​     Once at the bottom of the elevator shaft, ​Adam pried open the elevator doors using only his hands. Empty corridors beyond. Find a computer, he thought. Find a computer. Find a computer. Adam ran down a corridor, which led to another corridor, which led to another corridor. All silent. All deserted. No locked doors. Adam looked in this door, in that door, as he ran along. Nothing. No computers. If anybody had been in the facility earlier that day, they'd long since left. Adam ran along a fourth corridor, a fifth, a sixth. He began to suspect that this was all some sort of trap, some sort of odd, diabolical maze, when...

​     There they were.

     Adam slammed through a pair of swinging doors and...

     no more corridors. 

     He found himself, instead, in a heavily concreted area roughly the size of a baseball field squared. 

     And there they were, just like Livia had said, two hundred of them. 

     The missiles were long and lean and loaded into a launching device that all but filled this extremely large sub-basement area. One by one, they would launch themselves into the sky. Then, once in orbit, they would gather like a flock of birds until a second signal was given, at which point they would follow each their own individual instructions as to which power plant they would target. One by one, they would drop back to Earth. One by one. 

     "Okay, I'm here," Adam said. "How do I turn these things off?"  

​     "I'm getting a sense of the whole apparatus now," Claudia replied. "If...there should be...okay. I'm starting to gain control of the entire network. Give me...nope. There's a problem. I'm sensing a bear trap. If I go too far, I'm going to set it off, and those missiles are going to fly. Look around, Adam. Are you seeing any sort of control panel or..." 

     "Right ahead of me. Four hundred feet."

     "Is it on? Is it working?" 

     "I see lights. They're on. A couple of them are flickering."

     "Good. Slap that transmitter I gave you onto that control panel. I'll take care of the rest. I'm trying to get a Stargod to you but..."   

​     "No worries." Adam ran. He'd be at the control panel in seconds. Maybe for once in his fifteen billion years of life, he'd grab a break and he could stop this whole mess before... 

     Then...damn! 

     The Silver Scorpion dropped right in his path.

​     CLANK!

     Alacran no longer looked fully functional. Adam heard an odd, whining sound from deep within Alacran's armor, as if something inside of him no longer worked as well as it should. When Alacran moved, Adam heard a metallic scraping sound. Still, 

     "I AM THE SILVER SCORPION!" he bellowed. "I AM THE MOST POWERFUL BEING ON THE PLANET EARTH! PREPARE TO BE DESTROYED!"

     "Okay, but..." Adam sensed a tentativeness in his declaration that he hadn't heard upstairs after Alacran had first glass-shattered his way into the building. A certain self-confidence was now missing. The voice he heard was still loud and deep and powerful, yet... 

​     Whatever. Adam still had his bazooka strapped to his back. He snatched it to aim in Alacran's direction. 

​     "NO!" Alacran wanted no part of that bazooka. He turned to run, but...   

     ZZZZZAPPPP! 

     The blast caught Alacran in the left shoulder with enough power to spin him like a top to go crashing against a wall of consoles. BAM! He'd been knocked off his feet, and he rose again, slowly, not facing Adam. "Uh...Uh..."

      "You stay where you're at," Adam said. "Don't make a move. I've got to stop those missiles. You get in my way in any manner, and I'll take you apart like the tin can you are. We understand each other?"   

     Alacran nodded. Yes. Yes, he understood. 

​     "Good." Adam started towards that one console again. He had the transmitter in his hand. He'd have to move fast. If Claudia was going to... 

​     At which point, another figure flew into the room from the broken elevator shaft. This one wore enough armor to look twice the size of the Silver Scorpion. He hit the floor directly in front of Alacran.  

​     CLANK!

​     Oh damn, Adam thought. Another one.

​     Although this one didn't look exactly like Alacran. This one didn't have a tail, for one thing. Instead, he had arms, dozens of them in all sizes and shapes sticking out all over him from his neck to his ankles. As with Alacran's tail, however, Adam assumed that all these dozens of arms, each with four pincers that could close into fists, were controlled by some computer and not by the person in the armor themselves, because they worked in tandem, these arms. There was nothing chaotic about their movements whatsoever. 

     "LOOK UPON YOUR UTTER DESTRUCTION!" he bellowed. "I AM CENTURIAN! I AM THE SILVER CENTIPEDE! PREPARE TO DIE!"

CONTINUE