RVR4|Chapter 3: Directive

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Hoping to speed these up now that I'm more than halfway done Runeforged Book 3 and the launch in early August. I have a tiny backlog (1 more chapter) that I'll try to expand and get you guys reading more regularly :)

***

"Move left as soon as you are out of the staging area," Bee said.

The Guild staging opened onto Floor 2, Section 4. Petra went through first, Mikhail beside her, and the rest of them unfolded into position without bunching in the doorway.

Tess turned to the mag-lev board loaded up with spare parts and the BFD-3600. [EVALUATE] read it operational, and she took a step toward it to [INTERFACE] and toggle the Auto-Follow before noticing the readout.

[Mag-Lev Board MLT4 — Operational]Auto-Follow - Available -> Enabled [REMOTE INTERFACE]

Tess sighed, trying not to react. "I'm not Maximum Max..."

"Huh?" Asha asked from beside her.

"Nothing."

Yellow light moved through the crystal ribs overhead. The corridor ahead was broad, warm, and very empty.

"I have redirected the northbound patrol through Section 3," Bee said through their earpieces. "A second group is moving toward the central junction. Continue for sixty meters, then take the tunnel on your right."

There was a small note under the precision that Tess had learned to recognize. Bee was enjoying this. Not the patrols, exactly. The part where a floor that had fought back now moved when she asked it to.

The team moved with her. Mikhail kept the front-right lane, his MK-IX emitter still damaged from yesterday. Yuki took the rear and checked every branch as they passed it. Asha walked close enough to Tess to catch her if the concussion made a sudden decision, while making a convincing show of having no such intention. Cici trotted alongside the board with her ears swiveling, sniffing each warm draft that came off the crystal.

They crossed two junctions on Bee's timing. A patrol passed somewhere beyond the western wall, drones humming through the structure, but never came into view. At the third junction, Yuki raised one fist.

Everyone stopped.

She lowered two fingers to the wall beside her. "Fast approach. Multiple."

"The nearest group did not accept my diversion," Bee said. "Eight conventional combat drones. No additional contacts behind them."

"Distance?" Petra asked.

"Forty-one meters and closing."

Petra looked once at the maintenance approach. It widened twenty meters in, where old equipment housings broke up the corridor and a low crystal shelf gave Yuki elevation. "Set there."

They moved. Tess cut the board's follow speed, guided it into the recessed space behind the thickest crystal rib, and remotely turned off the auto-follow. Cici stepped into the same recess and sat against the board's corner.

"I will guard the equipment," she said.

Tess chuckled. "You do that, Cici."

Yuki climbed onto the shelf, rifle already braced. Asha took the angle below her. Petra stood forward and loose, both vibroblades drawn. Mikhail planted himself in the center lane and the MK-IX came alive around his whole body, energy following the shape of his shoulders, arms, torso, and legs.

The first two drones banked into the approach. Their repulsors screamed against the narrow walls, cameras snapping onto targets as the plasma turrets under their bodies brightened.

Yuki fired first. Her round went through the lead drone's camera and out the back of its hull. The machine pitched sideways and broke against the wall in a spray of fragments that dissolved before they hit the floor.

The second fired and Mikhail stepped into the bolt. Plasma flared across the field surrounding him and dispersed in a crackle of white light. Petra passed him on the left before the flare faded. One blade took the drone under its turret; the other cut through the rear drive mount. It spun apart above her.

Six more poured in behind it.

"High pair," Yuki called.

Mikhail shifted into their firing lane. Three bolts hit him almost together, one at the shoulder and two across his side. The MK-IX flashed around his full silhouette and held, though the emitter gave an unhappy whine. The drones climbed toward the ceiling to widen their angle.

Yuki's next shot struck the right wall, changed direction, and tore through one of the high drone's drive assemblies. The machine dropped hard. It tried to correct, its camera jerking as the turret searched for her, but Asha had already moved. Her hand closed over the pistol at Tess's hip, drew it cleanly, and put two rounds through the exposed core. The drone dissolved mid-fall.

