Footsteps echoed through every hallway of sublevel 29—

All converging on Mod’s group.

There were two hallways that led deeper into Gnosis. With Mod’s enhanced cognition, he could separate out some of the sounds coming from them.

Down the left hallway—a group of ten, maybe more. Their footsteps were fast but steady. They were a coordinated strike team, and at least some of them were wearing armor.

Down the right hallway—a wave of footsteps rose toward them, the enemies scrambling overtop of one another to get to them. Mod recalled visions of the Deep Ones with their dead eyes and gnashing teeth.

In the hallway behind them, Gnosis test subjects clambered against Athena’s barrier. She held them back for now, but every slash and swipe would wear it down. And as long as she was concentrating on holding them back, she’d be less effective at pushing forward.

Their entire plan hinged on maintaining momentum.

So Mod made the decision to go backward.

“Stay here,” he said. “Athena, get ready to drop your shield.”

“What are you—”

Mod was already down the hall. He didn’t bother pulling out his staff or shield. He leapt, and the barrier flickered. Mod sailed through like a cannonball and slammed into the mass of enemies. A vampire crumpled under the impact

The test subjects couldn’t see Athena’s barrier, but they’d figured out that they weren’t going to get past it. So they turned their all their frenzy and focus toward Mod.

Claws slashed at him. Tendrils of hair wrapped around him. Barbs and acid sprayed through the air.

To Mod, the world moved in slow motion.

He’d once fought a psycho contortionist who could elongate his body and bend into impossible shapes—that was who Mod channeled now. His fully unlocked prosthetics and coating of nanites allowed him to easily twist and slip out of everyone’s grasp. And everyone he touched got covered in nanites.

He swept through the crowd like a plague.

In seconds, the first test subjects fell to the ground. The nanites had spread to their faces, incapacitating them. One of the hair-supers lashed out, her tendrils flailing wildly, bowling over her allies. Mod ducked low, sprawling across the floor to avoid the strikes, then using his own whip to tag other subjects.

A vampire opened wide, lunging for a bite—

Mod head-butted him in the mouth, shattering his jaw.

Another used some kind of psychic power. The world distorted a moment, but Mod relied on his other senses. He heard the tick-tick-tick of barbs firing and ducked under them. He smelled acid as it bubbled up in the enemy’s mouth and twisted away from the feeble grasp of another. And he counted the groans of surprise as nanites coated their faces. The psychic distortion was over a moment later.

Fourteen seconds passed before Mod tagged all forty-three test subjects.

He was back at the hallway junction before the last test subject fell to the ground.

Athena scoffed. “Show off.”

Arsenal gave him a fist bump.

Mod checked his HUD and frowned. Taking down that many test subjects had cost him over half of his personal swarm.

NANITES 215% CAPACITY

He still had enough to armor and cloak himself, but if he had to take down more enemies, then he’d have to start making some hard choices.

Mod sent a silent command. He’d been generous with his nanite attacks down the hall. Now, any leftover nanites converged on the elevators. They began eating away at the metals and electronics, and using the raw materials to rebuild the swarm.

It would take time, but judging by the growing sound of footsteps, they only have about a minute to spare.

A group emerged down the left-side hallway. Mod’s intuition had been right—it was a coordinated group of guards. Most of them wore body armor, but several were clad in mage’s robes and held wands instead of guns.

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TINA called out, “Specialized squads. Anti-artificers and anti-mages.”

Between Mod’s enhanced cognition and TINA feeding him data, he quickly sized up their new enemies.

The anti-artificers wore exosuit-like armor. It wasn’t as advanced as the stuff that the Ventures used, but it was clearly powered. Mod could see the UV and infrared glow of small batteries embedded in the suit. These same guards hurled sonic grenades and their rifles fired EMP barbs.

Athena had already conjured a double barrier by the time the first shots sounded.

But her shields didn’t hold.

The anti-mages had their own preparations. Their robes glowed with incantations, and they hurled no less than four different spells down the hall. One of which caused Athena’s barriers to flicker.

“Get back!” Mod shouted and leveled his rifle.

Arsenal had already shoved Athena out of the way. Then she slipped back around the corner and leveled her new prototype gauntlets. For the first time since the war, Arsenal fired kinetic blasts.

