The BFD-3600’s beam hit the wall, filling the tunnel with light and noise. Sparks erupted in fans of orange and white. Plasteel fragments scattered off the surrounding walls, bouncing off the mag-lev board. The shriek of laser against material that didn’t want to be cut filled the enclosed space until it stopped being sound and became pressure, vibrating in her jaw and the bones of her wrists.
Cici lasted all of six seconds.
“I am leaving now!” The dog’s voice was barely audible. “My audio sensors are not designed for this! I will be several corners away!”
Tess braced against the BFD’s pushback and held on. Crystal dust hazed the air, turning the beam into a visible shaft cutting through the murk. The mag-lev board absorbed the worst of the vibration, but her arms took the rest, the drill’s recoil running up through her wrists and into her shoulders. Through the eye protection, the contact point was a blinding white spot she had to look away from, drilling by the board’s locked position and feeling alone.
One minute. Two. The drill ground forward centimeter by centimeter. Plasteel slag dripped down the wall in glowing lines and pooled on the tunnel floor, hardening into dark ridges. The heat radiating back from the bore point was enough to feel across her face even through the protection.
At the five-minute mark, she released the trigger and checked the bore.
Maybe half a meter. Two meters to go.
She checked the power readout. 19.1 / 24.0 AW. Five aether-watts gone, and she wasn’t even a quarter of the way through. At this rate, the cell would drain before she reached the other side.
“This isn’t working.”
The two modules she’d left dormant were sitting right there. Resonance Bore Mode and Harmonic Cutting, both available at her Tech level, and doing nothing while she ground away at the wall like she was using a handsaw on a bulkhead. The BFD had been built smarter than this. Time to let it be smart.
She activated [INTERFACE], found the two modules, and activated them.
The drill hummed differently when she pulled the trigger. Same beam, same intensity, but it pulsed now, shifting frequency dozens of times per second. She didn’t understand all of what happened next—the readout scrolling faster than she could track—but she understood the result. The wall stopped fighting, and material that had taken five minutes to penetrate half a meter began crumbling in seconds. The beam chewed through alternating layers of plasteel and crystal, each one yielding as the drill found its resonant weakness. Slag poured freely. The heat was intense, though. Tess had to turn her face away and let the locked board do the aiming.
The power drain was just as dramatic. The readout dropped like a countdown. 17. 15. 13.
One meter. The layers grew denser, more crystal than plasteel, but the drill adapted on every pulse. One and a half meters. The air ahead of the bore was changing, like something was building pressure on the other side.
Two meters. The resistance thinned. She eased off the trigger, not wanting to punch through too hard into whatever was on the other side.
Finally, the wall blew out, leaving a hole just wide enough for Tess to fit through.
Warm air slammed through the hole with enough force to push her back a step. It carried a teal glow and a metallic taste that hit the back of her throat before she could close her mouth. Raw Aether. It rushed through the opening in a visible column, shimmering, and filled the Floor 1 tunnel with a charge that made her skin prickle and her eyes water.
Tess fumbled one-handed through her kit and found the mask Sara had given her when she was fixing the washing machine. It barely helped, but was a stopgap. She pressed it over her nose and mouth and breathed filtered air. Her eyes were still streaming, her throat raw from that first unguarded breath, but the mask cut the worst of it.
BEE: Aether levels at your position have spiked. Are you alright?
“Yeah,” she said through the fabric. “First time experiencing Aether exposure, I’ve got a mask for now.”
The geyser settled in under a minute as pressure equalized between the two networks. What remained was a steady drift of warm, dense air bleeding through the hole from Floor 2 into Floor 1’s dead tunnels.
The drill read 10.4 / 24.0 AW. Less than half a charge remained.
Tess approached the opening. The BFD had cut a clean circle through the wall, edges fused smooth where the harmonics had sealed the material.
Floor 2’s maintenance tunnels were alive and pulsed with a yellow warning light.
Where Floor 1’s corridors were basic, the space beyond the hole glowed. Growth covered the walls in thick ribs that pulsed with a rhythmic yellow light, like a heartbeat.
Tess crawled through on all-fours.
The tunnel on the other side was wider than Floor 1’s. The crystal growth was structural—ribs supporting the architecture, not decoration. The light they put out was enough to see by, which made it feel less like a tunnel and more like something alive. [ANALYZE] lit up the walls with data. Structural integrity readings, power flow traces, energy density measurements. Richer than anything she’d parsed on Floor 1. Her skill had never had this much to work with.
