Aaron and Harry glanced down into the training center where the bot used to remain dormant. The wires and cables it previously hung from were ominously swinging back and forth. Four Deadmen lay on the floor near the entrance of the training center, wading in a large pool of blood. Their heads were completely caved in, and one of them was missing an arm.

"No way," Aaron whispered. "You don't think it..."

"Oh, it did it, mate," Harry replied. "Looks like it's not just humans who aren't safe from the Ambrosia."

Violent clattering rumbled through the vents of the building. Aaron and Harry jumped at the sudden sound of the intruder as it crawled in the walls like an insect. The echoes of the clanging metal made it seem as if their intruder was everywhere at once. There was nowhere to run.

Then the clattering noises grew closer and closer until it sounded like a swarm of spiders fleeing into a crevice. Right behind the two, unfortunately curious wanderers.

"Hurry up, Aaron!" Harry whispered loudly. "We gotta get out of here!"

Aaron scrambled around the floor and yanked an empty suitcase out of a shelf below the table where he found Recorder #6. He carefully placed it on top of the table and shoved every piece of evidence he had gathered into the suitcase. His recorders, the binder, and even the rolled up blueprint were now protected by that suitcase, even at the cost of Aaron's own safety.

"Run!" Aaron shouted, and the two of them bolted back toward the space where the window used to be.

Before he could leap off behind Harry to safety, he heard a loud bang behind him, followed by what sounded like the wall crumbling behind him. The metal clanging was louder and closer than ever, and the source of it was only a few feet away. But all of it was overshadowed by the monstrous, metallic shrieks no human could ever be capable of emitting.

It grabbed Aaron by his collar and hung him above the training center, dangling him off the edge of the overlook. Aaron fearfully turned toward his attacker to find the robotic training dummy they saw earlier, with a few noticeable physical changes. Its face had large gashes where the eyes and mouth should be, glowing a sinister shade of red like the sadistic grin of a psychopath. Its free hand was twisted into a mess of needles prepared to eviscerate its victims, blood tinted around the tips. In fact, most of its previously white plastic surface was now darkened grey from the years of disrepair and its hunt for Deadmen.

"Are you ready--fight--incomplete--" the bot stuttered in an uncomfortably dissonant voice. "The trial is n-n-n-n-not over."

"What the..." Aaron muttered, terrified to look at the red lacerations that represented the bot's eyes.

Then the bot's already insidious facial expression contorted into something more horrifying than the last. Its face opened up like a doorway to reveal another large mess of needles and sharp-edged contraptions prying at Aaron's face. It pulled poor Aaron closer to the deathtrap hidden in its artificial cranium, and he stared into the two crimson lights that represented its eyes. The tentacle-like metal arms sprouting out of the robot's face left behind gashes on Aaron's face, cutting up his cheeks and forehead and nearly missing his eye.

"The trial is never complete!" the robot hissed in a demonic voice.

"Harry!" Aaron exclaimed as he pounded on the robot's arm. "Help me!"

The robot raised his free hand, and the razor-edged phalanges replacing his fingers quickly spun around like propeller blades, preparing to gore Aaron alive.

"Please, Harry!" Aaron continued, almost on the verge of tears. "I can't let down my friends again!"

Before the robot could slice through Aaron's innards, Harry tackled the robot from behind and covered its face with his hands. He ripped the small bladed rods out of the machine's head and tossed them aside, sparks flying out of the stubs where they used to be. Harry then grabbed the robot's arm with the transformed hand and ripped it out of its socket with ease. More sparks flew out of the new wound, and the bot emphasized major discomfort through another one of its metallic shrieks.

"Harry, nice job—FUCK!" Aaron tried to say before the robot threw him off the edge of the overlook.

"Aaron!" Harry called out as he tossed the dismembered limb to the side. The bot retracted the damaged metal rods into its skull and closed it up, restoring its fake yet barely humanlike face. It took a swing at Harry with its remaining arm and nailed him in the side of his skull. Harry flew off the edge of the overlook and crashed to the floor beside Aaron. There was a medium-sized welt on his cheek, and the blood he spat out was dark blue.

"Harry!" Aaron called, the cuts on his face fading away. "You okay?"

Harry turned toward Aaron, the wound on his face vanishing in seconds just like Aaron's cuts. "You left the evidence up there," he groaned, blue ooze dripping out of his mouth.

Aaron returned his view to the homicidal robot standing above them. A new arm was forming out of the empty socket where its old one used to be. The metal endoskeleton extended out of the hole like the roots of a tree and continued to grow until it formed five points representing fingers. Then a new layer materialized above the skeletal structure, noticeably shinier than how it used to be. Once the fresh coat of armor had reached the tip of its metal fingers, it waved its arm around and twitched its fingers to reassure movement, ready to resume the fight.

