Wet ruins.
Maverick had not seen so many of his fallen brothers strewn about since the Siege of Havros—a time etched into his mind like a scar across steel.
And not since the Purge of Sundermarch, nearly two centuries ago, had he set foot into a scene so grotesque—so saturated with rot and blasphemy—that even the strongest of Warmachines had turned to static silence.
Now, standing before the maw of the facility once known as Outpost Thane-9, Maverick saw both memories colliding in the present.
The gates, once pristine alloy, had been twisted into a lattice of torn armor and corpse-metal—fused together by some bio-acid that still hissed. The sigils of the Warmachine Corps remained barely legible, scorched into the warped surface. The mark of sword and skull dripped with blood not yet dried.
He stepped through.
⸻
Inside was carnage—
but not chaos.
This had been done intentionally.
Bodies—hundreds—lined the corridors.
They weren't just fallen. They were displayed.
One was pinned upright to a wall by its own shattered spine.
Another lay disassembled with perfect surgical precision, organs laid out in geometric patterns like some dark altar to pain.
The walls pulsed softly.
Once cold steel, they now breathed—their veins glowing a faint, sickly green.
And all around him… the hum.
A low, guttural thrum. It didn't come from machines.
It came from deep below.
"They built this place to withstand extinction," Maverick muttered.
"And it became a museum of it."
He passed a doorway where four Bringers had made a last stand—
their robes burned, their metal bones snapped inward as if something had folded them with its bare hands.
One still clutched a plasma staff, its core cracked open like a shattered eye.
Maverick paused.
A single Warmachine helm sat on the floor nearby. The name etched across it read: "Hark."
"Brother…" Maverick whispered.
A memory.
Flashing behind his eyes—Hark, seven hundred years ago, lifting a collapsing bridge to save a squadron.
Hark, with laughter in his voice after every war.
Hark, who hadn't failed a mission in three centuries.
Gone.
Like all the others.
⸻
A sound.
Click. Skitter.
Maverick turned his head slowly.
Something moved behind the wall.
Then again.
Then three more, circling him.
They weren't rushing.
They were observing.
He ignored them.
He approached the elevator shaft at the center of the facility.
The lift was gone—just a hole now, lined with wire and bone.
Without hesitation, he leapt.
⸻
The decent began
For ten seconds, he fell.
Nothing but wind and decay rushing past him.
Then—
CRASH.
His boots shattered the bottom platform, and he landed in the engine core chamber.
Only… it wasn't a chamber anymore.
It was a hive.
The engine sat in the center, cracked open like a corpse's ribcage. Tendrils spilled from its core and wrapped around every beam and support strut. Pulsing sacs—eggs, maybe—hung from the ceiling, each one containing a partially digested human form… or what was left of it.
Across the floor lay dozens more Warmachines.
Some torn in half.
Some still twitching.
Some whispering.
He moved to the nearest one.
"Brother…" he said.
The figure turned—barely alive, one eye glowing.
"Maverick…" it rasped. "You came."
"What happened here?"
"They evolved…"
"They… adapted to us…"
Suddenly the brother convulsed—his body seizing violently as something burst through his chest. A long, obsidian claw shot upward, followed by a spiked skull dripping with acidic venom.
Maverick grabbed the creature mid-emergence and crushed its head in his gauntlet.
The fallen brother gasped once… and died.
"Rest," Maverick said.
Then—
The hive screamed.
⸻
A chorus of wails echoed from every tunnel.
They had been waiting. Watching.
Now, they surged.
The walls broke open, and from them came the abominations.
Twice his size.
Twenty feet tall.
Bone armor slick with toxins.
Tendrils lashing.
Teeth serrated and curling outward like butchered machinery.
Dozens.
They dropped from the ceiling.
Crawled from vents.
Broke through floors.
Maverick stood alone in the heart of this ruined place.
He reached over his shoulder. Drew his storm-forged blade with one hand, and unclipped his mag-cannon with the other.
No words.
No prayer.