BEE: I can see the increased Aether density through your skill. Floor 2 is considerably more active than Floor 1. I have no sensors on that side. Be careful.
Tess didn’t go much further. She followed the corridor to the first junction, reading the [ANALYZE] data as it painted the walls. Power channels running through the crystal like veins. It had junction nodes with routing tables just on Floor 1, but where everything there was right angles, Floor 2 felt organic. Like what most of the integrated dungeon tech looked like, except now it was everywhere.
A sound from behind. From the direction of the hole.
Cici’s nose appeared through the hole, followed by her head. She’d come through.
“The noise stopped and you didn’t come back,” Cici said. She looked around and went still. “Oh. This is very different.”
“Stay close.”
They moved toward the junction. Cici’s ears were rotating, and her nose was working overtime. They’d made it about ten meters past the hole when Cici stopped.
“Something is coming.” Her voice dropped. “Left corridor. Airborne.”
Two drones emerged from the left branch. Small, about the size of dinner plates, hovering on some kind of repulsor system. Their bodies were faceted crystal veined with light, bristling with articulated tools: tiny cutters, grippers, and something resembling polishing heads. If Tess didn’t know any better, she’d say they looked like maintenance drones.
Their patrol lights were yellow, a warm amber glow that matched the corridor ahead of them.
They found Cici first.
Yellow beams fixed on the dog’s chassis. Both drones drifted closer, circling at about a meter’s distance, tools folding and unfolding as they scanned. The light swept up and down Cici’s body, as if the drones were curious.
“They are looking at me,” Cici said.
One drone extended a small probe and touched her front leg. Cici’s tail twitched. The second drone circled behind her and scanned her rear plating. They clicked at each other, tools articulating in what might have been communication.
“They are examining me. These are diagnostic tools, not weapons.” She paused. “I think they’re curious.”
The drones followed when Cici took a step. Then another. Two small yellow-lit machines trailing a metal dog through a glowing tunnel, bobbing in her wake like attendants.
Then one of them turned.
Its searchlight swept the junction and found Tess against the wall. The yellow beam hit her chest, tracked up to her face. The light flickered, then went dark for half a second.
It came back on red.
A piercing whistle echoed through the tunnels, sharp enough to bounce off every surface and come back doubled. The second drone spun from Cici with its own lights flashing red. Tools reconfigured—cutters extending, spinning up to speed.
From deeper in the tunnels, more whistles answered. Many more.
“Cici, go. Back to the hole. Now.”
Cici ran. Tess was right behind her. The two drones pursued, closing fast, their cutting tools whining at full speed. Behind them, the answering whistles were getting louder.
They reached the hole. Cici dove through without hesitating, a scramble of metallic limbs. Tess pushed through after her, scrambling towards the BFD-3600.
She turned into the Floor 1 tunnel. Through the hole, red light was filling the Floor 2 corridor as more drones converged. And one of them was coming through.
The drone shot through the opening, cutting tools spinning, its crimson searchlight sweeping the Floor 1 tunnel. It was oriented towards Tess and sped up.
She lifted the BFD-3600 from the mag-lev, braced the barrel against her hip, and pulled the trigger.
The beam caught the drone dead center, vaporizing it instantly. One moment a crystal machine bristling with tools, the next a shower of glowing fragments and a puff of super-heated air that scattered across the tunnel floor.
“Stay over there,” Tess said to the hole.
She grabbed the plasteel sheeting from the mag-lev board and slammed it across the opening, pulling the plasma torch from her belt. She ran a bead of molten metal along the top edge, fast and rough, nothing like her usual work. Red light pulsed through the gaps as she welded. Bottom edge. Left side. Right side.
The last bead was still cooling when something hit the cover from the other side. A single impact, testing. Then silence.
Tess dropped the torch. The vaporized drone’s remains glittered on the floor between her and the sealed plate. The BFD’s readout glowed back at her. 8.1 / 24.0 AW. Two aether-watts for one drone.
She set the BFD on the board and started walking. The tremor in her hands would stop on its own. She activated her communicator. “Petra.”
Static. Then: “Here. We’re pulling back already, ran into heavier resistance than expected. What happened?”
“The maintenance tunnels on Floor 2 are defended. Drones. They came after me the second they saw me.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “I sealed the hole. They can’t follow.”
“Are you hurt?”
BEE: Are you hurt?
“No,” she said to both of them. “Just… it’s not what we expected down here. I think I’m suffering from mild Aether exposure, the mask helped.”
