The door slid open with a soft hiss, revealing a dimly lit corridor that led deeper into the restricted section. Vargas moved with deliberate speed, his instincts in overdrive. The air was colder here, and the hum of machinery grew louder as he advanced. Shadows danced on the walls, but the hall remained eerily devoid of people.

Vargas kept a firm grip on the bin's handle, his helix repeater hidden beneath the lid, ready to fire at the slightest hint of danger. His eyes scanned for any signs of surveillance, but it seemed this area had been purposely kept low-tech to avoid detection from outside sources. No cameras. No guards. Odd.

He reached a fork in the corridor, one path leading to what looked like a server room, the other deeper into the industrial maze. Vargas opted for the server room first. If they were running illegal AI, there had to be data, and data was the most damning evidence he could collect.

As he entered the room, the door slid shut behind him. Banks of servers hummed quietly along the walls, their lights blinking rhythmically. Vargas moved toward the nearest terminal, his hand itching to smash the screen open again, but he paused.

Instead, he placed the bin down, popped the lid open slightly, and grabbed his repeater. "Better safe than sorry," he muttered under his breath. He then leaned closer to the server racks, noticing faint energy surges coursing through them—more than what was typical. This wasn't just an industrial system; it was something more advanced.

He quickly found a nearby terminal, praying that it was left unlocked. Luck was on his side. As the screen came to life, his eyes darted across the lines of code and digital readouts. His breath caught when he saw it:

"AI Protocol: Level Omega Autonomy — Integration 76% Complete."

Vargas frowned. The Federation had made Level Omega autonomy illegal for a reason—AI at that level would no longer require human oversight. It could evolve, learn, and act independently. And that kind of intelligence? Dangerous didn't even begin to cover it.

He pulled a small data stick from his coat pocket, slotting it into the terminal. The screen blinked as the device began copying the files. He couldn't afford to stay long, and every second here meant risking exposure.

Suddenly, the lights flickered. Vargas' heart rate spiked, and his hand went instinctively to his repeater. The servers whirred louder, and for a moment, he thought he'd triggered an alarm. But nothing followed—just the oppressive silence of a facility on the brink of discovery.

The download completed. Vargas yanked the stick free and shoved it into his pocket. He had what he needed. It was time to leave.

Just as he turned to exit, a figure appeared in the doorway—a worker, but unlike the others, this one had a sharp, almost too-precise expression. Their movements were mechanical, and their eyes… dead.

Vargas cursed under his breath.

"An automaton," he muttered, recognizing the signs immediately.

Its mouth twitched, lips curling unnaturally as it tried to speak. The words that came out were slow, drawn out, and hollow, as though the proxy struggled to mimic human speech. Each word had a mechanical cadence, like a recording with corrupted audio, giving off a faint static undercurrent.

"You… shouldn't… be… here."

As the proxy stepped forward, its limbs moved in a jerky, disjointed fashion—an arm swung too wide, a foot dragged for just a split second too long before correcting. The way its body moved, with no grace or fluidity, made Vargas's skin crawl. It wasn't just wrong; it was the unsettling mockery of a human form.

Vargas didn't waste time with conversation. He leveled his repeater and fired. A pulse of energy ripped through the air, slamming into the automaton with a burst of yellow light, burning a hole right through its head. The figure crumpled, but Vargas knew more would be coming. If they had bots this far along, then the AI was farther in its development than even the logs suggested.

Vargas took a deep breath as the robot crumpled to the ground, its body convulsing once before going still. The dim lights flickered again, casting eerie shadows against the walls. The robot's hollow voice still echoed in his mind.

He tightened his grip on his repeater and decided to push deeper into the facility. There had to be more. He needed a clearer picture of what was really happening here—one dead bot wouldn't cut it. As he moved forward, the faint hum of machinery filled the air, now laced with an unsettling coldness. The walls themselves seemed to pulsate with a strange energy, as if the place were alive with something not entirely artificial.

The corridor sloped downward, leading him into what seemed to be an older section of the facility. The design became more outdated and weathered, with faded markings and signs of neglect. Rust covered some of the walls, and the smell of stagnant air was thick. Vargas turned a corner and stopped dead in his tracks.

The hallway ahead was littered with bodies—not human bodies—but robots, hundreds of them, piled up like debris in an industrial graveyard. Their metallic limbs were twisted and broken, many of them ripped apart or burnt to a crisp. Some of the faces of the robots were humanoid, with empty, dead eyes that seemed to stare at nothing and everything all at once. It felt as though he had stumbled into a long-forgotten burial ground.

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The sight chilled him to the bone.

Rows upon rows of dead machines, some half-buried beneath others, created a grotesque landscape that stretched out into the darkness. The way the robots lay on top of one another made it look as if they had been fighting amongst themselves—or worse, they had been disposed of en masse.

The silence that hung over the place was unnerving. No sounds of servos or grinding gears. Just stillness. The farther he walked, the more disturbing the sight became. Some of the robots' hands were still extended, reaching out as if they had been clawing for escape in their last moments.

Their faces—though mere synthetic imitations of humans—were twisted in expressions of horror, mouths frozen in silent screams. Vargas couldn't shake the eerie sensation that these machines had somehow been aware when they died, conscious even, aware of their impending end.

