Hanging cables and roots alike whipped Torric Zhen’s face as she sprinted through the underground access tunnel. She tasted blood on her lip and stumbled as her foot fell further than she expected, the tunnel angling downwards. She slowed to a steady jog, still unwilling to counsel the thought of Agent Lament catching up to her. The tunnel curved around to the right here, and then widened into a passageway, the dirt walls giving way to heavy stone blocks. There was a hefty hand-lamp hanging from a hook on the wall, the flame flickering brightly. She took it up and pushed onwards, deeper into the shadowy undercity.

A swift force pistol blast was all it took to smash the locked door not just off its hinges but some way down the tunnel after it. Lament holstered the slim weapon and gave a last look back at the garage. She had pulled open the engine compartments of the APCs and yanked out every wire she could find. It wasn’t as effective a solution as a bomb, but it would hopefully give them pause, at least.
Mist, slung over her shoulder, gave a groan.
“Oh, good. I thought I was going to have to carry you the whole way,” Lament said. She couldn’t leave Mist here to the fascist patrols, of course. She continued to shoulder the burden as the two of them proceeded further down the tunnel.

The underground labyrinth that Zhen made her way through was one she could have navigated blindfolded, she had passed that way so many times before. Of all of those times though, this was the first outside of the land of dreams. The black centre of the maze was her goal, the heart of all of it. She didn’t know what she would find there exactly.
A sudden flash of inspiration had come to her, while she was preparing her betrayal. She had recognised the dark psychic waves passing around her as soon as they approached the garage, knew that this was the origin. The place from her dreams. When the fighting broke out she had instinctively made her way to the entrance and found it unlocked – unlocked for her, she knew. The coming of the Agent had been foretold by whatever lay at the centre of the labyrinth. It was then that she had received her final orders: Destroy the agent, at all costs.

The tunnel opened up into a wider stone passageway, and Lament knew that the end was at hand. She staggered on a loose rock, sprawling to the floor along with Mist.
“I don’t think you can come with me. It might be dangerous,” she said to Mist, who burbled sleepily. “Alright, I’m going to put you against this wall here. Can you hear me? When you can move, don’t.” Not really satisfied with her precautions, she straightened up, leaving Mist dozing happily. Her pistol once again slipped from its holster, and Agent Lament crept forwards, into the Labyrinth of Cthon. Into the web of the enemy. She reached out and touched the wall to sense the path Zhen had taken.
Blood. A thousand lifetimes of violence, steel tearing flesh, bone shattering under hammer impacts. These walls had seen a hundred kinds of death and stood to see a hundred more. They must have been here for milennia. Lament pulled her hand away in disgust. Whatever ancient civilisation had occupied Cthon before the Empire arrived, she wouldn’t much like to meet them. The psychic projection was growing stronger. An entity this strong should have been visible from space. The labyrinth must act as a cloaking field for the powerful psychic wavelengths of the thing at the centre.
A chunk of masonry exploded next to her head and Lament dove into a roll instinctively. It wasn’t a force-blast, it lacked the characteristic report of a pulser. She projected herself into the passageway ahead and glimpsed a bright spot. Yes! Invisible to her, but so very visible on the higher channels of thought! As she focussed her mind, a shadowed figure resolved itself around the bright spot, the ultra-violet glow making the eye of a cyclopean androgynous figure. Another chunk of masonry detonated as if blasted out from within. Psychic weapons, living weapons, of a kind only possible in the realms of imagination. Or so she had thought. She spun out from behind the wall she was crouched behind and fired. The rippling pulse passed straight through the shadowed projection and impacted on the stone behind it. The thing was made of nothing substantial at all, Lament surmised, and would have to be fought with insubstantial means.
She closed her eyes and projected herself towards the figure.
-What is your name?- she asked it.
-Name?- said the Weapon. -The Weapon has no name.-
-What will happen if you kill me?-
The Weapon seemed very puzzled now. -The Weapon will have served its purpose,- it said. -There will be no more need for the Weapon.-
-Don’t you want to live?- asked Lament.
-The Weapon has no desire for preservation,- said the Weapon. -There is only Purpose.-
-If you don’t want to live, why do you?- said Lament.
-Purpose,- said the Weapon. Lament scoffed.
-I wish I had your conviction,- she said, and sent a mental spike into the Weapon’s now-exposed heart, obliterating its existence instantaneously.
“Sorry,” she whispered aloud, and carried on down the tunnels.

