Kirk followed the others into the dark, his hands shaking, feeling horribly out of his depth. Rain had loaned him a slender night-sight visor so he could actually see what was happening, but he still felt like the only one who wasn't equipped for this. The Kaysar soldiers had their spiv-tech. Nevay had her cybernetic eye. Holly had her fucked-up AmpCore senses and Treysi had the dubious gifts of the Schism-tech implants.

He was just plain old Kirk Balfour, once again finding himself somewhere he really shouldn't be.

Get it together, he told himself. You wanted this. You chose it. You could have fucked off into the shadows a long time ago if you really wanted to.

"You okay?" Treysi whispered, her shoulder brushed against his as she moved up close beside him. "You seem a little tense."

"Aren't you?"

"Not like you." She paused for a moment, her gaze flicking to their companions moving up ahead, picking their way through the cluttered, abandoned mess of corporations-gone-by.

Then she looked back to him, smiling mischievously in the dark. Treysi tapped the metal lines on her forehead. "Turns out, when you get used to them, these things can see all kinds of things, eh?"

"Like what?"

"Like your heart about to bounce outta your ribs and take somebody's eye out."

He managed a half-hearted laugh. "Well, thanks for that."

"Don't worry, okay?" she said. "I got you." Then she leaned closer, close enough for him to feel her breath on his neck. He felt a tremor of excitement shoot up his spine as she spoke. "No matter what happens, with this, with the corps, everything – stick with me, okay?" She hesitated for a second. Then continued haltingly, "when this is done, and if we're still alive, I'd like to... you know..."

Kirk nodded, feeling her awkwardness without the need for any corporate gadgets. "I'd like that, too," he told her, and turned his face, letting their lips touch for a brief instant. Then he grinned. "First things first, let's just make sure we both get out of here in one piece?"

"Fuckin' count on it."

"Oi, you two, don't fall behind," the Kaysar soldier up ahead of them called softly, beckoning. "Dunno how many more fucking jack-in-the-box surprises are waiting in this place."

They edged apart, but not before Treysi gave him a reassuring squeeze of the arm. He breathed out, his heart feeling a little less frantic than before as he followed her down the passageway.

That vague sense of calm lasted for a few minutes, until another machine erupted from rusted a supply cupboard and almost beheaded him.

Kirk barely got a look at it. He just heard the violent bang of the cupboard opening, and glimpsed the big, dark metal shape out of the corner of his eye. With a yelp, he spun sideways and fell backwards, swinging his overclocked stun-gun around and firing on instinct. Fortunately, at point blank range, he hit the thing square in the chest.

A blood-curdling code scream ripped through the passage as he hit the ground, flat on his back. When he actually looked, he saw a woman whose body was mostly metal now, save for the pallid skin of her shaven head. She convulsed violently, screaming until her cybernetic eye-implants blew apart. With smoke coiling from her ruined eye sockets, she toppled backwards, ramrod stiff. Her body struck the row of storage lockers like a metal pole, before she crashed to the ground, dead and in some kind of instant rigour mortis.

"Fuckin' hell." Treysi hauled him up effortlessly by the scruff of his jacket. "Kirk, you okay?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm good." The words came out in a shrill blurt and he cleared his throat, shooting her a nervous smile.

"Nice shot," Rain commented as she trudged over and gave the dead cyborg a prod with one boot.

"Not as fragile as he looks, our Mr. Balfour," Nevay chuckled.

"Oh, shove it."

The Kaysar officer motioned them onward. "Keep moving. We found some lights up ahead. Must be getting closer."

Sure enough, as they pressed on into the next set off passages, they found tepid yellow ceiling lights, not from the original construction, fighting to illuminate the corridors. He could hear the faint hum of their wiring.

"Generator," Holly confirmed. "I can feel it. This way."

She led them deeper into the half-light. Being able to see better without the night-sight visor should have put him at ease, but Kirk only felt wound tighter and tighter. They were so close, and it had all been oh so easy so far.

The other shoe was going to drop. He was sure of it.

