Much as he hated it, Gaylen had to bring out another stick. It made him the only visible thing in this entire underworld, but without it he would spend his last moments of life bumping into walls.

Instead, he found himself weaving around the mess this whole abandoned project had left behind. The foundations needed to hold up the immense weight up above were, of course, intact, but everything else was in something of a halfway state. There was piping of various sizes; some of it wide enough to allow a man. For a second or so Gaylen considered climbing in, but that came with the possibility of running into a dead end, and the thing would then be waiting for him at the exit.

There was also an electrical infrastructure, without the actual electronics. The more expensive stuff had been skillfully removed, while the stuff the corps had left behind had, of course, been crudely picked apart by people in need of money.

Gaylen had been to no few of these sorts of places; the literal underside of cities and stations and ports, though usually there had been people: The dregs and outlaws of society, that his own bad choices had condemned him to work with so often.

This one was empty. It was a bit surprising that it hadn’t become a local poor town, but perhaps Tsukima just hadn’t developed those social ills on a large scale. Perhaps these people overall had their shit together, with the horror on his tail being an unfortunate exception.

Not that it mattered. He heard little, and the echoes of his footsteps and his increasingly laboured lungs and heart made it all the harder to tell where the thing was. Besides, it had already snuck up on him repeatedly. Best assume it was right on him, and keep moving.

Gaylen sought logic to the environment; a guide to way back up, where he wouldn’t risk trapping himself between the monster and a dead end. But the half-unfinished, half-gutted state of things, and the short reach of his light, made the task a challenge.

There finally came a moment where he just had to stop; he had to give his muscles a moment, and his lungs a couple of deep inhales. And as tended to happen, a moment of calm helped the wits.

There was a slightly different sense to the air, and to the ever-present echoes. There was a greater… bigness to it all, and Gaylen tried tossing the stick straight up into the air. It was the equivalent of shooting up a flair while trying to hide, but hiding just wasn’t a realistic option for surviving this.

The light gave him a view of a slightly messy array of walkways, ladders, and steep, narrow stairs. It had probably been intended for maintenance crews, or perhaps as a poorly-designed emergency passage. What mattered was that it ultimately led up, and at the very peak of the toss he could glimpse a ladder vanishing into the upper darkness.

He made no attempt to retrieve the stick. He had broadcast his location quite enough already. So, guided by the memory of what he’d just seen, Gaylen felt his way towards the first ladder.

The task demanded a certain amount of caution and slowness, which was agony as he felt the presence of the thing; that horrid pit he was quickly coming to accept as a radar of sorts, however little sense it all made. He knew it was still around, that it was still hunting, and that he could not quite rely on his ears to warn him.

But he found it. His fingers brushed against the cold metal of the ladder, and he immediately started climbing. He couldn’t help but try to estimate the thing’s full reach from the ground, and the moment he passed up above it. It felt like he was more or less there by the time he reached a walkway, but not enough so to his liking.

The whole structure seemed to have a relatively sturdy design, and didn’t shake as he walked. It kept things relatively quiet, as he blindly made his way towards the memory of a set of stairs. Which was why the burst came as such a shock.

It was another momentary flash of that colour that made no sense, and he couldn’t even tell where exactly it struck. He heard metal tear close to his head, and felt pain. It took him a moment to realise he’d fallen forward, and was lying at an angle, in those narrow steps he’d been going for.

“This it is,” the robed man said, and still his voice carried that odd echo. “No more running. No more hiding.”

His footsteps were audible now, coming from behind on the walkway. Slowly. Perhaps as a deliberate gesture.

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“My work for this night is only half done,” he continued as Gaylen tried to get his bearings. “And you have taken up enough of my time. I am a bearer of old knowledge, and old powers.”

Gaylen started crawling upwards, and absent-mindedly fumbled with his belt as he did.

“Just look at what I have done. This core failed because I desired it. Look what I have let loose. With my will alone I have pulled power from beyond, given it form and attributes and bent it to my control. Among the ranks of mankind, I am one in billions.”

“All that, and you still manage to be a petty, xenophobic little asshole,” Gaylen groaned as he finished his ascent. “Like a cranky old man moaning about how the kids dress these days.”

