---

  // John 0825 - 2 hours and 10 minutes since entry. //

  ---

  Each step felt heavy. I could see the flashing warnings in the corners of my vision. Warnings about heart rate, warnings about power levels and oxygen stores.

  I frowned, I hadn't expected a journey longer then a few minutes. They'd packed enough for hours, at least for oxygen and power levels.

  But those were rapidly coming to critical levels. I'd spent the last few hours walking and I could almost feel the power systems failing as the batteries were drained. I checked the estimated time.

  An hour and forty minutes. That was the amount of power I had left before the suit I was wearing went from a protective exosuit to a steel tomb.

  I grunted, ducking underneath another of the rusted metal beams. I frowned, they had shown up about an hour ago. Like steel roots they crisscrossed the hallway, emerging from one end to stab into the next.

  At first the beams were a surprise, a few stray instances of them stabbed across the hallway. I felt hope as perhaps these beams meant this hallway would finally open up.

  But it didn't, rather the instances of the beams merely increased, growing numerous to the point I had to paused at several points, crouching underneath large nerve-like clusters of the rusted metal.

  I continued like this for a full extra hour, marking a total of three hours since entering this place. I'd noticed that the walls had been growing lighter. I wasn't sure if the colour of the walls merely were becoming a lighter tone or if a new source of light was present.

  I suddenly had to stop, up ahead the largest amount of the metal beams crisscrossed the passage. I strode up to them, tapping on the metal. The interlacing beam were so thick I couldn't even see past them.

  Was this a dead end? I wondered. I check the power reserves, enough for seven hours if the demand stayed the same.

  I tapped on the metal, the sound of it vibrated through my suit, reminding me of my oxygen reserves.

  Critical. 20 minutes remaining. "Shit" I muttered. Pulling back I considered my options.

  There was three possible ways this would end.

  The first was simple, there was no atmosphere and I'd die a from carbon monoxide poisoning or from the violent removal of pressure within my lungs bring the liquid inside my blood to a boil.

  The second wasn't any better. Judging from what I could visually see, as the suit lacked any sensors to tell the makeup of any potential atmosphere it was mostly nitrogen or a similar enough gas. It couldn't contain oxygen, but the mix was likely heavily skewed towards an under or over abundance of oxygen.

  The third was the least likely, atmosphere was present and it was breathable. But considering in my multi hourlong walk I'd not seen a single trace of organic matter then it was unlikely.

  I shook my head, overthinking would waste the little oxygen I had left. Perhaps salvation would lie beyond this wall of steel.

  I tested the suit, I hadn't check how strong the suits hydraulic are but hopefully they would be enough. I gripped one of the many rusted metal lengths and started to pull.

  With the groan of steel and the struggle of underpowered hydraulics I slowly bent one of the metal beams, curling it towards the wall. Repeating this to the rest I slowly bend an opening through the wall of steel.

  With every inch gained the oxygen warning increased.

  23 minutes

  15 minutes

  10 minutes.

  6 minutes.

  I was almost through, I could see visibly that there was around one more layer of the metal beams, I gave up on trying to conserve energy and begun to tear at the bars.

  They came loose with ease and I suddenly had to grab onto the very bars I had been attempting to remove a massive amount of pressure was seemingly released.

  I felt a physical wall of gas pushing down at me. The sheer pressure of it was beyond the suits ability to withstand and I felt my grip loosening, a warning about hydraulic pressure loose flashing across the internal screens.

  Then the exchange of pressure and gas suddenly stopped. I distantly heard the rush cease and slowly I struggled to stand up.

  Oxygen was empty now. I could feel the light-headedness setting in. My body shutting down from the lack of oxygen and the increase in carbon monoxide in my blood.

  I stumbled forward, the hydraulics of the right arm of my suit were completely busted. I could feel the true weight of the sight now forcing my arm to hang limply now that the exosuit was disabled there.

  I tumbled through the opening and fell, I crumbled forward, smashing my helmet directly on the stone. I could feel the glass of the visor crack as it met the grey stone.

  Suddenly I could breath and I fumbled with the latches, finally my helmet popped off and I gasped, choking and desperately drawing in the air in great gulps.

  I'd been right on two fronts, seemingly there was no air inside the tunnel, or maybe there air once and it was consumed some time ago, thankfully there was air outside the tunnel, I didn't know if It was even truly breathable but god was I thankfully my lungs were not outside my body as all water within my body boiled at once.

  I brought myself up onto my hands. The amount of power left had dropped to two hours after that little sunt.

  The oxygen level was now flashing empty and was starting to piss me off. The sight of before me however made all thoughts of oxygen levels vanish from my mind.

