The giant spider mech turned away from them. It moved past their hiding spot, with each step rattling the debris on the ground and shattering windows that were near where it stepped.

  "That thing didn't even look at us," Kyle said as he watched the giant trudge along.

  "We got lucky," Rachel whispered.

  "It looked like it was going somewhere specific," Clyde said.

  Ollie waved them forward. "Let's not waste the opportunity."

  They walked through empty streets, keeping formation. The tower grew bigger in their view with each block they crossed. The flickering lights stopped flickering, meaning the atmosphere of this place was the one that caused the twinkle.

  Gale noticed it first after crossing one more block. Less mechanical noises. Tendrils hadn't given him any signature of any spider mech in the radius it was limited in. In other words, it suddenly got quieter as they approached the tower.

  "Anyone else notice how peaceful it's gotten?" Kyle asked.

  "Peaceful isn't the word I'd use," Clyde said. "More like... empty."

  Rachel looked left and right and up, finding nothing. "Where did all the spider mechs go?"

  "Maybe they don't operate near the tower," Lily closed in from ahead. "Could be some kind of exclusion zone."

  "Makes sense. If the tower has the power source, then it might be too sensitive of an area for them to patrol around it," Ollie said.

  Dammit, Ollie! He just said the jinxiest jinx of them all. Gale knew it. Something bad was about to happen and that tower spelled danger frontwards and backwards.

  They walked for another 20 minutes with no trouble. No mechs and no ruin could be found where they moved. Just their own footsteps on metal and wind through the spires.

  Lily's hand shot up, stopping the group. She crouched behind a broken wall, pointing ahead.

  Gale moved up to look. His eyes got big.

  A spider mech lay across the street. This one was different. Huge. The machine was bigger than the eight-legged one they just hid from. It had 12 legs, each thicker than the smaller mech's body. Its hull and outer layers were thoroughly damaged, with holes and melted sections. A lot of its weapons looked like they were ripped right off by something.

  "What the hell could do that?" Kyle whispered, staring.

  The machine blocked the whole street. Black fluid leaked from the cuts and ripped off parts. Sparks still came from exposed wires, dropping into the puddle of oil.

  Clyde looked through his scope. "Multiple impact points. Coordinated attack. Whatever killed this wasn't working alone."

  "The spider mechs have been fighting something in this city," Ollie said. "Something strong enough to take down their biggest units."

  "I don't want to fuck around and find out what that something is," Clyde muttered.

  Kyle whistled. "Look at the size of those weapons. How much you think some of those are worth?"

  "Shut up, Kyle," Rachel said.

  Problem was, the whole street was blocked off by this gigantic thing. Since the fight was recent, it wouldn't matter too much if they went around or above.

  "We could go around, but that would add hours to our route. The tower's right there," Ollie said.

  "Or we could climb over," Rachel said.

  "Climb over that?" Kyle pointed at the massive mechanical corpse. "You're talking about a machine the size of a skyscraper."

  "Rache's right. The legs make natural bridges," Ollie said. "We could use them as walkways."

  "Might as well. Haven't seen shit in a while," Clyde said.

  Gale winced again. Every word these guys said hurt a part of him that wanted to tell them to stop talking about if anything would come at them. Bad luck incoming. He sighed before saying, "I vote for climbing over."

  "Fine. But if something jumps out and eats us, I'm blaming all of you when I die," Kyle said.

  "Noted," Ollie walked to the nearest leg, testing if it would hold. The metal stayed firm. "Follow my route. Single file. Watch your step."

  Ollie started climbing, using joints as handholds. The surface was slick with leaked black fluids, but the leg was flat enough that it felt stable. He reached the main body and found a path across damaged metal plates.

  Rachel followed, moving smoothly. Fists clenched tight in case anything came at them.

  Lily went third, jumping up the leg like it was stairs. She got to the top and immediately started looking for threats while the others climbed.

  Kyle and Clyde came together, helping each other on hard sections. Kyle made jokes about parts that looked like body parts, causing Clyde to snicker.

  Gale climbed last. No issues with balance when the concept itself was now alien to him. At the top, he saw the damage in clearer view. One of its legs looked like it had been ripped apart by something the same size as this one.

  They reached the other side without trouble. Going down was easier than climbing up. Soon they stood on the street past the mechanical corpse.

  "That wasn't so bad," Kyle said.

  "Speak for yourself," Clyde replied. "I smell like hydraulic fluid now."

  "Do you two always have a comment for everything?" Rachel said.