Zhen was nearly at the centre of the labyrinth. She half-expected to find a dragon down here, or some ancient many-headed beast that held evil intent on the entire human race. Whatever it was, it held incredible power. She could feel the radiating waves of psychic power. They seemed to be trying to push her away, but she would not be deterred. The thing in her dreams had taught her to resist the Agent’s manipulations, not knowing that power would be wielded against it in its own honour.
She had once been a true-blue Imperial loyalist. The war had beaten that out of her. Now all that remained was a desire to finish on the winning side. She had known which way the wind was blowing for a while, switched sides covertly. Then the dreams began. Something else was coming, something that blew the fascists and the empire out of the water.
She rounded the corner and was met with a sight that compelled her to utter the single syllable “Oh,” before she died.

Lament carried on down the pitch black passageways, easily resisting the increasinglyTURN clumsyBACK attempts by the psychic force to stopTURN herBACK. She didn’t use her eyes at all. The psychic radiations from the walls were her guide. Suddenly she felt a foreboding chill. Death, not the ancient death that the labyrinth was steeped in but a fresh, raw death that left her stinging as if she had been slapped across the face. Ahead of her, just a few feet. She stepped forward and knelt down, and her fingertips touched liquid pooling on the floor.
In the chamber before her was a machine and a man. The man was dressed in monkish brown robes, and had his back to her. The machine, the far larger of the two, filled the room from floor to ceiling.
“Agent,” said the man. “Even without your heraldry I would know the shape of your mind.”
“What is this?” said Lament, aware of a pounding inside her skull as if he was setting about it with a hammer.
“A toy, compared to the power of the human mind. A mere machine.” The man turned around. He was unremarkable, but for a neatly-trimmed pencil moustache. “But quite a useful one, I find. Your friend the traitor found that out well.” That explained the body by the doorway.
“With a projector this size you could control-”
“A planet? Not quite. A city, certainly, though I hardly have to bother these days. It’s much more rewarding than public office, I must say.” The man gave a condescending little chuckle.
“You were the prefect,” Lament said. “Why do all this? Surely power was the one thing you didn’t need.”
“I disagree, Agent. But power was far from the only objective. The Empire is bound to collapse. We cannot go on relying on it. I tried to break its yoke here as Prefect, but as you can see that hardly worked. A strong leader is what this planet needs.” He turned his back on Lament and began working at the controls of the machine again.
“A strong leader? Living in the undercity like a rat? Ordering purges of your own people?” Lament said. The Prefect had no answer. The thumping inside Lament’s headDIE grewDIE strongerDIE. HerBLOW handYOUR closedPRETTY aroundHEAD herOFF pistolBITCH and the tendons of her index finger tightened on the trigger.
“No,” said Victrix Lament, andWAIT sheSTOP letHOW the waves pass over her andSTOP comeSTOP rightSTOP backSTOP at the Prefect whose fingers twitched on the trigger of a pulser in his left hand.
Lament kicked the weapon out of his hand. “As satisfying as it would be to watch you destroy yourself, I’m duty bound to take you in, sir,” she said, binding his wrists with a thin cloth strip that, try as he might, he could never break.
“How could you reverse my machine?” he asked. Lament winked.
“A little Agent training, and a lot of luck. Have you ever heard of ‘psychic Judo?’” she asked. The Prefect shook his head. “I would think not, I just made it up.”
“You haven’t solved anything!” said the Prefect incredulously, spittle flying from his mouth. “The Empire will fall!”
Lament smiled. “Of course it will. And we’ll be waiting to pick up the pieces. The Agency hasn’t lasted this long without an exit strategy. You barely moved the needle, old man.” All this was said in the gentlest tone imaginable.

Lament went over to the machine. From here she could easily reassert Imperial control over the entire city. She thought about it for a while.
“I think the Prince will survive without Cthon’s tribute, don’t you?” she said out loud to no-one in particular, and fired a single force-blast into the projector’s core processor.

In the years that came after, the Cthonians began to forget about the Empire just the same as the Fascists, which fell apart infighting almost immediately after the machine was destroyed. The strange visitor lingered in the memory of a few, but she too disappeared with time. Victrix Lament flew her silver spacecraft away from the shadow planet, rippling across interstellar distances like a stone skimming across a pond.