  A sea stood before me, a massive endless blue sea seemingly contained within an even more massive cavern of steel and that same grey stone. Within the endless sea towers connected by thin bridges of metal and that stone rose up, stretching upwards and even downward as I could see.

  The sea of towers and endless blue waters broken only by the distant walls that contained this place was drowned out by the sight in the far distance.

  A tower, larger, more impressive then all other rose up from a group of the smaller towers, it rose up, a giant of size I couldn't even wrap my mind around. The celling of the this place curved around the tower, arching upward as the structure stabbed up into the heavens and beyond.

  For a moment I could do nothing but stare. The tunnel had been odd but this was beyond anything I could ever imagine. It seems I had truly fallen from reality.

  The only thing that really bugged me was the odd feeling all of this gave me. Clearly something had built this, skyscrapers of twisting steel and stone didn't grow out of the ground. With the way this place was contained within an even larger structure it was clear this whole area was just a tiny part of an even larger structure.

  But everything felt as if it was built without human hands, it was built in the image of a place in which people would live, yet... it lacked purpose, everything seemed... half hazardly put together.

  Like the dreams of a machine which was programmed with the knowledge of how to build something, yet had no awareness of how those things fit together.

  I felt small.

  ---

  // Nickol 0920 - 3 hours and 5 minutes since entry. //

  ---

  I sat before the data we'd extract from the log of the event. Everything pointed towards the sudden and complete vanishing of John. We had been speaking with the moon base, they had been receiving the same inputs as we had, but critically they had gotten for a single instant the location of where john had been dragged off to.

  The only issue was the location was impossible.

  To be exact, from what we could interpret from the location was in the space between spaces. Not even the void we bored the tunnel through but beyond even that. A sort of place beyond even reality and the lack of it.

  Several theories had been thrown around, and so far, one offered by an intern has been the most promising.

  John has been pulled beyond our reality and into another. Exactly what reality we weren't certain. The second issue was that with the utter failure of the test and how poorly it had gone we were getting threats of funding removal.

  Trying to stop the inevitable we had tried to explain the cause of the failure to those gathered. They didn't seem to take it well, most leaving immediately upon the conclusion of the rushed meeting. But on of the private companies funding us stayed behind and requested for a select few of our higher ups, myself included to join a meeting with them.

  We agreed and they proceeded offer to fund us, so long as we created a department solely focused on this new variable, the alternative reality john had been dragged into.

  We had agreed almost instantly. To get funding for our entire operation in exchange for forming a single department seemed too good to be true, and it likely was. But with the threat of all other parties pulling funding an leaving us high and dry with a trillion dollar project and nothing to show for it we had no choice.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  After accepting I gave the order to form the department as we received communications that two of our backers had pulled out. I felt nervous, years of work. Almost gone down the drain for variables we had no control over.

  "Sir." A voice interrupted my thoughts. I turned, one of the level three scientists stood with the long distance communication device we used for the moon base in his hands.

  "Sir the moon base wants to speak to you. Something has happened." He said, the nervousness in his voice gave me pause. The moon base shouldn't have anything happening at the moment, all operations were shut down after John disappearance on both ends.

  I reached out, taking the glorified phone from his hands. I noticed he had a trembled, but if it was nervousness from the current situation or something else I didn't know, but it didn't make me feel good.

  I lifted the phone to my ear. I heard the sound of the line connecting ring out before the voice of someone quite familiar to me echoed out, an old friend.

  "Nickol I'm not sure if the data has been sent to you yet but something came through on our end." The voice of Boris rung out in my ear.

  "What? Boris what do you mean something came through? I thought you shut down the gate." I muttered, straightening up at the panicked tone in Boris's voice

  "We did, everything was shut off, even the power, yet half an hour ago we detected movement on the bridge." He explained in a hurried tone. I hear the sounds of the emergency alarms going off in the background.

  "What do you mean movement on the bridge? It doesn't last long after the connection is broken, maybe a few minutes at most before the radiation decays it beyond a usable point." I said, confusion lacing my tone. I heard the alarms suddenly shut off, yet instead of calming down at shutdown of the alarms, Boris seemed to becoming even more panicked.

  "Nickol, it doesn't matter what we detected. What matter is ten minutes ago the gate powered up on its own, even with all the external power cut off. Then that thing came through."

  I felt my blood run cold at Boris words, the gate had powered up on its on before something came through? "Boris what do you mean something came through?" I hurriedly asked, I noticed the line's stability was going down rapidly, something was happening and it didn't feel good.

