Hostilities didn’t continue. In fact, this new adversary never even seemed to move unprompted. All it did was stand there, facing Finn with eerie stillness.Hostilities didn’t continue. In fact, this new adversary never even seemed to move unprompted. All it did was stand there, facing Finn with eerie stillness.

  On the other end, Finn just stood there watching its every move—of which there were none. Not a twitch, like a porcelain statue staring him down. After a few more breaths, his eyes drifted back to his bisected staff. A weapon he had amassed so many credits for, destroyed in an instant. Rendered useless as if it were nothing more than a plastic kids toy.

  This thing… It was on another level, wasn’t it? Neither Mistral nor Nar had displayed that level of speed. Even Viperia, for all the strength her unbinding granted her, had not managed this. What was, for all intents and purposes, instantaneous movement. He couldn't do anything, just let the dread settle in his stomach at the question of how this thing had gained its power.

  Perhaps equally disquieting were its origins, given that Gunther had been very particular about this thing's species. It didn’t fit into the categories he was familiar with, if it had one at all.

  Though there was something.

  Finn could sense its body was made up of a strange material, of sorts. A body composition so out of the ordinary and so far beyond his area of expertise he was left fumbling around in the dark. With his sensory capabilities, that was ridiculous. And yet the truth was right in front of him, clear as day.

  The way it assembled without delay from nothing gave Finn a hint of what its true nature entailed. Small parts making up a greater collective, congregating into a fearsome warrior for the purpose of driving off invaders.

  Each building block was tiny, but had a pattern to it, in turn comprising tinier building blocks. The individual parts were so small Finn couldn’t even identify them with his senses. He’d thought precision had been his selling point, yet he found himself coming up short here. His only option was to guess.

  “This,” Gunther said, nodding toward the barrier between him and survival, “is Amalgam. The guard dog of this dimension. Built, trained, and leashed to serve Wanderlust’s whims, even now that he’s rotting.”

  He crossed his arms, his dark gaze narrowed and focused. “From what I've seen, it’s got two marching orders. One is what you just saw; no one lays a finger on the precious merchandise, ever. Second? It's programmed to make damn sure we don’t claw our way out of this hole.”

  Programmed? Yeah, it had been clear that this Amalgam was made by something else, a robot of sorts. But that wasn’t all there was to it. Based on the context clues he’d been given, he could tell this thing was a group. No, that was too broad of a term. It was more accurate to say it was a colony of microscopic machines.

  Nanomachines, to be exact.

  He’d never considered the possibility, and considering that they were beyond his ability to affect individually, he had no hope of communicating with them. Or maybe this appointed guardian was smart enough to communicate and simply refused to, whether due to sentience or some sort of access code Wanderlust had imparted on it within his lifetime.

  There were just too many unknowns.

  “And you have a plan to steal some of these items?” Finn ventured.

  “No,” his new ally denied, walking up to Amalgam without a care in the world. “The reason I brought you here was to show you how dangerous it was.”

  “You could’ve told me that on the way,” Finn snapped, with more heat in his voice than intended. “Why bother with a demonstration when we were going to have to deal with it anyway? I’m wasting time by standing here.” He couldn’t afford to lose more time than he absolutely had to. If his body succumbed to the poison before he got out of here, he was as good as dead.

  “Kid, this was necessary,” Gunther rebuked. “No better way to learn than seeing something with your own eyes. Now that you properly appreciate the danger, we can move on to the escape route. Follow me.” With that, he turned and left, showing his back to the Unbound-level killer bot as if it were just another Tuesday.

  “You would still have to fight that thing,” Finn pointed out. “If we’re going to do that anyway, why not do it back there?” They were moving into a side door, Amalgam’s blank visage following them with its “head” all the way. Finn kept an eye on it, despite knowing it wouldn’t make a difference if it decided to kill him. Unease was all it brought him, along with the humiliating knowledge that he was once again being allowed to do something by forces far beyond himself.

  “Terrain advantage,” Gunther replied succinctly, as though that explained everything. It didn’t sound like he was going to say anything more on the topic. And Finn’s input clearly wasn’t being taken into consideration, so the next best option was to change the subject.

  “How long have you been here?” he asked.

  “Couple months, I’d say. Hard to keep track of time sometimes.”

  “Where are you finding food?” It was something he’d wondered about. How else would this guy have stayed alive? He was fairly certain Unbound still needed to eat.

  “Outside.” Gunther sighed. “You don’t need to worry about that, this isn’t even going to take a day.”

  Finn frowned, immediately skeptical. “You’re saying we can fight that and escape within twenty-four hours? Tell me what you’re leaving out. Unless you’re being delusional.”

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  Gunther stopped in his tracks, aura rippling with equal parts surprise and amusement. “Oh, I’m leaving a lot out. Delusional, though? No. You’re just going to have to trust me, Shade—and you’ll hate every second of it.”

  Trust him? The concept sounded ridiculous, and yet he found it intuitive all the same. Finn’s instincts were telling him, hilariously, that this person was trustworthy even though he intellectually knew that couldn’t be the case. Not this soon after meeting someone. He’d never felt anything remotely similar to this since… He scowled. Thinking about her would only distract him at this point. He’d already acknowledged the similarities between them.

  Out loud, he said, “What makes me so much more important than everyone before me? You said they all died, but here I am following you to who knows where without the slightest idea of what’s going to happen. How is this going to be any different?” He halted his footsteps. “Do you even want to get out?”

