“There it is.” Petra’s voice was hushed.
The spawner rose from the center of the chamber like a frozen tree, crystalline branches reaching toward a ceiling lost in shadow. Tess had seen spawners before. The one at the facility was smaller, desperate and dying. This was something else entirely. Twenty years of accumulated Aether had transformed it into a cathedral of living crystal, teal and violet light pulsing through its structure in rhythms that felt almost like breathing.
And at its base, curled in the bright light like a sculpture waiting to be unveiled, was the Alpha.
Tess had seen spawns through Bee’s cameras. She’d watched Petra and Mikhail fight dozens of them over the past weeks and even seen a few on the way here. But she’d never been this close to something this size. The Alpha was massive, three meters tall even in its resting position, its body a fusion of faceted crystal and dark metal that reflected the spawner’s glow. It looked almost peaceful, like a statue or a monument.
The core in its chest was dark but not dead—as if it were waiting.
“Six minutes,” Bee said through her earpiece. “The Alpha should be in dormant mode, but it will likely detect movement within fifteen meters of the spawner.”
“Then we don’t give it time to wake up properly.” Petra drew her vibroblades. The familiar hum filled the chamber. “I’ll draw it away. Mikhail…”
“I know.” He activated his shield generator, the shimmer wrapping around him. “Keep it busy. Don’t die.”
“Inspiring as always.” Petra glanced at Tess. “You know what to do?”
Tess squinted at the spawner’s bright light, tracing the branching structure up into the darkness. Somewhere in that structure was a shutdown sequence, a way to end this.
“I know what to do.”
The Alpha’s core flared to life the moment they crossed the threshold—amber light flooding through crystal veins, spreading outward from its chest like fire through dry kindling. It rose in segments, unfolding from its crouch with mechanical precision, and Tess realized the statue comparison had been wrong. This wasn’t art. This was a weapon remembering what it was built for.
Petra was already moving, darting across the chamber floor with her blades singing. She struck the Alpha’s flank before it had fully risen, crystal shards spraying from the impact, and then she was gone, spinning away as a massive arm swept through the space she’d occupied.
Mikhail stepped into the gap. His shield caught the Alpha’s follow-through strike, the impact sending him sliding backward across the stone floor, but he held. “Go!” he shouted. “We’ve got this!”
Tess ran.
The spawner loomed ahead of her, its trunk thicker than she’d realized from the doorway. The fight rang out behind her—the crack of Petra’s blades against crystal, the heavy thrum of the Alpha’s movements, Mikhail’s grunt as he absorbed another blow. She wanted to look, wanted to see if they were okay.
She couldn’t afford to.
Her hands found the spawner’s surface, and the world split open.
[INTERFACE] activated.
·········································SPAWNER UNIT F1-ALPHAFunction: Guardian Generation · Floor ControlPower State: OperationalAether Intake: 47.3 AW (Stable)User Tech Skill: 8·········································Spawn_1 .................. ActiveSpawn_2 .................. ActiveCycle Time ............... 480 minutesControl Interface ........ IntactShutdown Protocols ....... Unavailable·········································
[AUXILIARY_LINK] engaged.
·········································CORE INTERFACE ESTABLISHEDConnection Type: BridgeSource: {null} Class UserDestination: Spawner Unit S4-7Relay: CORE-B (Remote)Status: ActiveAP: 8/8Aether Supply: Ambient (Sustained)·········································
The connection was stronger here—ambient Aether flooding through her like water through a broken dam, making the code sharper, brighter, more vivid than anything she’d experienced at the facility. The spawner’s code cascaded through her vision in layers upon layers of nested structure, and for a moment she was drowning in it, lost in the sheer scale of what she was touching.
BEE: I am here. Focus on my text.
Bee’s messages cut through the chaos like they had before, but this time there was something different in them: confidence, familiarity. Bee had seen this code before, at the facility. She knew what to look for.
BEE: The shutdown sequence is in the root architecture. Follow my markers.
Highlights appeared in the flood of data: pathways illuminated, irrelevant processes dimmed. Bee was guiding her through the maze, pointing out the turns, keeping her from getting lost in the infinite recursion of the spawner’s design.
Tess pushed deeper, found the shutdown protocols, and initiated the sequence.
The spawner rejected her.
·········································SHUTDOWN SEQUENCE: UNAVAILABLE·········································ERROR: ALPHA_UNITS ACTIVESpawner cannot enter dormant state whileguardian units remain operational.Units detected: 2·········································
“Units?” Tess’s voice strained. “Bee, it says two…”
BEE: That is… not possible. I detected only one active signature ever. The readings always showed…
A shape moved in the shadows behind the spawner, where the glowing limbs met the chamber wall.