  "We-e don't know what it is, it looked like a giant mechanical spider, it almost didn't fit through the damn gate! It-" Boris's words crumbled into garbled static, cutting off his words. Thankfully the line stabilised quickly. "-uck its coming through. Nickol, we are going to the second moon base. Communication will be impossible as its taken over the towers! Look, if you receive the data, go through it! I don't know what this thing is capable of but if it gets onto earth humanity might meet its en-"

  The line cut out, the soft beeping tone indicated that the origin of the signal was missing. I stared into space, next to me the scientist stared at me.

  "Sir... what is happening at the moon base?" He asked, he sounded scared. I couldn't help but felt the same cold and terror filled chill gripping me.

  "Something came through the gate on the moon base." Was all I could mutter as the computers in the back of the room gave out several notifications of successful file transfers.

  "May god helps us all." He muttered.

  ---

  // John 1050 - 1 hours since exit of tunnel. //

  ---

  Making my way down to the city was a challenge made worse by the fact I had to reduce power usage of the suit to the bare minimum in order to be able to move for more then a hour at most. The weight of the suit now only supported by the exoskeleton at critical points left me exhausted, rendering the journey longer then expected.

  I had considered discarding my helmet but had decided against it. It was damaged thanks to my fall but I didn't know if it would because useful later.

  The structure of the whole place was mess of sharp angles and wires. Much of the stone was worn down by flows of water from some higher up place, explained why the sea below even existed, some source of water had filled it up slowly, judging from the scale of the place and the amount of water within it the sheer amount of time it had taken was likely hundred or even thousands of years.

  Just that understanding made me uneasy. This place was clearly old, older perhaps then even humanity. And that lead me back to the question I'd been thinking as I descending towards the towers that rose out from within the sea.

  Who built this place? And for what? I'd seen how purposeless it felt, like if someone was told to build a city but didn't know what a city was.

  But what exactly built this? Machines? Robots? I didn't know but the way much of the surfaces were angular and sharp and felt uniform, as if made from the same blueprint just iterated over and over again made me lean towards the idea that this was built by machines.

  I huffed, pausing to look over the edge of the outcropping I was standing on. Before me one of the towers rose up, leaning heavily at an angle it was broken, parts of the structure had simple fallen off, exposing the now familiar rusted metal beams running through the insides of the walls.

  A similarly rusted bridge extended from its uppermost floor, half bent it had become jammed into the outcropping of the wall I stood on whenever this building has gone from being straight to leaning as it was.

  I stook a step, swearing as I got a glimpse of the sheer hight I was at. The rest of the wall stretch downward, the building far below rested on a smaller building below the waterline. I placed a foot on the bridge, shuddering as I physically felt it bending between my weight

  With everything slanted at a slight angle I felt even worse about crossing this rusted decaying bridge. But with the alternative being attempting to climb further down the wall at a chance to find a lower point were I could enter the interconnected mass of buildings.

  I used my still function arm to grip onto the railing, I felt the metal shuddering as I put my other foot on the bridge. I momentarily removed the restriction on the power of the suit to run across the bridge.

  I could hear the metal groaning, complaining as it suddenly had to deal with several hundred kilograms of weight upon its already failing trusses.

  I felt and hear part of the bridge giving away. Increasing my face I felt my heart beating out of its chest as the solidness of the bridge decreased rapidly.

  I threw myself forward as with an almighty scream of metal the bridge failed and snapped into two, one half being left jammed into the stone of the wall, the other half snapping at the points of attachment to the building, falling off towards the sea far below.

  I rolled over, lifting myself up onto my feet as I placed my functional arm on the edge of the decayed wall and leaned over the edge. I could see the waves rippling as the extremely clear water showed in great detail the section of bridge that had fallen off slowly sunk down and down, vanishing into the black depths far below.

  I shuddered and leaned back, my guts felt like it was a bag of knots as I shook myself, ridding the feeling unease that fill me at that sight.

  This place seemed to be larger then even what I could see, the sea below seemed to go on down forever and with the tower to heaven far on in the distance I wasn't even sure about how high the celling went either.

  I turned away from the open hole and moved deeper into the building. The insides were empty, like a test render of a building they lacked anything functional aside from four walls, a floor and a celling. All in different states of decay.

  The floor had holes leaving to the room below while the celling was in a similar state of decay. The walls were faring better, but the smooth surface they once had been was now pitted and slightly broken, cracks and holes dotting them.

  I trudged further into the room. Walking around I found several more rooms, a few were better then the rest, more whole in a sense, one was heavily broken, the east wall simply missing. Letting in a breeze that howled as it moved through the empty space.

  I eventually located the stairs and they were surprising well matched for me. I descended down and down, each floor of this building was functionally the same, empty rooms in different states of decay.

  But around thirteen floors down I found something new. In the middle of one of the many rooms was a box. It wasn't made of wood but an odd deep black metal that seemed to be impervious to the decay all around it.

