The descent was brutal.
Lucian landed awkwardly, the impact jarring his entire skeletal structure. The pain that had been a torrent of white noise now became a focused, throbbing alarm.
The med-patch, hastily applied and then torn on the grate, had failed. His integrated systems flagged the immediate danger: Internal Hemorrhage (Minor).
He lay for a moment in the putrid sludge, not out of exhaustion, but for system recalibration.
The sewage tunnel was dark, thick with humidity, and smelled of chemical decay… certainly a hostile environment, but one that offered cover from the aerial threat.
Threat Assessment: External (Hyperion) – Low. Internal (Hemorrhage) – High.
Lucian used his remaining good hand to reach the wound site.
The heat radiating from his hip was alarming. He couldn't afford a second medical patch; he needed to conserve that resource for a catastrophic injury.
This meant he had to perform manual stabilization.
He reached into his utility belt and pulled out a small, surgical plasma torch and a spool of medical-grade synthetic thread.
His cybernetic hand's dexterity was unmatched, but the task was horrific: he had to reopen the cauterized wound and then stitch the layers of muscle and skin, all without anesthetic.
Some would faint just at the sight.
Lucian activated his internal pain regulator—not for suppression, but for data channeling. He needed the pain to tell him precisely where the most critical tears were.
The raw agony of the torch hitting the broken flesh lasted for only 0.7 seconds, a flash of red behind his optics. Lucian then systematically began the stitching, the synthesized drone of his breath the only sound in the darkness. He felt every pull, every suture, every snap of the synthetic thread drawing his broken body back into compliance.
Calculation: Time spent on triage: 4 minutes, 38 seconds. Efficiency: 96%. Acceptable.
With the wound stabilized, Lucian faced the greater problem: mobility. His remaining leg was functional, but crawling in the thick, viscous mud of the tunnel floor would burn through his remaining energy cells too quickly.
He needed transport.
He scanned the immediate area. The tunnel was wide, designed for massive outflow, but currently choked with debris and the corpses of maintenance drones.
Most were simply scrap: crushed, fried, or dissolved by the chemicals.
Then he saw it.
Ten meters ahead, half-submerged in the muck, was a D-Sani Unit 7.
A defunct sanitation drone, designed for heavy lifting and resource reprocessing. Its primary optical array was dark, one of its treads was stripped, and its chassis was heavily corroded, but the core processing unit looked intact.
Asset Identified: D-Sani Unit 7. Potential for mobility modification: High. Risk of activation failure: 40%.
Lucian dragged himself toward the unit. It was the size of a small truck, caked in sludge and neglect.
He leveraged his body against the chassis, straining his patched-up core muscles, and pulled himself onto the drone's massive, silent shell.
He accessed the unit's main port. It was a heavily shielded panel secured by a defunct mechanical lock; the lock had seized years ago.
Lucian deployed a tiny, sonic disruptor tool and began vibrating the lock's internal tumbler, listening to the microscopic clicks and groans.
The lock wouldn't budge.
Error: Mechanical failure is absolute. Alternative required: Brute force physical access.
Lucian didn't have the energy for true brute force, he needed precision.
He jammed the end of his synthetic thread into a hairline crack near the hinge and initiated an ultra-high-frequency kinetic oscillation. The thread became a vibrating saw blade.
It was loud, risky, and highly inefficient. There was no other option.
The hinges protested, echoing down the tunnel, yet they snapped, allowing Lucian to pry the panel open.
He interfaced his own cybernetic hand directly with the D-Sani Unit's core processor. The code was ancient, messy, and riddled with lack of maintenance— the kind of software that had never been updated since the Splintering.
Lucian, a master of modern, clean code, viewed the mess with detached contempt.
He bypassed the initial power-on sequence and went straight to the locomotion sub-routines. He disabled all non-essential functions: sanitation, reprocessing, communication arrays.
All power was rerouted to the functioning tread and the central hydraulic arm.
A low, guttural whine began to emanate from the D-Sani Unit 7. Its main eye flickered once, a dim, sickly yellow.
System Activated. Functionality: 65%. Mobility: One tread operational. Power Reserve: 15 minutes before self-shutdown.
Fifteen minutes. That was enough.
Lucian positioned himself on the chassis and used his integrated harness to secure himself to the central hydraulic arm. He began to input the first command: Move. Target: North Node Junction. Velocity: Maximum sustainable.
The crippled sanitation drone lurched forward, its one functioning tread digging into the muck, dragging Lucian deeper into the protection of darkness.