Shadowrun
Shadowrun Play => Play-by-Post => Topic started by: Kontact on <11-19-10/2356:48>
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Southside Chicago. October 9th, 2072. 5pm - one and a half hours until twilight.
This is where fool's gold goes when it dies. A heaven of once shining glass, promising everything but delivering only disappointment. The Elevated, as it used to be called, was the largest concentration of Chicago's wealth before the quarantine came down. Now it's just another ruin. After the 9 towers of the Sears fell into the Shattergraves, burning the old business heart of Chicago into a toxic pit, those businesses left functional had transplanted their heart down here. The building in question was a fine bit of architecture, in the form of a tapered cylinder with a semi-circular bite cork-screwing up the side. The bottom floors were filled with the usual squatters, hard enough to hold their own, but smart enough to have lived these last 17 years in isolation. Smart enough to know not to pick a fight when they could instead get a bribe. A case of batteries and some water-purification tablets had paid your way past them up to the fourth floor.
The next twenty flights had been filled with nothing at all. Doors and desks all gone for firewood. Everything that could be lifted had been thrown in to that slow Chicago pyre - the long funeral of winter where a dead city burned, little by little. Already in this fall month you could feel the desperation growing again. That terrible cycle that swallowed up more and more natives each year, first in the hundreds of thousands the year the wall went up - Uncountable dead filling the city with the smell of rot come spring - (And some people wonder why no one has cleaned this place up yet) - These years it's different. Long gone are the supply drops and the running gun battles which followed them. Today's Chicago is a gaunt thing, which eats itself much more slowly, and does so much more grimly.
Around the 26th floor, the filmy smell of melted plastiboard began to hint at what was already apparent from outside. The next thirty five floors were a burnt out mess, windows all shattered by the heat from the blaze. Toxic chemicals everywhere. It was time for gas masks. Cresting the stairwell on floor 28 brought you out into the open air, staring up into the skeleton of a building above you, and the untouched penthouse floors perched in the darkness somewhere above that.
True to Mike's word, it all seemed stable enough from here. Mike was an architectural engineer before the troubles hit in '55. That's why he still manages to put shit like this together. Combing through some old data disks you lifted off a broken down old Local Telelcom server a few months back, Mike had found building permits indicating the wine cellar's installation shortly before the quarantine. The building had belonged to Cross-Sim industries before it stopped belonging to anyone. The name implied that it was related to the now-devastated Cross Applied Technologies, but it didn't seem to be mentioned anywhere in the feeding frenzy of takeovers when CATco was divided up during the Crash of '63. So, like most of Chicago, it was no man's land, and anything inside was up for grabs. Good news all around so far.
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As Ruckus takes in the scenery he thinks to himself "Those damn squatters. Needing a bribe to lets us through? They should be glad we didn't waste them than and there." He chews on his lip under de gasmask. The thing always manages to sit not quite right, frusterating him when he wasn't moving. He had too deal though; a little discomfort is better than lungs full of chemicals. Looking up at the remains of the building he sighs and says: "Well, seems we need to climb our way up from here; this should be fun" Ruckus starts preparing his climbing gear.
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CodeMonkey chitters to himself about needing a long hot bath to clean off all this gunk while perusing the scans the Stormcloud took of the next few "stories".
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Ingmar stares blankly at the guts of the building above him, and whisper's, "Odin watch over us," in Finnish over coms. In English he says, "I will request that the eyes of Odin and strength of Tyr watch over this area while we climb. I will stay here while you climb. With Tyr's help, I may be able to catch anything... or anyone that falls."
As he walks clumsily around in his hazmat suit, it is hard not to laugh at the guy. He is carrying a lot of equipment for a kid his size, and being an awkward teenager just adds to the comedy of Ingmar trying to manage all the equipment he is carrying. The even funnier thing, but a different kind of funny, is Ingmar's seriousness. Perhaps if Ingmar made a wise-crack or two, like a normal kid, he would be a little less... creepy...
Clenching his left fist close to his chest, he watches the rest of the group climb. As he stands there, one might notice that his feet are floating slightly off the ground. He seems to be keeping a close eye on the glomoss strips on his right arm.
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Ruckus smirks than adds "If Odin is listening all the better, with all thos stories to navigate we will need all the help we can get." Ruckus never really liked magic; it seemed to random and haphazard to him. Alas in the modern times one need mages if they want to succesfully run. Still, he was at a slight discomfort when around anyone with ability. He'll play nice for now, see how this kid rolls when the crap hits the fan than he'll make up his mind.
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Digger is checking corners, then looking for a secure point to begin ascent. Also making sure no one in his new crew has dumped their cargo containers in some corner on the way up. He still couldn't believe the level of bitching he went thru with these "pros" when it came making proper prep for this 'run, good thing he was paying Tony and Tank downstairs or he have had to walk home. Sure wish more of the Don's boys worked the shadows.
Speaking of Don McCaskill, Digger checked his cargo pocket for the package, happy that the chips were secure. They hadn't met any Union patrols on the way in, thank the Virgin, but Tony knows to keep their fraggin' heads down if he sees them. Keeping that Union mole happy and in the Family is very important right now, so a lttle side trip to make a drop of some freaky stuff is well worth the effort, but the intel better fraggin' be there this time.
All thoughts settled, Digger takes the point if possible and making the climb easy for others to follow, looking back frequently to see if anyone is struggling.
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(http://i55.tinypic.com/2r4ts85.jpg)
/*Note, you would have come up from the staircase (box thing) on the bottom left. The black circles are supports and they should be slightly shifted clockwise from their position on that map, as this doesn't represent exactly which floor you're on now. That picture above should be the 25th floor. On each floor, the supports and the small "bite" drift slightly clockwise until the next support is at the 12 o'clock position at each 25 floor interval. (On the ground floor, and floor 100 [of 110] the bite should be facing West towards nearby South Cottage Grove Avenue, rather than North towards East 79th street.) The effect should create a triple helix of columns through the center of the building with diagonal supports connecting higher portions of one column to lower portions of another. Naturally, there are offices and cubicle farms on the outside and conference rooms towards the inside.*/ Pretty obvious that an elf designed this place...
Looking at it from the bottom produces a vision something like this.
(http://www.telovation.com/photos/spiral-stairs.jpg)
The actual floors above you are just gone. Somehow the fire got hot enough to melt plascrete and it slowly burned, its complex polymer chains unraveling into the vile residue which seemed to be on everything. You're all aware of how unusual this fire must have been, Digger especially so, since he knows for a fact that fires are so hard to set these days that the mob all but gave up arson for profit back in the 40s. While most were mentally planning their ascent up the spiraling central column, Digger was taking stock of the transport gear (collapsible boxes, check. Freezefoam, check.) and Machete had been on the lookout for trouble, trying to absorb the area. That's when he'd found it - A massive pile of slightly-aged excrement with what looked to be a human hand in it, roughly bit off at the forearm.
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Machete froze for a moment as he saw the fecal remains of something big enough to eat a pinche-metahuman for breakfast and shit him out in pieces too big for any mundane critters to be able to pass comfortably without rupturing the sphincter. He'd led too many trigger-happy cabrones through the CZ enough times to know that sometimes the best thing is to just keep your mouth shut and focus on the objective. Especially the little gabacho kid slinging some weird viking mojo, he might just wear himself out castin' pointless detection spells if he was walking around thinking his other hand might end up in a pile of shit and then he'd really be fucked. He best check it out so Machete walks over to the pile of shit, pokes it with the barrel of his Remington which he lifts up to his nose and takes in a big whiff.
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While preparing his gear Ruckus notices Machette walking to this big pile of unidentifiable goo and, for the lack of a better word, sample it. He raises an eyebrow and say: "Hey Machette, what's the matter? That goo special or something?"
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Digger gets a look at the pile, you can't work the sewers as long as he has and not be intimately familiar with this particular substance.
"Drek."
Taking a look around and then up into melted framework above, maybe trying at first to see if the droppings could have fallen down here from some higher perch, then considering the framework itself again and what could have caused the damage.
"Awww, fraggin' DREK!"
Digger sends the signal to his 'ware, and in one fluid motion, quick as lightning, unslings the Crusader, clears and switches magazines with the other hand and begins scanning once again the metal above for movement. He also steps several meters from the others, clearly attempting to avoid presenting a clumped target for attack.
"Somebody please fraggin' tell me we don't gotta climb 200 fraggin' meters through some fraggin' wizworm's nest. There better be some great drek up there, cuz I am sure poppin' a cork or two...if we get there."
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CodeMonkey's blimp had made several passes from the outside of the building, shining its spotlight in to compensate for the failing light. He had been dividing his attention between the situation with the team and the AR projection in his goggles as the blimp scanned ring after ring of outer wall. The going was slow, since the sofa-sized (well, loveseat-sized) blimp wasn't built with Radar sensors, but it was building a decent trideo map of the inside. At least, what it could see inside the large structure. There were landings on the 34th, 49th and 53rd floors which looked stable enough. Around the 58th story the cohesion of the floors largely returned, but there was probably still a lot of unstable ground. Here and there, massive blocks of plascrete were ready to fall and Ghost help you if it does. There were holes in the 28th where multi-ton blocks had fallen and hit the ground with the force of a small bomb.
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Ingmar watches Mechete in bewilderment. "What is it, Mechete?"
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"Drek... As in shit? Holy mother of mercy, that's one big pile of shit. What would produce such a large quantity?" Ruckus ask with an undertone of curiosity. He checks his M23 which is locked, loaded and slung around his neck infront of for easy exces. The bigger it is, the easier it is to hit on full-auto.
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Ingmar sighs a little, his question to Machete left unanswered, and decides to keep his attention focused on the climbers in the event that they should have a misstep.
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Machete straps on his climbing gear and begins his assent along the skeleton of the building towards the next possible landing several floors above. The whole time he makes sure to keep the release latch for his rappelling gear close by in case the team needs to abort the climb at any moment and get down quick. Those of you who are climbing ahead of him see the vertical slits in his green-yellow eyes focused intently on what's coming up above.
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"Hey Ruckus, tie yourself off to the hairball and the flying mage, then follow me up. That way if something happens to one of you, we got somebody keeping you from a highdive."
Digger then begins climbing the area around the central pillars, making the climb easy and trying to keep everyone in sight.
"Wait up there hombre!"
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Ingmar stares blankly at Digger, and then seems to realize something. "Yes, that is a good idea. Tyr's strength can hold me and others that are tied to me. I do not want to assume your faith in the gods, but if you do not trust your climbing skills, then you should secure a line to me." Ingmar takes his climbing harness out of his backpack and puts it on over his hazmat suit... gasping a little at the harness's tightness around his groin. Looking at the way the harness is worn on him may inspire thankfulness that climbing equipment manufacturers take into consideration that the users of their product may be new to climbing. He has not floated more than a centimeter above the ground, but it seems that whatever force is holding him up is rather steady.
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"Let's do this, mates. This wall ain't gonna climb its self." Ruckus says fiddling with his climbinggloves. Than he starts to follow Digger up the skeleton. Relatively easy climb as far as he could see; we should be fine.
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CodeMonkey climbs up alongside Ruckus, hand over hand over foot.
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With Machete's silent insistence, the team pressed onwards and upwards towards the first landing, and the top. The going was relatively fast with Digger scrambling up the column to grab a support beam, pull himself up and do it all over again. Every ten meters or so, he would clip his lead rope to one of the support beams' cross-bars. At this speed the team had covered the first 8 floors in a little over thirty seconds.
On the 34th, Digger could see the landing over to the left, looking much like it had on the trid mock-up CodeMoney had made earlier. The difference of course being how rickety it looked up close and in person. There wasn't much debris on it, and the slope as floor bowed out to the sides, suggested why. It was about 10 meters out, but could be accessed by climbing hand-over-hand on the skeletal support beams of the floor above it.
Meanwhile, down below, the van's sensors pick up someone sprinting out the sky-scraper's door to the next building over, a spartan 50-story office complex, probably made sometime back in the late 30s.
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Seeing Digger is taking the lead in the climb, Devoted chimes in on coms, "Digger, let me know if you reach a stable landing. If you find one, I will relocate there." Even though his teammates are navigating the climb easily, and all is peaceful around him (so he believes), he can't shake the feeling that something is definitely dangerous about the situation. If Digger doesn't find a landing soon, Devoted may have to traverse into open air, something he doesn't feel comfortable doing, but he definitely doesn't feel comfortable meditating alone next to a pile of crap with a human hand in it.
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"Hey Floater, and the rest of you joiks fa that matta, what part of STAY CLOSE TOGETHER AND TIE YOURSELF OFF TO THE OTHERS is confusing ta you?" Digger shouts back from eight stories above.
"I am making dis as easy as possible, but I can't babysit you all night, you if you got such a problem with your personal space that you wanna go splat, be my guest."
The dwarf's frustration in not seeing the creature he expects is evident.
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Suddenly the reason for Machete's silence becomes evident as a hint of movement from above becomes prelude to a tumbling block of plascrete the size of a coffee table. It misses Digger by a couple meters and slams into the floor below with a deafening boom. A dust cloud shoots 20 meters up into the air as the continued reverberations lend a moment of quiet to the scene.
Machete and Digger both see it, poking its head out from the cracks up above, an inhuman face with a horn jutting out of the middle of its forehead and an ear-to-ear grin full of nasty teeth. The head disappears again in a flash.
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Shaken and scared by the huge plaster boulder that just fell to the ground, Devoted now believes that Digger is intentionally dislodging boulders and directing them at him. Since he thinks an objection would only lead to more rocks being thrown at him, he decides he will try to be a harder target to hit. He calls his storm spirit (force 4 air spirit) from standby, and communicates to it via telepathic link. Devoted requests that the storm spirit continuously use his powers of concealment to conceal Devoted and the storm spirit from all matters of detection, astral or physical, but to allow the storm spirit to detect Devoted and to allow Devoted to detect the storm spirit. (of course, Devoted cannot see the storm spirit unless he is astrally perceiving, and he is not astrally perceiving.) Devoted waves his left hand in front of the face of his hazmat suit trying to wave the dust away and see the climbing group through the dust cloud.
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"Okay, THAT was no dragon." Digger pipes into the comlink.
"Looked like a big ass butt-ugly troll of some kind."
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"Holy shit, that was an nasty looking critter. Gentlemen, I believe its hunting time. Lets haul ass up there and give it an ass-whooping of a lifetime." Ruckus says with a smirk on his face. He climbs further with renewed vigour; his hand is itching for his M23. He is looking around for a stable platform from which he can better defend himself.
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Hearing AJ's message on coms, Devoted calls from standby a Fire Giant (force 4 fire spirit), and communicates to it via telepathic link. He informs the Fire Giant that the team is under attack, and he requests that the Fire Giant fight on the team's behalf. Devoted chimes in on coms, "I have requested the aid of a denizen of the other Realms of the World Tree to help in the hunt!"
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CodeMonkey begins casting about for a place to stash his meat body and warms up the Doberman.
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This time, a desk came flying out of one of the holes above. Traveling too far, it crashed into the supports overhead, cracking in half and lazily falling to the floor 12 stories below with a halfhearted crunch. If that had been another block of plascrete, everyone would have been pelted with hunks of pseudo-rock. This was definitely not a situation which would resolve itself.
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"Go, go, go! We need to get to that paracritter son of a bitch ASAP." Ruckus yells as hit adreniline starts pumping.
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Convinced that it is not Digger that is dislodging boulders, but some kind of paracritter, Devoted begins floating out of the dust cloud and towards the landing on the 34th floor. As he begins the trip, he calls a third spirit off standby, Fenris the wolf (force 4 beast spirit). Via telepathic link, he tells Fenris to destroy the paracritter. Devoted informs the group via coms, "I am traveling to your location, Ruckus."
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Machete mutters to himself, "La chingada...supongo que ya debo decir algo" and locks the climbing gear in place so he can just hang suspended. He then takes off the glove on his left hand exposing the gecko grip just in case the line gets cut and grabs the wall. A little blue flame can be seen coming to life as he flips on the pilot light to his Shiawase Blazer and get's it ready in his free hand.
Machete looks down at Devoted and his spirits rising out of the cloud of dust. The team hears his flat gravelly voice over the comm, "Spell-slinger, try to get those spooks to tease him out so that he starts flying. They're our best bet for killing it. Stick and shocks if you got'em ladies; he's hard as pinche rock. We're best off locking-down in place and dodging rocks until he gets sick of it and starts swooping rather than face to face with that thing on the landing. Oh, and if you can hit it with any type of crude iron, that would help too....oh and one more thing....it's a gargoyle if that helps at all...."
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Devoted relays the information to his spirits, via telepathic link, that the paracritter attacking the group is a gargoyle. He also adds that a good tactic against the gargoyle would be to lure the gargoyle into the open. He then transmits via coms, "I have informed the spoo... the denizens of the other realms, of the target and tactics."
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"That's not a half bad idea, Machette." Ruckus locks his climbing gear and whips out his modified M23 which he affectionately calls Charlene. He positions his feet so he can easily move around within the reach of the rope. "Let's rock, people!"
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Code, having grabbed the rope with his tail swung his body to the underside of the of the sloped pillar so as to avoid any more of the falling debris. Startlingly, he was greeted by the sight of a column of flame rising out of the smoke below, followed by a ghostly, gaunt and hungry wolf, followed by the sharp cut of jumping into the GM-Nissan Doberman drone still waiting on the ground floor. Everything was white and swirling with the dust of pulverized rock, but as he.. it.. aggressively backed up from the center, the place again took focus. Somewhere up there, was a target.
Meanwhile, Digger, having gone hand-over-hand to reach the landing, thudded down onto the chunk of standing floor. The whole structure, the whole world seemed to shake with his landing, but he didn't care. double-timing it to the wall, the shake and sway of the "ground" beneath him seemed to matter less and less the closer he got to the outer windows. Actually, it was shaking less near the walls. An encouraging sign.
Machete and Ruckus held their ground in the relative cover of the diagonal supports, as if daring the beast above to try and knock them off their perch. It did not disappoint. Another plascrete block, this one about the size of a minifridge, tumbled from the hole overhead and smashed into the main column a couple floors up before falling to the dust below.
