The metal corridor was long and dark. Layers of dust had settled on the floor, no one had been here for years. He walked forward. The dust muffled the sound of his steps. He watched it swirl around his boots, and then gently fall down. He was leaving behind prints, but it didn't matter. Walking was all that mattered now. Green numbers faded into his sight, overlaying the darkness in front of him. They were coordinates, reminding him there was still a long way to go.

Eventually, he reached the end of the corridor. It was much colder now, the temperature had fallen at least 10 degrees since he first entered. He looked at the wall in front of him, studying it carefully. The green numbers appeared again, flashing slowly - a hidden door? His retinal mode cycled automatically, scanning in all the usual wavelengths. Nothing. He touched the wall gently, his fingers trailing for any irregularities. The wall was perfectly smooth. A bit too smooth, actually. The wall must have been built after the corridor. Still, it was a dead end. He turned around and started back the way he came. Again, he watched the dust swirl around his boots. No, this would take too long. Facing the wall, from a distance, he took out his handgun. A rare beam weapon, that few possessed. He aimed at the center of the wall. There was a blinding white flash, followed by a loud booming noise. The wall collapsed into it self, and hot bubbling metal poured down to the floor. He walked forward, carefully stepping over the wall's sizzling remains.

There was no dust on this side. Indeed, the metal panels were glittering in the darkness: condensed water droples covering everything. The temperature had dropped to almost zero degrees. He looked into the darkness in front of him, switching to thermal vision. He saw no hidden suprises.

Almost a week later, he had reached the real end of the corridor. Unfortunately, the temperature had dropped far below the freezing point, and most of his internal systems were functioning poorly. His bio-mechanically enhanced body now solely relied on miniature machines carrying oxygen and nutrients to his organic parts. They were embedded into his bloodstream, warming the frozen blood as they passed through his veins. Soon, they would go out as well, if he didn't find any power source to recharge his internal batteries. As if this wasn't enough, somwehere along the corridor he had slipped on ice, and broken his left arm as well. However, in the freezing cold, he could barely feel any pain at all, and so he stood, shivering at the end of the long corridor. It had ended in a massive expansive tunnel. Embedded into the end of this tunnel was massive steel door, covered in faded writing: "B-001".

It took him an entire day to break the door's encryption codes. The neccessary algorithms were not present in his memory banks, and by the end of the day he had tried over a million different encoding schemes. "Finally," he said, his voice hoarse and weak. The steel door panels slid apart effortlessly, and white light filled the tunnel, briefly blinding him.

Inside was a massive cylindrical room, stretching high above and below, with a large glass globe in the center. Floating inside the globe was a female form, shadowed by entangled wires and tubes slithering across her body. She was slowly bobbing up and down in purple liquid, and occasionaly a bubble would form, vanishing into the top part of the globe. He traced the metal platform half-way around the room until he reached a bridge. Walking across it, he arrived at a computer panel. It activated upon his touch, and the computer screens came alive, flashing brightly and filling the room with sharp beeping noises.

The female specimen was still alive, kept in suspended animation for 99 years. Her biological history showed she had been admitted in a heavily wounded state, and the globe machine had repaired and replaced almost her entire body with pseudo-organic flesh and muscle. This process had been completed about 40 years ago, the remainding time she had just slept. He browsed further, searching her DNA information. Various mutations had taken place over the years, but her DNA was still relatively pure. More importantly, the genes containing the key to biological network interfacing was still there. This was the one.

This was the one he had searched for. The first human capable of directly uploading her consciousness to a shared neural net. For her it was the gift of immortality, but for others, the greatest curse ever to befall humanity. Everything had begun with her, and everyhing had ended with her. The loss of her genetic code had proven to be a fatal blow to the inhabitants of the megacity, once the mutation viruses had began to spread, and the silicon lifeforms started taking over. According to his memory banks, her unconsciouss body had been smuggled here by a team of desperate scientists at the outbreak of the war.

It was all here, everything he needed. He finished browsing her medical history and began the revival process. The globe drained quickly of its purple liquid, flushing it out around the globe and down below. The wires and tubes connected to her body popped out and shaked around violently. The glass almost broke at one point, as one of the tubes kept slamming into it. Another tube caught the specimen's throat and coiled around it tightly. She was going to suffocate. He aborted the revival process and activated the emergency opening system. The glass globe split in two, each halve sliding into its metal housing above and below. The liquid burst out of its glass prison and rained over him. It felt warm. He ran to the globe, his left arm flailing limply as he did. Crawling through the mess of wires, he began manually disconnecting them from her body and pulled her out. She was very pale, with smooth skin, and light of weight, but unfortunately, he slid on the wet floor and fell. It almost knocked him out cold, but he was still holding her as her eyes started to open.

