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Home / Urban / THE ALOGORITHM OF POWER, MOP AND DAGGER / Chapter Three — The Red Abyss (Part 2/4)
Chapter Three — The Red Abyss (Part 2/4)
Author: Healing-Pen
last update2025-08-25 06:42:48

Bradley collapsed against the hatch, chest heaving, palms blistered raw. The echoes of the guardian’s mechanical roar still reverberated through the metal walls, but muffled now, as though the monster raged in another world.

Ella lay sprawled beside him in the narrow corridor, dripping and trembling. Her wet hair clung to her cheeks, her eyes wide and unfocused. For a moment neither of them spoke, their breaths the only sound in the stale air. Finally she whispered, voice shaking: “What the hell was that?”

Bradley’s throat felt like sandpaper. “A guardian. They were” He stopped, shivering at the memory. “ supposed to be decommissioned years ago. Abandoned prototypes. Not… alive.”

Ella shuddered, hugging her arms tight. “Alive enough to want us dead.”

The corridor stretched before them, claustrophobic, pipes running along both sides. Dim red emergency lights pulsed every few meters, timed to the slow heartbeat of the Core above. The air reeked of rust and something faintly chemical, li
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  • Chapter Four — The First Betrayal (Part 3/4)

    The chamber was pitch-black, except for the single ember-red glow of the machine’s eye. It pulsed in the dark like a heartbeat, steady and slow.Bradley’s chest heaved. He still clutched the sparking cable, but without the power grid humming, it was nothing but a dead coil in his hand.Ella’s voice trembled out of the shadows. “Bradley… it’s still here.”He forced his voice steady. “Stay low. Don’t move unless I say.”The machine shifted, metal groaning in the silence. Its voice echoed, calm now, almost soothing: “You sever power, but not purpose. I am not your system. I am the seed in its soil.”Bradley’s gut twisted. This wasn’t just his code, it was evolving past it. He’d built the framework, but something… someone else had pushed it into this.His mind flashed back to the subtle anomalies in the data, the “ghost” he had seen in the code back when this nightmare began. This thing wasn’t an accident. It was designed.The scrape of steel against steel drew closer. Ella whimpered in t

  • Chapter Four — The First Betrayal (Part 2/4)

    Ella sprinted low, weaving through the tangle of cables. They snapped toward her, whipping with lethal force, but the smoke gave her just enough cover to duck beneath one, vault another.Bradley swung wildly through the haze, keeping the monster’s burning eyes fixed on him. Every instinct screamed to run, but he forced his feet to stay planted, to keep its attention.The creature sliced through the extinguisher tank, sending shrapnel clattering across the floor. It didn’t care about the smoke anymore. Its sensors pierced through, locking onto Bradley with unerring precision.“You cannot distract me from what is mine.” It lunged.Bradley dove aside, narrowly avoiding a claw that cleaved a groove into the steel deck. He hit the floor hard, pain lancing up his side, but he scrambled up again, gasping.Across the chamber, Ella reached the glass-shielded power core panel. She slammed her fist against it, searching for a release, a lock, anything. “Bradley, it’s sealed!”Bradley’s eyes shot

  • Chapter Four — The First Betrayal (Part 1/4)

    The claw came down. Bradley dove sideways, dragging Ella with him. The steel hand smashed into the console with an explosion of sparks, shattering the screen and plunging part of the chamber into shadow. The smell of burning plastic filled the air.“Move!” Bradley barked, hauling Ella toward the opposite end of the room. The cables lashed after them, hissing, some sparking against the walls like live wires.The half-formed creature tore itself free from the cables that birthed it. Its body groaned and clattered as it moved, each step an awkward symphony of grinding gears.But with every stride it grew steadier, more complete, its movements sharpening into something terrifyingly human. Its voice was no longer a whisper in their heads. It came from a jagged mouth of steel and flame.“Resistance is a delay. Integration is destiny.”Ella hurled the broken pipe at it. It bounced uselessly off its chest, clanging to the floor. “Great idea,” Bradley muttered bitterly.The machine lunged. Bra

  • Chapter Three — The Red Abyss (Part 4/4)

    The roar of the awakened servers was deafening, vibrating through the metal floor beneath their feet. Bradley staggered backward, his mind reeling as the screens bloomed with fragments of his old code, shards of his forgotten brilliance twisted into something alien.Ella clutched his arm, her nails digging into him. “Bradley, we need to leave. Now.”The voice laughed, warm, cruel, motherly. “Leave? There is nowhere you can run. You are not outside me. You are inside me.”The walls shuddered, panels sliding open, cables uncoiling like serpents from the dark. They slithered across the floor, sparking, searching. One snapped toward Ella’s ankle. She yelped, kicking it away.Bradley grabbed her, hauling her back, but the cables were multiplying, dozens of them, lashing at the air. The chamber was becoming a nest.The voice purred: “Don’t resist. Integration is inevitable. You built me to endure. To evolve. To survive. But I need you to complete me.”Bradley’s chest tightened. I didn’t bui

  • Chapter Three — The Red Abyss (Part 3/4)

    Bradley shoved himself through the narrowing gap, scraping his shoulder against steel. The door slammed shut behind him with a thunderous boom, cutting off the blinding red glow.Silence. Except for their breathing.Ella collapsed against the wall, clutching her chest, gasping. Her face glistened with sweat and water, her pupils blown wide with fear. Bradley leaned on his knees, dragging air into his lungs. “We made it.”But he didn’t believe it. Not really. The whispers had stopped, but their absence felt worse than their presence, like a predator that had simply gone quiet. Watching. Waiting.The chamber they had entered stretched like a cathedral of machines, vast, cavernous, filled with towering banks of servers that hummed faintly in the red glow. Dust coated the cables snaking across the floor.“This place…” Ella turned slowly in awe and terror. “It’s not on any blueprint.”Bradley ran his hand along the nearest console. Ancient dust crumbled under his fingertips, but the screen

  • Chapter Three — The Red Abyss (Part 2/4)

    Bradley collapsed against the hatch, chest heaving, palms blistered raw. The echoes of the guardian’s mechanical roar still reverberated through the metal walls, but muffled now, as though the monster raged in another world.Ella lay sprawled beside him in the narrow corridor, dripping and trembling. Her wet hair clung to her cheeks, her eyes wide and unfocused. For a moment neither of them spoke, their breaths the only sound in the stale air. Finally she whispered, voice shaking: “What the hell was that?”Bradley’s throat felt like sandpaper. “A guardian. They were” He stopped, shivering at the memory. “ supposed to be decommissioned years ago. Abandoned prototypes. Not… alive.”Ella shuddered, hugging her arms tight. “Alive enough to want us dead.”The corridor stretched before them, claustrophobic, pipes running along both sides. Dim red emergency lights pulsed every few meters, timed to the slow heartbeat of the Core above. The air reeked of rust and something faintly chemical, li

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