The iron stairs leading down from the tiered arena ended in an intermediate underground security vault on Sub-Level Two.
The hall was fifty yards long, carved straight from raw dark rock bedrock. It was flanked by heavy load-bearing pillars and dimly lit by flickering crimson emergency inner walls. Above, three self-running surveillance cameras swiveled on motorized mounts. Their red sight lenses tracked Arthur’s squad as they dropped.
Before the cameras could transmit tracking data to the surface command post, Pip struck.
The young falcon darted through the gloom with faster-than-sound care. It fired three pinpoint needles of white-hot heat flame directly into the sight sky-slits. The glass lenses melted with soft popping hisses, blinding the work-yard’s self-running monitoring system in less than two seconds.
At the far end of the passageway stood a heavy security checkpoint. There, two wired handlers clad in heavy blast armor were wildly loading high-pressure high-pressure cylinders into electric prod-cannons.
Behind the security gate snorted and growled their elite reserve: six Grade-C Spliced War-Hyenas.
These were not the uncoordinated, shambling prototypes Arthur had dissected in the upper lab. These were seasoned, combat-conditioned strike beasts bred for internal riot crushing weight and high-value work-yard defense. Each animal weighed nearly three hundred pounds, their muscular frames enlarged by man-made marrow stimulants, their spines protected by thick plates of underground crawler hard shell that had been surgically bolted into their upper-back bones with stainless steel brackets.