  "What else are we going to talk about while we wait for certain doom?" Kyle said.

  "True that. Might as well have some fun," Clyde said.

  Gale sighed, shaking his head. Even back in the asylum, these guys used the excuse of paper not to attack him. It's not like he didn't understand them though… now that he had the wave slash of tainted doom online. He snickered, causing Rachel to snap him a look and making him shrink.

  Getting back into formation, they continued moving toward the tower. Buildings near the tower once again changed. The more organic lines were replaced by cleaner ones and less curved shapes. It was more elegant, maybe signifying that people closer to the tower were the richer portion of the population.

  "Almost there," Lily said from up front.

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  After 15 more minutes of walking, the street opened into a clearing. The tower stood directly in front, its base taking up basically all of the open space. What looked like one building was actually connected structures all reaching to the same point in the sky.

  At ground level, large doors marked with bold yellow letters they couldn't understand. The metal was darker than the surroundings, almost pitch black with a hint of dark green.

  "There's our way in," Ollie said, pointing to the doors. "Whatever that is."

  "Isn't it obvious?" Kyle said.

  "What's obvious?" Gale asked.

  "It's an elevator, dumb dumbs," Clyde said.

  "And how do you know that?" Ollie facepalmed.

  "Hello? Big ass tower that stretches up to the sky. Big bold yellow letters that probably said 'main entrance' because that's what they always do," Kyle said, then glancing at Clyde.

  "Special Investigations Division for a reason," Clyde snorted. "We're smart."

  "Assholes," Rachel shook her head. "It does look like one though."

  "What ever it is, just form up on me," Ollie said, signalling Lily to come back. "No point in maintaining scout distance when we're at the objective."

  Lily joined them, her boots softly tapping on the metal floor. The doors stood about 12 feet high and 6 feet wide each. Standard size for something that looked like an entrance if the twins were right.

  Gale looked at the surface. The metal was darker than the surrounding buildings, almost black in the moonlight. Patterns covered both panels, designed like circuit boards but with curves like vines or roots.

  "No handles," Kyle said, walking closer. "No hinges on this side either."

  Clyde checked the other panel, looking across its surface. "No card readers. No keypads. Nothing that looks like security."

  Rachel tilted her head at the patterns. "Those markings aren't random. They follow specific paths across both doors. Could be electronic based or magitech."

  Ollie went to the centre where the panels met. He put his palm flat against it, feeling for any depression or raised area that might activate something. His fingers traced the patterns, following the flow of the circuits. "There's got to be something here."

  "Maybe it's motion activated," Clyde said. "Stand back and wave at it."

  Ollie stepped back and waved his arms. Nothing happened. He tried jumping, then walking back and forth. The doors stayed closed, and he gave Clyde a look that said he wanted to kill him. "Seriously?"

  "Buzz off, boss. Let me handle this." Kyle snorted as he pushed past Ollie, cracking his knuckles. "I crush puzzle games on my phone. Candy Crush, Monument Valley, Portal Bridge Constructor. This is just a bigger version of the same thing."

  He studied the patterns more carefully, tracing individual lines with his finger. The designs created a complex network across both panels, some lines connecting between sides.

  "See, the trick with these things is finding the sequence," Kyle said. "You start at the beginning of the pattern and follow it to the end. Like connecting dots."

  He found what looked like a starting point near bottom left, a small circle where several lines met and a rhomboid pattern. Kyle pressed it, then followed the connected path with his finger, pushing at each junction.

  "This line goes up, curves right, connects to this node here," he said, pressing each spot in order. "Then it branches off toward the centre, loops back around..."

  Kyle worked across both panels for 10 minutes, pressing nodes and tracing paths. He tried different starting points, different sequences, even pressing multiple spots at once. The doors didn't respond.

  "Maybe you have to press them all at once," Kyle spread his arms to cover multiple points. "Or maybe it's a rhythm thing, like music."

  He tapped the nodes in different patterns - short-short-long, then long-short-short-long. He tried rhythms from old songs, Morse code, even beats from commercial jingles.

  Nothing worked except for impressing Gale. Those weren't random movements. Maybe Kyle and Clyde were smart.

  Kyle stepped back. "This is bullshit. The pattern's there, but it's not responding."

  Lily moved forward. "Your approach assumes it's a normal puzzle. What if it needs something else?"

  She checked the doors differently, looking for hidden mechanisms instead of following obvious patterns. Her hands searched edges where panels met the frame, checking for hidden switches and hidden panels.

