The thick metal receded, the locking mechanism released, and the metal door slid not out but in, in and down through a short tunnel dug into the earth. The door and lock were one piece, like the core of a giant lock.

Small lights flickered on the inside of the cylindrical concrete hallway. Metal plates ran around holes in the stone that the door had hooked into, literal locking lugs had been used at some points in the wall, now no doubt held within the door apparatus.

I walked down the corridor and found, of all things, a staircase. I put my chit in the wayfinder and started walking down the concrete stairs. They were spotless, not a speck of dust or cobweb. Nothing, just smooth, nearly polished walls. The stairs were less smooth, which was nice, feeling them up, there was almost no traction.

I could imagine slipping and sliding all the way down to the basement of this place, god knows how many floors. The stairs had numbers on each landing, with a doorway that led off into an additional lit hallway with a symbol next to the door.

The top floors, those down to floor 20, had a circle with a horizontal line through it, the next twenty a circle with a stretched oval, an eye. The next twenty and open eye, with a pupil, and down and down. by floor 80, I was tired, by floor 120, I took a break to make sure I wasn’t wheezing. By floor 200, is was sucking in a breath and lying on my back.

I could only imagine what it was going to be like going back up the stairs if it was this bad coming down them.

***

“Sometimes I hate this job, am I on the right floor yet? No? fuck me. How did they get around with this many stairs.”

I had started talking to myself on floor 275 more than 50 floors ago, and I still hadn’t gotten to the one with my symbol, though it wouldn’t be much further.

Floor 330 ended up being my floor while also being the last floor in the facility, the doorway had two symbols, both mine and the one I had been warned of. I had been told whatever I was looking for had been nearby, whatever was down here was the stuff they didn’t want to get out.

I started down the hallway.

It was short, branching off at either end in an I shape. Closed doorways with little name plates next to them lined the hallway, most written in the languages I had seen above, none of which I could read. I sighed and started paying attention to the Wayfinder, taking a left and another left and two more lefts. Turning the final corner, I ended up not in a wall behind the stairs but facing the stairs, the Wayfinder told me to take a right and walk backwards.

“Wayfinder, please stop giving me a fucking migraine, where am I going?”

The Wayfinder didn’t reply on account of it being an overly large compass, but I was still pissed. Three more rights later, and I was seemingly back where I started, only this time, I was going right again.

I moved right twice, then left, then straight at a t junction.

I took another left, turning the corner with the confidence that the world was going to mess with me again, when I heard the sound of motors winding up and peeking up in the direction I was turning.

A very obvious gun was mounted to the ceiling, rotating barrels pointed right at me.

I started backpedalling immediately but was not quick enough to clear the corner fast enough not to take a shot, one slammed into my chest, the bullet deflecting off my chest plate, and another caught the brim of my hat, zipping through it in the corner of my eye while the third slammed into the plate near my neck.

It didn’t penetrate, lucky me, but it did knock me off balance. While the fourth bullet concussively accelerated, and the crack of the three prior bullets reached my ear, I contorted myself, turning to get the corridor in my vision as I pushed off the ground and out of the firing line.

The fourth bullet skimmed my leg while I moved through the air, tucking in before rolling back behind the corner. My landing was more of a rolling flop than a good roll. My leg kicked around from the pain of the bullet skimming me, throwing off my landing, but I could get up after stopping. I stood and drew Righty.

I took my hat off and, holding the brim, I pushed it around the corner first, followed by my gun, angled up in one hand at an awkward angle before training a shot with the turret and withdrawing my hat, a hole straight through the middle of my hat where my head would have sat.

There was the noise of something tiny and made of metal splintering, so I decided to do it again, but with a shot of plasma. Snapping off the shot using the same trick, I now had three holes in the hat and no broken turret, and I had no idea why.

I heard it hit something, but I didn’t know why it still shot.

I looked at the distance to the next hallway and decided to get a look. Readying myself, I tossed my hat across and waited for the whirring before dashing out and snapping off shots and the turret. My hat took four bullets while it flew across the junction. The turret started to swerve towards me as I ran across the junction after the hat, the turret snapping off a shot that bounced off my chest piece before stopping to swerve back the way I was moving.

