Where No One Goes: Chapter 2

The red glare of a thousand waking machine eyes reflected off the low-hanging smog. Jack scrambled to his feet, his breath rattling in his throat as the iron sirens of Sector 9 tore the night apart. The dead zone was dead no longer. Beneath his boots, the ground vibrated with the deep, rhythmic thrum of buried generators roaring to maximum output. To his left, the reinforced steel gates that had kept the sector quarantined for a generation were grinding backward into the concrete walls.

The path to the Upper Tiers was wide open.

"They’re moving," Jack whispered, wiping blood from his scraped cheek. Down the main avenue of the ruins, a column of the cybernetic vanguards marched out from the research facility. They moved with a terrifying, synchronized precision, their matte-black armor clicking against the cracked asphalt. Behind them surged a sea of quadrupedal security drones, their crimson laser lenses scanning the ruins.

They weren't just searching for him anymore. They were advancing toward the city grid. Jack knew the layout of the city’s lower fringes better than any Enforcer, but navigating them while a war-era defense grid actively hunted him was a different nightmare. He couldn't take the main streets; the drones would spot his heat signature in seconds. He lunged into a crumbling drainage canal that ran parallel to the main road. The concrete ditch was choked with stagnant water and toxic runoff, but it was three feet below street level, offering crucial defilade. He stayed low, splashing quietly through the muck, his eyes darting to the lip of the canal. Above him, a drone paused. Its scanning laser painted the opposite wall of the ditch in a brilliant red line. Jack froze, pressing his back against the slime-slick concrete, holding his breath until his lungs burned. The red line wavered, then swept upward as the machine clicked further down the street.He couldn't just run to safety.

If these things hit the border checkpoints of the Upper Tiers unannounced, the Enforcers would be slaughtered before they could even power up their shields. He had to warn the tier authorities, but his personal comm-pad was completely fried from the facility’s EMP surge. He needed a high-power transmitter. The closest one was at the Old Transit Station, located right at the edge of the quarantine border. Jack hauled himself out of the canal, slipping through a shattered storefront to avoid an overlapping patrol. The district was transforming. Automated weapon pods were rising from the rooftops of abandoned hab-blocks, their heavy barrels tracking the sky. Sector 9 was preparing for an all-out siege, and the Upper Tiers didn't have a single weapon aimed in this direction. He sprinted through back alleys, utilizing a maze of fire escapes and low rooftops to keep high ground. His legs felt like lead, and his chest heaved against the heavy, copper-scented air. Every shadow seemed to stretch and writhe into the shape of a skeletal guardian. As he reached the perimeter of the Old Transit Station, his heart sank. A squad of four vanguard soldiers stood directly in front of the terminal doors, their crimson eyes cutting through the darkness. They were heavily armed, carrying high-frequency plasma rifles that crackled with blue static.

There was no way to sneak past them, and he was completely unarmed. Jack looked down at his belt. His old scrapper tool—a high-amperage power bypass kit—was still hooked to his loop. It had enough charge left for one massive discharge. He looked up at a massive, rusting neon sign hanging precariously above the transit station entrance, still connected to the newly awakened sector grid. He crept up the side ladder of the adjacent building, his fingers trembling as he reached the structural supports of the sign. He shoved the bypass spikes directly into the main transformer.

"Come on," he muttered, throwing the manual override switch.The transformer didn't just spark; it exploded in a blinding flash of green electrical fire.

The massive, steel-framed neon sign ripped free from its anchors, crashing directly onto the vanguard squad below in a cascade of shattered glass and sparks. Two of the cybernetic soldiers were crushed instantly, their internal batteries rupturing in loud, blue detonations. The other two were temporarily short-circuited, their limbs twitching violently as the current overloaded their systems.

Jack didn't waste a second. He dropped from the fire escape, hit the ground rolling, and sprinted past the twitching machines through the shattered glass doors of the station. The interior was dark, illuminated only by the pulsing red emergency lights. He found the auxiliary communications desk in the back. To his immense relief, the terminal screen was active, powered by the sector’s grid reboot. He smashed his fist against the emergency broadcast button. The console whirred, linking to the citywide emergency frequency, "Mayday! This is Scrapper Logan, ID 883-Alpha!" Jack yelled into the terminal mic, his voice cracking with exhaustion, "Sector 9 is fully active! Repeat, the defense grid has rebooted! War-era drones and cybernetic infantry are breaching the lower perimeter right now! Turn on the tier shields! Seal the checkpoints! They are coming!"

On the terminal monitor, a sleepy voice from the Upper Tier Security Hub crackled through, "Identify yourself properly, civilian. Hoaxes on this line are punishable by—"

"Look at your thermal feeds, you idiot!" Jack screamed, pointing the station's external security camera toward the street.

The monitor went dead silent for three long seconds as the operator saw the army of red eyes marching out of the dark. Then, the distant, deep wail of the Upper Tier defensive sirens finally began to echo across the city sky. Jack slumped against the console, a bitter smile on his face. He had delivered the warning. But as he looked toward the glass doors of the station, he saw a dozen red laser lines paint the floor, slowly sweeping toward him.

His escape route was gone.