“Do we know where the Oracle is?” Ludwig asked.

The group stood in the corridor, letting the Avengers defuse several mines found further across the corridor. Wivin launched a couple of drones off her ruined backpack. Out of her original ‘flock’ of thirty floating orbs of steel, only two remained, and they scanned the surroundings, opening paths with their tiny appendages, slithering out of the edges of a round camera. The invaders sealed the door shut, separating sections of the factory, and the drones passed through the opened air vents.

They stumbled on the same picture everywhere. Partially destroyed and riddled with bullets, empty corridors, blood covering the walls, and pieces of torn cloth and meat on the floor. The once gray floor had turned red; the attackers had shown no mercy, executing people in toilets and medical cabinets. Inspirational posters, spare uniforms in changing rooms, food in the cafeteria—blood soaked all of it, and pieces of broken teeth floated in a bowl of soup.

Ratcatcher made herself look at it, burning in the consequence of failure and the reason and need for training in her mind. A single mistake could cost her life. And who will protect the backs of her friends? With whom will Liam play in the mornings, and who will see the house that Dad and Mom chose? She kept watching, remembering every act of cruelty and taking note of the surroundings.

“Where are the bodies?” she asked. The drones’ cameras showed empty corridors devoid of enemies, which was understandable. Hustler no doubt had another nastiness planned in store for them. The absence of corpses seemed fishy.

The drones kept on flying, filming the empty corridors. No shambler stood guard, and no Number preparing a trap was in sight. But the clever machines had spotted a few hidden mines and noticed the shut doors of the civilian and maintenance compartments. The trainee had a feeling that Hustler had prepared other traps.

This begs the question of why. Augustus had always, without a fault, made his trainees question everything. A locked door in the underground bunker? Why is it locked? Why hadn’t scavengers broken in and taken everything of value? If you could sneak in, then others could as well, since centuries had passed since the Extinction. And so on and so forth. He even showed video recordings about ambushes made by the automatic systems and how they disposed of bodies, creating a false sense of security.

Hustler was many things: a person enslaved by the Chosen Prince’s power, a zealot, a clever infiltrator, and a field commander. Yet he is no fool. With limited forces under his command, why did he waste shamblers on the attempted ambush instead of attacking head-on, holding nothing back? Sealed doors won’t stop them; a decisive battle is dawning, so why waste troops? What is he buying time for?

“Got turned into shamblers, no doubt,” Edward said, sniffing blood back into his nostril. “Esmi, my head hurts. Can you run a scan of the building? If that is okay, Instructor, Ludwig sir, not sure what your rank is…”

“Do it,” Augustus agreed.

“Landkomptur.” Ludwig tapped his shoulder, where a small image of a sun rose above a field, housing a resting hammer. “Young Edward received a wound…”

“A nosebleed! Our veins pop all the time!” Edward argued. “It’s no biggie!”

“Yeah, after we saw what our older brother left after himself in the bathroom once his power went haywire, we aren’t afraid of anything,” Esmeralda said. “A simple bleed won’t kill us.”

“Hey! That’s supposed to be private!” Her brother argued.

“Don’t care.” Esmi closed her eyes.

“Horrible,” Ludwig responded. “Unless you are a Troll, it isn’t normal. There is no need for Esmeralda to risk herself. Hustler can only be in one place.” A map of the factory appeared on their visors, and a crimson ray led to the room in the west. “He is in the control room.”

“How do you know it?” Augustus asked.

“Simple. Hustler had to be in the control room to reroute the energy flow and break into the energy grid. No other place in the building can provide that kind of clearance. And shortly prior to depowering the cameras…”

“Landkomptur is correct,” Esmeralda breathed out. She staggered, and Edward offered her a shoulder while the girl calmed her heavy breathing. “Sorry. Pain. I felt utter pain from the direction of the control room, the same pain I experienced when we encountered the line breaker. They are there—shamblers and heavy creatures, both. Whoever is there, he has surrounded himself with the best guards.”

“Is it Hustler?” Ratcatcher gripped the mancatcher’s shaft.

“No idea. Never sensed him to tell the difference.” Esmi shook her head. She hesitated, holding a hand on the visor of her helmet, clearly wanting to vomit, but decided against exposing her face to the air. “There is something weird, though. In the east wing, I touched the minds of people. Not dead, living people. They are experiencing pain, horror, and despair.”

“The Oracle said something about changing people into other forms,” Wivin announced.

“Does this mean that other workers are alive?” asked the rescued worker.

“Mayhap. Or it could be a trap,” Ludwig replied.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“Regardless, it is my duty to save them.” Wivin hefted her two-handed claymore on the remaining shoulder. “Landkomptur, I ask for a force of a dozen crusaders.”

“You shall have them, countymeister.” Ludwig turned to Augustus. “I’ll assign two of my soldiers to protect the civilian. I recommend your trainees stay behind with them.”

“We would rather stay with the main force. Too often in the past, enemies have ambushed my students.” Augustus drew two sabers from their sheaths. “I will advance at your side, landkomptur. Rowen, Jumail. Esmeralda, Edward, you are with me. I grant you permission to use heavy fire. Elina, your team is to join the second group; obey Countymeister Wivin to the letter. She says jump; you ask how high. Save the people and stay clear of the danger.”

“Yes, sir!” The four saluted the instructor.

The group split up. Ludwig led the larger force toward the control room, exploding the doors in their path. The Avengers weren’t taking any chances anymore. They marched, bedecked in the heaviest power armor and wielding some of the best weaponry available to the Oathtakers. Cannons blew up the doors in their path, explosions littered their way as mines hidden beneath the floor exploded, and they kept on marching through the storming hell of dancing flames and lightning.