Petra met the low group. She cut one out of the air, ducked under a plasma bolt, and had to throw herself sideways when another drone rolled over its companion's dissolving wreckage. The bolt clipped her forearm plate and left a glowing groove across it. She hit the floor on one shoulder, kept the blade, and swept the attacking drone's turret off as it passed.

It stayed airborne.

Tess's attention caught on the surviving machines and [EVALUATE] resolved their motion into timing. Their cameras turned together. Not perfectly, but close enough that the lag traveled down the group like slack through a chain.

[Floor 2 Combat Drone — HOSTILE]Camera Coordination: SynchronizedLatency: 366msPlasma Turret: CyclingFlight Control: Operational

"Right side turns late," Tess called. "Petra, after the camera sweep."

Mikhail stepped across the corridor and made all four remaining turrets choose him. Their cameras rotated. The rightmost lagged by half a beat.

Petra came up inside that half-beat. She drove one vibroblade through the drone she had disarmed, killing it, then pivoted into the late machine and split its camera. Five down. The hit carried her too close to the next turret. Plasma flashed, Mikhail shouldered into the line, and the bolt burst over the field around his back instead.

The MK-IX flickered.

"Shield's failing," Mikhail said.

The last three broke formation. One climbed, one cut left toward Yuki's shelf, and the drone Petra had blinded surged down the center. Asha fired Tess's pistol at it, not trying for the core. Her first shot cracked a repulsor. Her second hit the turret joint as the machine yawed blind. Mikhail let it come, stepped aside at the last instant, and struck it with his armored forearm. It slammed into a crystal rib and came apart.

The drone on the left opened fire. Yuki flattened along the shelf as plasma took a molten bite from the edge where her head had been. Crystal spat across the approach. Tess ducked behind the housing, jerked too fast, and the dull pressure behind her eyes drove forward in one bright spike. Her hand missed the top edge the first time.

BEE: Tess, your balance has degraded. Your concussion.

"Busy," Tess managed.

Asha slid the pistol back into Tess's hand and turned toward Petra. Tess braced herself against the crystal. The high drone's drive pushed dust down into her face as it lined up on Yuki again. Mikhail moved under it, forcing the turret to track him instead. That bought Yuki enough time to roll, set one knee, and fire. The drone snapped backward and dissolved around the round.

The last machine dove at Petra while Asha was healing the burn across her forearm. Petra shoved Asha clear, caught the first plasma bolt on her damaged plate, and lost one vibroblade from numb fingers. The drone's camera fixed on her, the turret cycling again.

Tess lined up her pistol and fired. The shot missed the camera and punched through a drive strut. The machine lurched. Petra snatched her fallen blade off the floor, stepped under the bad side, and drove it up through the central housing.

The corridor went quiet except for the slowing whine of Mikhail's shield and one loose chip of crystal ticking down Yuki's shelf.

"Eight units resolved," Bee said. "The diverted patrols remain outside this approach. I am pleased with the route, excluding the part where it failed horribly."

Petra flexed her burned arm while Asha pressed the seal flat. "The route is working great, let's go."

Mikhail looked at his sparking emitter, then to Tess. "Not sure how many more hits it can take."

"I can take a look—" Tess wobbled on her feet as she stepped toward Mikhail.

Yuki dropped from the shelf and took rear watch. Asha finished the seal on Petra's arm, then checked Tess's eyes with a light, pointing two fingers at her own face.

"Your eyes track wrong again, we go back."

"Okay, I'm tracking. You even said that it was mild."

"We'll see." Asha walked on.

The sensor relay was twenty meters deeper, though they nearly missed it.

Crystal had grown across the back of a shallow service alcove in overlapping plates, swallowing the relay whole save for a strip of dull metal and one weak amber indicator shining through the growth.

Tess crouched in front of it. [EVALUATE] reached through the overgrowth and put the damage into order.

·········································SECTION 4 SENSOR RELAY SR-4EFunction: Local Sensor Routing · Aether Flow TelemetryPower State: StandbyOutput Efficiency: 12%User Tech Skill: 12·········································Signal Routing ........... Damaged [Tech 4]Sensor Uplink ............ OfflineAether Telemetry ......... Degraded [Tech 8]Connected Systems: Section 4 Sensor Grid FCN-2B Eastern Relay Return·········································

"Yeah, that's it," she said. "The relay's alive. It just can't get a signal past its own face."

