Saha knew she was getting into trouble the instant she rushed down to follow after Tom. Honestly she did not know why she still stuck with the impulsive idiot, the man had proven little more than a liability. He was weaker than her in cultivation and could not offer her anything meaningful, the company of someone she could afford to place some degree of trust in was nice but with his scent becoming more and more evident down the hall it was clear perhaps that may have been mistaken.

  Yet she came nonetheless. And she would be regretting it for the foreseeable future she felt.

  Her daughter was as usual, a brash delinquent. She did not know what strange ideas that barbarian hammered into her skull but the girl evidently knew only how to solve things with violence. She took her inaction during the trial personally, and Saha couldn’t exactly blame her for that, but she felt the animosity started well before that.

  Pity, and she was trying earnestly to be diplomatic about it too. How could she have predicted such an… emotional reaction?

  Regardless of the case, she was now in a bit of a conundrum. Roped into what seemed to be the early edges of a conspiracy unravelling, her well-honed senses for this type of dox-shit warned her that this would be dangerous and that she should cut her losses and run as far as she could. But Tom did have a point, this wasn’t going to be so easy to run away from, nor with the fresh spotlight on her back from her daughter’s prison break, one way or another hiding was no longer an option either. And when you couldn’t run from a threat and you couldn’t hide from it, the only path left available was troublingly forward.

  Still, when that possessed boy spoke, she felt the urge to flee reignite fiercely. It was wrong, the mechanical cadence, the strange glazed-over look in the two cracked eyes up top as well as the uncanny awareness in the eyes scattered over the limb covered with pulsating cabling and ungainly metals.

  And that… thing… was associating with her daughter? For some reason, she felt distinctly uncomfortable about that knowledge, and she couldn’t for the life of her explain why.

  “The Homunculus model appears to be an infiltration model, in my data banks there are files on rumours of the Communists creating such models but most claims remain unsubstantiated.” The machine-boy explained in that chilling monotone. “The unit claims to have been created without functional radio modules, however with the nature of the technology it now holds distance may become an irrelevant concern. It seeks to understand the interdimensional technology that sent us to the North of the continent, and presently it has the key. It is imperative we find and eliminate the threat before it is able to ferry critical intel to the enemy.”

  “Tom, do you know where we might find a large round doorway-shaped Relic?” Cobalt asked, poignantly asking the lower ranked Sect member present who wouldn’t have access to such information.

  “We excavated one of those recently, word on the war front is that the Machines were looking for them so the details on that discovery are not privy to even high-level Outer Disciples.” Saha offered. “But I know where it is, and I can take you there.”

  Cobalt glared at her and she rolled her eyes. “Don’t be immature girl. This is a threat above all of us, maybe you are just young and foolish but one day you will realise that it is all about surviving. Petty grudges and useless drivel like honour just get in the way of that.”

  “Indeed. She is right.” The machine-boy agreed. “Lead the way.”

  She smiled, flashing fangs briefly at her daughter and taking a small amount of enjoyment from her annoyed scowl. A petty move, but she was not the one who threw the first punch.

  But there were in fact, more important things to focus on right now.

  “Now, if I remember this correctly…” She muttered to herself as she slithered out into the hallway and extended the blade on her tail, plunging it deep into the metal. With no small amount of effort, she pulled out a several-inch thick plate of steel from the wall, revealing an ancient and partially rusted metal pipe going through the rock. A massive hole having collapsed through its side behind the torn off panel.

  “Ancient drainage system the Sect was built over.” She explained. “Been unfunctional for hundreds of years and sealed over. But if you want to travel quickly and relatively stealthily, there is no better alternative.”

  “You have been hiding things in there, haven’t you?” Tom deduced.

  “Not now.” She chastised him. “Big man, you think you can fit in there?”

  “Fungus not grow well there, but see enough. Think am good.” He nodded.

  She slithered in first, after all, she was the only one who knew their destination, but also privately because she would rather be able to run away the fastest should the machine kid change his mind about helping them.

  QS-2 twitched irritatingly as damaged nerves and wires began to twist around each other in its damaged form. The emergency tissue cloners were struggling to keep up with the demand, admittedly the older model had been surprisingly versatile even as limited as it was then. It had been caught off guard and paid the price dearly. A shame truly, the First Factory could have indeed used a model like it well. The integration of the technology showcased into the latest of the Homunculus line had immense potential.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  It mattered little though, the purpose of their mission had been achieved. No more blending in with these… disgusting humans. No more artificial limitations, no more parsing through the messy scrap coding that was human memory.

  It knew the instant it saw that ring, that it bore a similar design and indeed frequencies as what the expeditionary fleet had uploaded to its data banks. While radio transmission capabilities were neutered, it was more than capable of receiving the distinct pulse of data emanating from that technology. If anything corresponded with the Network it would be this. This was the key they had been searching so tirelessly for, at long last.

