In a ruined lab now reclaimed by nature, with many vines and growths covering the structure of what used to be a facility for creations of human inventions for the progression of technologies and the like. The sound of a heated battle echoed throughout said place, a huge explosion generating a thick blinding smoke on what used to be the lab cafeteria, courtesy of the still functioning hulking security robot that laid dormant for centuries still operating under the programming of protecting the facility that is no more. It's body based on the shape and anatomy to that of an arachnid, segmented joints on their legs for faster and versatile movements, its head sports many eyes as well as armaments for eliminating intruders with lethal efficiency, the letters reading "Guardian" still faintly visible on top of its now weathered head plate. The middle eye camera, currently overheating, most likely the origin of what caused the explosion from earlier.

A humanoid figure jumped out of the smoke, the Guardian's many eyes immediately locked on said figure. Upon closer look, it was an adult female figure based on their body proportions from their bust and large hips, her attire is that of a full black body suit, with gray armor colored platings over her upper torso, shoulders, waist, thighs, knees, boots, and arms, as well a compact headgear covering her entire head with a visor along with many utility attachments on it. Around her belt as well as thighs are holsters and load bearing pouches for grenades and sidearms, on her back is a compact jetpack that also doubles as a bag pack most likely for supplies and just under it attached to her belt behind her hip is a larger pack for utilities and munitions, more load bearing gears on her vest with a bandolier of more ordinance on it. Currently, in her hand is a long barreled laser rifle with many signs of wear and tear as well as personal custom parts and colors consists of neon pink and cyan to the also personalized interface showing the energy count and such.

"Fucking great....." the armored woman cursed, her voice sounded robotic due to her helmet. She looked at the backside small panel screen of her weapon, the black interface showing a half full bar indicating the remaining charge is 47% with a comical emote of a cartoon cat looking unwell just at the bottom of the bar. 

"Even a 50% charge wasn't enough huh...." she chuckled bitterly before standing up and grabbing one the ordonance from her vest, it was a rounded vile shape containing a light blue liquid inside, swiftly inputting the time for detonation she turns her attention back to the Guardian.

"Let's see about this one then...." she muttered to herself while skillfully holstering her rifle using by fastening the sling into a shorter strap wrapping her body tightly, the weapon tucked securely on her back. She sprinted straight at the Guardian.

The machine immediately deployed more weapons from the top part of their abdomen, and began charging its two laser cannons at her. Just as its cannons begin firing, she boosted forward using her jetpack and slide under it, tossing the vial upwards right under the main body, the metal parts around said vial works as a magnet so it would stick firmly. Once done and now sliding to the other side, she did not waste any time to roll for a quick recovery then boosted herself once again this time in a diagonal direction to the left, narrowly dodging a devastating laser blast.

"Hot!" she exclaimed while landing behind a toppled cafeteria table and bracing herself for the incoming explosion and just as the Guardian aimed at her spot and was charging another shot, the vial finally detonated. The explosion sent it flying to a considerable distant, frost began to rapidly enveloped the Guardian whole as well as the surrounding area, the machine began to use its heating functions but it began malfunctioning due to to lack of maintenance and ruined state from the passage of time being dormant for so long. The light in its numerous eyes flicker as its being frozen, its movements getting stiffer by the seconds, the next few seconds all form of movement finally halted and the glow in its eyes went out. 

"Holy hell....." she gasped while peeking her head to the side of the frozen table before coming out of it, admiring the terrifying but effective Cryo Bomb.

"Now that's too effective...." she touched the table slightly and it crumbled into pieces, she then walked closer to the metal arachnid and lightly kicked the  frozen Guardian, after staring at it a few moments longer her shoulders relaxed. While looking around, she had just noticed that behind the destroyed wall caused by the Guardian's falling impact, there was a pretty large hole leading to another room. Walking closer to it, she took a peek inside and thanks to the advance HUD of her headgear she was able to have a clear visual of the room, it seems to be the server room with many decayed processors and servers of the old world. 

"Bingo!" she ecstatically cheered while rearing back her left arm.

Punching the damaged wall once was more than enough to make a big opening for her to go through, she immediately looked around the room. Moving around debris that's in the way, rummaging through the old electronics, and even dismantling as well as tearing open the dusty brittle panels, after a while of looking and rummaging she finally notices the slight flicker of light. It was coming from inside the door in the corner of the room, she walked towards the door, pressed the open switch, and unsurprisingly the panel displayed "ERROR" causing the girl to snicker and shaking her head.

"Of course" she chuckled and punched the panel of buttons breaking it completely. The door slightly opened before seemingly shutting off from the damage done.

Putting both her armored hands in the gap, she pried the open using her own strength but not all the way only enough to fit her through. Once inside, she realized it was an office room most likely for a researcher or scientist of higher rank, the racks decorated with science awards, two large book cases filled with books about science as well as biology, cabinets with labels for research documents, and on the table at the end of the office, had a skeleton slumping in front of an old outdated model terminal computer. Upon closer inspection, the name plate on the table read "Prof. Dave Storms" the rest of the researchers title were illegible.

"There it is!" she exclaimed seeing a cube shaped object in the Professor's now skeletal left hand's grasp.