Only breath.
He charged.
___________________________________
They came screaming.
The first beast lunged from the rafters, all 20 feet of ragged bone and toxin-drenched muscle—a monstrosity sculpted from hate. Its maw opened in a spiral of flesh-torn blades.
Maverick met it mid-air.
He drove his fist into its mouth, rupturing its skull from the inside. Bone detonated in a spray of acidic pulp as the beast's body slammed into the floor in a twitching heap.
Another charged.
Maverick spun, sweeping low with his storm-forged blade. The weapon, etched with heat lines from a thousand wars, sliced through the creature's legs like they were soft bark. It fell shrieking, and before it hit the ground, Maverick crushed its spine with a downward heel strike that shattered the floor beneath it.
Three more.
They circled. Fast. Coordinated. Intelligent.
Too bad for them.
The first lunged.
Maverick ducked beneath its claws, hooked his blade under its ribcage, and ripped upward—disemboweling it in a single brutal motion. Its organs splattered the walls like paint from a pressure hose.
The second pounced onto his back.
Its jagged tendrils wrapped around his neck, trying to pierce the gaps in his armor.
He reached back, grabbed the creature by the throat, tore it over his shoulder, and slammed it into the floor headfirst—until the floor cracked and its skull was paste.
The third opened its chest cavity—firing bone spikes like missiles.
Maverick raised his mag-cannon and returned fire.
The explosive slugs hit with thunderclaps, each round tearing flesh from bone, severing limbs, and finally—blasting the creature clean in half. Its top half crawled for a moment before Maverick stomped it into oblivion.
⸻
The chamber lit up in crimson pulses. The beasts were howling now—not from fury…
but from fear.
"You're learning," Maverick muttered.
"Good."
He charged.
A mass of them surged toward him—ten, maybe twelve, bodies crashing into each other in a blind frenzy to tear him apart.
Maverick activated his shoulder-mounted arc coils. Lightning arced outward with a deafening crack, frying the closest four where they stood. The smell of scorched bone and seared toxin filled the room.
He sprinted straight through the burning corpses, tackled the next beast, and slammed it into a support pillar. The entire support shook—yet the engine in the center remained untouched, as if protected by Maverick's unspoken will.
One beast leapt onto him and tried to pierce his chestplate with its jagged elbows. Maverick headbutted it so hard the top of its skull detached, sailing across the chamber like a thrown shield.
Another got behind him.
Claws found a seam in his armor and stabbed in.
He roared—not in pain, but rage.
He grabbed the creature's arms, ripped them off, and jammed both bone-studded limbs back into its throat.
⸻
They kept coming.
One by one.
Two by two.
Then in clusters, dozens deep.
He was surrounded now—completely. A wall of monsters. Eyes glowing. Breath steaming. Saliva and toxin dripping from fangs that had torn through entire battalions.
Maverick didn't run.
He stood.
And roared.
"I AM THE STORM THAT ENDURES."
He slammed both fists together, activating his shockwave gauntlets.
The ground split.
The blast sent every beast within ten meters hurtling backward into walls, into each other, into steel supports that shattered like glass.
And Maverick leapt into the air—
—crashing down with enough force to dent the reinforced flooring and crack open a trench beneath him.
He waded through the stunned and wounded creatures like a butcher through a field of lambs.
Blade.
Gun.
Fist.
Repeat.
One lost its head in a single swing.
Another had its chest caved in by a punch.
A third was grabbed by the throat and thrown into two others with such force they all burst on impact.
⸻
Finally…
One remained.
It was the largest.
Towering.
Lumbering.
Breathing heavily.
It had watched.
It had waited.
Now it advanced.
Its claws were longer than Maverick's entire body. Its skull was crowned with jagged horns, and its back was lined with tendrils ending in barbed stingers.
It hissed.
Maverick dropped his blade.
Holstered his cannon.
And opened both fists.
"No weapons," he growled.
"Let's end this the old way."
The creature lunged.
Maverick caught its claw.
