As the room rumbled on, the sharp scent of lightning filled the air.

My husband broke the silence by letting out a dry chuckle. "Roluan scientists will have their hands full with just this tram. There's only three simi--"

With a loud thump the room stopped, and the doors folded open.

Bemariq took a step forward. "What on..."

The warm air was stifling with its moisture. Half-hidden lamps barely illuminated the wide corridor in front us. Pipes and strands of nerve sprawled on the floor and hung from the ceiling. Veins of greenish blue coursed through the grey rock. Instead of being straight and even, the walls were filled with phosphorescent coralline outgrowth and curving ridges.

"Wait." Bemariq took a small device from his satchel; a detector of dangerous substances and radiation. Its warning colouration didn't change. "Well, at least we aren't going to die from just breathing here."

"Fascinating." The magnatess took a step out of the tram. "Was this area unfinished?"

"No." Bemariq kneeled down to poke the walls. "I think this structure has been alive and growing since the Collapse. Incredible! Perhaps, just perhaps, we might find some machinery still in state to reproduce by itself." He stood up and turned to the magnatess. "We need to go back."

Sitolytta snorted. "Don--"

"This discovery is the next Sidakoa." Bemariq strode to the woman. The soldier turned his gun on Bemariq, but my husband didn't care. "Possibly even a new Radhas sanctuary."

"Ridi--"

Bemariq continued: "The research here needs to be done right from the start. We can't do any readings without proper equipment. Ni Salng and his team need to take a look at all this, to know the parts that are safe to remove as samples. I need my assistants to help map and catalogue every fold and crevice. Not ruining this is... It's our duty. Not just to our countries, but to all people on this world."

Sitolytta twisted her mouth into a deep scowl. "Damned. That does ring true. I don't want my name to be remembered as the second 'Slaughterer of Radhas'. But I expect you to cooperate fully afterwards. No tricks, or I'll blow this place up."

Bemariq spread his arms. "Anything to stop this from becoming another looted and lost opportunity."

"Good." We followed Sitolytta back to the room. She said: "Lady Usinilim, tell the tram to return."

"It's good this tram line still works", I said. "Without it, the walk between here and the camp would be such a bother." I chuckled and put my hand on the window. "Take us back."

"No authorisation recognised."

"What?" I poked the window, but it didn't react. "Why do I need authorisation now?"

"Due to the general safety lock down, movement in and out of the installation is restricted to authorised personnel."

"But you let us in!" I yelled. The spirit didn't answer, so I rephrased myself: "Why did you let us in?"

"Emergency priorities are in effect due to mission endangering low population of negative seventeen. Potential breeding pairs receive limited automatic authorisation, as per directive--" The spirit let out an ear-piercing screech.

I winced and held my ears until the ringing faded.

"Oh great", the magnatess said. "Trapped by an ancient initiative to save the human species. Safe to say we already succeeded a hundred generations ago."

"This does complicate things", Bemariq said.

"At least the rescue will be on the way before long", I said.

"Instead of idling here for hours..." Sitolytta said, "We could search around."

I glanced into the gloomy corridor. The tram wasn't a place I wanted to be trapped in. "With this suit, I might be able to get this 'authorisation', so we could leave by ourselves."

Bemariq nodded. "And the soldiers wouldn't have to cause any destruction to break us out."

"Let's go then." Sitolytta gestured with her gun for us to move.

The dread from being pointed with a needler drowned into the giddy excitement of walking into corridors, which no human had witnessed in the historical period. Unlike the entrance complex beneath our dig site, this main facility still throbbed with primeval life, even if it had overgrown its purpose.

Bemariq's eyes gleamed, as they took in everything. The warmth of the air ceased being uncomfortable, but that might have been thanks to my suit.

We had little ways to navigate. Any markings on the walls were gone from aeons of humidity and stony growth. I drew a simple map on an ink slate as we went on, even if we planned to always take right turns in order to avoid getting lost.

The doors were fused shut or otherwise inoperable. We wouldn't force them, before making sure we could handle everything on the other side.

"What's that?" Sitolytta asked. She pointed to a stone lump on the floor. It had the distinctive three holes and the top teeth of a human skull without a jaw.

"A skull", I stated the obvious. "Fused into the living stone."

Bemariq sat on his haunches and looked around. "A part of the spine." He pointed to some distance from the skull. "That might a humerus. And that is a rib."

"Definitely not a whole corpse." I glanced around and frowned. Human remains made the gloom rather less inviting.

"While I'm not surprised by the human remains", Sitolytta said. "Why was the corpse ripped in pieces and spread around?"

"These growing structures could have moved the decomposed remains", Bemariq said.