The turret couldn’t turn fast enough to catch me, each time it changed direction, the motors took time for the ancient motors to aim the gun.

I fired off two shots with Righty to see where I was going wrong.

Righty kicked twice in my hand and sent two shots, zipping out only to be caught and thrown by an invisible field when they got close to the turret. The turret had a black circle around it from the plasma shot, the concrete misshapen from the heat.

I took it in before I cleared the next wall, holstered my trusty hand cannon, and taught it through.

Was that a force field? How the hell does that work? Is it just immune to bullets? No, that’s not quite right… the bullet moved. It was less like it hit something physical and more like it curved… That means its not some kind of force field, or not what I would think of as a force field, just some strong force acting on it.

A magnet? Plasma is magnetic; it's literally made with magnets, and the shots are metal.

Would the coil gun work? Its shots are also magnetic, but it's heftier.

I tried to remember if the shots got closer than the plasma, trying to remember how close to the turret the bullets curved. They did curve the same way and got closer compared to the plasma, if I had to guess, which made me think of magnets.

Some kind of magnetic field, shaped in a dome around the turret.

I planned how to proceed, reloading my guns with more plasma and deciding to keep the solid shot to the repeater for now before I hefted it in my arms and charged out and into a circular shape, forcing the turret to adjust twice as many times as it had before, slowing its aim and letting me snap off shots.

One quick shot aiming backward towards it hit it to the left and almost hit, curving just around and flying beyond it into the concrete.

I slowed as I rounded the top of my imaginary circle and snapped off a shot into the field, which got it to move towards the side and snap to the metal plating around the base of the turret. I sped back up, the gun close enough that it managed to put a bullet through the tail of my coat as it caught the air.

When I got back around, I squeezed off another shot. The coil gun had so little recoil, even from cycling the action, that it felt like a toy gun, but it didn’t throw off my aim. I had toyed around with it, trained around with it enough not to compensate for it, and I managed to land my shot.

The hefty metal shot flew from the barrel and entered the magnetic field around the turret. I shot so that I would just miss, and the magnetic field angled the shot back toward the turret, curving it in the same direction that the other bullets had been thrown. The shot tore through the thin metal plates and into the joint that moved the turret.

Motors screamed, and the turret shook as it tried to aim at me before it caught. The motors shrieked higher and higher as they spun without spinning, whatever moved it, not realizing what was going on until it began to smoke.

I looked at it and moved to cover, sliding into the hallway I had come from in time to avoid the bullets inside the turret cooking off as the turret lit on fire and pinging through the junction I had run around. The metal shrapnel was unaimed, shards of metal flying from already broken bullets as they slammed into the obviously reinforced concrete.

I shielded my eyes with my arm as bits of metal flew out into the side corridor towards me. I could feel the shrapnel bite into me, my coat taking the bit out of it but not stopping it from cutting into me.

I weathered the storm of metal as metal ripped into parts of my arms and legs, some pieces catching on my armour under my coat and some stinging into my abdomen. I forced myself to stand, clenching my muscles as round after round cooked off second after second. I moved to cover my neck, but a piece of metal bit in, flying into my skin and hitting the bone gorget.

Thank you, Dad, for having a protective bone around your neck. Thank the makers for making someone that way and my cursed luck to inherit it.

I tucked myself in to narrow my profile and pressed myself against the wall to take some weight and force for a million years.

It was more like ten seconds, but it felt like forever, ideas popped into my head before getting disregarded for their risk.

But end it did. Turret 0, me 1.

Well…

I mean, I guess the turret got 0.5, It technically hurt me, but it didn’t count. Hurting me by blowing itself up didn’t count, if someone blew themselves up and I happened to get hurt, I wouldn’t count it, and I wouldn’t count it now.

No one was around to count the points for the turret, no one would know.

I move back to the corner to take a look, my muscles sore from both pain and exhaustion but a little limp to conserve energy.

That was why I limped, it wasn’t because I was hurt and didn’t want to hurt. This would make a good story if nothing else, and I wasn’t going to admit that the metal peppering my body got me limping, that would make me sound like a pussy, and knowing the dicks I called drinking buddy, they would laugh at me over it. Well, everyone but Doc, he would just ask about why I was intoxicating myself again. Golems never drank, or at least I had never seen one drink.

