Mark robber's Arc

Chapter 3 of 4

Mark pressed his back to the pale wall and let the blue light wash over him. His breath finally evened out. The hunters were somewhere behind him, mapped and avoided. For one small moment, the wall at his spine felt like safety. Then something on the ground near his boot clicked. He looked down. A sleek metal device sat half-buried in the dust, its center panel pulsing a soft pink. He picked it up. The pulse quickened. The pink deepened to a hot, alarm-bright red, throbbing against his palm like a second heartbeat. He lifted his eyes slowly. Across the flat grey, a tall black figure had stepped out from behind the pale structure. Its grotesque potato-shaped head turned in slow, searching arcs. Wisps of grey smoke curled where its feet touched the ground. If it rounded the wall, his only shelter became a trap. Mark turned the other way and ran low. The device burned red in his fist. He scrambled around a low ridge and stopped short. A building sat there that did not belong — sleek, angular, plated in metal, with a yellow hexagon glowing above a heavy door. It looked built in a lab, dropped into the dust. Test towers. A stamped name plate. Something made for experiments, not for this dead world. He shoved against the door. It gave. Mark slipped inside and pressed it shut behind him. The red pulse in his hand slowed, then dimmed to a steady pink. He had lost the pale wall. He had found something stranger, and someone, somewhere, had built it on purpose.