  The large hallway was totally silent for a few eternal heartbeats, nothing but the sound of his own labored breathing reaching his ears.

  “As a matter of fact, yes. You are not a corpse right now because I pulled you out of that water.” Gunther’s chuckle was low, edged with irritation as he stepped closer, his hand gripping Finn’s shoulder just enough to make his presence known. “You don’t have to be different from the others—I am. I’ve seen what this place can do. I’ve gained insight, learned the rules. And this time...” His gaze sharpened, a shadow crossing his face. “This time, I won’t fail.”

  From here, Finn could look up into the taller man’s onyx eyes and see the resolve in them, the iron-clad certainty that he believed what he was saying. Not a hint of doubt in his aura either. Nothing but raw intensity looked back at him, and he didn’t shy away. He kept his body steady, not allowing himself to be cowed.

  It would have felt natural for him to say he’d faced worse things, but that wasn’t true, and they both knew it. The truth was that Finn had no idea what this person was capable of, and he somehow knew it was far worse than anyone whose power he had witnessed before. He was beginning to believe it, now. This was someone who had come close to reaching the peak.

  One day, he would get there as well.

  “Alright,” he eventually spoke, shrugging off the hand and walking further down the massive, eerily clean corridor. “Let’s go, then.”

  Gunther followed, his footsteps measured, his tone quieter now, yet carrying the same weight as a thunderclap. “Good. First step’s the hardest, Shade. Remember that when you start questioning yourself again.”

  Finn didn’t respond, focused on the endless corridor stretching before them. The pristine walls gleamed in the dim, sourceless light. There was no sign of wear, no cracks, nothing to suggest age or decay. Just an oppressive, sterile perfection that felt more hostile than inviting. Every few steps, Finn glanced over his shoulder, half-expecting to see Amalgam silently pursuing them. It wasn’t, but the sensation of being watched never left.

  At length, Finn broke the silence. “How much farther?”

  “Close enough,” Gunther responded, his voice tinged with humor or menace. Or both, he couldn’t quite tell. “Patience.”

  Patience was hard to cultivate when you had deadly poison running through your veins, and the few ways you had of slowing it down were unavailable. But he said nothing more, keeping his eyes on the next step. No reason to lose sight of the present.

  He made his way through the facility, Gunther walking a few steps ahead after the next room. It was more convenient, considering his fellow prisoner had been stranded here for much longer and actually knew the way. After some time, though, he began to notice something. In the walls, various mechanisms that would trigger upon receiving specific sensory inputs. They were not harmless.

  “Traps?” he observed, hiding how out of breath he was.

  Gunther tilted his head. “You spotted that, did you? I know the way to avoid those, but if you can detect them on your own, that’ll make things easier.”

  To demonstrate, Finn called on his power to outline the exact path they needed to take in black and white, using red to indicate the places on the wall and ceiling where the spikes and flamethrowers would come out. Pain lanced through his skull, threatening to break his composure, but he didn’t let any of his discomfort show.

  It got him a nod of acknowledgement. “Handy.”

  As such, they made their way through the maze of traps without incident, foreknowledge and local pseudo-omniscience both helping them to avoid any nasty incidents. Although, if Finn had to judge their quality, he would say they fell short of Amalgam by a vast margin. In fact, he would go so far as to say Gunther had no reason to avoid the traps on his own and was doing this purely for Finn’s benefit. If not for that, there would be no need for the black-haired man to carefully maneuver his way around.

  Sometime later, the two of them reached another gargantuan metal door which Gunther pushed open with minimal effort. On the other side, they found a giant chasm. Not deep enough that he couldn’t sense the bottom, but definitely deep and wide enough that he would fall to his death if he tried to jump over. The opposite end of the room was identical to the one they’d entered through, making him wonder what its intended purpose was when this Wanderlust character supposedly made it.

  It was odd. Finn could think of various mechanisms and different layouts that would be orders of magnitude more efficient than what they were seeing. Evidently, nothing of the sort had ever been implemented. Why? It wasn’t as if he was so arrogant that he thought his ideas were entirely unique.

  He dismissed the thought internally. If his journey was going to be made easier for some purpose he didn’t understand, then so be it. He didn’t have enough breaths left in him to ponder it for too long.

  They came to a stop near the edge of the chasm, looking out over the chasm. Finn’s grappling hooks, if they still worked, weren’t long enough to reach the other side in one go, and he wasn’t sure whether he could use his adhesive gloves. They’d been burned to the point he didn’t want to bet his life on them, meaning he saw no reliable means of crossing the room.

  When he opened his mouth to speak, Gunther wrapped an arm around his waist and hoisted him up, aggravating Finn’s injuries, almost making him whimper if not for a quick gritting of his teeth.

  “This one’s no trouble,” was all the man said before he sprinted.

  The whiplash rattled Finn, creating black spots in his vision until his carrier leaped. His stomach lurched as they soared through the air with the speed of a commercial airplane, clearing a five-hundred meter gap like it was a small puddle toddlers could jump over.

  Upon landing, it was all he could do not to puke his guts out. Gunther let him down, the motion surprisingly gentle considering his earlier treatment, and gave Finn moments to recover.

  “Come on, get up,” his travel companion said. “This was the easy part. Where we’re headed, there’s something far worse waiting for us.”

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