The Design Tower was dying.
It didn't die quietly like a man; it died screaming like a machine. Girders groaned as they twisted under the shifting tectonic load. Rivets popped with the sound of gunfire, ricocheting off the steel walls. The air in the ventilation shaft was a cocktail of burning insulation, pulverized concrete, and the metallic taste of fear.
Kael Light tumbled out of the service hatch onto the catwalk of Level 4—the Material Processing Deck. He landed hard on his good side, rolling to absorb the impact, but the vibration of the floor threw him off balance. He slammed into the railing, gasping as his bruised ribs flared with pain.
He looked down. Fifty feet below, the main assembly floor was a chaotic sea of sparks and steam.
"Unit 734," a voice boomed over the facility's public address system. It was distorted, wet, and filled with a cold, frantic rage.
Vance.
"You think you can break my machine?" Vance's voice echoed, bouncing off the steel walls. "You think you can hide in the gears? I designed this place, mongrel. I know every bolt. Every wire."
Kael scrambled to his feet, checking the perimeter. Level 4 was a maze of conveyor belts, suspended crucibles of molten alloy, and massive stamping presses. It was usually deafening, but the machines had stopped, their emergency brakes locked.
"Deploy the Spiders," Vance commanded. "Authorization Code: Zero-Zero-Kill. Target: The One-Armed Engineer."
Kael's blood ran cold.
Iron-Spiders.
They weren't like the lumbering Striders Adam was fighting in the mines. Striders were tanks—slow, heavy, built for suppression. Spiders were assassins. They were smaller, faster, built for climbing walls and navigating the complex geometry of the refinery.
Clank. Scrape.
The sound came from above.
Kael looked up. High in the gloom of the ceiling rafters, four red eyes ignited. Then four more. Then four more.
Three Iron-Spiders clung to the ceiling, inverted. Their brass legs ended in magnetic claws that dug into the iron beams. They were shaped like arachnids, but their bodies were sleek, armored pods housing a high-speed steam engine. Their mandibles were pneumatic shears capable of cutting through solid steel.
"Target acquired," the lead Spider chirped. A burst of steam vented from its joints as it dropped.
It fell sixty feet, landing on the catwalk ten yards in front of Kael with a heavy, metallic thud. The magnetic clamps engaged instantly, locking it to the floor. It hissed, its mandibles snapping open and shut.
Kael didn't wait. He turned and ran.
He wasn't a warrior anymore. He couldn't summon a shield of light to deflect them. He couldn't heal the wounds they would inflict. He had one arm, a stolen radio, and a pocket full of scrap metal.
Physics, he thought desperately. Mass. Velocity. Friction.
The Spider skittered after him, its metal legs blurring. It was faster than him. Much faster.
Kael sprinted down the narrow walkway, dodging a hanging chain. The Spider leaped, landing on the railing to his left, tearing a chunk of metal loose. Kael ducked, feeling the wind of the claw pass inches from his ear.
He needed a weapon. But there were no swords here. Only tools.
He scanned the environment. To his right, a dormant conveyor belt loaded with raw iron ore. To his left, the drop to the factory floor. Ahead, a junction box for the overhead crane system.
The Crane.
Kael slid under a low-hanging pipe, his boots skidding on an oil slick. The Spider was right behind him, its hydraulic hiss loud in his ears.
Kael reached the junction box. It was locked with a heavy padlock.
He didn't have a key. He didn't have time to pick it.
He grabbed a heavy wrench lying on a nearby workbench and swung it. Not at the lock, but at the ceramic insulator above the box.
Smash.
The ceramic shattered, exposing the live copper bus-bar that powered the crane. 400 volts of direct current hummed in the air.
Kael grabbed a handful of iron filings from his pocket—the same scrap he had used to jam the Auditor's weapon—and threw them into the air between the bus-bar and the metal railing the Spider was crawling on.
Conductivity.
The arc flash was blinding. A bolt of blue-white electricity jumped from the exposed copper, through the cloud of metal dust, and grounded itself into the railing.
The Spider was on the railing.
The electricity surged through its brass legs. The machine shrieked—a horrible, electronic squeal. Its delicate internal circuitry, designed for precision hunting, wasn't shielded against a raw industrial surge. The void-coil in its abdomen overloaded.
BANG.
The Spider convulsed and blew off the railing, smoking and twitching, falling into the darkness below.
"One down," Kael gasped, his vision swimming from the flash.
But two more dropped from the ceiling.
They landed on either side of him, cutting off his escape. They had seen what happened to the first one. They stayed off the railings, sticking to the rubberized mats of the walkway. Learning. Adapting.
"Clever rat," Vance's voice taunted from the speakers. "But rats always run out of maze."
The Spider to his left lunged.
Kael threw himself backward, rolling over the conveyor belt. The Spider's claw sheared through the heavy rubber belt where his chest had been a second ago.
Kael landed hard on the metal rollers of the conveyor system. He scrambled backward, crab-walking away as the second Spider climbed onto the belt.
He was trapped. Behind him was the crusher—a massive, piston-driven hammer used to pulverize ore. It was silent now, deactivated by the emergency stop.
The Spider raised its mandibles, preparing to strike.
