The door yawned open, and cold, sterile air rolled out like a breath from something ancient and waiting. My fingers tightened around my rifle as my instincts screamed that we had just made a terrible mistake. Kane stepped in beside me, her face lit only by the soft red glow pulsing from the walls.
The space beyond was massive—too massive. Vaults weren’t supposed to have horizons. But this place stretched far beyond what should have been possible, the walls shifting and reforming like liquid metal. It was as if the structure itself was alive.
And then I heard it. The low, rhythmic thrum of something waking up.
Kane sucked in a sharp breath. “Tony—”
A shape moved in the darkness. Then another. And another.
Metal groaned as towering figures emerged from the shadows—machines, unlike anyth