  Opening it was easy, the lid of the metal box was already half off, a detail which made me feel odd, as it mean something else had been here. But the insides of the box made it clear that if something had been here, it was a long time ago.

  Inside was a collection of odd metallic cubes, they were clearly of several metals. I could name a few, one was clearly silver, another gold one I could perhaps call steel, but it was rusted to hell and back, nothing more then a red decayed smear across the bottom of the box.

  I frowned, reaching it to pick up one of the cubes but a whine from my suit told me they were far heavier then I recognised, which was unexpected. They were almost a foot across each.

  I gave up and sighed. I slumped against the box, without my helmet I'd not been able to check the state of the suits energy reserves. But a more pressing issue stood in front of me.

  I was hungry and thirsty. I'd not eaten for several hours and the exhausting effort of moving the barely powered suit was starting to make my muscles cramp up.

  I stared out a hole in the room I was. The distant, impossibility tall tower hung there, an imposing sight in this alien yet familiar place.

  A sudden and loud bomb shook me. "What the hell" I muttered as I pulled myself up. I stumbled towards the opening and gripping the edge I leaned out, I felt a faint call to just jump.

  I blinked as a I spied trail of smoke rose up far in the distance, it was coming from one of the building up ahead. I could see crater of ruined buildings surrounding whatever had just landed, my brows furrowed and I jerked back as a bright yellow metal limb lifted from within the cloud of dust and rock to slam into the nearby buildings.

  The groan of steel trying to support a weight far beyond what it could echoed out as a thud joined in the cacophony of sound assaulting my ears. I lifted a hand to my face as suddenly whatever it was that was moving in that crater stilled.

  Then from the direction of the tower a massive shape flew across and slammed into the crater, sending an even higher plume of dust and smoke into the sky. I lowered my functional hand as I witness a giant spiderlike machine standing there.

  It appeared almost cobbled together, its rear was massive collection of random objects and devices, some of them appeared like the very buildings around me. The rest of it was covered in twisting pipes, wires and open machinery. "So that is what built this place." I muttered to myself as I leaned further out the opening in the building.

  I jerked back as the mechanical spider lifted one of its many legs and reached into the cloud before it, then to my surprise it lifted up with ease a similar yet smaller spider from within the rumble. Loud grinding sound echoed out, along with sounds of electronic screaming.

  I stared, trying to make sense of the scene before me. The two machines were clearly fighting, but for what reasons I had no clue. I watched as the larger machine lifted the smaller one close to its face?

  I leaned in, almost falling out as the lift of the opening crumbled beneath my feet. I swore as I hurried backwards, making sure not to slip as I leaned out once more. The larger machine had moved, lifting the smaller one up who had started to struggle, the electronic screaming increased in volume as if the smaller machine was begging for mercy.

  From the back of the larger spider with the sound of gears grinding and metal against metal friction emerged a large rod-like device. I watched as the larger machine spider carefully placed one end of the barrel of the device against the core of the smaller machine spider.

  Then the hum starting. At first I didn't notice it, just frowning as I watched the exchange. But then suddenly it was there, a ringing in my ears that seemed to grow louder and louder until my teeth were vibrating in my jaw and my skull felt like it was a pressure cooker.

  I shudder, reaching for my helmet on my side, I slammed it on with a bit too much force but thankfully the thick plates that covered the thing provided a insulating layer to the damn noise. I could still hear it but it didn't feel like my brain was being turned to mush.

  Turning my gaze back to the machines I witness something beyond anything I had seen so far.

  Within the strange device a burning blue glow had started up, its glow increased and increased, the air around the two machines started to distort, clearly the device was some kind of a weapon. I watched as the other machine started to truly struggle, its limbs slamming into the other machine with hope of removing the weapon jammed into its belly.

  Then the weapon fired. The effect was almost instant, from the point of contact a beam of blue light burned into the belly of the spider, prompting it to scream in its electronic voice. I watched at the metal it was made of grew red hot, then white before dripping down its body.

  I watched with growing horror as the blue beam of light bored through the belly of the spider before bursting from its back, the light arced cross the massive space of the cavern we were in before slamming into the wall, I watched it boil a hole deep into the grey stone before finally weaking and shutting off.

  The small spider had long since stopped moving. I watched as it twitched a bit, still alive but clearly very damaged by the attack. The other spider lifted the smaller one up, a burst of the electronic screaming echoed out before the larger spider threw the smaller one away.

  Directly at the tower I was in.

  I stared at the rapidly approaching half melted husk of the machine spider. I swore and jumped away from the window. I felt the spider slam into the tower, the entire thing shudder and I felt my guts shift as the lean of the tower ever so slowly increased.

  "Fuck me" I muttered as I felt the ground shift, lurching to the side as the tower started to fall.