Held it.
Twisted.
Bone cracked.
The beast screamed.
He stepped forward, driving his shoulder into its gut, forcing it back with a roar that shook the chamber. The creature lashed out with tendrils—Maverick tore them free.
They fought like titans.
Flesh vs steel.
Muscle vs machine.
Will vs instinct.
Then, in a final, brutal motion—Maverick hoisted the beast overhead by its neck…
…and slammed it down on a steel spike jutting from the floor, impaling it through the chest.
It thrashed.
It gasped.
It stopped.
He stood over it, breathing heavily, blood-slick from head to toe, armor cracked, but unbowed.
⸻
The room was silent again.
Every beast was dead.
The engine remained untouched.
Maverick stepped into the center of the carnage. Looked around. Counted.
Thirty-four kills.
Alone.
He wiped his blade clean.
Holstered his weapons.
"Facility cleared," he said into the comms.
"Awaiting further instruction."
And with that, he turned toward the engine.
It pulsed softly. Waiting.
______
The silence after slaughter was not peace.
It was tension held tight in the lungs of the dead.
Maverick stood amid the carnage. His armor hissed, steam escaping from cooling vents. Blood pooled beneath him—alien, acidic, still twitching in spots. Around him, limbs lay like discarded branches after a storm.
The engine loomed ahead.
It was massive—thirty meters tall, a monstrous cylinder of steel and forgotten science, half-consumed by tendrils that pulsed like arteries wrapped in bone. Its once-polished surface was now veined with corruption, as if the planet had tried to absorb it.
His comm crackled.
"Warmachine—this is Command. Engine integrity confirmed. Power systems offline. Restart required. Manual override necessary. Repeat: restart manually. Prepare for strain."
Maverick stepped forward.
He placed a hand on the engine, feeling the hum of dormant power—silent, waiting.
But something else whispered beneath it. Not words. Not thoughts. Impressions.
A kind of… warning.
He ignored it.
First, he had to clear the obstruction.
With one pull, he ripped a blackened tendril away—its ends writhing, shrieking like something alive. Another. Then another. He tore them free in chunks, throwing pieces across the chamber, some of them still pulsing after they hit the wall.
They hissed and bled where they were torn.
When the last tendril was removed, the cylindrical core of the engine revealed itself—an enormous wheel embedded into the base, crusted with time and pain. It hadn't moved in decades.
Maverick took hold of the massive control arms and pulled.
The floor groaned.
The engine resisted.
It didn't want to wake up.
"Move," Maverick growled.
He dug his heels into the ground, locked his spine, and pulled again.
It turned.
Barely. A fraction.
He pulled again—harder.
Muscles strained beneath armor. His arms shuddered with force. The reinforced gears inside the machine screamed as rust and decay were forced to obey.
Another rotation.
Sparks flew. Light pulsed.
The engine was stirring now.
Again.
And again.
Each time, the effort more brutal.
But Maverick was built for this.
Born of steel, sculpted by war, hardened in centuries of agony.
He pulled thousands of tonnes like a god dragging suns.
The lights in the room flickered.
The air shifted.
A vibration began beneath the floor—deep and ancient.
The engine roared to life.
The central core spun faster and faster, until the room thrummed with raw kinetic force. Light burst from vents around the chamber, blue and violent, burning the remaining ichor on the floor to steam.
Power was restored.
"Engine online," the comms confirmed. "Quasar array now stabilizing. Well done, Warmachine. Proceed to—"
The voice cut out.
Static.
Then—
A low rumble.
Maverick turned.
The far wall cracked.
Not from tectonics. Not from quake.
From… movement.
He raised his weapon. The engine still spun behind him, casting light like a second sun. And in that glow, the wall peeled back.
No.
Something peeled through it.
Out stepped a figure.
No—a beast. But not like the others.
Taller. Wider. Made of bone, metal, sinew—and faces. Human faces, melted into its chest like trophies, some still whispering prayers, others still weeping.
Thirty feet tall.