Devoted, hearing the crushing sounds of falling stone as he floated out of the smoke cloud in his faded-yellow hazmat suit, some of the smoke swirling up to follow him him, got the feeling that bunched up with the others was potentially not a good place to be. The spirits, meanwhile continued their ascent to the top at speed.
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Code shifted the doberman's stance until it was resting almost entirely on its back treads. Now pointed upwards, he trained the machine's sensors on the 3m hole in the ceiling above where the Gargoyle was just barely visible. The smartgun system sent a load of ballistic data to the ready machine, painting a mark over Code's sight right at the edge of the opening in the ceiling.
As Machete watched, ever-wary, the Gargoyle emerged into view and threw a chunk of plascrete the size of a Troll's head at the pillar of flame which, with a quick zig continued its rapid ascent to the top. Meanwhile, out of sight on the 60th floor, the beast spirit appeared, causing the Gargoyle to turn slightly in order to keep it off his back.
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With a practiced action, Ruckus brought his rifle up to aim at the agitated beast above his head. Giving his goggles a moment to focus on the beast, he put the dot right on target and loosed a fierce burst of jacketed rounds right into it's chest, trailing up to its head. He felt the ascender's teeth dig in as the rifle's kick traveled down his frame into the climbing harness. The beast still stood.
It glanced down, with an expression of malice and fled from the mouth of the hole. Unseen, the Spirit Wolf lunged at the retreating monster, ectoplasmic teeth meeting unyielding stone and coming to no effect. The beast above was gone from sight.
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Digger huffs into comms:
"I got some iron for him. You guys that jamook busy, I am moving to flank, up close and personal like."
Ducking and shading himself from the setting sun, the dwarf rockets up the structure.
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Through his open channel, CodeMonkey's voice broadcasts: I thought the point was to get it to come out into the open so we could all shoot it. There are safer ways to play Whack-a-mole than shooting *up*.
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High above the team, the Gargoyle tried to use its superior knowledge of the cubicle maze to regain the advantage of surprise. Much to its surprise, that was not happening. The Beast Spirit was again at its heels, while, above it, the Air Spirit materialized as a whirling mass of wind and ice. Before the Gargoyle could react to the new combatants, the Wolf at its feet opened its mouth wider and wider as a howl escaped from inside it. Not the howl of a dog or any other living creature, but the howl of a winds from a gaping hollow, hungry for the whole universe. It was only an instant, but it was an instant of pure terror that dragged on and on until the only thought left in the Gargoyle's mind was "RUN." It shifted and turned, just as a blast of freezing wind crashed down where it was standing only moments before. The insistent teeth of the wolf spirit again clamped down on its stony flesh, but again it ran on unscathed. It ran crashing into the southern window, dislodging the whole pane of Plexiglas from from the wall frame as it bolted out into the sky. Two shots rang out into the dying daylight. Someone from the southern building was now firing on it.
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The assault continued as the gargoyle attempted to flee further away. Ruckus sighted it flying out the space between the buildings and lined up a shot through the burnt out windows. Just before it passed from one window clearing to the next, Ruckus fired. The bullet whipped through the air and the gargoyle flew right into it, catching it right beneath the jaw, shattering both the skin and the bullet. At the last moment the creature's head snapped back and instead of the slug fragments traveling into its brain or eyes, most of it passed out its mouth and into its sinus. It flinched and spasmed a bit in flight, but continued on. The rising mass of the Fire Spirit spit out a gout of flame which reached the creature's retreating feet, but it didn't seem to effect it any.
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As Devoted floats below Machete and Ruckus, he holds out his hand-less right arm and points it at the gargoyle. A stern and serious look comes over his fair features as he grasps his stubby right forearm with his left hand. It looks as if he might be bracing for some kind of pain, but a smile comes over his face. Not a smirk or a grin, but a gentle smile of an almost pious nature.
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Visible only to him, a surge of arcane energy surged from the phantom fingers of Devoted's missing hand and shot straight through the ether towards the swirling black of the retreating gargoyle's form. It connected with the foul thing, only to somehow be beat off by the manic flapping of its hateful wings. The assault was still not over as, from above, a blast of cold black, which could only have come from the tempestuous Storm Spirit, was quickly joined by the angry blast of the Fire Giant from below. The two forces saw a sparkling interplay across the astral, which breathed and sweltered all around for a moment before the Gargoyle dove down and down, away from the Beast above, but closer now, to thee.
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Ruckus kept his sights pinned to the creature as it plummeted away form the jets of fire and ice above. He traced its path calmly as it zoomed past window after window on its decent and fired off two shots, through one opening and then the next. The first bullet smashed into the creature's ear canal, taking off a chunk of its skull and sending it no longer diving but falling out of control as wings spasmed and strained to stop the fall, but failed to have time enough even for that as the second bullet caught the out of control gargoyle right in the divot of its lower spine. The mangled form of the Gargoyle no longer even attempted to right itself as gravity pulled it down to the waiting pavement of the courtyard below where it crashed with a sound like wet bricks. Machete still keeping his mind on the climb noticed a glint from the scope of the sniper in the southern building as the man traced the creatures fall, but, moments later, it was gone. Code, still physically hanging from the ropes above and mentally sitting guard on the floor busied himself monitoring the upper levels of the building with the blimp's feed, still suspicious as to why no one had yet looted the building from above by helicopter.
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"That's how we do things. Mr. Gargoyle is officially pavement pizza." Ruckus says with satisfied grin. "Now we can climb in peace for a while." With Charlene secured Ruckus unlocks his climbing gear and resumes climbing. He is enjoying his adreniline high of the conquering of that mighty beast.
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Digger, seeing the beast plummet, moves to get a decent view and make absolutley sure it ain't coming back. Shading his eyes from the dying sun, he mutters "Won't never see something like that on one of Uncle Sal's pies."
Then he returns to the shaft they were climbing before to catch his breath and wait for the rest to catch up.
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Devoted watches the gargoyle fall with eyes wide open with wonder and fright. After staring at the crumpled heap of its remains on the floor for a few seconds, Devoted says via comlink, "That was some persistent shooting, Ruckus," and flashes Ruckus a grateful smile.
Devoted then floats into open air, where he is greeted by the Storm Spirit and the Fire Giant. Devoted performs a sort of mid-air kneel and begins speaking out loud in Finnish to the spirits: "You have honored me and my ancestors by your valor and strength in this endeavor. I no longer require your aid at this time, and you may return to the other Realms of the World Tree. I will not call on you again unless my strength alone cannot handle the task at hand."
Devoted places his now starry-eyed gaze on the doberman on the floor below. After thinking to himself for a moment, he asks over coms in English with a bit of a heavier Finnish accent than normal, "Codemonkey, do you wish for me to lift your machine to the next stable floor?"
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"No sweat, that thing had it coming. If that thing really thought he could smack us in the head with office furniture, he was soarly mistaken." Ruckus says ruefully.
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Machete continues his upward climb in silence looking rather un-impressed with the quick downing of the gargoyle which are known to be quite formidable. He pauses for a moment and looking a little peeved, then speaks into his comm's mic, "Congratulations, now we gotta move faster before the winds carry the smell of blood too far. Fall back a little and cover my tail while I take the lead."
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"Listen here, mate. If you rather eat a big slap of concrete be my guest, but I'm taking my chances with the smell of blood over a that beast harrasing us any day. Next time you have a better idea you might wanna share." Ruckus says with a hint of annoyance.
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Machete just keeps on climbin', the slits in his cat-eyes narrowing as he looks on up the shaft of the burned out building.
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Devoted seems to be listening to Machete as he redirects his flight to follow about two meters below Machete.
Devoted's smooth, yet youthful, voice chimes in on coms with a little more of a English accent than Finnish, "Which one of these landings looks stable to you, Machete? I need stable ground for an equipment check."
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After watching the group climb for a moment, Devoted sighs, his question to Machete left unanswered, and begins to search for a stable platform for an equipment check. He decides the landing on the 34th floor would be a good spot. After he reaches the landing, he proceeds to search through his survival pack for a canteen and a cloth so he can wipe his dusty hazmat suit visor with a moist cloth.
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Devoted places his now starry-eyed gaze on the doberman on the floor below. After thinking to himself for a moment, he asks over coms in English with a bit of a heavier Finnish accent than normal, "Codemonkey, do you wish for me to lift your machine to the next stable floor?"
Code Monkey returns to his body.
Well, it could be useful here to keep us from getting trapped in the upper floors, or it could be useful in the upper floors to keep us from getting killed.
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The immediate threat of the Gargoyle over, everyone resumed their upward climb. Well, everyone but Digger. He fired his grapple from the wall to the supports and swung over to the others, where they watched unbelieving the gall of the Dwarf as he traveled the shattered patchwork of hanging supports on a long arc to the center. He waited a moment while Machete continued up, followed by Ruckus and Code, then finally clipped himself into the rope taking up the rear.
Devoted, meanwhile, had cleared the dust and grime from the face-cover of his suit and again turned his sight away from the world of forms, back to the world of appearances. The headache he had from exposing himself to all the pain and despair of the city was still there, but moved further to the back of his mind. He looked up to the ceiling so far away and back down to the Doberman, sitting idle on the ground below. A small task.
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Devoted secures his equipment and floats back out into the open facing the Doberman below. His left hand clenches into a fist as he half-whispers over coms in English, "Through Tyr's strength..."
The Doberman instantly begins to float up towards the group, and Devoted is visibly concentrating sternly on the task at hand. He follows a couple meters below the group with the doberman quickly catching up to them.
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A little less than halfway through the flight up, Devoted started to feel considerably sick and light headed. He slowed his ascent and moved away from the center as he opened himself up to the true world of the Astral. There in the center of the destroyed structure, like a hazy egg of raw energy, he saw the shimmering outline of a man, sitting with legs crossed and arms lain atop them. It could be nothing other than a dark echo of the mage who, with his dying act set this building aflame. The exertion of creating flames so hot that they melted plascrete must have killed him. With reverence, Devoted stayed out of the emotional turmoil surrounding the spot, even as the others quickly climbed past it. He would have to remember the lesson of that man.
While climbing, Codemonkey had instructed his Stormcloud blimp to check out the floors above as best it could. The windows with their SolarSeal tint were not letting any light out at all. In fact, as the blimp maneuvered over to the hole where the Gargoyle punched out of the structure, it became slightly more apparent as to why those windows were sucking up rays so greedily, for when the blimp approached the open hole to peer inside on the 60th, four metal rods extended from around the window frame and a blot of electricity shot out and temporarily incapacitated the roving drone. Luckily, an incapacitated balloon isn't terribly different from a working one, and it rebooted again before long, no worse for the experience. The trid recordings of the hole in the 60th didn't show too much. There were movable walls about a meter and a half high which marked out a field of cubicles. Nothing moved and nothing of note was immediately apparent.
Machete peaked his head up into the space of the 60th floor after taking a few moments to listen intently for any activity above. The area was much smaller than the 28th far below. The building was designed to taper ever narrower as it got higher, but this large blank spot in the middle made the differences much more pronounced. Also more pronounced was the difference in decor. Unlike the floors below stripped bare, this area looked like a nearly untouched repository of 50s business artifacts. Not the kind of artifacts that are worth a damn, but the real news was that this place actually looked to be untouched. Mike hadn't sent them on a goose chase after all. It would be well worth looking around, and more so the higher they climbed.
-
Devoted resumes his ascent behind the rest of the team. He half-whispers over coms like a child trying not to wake his parents in the morning, "This building was burnt by a magical fire. Perhaps that is why it did not burn all the way down."
-
Digger huffs back, "It wasn't that gargle-thing making himself at home?"
-
Devoted answers with more voice and less whisper, "Good guess, but no. The echo of the mage that cast the spell that burnt the building and destroyed himself is here, slowly fading... He must have been very powerful in life."
-
"You mean this tower is haunted too?" says Digger. Anyone watching sees him look around and give himself the Sign of the Cross before proceeding.
Off the commlink, he mutters "Yeah, I am definitely gonna need a drink."
-
Arriving on the 60th found everyone in a medium sized conference room, the large meeting table crushed to the ground with legs splayed, doors ripped off hinges to the south and west and a temporary dividing wall to the next conference room half torn down. There was evidence here of a lengthy habitation by the now dead gargoyle. Chunks of plascrete scattered about the remains of victims spanning a not-inconsiderable span of time. There were some weapons here and there, and not all of them were scrapped.
-
The doberman and Devoted both touch down in the conference room.
Devoted gives Codemonkey a thumbs up, then takes a knee, seemingly meditating on something.
-
Digger toes through some of the discarded weaponery, then reaches down and hefts an AK to examine more closely.
"Coulda used something like this a few minutes ago...."
Pulling back the slide to examine the chamber, Digger is mildly perturbed when the pitted metal rips out the back end of the weapon. He looks at the seperated pieces of useless metal in his hands, as well as the scattered inner workings rolling away on the floor. He then drops it back to the ground and dusts off his hands.
"...or not." he mumbles as he continues to scavenge.
-
All-in-all, Digger didn't find much. Best of the batch was a Predator II pistol with a bit of severed fiber-optic cable still attached to the antiquated datajack port for its smartgun system. It seemed serviceable, and the clips would fit his Pred IV, but the rounds were all handload garbage. There were a few hunting rifles that were already crap before a Rock-monster took a steaming shit on them. One rifle looked like it once was pretty nice. The wood was polished to a shine with skin oils from continuous usage, and it had a solid scope on the top. too bad the barrel was bent and the butt-stock cracked from where its owner bashed it fruitlessly against the Gargoyle's stony hide as he was taken up to his death.
While Digger was considering this, Ruckus noticed Machete trying to secret away a couple of found grenades and talked him into splitting them up, one apiece. A couple of old pull-pin HE grenades. Neither of them had any idea whether they'd work right. Other than that, they spotted an AK 97 Carbine which might have enough serviceable parts to make a working rifle when it was combined with the broken AK Digger had first found.
-
Devoted stands to his feat and looks around the room in wonder. His movement is awkward, since he has to turn his whole body that is encased in a hazmat suit to look around. He looks over the weapons, but he seems to be trying to look through the piles of rubbish and weapons... This kid is not a weapons guy, and it is not completely obvious what he is looking for, but whatever it is, he is searching while standing in one spot... which doesn't seem like it would be very effective.
-
Machete non-chalantly passes the a few grenades to Ruckus to distribute. "Be my guest, if you vatos wanna blow your faces off tossin' these fuckers around, be my guest. I just use em to booby trap my sleeping spots. The short fuse on an old grenade works perfect." He turns his attention away from the gargoyles nest and starts scoping out the perimeter of the floor.
-
The smoke damage on the lower levels was noting compared to the 60th. Machete could easily follow the trails and tracks that the Gargoyle left in the decades-old sludge found on everything. The creature's wanderings had left a pattern like veins traveling through the old cubicle-farm of the office floor. A history of monstrosity living in filth. Lot of that to be found in Chi-town. This was a poisonous, precarious place and not one to dally in. To the south, Codemonkey's Stormcloud was hovering just outside of a busted-out floor-to ceiling window, it's optic lenses focusing in on them as they shuffled about piles of refuse and leavings. The northeast staircase seemed to have the strongest floor leading to it, and the least shit. Well, mostly the least shit. Who cares about the floor...
-
Digger pulls out an industrial trashbag and puts the most promising bits of hardware into it.
"Might find some zone armorer wants to trade if nothing else." he mutters.
After finding a comfortable way to carry the bag and keep his weapons accessible, he starts trudging up the stairs.
-
Devoted notices Digger going up the stairs, and begins to follow him, still keeping an eye on the strips of glomoss on his arm.
-
Machete moves cautiously around the room his under-barrel flashlight illuminating the nooks and crannies and his slit-like pupils narrow as the light scatters back. As soon as he notices Digger behind him stuffing trashbags full of junk he stops suddenly and tenses up. His back still turned towards the dwarf, he reaches one of his hands towards his back and the chime of a blade being unsheathed rings through the corridor. "We came here for one thing and one thing only. You think this is just some kind of simple snatch and grab? This doesn't smell good....sniper in the south building, dead mages... We're gonna have to travel light so either loose the pinche-trashbag or i'll lose it for ya."
-
Digger begins to turn when he hears a weapon draw, but upon regeistering the words, he returns to his activity.
"We? Are 'we" friends now, AHH-me-go? Cuz I figger friends share 'tings, like info when we don't all know what we might be facing. I figger we also don't draw down on each other without a good reason. You a tough guy Match-ete, I get that, Dere's a lot tough guys in La Familia, but when tough guys think they can go into business for themselves or name themselves capo, tings don't always work out. Capiche?"
-
Dovoted stops moving, and watches the two men with pure fright and helplessness. His jaw hangs loose, his mouth opens, and nothing but stiffled, nervous breathing comes out.
-
"Listen, I ain't nobody's AMIGO.....amigo. They pay me to run you through this hell-hole and keep you alive. I plan on doing just that and keeping alive means keeping your head low. Just like you said chummer, we ain't here on personal business so do your scavengin' on ur own time....understand..." The blade hold's steady in his hand.
-
Seeming unconcerned with Machete in general, Digger continues what he was doing. Actions speaking louder than words, the challenge hangs heavy in the air.
-
Machete's eyes slowly scan over to where Ruckus is standing and starts staring at him. "It's your call chief..."
-
"We aren't friends, no, but at the very least we are professionals, right? We do not have a problem, do we?" Ruckus rumbles, his hand explicitly on his weapon.
-
Devoted stammers nervously in broken English, "Digger... Please... for now... leave it..."
-
In one motion Machete sheathes his machete and puts his hand back on the under-barrel of his shotgun. He tightens the sling on his shotgun and it tightens up against his back, the flashlight still shining toward the ceiling. "Let's keep climbing."
-
Tensions were high, but experience has always shown that's a good thing when facing unknown threats ahead. If the team was this quick to snap at each other it was only because they're much more ready to snap a shot at anything that moves past their vision. And, on the subject of vision, these floors were dark. The dying sunlight which partially filtered through the missing windows of the hollow below, and the lamps that were set on the lower floors were neither found in this upper area. In fact, the smoke had blackened the windows completely, leaving the next floors as dark as pitch. Everyone had their lamps on who brought them, and the meager light they provided was a blessing.