Asha scraped a long fingernail over the edge of the growth and a pale curl came away. "Soft. Something to do with stopping the growth, yeah, Bee?"

"That is correct," Bee said in their ears. "Now that the flow of Aether to the excess crystal in that zone has stopped, it will eventually disintegrate."

Tess pulled a narrow chisel, a hand hammer, and her mask from the board. "Eventually doesn't really help us now."

She eyed the BFD-3600 but decided it wasn't worth making all the noise.

Petra and Mikhail took the corridor. Yuki moved to the alcove's eastern edge where she could watch the long branch without crossing into it. Cici settled beside Tess's left boot, close enough that she was nearly underfoot.

Tess started at the outer plate. The crystal chipped cleanly if she followed its grain and punished her when she didn't. She worked the chisel under each thin shelf, tapped until the tone changed, then pried the section free with both hands. Dust found every seam in her gloves. It coated her forearms, got under the collar of her armor, and turned damp against the sides of her face.

One thick wedge had grown behind the bent panel. She set a pry bar into the gap and leaned on it. Nothing. She shifted her knee, got more weight over the tool, and the wedge released all at once.

Her shoulder struck the relay housing. The impact went up her neck and rang through the concussion. For two seconds the alcove narrowed to her hands on the bar and the pulse beating behind her eyes.

BEE: Heart rate one hundred twenty-six. Your pupils remain even, so I won't tell Asha.

She stayed still until the pressure backed off. "Put that in the good news column."

Asha's hand hovered near her shoulder, then dropped when Tess reached for the brush. She didn't argue, which was somehow worse.

The last of the crystal came away in ugly chunks. Tess spread a dust cloth below the relay, cleared the loose grit with a stiff brush, then used a small air bulb around the panel seams. Cici sneezed at the first puff and looked offended at her own nose.

"That response was involuntary," she said.

"How does that even work?" Tess asked, blowing the final line of dust out of the latch so she could open the panel. "You're mechanical."

Cici's tail wagged. "I do not know!"

Inside, the relay was simpler than the overgrowth had made it look. One contact had been levered halfway out of its seat as the panel bent. A signal lead ran taut across the backplate, its insulation polished through where the crystal pressure had dragged it over a sharp edge. The substrate beneath was dark and pitted.

Tess unclipped a dirty contact and cleaned its seat until the swab stopped coming away gray. The contact clicked home with firm pressure from both thumbs. She tugged it once and it held.

Inside didn't even look that bad until she started checking the crystal filaments running throughout the box. She screwed one back into the routing strip, and found the receiving contact canted in its bracket.

"Of course you are," she sighed.

She loosened the bracket, reseated it square, and tightened it while holding the contact against the pull of the other leads. Then she connected a jumper, dressed the slack into the corner, and tied it out of the way.

Tess activated her [INTERFACE] through [EVALUATE] and her vision lit up.

·········································INTERFACE — ActiveConnected: SR-4E (Section 4 Sensor Relay)AP: 15/15Tech Level: 12Access: Root·········································

The relay overlaid around the physical work. Signal routing waited at the broken path, still trying to push output toward a contact that no longer existed. Tess spent an AP to change the assigned route to the jumper she had installed, checked the return, and brought local power back online.

The amber indicator strengthened. Light ran through the exposed crystal traces, hesitated at her new wire, then crossed it cleanly. Somewhere in the wall, a second relay answered with a low tone.

Her read updated.

·········································SECTION 4 SENSOR RELAY SR-4EFunction: Local Sensor Routing · Aether Flow TelemetryPower State: OnlineOutput Efficiency: 81%User Tech Skill: 12·········································Signal Routing ........... Online [Tech 4]Sensor Uplink ............ Online [Tech 3]Aether Telemetry ......... Active [Tech 8]Eastern Relay Return ..... OfflineConnected Systems: Section 4 Sensor Grid FCN-2B·········································

"Section 4 coverage is returning," Bee said. "I have the maintenance approach, the southern junctions, and all local corridor feeds. The eastern return remains unavailable."

