Sinner's Game

13 - Welcome to the Machine

Jim

Jim tried to breathe quietly, kept himself hidden next to his two allies. They were currently hiding behind a larger cable, which was right in front of a round opening: the end of the tunnel. The temperature had risen by a good bit since they had entered the tunnel, and something about the air here seemed to be even more dull, or plain even, than out in the dense metallic fauna of the jungle. The sweat on his forehead wasn't from the heat, though.

Anna held her bow readied, waited for the right moment to strike. A rather small heart – which Hendrick had cut out of the spreader they had fought earlier – was fixated on the arrow Anna was currently preparing to shoot. She had one of Hendrick's spears on her back as a melee weapon, just in case they needed it later on. Hendrick couldn't carry it anymore anyways; was more than busy carrying the box on his back around.

Hopefully this works, he thought. I don't want to find out what happens once these things catch us trespassing.

In front of them, behind the round opening, a giant funnel shaped room presented itself. Spreaders were floating around like honeybees, going in and out of dozens of round holes which appeared to be arranged evenly spaced close to the ceiling of the room. Jim estimated them to be around 50 meters apart from each other, the room being too large to guess its size.

I just hope that Hen is right and they really just use their own assigned tunnel, he thought.

Jim looked over at Anna's arms, saw her struggle to take aim.

Fighting one of them was worse enough...

From what Hendrick had explained earlier, every single one of these holes led to another tunnel, like the one they had just walked through. Only the upper meters of the room weren't slope shaped and instead consisted of a vertical metal wall.

At about the same height as the tunnel entrances along the wall, there was an around 2 meter wide metal grid floor. See through... because of course it had to be see through. Like everything here, it seemed like it hadn't been built and rather grown out of the wall, which itself seemed to be shaped out of metal parts and leftovers. Even the sloped surfaces weren't smooth, but rather smaller metallic pieces melt together in rough fashion.

Anna followed the movement of a rather close spreader, which carried something with his tentacles. It was still alive, weak mechanical roaring getting drowned out by the sound of the floating terrors. The spreader made its way closer to the middle of the room, then dropped the creature, which hit the steep slope surface below with a loud crank. It then slid downwards until it disappeared inside of the hole at the bottom of the room. Its screams decreased in volume, then disappeared completely.

Anna's bow moved with the being, her mechanical hands shivering slightly. It then flew closer to them, almost in their direction. Did it spot something? Jim saw Anna's hand shake more.

"Not this one," Hendrick whispered. Anna stopped shaking as the spreader flew closer before leaving through its assigned hole around 50 meters to their right. Anna sighed, put down her aim.

"So this is what you call most of the problems, huh? How are we even supposed to get to the elevator like this? It's like a fucking nest of them." Even though Anna was whispering, her voice appeared to be rather loud.

"It's the easiest way, believe me. If you don't want to end like the animal that just got dropped, just do what I say."

"Might as well be less painful than this shit," Anna said, rolled her eyes. "Pff... Anyways. Which one is it then?"