Tess turned her head, the interface still flooding her vision. A second Alpha shambled around the spawner’s trunk.
It moved wrong at first—jerky, uncoordinated, like a machine running through startup diagnostics. The light in its core flickered, amber pulses struggling to stabilize. It had been dormant longer than the first one, she realized. Deeper in standby. But with every step, its movements grew smoother and more deliberate.
By the time it rounded the spawner and saw her, its eyes were fully lit.
“RETREAT!” Mikhail’s voice echoed across the chamber. She couldn’t see him—the spawner blocked her view of the fight. “TESS, WE NEED TO…”
She couldn’t move. The interface had her locked in, her hands pressed against the spawner’s surface, the connection holding her in-place like a physical grip. She tried to pull away and felt the data streams resist, the spawner unwilling to release its hold on her.
The second Alpha took a step toward her, then another. Three meters, then two.
BEE: Tess. I can see this one’s connection to the spawner.
The text appeared in her peripheral vision, urgent.
BEE: It came online after you connected. The handshake is still incomplete. I can see the pathway. I can…
The second Alpha broke into a run.
Tess felt the bridge open completely. Her remaining AP drained to nothing in a single rushing moment—but the connection didn’t collapse. The ambient Aether in the chamber flooded through her, sustaining what her own reserves couldn’t, keeping the pathway open even as everything she had poured into Bee’s reaching grasp.
The Alpha was one meter away, arm raised, claws descending…
It froze.
Mid-stride, mid-swing. The amber light in its eyes flickered, stuttered, and then the whole light pattern shifted to green. The patterns in its crystal restructured themselves, facets realigning into denser configurations.
The Alpha’s mouth opened. Light pulsed in its throat, synchronized with a voice that spilled from it.
“…assume direct control.”
Bee’s voice, coming from the Alpha’s body.
The construct straightened, rolled its shoulders, and flexed its hands, opening and closing them like someone remembering how fingers worked.
“Oh,” Bee said through the Alpha’s mouth. “Oh, this is… this is strange. I have weight. I have…”
The Alpha did a small jump, testing its legs. Then a quick boxer’s shuffle, shifting its weight from foot to foot.
“BEE!” Tess struggled against the spawner’s grip, her voice ragged. “Petra and Mikhail… the other one…”
The Bee-Alpha’s head snapped toward the sounds of combat on the far side of the chamber. For just a moment, something flickered in its restructured eyes that looked almost like embarrassment.
“Right, yes. Priorities.”
Sprinting, the Bee-Alpha hit the original Alpha from behind, crystal claws raking across its back with enough force to send shards spraying across the chamber. The original Alpha spun, clearly not expecting an attack from one of its own, and the Bee-Alpha was already moving, ducking under a sweeping arm, driving a fist into a joint with mathematical perfection.
“Fascinating,” Bee’s voice echoed from the controlled Alpha’s throat. “This model has a structural flaw in the shoulder assembly. The joint was designed for power over flexibility… watch, if I apply pressure here…”
The original Alpha’s arm came off.
Petra stared. Mikhail, breathing hard beside her with his shield flickering, made a sound that might have been a laugh or might have been terror.
“Are we helping or watching?” Petra said.
“Helping would be appreciated!” Bee ducked a retaliatory swipe, moving with an unsettling grace. “I appear to know this body’s capabilities instinctively, but I am still only one combatant against a fully functional…”
The original Alpha’s remaining arm caught Bee-Alpha across the chest, sending her skidding backward. Crystal screeched against stone.
“…against a fully functional and angry Alpha Spawn. Yes. Help would be good.”
Mikhail moved first. His shield was flickering, charge nearly depleted, but he planted himself between the two Alphas and caught the original’s follow-up strike. The impact drove him to one knee.
“Mikhail, disengage left!” Bee called. “It’s winding up for a thermal attack—I can see the heat building in its chest cavity.”
He threw himself sideways just as fire erupted from the original Alpha’s mouth—a gout of super-heated plasma that scorched the stone where he’d been standing. Heat washed over Petra from five meters away.
“The chest cavity is vulnerable during thermal discharge,” Bee continued, circling to flank. “The venting process requires opening the crystal lattice. Petra, if you can get behind it…”
“On it.”