Mod aimed for the sonic grenade on the ground and another one flying through the air. Then together, he and Arsenal targeted the guards. Kinetic blasts from both of them echoed through the hall.

For a moment, it was chaos as projectiles flew from both sides. Some hit Athena’s flickering barrier, but others sailed through the gaps. Guards in robes conjured barriers similar to hers, but they weren’t as strong or as wide.

It took Mod a second to parse the chaos, but then he could anticipate the gaps in the barriers. He ramped up the firing rate, punching through the mage’s shields and targeting the weak spots in their armor—the small batteries in their armor, gaps in plates, and the mage’s hands.

One-by-one the guards fell.

EMP Barbs struck Mod’s chest and stomach, but barely penetrated thanks to his nanites and his suit. The barbs discharged electricity as soon as they impacted, but his chest was still mostly organic and all of his prosthetics were hardened against EMP attacks. He ignored the pain and didn’t slow his firing.

Arsenal shrugged off the barbs completely. Each one tinged off her armor. Ice shards and fire spells didn’t fare much better.

EMP NANITE LOSS -10%

EMP NANITE LOSS -5%

EMP NANITE LOSS -15%

Mod cursed as the alerts flashed across his HUD. Without pausing, he shunted nanites to his back so that the barbs wouldn’t affect them.

He managed to shoot the last anti-mage, and the rest of their magic barriers went down.

They needed to end this quickly. The footsteps coming from the right-side hallway had grown from a wave to a stampede. Whatever was coming was nearly on top of them.

Mod pulled out his impact shield and sprinted down the hall. On the way, he pulled out a sonic grenade and activated it in his pocket.

Most of the anti-mages and anti-artificer squads were already down for the count, and Mod made quick work of the six that remained. They were tagged and incapacitated before they could fight back.

Then the horde caught them.

Mod’s jaw fell open. He froze and stared down the hall as the Deep Ones poured around the corner. Pale bodies clambered over one another, scratching and claws at their brethren in a mass nearly as high as the ceiling. Long fanged teeth gnashed together… but their eyes were utterly black instead of milky white, and high-pitched screeches boiled out of their throats.

It took a split second for Mod to snap out of it and realize that these creatures weren’t the Deep Ones—they were vampires.

Even more information flooded Mod’s thoughts. They were vampire spawn—young vampires so starved that they were little more than living training tools. Generations of vampires starved into a frenzy and forced to turn others. With each successive generation, that bloodlust deepened until they became utterly mindless and consumed by hunger.

Again, Mod shook himself out of his trance. He leveled his rifle—

But the vampire spawn were fast approaching the junction in the hallway.

Right where Arsenal and Athena were taking cover.

Athena was clutching her stomach. Bleeding. She’d been shot… How had he not noticed before?

Mod’s heart felt like it was going to jump out of his chest, and it was only because of his prosthetics that his aim held steady.

Nerve impulses switched his rifle’s firing mode and then altered the barrel. Instead of a solid cylinder of plasma, the tip of the barrel flattened into a thin line. Ports in his arm opened and connected to his rifle, making a direct line from his fusion canister. He’d done the same thing in a desperate last stand against the Deep Ones.

Mod pushed back the tide once. He would do it again. Hopefully, this time he wouldn’t fry his arm in the process. He felt the world slowing down again. Felt like he was moving through soup. Raising his rifle felt like watching the ticking of a clock.

Arsenal was faster. She stepped into the hallway and raised her gauntlet.

Molten power erupted out of her, filling the hallway with liquid fire. The roar and the heat hit Mod like a wall. Mod recoiled as the world came back into violent focus. Through squinted eyes, he could just make out Athena stumbling back through the elevator hall, multiple shields wavering under the stress.

The last time Clara had let go like this, she’d melted a Class 4 monstrosity and an entire parking garage.

He tried to yell, tried to reach her, but he could barely take a breath, let alone a step forward.

Mod wasn’t sure how many seconds passed, but the blinding light and scorching heat finally stopped. Deafening silence followed. He opened his eyes to find Arsenal standing alone in the hall. Beyond her, there was nothing except for molten concrete and smoke. Anything else, living or not, had been utterly vaporized.

~ ~ ~