Chapter 164: 166: The Fall

<You sure about this?> BB asked at the back of my mind as we looked over the banister and down into the seemingly endless depths of the city. 

It was a latticework of bridges and walkways connecting building to building all the way down in a way that was distinctly reminiscent of Prespian City, yet also completely different. 

Congruent design, across millions of lightyears. 

I wouldn't fall the entire way, I'd just hop from bridge to bridge and hope that the power of my footfalls wasn't enough to cause them to crumble under me. 

As for BB's question, was I sure about what I was doing? I don't think I'd ever been less sure about something, and that was really saying something. 

Nevertheless, I wasn't going to let another city like this be ruled by terror. 

Back on Prespian city, it had first been the three clans, then it had been the Null Space Invader attacks, and finally, it had been absolute destruction at the hands of Lara. 

I had no idea what the true situation was on this world, only that a group of people were crushing another group of people into the dirt and that by my own planet's history that was generally a pretty bad move. 

As I was considering all of this a blaring alarm began to sound around me, a screeching horn that seemed to blaze from everywhere at once. 

I'd run out of time, I needed to get a move on. 

In one smooth movement, I vaulted myself over the banister and into the air. I only fell a few minutes before my feet touched the ground of another bridge, but the alarms followed me down. Clearly, they had some sort of a lock on my biosignature or were watching me through a camera. 

I'd need to keep going until I was able to shake them. 

I vaulted over another banister, and then another, getting a little bit faster each time, and being chased by the alarms every time as well. 

I risked a glance back up above me, and that was when I saw her. 

There was a woman's face leaning out over the very first banister that I had leapt over. 

Her eyes glowed green in the artificial half-light of the underground city, they weren't natural, clearly replaced by some kind of technology. I had no doubt she was memorising every inch of my face as I glared defiantly back up at her. 

She was an ugly sort of woman, with a long boxy face and a nose that was bent slightly to one side as if she had been in a fight, had it broken and then never properly had the bone repaired. 

Her chin and part of her neck seemed to have been replaced completely by metal, so it was no wonder her voice sounded synthetic, she must have had some kind of voice box replacement with an artificial stand-in. 

In other words, this was a woman who had been through the wars and back again. There was no doubt in my mind that she was a fighter, and likely a capable one at that. 

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She turned her head away to the side for a moment, as if she were talking to someone, and then glared back down at me again. 

Two new figures launched themselves over the banister, and they looked anything but human. 

They must have been the dranes. 

The artificial light of the undercity glinted off their entirely mechanical bodies as they fell through the air toward me. 

These creatures may well have been human at one point, they had two arms, two legs and a head after all, but that had all been stripped away by someone and replaced with metallic insectoid body armour. 

Segmented pieces of metal covered every piece of them from their toes to the very top of their heads. 

Where hands would have been, the drane's arms ended in pointed spikes, which themselves were actually hinged for the mantis-like blades that ran up the backside of the arms. Those blades crackled and sparked with blue electricity, getting hit by one of those would likely hurt… a lot. 

The dranes didn't bother jumping from bridge to bridge like I had done, instead thin membrane wings flickered out from their backs and beat against the air, propelling them toward me even quicker. 

Unless I wanted to fight these things here and now, potentially giving even more of the dranes a chance to catch up with me, I was going to need to start moving a lot quicker. 

I jumped off the bridge I was standing on and plummeted downwards, hopping from platform to platform, driving myself lower and lower into the undercity. 

As I got lower the buzzing wings of the dranes got ever closer, and the streets began to get darker and darker as there were fewer and fewer street lamps lighting the bridges, the deeper I got the more of them were broken and the more walls were covered in graffiti. 

And yet, I knew I just needed to push a little bit further, to get a little bit lower. 

It was getting warmer and warmer with each bridge that I vaulted past, which could only mean that I was getting closer to the Furnace, the bottom layer of the city where not even the dranes or the officers would tread. 

At some point, the buzzing of the wings faded away, but I didn't dare risk looking back. 

Instead, that noise was replaced by the thumping beat of music and laughter. 

As if by magic the darkness of the pit I had dropped down into cleared and was replaced by blue and green glowing streetlamps, revealing the hustle and bustle of a moving street below me at what would be considered a true ground level. 

I stopped on the very last bridge, glanced up to confirm that the dranes were no longer chasing me down, and then let a grin spread across my face. 

I'd arrived, and the fight for the undercity had only just begun.

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