It was time to see what this new suit could do. Ignasius had added a few tricks to Gondo's repertoire.

  He struggled to straighten his arm and engage the wrist mounted acid sprayer that Ignasius had modeled after the legendary hero of ancient earth, Spider Man.

  The acrid spray jetted from his wrist and hit the side of Burt’s body, completely covering the dampener. Burt reared back from the blast and lost his hold on the magnetic field. Gondo landed on the ground with legs parted and one fist on the ground. Hell yeah.

  As the acid started slowly melting into the dampener, Gondo could feel his power coming back, but didn’t tap it. He’d studied more than just Casting and Mathematics at the Academy. He’d also learned how to fight.

  He rushed Burt with his signature move, an uppercut to the jaw followed with a quick series of jabs to the stomach. The Reeler was taller than Gondo, and grabbed him attempting a leg sweep, but Gondo leaned back to deliver a superkick to his face.

  The Reeler landed on his back, temporarily stunned.

  “Mano a mano, huh?” Gondo said. He stalked towards the fallen opponent.

  Burt’s hand found the inside of his cloak and he rapidly drew a plasma pistol, trained it on Gondo’s chest, and fired three rounds. The suit absorbed most of the damage, but Burt was left with a split second to continue his attack. He produced a frag grenade and rolled it towards Gondo as he continued to fire. Blasts ricochetted off Gondo’s chest as he was pushed backwards by their force. The grenade clacked into position and detonated just in front of the Caster, blasting him backward.

  Burt stood amidst the smoke and scanned the area in front of him with his holo visor, searching for Gondo’s position. Suddenly he was grappled from behind, and he heard a voice in his ear.

  “You’re all bluster Albemarle. This one’s for my friends.” Gondo said, and launched the Reeler with a kick into the spinning fans below.

  The wall of the cone clanged as Burt’s weight hit its side and he began to slide downwards. His right hand went in first, flaying the skin from his fingers. Then the bones caught, and quickly dragged the entire arm through the blades. The fan stopped, locked on the large chunk of flesh of Burt’s shoulder, leaving him screaming and staring at the bloody stump of his arm. Finally, the fan pushed into overdrive, and sucked the Reeler through with a chunking sound.

  The sounds of his screams echoed through the chamber as his mangled body was pulled through the vacuum.

  Gondo took a moment to check himself for injury. Minor damage to the suit, shrapnel wounds to the areas of his face not covered by his crown, but relatively unharmed. Not a drop of Moonshield expended. Iggy would be proud.

  Now to check on the rest of their unexpected guests.

  ...

  Ignasius had to give it to this little breaching party. They were progressing through his traps remarkably well. They had already traversed the hall of boiling oil, using their full suits of armor to avoid being burned alive. Same for the magma room. These mercs didn’t have the same top of the line gear that Krueger’s men sported. They had opted for custom mods which gave them much more adaptability.

  The beleaguered attackers eventually found their way into a medium sized chamber with no apparent traps. Ignasius hailed them from the comm speakers.

  “I’m amazed you’ve made it this far my friends, but I implore you, respectfully, to turn back.”

  They stared blankly at the speaker, then resumed their dread march. Ignasius activated the EMP field in the room.

  The advancing mercenaries stopped dead in their tracks. The EMP fried all the electrical components in their gear.

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  “I should start with that, next time!” Ignasius said and chuckled.

  Believing them stuck, he began to divert resources into other areas of the attack. He stopped when he noticed movement in the room. “Impossible...”

  Armor ejected from the forms of the mercs and bounced off the corners of the room. They climbed from their nonfunctioning gear and regrouped, producing melee weapons. Ignasius could see their bare arms and legs were covered in swirling serpent tattoos. “Snake Clan,” Ignasius stated, finally understanding.

  The Snake Clan were the Endless City’s most tenacious gang. Known for their incredible toughness and determination, they had claimed an entire kingdom’s worth of territory through sheer body count.

