State Poland, Free Rzeszów Territory
PolTech-IV Innovation Park, August 18, 2049, 6:17 AM
“Well, we’ve made one hell of a loud entrance. Time to storm the Nest! Move it!” Maksim commanded.
“I’m taking point,” Nika shot back immediately. “I’ll handle the small fry hand-to-hand. Save your ammo — it ain’t endless!”
“All right,” Max agreed. “Dasha, Alisa, stay behind the platform and keep moving. I’ll cover you.”
Redhead bolted forward, tearing down the narrow “street” between rows of squat industrial buildings with blistering speed. Her countless hours in DeepVR, mastering the new battle suit and the TACTA laser pistol, were paying off in full.
Darting to the walls mid-run, she moved with lethal precision, her cutlass slashing through large and small spiders in a flurry of deadly arcs. For anything farther out, she relied on her laser pistol — a silent, lethal masterpiece of TACTA engineering. Even its lowest power was enough to take down any spider.
The obliteration of the Fire Wasp hives hadn’t gone unnoticed. In the distance, a furious howl rose and grew louder — the Stone Wolves, enraged by the explosions, were now charging straight for the team, taking the fastest route possible.
// SYSTEM
# ALERT! Stone Wolves (Groups 1, 2, and 3) preparing to attack.
# Predicted attack routes calculated.
The tactical map updated, showing eight shaiszu in the first pack, seven in the second, and five in the third. Each group included an Alpha male, its massive size distinguishing it from the rest. Their markers were flagged with a special icon. Currently, the System displayed a shared trajectory for each pack, with detailed predictions for individual wolves available if needed.
The Hornet strike drones were already in flight, requiring only minor course corrections to align with their targets. The wolves hadn’t advanced far before their airborne hunters closed in. Twenty-six sleek, metallic silhouettes tore through the air at low altitude, seconds away from reaching firing range.
“Max, I’ll intercept two packs with the Hurricanes. With afterburners, they’ll make it in time,” Alisa suggested.
“Go for it,” he said with a curt nod.
By now, the wolves had switched to aggressive evasive maneuvers. It was clear they’d received intel on where the attacks were likely to strike. Instead of charging straight ahead, the shaiszu began bounding unpredictably — leaping off walls, dodging through obstacles, and weaving sharp, erratic zigzags. Yet, despite the chaos, their movements were perfectly precise, with flawless coordination.
A clever move.
It might have worked if they were facing only human.
But this wasn’t a battle against humans. Not this time. This was a fight against the unrelenting precision of Alisa and Moira.
Engines roared overhead, followed by the deafening crack of gunfire, as the Hurricanes dove steeply from altitude, unleashing a deadly barrage. Having climbed high to evade the blast waves from the hives detonations, the heavy drones could now plummet at speed, unloading with brutal precision.
The first pack weathered the attack with relatively minor losses — one wolf down, another wounded, while the Alpha’s kinetic shield absorbed every strike. But the second pack fared far worse. Four wolves lay shredded, their blood staining the asphalt in dark, spreading pools. The Alpha’s shield faltered, its once-bright glow reduced to a pale, flickering shimmer.
The Hurricanes pulled back to reposition, their guns falling silent for the moment. In their wake, as the wolves scrambled to regroup, six “dragonflies” shot forward — nimble Tonbo Sanda FPV kamikaze drones, using the chaos to close in on their targets.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! BOOOM!
The first pack lost three wolves. The second was completely wiped out — its Alpha lay paralyzed on the ground, howling in agony, its kinetic shield shattered, its spine broken, and hind legs rendered useless.
Suddenly, the leader of the third pack made an unexpected move. It leapt high into the air, twisting mid-jump to push off a lamppost with its powerful hind legs. Like a living missile, it launched itself directly at a Hurricane.
Neither Dasha’s acute Foresight nor Alisa’s reaction speed could save the drone. In an instant, the Alpha accelerated, becoming a blurred streak of motion. Its sharpened crest and twin rows of horns pierced the Hurricane’s hull. Meanwhile, its twin tails whipped violently, striking the machine with razor-sharp blades in a frenzy of destruction.
In a matter of seconds, the drone spiraled out of control and slammed into the ground, engulfed in a plume of acrid black smoke. The kinetic barrier had saved the monster from the initial blast.
But not for long.
Furious over the loss of one of their two most powerful combat machines, Alisa unleashed five Tonbo Sanda kamikaze drones on the Stone Wolf. The resulting explosions fused into a single, earth-shaking blast, further intensified by the violent detonation of the Hurricane’s ammunition cache.
By the time the dust settled, only eight wolves remained, one of them an Alpha. But the surviving heavy combat drone finished turning and opened fire. This time, it started with a precise burst of four autocannon shells, shredding the Alpha’s shield. A split second later, the Hurricane switched to its rapid-fire machine gun, unleashing a storm of high-caliber rounds.
With the leader eliminated, the machine turned its attention to the remaining wolves. At the same time, four Tonbo executed their strikes, erasing the rest of the packs.
