Rivet stormed through empty halls, hewn from the solid rock of the underground. The lombaxes that built this place hadn't bothered to replace the flooring, rather opting to just smooth the stone out. The walls were lined in sheet metal, with grates near the floor hinting at a larger vent system feeding air throughout the facility. She could hear the hum of machinery and electricity coming from them, in a way akin to the beating of a heart somewhere deeper in.

She had no direction, blindly looking for any distinguishing marks or directions on the walls, or even just a door to break the monotony of endless blank hallways. Instead, she was forced to navigate an unending labyrinth of the same hallway after the same hallway. The empty paths gave her time to breathe and calm down, reminding herself not only of the mission but also just what Kaden had been mad about.

It wasn't like she didn't recognize her own reckless streak, she had more than her fair share of scars to remind her of that already. Something about him trying to lecture her about that though, calling her out for an error she was fully aware of lit a fire in her. Not to mention that he was caught up on something ridiculous like trying to keep a low profile when the whole multiverse was at risk.

She glanced behind her at the taller lombax following along, equally lost. He seemed to be thinking on something himself before he noticed her gaze, narrowing his own. She rolled her eyes and looked forward again as she reached corner number fifty-something. She turned it expecting more of the same, and to be honest… she wished it had been.

The next hall was a warzone, or at least what was left of one. Scorch marks and bullet holes littered the floor and walls, with makeshift cover erected in the middle of it all. She recognized the long dried stains as blood, at this point black and dried so it was anyone's guess who it had come from to begin with. She could make her guesses though. She looked past the cover and found a double sided door at the end of the hall, flanked on either side by sentry turrets and more deployable cover.

There, slumped in piles that leaned on the walls and doors were skeletons. And the longer she stared at them, the more she saw herself in them. The same teeth, the same fingers, the same… They were the same.

She froze in place, not sure what to do. Kaden took notice of her before he rounded the corner himself. "Is something wro- By the great bolt."

Shis shoulders slumped as he saw what she did. He slowly stepped past her and further down the hall. He reached the remains and knelt beside them. "Plasma burns. They match old cragmite designs. Probably the ones the empress handed out during her uprising." He muttered.

"W-where are whoever they were fighting then?" She hesitated at first, making her voice shake for a moment. Before she found her resolve again. "I can't imagine they went down without a fight."

"Their friends probably dragged them off. Left the lombaxes to their locked door that they died for. Either that or the turrets were still active at the time, and with the lombaxes here dead they had no reason to stay and fight them." While he speculated, his eyes continued to sift through the pile of bones before him, looking for something.

Or maybe someone She thought. "What do we do with them?"

He finally looked away from them and towards her, deep thought written on his face. "For now, tread lightly and treat them with respect. Later, when we have the time, we'll make sure they get taken home to be buried. It's the least we can give heroes like them."

"You…" She started to ask something but trailed off. There was a lot she still didn't know. About Kaden, about lombaxes, and as time went on even herself. It all made her doubt what questions she should even be asking anymore. Instead she shook her head and moved past them, taking care to not disturb anything. That put her in front of the door and the inactive turrets that flanked it.

There was no control panel on it, only scorch marks and scratches where someone tried to open it years ago. The seam running down the center was airtight, and with nothing to get any physical purchase on she doubted she could force it open by hand. And being as it was of lombax make she doubted she had enough firepower in her whole armory to punch a hole in it.

Kaden spoke in a language she didn't understand, but she assumed it was probably lombax. A system computer responded in kind, speaking from hidden speakers.

She turned to look at him and he nodded towards the door. "Hold out the wrench."

Her hand twitched absentmindedly, summoning the weapon to it. Its weight settled right before she raised it to look over it, then held it out towards the door. There was a low electric hum that grew in intensity for a few moments, making her think there was a scanner of some sort going over both her and the wrench. The speakers eventually chimed a short tune and spoke a word she assumed to mean she had been approved for entry.

With a hiss, the airtight seal was broken and the doors opened before her. The room inside was mostly filled by what at first seemed like a large metal desk, but she realized it was actually a huge computer console. On either side were now long dead potted plants, and the walls were lined in smaller screens, all of them either deactivated or flashing warning signs. Opposite the door was a window to a larger underground area, but all she could see from here was the ceiling of the cavern beyond.

Just behind the console was a large chair, no doubt reserved for this facility's administrator. And it was probably that same administrator currently slumped over in it, a pile of remains and clothes scraps. She carefully walked in, not afraid of any defenses but rather of disturbing the scene at all.