Also unlike the lower floors, there were doors on every level. Closed doors. Reassuring as that was to most, Devoted was not feeling particularly well. After 15 flights, he was feeling a tingling in his mind, tracing around in a dizzying way. Watching his wrist, the glomoss tabs he kept there confirmed it. The second of them had died, accompanied by his Foci. There was something wrong in this place. Something bad-wrong. History isn't exactly sunshine and roses anywhere in the Zone, but this place is one with a historical significance... or a present one.
-
With the conflict over, Devoted regains his calm demeanor. The kid must have had a sheltered childhood, he acted like he had never seen an argument before.
When the second strip of glomoss dies, Devoted stops for a couple seconds to compose his mind and body. Mumbling a prayer to the gods, he resumes following the group up the stairs with renewed intent. Thinking to himself, he wonders if this building contains one of the voids he is looking for.
-
The next few flights see everyone slowing down as the sludge born of various petroleum jellies left over from the fire begins to change consistency to something harder. The crust and crunch of the stuff by level 80 is so much that it can't pass unspoken. Meanwhile, Digger had been peaking out quietly every few floors and had noticed the disturbing trend of this crust extending out to all the halls outside the stairway. He froze in place and demanded, in hushed, but angry, tones, to know exactly what this crap is before he took another step.
-
Devoted is the only one that responds to Digger's demands, and attempts to get a good look at the stuff on the floor...
-
Devoted chimes in on comms, "It reminds me of an old wasp's nest, maybe dead and gone...maybe not..." He looks around the room blankly, not like he's searching for something physical, but like he's searching for a thought in his mind. "...but that doesn't make any sense... that would mean there were millions of wasps! ... or just really big ones..."
-
"Oh, real great! Frakking mutated wasp... On second thought Charlene can use the practice" Ruckus chimes in.
-
"Old wasp nest? Okay, dat explains a lot."
Digger moves his combat axe to ready position and thinks a bit as he hefts the blade.
"Ey wizkid, you tink dat ghostie down below was buggie, or maybe he was the reason we ain't been stung?"
-
Devoted turns his whole body to look at Digger. His head tilts thoughtfully in his hazmat suit, and he explains slowly in a serious tone over his comlink, "If that mage, whose echo I saw, is the same mage that summoned the bug spirits responsible for this nest, then we have much to fear... Any magical creature that makes its home here is... very strong, like that dead mage was in life." He begins praying to his gods in Finnish. Names like "Odin" and "Tyr" are accentuated in his prayer.
-
Only a few flights higher and the leathery residue from the walls has moved to block off the whole stairway. Upward progress was cut off by a solid wall of the hard, flaky stuff.
-
Digger walks up and taps on the wall with the axe.
"Yeah, figger'd sumthin' like dat was comin'. Youze want I should make a hole, or sumbody got a better idea?"
-
Shrugging helplessly, Devoted says, "We may be able to burn through, I have some matches..." and he shoulders off his survival pack and begins shuffling through it.
-
Ruckus grabs a HE grenade from a pouch in his jacket and smirks "Beats hammering it with an axe for half an hour, yeah?"
-
Looking up from his survival bag, Devoted sees Ruckus palming the grenade, and backs away from the blocked stairway. He slips his bag back over his shoulder and begins looking for cover in case a grenade or two goes off. Wrinkling his brow, he watches Ruckus to see what he does.
-
When digger taps the barrier, the flaky wall feels solid. Well, perhaps solid is not entirely the right word. Maybe tight. There is a bit of give when he bangs it, but not in a way one would expect a wall to give.
-
"So you want to blow out the whole stairwell and bring every bug in the building down here at once? Not so sure I can chop through this, but I can be a hell of a lot quieter than an explosion. Wizzy might be on the right track, mebbe we can melt it."
-
Machete flips on the pilot light of his flame thrower, puts his shotgun away and aims the nozzle at the nest. "So are we gonna burn this puto down or what?"
-
Ruckus looks at Machete with a grin "I like how this man is thinking!"
-
Machete approaches the flaky wall, pulls down the trigger to his blazer. The heat makes his teeth clench and you see the bright orange-white flames reflected in his tinted goggles. As soon as he sees the material begin to combust he moves back, gauging his handy-work.
-
From the bend in the stairwell, Machete saw much of the EzFlame naplam had hit the top part of the barrier and was burning the ceiling more than the wall. However, it soon flowed down lower and spread towards the floor, burning through the old insect's nesting like flaking papyrus. The air was beginning to fill thick with black smoke and smells so bad that the gas masks couldn't scrub it all. In fact, air was starting to become problematic as the flames pulled all the oxygen out of the stairwell, but just as the dizzyness was pushing you towards a panic, the fire broke through the wall and flared at the new source of oxygen.
Well, the fire didn't really break through so much as the couch did. The fire weakened the wall enough that what it was holding back crashed through. It all came pouring down, an avalanche of broken furniture and refuse with a mix of old dessicated corpses thrown in for good measure, all tumbling down the stairwell into the fire and towards the lower landing of the 84rd floor. The flames were already spreading.
-
Devoted takes in the whole scene with horror and awe! This whole thing was really quite a bit for him to take in. There is a little boy inside him that is repressed most of the time due to his stern concentration on devotion to the gods and piety. That little boy just couldn't stay chained up in that moment of intense heat and violence, and Devoted screamed, "That was awesome, Machete!"
-
Machete just stares at the flames trying to get a glimpse of what might be on the other side the barrrier. He remembers all the times during the winter when Wasp nest was the only source of heat that had kept him alive many a night.
-
"Atleast where through this fraggin' wall. It looks like exhumed graveyard now. Lets go before they stink us up more than they already have." Ruckus growls as he turns to make his way up to the next floor.
-
Machete moves past Ruckus to take the lead, the pilot light of his flame thrower still on, his cat eyes scanning the scene.
-
Ruckus follows Machete, Charlene steadily aimed in front of him. He checks his surroundings.
-
Managing to shake of his childish grin, Devoted follows Machete and Ruckus.
-
As Ruckus climbs a the stairs he sees throught the thick smoke that the hole first made is now block of by garbage and bodies. "Frak we need some way to clear this or get another way 'round, people!"
-
Moving to and kicking open the nearest landing door, Digger exits the smoke and junk filled stairwell.
"*cough* MOVE PEOPLE!"
-
The door opened on a hallway, unlike the open floor-plan of the offices below. It seems like these must be living quarters of some sort, maybe personal offices. Still, it's hard to tell as the walls and the doors are all covered with the same crusty substance you've become familiar with. The hallway stretches out about fifteen meters straight ahead before meeting with another fork. Meanwhile to the right and left a wider corridor trailed off in a curve around the building. Further branches were visible down the way, leading towards the outer windows.
-
Since Devoted has a pretty decent oxygen supply still working in his hazmat suit, he stands to the side of the door that Digger kicked in and looks back to make sure the rest of the group is okay. He makes a conscious effort not to get in anyone's way as they rush through the door.
-
Machete connects the oxygen supply from his Hazmat suit to his gasmask goes through the door.
-
Ruckus straps on his gasmask and follows his teammates.
-
Devoted follows Ruckus, and looking at Machete, he says, "I apologize. I thought the fire would be a good idea..."
-
After the team makes it into the hallway and Digger slams the door on the burning rubbish, he shoulders past the wizard, "Don't sweat it kid, no way to know we wuz gonna flush da hive's commode down on ah heads."
-
Devoted looks down the different hallways warily. "I guess we need to find another way up..." and follows Digger as he searches for another stairwell.
-
The relative loudness of the soft crunch caused by the flaky mess underfoot tells you that either you're the only things moving in on this level, or whatever is moving doesn't use feet. This is also apparent by the fact that your footprints are quite visible crushed into the dried-up hive wall lining the floor behind you. Glancing down the side hallway, you notice that the hive material covers up the outer windows as well. Apparently sunlight was not on the menu.
Cruising the middle ring as you are, you first come to a set of four elevator shafts, all of them open, and all of them generously coated with the same flaky crap that you've managed to get sick of already. Unsure whether to proceed to the other stairs, or if you could simply climb up from here, you slow and stop.
-
Devoted plants his hand on the side of an open elevator door and looks up the shaft for a second, and then steps away, looking at the group and wondering what they will decide to do.
-
Machete also hangs on to the edge of the shaft entrance and carefully analyzes the climb up and the way down as well. "Stairs ain't an option no more....if we wanna go up, this is our way."
[OOC: If the coast seems clear to him, then he's gonna pull out the climbing gear and start moving up.]
-
Devoted nods at Machette, and makes a fist with his left hand, clenching it to his chest. His feet float slightly off the ground, and he floats into the shaft behind everyone else as they climb.
-
Shining your lights down the shaft shows another wasp plug a floor below you. At least that's what you assume by the piles of office chairs and drawers and such. Five floors up there seems to be another of the hive walls like on the stairs. Hanging out into the shaft, Machete is able to see a few floors up and can confirm that the elevator doors at each level are open. This must have been one of the main access ways for the wasps to move throughout the hive.
-
Checking the condition of the wall inside the elevator, Digger turns to the mage "We are gonna need to team-up to get this group up the shaft, can you handle it kid?"
-
Devoted nods at Digger, "Just remember, when you yield to the strength of Tyr, you will be in his hands, not your own... You will be moving slowly, say "stop" when you are satisfied with your position."
Clenching the fist of his left hand, he looks sternly at Digger. Digger's feet slowly, but steadily, float off the floor, and his body begins to move into the shaft.
-
As Digger rises into the air there is a moment of panic as he kinda swims and gets his balance on...well, nothing.
He keeps his arms straight, for no real reason, and raises his chin as he moves out into the shaft, picking a good spot to set the hook.
"Okay, Devoted or Tyr or whoever, that's good,...stop."
Then he slowly raises his arm, sights and fires the cybernetic grapple gun.
-
The line travels up the shaft at an angle and wedges solidly on the corner of one of the open elevator doors. The winch itself is not quite strong enough to pull the dense-bodied Digger up the shaft, but, with a little help from his climbing claws on the hive wall, he makes good time. At each level, true to his curious nature, he peaked out, but saw little difference. Every section was the same T-junction with a curving hallway running around the building and a central hallway leading down to a large set of doors. On the second to highest level available, he saw those doors open and some light in what looked to be a large and hollow central room. Expediency trumping curiosity, he continued to the next level, and pulled himself bodily to the 87th floor. Stark as all the others, but this one too had open doors down the hallway to the center. Looking at it now in earnest, it seemed like these doors were closer than the ones back on the 82nd. The low light had hid that fact on the levels he passed, but thinking now, this fit a trend.
Uncomfortable leaving his back to the open doors, he was less comfortable being alone in this alien and hostile place. A quick loop of rope provided access to the others.
-
As the hollow central room becomes visible to him, Devoted switches to astral perception to take a quick look into the area from the elevator shaft to see if he spots any anomalies.
-
Even in this place, devoid of living things, the astral pulses and breathes with life. Its currents whirl and pulse with energy. In the center of this, the room ahead. In it, the energy swirled and flowed as if from a living heart. Its center, yet, showed clarity, even as its overwhelming color obscured everything inside.
-
As Devoted arrives at the top of the shaft with Digger, he shifts his perception back to the physical realm. He thinks about the the astral space in this area and wonders about the cause of the anomalies he has seen so far. While his knowledge of the astral realm is not very extensive, he gets the feeling that whatever is the cause of the increased strain on his magical abilities is close by.
-
"Were all the way up and no more critters; that's kind of an anti-climax." Ruckus grunts, keeping his weapon at the ready. "With all that wasp goo all over the place one would think that there would be somethng to fight along the way."
-
Devoted nods at Ruckus with a smile, while trying to keep an eye on everyone, making sure everyone makes the climb.
-
Machete directs himself to Devoted over the comm "Hey ese, just tie us off to something and then raise that thing"
-
Devoted nods towards Machete down below with sincere attentiveness and looks around the 87th floor for a structurally sound object.
-
After looking about for a second, Devoted notices the rope Digger left for the rest of the team below, and chimes in on coms, "I can levitate the climbing rope with you connected to it, if you wish."
-
"Just get them up here or we'll be waiting all day" Ruckus says.
-
Dovoted's feet touch down in the open elevator doorway of the 87th floor, and he focuses his attention on the rope, clenching is left fist. He waits for the team members below to attach to the rope before lifting it up to the 87th floor.
-
Those now gathered on the 87th see a faint orange light coming from the central room - The warm glow of an old lamp or other off in the greater darkness of the room... somewhere below the level of the door. The light does very little to show the depth of the room, and your low-light torches aren't proving to be particularly more effective.
As Machete passes by the 86th floor, and up to the 87th he hears a faint raspy breath, sort of humming, like groaning out a song. A small but sharp cough interrupted the sound, only to have it, quietly and distantly, break out into broken verse.
"Oh, they made us runways... for future fashion experiments.... to escape reality by overdose...
If you can't smell it on your last breath... you took it still - all gone... no matter who you cut it out or not for lately..
Keeps my whole body forever sore... the truth hurts and the heart is hard to burn...
Even in trying times we die trying to live forever... to pretend to give my life while I get carried away..
by the wind of an Earth composed of corpses... we all dance on our own graves for a living..
since counting down has been my trust fund... numb is my religion and it never killed anyone."
-
"There is some of that wasp goo over here too, maybe I finally get some extra action in. This climbing around isn't exactly exciting, ya'know." Ruckus grins.
-
Devoted gives Ruckus a look of fright and awe. Perhaps Ruckus is a very good shot and confident of his abilities. He hopes so... Devoted has not encountered any bug spirits before, but if there are bug spirits that made a home in this place where mana is chaotic and hard to control, then Ruckus will need to be a very good shot... Perhaps he should mimic the bravery of his group and focus on detecting disturbances in the area... There may not be voids here after all, but something else...
After making sure the entire group is safely on the 87th floor, Devoted stops sustaining the levitate spell on the rope, reaches down to collect it, and hands it to Digger. He switches his perception to astral, and keeps it there, but he keeps a close watch on his glomoss in case BC count increases sharply.
-
Ruckus levels his rifle and walks to the central room with some messure of care, which is quite the controlled impluse for him. Scanning the te envoirment as he goes he mumbles "Come out, come out where ever you are."
-
Ruckus moved forward at a steady pace, planting one foot carefully after then next, braced to fire with a thought. A patch of what he assumed was more floor in front of him resolved itself into a nest-covered balcony railing as he approached. The vast darkness beyond and the light below now made more sense. As he reached the doorway he could see out into the whole room proper, a grand auditorium of some sort. Not high above his head, suspended below the hive-covered ceiling were spotlights and machines he couldn't figure out. Down on the lower level, there was a corner of an apartment building, complete with street, signs and graffiti, but with one wall missing. The building itself and much of the area surrounding it were the only places in the past 5 floors not completely covered in the flaky hive wall. The old trideo equipment near the missing wall made it plain that this was a set, a street scene for some sort of trideo show.
The astral meanwhile was quite a different story. As Devoted walked towards the door, he was gripped by a massive, full-body sickness. The energies of the place felt like a wind, like a hand reaching through him. The whole of reality pulsed and swayed and still he moved forwards. The assault on his senses began to coalesce from the distant howl of hollow winds to a scream, and the scream properly into a massive buzzing hum. In front of him he saw what looked like a swirling dome of thickest energy, but looking at it, he saw now that it paused it's mad swirling and stared back at him. He felt the full force of countless eyes boring into him. That's when the whole world went away.
-
Devoted hears a scream echoing down the halls of reality, and feels his sanity start to slip. Instinctively he switches his perception back to the material realm to find his mouth wide open and the scream being emitted by his own mouth! He stops screaming, only after his lungs are empty, and kneels on the ground panting while nervous sweat begins to make his comfort level inside his hazmat suit drop even more. With the urge to run fighting his common sense that there is no-where to run, Devoted looks around to the other members of the group and manages to say in broken English, "Bad spirits. Sorry."
After catching his breath, he explains, "The spirits did not cause me harm, it is almost as if they just wanted privacy. Perhaps if we are respectful of them, we will be left alone."
-
At the mention of spirits Machete double checks the pilot on his flame thrower and makes sure it's ready to fire on anything that might close ranks.
-
Rising from his kneel, but still shaky, Devoted follows Ruckus towards the doorway.
-
The balcony section went all around the outskirts of the studio in a semi-circle to your right. To the left was stairs, flattened to more of a ramp with the thickness of the nesting material in this area, headed down to the lower floor. The whole walkway was thick with the crunchy hive material. The double doors were more like two rounded portals the way it built up around the corners. All of this contrasted rather sharply with the bizarre street scene down on the studio floor, where no trace of the stuff could be found. Taking in more of the chamber, there was a series of catwalks overhead, and a ladder to them from the center of the balcony's semi-circular arc. Above that, were several holes in the center of the ceiling. With no utilitarian reason to be there, one would have to assume they were burrowed through by the wasps. The problem at this point was that the catwalks over by the holes came within the area where Devoted had seen the swirling sphere of spirit energy.
Wandering around the balcony to reach the ladder up allowed for a better view of the set down below where the wall was broken away. There, in the false building was a sparse old room. An old-style kitchen area lay on the right, the left wall was covered in armaments from katanas to what seemed to be a 4-pod rocket launcher, and in the middle was a couch with a lamp beside it and one occupant. It seemed to be a dried up old corpse, but even as you watched it laying still as a board, sound from before continued to issue forth from somewhere inside of it.
"Fact is a lack of space... with no baby-fat to hibernate on.. the nursery births the path we're on...
Tears turn corrosive... now everybody smiles and hums... the dogs serve nation within.. spilling our blood before we can..
The brother's-keepers-downers by the yuppies taking uppers... when the saints come marching in.. sell them their deflated flags back..
And tell them the condominiums in heaven are in a petri dish... and you'll never make it out of the petri dish..
No matter how many pills you take... your head is the conspiracy...
Defend the family... try not to sleep... because you've never been killed before.. trying to enter my home no one lives in..
But I'll be a bird in my next life.. if I can escape the claws of christ in this one.. when the lord calls for loss of life..
You're going to be saved like free-range cattle.. with a burger in your mouth..
This isn't a test.. it's an avalanche... if you don't watch your head while it rolls and goes to null...
There is no heaven.. there is no heaven inside of me..
There is no heaven.. there is no heaven inside of me..