Shamblers emerged out of hidden compartments soon after, and Augustus’ sabers struck, cleaving through necks and blocking bullets aimed at his allies. Jumail’s size allowed him to tower over his allies, and energy beams from his in-built weaponry illuminated the corridors, punching ideal holes in the shamblers’ bodies. A line breaker burst through a wall, aiming to bring its leg at the halted troll. Rowen blocked the attack in time, groaning from the strain, and Ludwig thrust his gladius at the line where flesh connected with the metal harness. Electric discharges traversed through his blade, depowering the entire armor for a moment and overloading the generator within the line breaker. It stumbled, spewing black flames out of the grille, its weapons depowered, and the Avengers gave him no chance to restore balance, downing the creature with the joint firepower that leveled two walls.

The connection broke, stopping the video feed from coming onto Ratcatcher’s visor. She uttered a quick prayer, blocking the moving blades of a chainsaw. They made three-fourths of the way to the eastern hall, a large engineering compartment where equipment awaited repairs before being put back into action. Wivin halted her group at the sight of a mine and exploded it with a single burst of energy leaving her vambrace, setting off a chain reaction.

But when they came to the large doors leading inside the hall, all hell broke loose. Similar to the ambush waiting for their friends, they anticipated the ambush that fell upon them. The Oracle’s command reanimated their hearts; the spasming corpses had evaded detection by Esmeralda’s mind. But the Avengers’ sensors detected the rapid increase in heat signatures, and the group faced the assault back-to-back.

Doors and walls exploded, unleashing moaning and twitching shamblers, some still wearing their tattered, gore-covered work overalls. The one who came at Ratcatcher had his left hand replaced with an industrial chainsaw, the long wires wrapped around the arm disappearing in the still-not-pale flesh around the neck. The shambler spent little time trying to overpower her and opened his mouth wide, vomiting some kind of acid at her.

Ratcatcher didn’t wait to find out whether or not it could mar her armor. She pushed the chainsaw up and stepped to the shambler’s right, hitting it across the legs with the mancatcher’s lower end. The artificial muscles of her power armor amplified the trainee’s swing, and its force knocked the shambler onto his back. The undead swung his chainsaw arm to cleave through Ratcatcher’s legs. She evaded the hit, and the moving blades bit into the floor, drawing sparks. The mancatcher spun in Ratcatcher’s hands; its sharp blades pierced the reanimated man’s head, and the body convulsed one last time, gaining the merciful release of death. She reached for her gun, firing at another shambler, half-disgusted at the ease with which she got used to disposing of undead and half no longer caring. Kill or be killed.

Wivin fought with calm precision, bringing down her sword at full force despite lacking the arm. A horizontal strike dismembered a shambler lacking armor; the tip of the blade never touched the floor when Wivin slashed again, taking the head of a shambler clad in ruined power armor. Bullets ricocheted off her armor, and the countymeister ignored attempts by her warriors to keep her safe and pushed ahead, drawing attention away from the trainees to herself.

The countymeister stepped closer to the doors, her mechanical arm still not shooting. The barrels moved, but the shell had damaged the armor enough that not a single shell moved to the gatling gun. Wivin rammed the moving weapon into a shambler’s head, crumpling the helmet and the head within. Dozens of the moving corpses converged on her, firing at close range, grabbing her by the exposed edges of her armor, firing at the woman from close range, and stopping the blade.

“Well, if you want to,” Vasily said nervously, receiving an order from the countymeister on a private channel.

He aimed his grenade launcher and fired, rocking the corridor with a new explosion. The shamblers assaulting Wivin exploded into shreds, and the countymeister disappeared in the rising cloud of smoke.

“Vas. What are you doing, Vas?” Carlos exploded, breaking a shambler’s head with a stomp. Two more took aim at him, their shots piercing the afterimage left in the Barjoni’s wake. The confused undead started turning to find another prey and got their heads exploded by the Avengers.

“Not saying no to a lady!” Vasily snapped back.

The claymore slashed through the smoke, bisecting a shambler from head to hip. Wivin stepped out, undamaged. She faced the explosion with the intact side of her armor, enduring it, and her lure worked in the group’s favor, opening a safe zone toward the metal gates. They retreated in order, decimating the shamblers with precision fire. Faced in the open and with no oracle to guide them, the undead died in droves. Vasily and Wivin abandoned the fight and tinkered with the terminal next to the doors, trying to open them.

“It isn’t right,” Ratcatcher muttered, firing a laser bolt into a shambler’s helmet lens. The shot distracted the armored undead long enough for Elina to fire three times at its breastplate, piercing through it.

“Ratty, they are already dead!” Carlos responded angrily. “Just shoot them already!”

Ratcatcher sympathized with him and ignored Carlos’ words. It disgusted him. This senseless violation of the once-living and laughing people enraged the Barjoni, the sight of their entrails, the trembling bodies frustrated and horrified him in an uneven measure, and the frustration demanded an outlet. She won’t fault anyone for empathy. Instead, she snatched a grenade from the belt of a crusader and threw it. The Oathtakers’ grenades differed from the ones at her homeland; rather than focusing on the kinetic explosion, they released shrapnel from all directions, and the explosion shredded a group of three shamblers.

“No, Eliza is right, Carlos,” Elina said. She took cover behind a troll and started reloading her weapon. “Something stinks around here.”

“Of course it stinks! They are rotting on the move…” Carlos dropped the joke and turned around in a flash.

The doors opened, letting in the sounds of fighting and struggling inside the engineering compartment.