Petra sprinted wide, using Mikhail’s repositioning as a distraction. The original Alpha tracked Bee-Alpha with its remaining arm, amber light pulsing frantically as it tried to process why one of its own was attacking. It didn’t see Petra coming.
She hit its exposed back at full speed, both blades driving into the seam where crystal met metal. The Alpha lurched forward, and Bee was there—catching its swing, redirecting the momentum, exposing more of its damaged flank.
“There,” Bee said, almost conversationally. “See that cluster near the base of the spine? That is the primary thermal regulator. If you can…”
“I see it.”
Petra ripped her blades free and drove them into the pulsing crystal cluster. Light sprayed from the wound. The Alpha made a sound, resonant and awful, like a bell being shattered from the inside.
It tried to turn, to bring its fire to bear on the thing killing it, but Bee-Alpha was already there. Claws punched through the opening in its chest, finding something vital, and twisted.
“Coordinated assault,” Bee said. Joy crept into the Alpha’s borrowed voice. “How satisfying! I push, and things move.”
The original Alpha collapsed.
Crystal cracked, and the light faded. The massive construct dissolved into mist, leaving nothing but fading echoes and the smell of burned air.
For a moment, no one moved.
Bee-Alpha stood over the remains, drawing breath it didn’t need, light pulsing in rhythms that looked almost like satisfaction. Petra and Mikhail stood frozen, their expressions caught somewhere between awe and terror.
“Bee.” Tess’s voice was weak, barely audible across the chamber. She was slumped against the spawner, hands still pressed to its surface, pale and shaking. “You have to…”
She didn’t finish. She didn’t have to.
The light in the controlled Alpha’s eyes flickered. Its posture slumped. And then it simply… stopped. The green glow faded from its core, crystal patterns losing their restructured configuration, and the massive construct crumbled where it stood—dissolving into the same mist that had claimed its twin.
The chamber fell silent.
Then Bee’s voice, bright and excited through Tess’s earpiece: “That was exhilarating! I had a body—I didn’t know I could have a body! Everything just responded when I wanted it to move…”
“Bee.” Tess’s voice was barely a whisper.
“I want to do it again! Next time we encounter a spawner, if the circumstances align, I might…”
“Bee. Shutdown.”
“Right. The shutdown. Focus, yes.”
The spawner accepted the sequence this time.
·········································ALPHA_UNITS: 0SHUTDOWN SEQUENCE: AUTHORIZED·········································Initiating dormancy protocols...Core power: Reducing...Spawn generation: Suspended...·········································
The massive structure released its grip on her, the Aether flow reversing as the spawner powered down. The tree-like spires went dark branch by branch, light receding toward the core like water draining from a tub.
It took everything she had. AP at zero, running on nothing but ambient Aether and stubbornness, she pushed the last command through the interface and felt the spawner die.
The crystalline branches went still, and the pulsing stopped, twenty years of accumulated power finally at rest.
“That’s it,” Bee said. “Floor 1’s Alpha spawner is offline. Permanently.”
Tess’s hands slipped from the spawner’s surface. She sagged against it, legs refusing to hold her weight, the world tilting pleasantly around her. Everything felt soft and distant, like she was watching herself from somewhere far away.
“Tess?” Petra’s voice, somewhere nearby. “Tess, are you…”
“…I’m fine.” The words came out slurred. “Just… need a minute.”
“We don’t have a minute.” Mikhail was at her side, pulling her arm over his shoulder. “Can you walk?”
She tried to stand. Her legs had other opinions. “Maybe.”
As the spawner’s light faded, something became visible in the tree-like structure. A crystal, massive and blinking, embedded in the spawner’s core like a heart. It pulsed once, twice, and then fell free—tumbling from the darkening structure to land at Petra’s feet.
“What the…” Petra caught it before it could roll away. The crystal was the size of her fist, so compressed with Aether that it seemed to bend the light around it. “Is this…”
“And the Alpha’s remains,” Bee said. “I believe it dropped a loot container.”
A metal lockbox sat in the center of the dissolving mist where the original Alpha had fallen, scorched but intact. Petra grabbed it, shoved it in her pack without looking.
“How much time until floor reset?” she asked.
A beat of silence, then Bee’s voice, urgent: “Oh. One hundred seventy-six seconds.”
Petra went still. “What.”
“ONE HUNDRED SEVENTY-FOUR SECONDS. YOU NEED TO MOVE.”
***
They ran.
Mikhail half-carried Tess, her feet barely touching the ground as they sprinted through the corridors. Petra led the way, blades drawn, cutting through anything that got too close. The floor was already shimmering around them—the corridors blurred at the edges as the reset protocols initialized.