There is no me there is no me there is no.. ha!
There is no heaven.. there is no heaven inside of me..
Faith is where's the money.. ain't our day closed.. and dying's our alone time..
In defining self worth.. we're all dirt with digital watches..
Nothing lasts.. not even this.. next year don't vote.. beware of jingoism and bad sloganeering..
If you had to read the headlines.. you'd know the truth is not happening.. not today.. not ever..
Due to recent preoccupation with impending doom.. the unending evil.. made its living off us..
All I have to say to the wall is..... Oh!"
The "corpse" still hasn't moved, but seems to have stopped talking to itself and begun addressing your presence.
"Hello there... I... well..
My.. but you are fine hallucinations aren't you.."
-
Still shaken by his experience in astral space, Devoted has to fight his childish nature to run and hide from the noisy corpse. He observes the reactions of the other members of the group, not sure what to do.
-
Machete's usually cool blank demeanor seems suddenly shaken for an instant. "La chingada...." He mutters pulls down his little gas-mask and quickly sniffs some betel-meth into his nose and pulls it back down. "La chingada...."....and clutches his shiawase blazer a little more tightly.
He looks toward Devoted, whispers sub-vocally "Alright chavolito, you're gonna have to hold it together. You gotta tell us what the hell your mage eyes are seeing....this is what we brought you along for so don't crap out on us now!"
-
Suddenly, Devoted's survival instinct kicks in. He steps forward and speaks to the corpse with a voice full of youth and a slight dash of naivety, "We were on our way to the upper floors. How can we travel to the upper floors without disturbing the hive?"
-
Digger kinda fades to the background and sidles off to the edge of the room, keeping eyes on his team, the hive above and the 'corpse'. He looks ready to open up with the Crusader on the first sign of wasp or corpse movement.
-
"Oh! Good! Good! Goodgoodgood! Unexpected! The upper floors! I suppose.." The thin dried out frame started to shift slowly at first, and with great effort pull itself up. "..I've long needed an excuse to put on my face." The very fabric of reality seemed to forcibly warp with magical energy, apparent to all. Energy from the surrounding air flowed visibly into the dried up body, swelling it from an emaciated husk to a wildly grinning elf of striking appearance. His face was glowing picture of bemusement framed in deep red hair. "Tell me more! Promises! Stories! The end of all things, how was it?! Worlds of words exploding out from subway tunnels to paint the open sky shut tight?! Rifts in the fabric singing out apocalypse groans while hoards of mailmen with weaponized light bills march formations down the dead city strip?!"
Even now restored, there remained the strange sense of words emanating from the man as much as they were spoken.
-
Upon seeing the reaction of the elf to Devoted's question, Machete relaxes a little. It becomes readily apparent that scrounging to survive in the Zone has given Machete a certain level of tolerance for strangeness. He yells over at the stranger, "Hey cabron, mind speaking English? Mine's not so good!"
-
"English! A fine choice! I'm a word machine, without enough words to be composed or the worms to decompose! Excellent choice, really! Trying again!" *ahem* "Melt me a princess thought, like an open wound. To bleed to sleep, to plead to work, to heal no loyalty to things that don't keep clean."
He pauses for a moment searching your faces from 30 meters away.
"Don't know that one then?
I force myself to write, but have no paper and no pen. Only words to keep the self without separated from the self within...
Your story. Everyone carries a story in them. Give yours quickly before the wasps get tired of living and throw themselves on your swords.
No, seriously...
It's only a matter of time before one leaves the clean air of my bubble. They are all quite idiotic little things. Too stupid to live, but too stubborn to die. Prisoners and keepers both of us. A... Mexican standoff, a lifetime in the making. 'Nobody moves or everybody gets it!' Ha!"
-
At the mention of the "clean air", Devoted switches his perception to astral to see if he is still under the effect of the bug spirit's magic.
-
At Machete's insistence, Devoted centered himself and glanced once again with his true eye at the sight before him. He could see again, in the world of forms, but that was no comfort. What he saw and what he felt was surely Hel. All the speech of the end of days snapped to focus and he could see it clearly. The red sphere of energy, no longer swirling, but pulsing with mad fury was the egg which would birth the first cock whose crow would signal Ragnarök. His naked soul was being buffeted by the winds of Hel as he stood witness to the birthing of the world's demise. And that man, that "elf" was the center. Though he could see nothing past the mad swirling of the egg's shell, he knew it to be so. Consumed with this knowledge, he didn't notice when the voices started, but he could feel them in his mind, reaching out, making promises and assurances, massaging his beleaguered brain. The effect served to calm him enough that, no longer shock-stiff in terror, he became aware of their presence like a song in his mind, promising never-ending peace and total acceptance.
Luckily, Devoted didn't get his name by being easily swayed. He felt the strength of Tyr charge though his mind, extirpating the song, so that he could turn back to his task and back to the world of shadows. The material world.
-
Digger speaks up from his spot on the wall,
"If we got a Mexican standoff, at least we brought our own Mexican..." nodding to Machete, "...so's we can maybe do a piece a business. We help you with your bug problem, mebbe you pass over some of that hardware, and you tell us about some drink hereabouts somewheres we were here to find?"
-
"Help me? Oh, Etain preserve! Are we back on that script already? You're from the Star Chamber sent by high elf so and so, and you really liked my performance in 'Midsummer Night' so you thought you'd look me up, and I suppose the big strong one is here to sweep me off my feet and show me the town." He throws Ruckus a wink. "Utopia is waiting just outside these walls, and after a hundred lifetimes in hell I've finally got my invitation! Goody goody!"
The spindly man leapt to his feet and started walking, quite clumsily over to the wall full of armaments. The sight was simultaneously comical and disturbing as his body, though seemingly healthy was still thin as a rail. There was not a gram of fat on his frame. As he moved, it was like he was alternately being pushed and pulled in his stumbles.
"Oh boy, the price of freedom! All the stage props you can carry! And drink! I'd offer you drink, but I don't touch the stuff! Haven't in years!" He was, by this point, lobbing rifles and sub-machine guns lazily into the street outside the set's walls. "I eat the wind exclusively. Speaking of which..." He stopped the weak effort of tossing the guns out on the ground and once again began to work magic so potent that the fabric of reality was seen to warp inward. "I doubt my stomach even works anymore... 'Gone down the American river!' Ha! 'I'm with you in Rockland where you bang on the catatonic piano - the soul is innocent and immortal - it should never die ungodly in an armed madhouse!'" Along with his vigor returned the full strength of his body and coordination. He was now tossing hand grenades and pistols out to the walls on the lower level. He came to an ornate Katana and stopped. "Karl Kombatmage. Such a stupid production... Too much fun! Do they still have trids in your world?"
-
"Yes, I haven't seen that one. Were you an actor in it?" asks Devoted as he starts fumbling with his comlink, trying to send a text to the group with his hazmat gloves on.
The text reads: "Treead carefiully,. Verey ppowerrful."
-
"Ha! I'm an Elf! Naturally I was the villain! ...Well, mentor-turned-villain... But you must have seen it! It grossed more money than Fuchi makes in a year!"
He attempted to balance the sword-in-scabbard upright on the flat of his palm.
-
Digger moves closer carefully to examine the weaponery being scattered, especially when the elf starts tossing the grenades, he is somewhat preturbed about the 'props' comment.
"Yeah, I used watch dose all the time, 'till that one sequel where Karl was ducking a Family hitter for week or more, then managed to get the drop on him. Pops told me that fairy tales are for babies and to leave 'em go."
-
Digger starts to close the distance to the lower level, using his grip feet and playing out climbing line down the ramp to make it easier for others to follow if they so choose.
-
The climb down wasn't much to worry about. The slope made a hasty retreat problematic, but little more. Moving along the wall, facing the set, Digger made his way to a nickel-plated Colt 1911 and picked it up. The weight felt a bit off, but this wasn't a firearm he had extensive experience with. He pulled the slide back to check the chamber, and everything looked good. No round slid in, so he figured it for empty. Not taking chances, he put thumb to hammer and pulled the trigger, feeling its weight bite his thumb a little as he guided it forward. So far, so good. All oiled and working. He checked the barrel and found residue enough to indicate use. He popped the clip and his hopes sank a bit. There was a hose attachment and a little tank. Pulling off the slide showed the chamber was sealed with a gasket and the hammer was attached to a flint system. All this gun fired was propane. But... it was a real weapon, modified for now, but nothing in its operation had been significantly altered to keep it from being fixed for regular fire by an armorer.
-
While Digger was busy inspecting the pistol, he failed to notice an inky form coalesce behind him until his ears were full of buzzing. Devoted, likewise, was caught unawares, being too shaken still from his recent experience. Machete did not have this problem. In fact, he was waiting for exactly this to happen as the other bug materialized behind him, he spun to face it, flamer at the ready.
-
Machete unleashes a blazing fireball from his flame thrower and just paints the two materialized spirits with it. With his environment mask on he looks like a glorified exterminator drenched in sweat.
-
Once he sees that the wasp behind him is nice and covered in napalm he hops over to the ledge leans over and yells "yo Diggs! MOVE CABRONNN!!", andstarts painting the bug on the lower level with flame but the stream goes wide.
-
Digger senses go on on overload he smells napalm and hears the EXTREMELY load buzzing behind him. He is able to spin, duck, unsling his axe and let the wild swing carry him a safe distance when the flamethrower blast hits the floor.
"Who the frag are you trying to hit Tex-mex?"
-
On the ground level, Digger swung his axe around and through the wasp hanging right on top of him. The blade scraped along the floor and then upward in a vicious slash, bisecting the bug down the middle as it pulled itself away from him. Stumbling from the effort of controlling the weapon as it met such little resistance from the ectoplasmic form of the spirit, Digger couldn't help but sink a little as the gash through the creature's center seemed to reseal itself with no noticeable loss.
On the balcony overhead, Devoted fled away from the horrors, scrambling down the balcony as primal terror stalked him from behind. The great rising hum, the eyes that had stared into his soul, they were coming after him. Buzzing nightmares had spilled out of the air, and he was not ready.
Looking back, he saw as Machete painted one full on, face and wings, with napalm, only to watch the napalm slide off its ectoplasmic form into pools on the crunching ground. Machete snapped to the railing and spat a gout of flame, upside down at the bug below, but his stream fell short. Below, several of the prop guns exploded in the pool of burning gel, sending metal fragments flying about in a series of loud pops. Above this though, he heard screaming and full-auto fire coming from the hallway. Blocking it out, he turned to look at the elf below.
"No! No! Unacceptable!" The elf shouted as he brought his hands together in a clap over his head. The air shimmered around the set and a translucent barrier formed around the elf in his mana bubble.
[Musical score: the claustrophobic and terrifying Hopeless Pursuit of Remission (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHLTGhSe-qw)]
-
Machete hoses down the bug nearest him with napalm again and with his other hand he grabs his Mossberg automatic shotgun from his back and readies it in his off-hand, the whole time watching to see the situation down below.
-
"Alright buggy-bee, lets see what you got!" Digger faces off with his foe. Spinning his axe, he tries to set up an impenetrable screen while building momentum for a counterstroke.
-
Insensitive to the earlier axe blow, the inscrutable man-sized wasp lunged at Digger with its stinger, but managed only to hit the air where he used to be. Upstairs, the noticeably diminished creature, still slightly burning, zipped over the gout of flame and attempted the same maneuver against Machete. It's stinger slammed into Machete's shoulder, but no effect was felt through the armor. Meanwhile, from the upstairs hallway, autofire continued to rip outwards, stray bullets thudding into the balcony and careening off the elf's barrier, while, on the inside of the translucent barrier, several wasps had materialized and began throwing themselves bodily against the elf's mana construct. One, noticeably bigger than the rest, turned on the elf, getting right in his face and buzzing angrily.
"Oooh! ho! ho! ho! he.. he.. heeeeee... Try it you fragging bee-slag! Try it all day long! It's never going to work, Melissa! The sun will explode before you get one over on me you sad hack!"
-
On the way down the stairs, Devoted stops moving. He suddenly feels very uncomfortable about coming any closer to the elf, so he shouts to the group, "We need to get out of here! The bugs are attracted to the Elf!"
Feeling helpless and knowing that running from a spirit in the material realm is like trying to run from a bullet, he watches Machete, hoping he will know what to do.
-
Discarding his empty flamer, Machete swung the shotgun in his off hand to snug against his shoulder. His hand racing to find the trigger, he fired at the giant bug that seemed to be everywhere around him as it buzzed menacingly. The shot went wide, over its head, splashing off a wall in the distance. Devoted meanwhile, seeing that his companions had no hope of extricating themselves from this combat, decided that enough was enough, and, gathering a large amount of energy from the astral, he launched it, visibly cracking the air as it traveled to its target, only to shimmer across its skin harmlessly. Harmlessly, but not without effect. The insect tuned, almost as if it had melted into itself, and started a bee line straight towards Devoted's position.
Meanwhile on the lower level, Digger turned his artful dodge into a powerful swing straight through the center mass of the insect he had engaged in combat. It passed through once again, separating the creatures ectoplasmic form, but, this time, as it pulled itself together, it was noticeably diminished.
-
The recently cleaved bug swung itself at Digger, striking with everything it had. Digger, coming off such a huge swing had only moments to react, and did so, dropping down and away from the mad thing's imposing stinger. It brushed by him, leaving more than a touch of disquietude in its path.
Meanwhile, above, the wasp which had previously been striking at Machete was instead striking out towards Devoted at rapid speed. While it was bearing down on him directly, Ruckus stepped out of the hallway, leveled his rifle and fired a short burst directly into its center mass. The creature's form tumbled, ass over head, losing definition all the while as it dissolved into a quickly-evaporating mess and was gone. "Fragging things thought they could sneak up on m-" His words were cut short by a cough as Ruckus collapsed, the sound of gurgling blood backing up in his gas mask came through clearly to Machete's well trained ears. In moments he was still.
-
Machete didn't have time to care about Ruckus' problems when there was still work to be done. Seeing the first wasp collapse into nothingness in front of him, he instead rushed to the edge of the balcony, swung his weapon over the top and, sighting the bug just three meters below his smartlink's camera, blasted a fragmentation round straight through its abdomen. The thing collapsed like gelatin, losing definition and spilling onto the still burning ground where it disappeared. The calm was almost immediately interrupted by the advance of CodeMonkey's doberman drone still trying to fire on the bugs trapped in the elf's barrier. Machete could hear the click-click-click sound of its empty SMG as it moved in standing position toward the balcony rail. Machete made a move towards it but was hit with a searing pain in his chest. A fire raced through his veins, making him stumble and gasp. For a moment he thought about what must be happening inside him - about what happened to Ruckus. He had heard tales of this venom, a magical thing that killed you from the inside. There was no cure, but there sure was pain. He gritted his teeth and dropped to his knees. The fact that he was still alive was refreshing, but more so was the painkillers he'd managed to apply with his medkit.
Below the mad elf continued talking to the large materialized wasp.
"Ah, so that one's a magician! No wonder your panties are in a bunch! You thought you could use him, eh Melissa? He'd make you a queen? Maybe get rid of me? Hmmm? Did you forget, you tramp!? This is my production! I don't care what exec you slept with! Without me, it's curtains for all of you! I was glad when they got you, Melissa! I could have found you then! I could have saved you from that sad-shit understudy! I didn't want to! And look what he made of you, you buzzing idiot! Ha! You can't even do that! You can't even remember what a worthless cooze you were! You!... ah.. Oh."
The elf looked up remembering your presence.
"Well... finished already? That's good. That's nice. What were we talking about? Ah yes! GETTING ME THE FRAG OUT OF HERE!"
The materialized wasps still beating themselves against the barrier paused for a moment and began circling around inside the shimmering sphere, only throwing themselves against its wall occasionally.
"Oh, sorry sorry.. I'm not used to screaming like that. Though there was that one period where all I did was scream.. I couldn't even tell I was doing it after a while. I don't know how long back that was though... I had completely lost my mind by that point. Ha hahaha! It could have been years! I.. try not to go completely mad too often.. It's like a vacation - The more often you go, the less special it becomes! ...Anyway, enough of that. Introductions! Hello. I'm Holland Green. I am a millionaire, and I am trapped here by a hundred fucking wasp spirits."
-
Devoted blinks at the Holland with confusion. He doesn't even bother to sort out the conflict in his mind about the possible sexual relationship between himself and a bug spirit, it is just best not to think about such things, at least that's Devoted's philosophy.
He moves to Ruckus's body to assess the situation. He accesses the medkit strapped to his leg to find out if there is any signs of life left in the guy, and he waits for instructions from the medkit.
-
The angry beeping of the medkit's various systems made it plainly obivous as the stain forming on the ground. Ruckus was stone dead. His internal organs had swollen and ruptured and his blood was so acidic that it was melting through his vein walls. In the hallway, CodeMonkey was slumped against the wall, breathing but not moving.
-
Devoted listened to the heartless, monotonous beep. Tears welled up in his eyes, he tried to fight them back but didn't succeed immediately.
"He's dead.", was all he managed to whisper in subvocal without his voice breaking up.
He knelt next to the lifeless body, placed the tips of his fingers on Ruckus' head and recited a Finnish prayer to Tyr and Odin, praising the strength he'd shown in life, and to Freya, asking the Valkyrie to safely guide him to a better afterlife. He prayed with his back to the rest, hopefully hiding his tears long enough for him to gather himself back together.
He had trouble convincing himself that people like Ruckus would find a place in Heaven, Valhalla or whatever kind of afterlife Ruckus had believed in... According to the teachings he'd received his whole life, people like Ruckus were more likely to end up in hell. But somehow those teachings seemed too black and white... the Gods would have the wisdom to see the difference between all the shades of gray that formed the world.
-
"La chingada..." you hear Machete whisper through clenched teeth as he comes over to stand over Ruckus's body. He kneels down next to him on one knee and bows his head. He then makes the sign of the cross on himself and proceeds to carefully look through Ruckus's pockets and when he finds something he could use he inspects it and puts it in his pack. When he sees the other teammates looking at him, he pauses for a moment and looks up. "What?.... hey, this guy's gone off to a better place my friends and left us in this shithole to fend for ourselves. When we find those bottles of wine we'll toast for him but right now let's grab his gear and move. As much as I'd love to help Mr. Holland, unless he can help us, I don't give a fuck."