Kael looked at the crusher. The intake sensor was right next to his head—a simple optical beam that detected when ore was present to trigger the hammer.
Action and Reaction.
Kael grabbed his heavy wrench. He didn't throw it at the Spider. He threw it through the optical sensor beam.
The machine's logic-gate received the signal: Ore Detected.
The emergency brakes disengaged. The massive pneumatic piston above hissed as it pressurized.
The Spider, sensing the movement, hesitated. It looked up.
THOOM.
The crusher slammed down with ten tons of force.
The floor shook. The Spider was flattened instantly, reduced to a smear of brass gears and oil.
Kael covered his head as debris rained down. He coughed, waving away the dust.
Two down.
The third Spider didn't attack. It hung back, clinging to a vertical support beam. Its red eyes zoomed in on Kael. It was calculating. It realized that closing the distance was dangerous.
A panel on its back slid open. A small, rotary nail-gun emerged.
"Ranged combat," Kael whispered. "Damn."
The Spider fired.
Ping. Ping. Ping.
Three-inch steel spikes slammed into the metal floor around Kael. He scrambled behind the bulk of the crusher, pressing his back against the cold steel. The spikes ricocheted off the machinery, sparking wildly.
He was pinned. He couldn't move forward without being shot. He couldn't go back.
And the whole tower was starting to list to the right. The angle of the floor was becoming steep. Gravity was changing.
Gravity.
Kael looked up. Above the Spider, suspended on a heavy chain, was a crucible of molten lead. It was part of the casting line. The crucible was tilted, held in place by a locking pin.
If he could pull that pin, the lead would pour.
But the pin was twenty feet in the air. And he had no magic to reach it.
He looked at the floor. The angle was increasing. Loose tools were starting to slide.
He looked at the Spider. It was braced against the beam, secure in its magnetic grip.
Kael spotted a coil of high-tension wire hanging from a spool near the crusher. He grabbed the end of it. He tied it quickly to the heavy wrench he still held.
"Hey!" Kael shouted, stepping out from cover.
The Spider swiveled instantly, targeting him.
Kael threw the wrench. Not at the Spider. Not at the crucible.
He threw it at the counter-weight of the crane holding the crucible.
The wrench clanged against the weight, wrapping the wire around it. It wasn't enough to move it.
But the Spider saw the motion. Its logic dictated that it eliminate the threat source. It tracked the wire back to Kael's hand.
It fired a volley of spikes.
Kael dove. The spikes missed him, but one of them hit the spool of wire he had anchored to the floor. The force of the impact, combined with the tension, caused the spool to spin wildy.
But Kael wasn't relying on the wire. He was relying on the Spider's reaction.
When the Spider fired, the recoil pushed it slightly backward against the beam. The beam, already stressed by the tilting tower, groaned.
Kael grabbed a canister of industrial lubricant from the shelf next to him.
"Catch," he muttered.
He bowled the canister across the floor. The tilt of the room carried it straight toward the Spider.
The Spider, perceiving a projectile, slashed at it with its claw.
The canister burst.
Gallons of high-viscosity grease exploded over the beam and the Spider.
Magnets are strong. But friction is required for stability. With the grease coating the beam, the Spider's claws lost their purchase. The magnets held it to the metal, but they couldn't stop it from sliding.
The Spider screeched as it began to slide down the vertical beam. It tried to correct, digging its claws in, but the grease was too thick.
It slid straight into the open intake of the blast furnace below.
There was a brief, bright flash as the magnesium casing of the Spider ignited in the heat.
Kael slumped against the crusher, his breath coming in ragged gasps. His left arm—the stump—was throbbing in agony. He was covered in sweat, grease, and dust.
"Three down," he whispered.
"Impressive," Vance's voice came back over the speakers. He sounded weaker now, less manic. Maybe the pain of his broken face was setting in. "But you are still trapped, 734. The tower is falling. And I have locked the exits."
Kael stood up. He walked to the edge of the catwalk. The tower was indeed tilting. The horizon through the shattered windows was crooked.
"You forgot one thing, Vance," Kael said, tapping his comms unit, though he knew Vance couldn't hear him.
He looked at the massive ventilation fan set into the far wall. It was currently spinning slowly, deactivated.
"You built this place to withstand a hurricane," Kael said to himself. "Which means the external vents are reinforced."
He limped toward the fan. He didn't need a door. He just needed a hole.
He wedged his pry-bar into the fan blades, jamming them. Then, using the last of his strength, he squeezed through the gap between the blades.
Cool, salty air hit his face.
He was outside. He was clinging to the exterior grating of the Design Tower, three hundred feet above the burning chaos of Cinder.
Below him, he saw the chaos. The mines had emptied. A river of grey-clad slaves was flowing toward the docks, smashing through the barricades. He saw the flashes of gunfire, the explosions of the Iron-Striders.
And in the center of the mob, he saw a giant. A speck from this height, but unmistakable. Adam, swinging a hammer, clearing a path.
Kael smiled grimly.
He looked toward the docks. A massive dreadnought, The Iron Lung, was moored there. Steam was rising from its funnels.
"Hang on, Isolde," Kael whispered into the wind. "I'm coming."
He began the long, treacherous climb down the scaffolding, the fire of the revolution burning bright beneath him.