Then they rounded a bend into a wider maintenance accessway. The lights died and a storm of bullets replaced them. Someone yanked his shoulder so hard he felt it almost dislocate as he hit the ground. Up near the front, one of Rain's troopers took a burst square in the face, their head snapping violently backwards in a spray of smashed armour and blood.

"Contact!" Rain bellowed, hurling herself to the ground.

He saw Holly flinch her amplifier. As the others scurried for cover, an intense heat filled the corridor and he watched in amazement as a series of white-hot pinpricks lit up the air in rapid succession. Molten metal spattered across the ground and he realised she'd melted the fucking bullets right out of the air.

Slapping the night-sight visor back into place, he looked past where Holly stood. Just visible at the far end of the passage, he could see a slim, metallic shape hunkered down behind a set of heavy metal crates, one over-sized arm propped up on them. The heat fell away and he saw the AmpCore agent's shoulder relax just a little.

"Back there!" he shouted through the break in fire. "Left of the passage."

"I gotcha." Nevay leaned out from her hiding place in a small alcove, Doser's old revolver in her hand as she fired. Three shots slammed down the passage; one found its mark.

The figure jerked but didn't fall. Instead it swivelled and unleashed roaring torrent of shots from its weapon. Holly stood her ground, her amplifier swelling with light as more tiny comet trails of superheated metal spewed through the passage around her. Some on the edges got through though. He heard the pings of metal on metal; the whistle of the ricochets.

"Cover me," Treysi hissed from alongside him.

"You- what?!"

But she was already crawling, moving at a fearsome, feline crawl along the floor of the passage. She zig-zagged through the din, staying close to the walls. Another break in gunfire presented itself, and Kirk clambered to one knee. Out of range for the stun-gun, he pulled his pistol free and started firing.

The others joined in. Rain's sub-machine gun spat shots down the hall, and only then did the figure finally move, ducking and scuttling, bobbing up and down to snap off bursts of fire. It leaped with freakish agility when Holly sent a bolt of roiling red energy down the corridor and obliterated one of the crate stacks it was using for cover.

And all the while, Treysi scurried closer. He could just see her dark shape almost flat on her stomach now, moving beneath the firefight. When she got close enough, he saw her look back over her shoulder, her irises flaring red as she looked right at him.

"Stop – hold your fire!" Kirk hollered.

To his surprise, the others listened, and in that brief instant of quiet, Treysi erupted up off the floor in a flying bound, and hammered her mechanical arm through the head of their attacker. There was a crash of breaking, bending metal, a few violent yells, then what sounded like a hammer striking breaking glass.

Then silence.

"Treysi?!" Kirk called after a moment.

She appeared at the end of the passage, breathing heavily. She waved them forward. "I'm... good. C'mon... let's go."

When they reached her, she'd mostly recovered her breath. Lying at her feet amongst a sea of spent shell casings and wreckage, was a sleek, metal-bodied man, his implants shining and new. His bulky arm was a completely amputated rotating chain cannon, which also looked alarmingly new.

"HEY!"

Before anyone could say anything, a woman's voice echoed, distorted down the passage. Everyone froze. The lights remained dead, so they waited in the dark. Kirk licked his dry lips and tried not to breathe too heavily.

"Odiye? Toran? If that's you, could you get a fucking move on?!"

"Who in the hell is that?" Treysi murmured.

"Guess someone around here has even worse luck than you, Kirk."

He didn't respond. He was barely listening to them. The first word had come so fast that he hadn't really registered it, but when a full sentence came reverberating out of the darkness, he realised he knew the voice. In that same moment, he dismissed it as an impossibility.

It couldn't be, could it? What were the odds?

"That voice sounds a little bit familiar," Nevay said quietly, "don't you think?"

Holly nodded, her eyes narrowing. "Just a little."

"Okay, I don't know what the fuck you're all talking about," Rain growled, "but we're not leaving somebody normal down in this deathtrap. Everybody, on me."

She didn't wait for anyone to argue, stalking off in the direction of the speaker. Feeling numbness in his limbs, Kirk followed, with Treysi close on his heels. They moved past the makeshift barricade and through into a connecting chamber, where they found something decidedly not abandoned.