"So now there are robotic Deadmen," Aaron muttered. "Fuck my life."

The undead robot leaped into the air and let out a horrific screech reminiscent of the sound of metal scraping against metal. Its face had contorted back into a monstrous sight with crude slits for a mouth and eyes as it came crashing down on Aaron and Harry. The two of them rolled out of the way and spent the next couple of seconds dodging punches and grabs from the metal beast, especially once it replaced its fingers with knives.

"The trial is never complete," the bot continued to mutter.

"What the bloody hell does that mean?" Harry shouted, but the bot's knives silenced him by slicing straight through his face. His cheeks were completely ripped apart by the impact, and his teeth were visible through the mangled remains, leaving him with a terrifying skeletal grin that reminded Aaron of the White Scythe.

While Harry was disoriented, Aaron charged at the robot and shoved him away. Now that he was almost a complete Deadman, he had the strength of a superhero, which he noticed as the robot flew through the air into the wall. Once the bot was down, he ran back over to Harry and helped him back onto his feet, trying not to be disgusted by the blood running down his mutilated face.

"Wipe that grin of your face," Aaron joked.

"Way too fucking soon, mate," Harry replied. Zero sarcasm. He was genuinely upset.

"I'm very sorry. Let's go get the case. Or should we get rid of that metal bastard first?"

Harry stared up at Aaron. His teeth and gum line were still very visible and blood-red. "Definitely get rid of the metal bastard."

The corrupted bot cracked the wall as it proceeded to escape the large crater it left behind. Aaron and Harry took advantage of the moment and bolted out of the room. Their panicked state set off the other Deadmen in the hallway, causing the rest of them to speed through the corridor like a stampede. The only thing that mattered now was finding a weapon.

"Harry!" Aaron shouted as they ran. "You saw Bloodletter bury his daughter, right? What did he do with the shovel?"

"No shovel, mate," Harry replied, the flesh of his cheeks patching itself back together. "He used his bare hands. It took him like three hours just to dig the hole. Plus, wouldn't you rather use a gun?"

"That thing is fast, man. Probably crawling through the vents as we speak! We might not have enough time to find a gun, not to mention one powerful enough to penetrate its metal skull."

"I ripped its arm off! If anything we could just punch through its face."

"Kyle! Jade!" Aaron screamed out.

"Aaron?" he heard Jade respond distantly. "Are you all right?"

"No! There's an angry robot chasing us that carved a smile into Harry's face! Look for a weapon!"

"Wait, a robot?" Kyle shouted. "What the bloody hell?"

"Just look for a weap—"

The lights in the hallway went out. Aaron and Harry were now alone in the dark. The only thing that kept them from feeling alone was the sounds of the Deadmen scurrying through the pitch black corridor. They were not the kind of company Aaron felt comfortable around. With the lights off and inhuman screeches echoing all around him, he felt like he was alone in a tunnel with creatures too terrifying to speak of. And the worse part was the fact some of them didn't even sound like screeches. They felt more like voices in his head, fading in and out like a breeze through the room.

"Aaron," Harry whispered. "What do we do, mate?"

"I don't know," Aaron replied. "It's too dark. I say we reunite with Kyle and Jade. We'll be safer together."

The rapid pattering of footsteps echoed deep within the darkness of the facility. The two of them gazed down the hall toward the source, relying mostly on Jade's voice as she continued to call out their names. "Aaron! Harry!" she kept repeating.

"Jade!" the two of them called back in unison. "We're over here!" Aaron added.

The steps grew louder. Aaron gazed deeper into the pitch black unpredictability of the facility's halls. The two of them were ready to be reunited, the sounds of the heavy oncoming footsteps filling them with anticipation.

Until it turned out the individual running toward them was the corrupt training dummy, the lights immediately flicking back on through the hall like a flash of lightning.

The bot leaped into the air, its face opening up to reveal its sinister razor-edged appendages. It crashed down on top of Harry and punched straight through his chest, digging its fist into the floor. Aaron charged toward the bot and threw an array of punches, pummeling it around like a punching bag. The bot blocked his last attack and quickly jerked it in a crooked position. Aaron could hear the bones in his arm snap, but the pain of a fracture was no longer existent to him.

He stumbled back, attempting to reconnect his deformed arm. The bot had its sights set on Aaron, extending the blades on its blood-soaked hand, the same one it used to bury through Harry's sternum. It copied the same move Aaron did to itself, racing toward him like a bull.

"Hey, that was my strategy!" Aaron shouted. He cracked the bones in his arm back into their correct position and ran toward the bot.

