The subway train laid on its side, tipped over from when it derailed and slammed through the subway’s wall. It was a bit tricky to get in, slightly reminding me of the mutant ghoul nest Mira and I found back when we were searching for Granny Smith’s grandson… speaking of Granny Smith, I wonder how she is? I should go visit her- ah, I could think about this some other time. Now definitely wasn’t the time.

I managed to wedge open one of the doors, sliding inside once it was open enough for me to slip by. My feet hit the ground, my steps quiet though the sudden impact caused the metal to tremble slightly. I easily slid to the side, using one of the train’s brackets to stand on to avoid creaking metal.

My shotgun stayed high, ready at a moment's notice to blast anything that might jump out. The silence of the Underground sounded deafening in my ears as I slowly crept up the length of the tilted train. The subway car ended, its door blasted apart probably from the impact.

As I reached the door, I couldn’t help glancing over my shoulder. There were no bodies in the subway car. Was this thing abandoned when it was flipped- no, someone would’ve had to have driven it to get it to fly up and through the brick wall so harshly. What happened here?

A skittering of claws hit my ears, faintly audible in the far background. I was sure of it now; something was behind me… something with some level of intelligence if it avoided the tripwire trap. Should I set up an ambush here or further in? I won’t be able to dodge as well in here, though there is cover. Hmm… if it's small enough, it’ll have ample room to dodge and ample cover. Probably best I set up outside the train. Whatever kind of creature it was, it was cautious. As long as I don’t reveal that I know anything, it’ll probably keep stalking me, waiting for the perfect chance.

A plan briefly worked itself out in my head as I sped up slightly, jumping across a small gap to the next subway car. My jump was good, easily clearing the gap as I slid through a shattered glass door.

I made my way through the next car, finding some difficulty in just how steep the thing was. I had to use the subway seats and bars as a makeshift ladder to get up, though I kept at least one hand on my gun at all times in case my stalker decided now was a good time to strike. I crawled up it and out the subway car into the next one over, the one that went through the brick.

This one ended in a control cabin, one that was dented harshly. It was hard to tell where the control cabin started and stopped, to be honest. The entire car was destroyed, all the glass shattered and mounds of savaged metal and bricks lay all over the place. I finally caught sight of the first set of corpses.

Three skeletons lay under piles of rubble, two with more shattered bones than not, and one in a fairly good condition. Or as good as a condition a skeleton could ever be in the Underground. Scavengers had long been through here, leaving missing and gnawed bones. I caught sight of several shiny bits and bobs, though I could come back to loot later.

The control cabin dropped into a rather large maintenance room with several halls leading out of it. The room was vaguely circle-shaped, and was quite large. Not quite as big as the Circle's cistern, but still would take a bit to walk to the other side.

I wrapped a length of microwire around a fairly stable rail and hopped down, instantly activating my Perks. With my full suite of stealth enhancements, I ghosted up against the wall underneath the train, carefully avoiding anything that might crinkle or crumble under my feet. I moved so the view from the subway train would be entirely blocked by the bit sticking out. Then I hefted my shotgun and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Several minutes later, a bit of dust shook free from the wall, the only sign that something was up there. Whatever it was moved with dead silence- at least until one of its claws clicked against something. I stopped breathing entirely, afraid the rasp of the respirator would alert the creature.

After a few moments, a shadow dropped from the train.

My finger squeezed the trigger instantly, shattering the silence with a concussive blast as a spray of metal launched to the creature before I could even see what it was. My shotgun was already tossed to the side and my rifle half raised before the creature could react properly, letting out a screech of agony as it finally registered the shotgun blast.

It leapt backward, leaving a trail of dark ichor as I finally realized what I was dealing with. A creature, too mutated to call it anything in particular, glowered at me with two beady eyes that seemed to glow with an inner light. It was roughly wolf-shaped, though it seemed closer to an overgrown rat than anything.

It had already changed its course of action by the time I brought my rifle up, launching towards me as it swung its tail like a whip. The tail twitched, showing several deadly looking barbs, but it was too far to actually hit me. The tail cracked off to the side, not enough range to make any impact.

It was far too close for me to miss, so I unloaded full auto into the creature. The kick from my rifle hammered into my shoulder, trying to throw me off course. Not that it mattered. With the creature this close, the kick from the gun wasn’t bad enough for me to miss entirely. Sure, my bullets were scattered crazier than a blind archer, but at least they hit the target.

The first ten bullets hit it before it reached me, slowing the beast down. The rest of the mag slowed it even further, each bullet dropping the thing's momentum substantially till the last five bullets hit its frozen body, exacerbating its already lethal levels of blood loss.

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

Still, the thing acted as if driven by a pure desire for mutually assured destruction. It flung its tail at me, the sharp barbs seeming to have a metallic glint to them as Insight warned me of imminent danger to my thigh in the gap between my chest plate and greaves.

I ducked, Dexterity helping me to move just fast enough to catch the blow with the bulk of my chest plate instead. The impact jarred me sharply, though the tail deflected off, scratching the paint off with a sickening whine of metal. I stumbled against the wall, surprised by the sheer brutal strength of the blow.

