When the two Worm Men, driven by rage and hunting instinct, rounded the last bend piled with twisted pipes, the sight before them sent the alarms in their warped minds soaring to their limits.
They had entered not the narrow passage or dead end they had imagined, but an unusually vast, towering space.
It appeared to be the central junction of the old cooling system, or some abandoned, gigantic reaction chamber.
The circular Hall spanned more than a hundred meters, its dome rising dozens of meters overhead beneath a crisscrossing web of massive main pipes and rusted metal structures. Only a few surviving emergency lights cast pale, wavering glimmers from high above, leaving the entire space steeped in an oppressive half-light.
The floor was level, laid with heavy nonslip grating, but thick with years of dust and unidentified water stains.
The air seemed stagnant here, heavy with the stronger odors of rusted metal and old machine oil, while the damp stench of decay from the pipe network had faded.
And in the center of this empty, circular Hall, like an ancient Roman gladiatorial arena, a figure stood silently.
It was Lorne.
His black armour almost merged with the shadows in the dim light. Only the melted hole in his pauldron, its edges still retaining a faint, tainted glow, stood out.
He neither hid nor moved, nor even adopted a fighting stance. He simply stood at the center of the circle like a cold steel statue.
The deadly pair of Lightning Claws in his hands hung loosely, their tips lightly touching the floor grating and reflecting the cold, watery glimmer from above.
He stood there, the faceplate of his enclosed Helmet facing the two Worm Men that had rushed into the Hall, utterly motionless. There was no provocation, no speech, only