Chapter 94 - Infiltration of the Black Vault
We moved cautiously down the central conduit, Luca taking point with his rifle raised, his tactical flashlight cutting through the haze of aerosolized lubricants. Every thirty feet, the corridor was flanked by reinforced glass portals set into the bulkheads.
When I wiped the condensation from one of the thick panes, I gasped and stumbled back into Luca.
Inside the glass chamber, suspended in tubes of pale amber nutrient gel, were human forms. But they were not corpses. Thin, flexible tubing entered their carotid arteries and femoral veins; obsidian valve boxes—primitive, oversized versions of the device ticking in Marco’s chest—rose and fell beneath their exposed ribs.
"Prototypes," Marco murmured, his voice hollow as he stared at the floating shapes. "Before my father perfected the miniaturized core he put in me... he had to test the interface. He had to know if human flesh could survive the constant, unyielding strain of obsidian mechanics."
"Who were they?" Luca asked, his voice shaking with a fury he could barely contain. "Vance’s people? Rivals?"
"Vagrants. Informers. Men and women who crossed the Bellini family between 1985 and 2005," Marco answered without flinching, the brutal truth carving deep lines into his face. "My father was an architect of shadows, Luca. He believed the human body was merely an inefficient engine waiting to be upgraded. He spent decades down here, hidden beneath forty fathoms of water, carving out his kingdom while Chicago slept above him."
Suddenly, the overhead filament bulbs flickered, shifting from dim amber to an aggressive, pulsing crimson.
A heavy clanking sound echoed from the far end of the vault. Out from the gloom emerged three bipedal chassis—not robots, but horrifying biomechanical automatons constructed from steel armatures overlaid with preserved muscle tissue and driven by exposed pneumatic pistons. In place of hands, they held heavy industrial gripping claws and surgical saws that spun up with an ear-piercing whine.
"Clockmaker sentinels!" Luca shouted, immediately opening fire.
The heavy rifle rounds struck the lead automaton with resounding metallic clangs, punching holes through its brass plating and tearing away bundles of synthetic sinew. But the machines felt no pain, possessed no fear, and were driven entirely by the rhythmic instructions pulsing from the vessel's central core. The lead unit didn't even slow down; it lunged forward, swinging its massive steel arm.
Luca dove aside, the blade grazing his tactical vest and tearing a clean furrow through the reinforced fabric.
"Marco, get behind me!" I yelled, pulling two ampoules of concentrated potassium chloride and a high-gauge irrigation syringe from my medical kit.
"Laura, don't!" Marco cried, but I was already moving.
Years of working in high-stress trauma wards had given me an instinctive precision under fire. As the second construct lunged toward Marco with its whirling saw, I slid across the wet iron floor beneath its reach, jammed the steel needle directly into its unshielded hydraulic return hose, and depressed the plunger.
The concentrated chemical solution hit the sensitive fluid conduits, reacting violently with the bio-synthetic medium. The pressure gauge on its chest violently redlined; the pistons locked with a sickening crunch of stripped gears, and the machine collapsed into a heap of twitching iron and spraying oil.
"One down!" Luca yelled, firing a three-round burst directly into the optical lenses of the third automaton, sending it staggering backward into an electrical panel in a blinding cloud of sparks.
Marco didn't watch the fight. His eyes were locked on a massive vault door at the end of the hall, bearing the embossed crest of the Bellini family: a crossed scalpel and compass.
May you like
"The Command Core," Marco whispered. "It's opening."
***
