"We're hacking through dead wiring like we're on a freakin' safari, trying to get at a node that's supposedly on the other side. After half an hour taking turns with our knives we break through into the Archive, crystal memory stacks big as redwoods, silent and dark, waiting for the Mercantile League to return and continue filling them with delinquent loans, pending legal suits, and every pack of peanuts they've shipped across all creation.

We're standing there, wondering if we shouldn't accidentally discharge a few clips, when a spore cloud fills up the tunnel behind us, and spikes start hailing from the shadowy catwalks high above. We try to find cover, but there isn't any – we consider climbing the ladders up, but being stuck on a ladder with a Lerk around is suicide. Instead we start unloading our lmg's into the air, hitting metal and memory stack more than anything, flakes of falling crystal glittering in the flash of our muzzles. The spikes become more sporadic. Deej takes out his welder and starts cutting into a maintenance crawlspace; a sporecloud bursts around him and he leaps back, cursing. Another cloud sends Nem and Lestah diving from the far wall. So I say 'f-this', and switch my pistol for my grenade launcher. Someone says, 'what are you-' then poom poom poom, I launch three way up into the darkness. My squadmates stare at me like I'm insane. 'What,' I say, 'you want to die slowly?' One grenade clatters onto a catwalk, the other two just hang in the air, and then the whole place comes down around our ears."