This place is not a place of honor,

  no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here,

  nothing valued is here.

  What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us.

  This message is a warning about danger.

  The danger is in a particular location.

  The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours.

  This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.

  Of course her parents set up a research base in a place like this.

  Leah was standing over a hole in the ground, fifteen meters wide and perfectly round with thin metal steps going down its side. Concealed in plain sight. Without the ability to fly or satellite imaging it’d be impossible to find in the flat, snowy plains. She couldn’t fly, and the last satellites fell out of the sky before she was even born. But she had the next best thing: coordinates.

  Wind howled over her head as she tied a rope around herself, secured the other end at the top of the drop, and made her way down the steps. They were rickety and small, a deterrent as much as everything in this place was. The chasm itself was intimidating too; even she wouldn’t survive the nearly two hundred-meter drop.

  On the bottom was a circular metal door, covered with writing in multiple languages. A warning, one that Leah was about to ignore just as her parents did. The hatch was three times her height with over a hundred clasps and bolts keeping it secure. Opening it was a hassle—by design, of course.

  To the left of the hatch was a small keypad with no screen. Her parent’s addition. The keys were worn out by time, but Leah knew the combination without the need for any symbols. She’d searched for it for nearly a year. She quickly dialed in the code.

  Bolts moved, clasps unlatched, and air hissed. Something creaked. The door that normally should take hours to open, did so in minutes. Her parents never were patient people. The hatch didn’t open all the way, leaving only a small slit for her to squeeze into. Her rifle was too impractical to take into the tight space and she left it by the entrance.

  Light was too risky. Leah learned that particular lesson the hard way in one of the other facilities. Her parents like to diversify their defenses from time to time, but light activated sensors were among their favorites. She wasn’t as prepared for exploring the facility as she’d like—some of her gear, like her night vision module, was still at the Enclave—but she’d make do. She engaged her lidar, the infrared laser mapping the tunnel and displaying the surroundings on her visor. A large pipe ran down the middle of the corridor, with a walkway on one side and thick cables on the other.

  Leah looked over the map. There were a few dark spots where the laser didn’t reach that made her anxious. She waited a heartbeat for the lidar to make another rotation and overlaid the two maps. No movement. Half a second later, another rotation. Only after checking for the third time, she felt confident enough to proceed.

  There was a door at the far end of the tunnel. Carefully, she made her way there, constantly scanning her visor for threats. She almost made it without an incident. Almost. The creature timed its attack well, moving as soon as the scanner passed it, giving it half a second head start.

  It was hard to fight with only static images of her surroundings, but Leah was experienced. It wasn’t the first time she had to fight her parents’ experiments in unfavorable conditions. She acted on instinct, dodging the first strike. From still images, she extrapolated the automaton’s movements.

  Skeletal claws, half-emerged from the wall, positioned to rip out her throat.

  The rest of the creature in view, poised to strike again.

  A misshapen arm, motionless over Leah's head.

  A knife, halfway in the mess of cables and arteries that was the monstrosities' neck.

  The body, frozen midway towards the ground.

  Two and a half seconds. Too long. Her lidar picked up more shapes coming out of the walls, floor, and ceiling. She dashed for the door, dodging the creatures. Wet splashes and scraping metal followed behind her, close.

  Leah kicked in the door, releasing the springs in her leg to add power to the kick. She was blind for a fraction of a second before the lidar made its rotation. The room was small, a crossroads between three corridors. She chose one at random and ran.

  Red light filled the long hallway. The motion sensors must’ve picked up her movement. Doors lined the walls, but there was no point in trying any of them. She had to get deeper into the facility, and this one was built just like the others.

  Leah cursed. A dead end. Instead of stairs leading down, there was only a solid wall. One in three chances was good, but not good enough when deadly automatons were chasing you down.

  She could hear the monsters limbering in her direction. At least eight of them, judging by the sounds. Leah considered her chances. There was no need to kill or incapacitate them, only to get through. Doable. With a gun in one hand and a knife in the other, she waited for the beasts to round the corner.

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  The first didn’t have time to turn before a bullet bit into its frontal lobe. It staggered but didn’t fall. Leah unloaded three more shots into its head and it finally went down.

  With the lights on she finally got a good look at the brand of ugly she was dealing with. The automatons were hulking beasts of metal and flesh. Their finger bones were elongated into claws, their heads covered with flaps of skin held in place by rusted screws. They had necks made of pipes, connecting the organic hearts with brains stripped of all the parts deemed unnecessary.

  Not her parent’s best work, but still deadly.

  More were coming, walking over the corpse. Two of them stepped into the walls, the metal flowing and rearranging around them. How’d her parents manage that? She’d have to examine the walls later. Still, it made for two enemies she didn’t have to worry about if she was fast enough.

  The monsters were almost upon her, leaving no room in the small corridor to maneuver around. Leah armed her legs again, struggling with the effort it took to put the springs back in place. Next time she’d just use an actuator or real explosives. Though, she had to admit, there was something to be said about the simplicity of a spring.