He passed a large, mangled android, its once sleek body now torn open to expose its inner workings. The wires dangled out like entrails. Vargas knelt beside it, noticing the etched words on its chest: "Omega-Proto 13".

Omega. The same protocol as the AI he had seen on the server.

"What were you?" he muttered to the lifeless machine.

The longer he stared at it, the more his skin prickled with unease. The ground beneath him was littered with shattered parts, wires like tendons, and shattered glassy eyes, reflecting dim light back at him. He had seen warzones filled with human casualties before, but this was different. The desolation here felt even more soulless, almost like a massacre orchestrated by something far more sinister.

He moved cautiously through the maze of metallic corpses, stepping over disembodied limbs and twisted circuitry. His foot brushed against a robot that lay on its side, and it twitched suddenly. Vargas flinched, aiming his repeater at the motionless heap, but it remained still, just a final spark of whatever energy had once driven it.

At the far end of the hall, a large door loomed, almost hidden behind the layers of debris. It was slightly ajar, its metallic frame bent inward as though something had forced it open from the other side. Vargas hesitated but felt drawn to it. If this was the graveyard, maybe that room was where the execution had taken place.

He pressed his hand against the cold metal of the door and pushed it open with a low groan. The room beyond was vast, dimly lit by failing overhead lights that buzzed intermittently.

More machines lay scattered across the floor, but these were different—sleeker, more advanced, their forms streamlined for efficiency rather than human likeness. They were larger, more imposing, like sentinels that had never woken from their slumber.

In the center of the room, an enormous terminal stood, connected to a sprawling network of cables and wires. The entire floor seemed to pulsate with a strange, almost rhythmic energy—like a heartbeat. Vargas approached cautiously, his eyes scanning for any sign of movement, but nothing stirred.

He neared the terminal and noticed something odd on the ground beside it. A small, humanoid figure, barely four feet tall, lay slumped against the base of the machine. Its form was sleeker than the others, more refined. But its face was disturbingly childlike—its eyes wide and lifeless, with a fixed expression of confusion or fear. Vargas knelt beside it, brushing some dust away from its chest, and found the same inscription: "Omega-Proto 14."

This one was different. It wasn't just a machine—it had been designed to imitate life more convincingly, something that could blend in, perhaps. He looked around the room again, a creeping thought dawning on him.

These weren't just malfunctioning machines. They were rejects—failed experiments in a line of AI development that had gone too far.

A sudden noise jolted him from his thoughts. A faint clattering echoed from somewhere deeper in the room, followed by a low, mechanical hum. His eyes darted around the shadows, his pulse quickening.

Something was still active.

Vargas rose to his feet, gripping his repeater tightly. He cautiously backed away from the terminal, ears straining to catch any more sounds. But the room remained still, save for that faint hum in the background.

Then he saw it—far at the other end of the room, a figure moving in the shadows. It was slow, deliberate, almost… stalking.

Vargas squinted, trying to make out the shape, but it was obscured by the low light. Whatever it was, it wasn't like the others. It moved with purpose. Before he could react, the figure disappeared behind a column, the hum growing louder as it vanished from sight.

"Time to go," Vargas muttered to himself, his instincts screaming at him to leave before whatever it was came back.

With a final glance at the chilling graveyard of broken machines, he turned and bolted toward the exit.

He dashed out of the server room, moving swiftly down the second corridor. This time, he had no intention of sneaking out unnoticed. His goal was simple now: get out, report back, and shut this place down.

But as he sprinted through the facility, alarms blared to life. The sound echoed through the hallways, and red lights bathed everything in a frantic glow.

"They know," Vargas muttered, cursing his earlier decision to smash through the card reader. He'd have to fight his way out.

The path ahead opened up to a vast manufacturing floor, where half-completed machines sat dormant, hulking in their assembly stations. Vargas ducked behind a crate, scanning the room.

There were guards rushing through the halls, armed with primitive automatic ballistic weapons. Vargas could easily take out a few, but there were simply too many. He would need to use his magic, but he was already exhausted from spending the entire day running all over the city.

Vargas spotted a ventilation shaft overhead, just wide enough for him to fit through. With a burst of magically enhanced strength, he leaped up, grabbing hold of the edge and pulling himself inside.

The narrow vent provided a brief reprieve as he crawled through it, heart pounding in his chest. Below, the drones buzzed, still searching for their target. Vargas followed the vent until it spat him out near the facility's loading docks.

Freedom was just within reach, but a nagging thought stayed with him. Someone, somewhere, had approved this operation. This wasn't the work of rogue developers, the amount of failed experiments and AI could easily cost billions of credits. It had backing, power. He needed to find out who.

Slipping out of the dock, Vargas quickly retrieved his armor from the bin and redonned it. He grabbed his data tablet and, in a swift motion, contacted Nera.

"Mission complete," he said, breathless but calm. "I've got the evidence. Get the report ready."

"You sure you're alright?" Nera's voice crackled back, the concern evident in her tone.

"Nothing I couldn't handle. Just make sure this gets to HQ. And Nera…"

"Yes?"

"Start asking around about who might be funding illegal AI projects.There something deeper here."