A spawn swiped at Petra, but before it could connect, it evaporated. Half-solid shapes that turned toward the movement, reached for them before they disappeared. Petra didn’t care. She hit them at full speed, blades carving through whatever was left, and kept running.
“Left!” Bee called through their earpieces. “Thirty meters to the Floor 2 access!”
They burst into a wider corridor. A simple door was set into the wall, unremarkable except for the panel beside it. Petra and Mikhail slapped their hands on the panel with a satisfying beep.
“Tess, register access,” Mikhail said. “Can you…”
She was already reaching. Pulled her hand free from his shoulder and slapped it against the panel, leaving a smear of sweat and exhaustion on the surface.
Soft chime. “Floor 2 access registered.”
“Good enough.” Mikhail said, throwing her over his shoulder. “Now we run.”
They didn’t go down. They turned and sprinted back the way they’d come, racing the shimmer that was spreading through the corridors, the floor beginning to reconfigure beneath their feet.
“Ninety seconds!”
They ran as fast as they could through the atrium, which felt shorter than it had been when they were sneaking. Or maybe it was actually shorter as the floor had changed.
“Sixty seconds!”
They scrambled around corners, Bee in their ears directing them back to the private staging area. It seemed so far until Bee had them do a full 180 and retreat the way they came.
“The staging area door just moved, double back!”
“Thirty…”
Petra hit the hidden panel at full speed. The door slid open, and they tumbled inside.The door sealed behind them, and the floor reset.
They felt it through the walls, a deep hum that vibrated through the staging area’s structure, the dungeon reconfiguring itself beyond the sealed door. Spawns regenerating, corridors shifting, everything returning to its default state.
Everything except the Alpha spawner.
Tess was on the floor. She didn’t remember falling. The metal was cool against her cheek, the ceiling swimming overhead with no clear explanation of how she’d ended up looking at it.
“Did…” Mikhail’s voice came from somewhere to her left, ragged with exhaustion. “Did Bee just control a spawn?”
“I did!” Bee’s response was immediate, excited. “I accessed its systems through Tess’s connection to the spawner. The new Alpha hadn’t finished its handshake protocols—it was still in initialization mode when I reached it. I simply… redirected its command hierarchy.”
“You possessed it.” Petra stared at the mist.
“‘Possessed’ implies something supernatural. This was purely technical. I overwrote its behavioral parameters and assumed direct motor control through the spawner’s network.” A pause. “But yes. Functionally, I possessed it. It was wonderful.”
“The Alpha is gone.” Mikhail said it as if he were testing the words, making sure they were real. “Floor 1’s Alpha spawner is actually gone.”
“Offline,” Bee confirmed. “Permanently. No more Alpha. Every delver on Tertius-Prime can now access Floor 2.”
Petra laughed, high and sharp, edging toward hysterical. “We did it. We actually did it.”
“You did it,” Tess mumbled from the floor. “I just… touched things.”
“You touched things effectively.” Petra dropped beside her, pulling the lockbox from her pack. “Speaking of which…”
She opened it.
Two handles rested inside, nestled in foam that had somehow survived the Alpha’s destruction. They were elegant, dark metal with subtle ridging, curved grips that looked designed to fit a specific hand.
Petra went still.
“What is it?” Tess tried to focus and failed. The world was spinning pleasantly, everything soft at the edges. Felt like the third beer at game night, except she hadn’t earned it with anything fun. “What are those?”
Tess tried to use [Analyze] but nothing happened beyond her vision going blurry.
“I don’t know.” Petra’s voice was hushed, reverent. She lifted one of the handles, turning it in the light. “But I think they’re mine.”
She set it back down and pulled out the crystal—the heavy, compressed thing from the spawner’s core. It pulsed in her palm, dense accumulated Aether.
“And this?”
“Unknown.” Bee’s voice held frustration. “The floor sensors cannot analyze it. Tess would need to examine it directly, and she is currently…”
“Drunk,” Tess supplied. “Feel drunk. Without the fun part.”
“AP depletion.” Bee’s voice softened. “You gave me everything you had. You need to rest.”
“Yeah.” Tess’s eyes were closing. The ceiling was very far away, and getting farther. “Yeah, okay.”
She let the darkness take her.
The last thing she heard was Bee’s excited voice: “I had a body. I had hands!”
And then, nothing at all.
{NULL} LEVEL UP!LEVEL 8 → LEVEL 9TECH: 8→ 9AP: 8 → 9