Rubber soles squeaked across a section of meshed steel grating, high atop the wall that swung out wide to swallow an entire town. The constant background roar of rain crashing against metal mixed with echoes of the water pouring through the gaps to plunge gurgling into the darkness below. Along the top of the bulwark, a parapet ran the length of the structure, but it stood out from an ordinary fortification. Unlike most, this barrier faced inward.

Down the length of the wall lay thick, barrel-sized spotlights, spaced out every hundred yards to form a slowly curving line as they faded into the driving downpour. The cage-clad bulbs cast brilliant beams of light through the rain, searing away vast swathes of shadow in slow, measured arcs. Within each shaft of light countless reflections shone, scattering through the falling drops to form an almost physical cone of illumination.

It was a warm night, the only consolation to the mix of PRT officers and Protectorate capes that patrolled the thick walls. They trod familiar paths in slow, meticulous detail, eyes drifting from the slick walkway to their primary focus: Site Q3. Eagleton, Tennessee. The home of the Machine Army.

Dozens of feet below—across the wide, cleared gap—lights blinked without rhythm in the black. Now and again the sweeping edge of a spotlight would drift across a particular patch of sodden mud or collapsed concrete, and a piece, a corner of a limb was caught in the light for a moment. The soft glow of synthetic white, or reflected spots of gunmetal grey, gleaming against a murky background. There would be a second of stasis, and then with a jerk and scuffle of motion it withdrew further into the darkness. One single drop returning to a sea of twinkling lights.

Along the wall, a pair of capes stood still in anticipation, staring into the night where a glint of movement had vanished just before. As the seconds ticked by without further change, the taller of the two shook his head, hand falling back to his side, and after a few murmured words they drifted apart to continue their patrol.

There was a balance at Eagleton, between the guards stationed along the walls and the writhing mass nestled within. For all the threat that the expanse of shimmering lights represented, it was no war zone. The walls stood high, but no hordes of machines crashed against their base.

The force that had so quickly swelled to encompass two-thirds of a city was an oddity. Despite the speed at which they'd wormed through block after block in that first, devastating flood, they had stopped at the initial series of hastily-erected barricades. Even as reinforcements from around the country came pouring in, there had been no last desperate push. The odds had shifted further and further, and yet a final attempt to break out of the encirclement never appeared. However strange and hostile these new enemies were, they had seemed content to stop.

The PRT was quick to discover, however, that the Machine Army hadn't given up. Not long after the area had been secured and the advance halted, the first Protectorate-supported attempts to retake the city had begun. They hadn't lasted long. As the officers had crept down silent, ruined roads, the machines seemed to have vanished. Minutes later, they entered the first freshly-abandoned building, and were met with a blizzard of whirling steel and hidden death.

Every road, every parked car or empty building was revealed to be a potential death trap, filled with camouflaged machines. Though the enemy didn't seem to have an overarching grasp of offensive tactics, the hidden machines certainly understood defensive ones. The city had become an abattoir, where one false step brought down lethal consequences upon entire squads.

The barely-effective, three-month campaign had already dragged to a near-halt when the final blow was struck. From the ruins of what had been thought to be cleared territory, death emerged from the ground, from the walls, even from trees and rocks. Caught by surprise, the offensive line crumbled, falling back to the very first set of emplacements. After that, an uneasy stalemate had been struck, and both sides had dug in where they were.

