The upper level was a facade. Transport vehicles sat parked and silent. Crates and plasteel boxes were stacked on shelves, gathering dust. It was the lower level where the truth festered.

But first, he would have to take care of the patrols around. Permanently.

Rico leaned against a dusty crate, the silence broken only by the hum of the climate control and the distant, muffled thud of some high-speed trance from a nearby club. This was the third straight hour of staring at stacked plasteel boxes. He hated guard duty in the warehouse. Nothing ever happened up here. It was purgatory.

Suddenly, a priority ping flashed across his vision, overriding his idle thoughts. It was a direct, encrypted message from Pig's command channel.

>ALL UPPER LEVEL PERSONNEL. REPORT TO STORAGE CLOSET 7-C. IMMEDIATELY.

Rico blinked. Immediately? He pushed himself off the crate. Across the room, he saw the other six members of his shift, their postures shifting from bored to alert. They exchanged confused glances but didn't speak. An order was an order.

They moved silently through the dusty maze of shelves, their shoes making soft sounds on the grimy concrete. The air felt heavy, charged with an unspoken tension. They reached the designated storage area, a windowless room at the back of the warehouse. One by one, they filed inside. Rico was the last one in. The door hissed shut behind him, the mag-lock engaging with a heavy, final thud.

The room was plunged into darkness.

Before Rico could even ask what was going on, his world dissolved into screaming static. His interface went haywire. His optical mods filled with glitching, corrupted data, his auditory sensors blasted a wall of high-frequency white noise into his skull, and his tactical HUD flashed with nonsensical symbols. He staggered, disoriented, a wave of digital vertigo washing over him. The others were stumbling around him, grunting in confusion and pain, their own systems under assault.

Through the chaos in his own head, Rico looked up.

Something detached from the ceiling vent. It was a monster, a nightmare of glistening black plating and razor-sharp angles, unfolding in the dark. For a horrifying second, he saw four arms brace against the vent, and then the thing dropped, its body swelling and reconfiguring as it fell. Blades erupted from its arms. Six glowing red eyes ignited in the darkness, two large and four smaller, all fixing on the trapped men with a cold, predatory intelligence.

It landed in their midst, and the hurricane of death began.

Rico didn't even have time to scream. The creature was a blur of motion, a black and red storm of death. The man next to him had the top of his skull sheared clean off by a bladed arm, his body slumping to the floor a second later. Another guard fumbled for his pistol, but the monster simply pointed one of its forearms at him. There was a faint hiss, and the guard collapsed, a neat hole drilled through his forehead. For a horrifying instant, Rico saw a thin, glistening filament retract from the guard's skull back into the creature's arm. The rest was a whirlwind of carnage. Limbs flew. Arcs of blood painted the walls, illuminated in the strobing, glitching light of their failing optics. The monster was everywhere at once, turning his comrades, his brothers in the Red Obsidian, into nothing more than minced meat.

He was the last one left. He finally managed to pull his weapon free, his hands shaking. He raised it, but the monster was already there, towering over him. The four bladed arms were dripping, and the six red eyes stared directly into his soul.

Rico opened his mouth to scream, but only a choked gurgle came out as the world dissolved into a final, searing flash of pain.

The silence returned, deeper than before. Ray's form retracted, the extra limbs and eyes dissolving away. The upper level was secure.

He found the access panel to the lower floors, into the main building, hidden behind a stairwell that led to the catwalks spanning around the warehouse.

With a touch, the door slid open and he sealed it behind him, the heavy thud of the mag-locks echoing with finality. The only way out now was forward.

The knowledge he had stripped from Porcelain Jack was a perfect map in his mind of the rot that festered here.

The air changed instantly. The sterile scent of recycled air was replaced by the metallic tang of old blood and the sharp, antiseptic smell of industrial cleaners failing to do their job. The corridors were dark, stained with things he didn't want to analyze. Faint, muffled sounds echoed through the metal walls—some were the high-pitched whimpers of recorded audio tracks, but others were guttural, real, and fresh.