  Now wielding a variety of swords, hammers and knives, they continued on through the passage. One brawny gentleman in the back actually dragged the net and trident of a Retiarius.

  “This has gone a little too far,” Ignasius said.

  He closed off the corridor they were currently marching through and funneled a very potent knockout gas into the room. The attackers immediately held their breath and began working to pry open the doors. Interminable minutes passed as they labored, falling one by one. The last man standing stared into the camera mounted in the corner as he finally took a breath and fell.

  “Well done comrades,” Ignasius said quietly to the room of sleeping bloodthirsty mercenaries, then turned his full attentions back to the assault.

  ...

  The Safe House was exposed. The squabble between the two factions abruptly halted when senior leadership arrived and slapped them into shape. The full force of both parties had decimated their defenses.

  The enemy had swarmed through the ruin of the gate. They were now negotiating a variety of Ignasius’ traps. Once the tunnel was completely full, Lowell would collapse it.

  “The bunker has fallen. Ignasius, prep the Sunsword. Gondo, get back here and begin transferring what we’ll need onboard. I’ll burn the drives,” Lowell said through the comms.

  It was a massive waste of resources, but now that their position was compromised there was no alternative. Lowell couldn’t help the thought that something had shifted in the power struggle between the independents and the A.E.C. If anything, now was the time for them to lick their wounds after their defeat at the concourse. Krueger had altered tactics, and whatever that meant, it was bad news for them.

  Ignasius bolted from his workshop, a box of his coveted mementoes hovering and tottering in front of him. He did a 180 and disappeared into the hanger bay.

  Lowell took a moment to look around at their underground home, ceiling rattling from repeated concussions, red lights strobing and equipment shaking off tables to explode into pieces on the ground. They had lived here for over 5 years, and this was the last sight they would ever have of it.

  Just then the flash of a welder lit the doorway from the main entrance tunnel. The breaching party was here.

  Shaking out of their momentary reverie, they sprang into action. They inputted the command to destroy the tunnel and a cacophony violence echoed through the room. The welder went dead.

  The vital data they needed from the lab had already been uploaded into Ignasius mainframe, and was always safe, but they needed to fry all the remaining data banks in the station manually.

  Gondo returned in a blur and began salvaging equipment, as Lowell pushed back their chair and began removing the data banks that were racked underneath their workstation. They pulled out the drives, produced a spray can of acid, and melted each one in turn. They couldn’t leave any remnants of their discoveries to be salvaged by the hyenas at their door.

  After returning to their quarters and quickly grabbing their personal effects, Lowell entered the hangar. Gondo and Ignasius had finished loading the craft.

  For a spaceship, the Sunsword was relatively small, but still contained the core elements of the Safe House. It was peaked in the same lance-like shape of the Glaive, and Gondo’s crown. It hummed expectantly, and as the trio ran inside, the rampway began to close.

  “Shame to have to say goodbye to this place, I’ll miss it. Still, we always knew this day might come,” Lowell said.

  “One day they’ll make this bunker into a museum for what we’ve accomplished here,” Gondo said as he strapped himself into a chair in the cockpit.

  “Let’s hope we live long enough to visit!” Iganasius said, and socketed himself beside Gondo.

  Lowell took the pilot’s chair, belted up, and engaged the craft.

  Smoke blanketed the floor of the hanger as the ship prepared for liftoff. Lowell and Ignasius quickly rattled off system checks. Finally, it was time to leave.

  A hatch opened in the ceiling and the craft ascended inside. It hit the tramway that would propel it to the launch site. This was the most secretive exit of the Safe House, and Ignasius had tunneled it himself.

  The mood was tense and melancholy as the craft travelled into position. The Sunsword locked into place in the launching complex, the ready lights went green, and they were suddenly propelled upwards and outwards at high velocity, leaving behind the city they had called home, and into the stars which beckoned them ever forward, into the terrifying abyss.