For the men and women stationed at Site Q3, the depths of Eagleton remained unknown, but it was no mystery. Day after day, a few scattered machines moved idly forward towards the wall, only to be destroyed by chattering weapons fire or the gleaming burst from a nearby cape. Years of exposure had reduced the Army from a nebulous horror to a common, if stubborn foe, and the PRT was confident in its efforts. The city may have been overrun, but as long as they remained atop their wall, it would spread no further.

~~~~ ~~~~

Deep within the center of the ruined city, the Machine Army's work came to fruition.

From the surface, there was no perceptible change. Even without the lashing rain and the darkness of night, an observer wouldn't have been able to spot the slightest difference amidst the sea of machines. The lights continued blinking, the faint rumble of distant movement remained steady, and water kept pouring down on smooth, shifting metal.

Within the Machine Army, however, all knew that the work had finished. All knew, for all was one, a singular host with ten thousand branching bodies. The information percolated through its self, registered and acknowledged across the vast expanse. A piece of data that slid into place to join countless other fragments. The fabrication was complete, and it was ready.

Were the Army someone, something else, it might have felt triumph at the news. A warm glow of satisfaction, an undercurrent of hungry anticipation for what would come next. But the Army did not think, did not feel. It only acted, and as the notice rippled through it, the next series of instructions rose to the front.

The Machine Army did not deliberately try to be secretive, far underground, because it had no concept of secrecy. Even as it laid traps, as machines camouflaged themselves deep within the facades of ruined structures, secrecy was not a goal, for the term was as meaningless as any other. What the Machine Army did understand, however, was patterns.

It recorded everything that it experienced, and it processed information very, very quickly. Data was aligned and corroborated, scoured for repetition and connection. One event, one action, flowing into another. Through its searching, it had amassed the initial criteria that the project required. Every decision, collected through those initial months of conflict, that had let its pieces last the longest. Gaining distance from the other that surrounded it on the surface, breaking the visual paths between itself and that-which-was-not-itself. It had followed its own rules to their conclusion and begun construction underground.

From there, work had begun in earnest, a paired design of two parts. Either piece was useless without the other, and—like so much else it built—fragments of a greater whole. The Machine Army could not create wholesale, it had no imagination from which to pull, but it remembered. It improved, as it tore things apart to merge and recombine with each other and the shells of its self. And it had watched, many months ago in a similar storm, when a raging bolt of light had been pulled to a tall, metallic form. When within that form, for a moment, pieces had moved on their own.

Now, tall shapes whirred through a cavernous hollow, buried deep beneath the earth. Delicate limbs flickered across the expanse, spider-like, carrying seamless sterile bodies in twisting spirals around a central edifice. Each move was a perfect economy of motion; they did not twitch so much as suddenly blink from point to point without hesitation, lightning fast. Last-minute corrections upon the surrounding walls occupied the machines, making minute changes to the constructed expanse. Finally, they drifted to a halt in unison, and all around the edges of the room space warped and bloomed.

From each node purpose-built machines emerged, pieces of a greater whole that settled into place below the distortions. They had no limbs, no wheels or treads. They were not meant to move. Together, they surrounded the center of the room, and a pair of smooth black pillars slid into place, reaching up into the dark.

As the pieces began shifting into position, an elaborate dance of moving shapes and finely-assembled components, the Army studied the room and the project that lay within. Layers upon layers of delicate planning and meticulous detail filled the space, the products of an unwavering, unfaltering drive that fuelled its entirety. As information flowed between each metal shell, so did identity; the form did not matter. Each and every machine within was connected as part of a singular whole.

At the top of the central tower, space bloomed once more, peeling back like an invisible curtain around a slender, tapered form. The rails descended to meet it, and the pedestal shifted, collapsing into shape. High, high above, there was an inaudible shift; half a minute later, the first drops of moisture finally tapped against the floor. At the base, the open space seemed to scratch and twist, even as the silence and stillness remained unbroken. On the surface, sensors pointed towards the sky, trilling silent notice as readings rose, and the scent of ozone filled the air.

There was a final click, and then the very air tore itself apart with a burning, rumbling crash.

From the base of the cavern upwards, a shattering line of light tore down the length of the twin metal rails, instantly propelled past the flimsy barrier of sound and up into the sky. Layers of threaded material along the roof of the room absorbed the light, disguising the sound, and the slender pitch-black dot emerged to match the descending bolt from the heavens.

Following the lightning that had sparked its design so many months prior, it returned to the sky.

~~~~ ~~~~

The machine that made up the outside of the thin black oval was designed to be destroyed. Beyond the tearing wind that slowly stripped away its surface, its very design was transient. It monitored, it kept watch, and it existed as the vehicle for another. Once the task was complete, it would cease. The functions that it had been created to carry out were too specialized, took up too much room within its structure. There wasn't enough space for the mechanisms for replication. That task, the most important task, was bequeathed to the one within it. The seed.

As it hurtled upwards through the heavy clouds, its blistering ascent slowed. Without continual thrust gravity proved an inescapable opponent, pulling indifferently against the smooth shape. Its velocity plummeted, and as the final shreds of motion bled away, the parameters were met. From the highest point the black surface seemed to dissolve, splitting down the middle as a latticework of seams appeared on the expanding surface.

As the seemingly-solid shell disassembled, it didn't vanish into the turbulent sky. Instead, long threads unwound outwards, quickly pulled taut by the wind, and the lower portion collapsed, growing smaller and smaller. Seconds later, less than a fist-sized node remained. Above it, an expanding fan of lines caught the heavy breeze, and it continued onward through the sky.

Throughout the countless wires the now-diminished intelligence watched, inactive.

Hours passed as it traveled passively. It was descending now; the storm had slowly dissipated miles behind, and normal air currents weren't strong enough to lift it, merely slow the fall and drag it towards the horizon. Information washed over the machine, and it let it accumulate, incapable of analysis in its current form. For the first time in its existence, a piece of the Machine Army was distinct, unique. Within it lay information that it did not possess, and yet it could not share the knowledge amongst its self. Distance was no obstruction, but instead the barrier lay within its design.

For the singular machine floating through the sky, detection was antithetical to its purpose. It existed to be undiscovered, and communication with the vast remainder of its self went against that fundamental goal. But the missing capability would not affect its objective.

Below it, a new sea of gleaming lights stretched out against the black. Yellow pinpricks grew larger, and the machine shifted, angling towards the edge. Not long after, the ground rose to meet it. Towering structures entered its crippled perception, and a soft scrape heralded its landing.

Beneath the central body of the machine, rough concrete pressed against its hull, thick and dense. A suitable location. The final stage began, and it ate downwards into the material. A crawl of inches became feet, until it came to a final rest. Above it, the wires slowly retracted, packing into the hole, and all movement stilled.

The machine ran through a final series of checks, one by one. Each came back within acceptable ranges, and then the flow began. Every scrap that had accumulated over the journey was pushed to a single repository, archived. The last streams of information ceased to flow, and the machine died.