Gary snuck his way towards a footbridge down the street. This area, unlike the rest of the city, was devastated. Buildings were crushed. The street was broken open revealing an underside. Only the sidewalks remained unscathed. The plasma fire had been coming from there, and he was almost certain that he had seen a body fall over. Greenery grew off the sides of the footbridge, obscuring his vision. A figure could be seen standing up on the bridge, its belly engorged. It looked like a blob of metal vaguely shaped into a human form. Gary quickly hid himself behind a tree on the sidewalk. The blob man began to waddle away. It falls down the stairs. It picks itself up and waddles in the general direction of the spire. Gary waits a few moments, and then makes his way towards the footbridge.

He inspects the area, but finds that it is practically immaculate. In the greenery there was a little dongle. His sight had always been keen. He picked it up and inspected it. It was puke green in color and had a little button that could be pressed. He wasn't certain whether he should press it. He made his way down from the crossing. He pressed the button, threw it up to the foot crossing, then hid himself away behind the open door of an empty ruined store. He heard a whirring sound, and saw some sort of hoverbike drive itself towards the footbridge, and straight into the gaping hole where the street used to be.

"Shit" Thought Gary. He realized that this was likely his only hope for finding a vehicle to take him towards the spire. He quickly ran back up the footbridge, picked up the dongle, and looked down into the open street. Underneath he could see the hoverbike floating safely over some rubble. Gary jumped down. The fall should have hurt his knees, but his improved form prevented that. He was certain it was the new body as he didn't seem to have carried his cultivation with him. While it likely wouldn't have been very useful in this situation. The capacity to dodge most threats would have been greatly appreciated.

The underside of the city was a flat plane made of concrete. metal Pillars held up the rest of the city. It seems that none of the buildings, except for the spires, had basements. Gary decided that he ought to make his way to the spire using the hoverbike. He wasn't sure how to use one, but was certain that he would pick up on the way. He got on the bike, connected the dongle, and brought down onto the concrete. It took him a few moments to familiarize himself with it, but found that it was pretty intuitive. As he pulled away from the gaping hole, he heard what sounded like a trash compactor behind him. He was tempted to turn around, but decide instead not to tempt fate. He pushed the hoverbike to its limit. As the noise faded he relaxed for a moment.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

The underside of the city was brightly lit, and he could see the basement of one of the spires. It seemed to Gary that these spires were as wide as they were tall. This city was much much bigger than it looked from up above. He heard what sounded like a chainsaw coming from behind him. This time he took the risk to look behind him. He saw a vaguely dog shaped metal blob quickly gaining on him. He took one hand off of the handle bars, and pointed his rifle at it and began to fire wildly at it. The few shots that managed to hit it seemed to have slowed it down, but ultimately didn't seem to damage it all that much. Gary was fine with it simply slowing down, as he didn't feel the need to kill his enemy, just escape from them. He kept firing at it until it was slow enough for Gary to make some reasonable distance between him, and it.

Gary felt he had outrun it. He did not like the thought of being eaten whole. He felt pity for the other clones, but they were not Gary so ultimately it didn't matter to him. After many long hours Gary finally arrived close to the underside of the spire. He made his way around the black walls until he found what looked like a maintenance door. He got off his hoverbike and quickly shot where he thought the lock was open. He wanted to hide himself as fast as possible. He could still see the damn thing in the distance.

Having pushed himself inside he found that he was walking through the maintenance tunnels of the spire. He found a map on a wall helpfully labeling where he was, where he needed to go, and how to get there. He made his way through the tunnels, past steaming pipes, and weird cogs, not at all curious what the actual inside of the spire looked like. Eventually he reached the access elevator. It needed a code to be called and operated. Gary felt fortunate that some disgruntled worker had scrawled it underneath the keypad. The elevator was taking a while to reach him. He swore he could hear chainsaw sounds getting closer. It finally arrived. He made his way inside and pressed the lowest floor he could reach. As the doors closed he actually began to hear it fast approaching. The doors couldn't have closed a moment sooner. Gary hoped it was too stupid to use an elevator, as he likely couldn't outrun on foot unless he wasted all of his ammo. His plasma rifle should be good for a thousand shots, but he didn't know how many he would need to kill, or how many he'd used.