Meanwhile, the team — accompanied by their android, the platform, and ground-cover bots — had already reached their objective.
Ahead loomed a massive breach in the wall — one of three known entrances into the shaiszu Nest.
// SYSTEM
#Active Drones:
* Recon Microdrones Scout 2500: 93/100 (-7)
* Observer Drones Eye: 10/10
* Combat Drones Hornet: 49/49
* Heavy Combat Drones Hurricane -2: 1/2 (-1)
* Kamikaze Drones Tonbo Sanda S: 279/300 (-21)
----------------------------------------
The Shaiszu had torn quite a gash in the wall — wide enough to drive a tank through. Not that a tank would have gotten far. Massive roots, thick branches, and vine-like tendrils jutted from the gaping hole, their surfaces coated in fine chitinous scales, looking like grotesque, interwoven cables.
Beyond the gap stretched a dark, foreboding corridor, its depths faintly illuminated by an eerie bioluminescent glow. The creeping organic matter of the Nest had evidently overtaken the building’s interior, repurposing it for its own sinister needs.
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“Ready?” Maksim asked in a low voice, pressing himself against the armored flank of the robotic platform, Sleipnir.
“Let’s go! Fast and faster!” Nikola quipped, adjusting her grip on her cutlass. In her other hand, she held a laser pistol with a nearly full charge at 96% — plenty to last, with spare batteries clipped to her belt.
Dasha kicked a root protruding through the cracked concrete near the entrance a couple of times and muttered darkly, “You can’t ever be ready for crap like this, no matter how many biopunk games you’ve played or horror movies you’ve binged. Bet there are tentacles in there. Weird-ass eggs. And some face-hugging monstrosities. Yeah.”
“Which is why you’re keeping your helmet on, WonderKid,” Maksim said with a smirk before gesturing forward. “Alright, we’re going in!”
// SYSTEM
# ALERT! Mission objectives updated based on additional analysis.
# Likely location of the Nest Guardian and Incubators identified: central raw material storage or adjacent finished goods warehouse. Updating the map...
The team’s route appeared on the augmented reality map. It was discouragingly long, winding, and leading deep into the heart of the sprawling facility. It lay through offices, technical rooms, quality control labs, and product packaging lines.
Sleipnir, its folding shields pressed tightly to its sides, started moving and entered the building. Carefully stepping over thick roots, crushing moss and snaking vines underfoot, the heavy machine advanced, ready to unleash fire from the turret on its back at a moment’s notice.
Nika and Maksim moved in its wake, eyes darting across the shadows and hands steady on their weapons, ready for anything. Overhead, three Eye recon drones hovered, accompanied by five Hornets for fire support. Bringing more would have caused interference in this cramped space, so additional drone teams followed at a distance, ready to reinforce at a moment’s notice.
“I really wish we had flamethrowers,” Alisa remarked, eyeing the webs stretching across the walls. Thick, tangled formations resembled oversized nests, exuding a sense of foreboding.
“Hell yeah! I’d torch this whole lair to ashes, no question, yeah!” Dasha added with a bloodthirsty grin.
“We’ll have to make do,” Maksim replied, his eyes locked on the augmented interface. Already, the fourth Scout microdrone had been ensnared in the sticky, almost sentient webbing and was hopelessly trapped.
The web in this corridor wasn’t merely adhesive. It seemed alive, its organic fibers pulsing and twitching at the slightest movement, as if searching for prey.
The Ghosts hadn’t gotten far before an unnerving sound began to rise from the depths — the scuttling of countless tiny legs across the floor. A colony of Scout Spiders burst out, swarming toward Nikola and Maksim in a coordinated frenzy, thoroughly avoiding Sleipnir’s bulk.
Without a second thought, Redhead lunged forward, dropping to one knee as her cutlass slashed through the writhing horde in a flurry of relentless, sweeping strikes. At the same time, her laser pistol spat out precise bursts of fire, picking off distant spiders, seamlessly complementing her blade work.
Maksim provided cover fire, his Vector Spike GNRc3 unleashing needle-like projectiles that ripped through the advancing ranks with ruthless precision.
After thirty grueling seconds, the spider swarm dissipated. Nikola wiped her blade with a disposable tissue, as she had strapped a pack of them to her armor before stepping into the Nest. She knew that the spiders’ acidic blood could corrode even the finest steel of her weapon if left untreated.
Their brief reprieve was cut short.
A shrill screech echoed through the air as larger spiders — the Scout Guardians capable of spitting acid — crawled into view along the ceiling. Globules of caustic liquid shot from their jaws, sizzling menacingly as they struck metal surfaces. The first droplets landed on Sleipnir’s armor, leaving faint but unmistakable scars that shimmered under the corridor’s dim light.
Their choice of high ground, however, proved fatal. Maksim and Nika dove backward into a crouch, just as five hovering Hornets opened fire. The drones unleashed a coordinated assault, swiftly eliminating three waves of spiders before they could pose a significant threat.
BOOM!
