Cyberpunk: Spartan Walker

Chapter 200 Reach Interlude ([-])
At the end of the corridor was a platform overlooking the largest room Fred had ever seen.

Kelly stepped onto the platform, looked over, and then waved them forward.

Surrounding the room is a hierarchical structure with more than ten floors and no railings.They were standing on one of the floors.Fred leaned over and saw that it was at least 100 meters from here to the floor below.The room is roughly circular in shape, with a diameter of 3000 meters.The floor was blue, and there seemed to be billions of tiles shifting, stretching, and rearranging into familiar yet unfamiliar patterns.

The ceiling is circular and filled with holographic images of a golden sun, azure sky and cotton-like white clouds.The white clouds have different shapes, some are spherical, some expand into pyramids, some are horizontal bars, and some are cubes.In the center of the floor is a pedestal that glows faintly.

Isaac raised his hand. "Listen," he whispered over the communication channel.

They all stood still.Fred listened hard, but there was no sound.Fred turned on the hearing enhancer and turned it up to maximum.He heard the "creaking" sound of their joints in the armor and the faint heartbeats of several people. Other than that, there was silence.

"They stopped," Fred said, pointing overhead. "They stopped digging."

"This is not a good thing," Dr. Halsey said. "We know the Covenant won't stop at anything they start. We'd better keep going."

Kelly removed the magazine, emptied the chamber, and inserted a self-installing climbing steel cone into the barrel.She fired it into the stone wall, embedded it ten centimeters deep, and then let the sharp fixing claws extend to secure the steel cone to the wall.

Winn handed her a roll of rope.She fastened one end to the steel cone and dropped the rest.

Daisy and Will stood on the edge, scanning the open area with weapons in hand.Jun stood on a higher ground, the sniper rifle in his hand ready to go.

Kelly jumped down, rappelled to the bottom, and soon gave the all-clear signal.

Will and Daisy followed her down to the floor.Then, Fred tied Dr. Halsey's waist with a rope and carefully lowered her down.He and Wen En were in the rear.

The tiles in this great room are different from those in the hallway above.Although it's still blue, there are squares, circles, bars and triangles here.If these symbols were a language, Fred would be standing on a million words right now.He wished someone had given him a dictionary.

Dr. Halsey stopped and looked at the tiles. "If only we had time," she murmured, then walked toward the light source in the center of the room.

The Spartans regrouped around the Doctor, but Fred's instincts warned him that this was not a good idea.He couldn't tell where he was.

The room was so big that they felt as if they hadn't even walked in yet.This confused him.He had a strange dizzy feeling, as if the floor was tilting and he was walking on the roof.

Dr. Halsey quickened his pace, but the distance to the center of the room did not seem to shorten.In fact they seem to be getting further and further away from it.

Fred turned down the color of the display until everything was a faint, blurry black and white.He looked at the motion detector carefully and found that the Spartan and Dr. Halsey were becoming more and more separated, and were now 24 meters apart.

"Everyone stop," he said, "and regroup. We're spreading out."

They stopped and slowly resumed formation.

"There must be a way out," Dr. Halsey said.She reached into the pocket of her overalls and pulled out a roller ball. "The floor is sloping toward the center." She put the ball on the floor and pushed it gently.The ball rolls forward, then turns, returns to the starting point and stops.

"That's weird." Fred muttered, "Kelly, you have the strongest sense of direction. Close your eyes, choose a direction, and we will follow." "Yes." She replied in a low voice.

The Spartans put their hands on each other's shoulders and moved forward—not to the center of the room, but to a point Kelly had chosen—obviously heading back.

Fred turned off the display and focused on watching the motion detector.Several of their points were closely arranged together, and then another point appeared - they were walking directly towards that point under the leadership of Kelly.

After walking another 20 meters, Kelly stopped. "look."

Fred turned on the heads-up display, and the crystal blue light immediately came into view.They stood in front of a light source in the center of the room.There was a pedestal here, made of the same golden material as the symbols in the corridor, and floating above it was a fist-sized crystal, tapered at each end.The crystal is constantly rotating, with each face folding and moving along the center line, like a Rubik's Cube.

Dr. Halsey reached for it, then hesitated. "Is there any radiation?"

Fred checked his radiation meter and reported, "Normal."

"We must bring it with us," she whispered, "either study it or destroy it. The key is not to let the Covenant troops get it." Her hand touched the crystal, and the light of the crystal dimmed, as if it had been Haha. Dr. Ersey's palm sucked away.

Fred's heads-up display suddenly went blurry, his shields glowed dimly, his speakers roared, and motion detectors detected thousands of targets pouring into the vast room.His radiation warning device also glowed with a blinding red light, then slowly disappeared.

"Radiation spike," he whispered. "A large number of neutrinos have been analyzed, but I can't determine what type they are - there is no storage in the computer database."

"Is it safe now?" Dr. Halsey asked, squinting at the crystal in his hand.

"It seems so," Fred said to her, "but Bo"

“There’s no time to argue,” she said. “The neutrino radiation penetrates the rocks above our heads.”

"They can use this to determine our position," Kelly said. "Just triangulate with three ships nearby. We have to get out of here—quickly."

"Which way to go?" Isaac asked Fred, "Go back the way you came, or go deeper?"

"There's no way out of this titanium mine," Fred replied, "so we have to keep going deeper."

An explosion shook the mountains and the earth.The thunderous rumblings were heard endlessly, but instead of gradually disappearing, they became louder and closer.

Fred's shadow lengthened, becoming sharply defined.

He turned sharply and looked towards a source of intense white light - just above his head, a small hole in the dome: a holographic image of the planets and moon fading to white and disappearing.

(End of this chapter)