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The turret was a shredded metal, the bullets had ripped from the casing, leaving the barrel without any ammunition to fire and a whole lot of structural damage. The shredded metal plates holding it up were sagging and smoking, the warped metal crackling as it cooled. I could see the sparks through the holes. The turret was dead or as good as dead.

Confirming the kill so to speak, I pulled out my Wayfinder and heart hammering in my chest I followed it, paying more attention to corners. I bypassed two more that were down a corridor with the bad symbol as I turned down the path towards my loot, my treasure, my millions that were held as a part of our transaction.

God, but it was a lot of money. Would it be worth the nightmares I would have over the dog thing? Probably one day, I could go see a shrink about that with my money, I would get better.

I followed the Wayfinder down the hall, devoid of doors except for the one, all the way at the end. I walked, or limped, or limp walked down the corridor, through the concrete hall.

The door had a chit reader, the door not a normal door like those I had passed at the front, but one more like the one above.

It felt longer the more I focused; the air had gotten dryer the further I had gone down, but down here, it was downright bone dry. I would probably get chapped lips if I stayed, the air would just suck the moisture right out of me.

An image of a mummy from a pulp fiction comic, wrapped in linen bandages, came to mind. Someone stumbling down here only to get grabbed when they opened my sarcophagus.

I was close enough to taste it.

I got to the door ten thousand years later, but I had the chit ready and placed it in the cup.

The chit got read, and the door beeped, and a little light popped up on the panel, and I picked the chit back up, or I went to pick the chit up. The door didn’t release it.

“Fuck it, the doors open. I don’t need it,” I muttered to me and myself, walking in through the door as it opened, the big circular door moving straight backwards on gears before rolling into the wall.

I walked down through the corridor, coming to a bend and taking it. there was only one way forward, and I limped with passion down it.

I blinked when I turned the corner, and I was in a stone passage when I opened my eyes. Not one of the concrete hallways, large open and circular, but a more cramped rectangular passage, the wall I didn’t keep a hand on to keep myself up, was notably uneven, with small gouges in the singular, continuous stone around me. Like it had been chiselled, chipped bit by bit until a hole had been left behind.

It was bizarre, but at this point, I was left unphased. Compared to the forest and rock wasteland, concrete tunnel to rock tunnel was less strange than it could have been otherwise.

I looked back and saw the passage now was straight, seeming to go on and on forever. It gave me the closest I could feel to nausea, a minorly queasy feeling, like staring down from a great height. If I ever got asked, I could swear to it that the hallway leaned around like a flexing tube, a weather sock in a gentile breeze.

But that did not matter. Forward was straight, it was forward, and it was the way I went.

Down,

Down,

Down, through the veins of the earth, marbled veins of minerals like plac stuck in the walls for so long they blended with the rock.

The air was so dry my lips felt chapped.

The thump of my feet felt like the beating of a great heart in my ears.

But I saw, just barely in the distance, a light. So I walked forward until there was no more forward to walk.

I came out in a hexagonal room of carved stone. Electric lights dotted the top, six lights, one in each corner, lit the place.

The walls were tiled in carved stone hexagons.

And in the middle, a rectangular coffin-like slab of stone with a bauble on it emitting a soft, purple glow. The bauble rested on coffin-like plinth, an irregular pad beneath it to hold it off the cool stone.

It looked like an irregular glass ball, flat shapes edged in silver, small enough to look round with a wisp of light. The shapes were hexagons.

This was the treasure.

It was so small I couldn’t imagine it as being worth it. What would those clanker cultists want with a bauble like this? The Collector was self-explanatory, but what did they want from it? Was it a random chance encounter or intentional?

I didn’t know, and I didn’t care. I could literally hold the money in my hands.

I walked towards it and picked it up.

It was weightless in my hand, the lack of feedback made it feel fake like I was trying to carefully lift an illusion instead of a very dainty artifact. I watched the light inside of the glass bauble, flickering with light, unlike a fire or electrical lamp. It was both more solid and also soft, like an ebbing globe of light with flickering sparks of the same colour trailing around it, in and out with the ebbing.

