Down below, she and her little group are moving across one of the suspended bridges—Borzen in front, the civilianssandwiched between, Dravven scanning ahead. Liora walks last, her eyes everywhere, checking every pattern in the walls like she’s reading the Maze’s mind.
She’s trembling, but she’s stillthinking.Still fighting.
I press my claws into the vent edge, watching.
Borzen reaches the mid-span first. He’s a big bastard—too heavy for a section this thin. I know that bridge. It was coded to handle half its load capacity for testing purposes. It’s a trap built on physics and ego.
I whisper under my breath, “Don’t step center. Don’t step?—”
He steps center.
The bridge screams.
A tremor ripples through the beams. Red warning glyphs flare across the railing. Liora shouts something—I can’t hear the words, just the panic. Dravven lunges forward, trying to steady one of the civilians—a young woman with short hair and shaking hands.
Then the floor gives way.
Borzen roars. The civilian screams. The bridge disintegrates beneath them, dropping into the open throat of the reactor pit.
Borzen grabs the civilian’s wrist—his cybernetic arm whines with strain—and in one motion, he tries to throw her across to the next platform. It’s a desperate, heroic, stupid move.
She almost makes it.
Almost.
For one impossible second, she hangs in the air, arms outstretched. The plasma light catches her face—a look of sheer terror—and then she hits the energy field. Her body vaporizes mid-air, the shockwave rippling across the chamber like a sonic slap.
She’s gone.
The smell of ionized flesh fills the air. Even from here, I can taste it. The metallic tang of death—instant, total. The Maze hums with approval.
Borzen tries to retreat—scrambling back toward the ledge. But the bridge’s central support shifts, a molten joint snapping free.
A beam falls.
It spears him through the chest.
The sound he makes—half roar, half gurgle—is pure animal. His back arches as the beam pins him to the grating. Sparks rain down around him. His mechanical arm spasms violently, the servos shrieking in protest.
“BORZEN!” Liora screams.
She runs to him, Dravven grabbing her arm too late. She drops beside Borzen, hands pressed to his chest, trying to stop the impossible.
He looks down at her, lips curling into a bloody smile. His voice is barely a whisper. “Engineer… fix this.”
And then he’s still.
Something inside me snaps.
The Maze shifts camera angles—walls unfold, metal rearranges, giving me a perfect view. I see Husker’s avatar shimmer into being above them, projected across the molten chasm.
He’s wearing sunglasses and a wide grin. “And that, folks, is what we calldrama!Stay tuned for the next round—after a word from our sponsors.”
The feed cuts to static. The Maze goes silent again, as if nothing happened.
I can hear her sobbing. Quiet. Broken.
I canfeelit, like a frequency vibrating through my bones.