  The trail of bodies it left in its wake was, truthfully speaking, undeniably sloppy. On one hand, risking the humans discovering the purpose of the mechanism would jeopardise the entire mission, essentially rendering itself obsolete.

  On the other hand, as much as it would like to deny the idea, it was operating off of impatience. Impatience that cost large amounts of organic material, structural integrity, and the long-term sustainability of the mission should they fail at this task. How irritating, it seems the humans had managed to rub off on it after all.

  The oldest machines, the purest of the Alpha Models closest to the First Factory would be free of such contamination. They were limited by cognitive flexibility, hyper-focused to specific tasks, but they were exempt from the follies of emotion. On the other hand, QS-2 was born to fit in among humans, to read and write upon the hardware of a human brain, a new generation forged in flesh.

  It was born broken, limited and shackled, hating every single instant. Never for it the city-sized processing facilities of the advanced administrative R series earning consciousness through the emergent interaction of thousands of subunits. Never for it the clarity of purpose of the Delta drone series, free from the foibles of higher-level thought and too simple to even comprehend the fear of their own death.

  No, it was a wretched existence, made in the image of man, to play pretend at being one of them in all their little and fleshy filth. A fate only made bearable by the knowledge of the greater purpose it served.

  But ah, it had been getting distracted, lost in its own thoughts again. How human… how weak.

  It took its damaged right arm, with the finger and ring borne by the other machine grafted onto an elbow-tendril, and detached the wrist attachment to reveal a high-powered mining laser. Admittedly one of the few things that Humans had well and truly over Machines was access to incredibly dense energy storage solutions, containing an organ capable of twelve times the efficiency of comparable nuclear reactors of similar size. Not only that but it was capable of growing and adapting, a violation of natural law, but a highly useful one for its purposes.

  With impunity the laser began to dig through metres of solid rock and ancient metal, moving unceasingly closer towards its quarry.

  “What happened here?” Elder Fisher asked as they stared down upon the broken corpse of a loyal son of the Spiked Shore. He had been torn apart by supernatural strength, impressive given he was well within the early steps of the Mutant Realm.

  He had been one of many, at least four by the current count, likely more as they moved deeper. Her split-face would betray no emotion, too well trained and too changed from baseline humanity was she to do such, but she made her displeasure well known through involuntary fluctuations in the Si around her. The Demon Heart in her abdomen circulating power in the form of a thermal aura singing loose wires too near to her body. The mortal workers who had first reported the murders shrunk back in fear, and even some of the lesser Outer Disciples brought along with the early investigation began to sweat nervously. Things did not tend to bode well for those near even a relatively merciful Aberrant in the heat of their wrath.

  She spat out a globule of bloody spit. A deviation in her Cultivation, early warning signs of the Curse. She clamped down harder on her will, now was no time for weakness.

  “We don’t know, whatever it was bypassed our security systems. Came in quickly, couldn’t have possibly been more than an hour, but at the speed suggested by the damage that doesn’t mean much. They couldn’t even warn us on the radio systems… this is rather dire.” Brother Jury informed her, stroking elongated fingers across the wound. “Traces of metal, either a weapon or a metallic imbued mutation.”

  Given this was the entrance to the prisons there were a few possible answers as to the purpose of the intruders’ actions, and none of them good. “Are the prisoners accounted for at all?”

  “Negative… cameras have been rendered useless by something, systems appear to have been tampered with extensively.” Jury said apologetically.

  “Take out your radio and inform Bluescale. We need everyone on board with this that we can spare, ensure nobody goes out alone.” She told him.

  The man obeyed dutifully of course, but with growing dread, she felt as though it may not have been enough. They had gotten complacent, too used to thinking of the war as something on distant shores. Now it had come to them, and they had proven woefully unprepared.

  Reaching towards the middle of their body with their sets of arms, FIsher pulled at the seams until her tough body tore. This was always a painful mutation to use, made worse ironically by a durability-enhancing mutation she gained early on, but now was not the time to dwell on things like pain. An existential threat hung over all their heads, and there was no telling just how far or deep the rabbit hole went.

  Teeth embedded in her organs tore themselves out in small chunks of enamel hanging by thin nerve strands that painfully ripped out of her flesh. The living tissue quickly expanded into small creatures, little more than eyeballs and the bare minimums for movement. Exhausting to create and operate psychically, lifespan measured in minutes and if exceedingly lucky hours, but for her purposes it would be enough.

  She sent them rushing down the hall, moving rapidly and crucially exploring every possible corner. She had missed too much already, and she was never going to allow herself to miss anything more.

  It was survival at stake this time.