The magnatess snorted. "That is an undramatic explanation compared to what I had in mind: desperate cannibalism."

I turned my scowl towards Sitolytta. While I had seen plenty of ancient human remains, being trapped deep underground wasn't the place for eerie tales.

The magnatess pursed her smile at me.

"What's that?" The marksman's voice startled me. Despite his bulk, his silent presence had slipped from my mind. Hyssi pointed down the hallway, where a lump moved among the shadows of the outgrowths. Its surface reflected the faint light in the manner of polished chitin.

"Stay back, magnatess", Hyssi declared and moved past us with his needler at the ready. He stopped a few feet away from the strange object. "Seems like some sort of animal. Though, not any I recognise."

"Let me see." Bemariq strode forward. I hurried after him.

The creature had a smooth segmented shell. It was asymmetric, and its numerous flexible legs were all different sizes. It lacked any recognizable head beyond a bundle of sensory antennae.

"Should I kill it?" Hyssi asked.

"No!" Bemariq crouched. "It's some sort of tool or machine, gone feral for generations. Fascinating. It must be able to reproduce by itself."

"If we figured out its original purpose", I said. "It could be bred back into a useful form."

"Exactly." Bemariq stood up, smiled at me and took my hand.

I grinned wide. "Even one new functional machine lineage would be a find beyond valuable. To mankind, I mean."

"For all we know it might be an elaborate kitchen appliance", Sitolytta said. "An ugly critter, regardless."

"I wonder what it eats in here", Hyssi said.

Bemariq shrugged. "The by-products of the systems maintaining this structure, would be my guess."

I glanced at Sitolytta. "At least they can't have been eating corpses for thousands of years."

The magnatess smirked. "Maybe that's why the facility wants breeding humans. For food."

"The machines could eat by themselves whatever they would feed to the humans", I said.

Sitolytta wasn't discouraged. "Perhaps they prefer the taste of us."

"I should take point from this onwards", Hyssi said. "I don't know how they live, but I know feral machinery doesn't need to eat humans to be a threat."

The corridor opened into an open space surrounded with terraces, which were overgrown with vines, moss and gnarly stunted trees. The ceiling above was luminous grey, yet not high enough to appear like a clouded sky. Though the mist was thin, it was enough to hide the walls from sight.

My wonder at the garden under stone turned into a chill up my spine, when a man-sized shape jerked into view from behind a tree. With a uneven gait the four limbed creature approached us.

The crawling beast would have appeared to be person wearing a carapace suit like mine, but its lithe frame was too shrivelled to hold a human inside.

"Halt!" Hyssi shouted.

The creature stopped to rest on all of its four limbs. Only two fingers of both hands touched the ground. The plates of its carapace were thick and rough, and the feral suit was itself uneven on one side. The helmet drooped as a mere flat pouch from its shoulders.

"Is that a suit like yours, lady Usinilim?" Sitolytta asked.

"It does look similar."

The feral suit shifted its shoulders, presumably trying to get a better view of us with whatever parts worked as its eyes.

The magnatess pointed her gun at the creature. "Is it supposed to walk about?"

"No. My suit hasn't moved itself without me inside it."

Sitolytta let out a sigh. "If it wasn't so sickly looking, I might risk wearing it. To be frank I don't trust this thing."

"That is wis--"

The feral suit let out a strained babble, akin to syllables from a language even it had forgotten. It stood up, as a crippled man might, and unfurled open. From inside it fell brittle black bones and soft mush reminiscent of brain tissue. Viscous liquid dripped from where the suit had cracked.

My stomach turned.

Sitolytta lifted her hand to shield her nose with a sleeve, but quickly took a proper grip of her gun again. "That's hardly inviting."

Bemariq took a step forward. "If captured it, we could--"

"Don't go closer." I moved in front of my husband.

He snorted. "I wasn't--"

The feral suit shivered, and strode forward with wobbly fluidity.

"Shoot it", the magnatess commanded.

"No--" The crack of the needler drowned Bemariq's voice.

The feral suit flinched from the impact, but didn't slow down. Hyssi stepped in front of the approaching creature. The feral suit twitched in place for a moment, before dodging around the marksman and continuing towards Sitolytta.

"Hey!" Hyssi grabbed the floppy shoulder of the feral suit.

My eyes barely caught the following movement. The suit twisted around and grappled the soldier in an attempt to engulf him. Fear deformed the marksman's face, as his armour-assisted muscles struggled to keep the wet folds reaching his head.

I dashed forward. Before my second step, my suit was moving me.

"Threat detected", my suit declared. Its mask spread to cover my face, and I couldn't see. Yet despite my sudden panic, the suit moved around me. "User override deactivated by emergency combat override."