That's the most you've heard him say the whole run and it's obvious he's a little shaken and trying to hide it.
-
"To the victor, the spoils." he muttered quietly more to himself than anyone else. "Only here just surviving for an hour is a victory... and we're not winning."
Devoted stood up and straightened himself. "We failed him. The least we owe him is not to leave him here as a snack to the next ghoul or gargoyle...", he threw a glance in the direction of the skeletal elf surrounded by spirits, "or something."
-
The elf identifying himself as Holland seemed staggered by the lackluster response to his words. And by "seemed staggered," that is to say he actually physically staggered backwards in confusion. As a man used to entertaining himself, it seemed the change in audience was taking time to adapt to.
"Good lord! Have.. Wait. I get it! You're from a world without the concept of money! Incredible! As unexpected as this is, I'm certain that it must be the only explanation! So very curious... Allow me a moment to digest this new information. I trust you won't mind if I continue to shield you from certain death while I contemplate what currency you might use in this amazing new world of yours."
-
Devoted bit his lips and balled and released his fists slowly. For all he knew, the eccentric elf had known about the wasps' ambush in advance but hadn't given a warning just to get some entertainment. He'd heard the madman's promise of millions, but that could just as well be mad ravings like everything else that had come out of him.
-
Digger walks back in from the hall, dragging the rigger with him. After dumping him near the medkit, he turns back to the elf.
"Eyyy-YO! Money works just fine in these parts, although barter is better in the immediate vicinity, I got a bank account on the outside the Zone too. What we don't have is a freakin' clue as to what exactly it is ya want us to do? We didn't come to rescue you, we didn't even know you wuz here, so we got STUGATZ we can do for ya at the moment, any ideas?"
-
CodeMonkey from the relative safety was jacked into the Doberman. From the close to floor position the world looks differently, and there is that need to just stand up on the back legs. But he just zoomed in registering the picture of the mad elf.
Once that is done he flipped to the blimp.
Jacking into the flying drone isn't safest thing. he recalled the manual. First, watch for the wind there is a splitsecond moment noone is steering the drone. If the drone hovers close to hard objects, there is a possibility of crashing. Secondary watch out for sensory overload. ... Whoa!!!, that is scary, one second a doglike crouch and in the other the overhelming 360 degree visual feedback with hawklike zoom and that itching of the legs/engine/the thing below...
Code took a full circle around the tower, then zoomed windows in the nearby tower that was hosting the sniper trying to spot him and jacked out. Back in AR he tasked the drone to fly to the top of the tower fast taking a random turns on the way up to avoid any potential shooters or gargoyles. The goal is to assess number of floor left to the top and general condition of the sections. He left the visual input in the open AR window.
Busy busy busy he muttered to himself reloading the clip in the Doberman's Ingram.
-
The top of the tower stood tall as it had when Code first sent his blimp circling it. The tapering end of the sky-scraper with it's little curling divot made it look a bit like a flower bud, as if it would one day open up. Of course it wasn't designed to do so, only to appear as something naturally beautiful and toweringly magnificent. He could easily recognize the solar glass on the side of the building as a source of power, so, hypothetically there was electricity available here. Actually, that hypothesis was confirmed earlier when the blimp was shocked by a sort of external security and had momentarily shut down. The extent of the electricity available was still in question. The elf had also had a small quartz lamp lighting the room in the middle of the set, so at least some of the power must be available for use inside the building.
Code pondered this as the blimp drifted lazily around the upper floors. He tried to overlay the building plans Mike had provided in order to get an idea of what was up above them. The 90th floor contained the last of the smaller personal rooms that one could logically assume were dressing rooms of some sort. Above that were a few more meeting rooms and offices, but above that were the executive suites. That's were the real haul would be. Art, jewelry and all manner of expensive trinkets could be there. Rounding the building to where the divot was found on the west side of the 100th floor, he saw at least one good reason why a helicopter team had never come in here to scavenge. The landing pad indicated in the building plans was completely gone, sheered off entirely, with what looked like a blast door covering where the entrance/exit would be. That was the sign of a lockdown. Someone must have hit the panic button and sealed it off.
The southern-adjacent building where the sniper had fired from showed no movement from this height and angle. The southern building itself was a pale, blocky, utilitarian structure, oafish when compared to the Cross-sim tower. As noted before, most of the windows seemed to be smashed out, allowing for the terrible Chicago winds to tear through it. The street would probably provide more shelter than those wind-swept upper floors. Lowering the blimp further to investigate it, Code saw a more interesting sight on the ground between the two buildings. Where the Gargoyle had fallen, there was a small crowd of people gathered around. One of them, holding a long rifle, was addressing the others, though, he was too far away for Code's blimp to hear anything said.
-
Up in the tower, the bizarre elf laid down on the floor and started to move his arms and legs as though he was making a snow angel in the thick dust. "If you can't do a job, farm it out. I don't expect- Woah, look out! Ms. Busy-bee is on the move! Best to duck!"
The large wasp Holland had been shouting at earlier had turned away from the supine elf as he'd been talking and was focusing its attention on Devoted.
"Watch out magic-bag! She's got the hots for you! Don't you open yourself up to her! She will ruin you just like she ruined the remake of Native Son!"
-
Once again self inducted paralysis taken over the CodeMonkey's body. When he opened up to his Matrix senses the glory of the electron night was surrounding him.
First things first. He opened up Doberman's ARO and issued guard body order, and left it with the view from Doberman's camera. Now down to the Stormcloud node...
Let's take a look what commlink nodes are subscribed to this cell... Monkey's icon was sculpted as a cartoon like chimp character and it was programmed to make random moves during the instants on inactivity. It took the moment to scratched itself over the back with the enormous long hands.
Oh there it is... damn no commlink nodes...
-
He turned around as Holland mentioned him and found himself looking straight into the Wasps compound eyes. They seemed to trap him as he felt the monster's mental tendrils reaching out to him, probing his mind for weakness. It felt as if a dozen ice cold tentacles were trying to dig into his skull.
Devoted instinctively focused on who he was, why he was and at this moment even more important, where he was. Standing in a puddle of blood flowing out of the lifeless body of a person who he had fought alongside with as a team, only to have ended up being killed by the poisonous sting of a creature just like this one.
Anger flared hotter than the sun, burning the tentacles. Determination built up inside his mind and grasped the tentacles before the Wasp could pull them away. The fire of his righteous anger followed them back to their source. He felt the Insect Spirit's anguish as his burning rage entered its mind.
It was he who let it go.
"We've got one bug left to squish."
-
Having been so viciously rebuked, the large wasp, faded from sight, back into the astral. Several other wasps still circled inside the magician's dome, throwing themselves against the barrier, but several more disappeared along with the large one.
-
Digger felt completely out of his element, but with no one else stepping up, he pressed the elf to keep him focused and on topic.
"Looks like your girlfriend is giving us a second to chat. We are here, and I guess D is willing, so lay it out for us capo, what do you need doing?"
-
Holland perked up and sat cross-legged on the floor. He was suddenly somber and spoke quieter and calmer.
"Oh, thank ghost.. You're like angels.. making that horrid bitch go away.. How did you do that? Oh, please, god, teach me to do that."
He bent forward slightly, dropped his head into his hands and started to sob quietly.
"I just don't care. I don't fragging care. Call the army. Call Lucien Cross. Call the Ghostbusters. Call freaking Ares. Just please.. I don't want to be here anymore. I can't be here anymore."
The strain of maintaining the protective spells seemed to be taking a toll on the mad elf's composure.
-
CodeMonkey, snapped out of his VR trance to find himself dragged to a different part of the floor. Now propped up against the balcony railing by Digger, he reached into his front pouch and pulled out a long tube. Twisting it and opening it, a metal mesh came out and, clearing the tube's mouth, fell open to produce a dish antenna. Code pulled the jack from the bottom of the dish and plugged it into his commlink. This done, he pressed a button on its stem, producing a small spike when he proceeded to shove into the balcony railing to anchor the device. The world wide matrix blinked on in his link and he dove in.
After several minutes of research, Code managed to gather a good deal of information on this man, Holland Green. First, he found a filmography briefly detailing his life and work. Born 2013, he is world-famous trid star and stage performer well known for his work in several high-budget trideo productions as well as his initial rejection of the simsense format for storytelling.
A short clip from an academic repository pops up. "If we could learn as much from feeling our face as from looking in a mirror we would not need mirrors. Film-craft allows us the perspective to see ourselves while being free of ourselves. I believe that a level of removal from the action of the story is necessary for greater understanding to be reached. To simply feel is not enough to learn, otherwise, we would all be sages." The voice matches that of the man below well enough in a cursory inspection.
It goes on to say he retired to Québec City in 2058, where he is seen occasionally, but prefers his privacy. He owns several high-end restaurants in the country of Québec as well as the UCAS and is know to frequent them occasionally. The old images of his face are immediately recognizable as similar to the rail-thin elf on the floor of the set, but there are some subtle differences besides his gaunt, skeletal form. The more current images taken since the crash of 63 show a man with a much fuller and happier face, which contains several of the identifying marks from the filmography's pictures which the elf below lacks.
-
Digger suddenly snaps his fingers.
"Hey, mebbe we can get the firebug ghostie from downstairs to come up and burn the buggies the rest of the way out? That could work right?"
-
After a little bit of Matrix searching and reading, CodeMonkey saw a swirling ball of light fly into view and pulse warmly to indicate that the blimp had lowered itself into range. He momentarily gave up his search to jump in and pilot it close enough to hear the discussion being held over the gargoyle's shattered form. Back in the blimp, Code quickly confirmed that all his systems were functioning properly and began to drift around the outside of the building. He was very glad that the wind was slack at this time of the evening since it wouldn't interfere with the audio on his trid-cam. There were five men standing about. Four men with dusty long coats, shotguns and rifles standing toward the building and a wiry-looking elf with a large gun on his back which you earlier identified as the sniper. It seemed he was speaking heatedly with four other men.
"...an asshole, Morgan. You have no clue what you're trying to pull down on your own head."
"Is fancyboy Jack afraid of a few ghosts? Way you were swooning over that shooter I thought maybe you'd found someone to replace your brother for your nightly ass-"
The sniper, identified as Jack, snapped his fist into the speaker's face, hard. The other man, Morgan, fell straight to his back almost as if the punch and the fall were a single motion. Jack then looked at the other three men and finally up to where the blimp was idling. He looked at it for a second, blinking twice, then turned his gaze back toward the man writhing on the ground, covering his face.
"..pff-uggin.. gill you.. puggin dead nan.. Jack. fink you gan.."
Without another word, Jack jumped into the air and came down hard on the man's chest with his knees. There was no fight left in him. Hard to tell if there was anything left in him. Jack stood up and brushed himself off a little.
"Get him out of here. I'm going up there to look for my brother."
As the three others dragged the unconscious man away, Jack pulled out a cigarette, lit it and stared at the blimp for a second.
"You get that last part?" He said, smiling. "I'm coming up."
He pointed to himself, the building, and then the sky. laughing a little, he put his hands in his pockets and started strolling towards the Cross building.
While Code was watching this take place, another orb of light appeared in his vision, floating just on the periphery of his sight. He reached out and touched it now with his mind, resolving it into a sensor view from the van on the west side of the building. It seemed there was a vehicle approaching..
-
Stormcloud blinked twice (zoomed in, zoomed out) with a optic camera in confirmation, climbed a little higher and focused on the incoming vehicle. Code inside the drone added another query to the research - identifying similarites between pictures of Holland and 'Jack'. General query on 'Jack' as well, and fired up node detection analysis on the incoming vehicle.
-
Code caught sight of the vehicle about two city blocks to the north and closing fast over the rough terrain of the pot-holed street. A couple of honks to nearby pill-boxes let anyone in earshot know that this fast mover was an expected sight. It looked like an open-framed dune buggy or ATV with a massive.. thing at the wheel. It pulled up outside the western entrance near the van, and almost immediately, the van's TIe software resolved two hidden nodes. One from the car and one from the man. The nearby elevated train line along that road obscured the sight considerably, so that it was hard to make out details, but it seemed like a large humanoid got out of the vehicle, went around to the back, and lifted the better half of a motorcycle out the rear to carry toward the tower.
-
Subvocal: "As far as I know, this weird elf and the bugs are working together. How else could he have survived here for that long?"
"You want to know how to do that? Gather your thoughts and fight those damned things."
Devoted looked again at the dead body of one of his fellows, then crouched next to it and started dragging it towards the elevator shaft. With the help of the others, he could lower it and himself to get it to the fire. If they didn't, he'd have to levitate again, but he had to admit to himself he hated the idea of using magic in this place more and more; the bugs were obviously attracted by it, and that had resulted in Ruckus' dead. Maybe if he hadn't...
"If you're not going to help, I'll do this alone. I'm not leaving his body here." He wanted to say it over subvocal, but the physical strain of dragging the body caused his voice to be louder than he meant.
-
The broken lower levels stretched like a maze of pit fires, huddled masses and unwashed chaos across Jack's field of vision as he entered what was once the building's lobby. A long pitted and bullet ridden security desk sat in front of the defunct elevator banks and a haggard man brandishing a tire iron glared menacingly from behind some plastic construction material now acting as a domicile. The Gatekeeper. Every building had one. You paid your tolls here first or they made sure every squatter was looking to gut you as you delved deeper into the structure. It worked like some kind of fucking magic and the word of mouth spread like it did with the bugs via hive-mind. The Keeper had the look of desperation, a look of knowing that this plot of broken plascrete was his and if you wanted it, there would be blood and to the victor goes the spoils.
The squatter eyed the Elf and the Elf eyed him. How long had it been for this bearded resident? How long had he been living with his lot in life? How long had he been defending his territory inside the building from those forced to survive outside or from the raiders and the bugs? Either way, a tiny bottle of Isopropyl Alcohol slid and bounced along the the broken floor, stopping near his plastic abode. Jack pointed to the bottle and tipped his cover. Payment for a weathered eye and a struggling family. The guy could trade that or invest it with the local healer. It might feed the younglings and the woman the Elf's thermoptics had picked up cowling behind the man's plastic walls one day.
One Day. Jack thought about what that really meant here in the CZ. One Day was the modern Chicago dream. It held promise. It held hope. Today, however, it was still nothing but a fucking dream. He unslung his rifle and watched as the light show signaling the Smart connection played out like Christmas in his field of vision. His dream died with his brother. Today was all he had left. Tomorrow he'd mother-fuck those responsible, sure, but today was what mattered. One day he'd be back up with his brother running shit again. One Day.
The horn blasts echoed off the plascrete canyon walls and reverberated inside of the building's lobby. A sanctioned runner. Sometimes a good thing but sometimes not. Wheeling around, Jack took a knee and readied his rifle to the shoulder. He was exposed to anyone coming in via the front entrance. Not a good tactical situation. If said runner was making a line for the building Jack hoped he came with good intentions.
-
The hulking thing hauls the bike scrap with apparent ease towards the tower. It's just over six feet tall but ridiculously broad, with wide arms that hang nearly to its knees, but making out more features is difficult due to its heavy protection. A full set of bike racing gear, layered with obvious gel packs, dyed in a makeshift urban camo and with a matching helmet covers the thing. The fingerless gloves do reveal heavy, spade-like digits or claws that could be covered in what looks like bark.
As it spots Jack, the thing begins to reach for its helmet with its spare hand and bellows out in a gravelly, deadpan voice, "Jack. Shit. Good ta see another ol Haymarketer kickin around still."
The helmet comes off, revealing what could possibly be some sort of ork (if one relaxed their eyes and got reaal imaginative about it), with a bald head, yellowed tusks and a bull-thick neck. What really grabs your attention is the fact it looks like the lovechild of some Bavarian ogress and a giant maple tree, with thick brownish bark-like skin mottled with green licheny patches. A few tiny fern-like growths around the ears stretch eagerly skyward as the helmet comes off, seeking out whatever sun they can. The treeman's face is about as blunt and expressionless as his voice, made all the more so by opaque protective covers on his eye sockets designed to look like curved panes of amber.
"Still smokin them death sticks, eh? Shit'll kill ya, man." He grunts, adding, "You here on biz too? Lemme just trade in this hunkajunk with the slags for some supplies, an we can talk shop."
If there is a rifle pointed in his direction from the wiry elf, the treeman pays it no mind. Jack's good people, a trait rarer than fresh food among Zoners, and you treat good people like kin if you want this city to shine once more.
He looks back in the direction of the van for a brief moment, grunting again.
-
Distance scrolled down the right side of Jack’s field of vision thanks to his connected range finder as the walking tree expunged itself from the Humvee.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph, you’re one ugly sight this late in the day, my man. What’re you looking to trade that pile of shit for, anyway? Oh, hey, not for nothin', I could use a hand getting Jim’s body back. He’s upstairs somewhere. I got some beer back at the Atoll if you're game.”
Tossing the guttering cigarette towards the door, Jack pats the breast pocket on his vest out of habit. The soft pack is still there. Lowering the weapon from his shoulder, he opens the loop on the retractable stock. He feels it close into itself rather the watches it happen and reconnects the weapon back across his chest as he shakes out a new cigarette. Hanging it loosely from his lips, he motions with his lighter-laden hand towards the bike parts.
"Nice haul, by the way. Dare I ask where you scammed it? I scoped what I assume is a group of scav’s up there from across the street. I don’t know if they’re jumpy or what but I’d rather have a walking Red Wood at my back if they get weird. You need a hand walking that toaster somewhere? I'd offer to carry it but, well...."
Jack motions with the lighter at the big man and then at himself.
"It probably wouldn't work out too well considering..."
-
Digger moves to the shaft and gently takes Ruckus' body from the mage.
"I won't leave him here either, but you don't bury the dead till the fight is over. Let's take this a step at a time, we are on the clock here kid, and the job comes first, kay? Now, get it together."
-
"Fight them.. ha! Ha! Haha! HAHAHAHAHAHa." Holland fell back laughing until his form shook. "Uhhhh.. Fight them... Thank you... I needed that, Magic-bag.. Thank you." Once again the elf was laying on his back unmoving. "You have a talent for delivery son.. or.. or daughter.. It's hard to tell under that full-body condom you're wearing."
"Wait, where's the big guy with the rifle?"
