He doesn't talk again. He doesn't say "I thought I heard a bang." He's too genre-savvy for that. It's the kind of thing that someone says right before they get grabbed and killed. He doesn't talk, he just keeps listening and staying on the alert, and that's what saves his life.

Because instead of only hearing his own voice, he hears the slightest creak from above, which makes him look up just in time to see one of the mechanforms bursting out of an air vent in the ceiling, right outside the door of the lab.

He dives backwards out of the way, just narrowly avoiding a clawed swipe to his face and then launches it away from himself so hard with teke that it gets knocked through the glass wall of the lab across the hall, and then out through a window.

The sound of crashing glass echoes through the halls and...another sound answers it back. Inhuman screeching, like metal grinding against metal.

"How did they even get here?! They're supposed to be miles away!"

He starts picking up what magnets he can with teke, holding them in a little sphere. They need these. They're losing and they need every little edge they can get.

He also taps his ring, to get an omnicom line open through the interface in it.

"No signal. I think they're jamming us somehow!"