I stumbled to the side, one hand hitting the magazine release catch to drop my spent mag to the ground. I used the other to push myself off the wall into something between a leap to the side and a pushup as a cold tendril of Insight wrapped around my throat. The tail cracked loudly and whipped through recently vacated space as I felt a drop of cold sweat drip down my back.

Before it could try one last time, I pulled back the charging handle and fired a dozen bullets into its head, carefully bursting the rifle so I could focus on accuracy. The critter finally stilled as half its head blew off in a shower of gore.

I watched it, guard still fully raised for a full two minutes as I caught my breath and slowly backed away. Once I was sure it was dead, I approached the beast, taking in even more details as I tried to figure out what it was.

After several minutes trying to piece together its species, slowly watching as the last of its blood oozed out through its thick fur, an aggravated huff left me. I’d spent so much time looking through bestiaries of the Underground, only to fail in recognizing a creature. Was it all a waste of time- no, I probably just happened to run into the only creature not recorded. That's right, it was just a bit of faulty luck, nothing more. Surely I’d recognize everything else… I hope.

I reloaded my shotgun and rifle, even taking the time to grab my dropped magazine and refill it with some loose bullets I kept in my bag. I lurked in the shadows for several more minutes in case anything else decided to wander over to us, though nothing did.

Once I was assured nothing else would come, I checked out the rodent. And I have to say, the thing was quite impressive. Its fur looked rather unnatural, having just the right amount of curl to weave itself into a rather complex pattern. The weave acted almost like a natural ballistic weave, and I found about a dozen shotgun pellets barely penetrated the matted substance. It was a rather impressive, if quite disgusting, sight. The weave seemed to trap blood and viscera, leaving the thing’s fur a disgusting mess of hair and coagulated blood that only boosted its own defensive properties.

Its tail was far more interesting though, at least to me. It had an almost metallic feeling in my gloves, feeling more artificial than natural. I was more mechanically than biologically minded though, so I only gave it a quick look over before shifting my attention away.

I hauled myself back up the line of microwire, pulling myself into the subway car to get a closer look at the corpses. Based on their attire, they were probably all mercs, though high-end ones. Were they trying to drive the train down here?

That was kinda… badass. How about instead of a super secret stash, I had a super secret subway train that I could drive around everywhere? Of course, that was without thinking about the plethora of downsides… such as derailing and ramming through a wall. And subways were one of the main methods of travel down here, so little chance of keeping the subway hidden without some serious investment.

One of the skeletons had signs of being seriously chromed out, and the other two weren’t far behind it. One looked like it- he based on the occipital protuberance, shape of the cheek and jaw bones, and formation of his hip bone- looked to be a bruiser of some kind. He was the furthest buried, leaving his chrome dented beyond any hopes of salvaging anything from it besides maybe the metal. Plenty of parts looked as though they had been swiped since his death, leaving gaps in his corpse.

The other, one I couldn’t tell for sure who or what they were since their bones were splintered to near nothing, had a bunch of old speed-enhancing chrome, though since it was more lightweight the chrome was in an even worse state than the bruiser. Someone had already picked through and taken all the good stuff.

The only one in relatively good condition had thin lines of chords and metal where their nervous system would’ve been and several data jacks. I recognized the lines as a Neural Link, which was an easy sign of wealth… or at least it should be. They were expensive enough that most normies and even low to mid-level mercenaries wouldn’t have one. Not that they were super useful unless you had money.

I should know. My Neural Link came from my Grandfather back when I was much younger, a Cold Moon NL 3.0, boasting adaptability to grow as its host did, something more often seen in KairoTech Global’s products. Unlike KairoTech stuff though, mine was purely mechanical. It was one of a couple hundred made and by far the most expensive thing I had. Maybe even everything combined wouldn’t match the price.

Too bad everything went south before I could get a good Neural System Interface. Instead, I was saddled with a cheap knockoff. If I had one back when I first got the Advent Ghost, glitching would’ve never been a problem. What did it matter if I had massively increased chrome connectivity if the NSI, the translation from computer to brain side of things, was garbage? It was like running an extremely high-spec computer with a CPU a century old. It just wouldn’t work out very well… and it didn’t.

Then again, it probably wouldn’t have helped... Maybe? Nael seemed to think my reaction was similar to how Magi and Adepts reacted to chrome, so maybe it wouldn’t have done anything even if I had a good NSI. I was practically charged with the Aether by the eidolons themselves…

Usually, I was against taking chrome from corpses, half because it was a disgusting process to hack off bloodied limbs, and half because it was highly impractical thanks to the lockdown and anti-tampering features most modern chrome had. Oh, and it was a bit disrespectful to the corpse. This time, though, I snagged the neural link. It wasn’t in amazing shape, with several dents littered across its surface, but it was in good enough shape I could probably salvage some components to use on other things on the off chance the anti-tampering bit was in the destroyed sections. Then again, it was heavily damaged, so maybe not. There was a reason previous scavengers left it behind.

Other than that, I scrounged around the train finding nothing else. I did find some shifted rubble suggesting that at one point there had been several boxes scattered about, but nothing was left except for the corpses of whoever originally looted the place. Probably took away most of the good chrome too, leaving only the broken and shattered stuff.

There was nothing left here for me. I gathered up everything once more and set off for my second location.