-
"Ya, I'm game soon as I take care a this. I ran into a Horde ganger who needed ta commune with nature. He didn't seem ta need the resta this bike afterwards. Figured I could get some food and some cooking supplies for my 'kitchen'."
Gardener does a quick barter with the Tower squatters for some chems from the hydroponics plus passage, letting them know he'll come pick them up soon as he's back from upstairs.
Fitting his helmet back on, he ambles over to Jack and mutters, "Ya, them scavs could be jumpy all right. Got a couple armed slobs in the van. Mean drone, too. You got a redwood at yer back so long's I got a fast elf at my front."
He does a mental check of his gear, the combat load vest and slings on the Remington and Ingram shifting and readjusting to keep everything snug. He gives Jack a thumbs-up. "Ok, let's do this."
-
Code, put set the blimp to hove several floor above their current location and circle the tower sensing for troubles. Then triangulated the trolllike creature link on the trid map of the tower that the blimp has built and put a loop in the van's sensors to update the location as it moves. Then switched to the Doberman and used it speaker to transmit voice without leaving VR. "Mr Green. Can you go with us? We'll think something on the way. Guys, we'll have company two armed and dangerous just entered the building, one said he's going up looking for a brother. There must be more people like Holland here. Do you mind if I call the drone Ruckus? That would honor him?" The entire speech sounded strange to the point of creepy, voice from the combat drone, subject not obviously linked, sentenced lacked intonation, and the body of CodeMonkey was just sitting still, not even twitch of the tail.
Afterward he put the AR with visual&audio of the surrounding and sunk back to the research on Holland.
-
A mental checklist popped into Jack’s head had as he searched for an appropriate path to ascend. He had his weapon, his associated mags, his pry bar, his head tech was working fine and he had a man-bush guarding his back. He’d gone into trouble with less. Jack took a second to orient his systems. A mental command started a chain reaction within his body as the elf flipped on all of his combat systems.
Buzzing and whirring filled his audio senses as his internal systems kicked over to active mode. His fingers tingled, the hair on his arms stood to attention and the weight on his sore feet seemed to lighten a touch. He felt his implanted systems come online and begin to settle on “full active”. His senses told him he was “switched on” and not in the strip-club sense of the phrase, when targeting data streamed into his field of vision as the targeting reticule that was being beamed onto his iris swiveled and danced over every possible target.
Tree-Man could probably feel the level of activity inside of Jack at some point in the process. His heart raced, his pheromones we literally bumping chemicals into his immediate area, and his limbs vibrated in fits of controlled seizure. Dr. Frankenstein was a pussy compared to Jack’s cyber-doc.
“Gardie, you know anything about critters? I, ugh, forgot to mention something…. we’re probably gunna’ run into some local fauna and I’m pretty sure it knows we’re coming.”
He grits his teeth for the coming pummeling, flinches, and finally lights his cigarette.
“Yeah, my bad.”
-
Devoted lets go of the dead body without struggle. His emotions had been shifting from grief to anger and determination. Digger's comment made something inside his mind 'click'.
Tyr would demand honor, would not allow fallen allies to be left behind. But he would finish the fight first. He would demand courage from his followers, bravery to fight back and see that justice would be done and this death avenged. Grief would come later.
Tyr had helped him brace his mind against the intrusion of the insect spirit, had shown that he expected strength and valor. Devoted realized he had responded to that sign of the Gods only with weakness. No more.
"You're right. Sorry. It will not happen again."
He stood there looking ashamed of himself for a second or two when Code's message shook him out of it.
Yes, I think he would enjoy shooting some more of these things. he sent as a reply.
As for Mr. Green here; do any of you trust him or a word of what he's saying?
-
"S'all good kid."
Digger looks at the Doberman, it was always creepy when Code did that, but when he finally had something to say, it was usually worth it.
"I think the only thing Ruckus would say to that would be to work on your aim, furball. This is all kinds a trouble we don't need or really have much time for. Code, can you raise Mikey and see if he can be of any use at this point or maybe get a link to those yahoos coming up? Cuz Mama D'Angelo's baby boy is out of ideas."
Looking at Devoted he says, "There are about a million easier scams this guy could be pulling, so yeah I believe him. I think he his bat-shit crazy and next to useless, but I don't think we are being played."
-
Southside Chicago. October 9th, 2072. 5:19pm - 87th floor.
"Oh! 'Mr. Green!' I like that! I like that a lot! No one has said my name to me in.. What year is it? Anyway, I'd like to return the favor. Hopefully robots, at the least, have the manners to identify themselves to someone who has saved them from blundering into a fate worse than death. So, what is your name? What is your quest? How can getting me out of here help you today?"
While the strange elf was talking, Digger brought up his comm. The auto-networking had hooked him up to the matrix through CodeMonkey's link to the satellite, giving him outbound calling capability. He pinged out to Mike, whose deep, weathered voice promptly answered. <<"Digger. What's the trouble.">>
Southside Chicago. October 9th, 2072. 5:19pm - 28th floor.
Jack had spent the past week and a half in The Greenhouse, as the local Union guys called this tower, trying to get up the fire-ruined skeleton to kill the Gargoyle which was currently laying shattered on the ground outside. Now it was dead by someone else's hand, and he didn't exactly know how to deal with that. He just wanted to see what was left up there and to meet the guy who'd gunned down his brother's killer in three unbelievable shots. He needed some sort of closure. He flexed his hand a little and thought about what that fuck-up Morgan was trying to do. He wanted to try and ambush the scavvies on the way down, forgetting that the Gargoyle was better at ambushing then they'd ever be and that there was a damn mage up there who'd been literally swarming with spirits. Morgan's idiot ass would have gotten them in a lot of trouble. You can't starve out a mage, and you can't surprise one. Even Morgan was better off beat into a coma than dead.
Gardner had never been up in this building before. He came by pretty regularly in the past 5-6 years since they'd gotten the huge open-air lobby's built-in hydroponics working full time growing food, but as far as he knew there wasn't anything in the main building besides personal quarters. The Greenhouse was pretty far north of the Union's main turf, which made the place a bit of an outpost for solitary traders like himself who didn't like the sense of being outnumbered one would find in a main camp. He had to admire the demo charges on the walls though. Nice touch for an outpost. This place wasn't going to fall into another gang's hands.
Jack and Gardner emerged from the stairway at its plateau on the ruined 28th floor, both in silence. This was a place which demanded it. Thirty stories of bare, swirling ironwork, like the bones of a god. Taking in the scene, including several large craters from debris-bombs dropped today and on Jack's two previous attempts upward, the two found a black rope hanging from one of the center columns like an invitation. It seemed the scavs were either too confident or in too much of a hurry to think to pull it up after them.
-
"And how, exactly, did you save us? So far, all you've done is babble nonsense and laugh while one of us got killed by your little friends. How can getting you out help us?"
-
Southside Chicago. October 9th, 2072. 5:19pm - 87th floor.
The elf turned his head and looked at the young man for a moment, studying him and coming to the conclusion that the lad was actually serious, and, apparently, completely clueless.
"You've already killed one friend by being a fool. I suggest you quiet yourself while the grown ups talk, lest you kill the rest of them. In the mean time, please keep your eyes on the many wasps still physically throwing themselves at you. If, for some reason, my barrier goes down, you will want to kill yourself before they reach you."
-
Gardener craned his head back, peering dubiously up the building's interior. "If a tree falls in the Cross Tower an only a wisass elf is around to laugh at it...." He pokes at the rope.
His right hand shifts back as the Ingram sling relaxes, targeting feeds coming online just in case. Let's hope the software doesn't have to rely on the "expert" system today. Goddamn cost-cutting TrumanTech simware.
"I'm open to ideas. Don't really care for this rope. Lemme know if you want me to be quiet or loud if things get squirrelly."
-
Digger puts a hand on Devoted's arm and steps forward again, keying open his comm so Mike could hear him.
"Well Mista Greene, I am not sure what else to tell you. I'm Digger, we came here on a salvage mission, and we cad me across you in little magical fix. If you kept them wasps from killing all of us like poor Ruckus then you have The Family's thanks. I am going to assume those guys heading up aren't with you, and you really are keep that queen from busting loose, but we don't really have the mojo to help a rich and famous and powerful mage like you. By the way sir, you might want to go easy on the kid, he is the best spellslinger you got available to help right now, I'm just sayin', no disrespect."
Digger had his hands up and talking fast while putting himself between the two, just like that time that Frank 'The Ear' wanted gut Joey Chips before the Quad Graphix job. "This is why I stay in the sewers....I really need a drink." He thought to himself.
-
Holand sat back up, put his hands in his lap and began speaking in an even, neutral tone. The words rose out of his mouth as if from a pool deep inside of him.
"Hello Mr. Digger. I understand you're not prepared for the predicament you've found yourself in, and I'm quite sorry about your friend. I didn't know they'd woken up. The wasps. I do not look at them. They get very hostile when I look at them. They want to rip my soul from my body and carry it off to their home to feast upon it. They are crazy. If I die, then my soul will be torn from the Wheel of Life by them. I can not allow this. So I have decided to outlast them. Has that time come now? I can only hope so. My existence is a constant state of pain. A howling hunger whose mouth refuses to end. You could never know the torture of it. To be alone in this place is so terrible. I try to numb myself to it. To be not myself is the only way to exist. They don't seem to have this problem. They mostly sleep, the stupidest ones. They can't even see me. They are so dumb. The slightly less stupid ones can see me. They appear sometimes and I scream at them. Ms. Busy-bee keeps them from me. The nymph is smart enough to control them. She knows that, if I die, there will be nothing keeping the clouds at bay. The clouds are everywhere and will kill them all. Your friend in the bag knows this. They leave me alone now. They have been, at least. Now they are desperate for your friend. Ms. Busy-bee will sacrifice anything to have him. I am afraid of what might happen. If I drop my barriers, they will come after you again. They will kill all of you and take him. They will break his mind open and travel the bridge through his thoughts. She will be a queen. Gareth's sacrifice will be for nothing. The longer you wait, the more desperate they will become. I do not know what they will do."
Meanwhile Mike continued to speak to Digger over his commlink. <<"Digger! What the hell? Did you ghost-dial me? Is that even possible with these things? God damn it, who the hell is talking over there and why the hell won't he shut up?!">>
-
Digger subvocalizes into the comm while appearing to consider hollands words.
"Jeez Mikey, have I gotta hold everyone's fraggin' hand on this job? I am trying to catch you up while I am talking to this guy we found up here, 'kay? You got any other assets running around? Cuz we are a bit shy at the moment, what with suddenly having to deal with a wasp hive up here and Ruckus gettin' whacked and all."
Digger suddenly looks up, "Hey is a nymph's hive easier to kill than a queen's hive?" he asks the room in general.
-
Jack wonders off mentally as Green Been yammers. His attention is fixed elsewhere. The structure of the building’s upper floor, or at least the ones he can see above his position, look like a mish-mash of shit conditions and passably sound ones. Jack picks up his jaw and turns back towards Gardie.
“What’s your call, my man? Upward yonder or wait ‘em out? I’m thinking they’re here for a reason. Nobody climbs this high into a crumbling sky tickler without due cause. Maybe it’s a profitable one…”
A toothy grin stretches across Jack’s face as he thinks about a possible ticket out of The Zone…or at least a decent payday. They didn’t call him Jack Thievery for nothin’.
-
<<"...what?">> There is a pause. <<"Nope. Still the same. I keep playing it back and it's still coming out as nonsense.">> You hear Mike sigh and go silent again.
<<"Digger, am I gonna to have to decipher exactly why you're telling me a bunch of insane shit calm as if you were ordering a pizza? If there's something or someone controlling your brain, please keep talking to me as if you're out of your mind. That will be the signal. One second. I'll call Code.">>
CodeMonkey was busying himself by piling through massive amounts of data, cross-referencing Holland, Cross Applied Technologies, Jack and a bunch of other things when Mike's call came in. He mentally opened the channel to talk and surf.
<<"Code. It's Mike. Are you okay? Digger says Ruck's dead and you're going to single-handedly attack a bug hive. He seems to find this inconvenient with his current resources. Does that sound about right to you?">>
-
In the VR CodeMonkey icon eaten a banana from the heap that was being piled by the smart frames (strange way to picture feeding batches of data to the Search and Browse programs, but that was the Code's way) - and a second later a printout appeared in his hand. Code scanned it and thrown over the second heap of similar printouts.
He addressed then an AR window then appeared to the right and abovee the visuals from 'Ruckus' and blimp.
Yes. Ruckus has been damaged beyond fixing. I'm not sure about attacking the bug hive. We still think it over. 65% we'll try to do it. Can you tell me anything about Holland Green. His value in nuyen to be exact.
As a multitasking is a way of life he fires up another actions:
- add to query - bug spirits, queens and nymphes - weak spot, fighting strategies, especially non-magical ones.
- remote control of the microdrone and send him flying to the higher levels to do some automated scouting.
- send an AR to the Troll-like creature's 'link. Welcome to Cross Apllied Technology - scavenging, and hunting excursions limited company. Avoid the gargoyle shit on the level 25, this is the kind that stick to the clothes and doesn't easily wash out. On the level 60 you'll find it's nest, there is some weaponry. Would you be so kind as to bring some? We might need it. Thank you for your attention. There is Code's commcode attached to establish two way communication.
-
Gardener keeps looking upwards. "The raw climb don't look too nice, even with my mag systems. Building ain't in tha best shape. The rope looks sturdy, an I don't see anything moving for a few floors up so it's probably a safe option."
He pauses in midthought, grunts, and forwards on the incoming AR message to Jack.
"Looks like these are tha scavs Wild Mike wanted me to hook up with. Should be a safe climb, but you probably wanna go first. I can see around you if somethin pops up. Looks like the gargoyle's nest is up on 60."
Gardener mentally accepts Code's comm invite and subvocally chats, "Wild Mike sent me to cover yer hoops, was out of signal range in tha zone otherwise I'da been here sooner. Name's Gardener. My friend Jack was here huntin that gargoyle, but is a good man in a pinch. We're comin up, but what you got goin on up there that needs firepower?"
-
Bugs. Spirits. Bug spirits.
-
The Remington whips around as Gardener suddenly kneels to the ground. Shells start ejecting out into a little pile and his smart ammo pouches shift and open for easy access.
"They got bugs, Jack."
The spare shells go back in their pouches as Gardener changes the load on his shotgun. Two flares in first to burn the fraggers. Six slugs for no-frills bug squashing.
-
He scans the comm. code, the message, and the Gargoyle references. What do Gargoyles do? They eat, they shit, they sleep and hopefully they die. There are weapons on level 60? Maybe it’s his brother’s kit? If it is his brother’s shit, then where the fuck is the body? What does a creature the size of a Nissan Jackrabbit do with a dead body? Probably anything it wants but all kidding aside what does it do with a body once it has presumably killed its victim?
A single frame AR display pops up into his PAN. He hated AR displays. They were like giant glowing targets superimposed over or around a person’s head. Scrolling through the message, Jack highlights the comm. code and redials. He waits for the connection to be engaged on the receiving end and turns towards Gardie.
“Yeah, I got that. Looks like we’re climbing. Let me know if you spot anything that looks like John’s body anywhere. I still gotta’ get him down from here.”
Hunkering back from the climbing ledge, Jack does a mental checklist of on-hand supplies. Unsatisfied with what he thinks he might have, he whips around his beat-up backpack and roots through it; mags, crow bar, more fucking mags, half a carton of cigarettes, a full canteen, some m-rats, some lose trade supplies, his lock back knife, wet-wipes, toiletries, a bedroll, and his gas mask. Throwing the gas mask over his head, he lets its rest around his neck and chest. Slipping his .45 into its cross-chest holster, Jack takes a moment to mentally make sure the weapon is in working order. Satisfied, he lets go of the grip and disconnects the neural feed with the side arm. Next came cycling The Bitch for bug hunting.
Mentally ejecting the mag of 7.62x51 explosive rounds, he slams in a magazine of his go-to bug crumpers; Mitsu-Arms’ very own KE-IV toxin rounds. Feeling okay with the weapon’s level of readiness, Jack reconnects the one-point quick detach sling. He rolls up his sleeve, unplugs the data cord lead from the jack in his arm and gives it a good spit polish. You didn’t want these things losing connection mid-firefight. A few jumps to make sure his kit isn’t going to make too much noise or shift awkwardly during combat on him and Jack is about his business. Chicago is now a much safer place for Metahumanity.
-
This time, Devoted's link lit up. Again it was Mike. <<"Devo. Kid. You're crazy. That's gotta be some kinda protection from being made crazier, right? The wacky bus is already full? Devo and Code have apparently forgotten basic protocol and are trying to kill themselves. You still remember what to do if you run into a bug nest right? Call an Ares Firewatch team and collect the 20,000 yen bounty? I assume you're all clear of the building, right? ..Since you're alive to answer the call?">>
-
<<You call in those Ares chivatos and you just bought all of us a one way ticket to the resurrection Mike...they don't let nothin' in, nothin out...you really think they really gonna give out a 20k payout to a zoner? Please, Ares cowboys shoot zoner women and children for target practice ....naw ese, we wait until we got the reinforcements you sent and then we decide what we gonna do.....but only after we snatched the loot which is the only sure payday right now.>> utters Machete into his comm as he shoves Ruckus's Colt M23 into the waist band at the back of his pants. "Listen, Mike hired me to keep an eye out for you guys while we lay low and go straight for the loot and that's what I intend to do. I ain't said much up until now, but even though I got eyes like a cat, I ain't curious like one....so i'm saying something now.....and that's NO, fuck NO." He starts changing out the fuel canister in his Blazer and keeps talking, "I'm gonna keep on climbing this place and looking for the loot we came in here to grab. This Mr. Holland over here has been waiting a long time and he can afford to wait a little longer. Whoever wants to follow me can, once we find the loot, then on the way back down we decide if saving Holland is EVEN doable....." You hear him mutter "Pinche huey..." as he starts making his way back up to the higher veranda to get back to the exit.