The room was clean and efficient, plated in grey metal and lit up by individual pale work lights on tripodal stands. He saw a series of holo-screens lit up on walls, but he barely paid any attention to them, his eyes searching for the owner of that voice. The person who shouldn't – couldn't – be here.

His eyes found hers. Her brows rose, her face contorting with shock.

"Kirk?!"

His eyes almost popped right out of his skull when he finally accepted who was sitting in front of him.

"You can't... you can't be..." he shook his head. "How are you here?" He lowered his gun and clapped a free hand over his eyes for a second.

When he looked again, she was still sitting there, large as life. Lashed to a chair by some kind of industrial cabling and heavy metal clamps around her wrists and ankles. Just sitting. Waiting for them to come.

He had no idea what to say. For what felt like years he just stared at her.

Inevitably, it was Nevay who shattered the stunned silence that followed.

"Oh, for fuck's sake," she exclaimed, sitting down heavily on one of the crates. She shook her head, a bleak smile on her face. "Why? Why am I ever surprised by you two anymore?"

"Oh, terrific." Piper shook her head in disbelief as she took in the ragtag group. "If I had time, I'd be surprised to see you."

"So... you guys know each other?" Treysi ventured.

"Oh, Jesus," Rain spat. "Piper Russell? That's her, isn't it?"

Nevay snorted. "Yeah, that's her. Can feel that tongue from half a mile away."

"I'm sitting right here!" Piper shouted, and tugged at her bonds expectantly. "Does anybody want to fucking help me out of this thing?"

"Oh. Yeah." Kirk started forward, but Treysi caught his arm.

"Hold on, what the fuck's going on?!" she exclaimed. "Who is this? What's she doing here – alive?"

"That's a really long story," Piper shot back, "that I don't have time to catch you up on right now. I don't know you, but you're here, and we have got to go. You know what's going on up there, right?"

"Yeah, our friend's fucking army on the streets," Holly replied.

"His name is Osric, and it's not the army you've got to worry about."

Kirk's eyes widened and he gently pulled free of Treysi's grip. A horrible cocktail of feelings surged in his chest right now, none of which he felt remotely capable of dealing with at the moment. He breathed deep and did his best to stuff them all down into his chest, at least until he could hear what she had to say. He looked to Holly and dipped his head towards Piper's restraints.

"Get her loose, would you? Whatever the hell is going on, I think we're on the same side right now."

Holly wrinkled her nose, but raised her amplifier. A moment later the heavy manacles broke loose, and the thick cabling that was wrapped around her sloughed off, thumping to the metal floor. Piper scrambled upright taking a deep breath and rolling her neck from side to side. He heard a crack echo through the room.

"What do you mean," Rain asked, "that the army's not the problem?"

"He's set some kind of assassin kill-bots loose into the city." She nodded to Holly the same thing that chased you.

"Kill-bots?"

"Gross fucking half-human, half-spider..." Piper spread her hands helplessly. "I don't know what they are, I've never seen anything like it."

"Sounds a lot like your Lurkers, Kirk," Nevay said, and all the bravado had seeped out of her voice now.

Kirk's eyes widened and he took a sharp step towards Piper. "You're sure? You're sure that's what you saw?"

"Not something you forget in a hurry, Kirk."

"How many?"

"I saw at least three of them. Could have been more."

He glanced at Holly and found the AmpCore operative's face drained of blood. She swallowed hard. "If there are more of those things..."

"All that shit in the streets, every single person that's dying up there right now? It's all just one big bloody diversion."

"Diversion for what?" Treysi looked Piper up and down, still looking thoroughly wary. Piper returned favour, seemingly noticing the girl's implants for the first time. She shot Kirk a questioning glance.

"Piper, Treysi – Treysi, Piper. It's a long story but she's cool, and she's playing for the home team," he assured her.

"Piper, what's going on," Holly said, her voice shaking audibly. "What is ... Osric doing?"

"Why do you think he's not here? Why to you think you were able to just walk into this place without getting cut to pieces?" She pointed upwards. "He's not coming back. This is the endgame. He's out there, right now, and he's not off killing civilians. He's there to cut the head off the snake."