The screens throughout the room were all dim and covered in a veneer of opaque dust while they flashed warnings in lombax, but they came and went too fast for her to read with her loose grasp on the language. Kaden strode past her, immediately laying his prosthetic hand on the console. She was irritated for a moment before acknowledging that it wasn't like she could work the console very well on her own. Instead she circled around (Giving the chair a wide berth) towards the windows on the back wall. From there she could see down into the cavern below.

She saw rows of glass tubes and holding cells filled with strange fluids, and decrepit research stations flanking all of them. Hundreds of vats of odd liquid with churning colors and ribbons of whatever had once been mixed into them. From here she could make out a few that had shadows shifting and twitching inside of them. No doubt test subjects that had been kept alive all these years by the instruments that contained them. Her conscience made her doubt if she should feel happy or worried about the handful of containers that were broken open, their contents now long gone.

"This place is a mess." Kaden said from behind her. She turned and saw his eyes glowing as he skimmed through the computer's systems.

"Really? The genetics lab that's been abandoned for over twenty years is not in the best shape?"

The glow dimmed as he looked at her. "I meant that it was worse than I had originally expected. The reactor is barely running, most of the sensors are dark and we're cut off from the lower levels by cave-ins."

"Then how is Ratchet supposed to reach the vault? It's at the bottom right?"

He nodded. "He's using the ventilation shafts, so he should be able to get past most of the cave-ins and then pick his way down from there."

"We should let him know." She said before activating her communicator. "Ratchet? You read me?"


A few minutes earlier

"Ratchet, it's getting closer!" Clank warned from behind him.

"I know! Not much I can do about it right now!" He shouted his response over the wind howling past him. His dive down the underground facility's vents was not going well. Clank could only maintain a hover for a few moments before his energy reserves started to get too low. Not to mention that if they went too slowly, whatever it was that was chasing them from the outside of the vent started to get too close.

Now though, whatever was on their tail had given up on trying to keep a distance. Claws ripped through the metal of the shaft mere feet behind them as they fell. Ratchet couldn't make out any details beyond a hint of orange fur that occasionally peeked through behind them.

He had to keep his eyes forward though, or run the risk of hitting one of the walls. That was getting harder and harder though, as with every branch and split in the main shaft they were in, it narrowed more and more. He now had half the space he had started with and missed every inch. "If you've got any bright ideas pal, I'm all ears!"

"I'm afraid I have none at the moment. Perhaps if we fall far enough it will simply leave us alone." He offered.

"If only I thought we were that lucky." Ratchet lamented to himself a mere moment before the shaft narrowed again, an offshoot going off at a right angle faster than he could even see it. The smaller space made his feet glance off the wall, and that was all it took to send him tumbling.

He bounced from wall to wall, knocking off of them with solid thuds that left dents in the sheet metal and bruises on his body. He grunted with every impact, filling the entire tunnel with a cacophony of involuntary pain. Thankfully he didn't have to fall too far this way before the creature chasing them caught up.

A long, orange furred and many jointed arm ripped into the tunnel just ahead of them before its grasp finally caught him. He grunted as it pinned him to the wall, dazing him. Clank tried to say something, but the wall muffled him. Ratchet realized his hands were free, letting him grab a nanotech container that he popped into his mouth. His teeth crunched through the sugar glass and released the cool fluid within, the nanomachines immediately diffusing into his body. Shaking his head for good measure, he recovered his awareness quickly while the creature was tearing open a larger hole in the opposite wall.

The hand holding them in place was only big enough to pin him by his waist, so at the very least he wasn't dealing with something as large as the big bug that had guarded the entrance to the facility. There was something… off about it though.

It had three fingers on its hands, but the two besides the thumb looked more like fused together fingers that had then been topped with claws. The arms had at least three joints that he could see, but that was at odds with the coarse fur that covered them. Then the face came in through the opening it had made, doubling down on the uneasy feeling he had. It had four gleaming eyes that watched him hungrily above a slathering mouth. Saliva (at least what he assumed was saliva) fell in rivers while fleshy mandibles tried to make some kind of clicking noises, but it only came out as gurgles and popping noises. Like its biology didn't match the structure of its face.

A face that kept trying to force its way into the opening it had made, but it was having little luck. Ratchet did a quick scan of his arsenal. With his arms free, he could use most anything he had, but some part of him was saying not to just blast the creature away. Instead, he opted to pull a relic out, producing his groovitron glove. He threw the glittering disco ball at its exposed face, and once it activated the bright lights it produced made the creature scream in pain, its eyes adjusted to the darkness of the underground.