While reaching for it, she suddenly noticed the gun on the deceased man's right hand, it was a model from the old world to her surprise and intrigue, as it was the one named "Colt" pistol. She picked up the ancient firearm not batting an eye to the crumbling skeleton hand that held it to admire the old ballistic based weapon, there are still ballistics around of course mostly for the underground as high tech weapons are hard to use because of the advance ID lock and some with self destructive features. She pocketed the gun on her large pouch on her hip.

Yet she is now overcome with curiosity of why is it in the Professor's hand during the time of his death. She then looked at the body more closely to inspect further. Slowly grabbing and reaching for the skull, once she had closer look she notices a hole from the left side of the man's skull, it was an exit wound she surmised, leaving her with many questions. She then turned her attention to the terminal in front of the corpse, the screen was on "Stand By" meaning it had been on for a long time now, possibly when the Professor died even.

Moving the skeleton slightly away so she can use the keyboard better, she started looking through the archives of files and data in the terminal. Most of the files were research theories and experiments, she felt there is suppose to be more, so following her gut feeling she looked back at the skeleton and rummaged through his pockets. After a bit of searching, she found an old bulky flash drive from the Professor's lab coat pocket she then attached the drive into the terminal, and once it finished uploading only one new file appeared. The file name was "Project Rift Walker".

Feeling a bit hesitant, she tapped to open file. The contents loaded up as fast as it could for its time, which a lot slower compared to the present adding a bit more anxiety to her, soon texts, quotes, images and results of the Rift Walker project began to show clearly. As she read through it all with absolute focus, she began to feel even more suspiscious about the mysterious cube shaped artifact's significance until the end of the experiment log of the file, there is a video. Pausing for a few moments, she tapped a key to play it, as the video began buffering it revealed a middle aged man with brown hair and beard wearing a lab coat and is sitting down in front of the camera, his coat as well as the background looked familiar, she concluded that the man in the recording to be Professor Storms. 

...."This will be my last and only log as i have destroyed the rest".... the professor said in the feed.

He then takes out the black cube in question, looking at it with melancholy in his eyes.

...."We were in over our heads with this Project....we thought after finally finding and obtaining the Nexus Cube we could advance humanity even further. Expanding our reach beyond even space or realms unseen by anyone!" he shakily proclaimed before looking at the Nexus Cube in his hand.

...."The unforeseen incidents and disasters were expected, but after decades of experimenting, calculating, and observing the patterns of Cube we were finally able to uncover some clues to open a rift!" the feed then cuts to a footage of man wearing a bulky suit with a safety cord tied to around their waist holding the cube in what seemed to be a testing ground site. He gave a thumbs up to the camera to signal the start of the experiment, the man held the cube up and then a robot arm with a needle-like appendage descended down, the tip of began heating up before shooting a thin line of laser directly on to the Nexus Cube. Golden lines of unknown pattern began to glow on the cube, it flew up and was somehow suspended in the air on its own, as it glowed brighter the camera began to distort and cuts to black.

It switched back to the Professor, ...."that is the first and last recording of the experiment, exactly 14 minutes after.....the subject returned, he was severely injured as his entire right side is melted, fortunately the camera on him was intact, and the footage in it...." he hesitated for a few seconds before continuing.

......"We were in over our heads.....it was then i realized, the universe is much more vast and even more horrifying than anyone could ever imagine.....we shouldn't have done this, we shouldn't have try to play God....." he shakily said while looking at the cube in his hand, then reached inside his lab coat. Taking out a black Colt pistol, the very same pistol she was inspecting earlier and set it down on his table calmly. 

...."To whoever find this footage, i implore you to not follow our foot steps.....and do not let the Cube fall into the wrong hands....uuggh!!" the Professor suddenly clutched his head in pain while trying to shut off the feed before finally ending the video.

"What the hell is going on....?" now feeling very wary while looking at the object named Nexus Cube, she picked up it up and it felt quite light in her hand.  It looked like a simple rubix-cube sized object, but to think it was some kind of reality warping artifact based on what the professor said. Just then she suddenly felt a slight tremor, and something began hitting the door to the office really hard, she ducked down while placing the cube in her pack before taking out her laser rifle. Several more hits, the door was finally breached revealing a familiar looking spider like appendage.

"Stubborn piece of junk!" she sets it to Overdrive and began firing at it, chipping away at it at best despite using the maximum firepower she had. The appendage extended itself further to reach her, to which she performed a cartwheel maneuver to dodge its piercing attack, instead hitting the terminal table with the remains of the Professor, scattering it around the room. The shots only knocking it around much to her frustration, then its tips suddenly glow. 

Shocked after realizing it has a laser function in its tip, and its charging a shot as it aimed her. "FUCK..!!" she cursed and set her rifle at 70% charge aiming at the wall next to her to make an escape route. Busting down wall, she immediately sprinted out of the room, and boosted ahead to gain as much distance as she could, but the arachnid-like limb's blast radius was far wider than expected. The laser shot grazed a part of her backpack, the durable material burning away and the contents of that one particular compartment, is the Nexus Cube. 

She managed to barely caught it fell out, but her headgear's HUD suddenly signaled her a warning, telling her of an unknown energy surge. Shocked followed by a feeling of dread, she remembered the experimental footage and to her horror, golden lines began to light up on it.

"Ah.....shit...." were the girl's last words before everything went dark.