"Hello," he said akwardly, staring at her naked body. She was quite attractive, and her green eyes glowed with energy, but they were unfocused. "Can you hear me?" he said more confidently. Her eyes darted back and forth a bit, and then rolled back into her skull. Shit, he thought, this long in suspended animation may have damaged her brain. He then suddenly realized she was clinging to him, shivering violently. Numbers appeared in his sight, telling him the room was still very cold. He had almost forgotten, the liquid that had rained upon him felt so warm in comparison. Aborting the revival process had effectively jumpstarted her heart, her blood had barely had any time to flow before it would start to solidify in the cold. He slung her over one shoulder, and walked back across the bridge. He scanned the surrounding area for any doors or exits and found what appeared to be a small storage compartment, opposite to the side he came in. The door was frozen shut, so he blasted it of its hinges with his gun. This briefly activated some sort of alarm, but he was able to override the system using the same codes as he used to enter the globe room.

Inside the storage compartment was a small bed, some blankets and boxes containing foodstuffs, syringes and various medical equipment. He layed her down into the bed, and wrapped all the blankets he could find around her. The door panel had a built-in thermostat and so he cranked it up considerably, immediately fogging the window on the door. He turned on the lights as well, and connected his neck to a power outlet by pulling out long wires hidden below his skin, popping them out of fake birthmarks. It didn't take long before he had fully recharged his internal power source and could initiate auto-repair on his arm and the rest of his body. He looked over to the shivering girl one last time, beforing passing out from exhaustion.

Several hours later, he was artifically awoken by his own subconsciouss alarm system. It had detected movement nearby, and as he reached for his gun he realized it was only the girl turning around in the bed. As numerous numbers and letters scrolled down over his eyes, performing system checks and telling him he was O.K. he let out a sigh of relief and got up, feeling his newly repaired arm. Good as new. He walked towards the girl and sat down in the bed, feeling her forehead. She was still cold, but it wasn't life-threatening anymore. The room was relatively warm now, cozy even. He looked around in the boxes and found some vita-shots and high nutrition bars. There were some bottles of purified water too, which was rare in these days. He ate some bars, drank a bottle of water and injected vita-shot into the arm of the girl to give her body some well needed nutrition and stimulants. Her immune system was probably weak after so much time in suspended animation, but seeing how most her body had been replaced with bionic parts over the years this probably wouldn't be that much of an issue. She complained a bit when the needle pierced her skin, but didn't wake up. So he decided to watch over here until she did. A couple of hours more, and he was staring into those green eyes again.

"Wh-where..." She stuttered, barely audible. He pondered how to answer that question, but before he could, the globe room's alarm system went off again. Three alarms in one day? He grimaced. What ever activated it this time, it had changed the codes to shut it off. The girl in the bed tugged at his suit, still expecting an aswer. "Shut up," he responded, and threw some clothes to her. "Take these on," he continued, while moving towards the door. "And don't move."

The alarm siren ringed in his ears as he peered out of the door's window. The lights had gone out in the globe room, and he knew there was something hiding in that darkness. He flickered quickly through his optical filters, and his thermal vision revealed a large hulking mass of metal giving off a familiar heat signature. A Guardian... Fuck. It noticed him immediately, and directed two gun barrels at him. The barrels began spinning rapidly, jolts of electricity arcing around the shiny metal. He watched as the heat built up inside the guns, turning into two terrifying red dots in his thermal vision. Would the door hold? He threw himself to the floor, forgetting about the girl in the bed.

The bullets rained down like hellfire, each round shaking the door violently. It was nosy, it was horribly noisy. The door screeched and complained. Bits of it fell off continously, thudding heavily against the ground. The window blasted into the room, accompanied by an ice-cold gust of wind. He turned on his back and kicked himself from the door, sliding through pieces of sparkling glass. Holding his gun with both hands, he shot through the window, hoping to hit something useful. There was a slight pause in the bulletstorm coming from the other end, allowing dust and debris to settle down nicely. Suddenly, he heard a swooshing sound. He had only just realized what it meant when two small missiles hit the door and ended it once and for all. The explosive force completely ripped it apart and sent burning metal flying everywhere. He had to act fast, the next volley would kill him outright.

Coughing and shivering, he got up from the floor and ran out the smoking hole that was once a door. Surprised, the Guardian reared on its two legs, lowering its missile battery. He shot of a couple of rounds into it as he dashed behind the control panel to the globe. By now, pretty much everything was on fire and his thermal vision was useless. He switched it off and gritted his teeth. The Guardian fired its barrel guns again, creating a staggering amount of bullet holes in the control panel. He raised his gun above the ruined computers, and fired blindly. He seemed to hit something, and darted out from hiding. The Guardian's legs were crippled, it was lying uselessly on the floor, flailing its guns in all directions. He aimed at its head and fired again. Its metal head melted away revealing a small chamber containing some sort of brain in a vat. The tissue looked damaged and tortured, with several missing bits and electrical wirings sprouting out everywhere. As he ended its life, he could have sworn he heard it scream.