His Advanced Sensor Suite became a symphony of horror. Thermal vision painted the heat signatures of terrified people in cages, their bodies radiating a feverish heat of pure terror. His enhanced auditory sensors picked up the frantic, arrhythmic heartbeats from behind reinforced doors. He passed the holding cells, catching glimpses of the victims within. Their eyes were wide, hollowed out, staring at him with a terror that had burned past hope and settled into a state of permanent, silent screaming.

A two-man patrol rounded the corner, their heavy boots loud and clumsy in the oppressive silence. They were heavily modded, their arms thick with cheap, powerful cybernetics. They never saw him. His Combat Decision Assist painted their predicted paths, their every move plotted a second before they made it. He flowed from the shadows. A serrated forearm blade slid through the first guard's chest, destroying his heart before he could even register the attack. For the second, Ray unspooled a molecule-thin wire between his fingers. As the guard turned, Ray stepped through him. The man's head, severed cleanly at the neck, toppled to the floor with a wet thud.

Merciless. Efficient.

He was a predator hunting in a den of monsters.

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He followed the cacophony of sensory data to its source: the main "sound stage." It was a large, circular room, the floor a dark, sticky crimson. The walls were lined with an array of high-definition cameras, microphones on long booms, and harsh, studio-quality lighting rigs. It was a fusion of a film set and a medieval torture chamber. Chains, hooks, and a terrifying assortment of medical and industrial tools hung from racks, all meticulously cleaned.

And in the center of it all, he found Max.

He was the centerpiece, strapped to a tilted surgical table. His eyes were open, staring at the ceiling as a grotesque mixture of tears, snot, and saliva traced paths down his face and onto his chest. Ray's OptiRange Mk-IV eye zoomed in, his tactical overlay analyzing the scene with cold, brutal clarity. Max's right hand, just below the wrist, and both legs, above the knee, had been crudely hacked away. Ray's gaze followed the steady drip of blood from the raw stump of his forearm, which was counting down the boy's life. Ray couldn't spot Max's leg stumps.

Standing beside the table, wiping his hands on a filthy rag, was the director of this horror show. "Pig." The name was an understatement. He was a grotesque mountain of flesh, naked from the waist up, his body slick with sweat. His face was a mask of porcine features, his small, intelligent eyes bulging with a sick, creative fervor. He wheezed with every breath. Surrounding him was his crew, a half-dozen guards even more heavily modded than the ones in the hall, their optics glowing with sadistic anticipation.

"Alright, reset the cameras for the wide shot," Pig grunted, his voice a wet, gurgling sound. "Let's get the finishing touches. The clients paid for a masterpiece."

For a moment, Ray was just a machine, processing data.

Target: Max.

Status: Critical.

Antagonists: Seven.

Threat level: Moderate.

The logic was cold, efficient. But then, something else surfaced. A ghost in his own machine. The memories of Ralph, roared to life. It was a feeling, a primal, paternal terror that bypassed all of Ray's logic cores. It was the pure, unfiltered love of a father for his son, and it was screaming.

The beast answered the call.

The transformation was instantaneous and horrific. His body swelled to over twelve feet tall, a terrifying apex of technology fused with raw, predatory power. Overlapping layers of midnight-black alloy formed intricate armored plating, fitting together with inhuman precision . Glowing micro-circuitry engraved on every surface pulsed with blood-red energy.

Protruding from his massive shoulders, two pairs of arms engineered for dominance erupted into being. The upper set, colossal and constructed from segmented cybernetic muscle, ended in four-fingered claws capable of crushing steel. Below them, a secondary pair of equally formidable arms added to his grotesque symmetry. His torso became a fortress of layered mechanical sinew, shielding a blazing, reactor-like core that throbbed with the volatile crimson energy of the high-density power cell he'd consumed.

His legs snapped and re-formed, becoming long, reverse-jointed digitigrade limbs, built for explosive power and brutal, canine agility. His head elongated, armor plates shifting to form the brutal silhouette of a warhound's skull. Four burning eyes—two large, two small—ignited in their sockets, and twin horns arced backward like aggressive ears held taut. With a final, sickening sound of shifting metal, his lower jaw split open—the 'Ripjaw' Mandibular System unhinging to reveal a snarling maw filled with rows of matte-black, wedge-shaped teeth.

There was no fight. There was only extermination.