"The trial is never complete," the bot uttered monotonously.

"It'll be complete once you finally shut the fuck up!" Aaron quickly added before diving underneath the robot. He wrapped his arms around its leg and flipped it over onto its back, crashing it down on the floor behind him.

He then jumped back to his feet and prepared to stomp on the robot's head. Fortunately, Kyle and Jade finally arrived at the scene with a little something to make killing the metal bastard ten times easier. "Aaron, catch!" Kyle shouted as he tossed Aaron a shotgun.

Arron turned toward the robot as it stood back up on its wobbly legs and fired two shots, burying lead in its cranium and its chest. Two dents remained where the bot was shot, neither of which penetrated through the metal. Not only did it not reach its circuits, the shells started sliding out of the holes in its armor like earthworms and popped down on the floor beside it.

"Incoming!" Jade yelled.

Aaron jumped out of the way as Jade slammed the blade of a shovel down on the robot's head. The impact left behind a deep incision that sprayed out sparks as Jade ripped the blade out of its metal cranium.  She then continued swinging the shovel at the bot's neck, repeating over and over again until its head tumbled off its torso to the floor. Its headless body collapsed to the ground in a contorted position, never to wake again.

"Manipulation of its own body structure, ability to control lights," Aaron said, trying to catch his breath. "I'd call it an Abnormal."

"See? What did I tell you?!" Kyle shouted with a hint of frustration. "Splitting up is always the wrong move, even for the monsters! You motherfuckers better be glad we're not in a horror story or something, otherwise that thing would probably be wiping its arse with my severed head!"

"I'd prefer not to comprehend how that would physically work," Aaron replied with a grimace.

"So now machines can become infected," Harry interjected to change the subject. "There's no way Ambrosia is just a simple virus after that."

"It isn't, guys," Jade replied. She glanced at Kyle, who held a stack of papers in one hand. "It's so much worse."

Aaron gasped. "Wait one moment! I left the evidence back in the training center! I'll be right back."

He quickly ran back to the overlook and snatched up the suitcase. Finding nothing else in the room that interested him, he returned to his friends a minute later. Each of them held at least two sheets of paper per person, and all three of them had the same shocked expressions on their face. Jade noticed Aaron approaching them and ran to him. "Look at this!" she said. "Do any of these people look familiar?"

She pulled Aaron closer to her and held out a framed picture in front of them. There in the picture were Colonel Schaefer and his wife and child. After everything he had been through, Aaron couldn't tell if Schaefer's smile was genuine or the kind he wore when he was about to do violent. He rarely talked about his wife and Aaron forgot he even had a son. All he knew about them was that they were both killed on the voyage to Matheson.

Or at least one of them. "Look at the kid," Jade said. "It's Edgar!"

Aaron took a closer look at the son. He looked around ten years old and waved a cricket bat around like a sword. He had the same bald head and essence of innocence as the youthful Deadman Aaron had encountered back in the Dead Center. The only difference was that he had color in his eyes. And he seemed happy.

"Can't believe Edgar is Schaefer's kid," Aaron said in a surprisingly disinterested tone. "And he doesn't even know his son is still out here."

"That's not all, mate," Harry chimed in. He handed his piece of paper to Aaron. The first thing on that piece of paper was a picture of himself, but alive, younger, and without the milky white eyes. But everything changed when Aaron started reading the information beneath the picture.

Name: O'Connor, Harold

Assigned Alias: Atlas

Age: 16

Birthplace: London

Notes: Both parents deceased, left behind younger sibling in London orphanage (a brother; Aaron O'Connor, 5). Part of the crew delivered from the training camps. I feel bad that he still thinks he might be sent back home once it's all over...

"Aaron," Harry said slowly. "I'm your brother."

"You're sixteen?" Kyle asked.

"Nah, mate. That's when the paper was written. I think I'm twenty-seven or around that."

Aaron didn't hear those last comments, especially considering how needless they were. He remembered having a brother, thirteen years ago. He was too young to learn his name or even comprehend if he loved him. But after spending all those years alone in a children's home, he realized he still had family out there. And yet, this so-called family member didn't seem to care enough to even write a letter.

Aaron was too distracted by anger to think logically, like the fact Harry wasn't even allowed to write back. Or the fact he went through those years relying only on his friends. He never felt alone before, but now that he realized there was still someone out there who could've made him feel like he wasn't the last O'Connor, he felt like the only living being left on the planet.

He crumpled up the paper in his hands.

"Aaron?" Harry asked. "You okay, Brother?"

"You left me alone in London, man," Aaron grumbled. "Do you think I'm okay...Brother?"