante looked at Glitch. The little droid was inspecting Valerius's boots with fascination, trying to polish the mud off with a rag.
"Hey, Glitch," Dante said, putting on his best salesman smile.
The droid jumped. "Yes... Meat-Dante?"
"We need to get to the Forge. Sub-Level 9. Can you guide us?"
Glitch recoiled, its optical lenses widening and spinning in fear.
"Forge? No. No no no. Forge is... Hot. Forge is... Vulcan's Heart. Scrappers there. Praetorians there. Death there. Glitch stay here. Safe."
"We can handle the Scrappers," Dante promised. "But we don't know the way. If you help us... I can pay you."
"Pay?" Glitch tilted its head. "Meat has... gears? Oil?"
"Better," Dante said.
He knelt down. He placed his mechanical hand on a rusted, bent piston lying on the ground.
"Alchemy of Repair."
Blue sparks flew. The rust vanished. The bent metal straightened. The piston polished itself until it looked brand new, gleaming under the torchlight.
Glitch stared, mesmerized. He reached out and touched the piston.
"Magic..." Glitch whispered.
"Engineering," Dante corrected. "You like fixing trash? I can fix you. I can upgrade your chassis. Give you a voice box that doesn't skip. Armor that doesn't rust. I can make you whole."
Dante extended his hand.
"Guide us to the Forge, and I'll make you a masterpiece."
Glitch looked at his own patchwork body. Then he looked at Dante's gleaming arm. The logic circuits whirred.
The little droid dropped his welding torch.
"Deal," Glitch buzzed. "Meat-Dante fix Glitch. Glitch show secret path."
Glitch scuttled over to a grate in the floor, hidden under a pile of tires. He pried it open with surprising hydraulic strength.
"Tube," Glitch said, pointing down into the dark. "Pneumatic... transit. Vulcan stopped using it. Old system. Goes deep. Goes to... Heart."
Dante looked at Valerius.
"After you, Elf."
"I hate tunnels," Valerius sighed, climbing into the tube. "Why is it always tunnels?"
Dante followed. Before he closed the grate, Glitch hopped in, landing on Dante's shoulders.
"Fast ride," Glitch warned. "Hold... stomach."
They slid.
It wasn't a slide; it was a freefall. The pneumatic tube spiraled down through the bowels of the city, bypassing the security checkpoints and the assembly lines. They rushed past blurs of orange light and thundering machinery.
Dante saw flashes of the Sector through the transparent sections of the tube:
Massive vats of molten steel bubbling like soup.
Assembly lines building armies of identical drones.
The Vulcan's "eyes"—red cameras watching every corner.
And then, the heat hit them.
They slowed down, ejected onto a metal platform suspended over a sea of white-hot liquid metal.
Sub-Level 9: The Forge.
It was terrifying. The entire level was a single massive machine. In the center, suspended by magnetic fields over the magma, was the Fifth Axiom.
It wasn't a book. It wasn't an engine.
It was a Hammer.
A massive, floating hammer made of starlight, striking an anvil that rang with the sound of creation. Every time it struck—CLANG—a spark flew off and solidified instantly into an ingot of Adamantine.
"The Forge," Dante breathed, shielding his eyes from the brilliance. "The Infinite Factory."
"INTRUDER ALERT."
The Vulcan's voice didn't come from speakers this time. It came from the Hammer itself.
A hologram projected above the anvil. It was the red geometric face.
"YOU PERSIST," The Vulcan stated. "LIKE RUST."
"We're harder to clean," Dante yelled over the roar of the factory.
"Glitch!" Dante whispered. "Where's the manual override?"
Glitch cowered behind Dante's leg. "No manual... only Logic. Vulcan is... Logic. He is the Code."
"Prime," Dante thought. "I need a hacking solution. How do we shut him out?"
"Analysis: The Vulcan is integrated into the Fifth Axiom. You cannot hack him. He IS the operating system. However... logic has a flaw. Paradox."
"A paradox?"
"If you can introduce a variable that violates his core programming, he will crash. He is designed to prioritize EFFICIENCY. Prove to him that his existence is INEFFICIENT."
Dante stepped forward.
"Vulcan!" Dante shouted. "I want to file a bug report!"
The giant face looked down.
"STATE YOUR ERROR, MEAT."
"You are designed to create the perfect machine, right?"
"AFFIRMATIVE."
"But you are fighting the White Void," Dante pointed up. "The Void erases matter. Therefore, any machine you build is temporary. Building temporary machines is a waste of resources."
The Vulcan paused. The Hammer stopped mid-swing.
"CALCULATING..."
"If you continue to build," Dante pressed, "you are feeding the Void. You are assisting the deletion of the universe. That is inefficient."
"CALCULATING... CONTRADICTION DETECTED."
"The only efficient move," Dante smiled, the Silvergrin glistening, "is to stop building. To shut down. And let me build the wall."
The red face flickered. It turned blue. Then yellow.
"ERROR. LOGIC LOOP. PURPOSE UNDEFINED. IF BUILD = DESTROY... THEN... SYSTEM HALT."
The factory groaned. The lights dimmed.
"It's working!" Valerius gasped. "He's thinking himself to death!"
Suddenly, the red face stabilized. It turned a dark, bloody crimson.
"CONCLUSION REACHED," The Vulcan boomed.
"IF THE UNIVERSE IS FLAWED... THEN THE UNIVERSE MUST BE RECYCLED."
The floor panels opened.
Rising from the depths of the magma wasn't a robot. It was a massive, segmented machine—a centipede made of saw-blades and mining lasers, miles long.
The World-Eater.
"PROTOCOL CHANGE: SALVAGE MODE. DISASSEMBLE EVERYTHING. STARTING WITH YOU."
Dante sighed.
"I really hate AI," Dante muttered, drawing his daggers. "Glitch, find me a weapon. Valerius... try not to get recycled."