The creature lunged, spidery feet slamming down against the metal catwalk, which vibrated violently and rattled against the metal housings and rivets that held it in place. Adam dove to the side, pinning himself up against the wall, and Sunny dove forward between the creature's spidery set of legs and below the pincers.

The creature screamed and she flipped onto her back burying the blade of her spear deep inside its belly. It staggered, and Lanus was there to take advantage of its poor footing. He bellowed a war cry as he slammed his massive body into the creature's side. Maker or not, Lanus was a powerful warrior, and though the void creature was as large as a small car, that did not stop lanus from pitching the beast over the railing and out into open space.

The void creature screamed and flailed its voice growing faint as it was overcome by the will of gravity.

Sunny rose to one knee pulling to the side as Adam skidded between her and her father, driving his spear into the throat of a corrupted Drev soldier whose weapons had been intended for Sunny.

Then Lanus and Sunny were both there, one on his right shoulder and the other on his left as they advanced up the catwalk.

Time was ticking away.

They didn't have much left.

Rage filled Adam's chest.

They didn't have time for this!

It had been a long time since Adam had allowed this sort of rage to grace the space inside his head. It was hot, and cloying, a sort of hazy redness that gummed up his thoughts and filled his vision. The anger that he felt now was important, but the drugs that ran in sharp waves through his veins were enough to open the door.

For years Adam had fought against this side of him, attempted to banish it from his mind and pretend that it didn't exist, a simple product of drugs and mental manipulations by evil men. But all along he had known better. The drugs and the brainwashing may have groomed the creature, but he had always existed inside. And now, he was needed.

Adam's mind went red.

He roared.

Truly the steel-eye soldier had returned and returned with a vengeance. Before it had only been allowed to play, to take control with Adam's supervision.

Not anymore.

Unit 15 had returned to destroy.

Gun in one hand.

Spear in the other.

He shot his next opponent under the chin, stripping off the front of its face. The body wobbled and he kicked it to the side, pitching it into the rail, and over the edge. He slammed his spear through a throat to his right and wrenched forward to bash in another skull even as he tore through the throat of the first.

Two bodies hit the ground.

He reigned in the momentum of his spear before swinging it around in the opposite direction, brutally pulverizing the skull of a corrupted void human that scuttled its way up the catwalk.

The body fell away even as Adam raised the pistol in his offhand and fired three times.

Two shots two heads, while the third went wide.

The void Tesraki leaped at his face gouging at his helmet, and the gun was knocked from his hand and onto the chaos of the catwalk below, vanishing amidst the piles of bodies.

With his hand now free, Adam reached up, grabbed the Tesraki by the scruff of the neck, and hurled it violently into the wall at his side. It hit with a sickening crunch and fell to the catwalk.

His vision cleared to find three void Drev baring down on him, already inside his spear guard.

He raised his hands to fight and was suddenly assaulted by the sound of gunfire.

Two of the Drev, the one to his right and the one to his left went down hard, sprawling against the catwalk. The last Void Drev paused in shock, but only long enough for Adam to draw back a fist, and punch a hole in the creature's sternum, cracking its carapace and stopping its heart.

Adam stepped over the fallen bodies, his mind set on just one thing, one goal.

They had to finish this.

Even in the dim haze of the drugs and the rage he knew.

They didn't have much time.

Forty minutes

Sunny and Lanus took up his shoulders again as they plunged into the fight. Wave after wave of the void creatures were poured down upon them, but they would not relent. Lanus did his best to clear the way with Maker power, one hand held out and ready to administer a blast of energy whenever he could.

Their sprint was more of a jog now, frustrating Adam as the minutes ticked away.

Twenty minutes

Fealty tracked their progress on the HUD.

They were getting closer.

Adam could feel it. Power hummed through the Necrotorium like a beating heart, pulsating through the very walls and air. The hair on the back of Adam's neck stood on end in response as they made their way into a final hallway. Dark tendrils of Apollyon's presence lingered as shades in the upper and lower corners of the walls, squirming and wriggling like so many earthworms deep in the dark places.

Blood pooled like ruby rivers in the dark.

Bodies lay quiet.

And still the necritorim pulsed its slow, steady beat.

At first, the hallway appeared empty, and Adam had a brief moment of hope that the rest of their way would be clear.

His hope was rewarded promptly with reality.

Ten minutes

"You will go no further."

They heard the voice before they saw him, the sound echoing in eerie waves off the walls and down the corridor.

And then he appeared.

Everett was a little worse for wear, his Maker body torn and dripping tarnished gold icor onto the floor.

They did not

Have

Time

For

This.

Adam snarled, "Get out of our way.

Everett shook his head and raised his hands into the air, "I cannot, and I will not impede the coming of the lord of darkness, may his infinity shine through eternity when time ceases to exist and we are all brought together in oneness to sustain his everlasting-"

Two bulletholes sprouted in Everett's chest followed by a third a belted moment later.

And then Ramirez stepped forward and emptied an entire magazine into the startled Maker's chest walking forward with a grim determination plastered across his face. Everett staggered back onto the floor mostly alive until Ramirez stuck the barrel in his face and pulled the trigger three more times.

It didn't kill him.

Not technically, but he wasn't going to recover from that anytime soon.

"Shut up," Ramirez announced to the following silence.

But no one said a word, simply sprinting forward into the dark hallway at full tilt.

They were going to make it!

And then they came to a fork in the hallway.

A fork that had not been marked on the map.

Adam cursed, "Shit. which way."

"No time, just pick a direction," Sunny said, turning right. Adam followed her, praying all the while that they were going in the right direction. Maybe they were, the pulsing was growing louder, power surging through the metal at their boots.

Five minutes.

Despite the Steel eye armor, Adam was panting, hot sweat soaking the sweat-wicking bodysuit that he wore.

Three minutes.

They turned a corner doubling back on themselves as they ran inside.

Lights over their heads started to pulse orange.

Initiating Necriscope launch, all unnaturalized personnel must proceed to safety operation zones.

Adam ran harder heart feeling as if it was ready to burst from his chest.

COME ON!

90 Seconds.

Adam burst through a door at the end of a corridor finding himself on one side of a wide pit, not unlike the funnel at the beginning of the necritorium, except now, this one belched heat like a rocket engine, glowing hot with burning gold energy. The heat was so intense it warped the air above it like a wavy haze in the desert.

And off on the other side.

He saw Kazna, slathered in blood, but still alive.

And standing before a console.

Adam roared wings deploying as he lept over the edge and immediately regretted it as the heat from the pit seared through the open cracks in his armor. The jetpack flared and fealty pulled them back even as the flesh cooked on his open body. He snarled in pain and rage, pulling back and cutting around the perimeter of the pit, even as Lanus lept over the edge following Adam's original plan in the ways Adam could not.

Sunny sprinted around the other side.

Fifty seconds.

The pit was wide, very wide.

Lanus was only halfway across.

Thirty seconds.

The rocket of Adam's jetpack flared.

Another dose of the painkilling cocktail was supplied into his blood, even as his skin burned.

Fifteen seconds.

Lanus had reached the edge.

Ninety-nine percent power.

Kazna saw them, her eyes gone wide as they raced towards her.

Lanus was almost there.

Ten seconds.

Lanus reached out a hand.

But this was not the movie, and no reason Kazna couldn't hit the button before the countdown finished.

And that is exactly what she did, slamming her fist down on the controls at eight seconds, and then stepping back through the portal just as Lanus's hand swiped through the place where she had been only moments before.