  "Sometimes the real button is disguised as decoration," Lily felt along border designs where the biggest rhombus was. "Security systems often hide controls in plain sight."

  Lily pressed various parts, a circle, an inverted J, squares like patterns, a triangle with two lines. She even pushed the entire door frame, thinking it might slide up or sideways. After several minutes of searching and feeling for anything, she found nothing that responded. "The mechanism isn't mechanical. At least not in any normal way."

  Rachel had walked away from the door during this, moving along the wall that extended from either side. She studied the same patterns that covered the doors, but these spread across the tower's base in larger designs.

  "Hey," she called from about 20 feet away. "The patterns continue along the whole wall."

  She traced a thick line that came out of a rhombus that started at the door's edge and went across the wall surface. The path met another rhombus, overlapping a circle, where it branched into three different lines, making a network across the visible part of the base.

  "It's like the doors are just part of a bigger circuit," Rachel said, following another path with her eyes. "Maybe the button is somewhere else entirely."

  Ollie looked at Gale. "Your turn. Maybe fresh eyes will see something we missed."

  "Rookie's got a knack for finding weird stuff," Clyde said. "Might as well let him try."

  Gale went to the doors, studying the patterns Kyle and Lily had already checked. Up close and personal, the design looked like something he had seen in the Dainv ship but slightly different. The lines had a pattern and the symbols meant something, but what?

  He put both palms against the surface, feeling a slight warmth. The metal was definitely warmer than the air around it, suggesting energy flowing through.

  Closing his eyes, he focused on the patterns under his hands. The design seemed to shift slightly when he touched them, though he wasn't sure if that was real or just his imagination.

  There. The rhombus had sent a pulse in the direction of the largest path from the biggest rhombus. The line curved from the bottom of one panel, spiralled up in a complex pattern of circles and intricate lines, then crossed to the other door before ending near the top.

  When his finger reached the end, a faint vibration ran through the metal. Gale opened his eyes and looked at the spot he'd touched. For a moment, the pattern there seemed to glow with soft blue light.

  "Did you see that?" he asked.

  "See what?" Kyle replied, moving closer to look.

  The glow had faded already. Gale pressed the same spot again, but nothing happened. He tried tracing the whole path again, but the vibration didn't return.

  "Maybe it needs more than just tracing," Gale said. He activated Phase Touch, letting cold energy flow into his fingertips. "Let me try something different."

  He placed his phased hand against the door and tried to push through. Instead of passing into the material, his hand hit resistance. It looked like the same forcefield that blocked his Balista shot during the spider mech fight.

  "No good," Gale said.

  "Can you force it?" Lily asked, looking at Gale. "Just push or pull the doors open manually?"

  Gale checked the door frame for weak points. The doors sat flush against their housing, no visible hinges or edges that could be used for leverage. They looked like they would slide rather than swing open. He put both hands against the left door and pushed. It didn't move. He tried pulling, feeling for any give. Nothing.

  "Let me help," Lily said, moving beside him.

  Gale pushed harder, veins showing on his forehead. Still nothing. He tried pulling instead, gripping the edges and throwing his weight back. The entrance stayed sealed.

  "Maybe it's not about-" Gale began.

  Dark green pulses suddenly blazed across the full pattern on the door, creating a network of glowing lines. The light travelled along the carved paths, branching and coming together like a river.

  The group stepped back as the light grew brighter. What looked like static patterns before came to life as lights originating from the rhombus travelled throughout the whole intricate suite of patterns.

  A soft hum filled the air as mechanisms in the door turned on. Gears moved. Locks opened. The barrier that fought all their efforts simply vanished.

  "What did you do?" Ollie asked, looking from the glowing door to Gale.

  "I was just pushing," Gale said.

  They turned toward Rachel, who stood beside a metal orb in the wall. Her hand rested on its surface, with similar dark green glow pulsing under her palm.

  "Rachel?" Lily said.

  Rachel pulled her hand away from the orb, the energy immediately fading. "Sorry. Accident. I was just... examining the wall patterns and must have leaned against it."

  "Lucky accident," Kyle said. "Though I maintain that my puzzle-solving skills loosened it up for you."

  "Your puzzle-solving skills," Clyde said, "consisted of randomly poking at things until you gave up."

  "Damn right that's a legit strat."

  The door finished opening. With a final click, both panels swung inward, showing darkness beyond. Cool air flowed out, carrying a strange organic scent, completely different from the stale air of the whole floor.

  Ollie readied his long gun. "Form up. Standard entry formation."

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