  She kicked off the floor, soaring over the monsters with the added momentum from her legs. She was almost in the clear, when one grabbed her by the leg. It slammed her hard into the floor.

  The fall knocked the breath out of her. She rolled sideways, claws sinking into the stone where her head had been a moment ago. The other beasts didn’t react fast enough to swarm her. She was already up and running back towards the intersection.

  The ones hiding inside the walls tried to grab her, but she sidestepped their attacks. Ambushes were pointless if the enemy saw you set them up, but the automatons weren’t smart enough to realize that. Again, not her parent’s best work.

  The next corridor turned out to be correct. Leah dashed down the stairs, the whole stairway shaking with her heavy steps. Lower levels always had the exact same layout, designed entirely by her parents. They were creatures of habit, and she memorized their habits years ago.

  Left, right, right, straight. Before her was a door, far sturdier than any present in the facility so far. She breathed a sigh of relief and entered the combination. 2604. Her birthday.

  The door opened and she turned her back to it. With precise movements she reloaded her pistol, waiting for the automatons to approach. Only five left, she let them get close. Close enough to see the blood mixed with oil leaking. Close enough to see the pores on their lifeless skin.

  She took one step back.

  The monsters immediately lost focus, their programming not allowing them into the room. Even with brains, they were still machines bound by their code, and the research room was off-limits to them. Too much risk of them damaging something vital by accident.

  Leah unloaded into their backs. Two fell before she had to reload again. Before the creatures got too far, she stepped back into the corridor. As one, they turned and closed the distance.

  Step back, shoot, reload, step forward. Soon, there were no automatons left standing.

  The room was vast. Workbenches lined one wall, with rotten organs and rusted metal scattered about. Her parents must’ve evacuated this facility in a hurry. There were prototypes of technology Leah knew well in the room. Early versions of incubators that let children grow well even in the harsh wasteland and with inadequate nutrition. Prototypes of defense systems for the Enclave. The AI modules, a version of which she herself was using.

  She made her way to the pile of papers on one of the desks. Quickly leafing through, she found nothing of note. The research here was mostly redundant—she’d raided facilities with more advanced tech. This was one of the earlier ones, it seemed. Expected, but still disappointing.

  Nothing more to see there, Leah navigated the corridors leading towards the core. It was the deepest area of every facility, powering the whole thing by processing atomic waste leftover from civilizations long past. It was buried kilometers under the main areas to limit toxic exposure, with a single lift leading down.

  She didn’t bother putting on one of the protective suits that lined the corridor out of the lift. She’d integrated better technology into her armor. The reactor room was shaped like a sphere with a flat bottom, around eighty meters in diameter. A gigantic metal ball levitated in the middle, held in place by a stasis field.

  As soon as she got close to it, an indicator appeared in her peripheral vision.

  WARNING. High radiation levels detected, engaging shields.

  A translucent shimmer covered her as the automatic protections of her armor turned on. Even they wouldn’t last long, but they’d be enough. The core levitated high enough that she could crouch-walk under it. It had a circular hatch at the bottom, a scaled-down version of the one outside. Leah slowly turned the handle and it opened, revealing a ladder leading up.

  WARNING. Radiation levels exceeding critical amounts, estimated time until shield failure: 15 seconds.

  She had to be fast, her vision was swimming already. Grain noise from the radiation clouded her lenses. If it kept up, she’d be blind soon. Leah ascended the ladder as quickly as she could, and reached up into the center of the sphere. The timer was ticking down.

  WARNING. Radiation levels exceeding critical amounts, estimated time until shield failure: 5 seconds.

  She grabbed blindly until her hand closed around a small metal cube. She ripped it out. Quick calculations raced through her mind. She wouldn’t make it down in time. Leah let go of the ladder.

  WARNING. Radiation levels exceeding critical amounts, estimated time until shield failure: 2 seconds.

  Her head banged on the metal steps before she could wrap her arms around it to protect it. She’d lost vision in one eye already, but her unconventional descent bought her enough time. She hit the floor with a hard thud, less than a second before her protections could be breached.

  All around her the facility was shutting down, cut off from its source of power. Half-blind and fully in pain, she scrambled to close the hatch. That was too close. She was stupid.

  But it worked. Leah smiled.

  In her palm she held a small, metal cube, covered in green vein-like tubes. Another piece of her parent’s puzzle. There was a symbol on one side, same as all the other cubes she’d found. A circular outline the color of rust, filled with small shapes separated into squares, akin to an electrical grid. Her parent’s signature.

  On the surface the cubes served as stabilizers, directing the energy of a reactor. But they were too bulky, technologically speaking, for only this one task. Her parents could've achieved the same result with half the circuitry and sophistication. They had a hidden function, she knew, left by them for her to discover. She only had to find out what it was.

  She had five more cubes back at the Enclave. This was the last one she needed. She was so close.

  Leah stowed the artifact in one of her many pockets and ran a quick self-check. She’d need extensive treatment for radiation poisoning, but the only major issue for now was her destroyed eye. Luckily, all the materials needed were currently in a hallway upstairs.

  She just had to perform a few autopsies to get them.