Tess should have released [INTERFACE] then. Instead, [EVALUATE] caught the telemetry now moving through the repaired relay, and the floor changed under her attention.

·········································AETHER FLOW EVALUATIONSource: Section 4 Sensor GridLocal Structure: OperationalPressure Gradient: ElevatedPrimary Flow Vector: EastEastern Return: OfflineBoundary Resolution: Offline·········································

The read wasn't a map. It gave her no shapes in the blind section, no units, no clean answer waiting at the end. It was pressure through the structure. Aether moved along the restored paths and leaned east, every local branch feeding toward the same dark cutoff. The load gathered there without a return signal, like a line pressurized against a valve she couldn't see.

Tess pulled her hand away. "Everything's flowing east."

"I see the same direction in the restored telemetry," Bee said. "My sensors end at the boundary. I cannot identify what lies beyond it or determine why the cutoff persists."

Mikhail had turned from the western corridor. His eyes followed the junctions, the eastern branch, then the maintenance approach behind them. "Perimeter."

Yuki crouched near the eastern branch but did not enter it. She swept dust aside at its mouth, exposing several shallow arcs where repeated repulsor wash had polished the crystal clean. She checked the ceiling, then the matching marks at the side approach.

"It's almost like there's two factions of drones in here," she said, pointing to some damaged crystal in the wall. "The ones that the TK-11 is controlling, and the wild ones that just attacked."

Petra picked up what Yuki was saying. "It doesn't want us to get close to the Aether node, pulling its forces back to guard it..."

"Given all that we have seen on this floor, I believe it knows we are trying to repair the dungeon," Bee said. "It appears that its directive is to prevent that."

"The Network," Mikhail confirmed.

"Correlation does not mean causation, Mikhail. We do not know who Pwnd_lol is, or their affiliation."

"You don't really believe that, do you, Bee?"

After a pause: "My projections are uncertain... but I am not."

"Of course it's the Network," Tess said, straightening her back and trying to ignore the rushing teal Aether in her vision.

Petra studied the hall in front of them for a moment. "We've fixed what we can today. Let's pack up. I told you it would be easy."

Everyone exchanged glances at her words, and Asha shook her head.

Tess closed the panel as far as the warp allowed, sealed the remaining gap against dust, and gathered her tools. Wiping her brow and taking off her mask, she started back in the opposite direction as the team got into their positions around her.

Bee routed them back through the newly restored coverage. They crossed Section 4 without another contact, pausing once while a patrol moved through a parallel corridor. The mag-lev board floated after Tess with Cici trotting beside it, and the team settled back into the same easy formation they had entered with.

At staging, Petra's focus caught on something only she could see. Her mouth tightened. Mikhail checked his own status a moment later and gave one small shake of his head. Yuki let out a breath through her nose.

"Damn, still eleven percent away..." Petra said. "Eight drones wasn't even enough for one..."

Yuki slung her rifle and patted her on the back. "Still counts."

Mikhail keyed the elevator.

They loaded in together, dust, damaged armor, tool board, and Cici. As the elevator started up, Tess leaned against the rail and let the motion settle under her boots.

"Jeremy is currently in the Guild Hall," Bee said. "He said he is waiting for your return."

Petra looked up. "Reason?"

"He did not provide one."

The doors opened onto the Guild Hall. Jeremy stood on the other side of it. His jacket was immaculate, his posture straight, but one gloved hand was pressed flat against a table hard enough to crease the leather.

[EVALUATE] fired without her asking it to.

·········································■■■■■■■■ ■■■■■■ / AUTONOMOUS ■■■■REGISTRY ■■■■: ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■EPOCH: ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■DIRECTIVE: ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■REFERENCE: NONE ■■■■■■■■■■·········································

The block was wrong. Wrong fields, wrong order, script she only half recognized around slabs of solid black. It held for under a second and vanished.

Jeremy went rigid. His gaze found her across the room, held one beat too long, and moved on. He said nothing about it.

He lifted the other hand and stopped them where they were.

"Don't leave the Guild Hall. The System Manager has arrived at the Estate."

Everyone turned at looked at Petra who pursed her lips.