The golem reached one of its arms and grabbed the hilt, then threw the knife out the door. It fell into the abyss. Lost.

Alan briefly stopped to gape at the sight of his lost weapon, only to almost be sliced open by a descending blade; Eve immediately directed him onto a new safe path through the attacks. Fortunately, it seemed as though the golem had to recharge its energy after using the blink ability. If it had been able to use it as often as Sidestep, Alan would have been killed long ago.

Alan gritted his teeth, all his attention on the remaining knife. Seconds later, he managed to grab it as he ran past. He sliced at a metallic arm passing beside him, attempting to grab the blade. He jammed the knife inwards then began running back at the golem, severing the golem's wire tendons. The arm shuddered, then dropped the blade it was holding.

Two blades swiped at Alan from opposite sides. A third blade swiped downwards from above, like a guillotine. Alan dived to his left, dodging two of the blades. He used his knife to cut through the third. As Alan charged at the golem it tried an additional series of triangular attacks but each time Alan was able to successfully avoid taking any damage, inflicting minor wounds with his counterattacks instead.

Alan finally made his way to the golem’s body as its eye began to charge a blast. He stabbed forwards, driving in the blade and lightly pushing it through at Eve’s command, letting go of the knife. With his momentum Alan sprinted around the golem, catching the knife mid-air as it fell out the other side, having pierced the golem all the way through. For good measure, Alan immediately reversed his grip on the knife and stabbed the eye at the opposite end, twisting viciously trying to inflict as much damage as possible. A split-second later, the golem shut down.

As his adrenaline began to wear off Alan looted the two golems before collapsing onto the floor, exhausted. They each dropped small crystalline cubes of dark green energy and a scientific design. One design looked to be a blueprint of the golem’s eye-weapon; Alan was hopeful that Phantom would be able to incorporate it into his own bionic eye. The other seemed to be part of a larger diagram that when fully assembled would be able to give metal golems technological psionic ability, or at least that was Eve’s hypothesis. Both would sell well, solving Alan's debt.

Chapter 20

After resting for an hour, Alan headed out, his armor’s basic invisibility active. Eve figured that they couldn’t rest for too long as there would be patrols sent out to find them. She set a pace of a quick jog, and guided Alan on a pathway to the nearest hub area. Once there, they could hopefully hash out some sort of deal with the warden AI; otherwise they would need to try to find a friendly group of players to survive, which was unlikely to say the least.