A rusted maintenance catwalk hung fifteen feet above the main corridor. The metal grating vibrated relentlessly under their boots. Blinding violet flashes illuminated the slaughter below in sharp, strobe-light bursts. The Vanguard was drowning in bodies. A wave of emaciated ghouls threatened to completely overwhelm the earthen barricade.

​Maya held the high ground. She did not carry a standard rifle. She wielded a P.A.C.I.F.I.C. heavy-duty structural rivet-rifle. The weapon was a massive yellow construction tool originally designed to bolt solid steel girders directly into bedrock. A faded yellow warning label sat bolted to the side of the receiver.

​WARNING. Recoil may cause severe spinal compression. Use of exoskeleton required. Corporate medical will not cover joint degradation.

​She fired the weapon with absolutely zero exoskeleton support.

​Maya pulled the trigger. The heavy, jarring recoil punched directly into her unaugmented shoulder. Her bones absorbed the brutal, concussive impact. By the third shot, her shoulder joint was already grinding. She ignored the white-hot flare of pain. She racked the heavy slide and picked her next target.

​Don operated beside her with cold, absolute rhythm. He fired armor-piercing bolts from his scavenged crossbow. He did not waste time looking for clean headshots. He shot strictly to cripple the leading edge of the swarm. He snapped femurs and shattered pelvises. The crippled ghouls collapsed instantly and tripped the ones sprinting blindly behind them.

​He counted his armor-piercing bolts by touch. He had eleven left. He did not announce the deficit.

​"They’re drowning Tyson," Maya yelled over the gunfire. "He can’t clear the meat fast enough."

​"Don’t look at Tyson," Don replied. "Watch the walls. The freaks are climbing."

​The ghouls decided to bypass the V-shaped spike funnel entirely. They dug their broken fingernails into the concrete walls. They scrambled upward like massive, rotted insects to drop directly onto Maddie and Tyson.

​Maya tracked a climber. "Who taught these things how to scale concrete?"

​"Just shoot the climbers," Don said.

​Maya centered her sights on a pale, thrashing anomaly. She pulled the trigger. The recoil rocked her violently backward. The warning label’s promise materialized in real time. Her shoulder joint crunched sickeningly. A ten-inch steel construction rivet blasted out of the barrel with a deafening pneumatic thud-hiss. The spike punched straight through the ghoul’s shoulder blade and sank three inches deep into the concrete wall behind it.

​The anomaly hung suspended fifteen feet in the air. It thrashed wildly. It screamed while pinned to the corridor by its own ruined shoulder.

​A cold blue LitRPG prompt flickered directly over the struggling ghoul.

​[Unauthorized Construction Initiated. Asset Modification Logged.]

​Maya ignored the absurd corporate warning. She fired three more times in rapid succession. She pinned the next wall-crawler through the throat, the thigh, and the ribs. Four ghouls hung from the corridor wall like a grotesque art installation. Thick drops of black fluid rained down onto the Vanguard.

​Don fired his seventh armor-piercing bolt. He had four left. He kept his mouth shut and cranked the string back.

​Maya glanced downward while racking her next rivet. Through the violet flashes, she caught a clear glimpse of Allison. The earth-mage stood completely grounded three floors below. Her amber LitRPG script was a mess. One arm blazed like a magnesium flare. The other arm ran on dull, dying residual embers. The asymmetry was entirely obvious even from the catwalk. The Builder was pulling far more mana than the system was designed to handle.

​Maya stared at the uneven glow for one second. She knew exactly who Arthur Vance was. The architect of this entire corporate graveyard had built the very walls they were currently dying against. His daughter was currently bleeding magic to keep those walls standing. Maya did not know what to do with that information. She filed it away and turned her heavy rifle back to the wall-crawlers.

​"The System thinks I’m remodeling the hallway," Maya shouted.

​"Technically you’re putting up new wallpaper," Don said. He dropped another climber with a bolt to the kneecap.

​"They look terrible," Maya noted. "Total violation of the corporate dress code."

​"Keep bolting them to the drywall. I’m down to four heavy bolts."

​The suffocating stench of boiling blood rose from the slaughter below. Maddie discharged her battery completely. The electric flash lit the entire corridor. Blistering heat radiated off the yellow barrel of Maya’s rivet-rifle.

​A massive surge of anomalies hit the right flank. The swarm threatened to spill over the spikes. Maya held the trigger down. She pinned five ghouls in a row with rapid, punishing shots. Her shoulder tracked entirely wrong on the recoil. The joint slipped out of alignment. The warning label’s spinal compression happened in agonizing, millimeter increments.