Reeling in pain, it ripped the pair from the wall and tore them through the hole after it. Once they were free from the vent, it flung them away so it could clutch at its face. Clank activated his helipak, letting Ratchet get an idea of where they were.

It seemed like it was some sort of maintenance area running alongside the ventilation system. The walls of the cave itself were uncovered save for a myriad of pipes and shielded cables that were all bolted down. Catwalks stretched far above and below with the occasional door leading elsewhere in the facility. Ratchet was in the middle of picking one to land on when the creature roared, reminding them that they still had that to worry about. He tried to turn to see it, but it had crawled into the darkness too fast for him to catch more than a twisted foot.

"Ratchet, I believe that creature has been engineered here." Clank warned.

"Was starting to think that myself pal. I don't want to have to kill something like that. Doesn't feel right."

Clank landed them on a catwalk. "We might be able to find something to treat it with in the labs, but that would take time."

"We'll have to come back for it then and just try to avoid it for now."

Almost as though it was letting him know that it was going to make that difficult, the creature roared from the darkness. Proceeding the piercing noise was a chunk of rock, likely pulled from the wall. Ratchet dove to the side, narrowly avoiding the makeshift missile as it ripped through the catwalk like a knife through butter. He decided at that moment that it would be easier to avoid the thing by going into the facility proper and ran for the closest door.

He imagined that the halls on the other side had once been sterile and white, but were now dimly lit and a dust covered gray. He could only hesitate for a second before another cry spurned him onward, sprinting down the hall. His boots kicked up clouds of dust in his wake, making what little light that was coming from the barely functioning lights even dimmer everywhere he went. His communicator crackled to life as he ran, Rivet's voice coming through.

"Ratchet? You read me?"

"Loud and clear. What's up?" He spoke quickly while he ran deeper in, hoping he was by chance heading in the right direction.

"We made it to the admin's room." She started, and Kaden picked up from there.

"I'm tracking you now. You've still got a few floors to go before you make it to the vault, but you're heading in the right direction. You've also got something following you though."

A door crashed open somewhere behind him. "Really? Didn't realize." Ratchet tried to balance the sarcasm and fake surprise in his voice.

Rivet spoke up again. "Be careful Ratchet. We're blocked off from getting down there by cave-ins. We won't be able to help you."

"That's not all. While power is still on down there, ventilation isn't. You'll need an O2 mask starting on the next floor if you wanna breathe."

"Jeez, you guys got any good news?" Ratchet activated his jet boots as he quipped, trying to go just that little bit faster.

"I can open the vault as soon as you get there, that's about it." Kaden told him. "But if you want bad news, I've got more."

"Of course you do." He heard Rivet mumble through the communicator.

"There are ship signatures inbound. A lot of signatures."


Rivet spun on her heels, turning from the window she'd been looking out to the older lombax. "The cragmites are coming!?"

"I can't imagine anyone else has a fleet that size in the galaxy right now." He clarified.

Her hand combed through her tuft while she thought. "You said this place was hidden! Hard to find unless you knew it was there!"

"And both Tachyons already knew it was here. They probably predicted our trajectory or tracked us, no way to know for sure. And right now, it doesn't matter." Kaden explained with a whiff of anger to his voice.

"What do we do then?" Ratchet asked. "Are we better off leaving the dimensionator in the vault for now?"

"No! That thing is our best chance for survival! You get it out and then use it to get back up here to the surface. We'll hold them off if they manage to get in by then."

"Dad, you're talking about practically the entire cragmite army!"

"Numbers mean nothing to lombaxes son. You just worry about that creature on your tail for now. Duck by the way." Kaden said the last part nonchalantly.

"Huh? AH!" Ratchet shouted before a sound like rending metal and shattering glass filled the channel.

"Ratchet!?" Rivet asked.

"I'm okay! That was close though." She heaved a sigh of relief, and she saw what almost seemed like a knowing glance on Kaden's face before it disappeared just as quickly. "I'll keep heading down and call back when I reach the vault."

"Roger that. We'll get ready for a fight up here." She said. "Maybe start with getting those turrets out there back online."

Kaden nodded. "Sounds like a plan, or at least as much of one as we're likely to get. Prepare yourselves you two-"


"The end is finally here!" Both Tachyons laughed, malicious joy dripping from their very presence as they arrived at Auros. The entire cragmite fleet on their heels.