A deafening crack echoed through the corridor as the Lynx X12 sniper robot sprang to life, shaking the air like a thunderclap. Dasha had mounted it onto Sleipnir’s back, ensuring the smart killing machine wouldn’t obstruct the autocannon already secured to the platform.
“My passive Sixth Sense just kicked in – I felt a serious threat,” WonderKid explained with a shrug. “Seems like there’s a sneaky one ahead, yeah.”
Right on cue, a large, semi-transparent creature dropped from a nest on the ceiling. It looked like a grotesque centipede, stretched to an unsettling length of nearly a meter and a half.
“Ugh, disgusting,” Redhead muttered, raising her laser pistol and putting a sizzling impulse straight through the thing’s head, cutting off its twitching for good.
“Keep moving,” Maksim commanded.
Sleipnir resumed its advance, its massive legs grinding the organic floor into pulp. Nika kept pace beside the platform, cutting down the remaining shaiszu with quick, decisive strikes as they lunged at her. At one point, she nearly lost her balance when a strange organic lump under her boot exploded without warning.
At that moment, the System marked the area as a deadly hazard using a red visual telegraph. As if trying to prevent anyone from leaving the danger zone, a large crack opened in the ceiling, spilling out a swarm of spiders. But Nika had already rolled out of the way, taking cover behind the platform.
“Run! Get out of here!” Maksim shouted as Alisa opened fire with two Hornets. The sharp bursts of gunfire ripped through the spider horde, shredding them before they could spread.
“Watch your step, guys — there’s probably more traps around,” Nika warned as she moved ahead, her steps cautious. She stopped abruptly, scanning the two paths ahead. “We’ve got a fork. And there’s something strange on the floor in both passages.”
The Ghosts’ leader focused on the dynamic map, its layout updated as new data streamed in from the Eye drones and deployed Scouts.
“Alright. One path is clogged with dense webs. The other… looks like some kind of organic pool. It’s hissing, with some giant, bursting bubbles… not good,” he thought, analyzing drone’s visuals. “And the whole surface of that bubbling soup pot is lit up blood-red by the System. Lethal. No question about it.”
“We’re going through the webs,” Maksim decided. “No way I’m wading through whatever that bubbling stuff is.”
“There’s a parallel corridor further ahead that leads to the same hall we’ll reach through the second passage,” Alisa said, having already scouted the route over the pool with an Eye drone.
Sleipnir boldly pushed into the web-filled corridor, its side shields partially extended to scrape away the sticky fibers with its bulk. Thick strands still dangled from the ceiling, some of them twitching like ravenous tentacles.
All drones were forced to descend to the platform’s level. Staying airborne meant certain entanglement.
With every step, the organic infestation thickened. Thorny vines and bulbous, fleshy growths jutted out from the walls and floor, while translucent sacs, pulsing with clusters of writhing tentacles, littered the ground like grotesque, upside-down jellyfish.
“Damn it, we could really use flamethrowers,” Maksim grumbled. “Fall back. Sleipnir will deploy shields. Alisa, send six Tonbo Sanda to clear the floor, I want those jellyfish gone. And there’s an organic wall blocking the passage ahead. According to the map, that’s where we need to go. We’ll blast our way through.”
The team retreated to the fork, taking cover behind Sleipnir’s shields. The six kamikaze drones zipped forward, and moments later, the corridor shook with a rapid series of controlled explosions.
“We won’t get them all, but at least the path’s clear,” Dasha remarked, watching the corridor through the Eye feed.
The organic obstruction had been partially blasted apart, revealing the corridor stretching further ahead. The Tonbo drones had wiped out the jellyfish-like creatures, leaving the thick stench of scorched protein and burnt chitin hanging in the air. Knowing what lay ahead, everyone except Alisa had already switched their armor to air recirculation mode, so the reek didn’t bother them. The oxygen generators had enough capacity for 48 hours of operation, venting carbon dioxide outside – plenty of time for the fight ahead.
“Alisa, three more Tonbo – the gap’s still too narrow,” Maksim ordered.
“On it.”
Seconds later, three synchronized explosions tore through the barrier, obliterating it completely. The path ahead was now wide open.
The corridor beyond was surprisingly clear, with only a few stray webs clinging to the walls and no trace of vegetation. The team hurried through, bursting into a vast room — once the facility’s packaging line.
It was unrecognizable now. A dense carpet of moss blanketed the floor, rising to ankle height, while webbing smothered the machinery, cascading from the ceiling in grotesque, sagging sheets. The air stirred faintly, a sign of drafts weaving through the cavernous space. From the far corners came strange clicks and taps, their eerie rhythm amplifying the oppressive silence.
Suddenly, a massive figure scuttled out from behind a conveyor station, its shadow stretching across the mossy floor.
This creature dwarfed anything they’d faced so far. Standing 1.6 meters tall, it moved on eight segmented legs, its wide pincers snapping menacingly, while a curved, stinger-like tail swayed with deadly purpose.
“Skorpion, kurwa! Ja pierdolę, jakie bydle!..” Nikola breathed, her voice barely audible, as her wide eyes locked onto the monstrous predator.