In the blind blackness, I collided into something flimsy. My arms moved, gripped and strained, until whatever I was holding gave way and snapped. My leg kicked and stomped, and the high whine filling the air ceased.

My vision returned, though it had a layer of unreality: I wasn't looking through windows in the mask but at perfectly lifelike paintings in front of my eyes.

Below me was the crushed remains of the feral suit. Age, disease, malnutrition or poor breeding, whatever it was, had left the suit weaker than mine. But not much. The artificial muscle around my body trembled and sent inexplicable signals of weariness through me.

Hyssi stood trembling, his face made even more boyish by the lingering terror.

"Sirin!" Bemariq rushed to me, but stopped at a two-step distance. "Are you alright?"

My fingers fumbled to remove the mask. As it slid off my face, an acrid wet stench burned into my nostrils. It was fortunate that my gown was threadbare, as the new coating of viscera had surely ruined it. I cleaned my gloved hands on the fabric and said: "I'm alright."

Bemariq smiled. He took a step to hug me, but decided otherwise after a glance on my soiled overgown. We grinned at each other instead.

Sitolytta had watched me with keen interest, but now her large eyes wandered to the fog beyond.

"There's more of them", she said. "We need to leave."

Six or more shadows moved in the mist, sometimes on two limbs like men, but mostly on more.

Bemariq stood still with foolish determination on his face. I clasped his hand, making sure not to crush his bones, and dragged him with me.

Sitolytta ran back the way we had come. We followed. After me and Bemariq, the marksman jogged with long strides. The feral apparitions were not far behind. They did not hurry, yet managed to move fast. They spoke to each other --and possibly to us also-- in whines and jabberings.

The corridors surged past us. The magnatess glided in the front with a hand holding her skirt up.

"Equipment required for full reproductive reorganisation detected", my suit said. "Proceeding..."

"Wha--" My legs shifted under me. I braced for a fall, but the suit kept me on my feet. In fluid motions, my suit walked me to a corridor on the right.

"Stop!" Hyssi yelled. "Where are you going?"

"The suit's taking me!" I shouted.

"Come, Hyssi!" the magnatess shouted. "Splitting up is a plan good as any!"

I strode with long fast steps, but Bemariq was able to run past me.

"Can't you stop?" he asked.

I squirmed inside the grip of the carapace suit. "No!"

Bemariq dropped behind me, and after few more steps, I couldn't turn my head enough to see him.

A low whine was followed by a stony screech.

"Bem?"

"Here, Sirin." My husband appeared to my side. He took my hand and squeezed it hard enough for me to feel his grip through the glove. He said: "That door should hold them off. I hope the Jaan find their own way to escape."

Still he cared about the slut. My jaws clenched, but I caught the surge of petty jealousy. However, my voice was sharp, as I said: "I'm relieved for your sake. Yet I find myself already in a suit!"

"Did it say anything about what's going on?"

"You didn't hear it speak?" My voice broke into whine: "It said it's continuing with the reproductive alterations."

"Oh... By the-- We need to stop it." Bemariq tried to grapple me, but the suit slid easily from his grasp.

A door opened at my side, and I was walked into a brightly lit room. The walls were smooth without lumps or growths. The door behind us slid close.

I stumbled, when the suit stopped moving me.

"Organ printing is still underway", a disembodied voice said. "Please wait in the reception room."

Bemariq tried tried the door handle. "Locked. Can you move, Sirin?"

"Yes." I rushed to hug him. "Thank the Lady that the machines allowed you here."

Bemariq wheezed. He detached from my grip and patted my back. "We need to find a way out. But first, we need to get you out of that suit."

He took my wrist, but pressing the controls didn't open my carapace.

"Damn." Bemariq sighed. He took a cutter-worm out of his satchel.

"Wait. Bem, this might the only healthy suit left."

"That is..." His mouth twitched. "No. It's certainly not worth risking your life in whatever procedure the spirit is planning for you."

"We might need my suit to escape." I swallowed and tried to sound brave. "Breaking my suit is also a risk."

Bemariq looked into the floor.

I gestured at the surprisingly clean interior. "This rooms is pristine. Perhaps the machinery here works as intended?" I pressed against Bemariq. My heart's beat filled my chest. "And Bem... Anything could happen as we leave. This might be our only chance to..."

Bemariq hugged me. Entwined, we remained silent for several of his deep breaths.

"Damn it, Sirin." He drew back and put the cutter-worm away. "This can end with regret either way."

I smiled. "That cutter probably wouldn't be enough to break through this suit. Not before it stopped you from harming it, at least."