The door of Traver’s mysteriously teleporting clinic slid open once again, and this time, the environment on the other side was much, much different. I don’t know what I had been expecting from the area where this facility's power core resided. Maybe I had thought it would be even more corroded and miserable than the rest of the bunker combined. My Core, for instance, had thought it might possess more monsters stalking the halls.

  But no.

  It looked to be the exact opposite.

  It was…it was completely pristine on the other side of Traver’s door. The far wall of the hallway we appeared to be just outside of was totally spotless. Cool fluorescent light shone brightly from overhead just beyond the doorway, illuminating the immaculate walls of the oddly white, nearly ceramic steel. I couldn't even tell where the light was coming from to illuminate the hall so clearly. It wasn't coming from the puck lights I'd seen in other parts of the bunker. It was like...it was just there somehow.

  “What?” I breathed, the sight of the uncorroded bunker raising my hackles for some reason. Something about it felt…wrong.

  Wrong, but real. This didn’t have the half-dreamlike atmosphere of Traver’s illusioned clinic.

  “Behold where the bulk of the power from the core has been going, all these long years,” I heard Travers sneer from my right. Shifting my eyes his way, I saw the ancient Lich wave one hand dismissively towards the opening we still hadn’t walked through. “Lucretia made sure the curse would not inhabit the halls of the Engineering sector, for fear that it would degrade the core itself. Even then, if nothing else had been done this area would have rotted to a certain degree. However, I believe the creature itself took a page from its creator’s book. It’s vain and fastidious. It doesn’t want to dwell for millennia in a moldering ruin. Thus, the AutoMats are still running in this sector, maintaining and cleaning its immediate environs.”

  I furrowed my brow at the disguised undead. “The what?”

  Travers didn’t need to speak. I got my answer anyway.

  I heard the sound of it before it came into sight. From beyond the doorway and off to the right, I heard what sounded like the whir of gears and the hum of an electrical device. Before I could even prepare myself, a matte black, seemingly plastic rim appeared, creeping along the far wall of the hallway. In moments, it fully came into view.

  If I didn’t know any better…I would say that was a fucking roomba.

  It was larger than the small, robotic vacuum cleaners I was familiar with from back on Earth. The circumference of the device was greater than the typical foot of the conveniences, looking to be two to three times greater. It somehow clung to the far wall through no mechanism I could see, no rail or guidelines visible before it. There were no markings or seams on the surface of the apparent automaton, and the result was that the device looked like nothing more than a disturbing black circle of void upon the pristine surface.

  Either that or an insect, patiently inspecting its prey.

  Because it was watching us. Somehow, although I could see no sensors or lenses on it’s shell, I could tell.

  This thing could see us.

  Oddly, the thing let out a flat beeping noise and then resumed its journey. In moments, it had whirred away out of sight of the doorway and down the hall from us. I could hear the journey of the thing far after it had fled my line of sight, slowly creeping down the hall from us.

  I eventually found my voice. “The fuck was that?”

  Travers snorted at me. “One of the AutoMats. Caretakers and defenders both, for this facility and the others. They clean, they repair, and they could even kill in defense of the Netherim people. Once upon a time, we truly depended on them. Until the man who was the Security Chief in charge of the AutoMats disabled them so Lucretia and her defilers could slaughter us all. Enamored as he was, I’m sure if Harlow could, he would have turned their Lases upon us. At the time, they were unable to attack residents. However…that merely meant they sat dormant while we were slaughtered to the last.”

  Lases…

  While the Lich had been talking, another one of the ‘AutoMat’s had crept past. This time, it had been along the ceiling. It had beeped at the two of us, as well.

  “Why are they…?”

  “It’s registering our presence,” Travers explained, surprisingly patient. “It recognizes my disguised form, but you are not in the resident database. My presence is the only reason they’re not immediately opening fire upon you, pretender, and only because we’re not technically in the Core Sector yet. The environs of my clinic still register to the AutoMats as being part of the Medical Center. If we had stepped out into the hall, we would both be ash right about now.”

  I felt a shiver run down my spine at that thought. “Please tell me I’m not going to be dodging lasers from glorified vacuum cleaners as I try and kill this damn thing.”

  “Oh, are you scared, pretender?” Travers mocked. “Don’t be. I’ve already thought of this. Here. Put this on your lapel.”

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  I looked down at the Lich’s disguised, bony hand to find that he was holding a somewhat familiar sight.

  An ID card, not that dissimilar to the one Cecily had both told me to take and then used to save Aveline and I from the controlled bulk of Harlow. Only instead of being hers, I could tell this card belonged to Travers himself. Printed on the surface of it was a much younger, much more relaxed, and much more living version of the undead at my side, along with his name and a string of numbers.

  I did as he asked, taking it from his palm and snapping the alligator clip onto the mantle of my cloak. “What about you? Don’t you need this?”

  “Normally, yes,” Travers nodded, reaching into the illusioned breast of his decayed lab coat. “The Core Sector has heightened security, as I said. If I wandered out there without a valid keycard, then I’m liable to be…‘lasered’, as you put it. However…while you were busy fetching your fellows, I went and retrieved this.”

  To my shock, the Lich pulled out another familiar item from his coat. So familiar, in fact, that I’d had it myself earlier.

  Another ID card.

  Cecily’s.

  “How?!”

  Travers smirked at me with deathless, illusioned lips. “I told you. While you were gone, I anticipated this issue. I retraced your steps to the Maturation Hall-”

  The fuck was that? Was he talking about the giant hall filled with dead people that I’d been mentally referring to the ‘hall of the dead’?