“We’re heading to staging. See you after the reset.”
BEE: Your signal readings suggest an elevated pulse and residual Aether in your system. Both are within a manageable range. Asha should be able to help with any lingering effects.
Tess almost smiled at that. Her throat was still raw, and the mask sat loose around her neck, but she was moving, and moving was better than standing still.
Cici fell in beside her without a word, which was unusual enough to notice. The dog walked close, her shoulder brushing Tess’s leg with every few steps, paws clicking in the silence.
The walk back felt longer than the walk in.
***
The maintenance hatch opened, and Tess stepped through into the staging area’s light. Asha was on her feet the moment she appeared, eyes tracking from Tess’s face to the mask hanging around her neck to the crystal dust coating her armor.
“What happened?”
Tess pulled the mag-lev board through. The BFD-3600 sat on it, scarred and warm, less than a third of its charge remaining.
“Floor 2 didn’t want visitors,” she said.
Cici squeezed through the hatch behind her and sat. Her plating was dusted with glittering fragments that sparkled in the staging area’s light.
Asha was already reaching for her med kit. She pulled out a device that looked like someone had welded a medical scanner to a power regulator and wrapped the whole thing in electrical tape. It shouldn’t have inspired confidence, but it did anyway.
“Sit,” Asha said.
Tess sat on the edge of the mag-lev board. Asha ran the scanner from her forehead to her sternum, reading the display with narrowed eyes. Her free hand tilted Tess’s chin up, checked her pupils, and pressed two fingers against the pulse point on her neck.
“Aether saturation. Mild, but it’s in your lungs and blood.” She put the scanner down and dug through her kit. “How long you breathing it unfiltered?”
“A few seconds. Maybe five.”
“Five seconds of raw Aether.” Asha pulled out a hypo that was the same shade of ugly as the scanner. Homemade casing, hand-etched dosage markings, but the fluid inside was clear. “Lucky it wasn’t longer. Seen miners on Kovacs take a lungful of concentrated stuff and wake up a week later.”
She pressed the hypo against Tess’s arm and activated [PURGE].
The effect was immediate. Warmth spread from the injection site through Tess’s chest, and something loosened in her lungs that she hadn’t realized was tight. She coughed once, hard, and tasted metal. Then her throat stopped burning. The prickling across her skin faded. Her eyes cleared.
“Better?” Asha asked.
“A lot better.” Tess blinked. The staging area looked sharper. She hadn’t noticed how much the exposure had been dulling everything until it stopped. “What was that?”
“[PURGE] skill. Breaks down foreign compounds, forces them out. Aether, toxins, bad drugs, whatever don’t belong.” Asha packed the spent hypo away and fixed Tess with a look that was equal parts professional and immovable. “Body won’t take another for several hours. Not going back in, yeah?”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“Good. Wasn’t a suggestion.” Asha pulled a dermal patch from a pouch and pressed it against Tess’s neck. It was cool and faintly adhesive. “Pulls residual Aether through the skin. Slower than [PURGE], catches what the hypo missed. Leave it til it changes color.”
Tess touched the edge of the patch. “You made all of this yourself?”
“Most of it. Healing supplies cost plenty when you buy legal. Cheaper when you know what you’re doing.” Asha sat back and looked at her work with the satisfaction of someone who’d solved a problem efficiently. “Gonna feel tired in about twenty minutes. It’s normal. Eat something if you can.”
Cici had been watching the entire procedure with her ears forward and her nose twitching. “Thank you for helping Tess, Asha!”
“It’s no weight,” Asha said. “You’d be surprised how many forget to say it, though.”
She looked at Tess again, and something shifted behind the professional assessment. Not soft, exactly. Asha apparently didn’t do soft. But present.
She shook her head instead. “Tougher than you look, Rivera.”
“I had a BF drill.”
Asha snorted. She started packing her kit, hands moving with the same efficiency she’d used unpacking it. Every tool back in its place, latches closed, pouch secured.
“Get some rest,” she said without looking up. “Team’s gonna be a while until the doors let them out.”
Tess leaned back on the mag-lev board. The dermal patch was cool against her neck, and the exhaustion Asha had predicted was already creeping in at the edges. Through the staging area’s walls, she could feel the faint hum of the dungeon around them. Floor 2 was shaping up to be a much bigger problem than any of them thought it could be.
But now she knew what was down there. And next time, she wouldn’t be going alone.