He kept on going, and the man’s footsteps fell silent for a couple of seconds. Then, as Gaylen had expected, he kept on talking.

“Oh, do not get it in your head that you know me!” the man said with an angry edge. “Do not think your words mean anything!”

He started up the stairs, and kept on talking to show just how much he didn’t care.

“You are an ignorant little thing, blown here by the lanes, helpless in the face of true power.”

That colour started up again, in flashes that seemed to have no source but carried a very menacing crackle. It built up in intensity, like some kind of charge, but through it all Gaylen could still hear the man’s footsteps and voice, as they broadcast his location.

“I will show it to you as you die. You can die screaming beneath the-”

Gaylen pressed that button on the belt, and the lock-charge he’d put on one of the steps went off. As before, the report wasn’t loud. But small though it was, the charge was designed to shear through sturdy metal locks. An unarmoured human foot was nothing in comparison, and the man’s scream told Gaylen he’d timed this just right.

The crackling flashes stopped immediately, and the man rolled down the stairs. It was an audibly painful, full-speed journey down bare metal, that ended in a solid thud down on the walkway. And then the man was just screaming and gasping.

“It’s your own fault for talking so much!” Gaylen shouted, as a minor indulgence. “Now bleed to death, please!”

He took out a third glowstick and activated it, now that there was at least one less problem around, and in its light he hurried to the next set of stairs. He bounded up, as fast as he could in the face of fatigue and vaguely noticed injuries, and then immediately found that ladder. The stick went between his teeth, and he climbed.

He went up, up, up, surprisingly high without any kind of platform or other stop on the way. If this had been an emergency exit, then it was a shitty one. The darkness below him was just as absolute as above, and it was clear that a fall would be fatal.

But he didn’t fall. Finally, after a while more in this odd limbo, the light in his mouth shone on metal. And an opening. It wasn’t closed, and so Gaylen could finally throw an arm onto solid floor, and pull himself up.

He allowed himself a few seconds on his ass, just savouring the feeling. Then he switched the stick back to his hand, and waved it around. There was no lid to slam down on the ladder opening, but there was a door. A single door, in this fairly small room.

Gaylen took out the tracking pad and confirmed that, yes, Sammy wasn’t far off. If Gaylen’s sense of direction hadn’t gotten completely confused down there, then the man was now roughly in the centre of the dead core.

He got up, much as his body didn’t want him to, and tried the door. It wouldn’t open. There was a protective cover over the lock itself, so he couldn’t even tell if it was electronic or not. The whole place hadn’t been abandoned long enough for the metal to start corroding, and so he took out his second-to-last lock bomb and applied it. Small though the boom was, it echoed off a hallway on the other side, and so did the hinges as he pushed the door open. They weren’t corroded, but they sure weren’t oiled.

What greeted him was every bit as dark as the exterior. His stick was the only light, and so he progressed slowly to the left. Large buildings were typically meant to have public comm setups on each floor, each with its own long-lasting battery, in case of emergencies. There was a good chance those had been removed, but finding a working one was his best-case scenario, and so he kept his eyes open.

Still, for any contact with the others to be truly useful, he needed to be able to tell where exactly he was, and so he kept on going, in a straight line down the hallway. He ignored doorways and intersecting hallways, until he reached the exterior wall.

The glass in the decent-sized windows hadn’t been removed, and a dirt-repellent film had kept it clean even in abandonment. And so Gaylen had a good view of the dead core. Theoretically, anyway. Because of course there were no lights.

What he did see were outlines; a mountain range of enormous hulks, and vague hints of the incomplete or partially scavenged state of some of them. Gaylen was higher up than he’d expected; that ladder had led up to at least the sixth floor. He checked the pad again, and yes, Sammy was still somewhere in the middle. He wasn’t moving anymore. Presumably, he’d arrived at whatever place his petty gang called home.

Where Mardus was being held.

He didn’t hear them arrive. Only the sudden lights at his back gave them away.

Gaylen turned, and found three figures, all shining half-blinding lights on him. They were attached to guns.