Like a beating heart of some species of gentile etheric being, simply waiting within the glass. I swore I heard a whisper of a noise, like when your ear picked up your name in a crowd, only whispered too far away to tell if it was real or if it was just a trick of the mind.

The room started moving when I lifted the globe, the pad triggering some kind of reaction in the room. I looked up, holding the orb, but not stuck pondering it as I watched the stone walls start retracting up, the engraved hexagonal plates warping to give the room a bumpy look before they slid on angles via an unknown method into the wall, like a coin into a slot.

Beneath was an engraved metal behind a thin sheet of black glass. The metal looked like that on the Lighthouse. The floor beneath me remained unmoving, but the rest, the other five segments, started pulling back, revealing the plinth as a pillar that reached down into a vat of glowing green goo.

“That doesn’t look good, but I suppose it doesn’t matter, I got the loot, now I get out.”

I turned to move from the room to leave the tang and bubbles of the goo behind, but I only made it to the now large concrete hallway when I stared down a wall of guns.

I could barely recognize the threat of 8 armed men in black before they let out a volley of fire, slug throwers letting out a chorus of concussive belches, lazers letting off bright light and leaving behind the smell of ozone as they ionized the air. The cold tear of metal in my flesh and the hot scorch of lazgun fire cooking me well done in circular chunks.

I stumbled back into the room, iron catwalk under my feet instead of solid stone, my hands trying to get under me and break my fall, but in doing so, the globe in my hand, so light as to seem ephemeral, broke on the metal floor below me.

I hit the metal catwalk with a cry, the pain of my prior engagement nothing compared to getting shot for real. Agony bloomed in brilliant flickers inside my closed eyes before I got to controlling my breath. I needed to get up, knowing I needed to move, needed to not be on the ground where I was totally defenceless. I grit my teeth and opened my eyes as I tried to force myself up, but I was too weak. All I could see was the broken globe and the flickering light within as it started to fade, and all I could do was wiggle my fingers pathetically.

I cupped my hand around the broken glass, trying to pick up the orb of light, but it turned to so many embers as my hand passed through it, tingling but otherwise snuffing it out in a moment.

The artifact was unrecoverable. It was an unfortunate turn of events, but it happened. I could keep my upfront payment, but I needed to get out of here to keep it.

I tried to get one of my guns, something to defend myself with, as I turned my head towards the door, but my moving arm just got shot a second time as one of the black-clad gunmen trained the gun on me. My arms failed me, and I slumped from my side to my back.

“Fucker. You're not from here. What's a girl like you doing in a place like this?”

The attempted insult to the man fell on deaf ears as he simply scanned the room and called, “clear,” back into the corridor.

I watched, confused, as, of all people, Manfred walked out from the corner.

“Manfred? Why are you here with a bunch of thugs? No, how are you down here with a bunch of thugs?”

He didn’t answer me, simply coming closer to take a peek at the smashed bauble and clucked his tongue.

“Unfortunate, that would have been a nice find.”

“What are you-”

“Oh, do be quiet, girl. It should be obvious why I’m down here.”

A few thoughts percolated through my head, and I grasped one.

“You're betraying the Collector, or maybe you're a Clanker?”

He scoffed, “No, don’t be so banal, dear. This is a double cross. The classic lured them out with a lot of credit tricks. Honestly, I paid you so much money, and the idea that I didn’t have my own collection team didn’t go through your head? Not once?”

“But why? Why go through the effort, what about the collector what-”

“You haven’t even figured that out? God, I forgot, you must be as dense as your father was. I am the Collector. Ah Ah, no saying something stupid like ‘but why,’ honestly it’s a cliché,” he said, cutting me off before I even got to asking him my why follow up.

“You know what, when I heard Bandit was back after a few decades of not doing much, I had been ecstatic that my old archnemesis was back, I was so excited that I decided to call up in person. I had a whole speech ready. Then you picked up the call. Honestly, what a disappointment. I expected you to figure something out on the ship, another disappointment, I expected you to find out we were following you and find a way through. I can honestly say, with all sincerity, you are the worst Bandit I have ever met. Or should I call you by your real name? I’m going to guess. Ruth? Or maybe Darcy Jaydin? That treacherous little sister of mine had a few preferred names for a little girl before she ran off with your father.