​The heavy drum clicked empty. The pneumatic hiss died completely.

​Maya dropped the empty magazine directly onto the metal grating. Before her hand could even reach the spare drum on her belt, Don stepped completely into her firing lane. He did not ask if she was okay. Anchoring his boots, he took her exact angle and fired three armor-piercing bolts in three consecutive seconds. The heavy steel dropped the ghouls rushing the gap she left open.

​That was his last armor-piercing bolt. He still did not announce it.

​Maya did not step back. She grabbed the collar of his rough canvas jacket. She used his solid weight as a physical anchor against the violently vibrating grating. She pulled herself tight against his shoulder. She slammed the fresh heavy drum into the rifle with her good arm.

​Don felt the heavy impact of her reload. He knew exactly who Maya was. He knew she organized the riot. He knew her brother’s name was on the Sector 300 manifest — the same manifest Will had sealed without a vote, the same math Maya had been living with since the bulkheads closed. He covered her reload and said nothing. But there was a specific quality to the silence between them — the silence of two people who are both aware of a thing neither of them is going to name in the middle of a slaughter, which is its own kind of acknowledgment.

​"You missed the kneecap on the big one," Don stated.

​"I was aiming for the throat," Maya fired back. 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

​"Your aim needs work."

​Maya racked the heavy slide. "You’ve been counting your bolts since the first wave. How many left?"

​Don paused for a fraction of a second. "Enough."

​Maya looked at him for exactly one beat — long enough to register that they both knew the answer was not enough — then turned back to the dark. "Chamber the next round, marksman."

​The high ground suddenly became a massive liability.

​A hulking Nephilim abomination completely ignored the funnel below. Thick rusted iron plating fused its heavily mutated skull and shoulders together. It spotted Don and Maya on the catwalk. The creature reached up with massive, corrupted hands. It grabbed the rusted steel support beams holding the grating to the ceiling. It pulled with the methodical, terrifying force of something that was not angry. It was just thorough.

​The agonizing groan of rusted metal tearing under massive weight deafened them. The entire metal grating violently tilted forty-five degrees.

​Don completely lost his footing. He slid rapidly toward the sheer drop.

​Maya dropped her stance. She grabbed his tactical harness with her bad arm. She hauled him violently backward using pure, desperate muscle memory. Her shoulder joint ground together with a sickening pop. She held him on the grating anyway.

​Thick clouds of pulverized concrete dust rained down on them. The abomination ripped another support beam free. The catwalk shrieked.

​Don raised his crossbow. He clicked the safety off. He was completely out of armor-piercing bolts. The standard steel-tipped bolts remaining in his quiver would bounce uselessly off the thick iron plating grafted to the creature’s skull. He kept the crossbow aimed directly at its face anyway. Putting the weapon down was not something he was prepared to do.

​Maya did not aim the heavy rivet-rifle at the ghoul. She aimed the massive yellow barrel directly upward.

​She targeted the cracked, crumbling concrete ceiling anchor holding the entire rusted ventilation unit above the creature. Raising the heavy weapon overhead pushed her shoulder past its breaking point. The joint tracked completely wrong. The warning label’s promise was fully realized.

​She loaded a red-tipped, high-pressure explosive rivet into the chamber. She pulled the trigger.

​The heavy recoil blasted her backward onto the tilted grating. The explosive rivet buried itself directly into the compromised ceiling anchor. It detonated a second later.

​A massive chunk of old-world concrete violently detached from the ceiling. Heavy steel ventilation piping tore free from the brackets. A literal ton of debris dropped straight down. The rubble completely crushed the abomination beneath jagged concrete and twisted iron.

​Thick gray dust swallowed the corridor. The catwalk stopped shaking.

​The System did not award any experience points for the kill. A jagged red warning prompt flashed violently through the settling dust cloud.

​[Catastrophic Infrastructure Damage Logged. Maintenance Costs Deducted from Remaining Lifespan.]

​Don read the glowing red text. He slowly lowered his crossbow. He looked at Maya.

​"Remaining lifespan," Don read aloud.

​Maya leaned against the slanted railing. She wiped a streak of blood from her cheek. "I think that’s ours."

​"Good to know the corporation is still billing us," Don said.

​Maya racked the heavy bolt of the nail-rifle to chamber her next round. Don smoothly loaded his last standard bolt. Neither of them looked away from the dark.