Four arms.
Eyes that bled from sockets.
And it spoke without a mouth:
"We know you, machine of wrath.
We remember your kind.
And we… evolve."
It surged forward.
Maverick didn't flinch.
"So do I."
And he charged.
___________________________________
The chamber cracked beneath the weight of what had just entered it.
The walls moaned. The light from the quasar engine danced violently across jagged bone and flesh like a holy fire refusing to touch the unclean.
It was thirty feet tall—a blasphemy with form.
Four arms. Eight fingers on each hand.
A spine that jutted from its back like broken pylons, dripping with yellow ichor that hissed wherever it struck stone.
And it looked at Maverick not with rage…
…but with recognition.
"You," it said without lips. "We remember your birth.
We tasted your kind in the cradle.
You are not flesh. You are interference."
Maverick said nothing.
He holstered his gun.
And cracked his neck.
The fight began with thunder.
The creature leapt first, the impact of its feet splintering the foundation as it launched. Its screech echoed like a collapsing cathedral. It reached for Maverick with claws wider than most men were tall.
He ducked beneath the first swipe—barely.
The second came faster. He caught it.
Steel met flesh. Flesh screamed.
With a roar, Maverick tore the arm free from its socket in a shower of thick, sulfuric blood. But even before the limb hit the ground, two others came swinging.
CRACK.
Maverick flew backward, slamming into a wall. The concrete spiderwebbed behind him.
He stood. Staggered. Recalibrated.
The engine still spun behind him, casting flickering halos of light through smoke.
"You bleed," the creature mocked. "Perhaps the first of your kind who will die with a name."
Maverick charged again.
This time, it was war.
He didn't aim to injure. He aimed to erase.
He ducked a scythe-arm, slid beneath another, and rammed his fist through the beast's gut. His knuckles shattered bone on entry. Blood gushed from the back like a broken dam. But the monster twisted, its remaining claws slicing across Maverick's shoulder, cutting into the alloy beneath.
It was fast. Too fast for its size.
Smarter than the others.
And it hated.
"We studied you," it whispered into his mind. "Every war, every kill. We were bred to break you."
Maverick grabbed one of the spinal pylons on its back and ripped it clean off, stabbing it into the creature's neck. It thrashed—slammed him into the floor. The stone cratered.
Maverick coughed. Blood pooled in his mouth. A rib cracked.
He rose.
Again.
"You die here," it promised. "And your engine dies with you."
The beast opened its chest—literally.
A vertical maw of jagged teeth lined the torso, glowing with an inner furnace. It tried to consume him.
Maverick jumped in.
Inside the rib-cage maw, he used his elbow like a piston, punching vertebrae into shards.
He reached into its center.
Grabbed something beating.
Squeezed.
BOOM.
The creature screamed—an eruption of hate so loud it shattered nearby glass from rooms long abandoned.
It flung him free. Maverick skidded across the floor in a heap of gore and sparks.
His helmet flickered.
SYSTEM STABILITY: 62%
MUSCULATURE RESPONSE: PEAK
VITALS: FUNCTIONAL
He stood.
"Now die."
He charged, faster than before.
He tackled the beast through a column.
Then another.
And another.
Stone collapsed around them like the fall of forgotten towers. The creature's head bashed against rebar and steel.
It lashed out.
He dodged.
It screamed.
He answered with a boot to the jaw that cracked its skull in half from the side.
Then he pulled his blade.
A weapon that hadn't been drawn this entire war.
Thick. Black. Engraved with scripture from ten thousand years of blood.
He shoved it into the beast's eye, down into its spine, and twisted.
The monster went silent.
It slumped.
Shuddered.
And died with nothing but steam rising from the hole where its brain once was.
⸻
The room fell still.
Only the engine hummed.
Maverick stood over the corpse, blood-slicked, panting softly through the vents of his helm.
"Studied the wrong one."
He looked down at his broken rib counter, then turned toward the next door.
The mission wasn't over.
Not yet.