You know what I don’t think it matters, it would just throw me off my game to call you anything but Bandit.” He said in a rambling stream of thought.

“I can tell you like the sound of your own voice. If you're going to kill me, get on with it,” I spat venomously at him.

I checked myself over, seeing what I could move.

If I could just move my arms, I could get my blade out. If I could get my feet under me, the close quarters of the area would favour my sword over my guns.

He seemed to catch himself and that chuckle, one far too full of mirth for the circumstances.

“HA HA! Look at me, monologuing again. It’s a terrible habit of mine. You know it’s a shame this artifact got crushed like that… And while I could just kill you now, I think I have a better idea... I've been experimenting with artifact manipulation for some time, and there's one artifact here that I might be able to take if it works…” He said, trailing off before patting himself down and finding what he was looking for.

He withdrew a strange glove from one of his pockets. It looked like someone had taken random bits and bobs and screwed and soldiered together. There was even a small square of duct tape holding two wires together like a wire nut. There were antennas and broken artifact bits and metal. As someone who had made things before, modified things before, it was garish, like it had been made from scrap parts by an overambitious child.

He started humming giddily, putting the glove on his left hand while he reached forward with his right, scooping up a little blood and pooling it in what looked like a glass dish with metal prongs inside of it. He scooped up enough to cover the probes, then took a glass plate out and screwed it on the first.

“Here goes nothing, I suppose I do hope it works. The emperor would be so proud of my work.”

That threw me for a loop. I was about to try and throw myself up at him. Expend what little energy I had left, but those words stopped me.

“What? The emperor? What are you talking about?”

“Hmm? It won't matter to you, girl, though I suppose it won't hurt to tell you that there's going to be a reconquest of sorts, it will be starting soon. The emperor of Raphael is going to start a war to pacify the… how would I put it kindly? Less civilized groups of the solar system bring an age of prosperity that hasn’t been seen since the fall. We struck up a conversation about artifacts a decade or so ago, and I decided to help him take Gabriel for a place in his new order. It was what was best for the Sartones, you see.”

He told me before reaching down for my sword and placing a hand on the handle,

“Now, let us see if I can pick up that sword of yours Hmm?”

He grasped it, and then, to a grin on his face and a look of disbelief on mine, he drew it like I would.

He held the blade in one hand, the blade changing from the grey translucent crystal to the vibrant oxidized blue.

“And there we go. Honestly, a part of me, a small part, mind you, wants to bring you along just for more testing. But I know better than probably anyone else just how lucky you, Jaydins are. Goodbye Bandit. You won't be lonely long, I think I’ll pay a visit to dear old Jason and that treacherous swine I call a sister.”

I jerked, trying to lift myself, tried to throw myself at him, but I was just too weak. Blood loss, exhaustion, and the trauma of my burns and pullet holes were too hefty for me to overcome with a little gumption.

“I hope you trip on the stairs back up and kill yourself, Collector,” I spat.

That got him to look at me, confusion on his face.

“Stairs? What are you… Oh, HA HA AH! Oh, dear child, you took the stairs? 300 floors of them? No, dear, I think I’ll take the lift to the first floor instead. All right, Captain, dispose of her, the goo will melt her well, I think, then get ready to depart, the field is only going to remain down for another… ten hours or so.”

He left then. He didn’t even look back. I started shouting as one of the black-suited goons came over and kicked me into the vibrant, bubbling green goo.

I screamed as it got into me and started to melt me down, penetrating into my flesh and pulling me apart piece by piece, and I kept screaming until it killed my nerves.

The lights in the room turned off above me, and I fell into darkness.

The whispers came to me then, but I ignored them as my memories cleared.

The Oracle had been right. I wonder if she knew.

The ideas in my head ate at me as the whispers got louder and clearer, but I ignored them. I kept doing so all the way till my head got around to the idea of revenge, and the whisper made a deal.

It could help me get revenge, help me get back at the collector if I would make a deal.

And I did.

***

I woke up in the dark of the ship, blood running down my head and the melody vibrating inside my head. Another cycle, another round of torment.

But this time.

This time, I remembered who I was.

My name was Jacalyn Bandit Jaydin, and I knew now how I could get my memories back.