-
Mike seemed to be glad to be getting some information finally with Machete on the comm. <<"Backup? What backup? Hold on... You're still in the building with the hive? So... it's in torpor and the boys wanted to wake it up for sport? You know what. I.. go with god, okay. I don't possibly see how there's any money in killing bugs, but what was the other thing Code was talking about? Holland Greene? The trid-star? You guys find a bunch of his stuff up there in the dressing rooms? You get some blackmail material or something?">>
-
Halfway on his way to the veranda Machete freezes as soon as Wild Mike seems to know of Holland. "Blackmail Material? what if we told you we had the pinche cabron himself live and direct in the flesh?"
-
<<"I'd be confused as to what the hell he's doing in Chicago, but, other than that, I'd say send me trid.">>
-
<<At the moment he is keeping a wasp nymph from using Devoted as a host, while keeping the rest of the hive from eating our faces. I guess he is also keeping the hive alive by not letting the magic goop eat him or them.>>
"Code can you send mikey some trid? Mr Holland, smile for the camera and meet our fixer Mikey."
-
No prob. On my count his networth is measured in millions. This is so much more then the twenty thou that it make me willing to risk. Code send out the pictures he made of the elf.
-
Southside Chicago. October 9th, 2072. 5:22pm - the Cross tower hollow.
Gardener clipped his harness in and started up the rope at a good speed. He made it up to the 60th with only a few breaks along the way. Jack took a little longer an had to stop more frequently, but he was more comfortable climbing up once Gard had secured the top and his weight was no longer making the poor rope creak.
Southside Chicago. October 9th, 2072. 5:19pm - 87th floor.
Code's Doberman provided a much better trid image than a commlink could, so he zoomed it in on the scene below the balcony.
"Hello Mikey." the drained elf waved.
<<Holy shit. What the hell is Holland Greene doing in Chicago? You said he's got a nymph trapped? Seriously? You've confirmed this? That changes things. That changes a lot of things. How the hell is he... you know, nevermind. How long do you think you can hold down the upper floors? Because you boys are sitting on a goldmine. There's any number of folks who'd pay large to get their hands on a specimen like that, and, did I mention, what the hell is Holland Greene doing in Chicago?>>
-
"I'll go make sure Mike's guys make it up here.", Devoted said, collecting the rope back from Digger and walking towards the elevator shaft towards which they came up, away from the studio and Holland Green. He secured the rope, dropped it down the shaft and sat down with his legs hanging over the edge, looking down for new arrivals.
He let his mind drift off... folks who'd pay large to get their hands on a specimen like that... Every time that line echoed through his head, he couldn't help but shiver.
-
"Alright, it looks like we got a change of plans then." Machete turns back around and comes back to the group, his cat eyes scanning the whole studio trying to re-assess the situation.,
-
"hope we still have a shot at that wine cellar..." Digger thought, then addressing his fixer on the comm, "It's more like they got each other trapped, some kinda magical mutually death pact kinda thing."
-
Southside Chicago. October 9th, 2072. 5:24pm - 60th floor.
Gardener looked around in the near black of the upper floor while his radar periodically pinged. It didn't seem to pick up anything new above him, even though he was much closer now. Cubicles, chairs and old-fashioned workstations seemed to dominate this section. Looking around didn't reveal much either. He needed his lowlight lamp to see anything on the visual. thermo showed some cold spots on the floor that proved to be bio-filth from the gargoyle's long occupation of the place. Jack finally pulled himself up and was overwhelmed with the stink of the place. The smell of smoke, chemicals, and shit made him gag and slap on his gas mask. The scene was wretched. Piles of waste were festooned with little pieces of gear, clothing and bones. He didn't want to look through it, but he knew he had to. Taking out the micro-transceiver he had often used to stay in contact with his brother while guarding a shipment to the Midway airstrip, he closed his eyes and pressed the call button. In the darkness to the right of the hole, he heard its response. He knew it would be bad, coming up here. He had no idea the kind of spiraling hate he would feel in this moment, seeing this horrible place, and knowing, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that some fucking monster ate his brother, digested him, and shat him out on the floor. His brother was a pile of crushed bones and monster shit on a filthy floor. His rifle sat on the ground, barrel bent and stock cracked from being repeatedly beat against the Gargoyle's unforgiving form. It was an exceptional rifle, which had protected them both for seventeen years. His brother had protected him, until Jack was old enough that they could protect each other. Not anymore. Not ever again. The thought felt like some sad, disgusting, horrible thing thrashing and squirming in his mind. He felt for a moment as though he might go mad from the hate, but before he was reduced to sputtering and frothing. His brain lit up with a flash, like a crack his darkening features. He turned towards the nearby stairs, momentarily puzzled, but this time he was sure. He heard it again. A short chittering screech. Jack swung his rifle around and cracked a smile like an open wound. It was like the universe was telling him that things would be okay. It had provided him with exactly what he needed at this moment, some god-fucked little monsters to kill.
Southside Chicago. October 9th, 2072. 5:24pm - 87th floor.
After another couple minutes of searching and reading, Code managed to find a trid-discussion group which wasn't absolute meme-ridden garbage populated entirely by developmentally-stunted children who list their top five movies as the last five movies to recently came out. It was a long, hard search wading through so much of that... But this one group he stumbled on seemed to care about things that happened longer than a week ago, and longer ago than the '63 Crash as well. This specific discussion was about Holland Greene's retirement in '58. The consensus was that it was odd. He hadn't released anything of note for a couple years, but he was a uniformly known as a real tradecraft guy. Few people were as into entertainment as Greene, and those crew people who had worked with him, of which there were a couple in the discussion, said that they'd never believe that the would just quit the biz. A few who watched him, take after take, doing his own magic instead of a stunt mage, attested that Holland worshiped art like it was a deity. Others suggested that, since he relied entirely on a stunt mage for his last couple of stinkers, it was possible that his magic was gone, both figuratively and literally, and that, without that wiz-juice, he must not have seen the point anymore. Code knew that the guy below certainly hadn't lost his magic. In fact, he was practically soaking in it.
Meanwhile, Devoted seemed to take the elf's words to heart and used this opportunity to keep an eye on the bugs trowing themselves against the mana barrier. They would circle and lunge, then circle and lunge. Their features were regular from one to the next. They all shared the same head to torso to abdomen ratio. They all had the same wing-length. They all gave the same sort of deeper wholly-alien impression, like what you were seeing was not really them, but what sense your brain could make of them, as if this bug-like form was just the tip of a horrific iceburg. As he watched, them bang and circle, he noticed that, every now and then, one would disappear and almost immediately be replaced by another. They were cycling in and out in a way which showed some sort of intelligence at work. With about ten of them flitting about, it was hard to keep track of just one. Each of them looked the same as the others so... Wait. There was one that didn't look like the others. It's torso and wings were larger, and its head was wider. And then there was another like that. And a third. They circled around and around, but they never attempted to throw themselves against the barrier. Now there were four of them. Machete noticed it too. He knew the difference they represented. Soldiers. The hive was turning militant. Holland stood up and walked over to the couch. "You need to get the kid out of here. You really need to-" One of the soldiers rammed into Holland with its head, sending him off balance. Another charged toward him, but he stepped aside, only to get caught in the back by a third. "You really really ne-" Another hit sent him sprawling over the sofa. They seemed to be trying to pummel the elf into submission. "Go. Go! No!" One of the bugs tried to grab him with its legs, but he slipped away. "I won't let you, you fuckers! I won't let you!"
-
Southside Chicago. October 9th, 2072. 5:24:03pm - 87th floor.
Holland tried to jump behind the couch, but was too late to get away. The noticeably larger wasp was back and it grabbed Holland, mid leap, wrapped its spindly appendages around him and pulled him to the ground. The elf began to thrash and scream like a psychotic, which wasn't far from the truth. "Yaaaaaaaagh! Fucking shoot them!" The glittering barrier dropped and three of the Soldier wasps turned and flew toward the balcony, radiating waves of fear, only to strike the Mana barrier the elf left up on the astral and bounce off. All except one, which managed to force its way though. Meanwhile Devoted saw as, again, the large wasp tried to stare him down, and, again, it was fully rebuffed. However this was quickly followed by a wave of energy shooting across the air from Hollands outstretched hand to grab on to him and lift him up.
Southside Chicago. October 9th, 2072. 5:24:03pm - 60th floor.
Still and listening, Jack and Gardener waited as the sounds from above developed. There was chittering and scratching, and then Gard's radar picked up movement coming down the stairs like a wave about a foot or so off the ground. It was three floors up and coming down fast.
-
You never got used to the Bugs. You live with them in a weird balance of attrition but you never get used to them. As he sights down the scope of his Russian battle rifle, Jack can’t help but wonder back to the day he met this old timer in Northside. The old geezer was weird, like REALLY weird, totally weirder then the usual Zoner. He would flip out for no reason-well, what Jack had thought to be no reason at the time-when new people meandered along his block. He’d scream seemingly random shit out of his third story window onto the corners about the “Invee” or the “Eyevae” or whatever the fuck and how they were “on the march” as he put it.
Most people just shouted for the bearded guy to shut it and mothers would just make sure their kids didn’t tease the bastard too much out of pity. The local gang would drop meals off to the guy when they could but everyone pretty much fingered him a fucking nutjob and let him be. Jack never did figure out what happened to that old guy but it turned out he was right to be freaking out because two weeks later Ares “liquidated” his apartment building and the Ant hive that was setting up shop in the basement. Anyway, it never sat well with Jack the old guy was right and since that day he always had a thing against the crawlies and now they were the apparent target of his ire.
“You getting’ anything, man? We needa’ bleed ‘em hard when they get here or we’re gunna’ end up food for ‘em.”
Jack’s muscles twitched with repressed rage and adrenaline. He needed to mow these fucking things down. He needed to see them die en masse as he pumped round after acid round into their unholy bodies. He needed to see piles of them steaming on the ground before him like cooling wheat before the scythe on a frigid day. He needed to see them stain the broken floor with the color of their blood and see their once metahuman flesh finally laid to rest. He needed revenge.
-
Devoted felt himself rising into the air. He knew the spell, understood its magic and tried to use that knowledge to resist it, but failed to fight off Holland's powerful spell. "Holland! What in Tyr's name do you thing you're doing?"
-
Subvocal - "Jack, fast incoming, 3 floors up."
A wave of guilt hit Gardener about the same time as the rush of amphetamines began to kick in. Filthy stuff, but desperate times call for desperate measures. You don't pussy-foot around with bugs.
He shifted a little to the side, keeping a good angle on the stairwell to hopefully get the drop on whatever thing was barreling their way, his barky mitts holding the Remington level despite the oncoming surge of adrenaline and drugs.
-
Southside Chicago. October 9th, 2072. 5:24:06pm - 87th floor.
Devoted rose over the railing, but mostly toward the ceiling. It felt uncomfortable to be controlled like this, now 15 meters up. He quickly understood why his team mates were so reluctant to go travel this way his power... which is something he could still accomplish for himself at this point.. "Knock me out and the barrier's not the only thing that will fall, Melissa!" The trapped elf groaned out from the floor as he squirmed free of the bug's grasp. Devoted didn't know if the elf was bluffing, but he was sure that he still had the power to stop his own descent.. Whether Holland or the Nymph knew that, was another matter.
Southside Chicago. October 9th, 2072. 5:24:06pm - 60th floor.
Gardner felt blood pounding through him like a wild animal as the Cram took hold. His nerves jumped and sputtered like a beat-up engine. He gritted his teeth and choked it down. He needed to control it all. It seemed to be working. He was riding the waves of Cram as they washed over him. He watched his radar as the creatures piled down the stairs and hit their floor with a terrible speed. They lit into the circle of light created by Gardener's lowlight flashlight, like lambs to the slaughter. Or, actually like chitinous gray mutant rats-things about the size of a toy dog... to the slaughter.
-
Machete sees an opening as Holland scuttles away from the Nymph and he knows he doesn't have a second to lose if he wants to get at that Nymph. He knows the team doesn't stand a chance fighting all those bugs and the hive needs to cut off from the head! He swings over the veranda and goes into free-fall for a fraction of a second before he hits the ground a few meters below and does a tuck-roll. The impact never-the-less is no cakewalk and the moment he hears a cracking sound in his rib cage as he hit the floor he knows something was broken in there, he just couldn't feel it as the adrenaline coursed through his veins. Standing up from the roll in one fluid motion he charges the Nymph with his Shiawase Blazer raised with one hand near his shoulder, the other hand reaching around and pulling out his machete. He yells at the top of his lungs trying to distract the Nymph away from Holland, "Pinche puta de la chingada! Come get some bitch!"
-
The bug which had managed to break free of Holland's barrier shot straight at CodeMonkey's doberman, the recently christened "Ruckus 2.0", and, much like it's namesake, the drone took a beating. The wasp grabbed the drone by with its legs and managed to smash its stinger through the armor on its underside. Battery acid and hydrolic fluid pooled on the crunchy ground. However, also like it's namesake, the drone fought back viciously, jamming its weapon into the clinging wasp and firing a burst of exploding ammo to tear through the bug's mass. It released the drone, which hit the ground, wheeled backwards to regain its footing, and fired again, this time grazing past where the wasp had just been.
Meanwhile on the floor below the balcony, Machete's scream had attracted the attention of the two soldiers which had tried, unsuccessfully, to escape containment in an effort of assassination and assimilation. They turned on Machete and belched gouts of toxic green fumes into his face, causing little more than annoyance as the air supply in the gas mask kept the fumes at bay.
-
As the bug jerked to the side to avoid the second burst from Code's Doberman, Digger whipped out his machine pistol and sprayed another storm of self fragmenting rounds into the buzzing menace, tearing chunks of its essence free. Meanwhile, even as Devoted was lifted higher into the rafters, he saw the savage attack made on the security bot and the mental image of one of his friends being likewise lifted and impaled spurred him to action. He gathered as much energy as he possibly could and launched it at the wasp attacking below. The energy trailed out and smacked into the alien thing, but seemed to strike some of the ectoplasmic spray being thrown up by all the exploding bullets and the discharge came too early to fell the thing.
-
Gardener sprung into action as the mess of little critters barreled at Jack. The Remington tracked, fired, tracked, fired in rapid succession as the crammed-up bulky treeman belted out obscenities, lips curled back off his yellowed tusks.
BLAM "Taste g" BLAM "you motherf" BLAM "rat bas" BLAM "k it!"
Smart ammo pouches shifted on mental queue as Gardener prepared to slap more shells into the still-smoking shotgun.
-
“What the fuc..?!”
Two seconds and Jack’s dick-deep in scrambling concrete rats the size of midget dogs but with the temperament of a cage fighter on PCP. Anyone who’s ever watched Football or Urban Brawl can appreciate the sheer destructive power of the forearm bash. With the proper application of “dickhead” and forward momentum one could devastate any defensive lineman or enemy brawler….or a jumping Rockrat.
Jack’s left forearm guard took a jarring as he rolled backward from the onrushing swarm and smashed it square into the snout of jumping rat. Blood and nonporous material sprayed from the animal’s grill. Jack mentally had his weapon shit out its current mag as he spun on his back knee, drawing forth a new mag of Explosive ammunition. Slamming it home, he mentally “slaps” the bolt catch and homes a round in the chamber.
“Fuck this kid shit.”
Jack’s weapon cycles from SAFE and stops just short of ROCK N ROLL, settling on KICK ASS. On KICK ASS it stays as the weapons farts out a few bursts at the rushing horde. A few die messily and a few more fuck off in fear. Either way, a bit of rage is shed for the effort and Jack refocuses on the usual shit like cigarettes, money, and tits.
-
Bug spirit disappeared. The physical and magical onslaught seemed to much for him. Code within the Ruckus jerked slightly feeling the liquids puring out with each move. The self test systems fired up dozens of warnings in the AR but the spine has already informed him of the rear wheels malfunction and rear sensors disjunction from the motherboard (hopefully not destroyed).
With the closest target gone from sight, smartlink picked up the largest threat. Bug spirit tagged 'nymph'. Ruckus dog brain supplied quick targetting soft analysis - weakest armor spot between head and the rest of the body. Most probable defensive maneuver dodge to the left at 89% probability. The move will open up the front torso, strong armor but easier to hit. Most effective action: single shot, followed by long burst.
warning... but Code wasn't following further info .. 30 miliseconds were most that he could afford in that heat ... turret turn ... aim ... shot ... turret turn ... burst ... executed flawlessly. Not a single explosive bullet missed from the wide burst despite the frantic dodges of the 'nymph' target. ... 37% probability of the friendly fire in case of burst fire misses... the analysis concluded.
smartlink greened out the target as non-hostile and locked on one of the remaining spirit manifestations.
-
On the floor of the set, Machete brought out his Blazer and fired an arc of napalm at the two soldier wasps still trying to break free from Holland's mana barrier. The gelled gasoline cut like a line between them, splashing off the wings of one as it charged dangerously close to machete before recoiling back into the space around the set. The other bug had already moved back as it approached Holland and spat a noxious stream of gas and chemical in his face. Holland screamed and clutched his eyes, but didn't drop his spells. The barrier still kept the 6 or so smaller wasps bouncing off it, and Devoted continued to rise toward the ceiling, now without guidance. It seemed like he was heading for one of the holes above.
-
From the balcony, autofire chattered off, filling the large room with syncopated echoes. Not missing an opportunity to press the advantage, Digger and Code fired on the trapped bugs. After digger's rounds plowed through the bug which had just made a failed pass on Holland, it turned its attention towards Digger and getting out. However, as it charged the barricade, another well-aimed shot came from the battered robot, leaving nothing more than a splat of goo against the mana-wall. The robot continued to fire as it traced across the room at another of the soldier wasps, but the bullets only ripped into the ground.
-
Southside Chicago. October 9th, 2072. 5:24:06pm - 87th floor.
The bug which had just dodged his flame flew straight at Machete, but struck the mana wall hard. It didn't move though. It simply pressed itself against the invisible barrier and stared straight at him. Above, as Devoted floated upward toward one of the openings in the ceiling, the injured Soldier manifested right behind him.
Southside Chicago. October 9th, 2072. 5:24:06pm - 60th floor.
Gardener and Jack blasted slug after slug after fragmenting round straight into the scurrying pile of rat-like creatures, throwing powdered plascrete into the air in a cloud, from out of which the remaining living rats burst in attack. Gardener easily swatted them to the ground with his massive hands, while Jack took bites to both his legs. Fortunately for him, his shin guards kept their teeth from drawing any blood.