  Maturation Hall….

  What had been matured there?

  “-and retrieved the card from Cecily’s withered corpse,” Travers continued, seemingly unaware of his slip-up. “With this, the both of us will be able to venture these halls to the main control room, where the Wyrm waits. One moment.” After clipping the ID card of his daughter’s deceased mother to his own lapel, the Lich briefly narrowed his eyes in concentration….

  And swept out one hand sharply.

  The last time he had made a move like that, my companions and I had been swept from his lap like we were refuse telekinetically.

  This time, though…

  The both of us changed.

  I felt it as a wave of cold Mana swept over me, and suddenly I was no longer Nathan. Instead, as I looked down at myself, I was Travers instead. I frantically patted myself down for a moment, only to be relieved when they passed through the surface of the illusion suddenly layered over my body. The Lich had transferred his own false appearance onto me instead. Looking up, I nearly expected to see a desiccated zombie in a lab coat standing before me, shorn of its own illusion.

  Instead, I found Cecily.

  At least, I thought it was her.

  Cecily Montblanc was…a short woman, honestly. The top of her head barely came up to the bottom of my shoulders. Long, straight blonde hair fell down her back in a curtain of gold, while her slight form was clothed in a red turtle neck, black slacks, and a pristine white lab coat. Thin wire-frame glasses were perched upon her slightly larger-than-average nose, the circular lenses glinting in the fluorescent light. Almost irritably, ‘Cecily’ swiped her loose hair behind one ear and fixed me with bright emerald eyes. A familiar expression of disdain crossed those features, of which I could see more than a hint of Aveline in.

  I took a deep breath. “I see,” I said quietly, inspecting the ‘woman’. “So this is what Cecily looked like, in life.”

  Travers, because that had to be who this actually was, nodded at me, illusioned as his long-dead lover. “Yes,” ‘She’ said in a clear voice, surprisingly much smokier than I was expecting. “This is her shortly before her death at the hands of Lucretia.” Seemingly unmoved, ‘she’ nodded firmly. “This will do. Now, listen closely. The Core Sector isn’t large, but it is filled with the AutoMats. Your illusion would not hold up under intense scrutiny from another. It will shatter the moment you reach out and touch anything. It will barely hold under your footsteps.”

  Don’t touch anything, got it.

  “Luckily, the AutoMats are not programmed to be intelligent,” ‘She’ said, with a dour smirk. It looked…odd on Cecily’s face. “They will scan us, but their scanners are not capable of piercing illusions. We’ll simply register as Dr’s Travers and Montblanc, here to check on the core. The foolish Wyrm has relied too heavily on Harlow and the army of AutoMat’s inside the control room to defend itself.”

  “Hold up,” I said, raising a hand to stop him. “Is that why you’ve never tried to kill the Wyrm before now? The AutoMats and Harlow?”

  The disguised Lich eyed me evilly for a moment and then shook ‘her’ head. “No,” ‘She’ said irritably. “You need a valid Engineering sector ID card to enter the core, and Cecily was Chief Engineer. I was…never able to breach the door to the Maturation Hall, where I knew she and Aveline lay. Harlow, however, did the job for me when he was chasing you. Thus, we now have the ability to get in with her card. Now, if you’re finished?”

  I raised my other hand in surrender.

  “Once inside, I’ll distract the beast and the AutoMats so you can try to slay it. You would not be able to withstand the concentrated fire. I can, and I’ll make sure to deal with the automatons while it calls for Harlow. It’ll be your job to deal with the Wyrm once inside. Do you understand?”

  I frowned at him. “There’s no other way into the core than the front door? Kind of a…bad way to conduct an assassination, even of a monster.”

  Travers shook ‘her’ head sharply. “No. The Core control room was constructed in such a way as to have only one way in and out. No vents, no access paths, no side ducts. It doesn’t even have rest facilities inside. It’s the perfect stronghold if you’re a leech. No way in, or out, with a vault door thicker even than the one on the Maturation Hall.”

  “Then…I guess I’m ready.”

  As I’ll ever be.

  At that, Travers turned on ‘her’ heel and strode out into the hall without another word. As I followed ‘her’ out, I don’t know what I was expecting.

  But it sure as hell wasn’t a pleasantly scented air that smelled freshly cleaned.

  To my right, I saw Travers wrinkle ‘her’ nose. “After all these years, they still use pine scent,” ‘She’ grumbled, before shaking her head. “I hate pine scent. Follow me…Jonathon.”

  I nodded at the disguised Lich, casting an eye up and down the hall we were in as I did so. “After you…Cecily.”

  Travers stalked off, and I followed.

  Now that we were out in the hall, I could see that these pristine white walls were veritably festooned with pitch-black AutoMats crawling on them. There must have been dozens of them all along the length of the hallway, and I think most of them were meant to be stationary. They seemed to be crouching over the entrances to different rooms, their sliding doors barred by the circular shape of their bodies.

  The hall itself was…pretty damn long, I could see. Maybe a few hundred feet away, I thought I could see a separation at the end of it, but the bright white light was hurting my eyes after so long spent in the dark of the rest of the bunker. I couldn’t be sure.

  All I could do was follow Travers disguised form down the hall that led towards the Aetheric Fusion Collider core.

  The entire time, I was greeted by beeps from the AutoMats as they scanned me.

  That was going to get old quick.

  I could just tell.