He exploded from the doorway in a blur of motion. The guards didn't even have time to open fire. The first guard was simply erased. Ray's colossal upper arms slammed down, and the man disappeared in a spray of red mist and shattered cybernetics. The two guards next to him were grabbed by the smaller, secondary arms, lifted into the air, and violently ripped in half.

The room became a whirlwind of absolute carnage. Ray moved like a predator unleashed, a black and red storm of claws and teeth. He pounced on another guard, his massive jaws clamping down on the man's head and shoulders, crushing bone and armor into a mangled ruin. He turned on another, his claws shearing through the man's assault rifle and the arms that held it before disemboweling him with a casual swipe. The final guard tried to flee, but a single, taloned hand shot out, impaling him through the back. The Juggernaut stared for a moment with its four glowing eyes, then simply squeezed, reducing the man to a shower of minced meat and shrapnel.

He cornered Pig against a wall of monitors. The grotesque man was a whimpering, terrified mess. "Wait, please!"

One of his colossal, four-fingered hands shot out and clamped down on Pig's head, the talons digging into his skull. He lifted the man from his feet and dragged him effortlessly across the blood-soaked floor, toward the industrial mincing machine in the corner. Ray's glowing red optics glanced at the small, unidentifiable pile of bloody flesh at the base of the machine. The pile that had once been Max's legs.

He held Pig over the grinding gears and, with his other hand, activated the machine. It roared to life. The sound of the turning blades sent a fresh wave of terror through Pig, and he began to fight, screaming and flailing his legs, his fists beating uselessly against the black alloy arm that held him.

A low growl, like the sound of grinding metal, rumbled from Ray's chest. "Useless."

And then he let go.

Pig's screams were cut short by the crunch of bone and the shriek of tearing metal as the machine's teeth caught his legs. His torso and then his head followed. His minced remains joined the pile at the base of the machine.

The silence in the blood-soaked studio was absolute. The monstrous Juggernaut form receded, the black alloy dissolving back into a normal, human shape. Ray stood over what was left of Pig. The rage was gone, replaced by the cold, logical imperative of the mission.

He went to Max. The boy was silent, his eyes wide and unfocused. He was bleeding out.

Ray scanned the tray beside the table, and quickly tasted the chemical compounds in the various syringes. He found a powerful coagulant mixed with a heavy sedative. He grabbed a fresh syringe, filled it, and injected the contents into the boy's neck. Max's eyes rolled up, and he fell into unconsciousness.

Now, the work began.

An emergency field surgery.

Placing his hands over the raw stumps of the boy's legs and hand , Ray commanded his nanites. They flowed from his fingertips, weaving a sterile, flexible seal over the wounds, cauterizing arteries, and stopping the bleeding. He glanced at the severed hand lying on the floor. His analysis suggested it was still viable. He quickly grabbed it. The legs… they were gone. There was nothing to reattach.

He gathered Max into his arms, but he wasn't finished. Before leaving, he turned his attention to the studio's data servers. As a final act, Ray sent out a single, anonymous data burst to the VPD, containing the studio's location, all the data on studio servers and a heavily encrypted file with the names of its most prominent clients.

He walked out of the studio, knowing the other victims inside would be treated by the VMD. He had done more than enough. The lingering stain of the place, the echoes of suffering, would remain in his memory banks forever. But for now, he had a mission to complete. He carried the silent, traumatized Max out into the rain-slicked streets of Slickrow, a monster who had just saved a child from other monsters.

Ray was in an automated taxi when he made the call. Julia's interface pinged. She summoned all her will not to decline. Her exterior remained indifferent as she attached the last connection to the cyberarm of her client.

"What do you want?" Julia answered, her tone snappy.

"Are you at your clinic?" Ray asked. He sounded urgent.

Before she could answer, she received a series of photos. A boy covered in a blanket, his expression deadly pale. His frame, too small. The legs… were missing. His face was heart-shaped, still clinging to the softness of youth. Soot-dark freckles crossed his nose and cheeks like digital static. His dark chestnut hair was a thick, uneven mess.

"Who is he?" Julia asked, her voice losing its edge.

"His name is Max. He needs urgent medical treatment."

"I'm waiting," Julia said, and the call ended.

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