-
Code was on to the bug's disappearing act, and knew from the last time that Devoted's magic was like a magnet pulling these things towards him. So, when the bug appeared behind Devo, Code was ready. He fired up at it, putting it on the defensive, and keeping it off Devo's back. Meanwhile, Digger lined up a shot at the bug in front of Machete and tore it down the same as the last. Machete continued to work his flame thrower, spitting another fountain of fuel at the soldier inside the barrier, but he only managed to hit the prop wall. In fact, the set was burning quite nicely. Devoted, still suspended in the air, was clued in to the bug's presence behind him by the fire from the bot below. Taking a moment to be thankful for the machine's expert targeting systems for not hitting him, he turned and loosed another Manabolt on the struggling terror. This time, it couldn't hope to stave off the young lad's fury. It's form swelled and popped.
Not quite through, Machete quickly twisted the nozzle of his flamethrower to his favorite setting, atomize. This time, instead of producing a jet of burning liquid fuel, it sprayed a cloud of it, roasting everything in the air. Many of the smaller bugs were ignited along with the soldier which had just desperately tried to flood his mind with terrible sensations. Machete wasn't having any of it. He kept the flame sweeping across the bug even as the drone above fired down on it. The combined onslaught was far too much for the trapped creature, and it died screeching.
Above all this, Devoted still floated upward into what seemed to be a control room of some sort. There was a large panel against one of the walls with digital readouts still lit up. It seemed pretty sophisticated for a physical interface.
-
Ruckus fired remaining bullets into the frying wisps and returned to CodeMonkey body.
Just as he came back rigger's eyes opened. Poor doggy. An authentic worry was painted on his face as he scrutinized the damage done by the evil spirits. They were much beyond simple repairs. but he done what he could trying to stop the flow of the liquids and removing the dented armor unblocking the rear wheel. Then he reloaded the clip.
Only after the drone was tended Code turned toward Holland, to check if he lives.
-
That last blast put Machete fresh out of fuel for his Shiawase Blazer. He switches the pilot light off and holsters it on his back. He quickly pulled up his shotgun to a ready position and pops out the last empty casing with a single pump bringing the new round into to the chamber as he sprints over to where Holland is and puts the muzzle of his Remington right in the elfs face and yells at him: "Ok maricon, we don't got time for games, tell me what the fuck you're doing with my little buddy over there!" making a nodding motion up towards the floating Devo.
-
"Wow, awesome flame Machete! Fry those bugs!" Devoted shouted down seeing the cloud of flames appearing in front of his friend.
He saw the scorched bugs fall to the floor, then lost sight of the events below as his head finally reached through the hole in the ceiling. He took had a good look around in the place Holland was sending him to, then looked down. A long way down. He swallowed.
The threat to his friends gone, Devoted could focus on getting himself to safety; he played with the ring on his necklace while whispering a prayer to Tyr and felt his prayer answered. Even though Holland's much more powerful magic was still in control of his movement, at least he wouldn't plummet to his death if, or when, the unstable elf decided to stop sustaining the spell.
"I think I'm safe," he shouted down "at least from falling to death. But I wouldn't mind being in control of my own movement, or knowing where in Tyr's name he's sending me!"
He felt a headache building up; sustaining the spell in this environment was taxing on his mind and body; he doubted he had the strength to do much else.
"There's a lot of tech stuff up here, I think you'd like this place Code!"
-
Digger changed clips on his Crusader, using normal ammo and his axe to finish off the last few baby buggies flapping around pitifully. He also tried to smaother the flames destoying the set.
After hearing Devoted and figuring out Holland might not be quite as off as he looked so he decided to intervene before there was another barbecue.
"Hey Paco, sounds like pointy there had a plan when he played Up, up and away with our spellslinger, give him some room."
Walking over to where he could get a look up the hole, Digger sighted and fired his grapple.
"You heard the kid, up the rope furball."
-
The black slits in Machete's yellow-green eyes narrow through the goggles of his gasmask as he keeps the shotgun pointed at Holland's head. He feels the horrible crash from the his adrenal pump hormones wearing off and you hear him cough and shake a little. With the other hand he reaches into his vest and pulls out a small stimpatch which he slaps onto the back of his neck and he instantly relaxes as the pain subsides.
"I'm gonna just keep an eye on this maricon just in case."
-
The flaming wasps dematerialized only to be replaced by more in what seemed like a never-ending cycle of the little things. There were more and more of them In Machete's view. They were throwing themselves specifically at him now that he was so close. Trying to keep a bead on Holland was problematic with the crush of the things. "You'll probably want to step back. They're very territorial. If Melissa didn't hide me from them they'd probably forget not to kill me. They can't seem to remember that my death is their death. They're that stupid." Holland coughed from the smoke and flung some of the slimy goop from his clothes to splatter against the wall.
"You wanted to go up? He's up. I don't care where you go as long as he's not here to tempt her anymore. You've made your call; Someone knows I'm here now. That was the only thing I ever wanted from you and, thus, your only bargaining chip. You can't un-ring that bell, chum." Holland shimmered for a second and the slime was gone from his face and clothes. Another wave of magic rippled outward and the napalm and soot were swept away to the edge of the set where the hive material ends. Finally he walked over to the charred and shot up sofa, rested his hands on it and pushed magic through it, reweaving and repairing it to a perfect condition.
-
Since our only bargaining chip is gone, is there any reason for me to not tell Ares Firewatch about mad mage infested with entire hive of bugs and that they should nuke the entire district before the fool gets away?
-
"So, what you're saying is that, I am a fool for fighting to save your lives twice now, since your continued existence is a threat to me? You make a compelling argument, robot. I was going to mend you like I mended my sofa here, but your logic has swayed me. You can go fuck yourself." The satellite dish whipped out of the balcony railing and shot under the sofa in the blink of an eye. Holland stepped forward toward Machete who was menacing him with a shotgun. "I have out-maneuvered hell itself since before half of you could pop a boner. Go ahead and threaten me you fucking cockroaches. Get angry and try something. Try anything you pathetic little piss-ant. All I have to do is stop thinking about it and you're dead. You know that, right asshole? These things will fuck you to death with their stingers just like they did to your friend. How the hell can you not remember that? It seems pretty fucking obvious to me, but since you're as stupid as a fucking bug, maybe you belong together. Who am I to keep you apart?" He was standing right at the boundary of the bubble now, bugs whipping around him angrily. More bugs. "You don't get it at all, do you rain man? These things, they can't even understand language. That surprise you, asshole? They only read emotion, and I just can't seem to fake amusement at your shitty little selves anymore. What do you think about that, maricon? That bitch can't understand a single word we're speaking, but I figure, as long as we continue to antagonize each other, she doesn't know we're conspiring against her. What do you think about that, shit-for-brains? Aaaaaanht. Don't care what you think. Now get the fuck out of here before I let these things kill your pathetic asses. You really are just begging for it. You step in a pile of shit and then stand around sniffing it like idiots. Maybe, if I let hem kill you, the next bunch of dog-fucking scavengers will have the sense to not hang around a hive of insect spirits like they don't have a fucking care in the world."
-
Digger again moves in between the members of his team from certain death, his many years of keeping hot-blooded Italian tough-guys from saying something stupid to the bosses coming in handy, yet again.
"Machete, get up the rope. We need as many eyes as we can up there to figger out what the kid found, I got things covered down here."
To the mage, Digger tries to speak calmly.
"He is good in a pinch boss, he has just had a rough time of it today, but we got this."
-
Code flinched at the whip of the words. He was on the verge of shouting back. Hey! I've saved you life too. I shot that nymph remember? And that bug banging you too. That bacteria floating around would eat you too during you sleep or that bugs would eat you. You haven't spent last twenty years keeping to the straw to stay alive to be shot down by some punk codeslinger like the mearest ganger. So stop bullying here your majesty. I am not a pawn to 'you-may-go-now' around. Show some gratitude for saving your life, and letting the world know that you're alive. Shut up Code! He snapped on himself and flinched even more. You're doing this job because you couldn't haggle yourself a decent raise, you're not good at talking. Back off! Now! ...
Code hunched a bit. His tail twitched a bit. He managed to say aloud only. I am sorry. Please excuse me.
He gathered the few remaining pieces of Ruckus and started to climb upward slowly looking sadly after his satellite dish.
-
Machete lowers his shotgun keepig his eyes on Holland. "You sure talk a good game for someone who just a moment ago was screaming for his life against something we just tore to shreds. You stay here while we do scoping."
With that he tightens the strap on his shotgun bringing it taught and pulling the gun against his back as he jogs over to the rope and starts climbing.
-
"Oh god damn it! Don't apologize to me! You still don't get it! Melissa is watching you! You've proven yourselves capable threat, so you're in real danger now! You need to leave immediately, but you need to leave angry! How thick are you!? You could already be surrounded, you simpletons! You need to go where she can't see you! You kill four of her soldiers and her caretaker stooge, Ms. Busybee, and you think this is over!? Could you really be that dumb?"
-
"Oh, don't you worry yourself about that, Mr Weed-Eater!! The guys that went up in that hole are either scared to death of you, pissed at you, or BOTH!" Digger screams at the elf.
"Me? I am DEFINITELY the last one, but I gotta go up on that balcony and make sure that Mike's guys coming up are able to link up with us!!"
Digger then scurries upstairs and tries to raise Jack and Gardner on the comm.
-
Plascrete particulate still filters through the air as the remaining rat-thing flees, gobbets of his kin spattered about the dead gargoyle's lair. Gardener flicks a bit of carrion from one knobby digit.
"Think I chipped a nail," he mutters dryly, then looks over to make sure Jack is okay before slipping some shells into his shotgun.
He shuffles about the lair, rooting through the debris with the trained eye of a natural born survivor (with a little radar cheat) and picking out some choice bits.
subvoc - "We ran into some weird rat critters down here, but should be up ta party with you soon."
Craning his featureless amber gaze upwards, the treeman lets out a sigh to try and calm down but his muscles twitch under the effects of the amphetamines. As he begins the climb his motion becomes a bit smoother, his muscles having something to do. Maybe there's somethin ta frag up there, he thinks. That'd help.
-
Devo, sad tone doesn't leave the Code's voice. Could you get Ruckus up? I'll manage on my own.
While climbing up. Code fired up an AR window and fired a text message to everyone around. We need to keep in touch with him. Jack, Gardener, if you got any spare or cheap 'link leave him near the elf mage you'll find by the way. We're going further up.
Up there Code takes a look around.
-
Southside Chicago. October 9th, 2072. 5:26pm - 87th floor.
Getting up wasn't too difficult after the previous climbs. The ladder to the walkways above the set brought you most of the distance. The actual climb was a pain in the ass, since it came so close to the now swarming bugs. Climbing up the diagonally hanging rope, you could see the bugs pressed up against the invisible wall of the resumed physical barrier, as they tracked the progress of your climb. The not-so-mad-as-he-seemed elf continued to insult and belittle you as you went. Nothing hostile was said, just a lot of unfriendly words. The genuine murder-thoughts in the room earlier seemed to have done a lot to stir the bugs up as they responded to threatening energy with fierce activity. The fear, disappointment and anger wasn't calming them, but their numbers were slowly decreasing.
The upstairs room was relatively cramped. It was a wedge, like one fourth of a pie with two long board stations along the inside walls taking up five of the eight meters distance. There were several archaic flat-panel displays hanging over the boards showing various computer errors, mostly related to failing memory. The Cross OS was surprisingly robust to still be running after nearly two decades. The door to the room was permanently held open with hive-crust like the ones below, but the hallway was lighted intermittently by flickering gas-electric lights. Possibly neon. Out the door, the hallway curved predictably down the way.
Southside Chicago. October 9th, 2072. 5:26pm - 70th floor.
Gardener and Jack eagerly started up the stairs, following the path the others had taken, and, before long, discovered the reason that the rats had run down. Around the 70th floor, black smoke trickled down the stairs, only to be sucked under the slightly-cracked doors leading to the middle floors. The smoke got a bit thicker as they went up and it billowed significantly as air was sucked upward by the fire above.
-
Code started form the careful search. Drawers, lockers or rooms near the consoles might be hiding some spare pieces of electronics, especially those that could fail more often - storage modules, memory modules, displays, wires, usage manuals etc...
Playing around ancient electronics was much fun, and from time to time looking at this or other piece, someone standing nearby could hear him mumbling: God how I wanted to have this one when I was in prelim school... or This is still working? Unbelievable...
All the time while familiarizing with the hardware he took a look on the software side that is what was presented on the screens that were on and trying to gain access to the system.
-
As if reminding himself of something. Code took Machete's commlink and prepped it for instruction mode. Setting up new user account for Holland and running the standard startup program for familiarizing new users with it's functionalities. Then with Machete's privileges blocked the outside calls other than to his own commlink. Logged in as admin and put the link console in the AR, turned on both display, microphone and camera so he could easily exchange text and video messages with the mage. After that he wrapped the thing with a piece of synth leather from the nearby chair and a piece of cord from the remains of Ruckus 2.0 and waited. When the bugs settled down a little he dropped the package on the Hollands sofa.
The initial text on the link would be: read the instruction, ask aloud if you need help, I'll guide you. Robot.
-
Devoted looked down towards the badly damaged Ruckus 2.0 and focused on levitating it. He tried to envelop as much of it as possible, the poor thing was badly damaged. He hoped suddenly losing gravity wouldn't cause some of the loose parts to drop off completely.
As if fighting against the background count wasn't bad enough, he had to carefully guide the drone so as not to go through the barrier, which also meant having to look at the angry spirits.
The almost-broken drone touched the ground safely, Devoted looked at it with compassion.
"Can't you use some of the, uhm, stuff around here to fix him up a bit?"
-
Good thing I have my own air.
subvoc - "Yeah, I just found a banged-up transceiver if ya need me to leave it with elfie boy... did someone light the fraggin place on fire or what? There'sa shit-ton of smoke on 70."
Gardener's display resolved once again into a mapped radar layout as he let his helmet's sensors override his cybereyes' primary vision mods. Taking a moment to double-check that any flammable gear was protected by the armor he had thankfully treated with flame retardant and that his smart ammo pouches were well sealed, he cautiously heads onwards and upwards.
A couple mental queues belatedly tagged the gargoyle's lair and rope locations with titles, as well as the smoke/fire threat, in his orientation system's rapidly-developing map. He also had the system fire off a query to all comms with an open connection to him... never hurts to know where friendlies are.
(from Gardener's comm) - <<TrumanTech Cartographer 3.72 Nav System>> Requesting GPS feed.
-
Digger tucks himself out of sight as best he can behind the railing and chats up the new guys.
"You wanna steer cleer of stairwell 2, it is probably a blast furnace by now, we tried to burn through a wall of wasp goop and it ignited a fraggin' junkheap beyond it. You might try the main elevator shafts, but they have the same walls and junk. I guess the busy bees were clearing out and sealing off the uppers floors. The walls are around the 80th."
-
Don't know yet - some of this are plain ancient.
-
Code knew from his earlier inspection of the drone that it was mostly mechanical damage. Wires don't cut too well from a stab, and the electronics are a small target. His quick patch job earlier kept the hydraulic fluid from leaking too much. A combat drone like the doberman had reserve fluid to help deal with that kind of situation. Repairs, real repairs, would take hours. The machine would need to be partially disassembled and pieces replaced or straightened with precision mechanical force. He knew he could make that second option happen, but he didn't have the time now. From a temporary point of view, there were a few actuators which could be re-aligned to help it move again properly.
-
Machete instinctively took the lead and peaked down the hallway, his cat eyes narrowing. I'll go scout up ahead. He starts moving down hallway and going around the bend.
OOC-- ok keyboards here are different in peru so i still dont have the hang of what symbols are what so bear with me. also buying hits on perception as usual. roll for me whenever u want....and also feel free to npc me if i go awol for a little too long.
-
Devoted felt quite useless, he didn't understand the first thing about technology and the one thing he was a bit good at was nearly worthless here.
He jumped at the opportunity to do make himself useful and drew his gun.
"I'll go with you."
-
Gardener eyes the elevator shafts dubiously despite the rope dangling down. Layers of flaky bug crap coating things is not the most calming sight. He begins the ascent to the 87th floor, climbing with ease between the boost from his vatjob muscles and magnetic systems.
subvoc - "Why do I feel like I'm crawling up the nose'a some sleepin nightmare?"
The lumbering tree pulls his bulk out of the shaft on the 87th, letting out a grunt as he stretches. "Someone call tha cavalry?" he grumbles.
-
It’s been four hours and Jack has been gnawed on, watched big brother shit the bed, climbed to impossible heights in a bug infested corporate tower, and almost put a hole in his foot when he was shooting concrete dog-rats the size of an angry poodle. Today is looking up.
Rope, jump out, almost die, catch, and hoist self up. Simple process, really. He’d done it plenty of times. This time, however, something doesn’t work itself out as planned. Jack’s left glove makes contact with the rope Gard is on. His damnedable right hand, however, doesn’t want to follow Left’s lead. He misses with his other hand and his inertia carries his 170lbs body spinning around and then down the rope like some scene out of Black Hawk Down. Usually for fast ropers there’s a high deck somewhere within eyes shot. For Jack, there’s 76 floors of open elevator shaft and/or certain messy death. Like fucking slut magic his right hand finally finds purchase around the rope shaft somewhere around the 70th floor. The now exceedingly arduous climb begins after Jack catches his breath, praises Alah, Jesus, Buddah and Tom Waits all at the same time.
Making it to the appropriate floor, he scrambles unceremoniously to the deck and lays supine on the rotting floor with his rifle across his chest. He’s sucking air. Badly. Damn you, carcinogens. Damn you.
“Whats…*cough*…the good word?”
-
Southside Chicago. October 9th, 2072. 5:30pm - 90th floor.
Machete set down the hall through the flickering light of the barely-working fluorescent bulbs overhead. Going quite and slow made little sense with Devoted right behind him crunching along. This floor didn't seem too particularly different in floor plan than the ones below. Concentric circle hallways but with offices on the outside. Passing by one on the west side, he saw sunlight barely peaking through a gap in the crusty nest material at the bottom of the door. The main feature which dominated this part of the hive area, and which had been absent from the set below were holes in the ceiling and floors. It's possible this was the norm on the lower levels as well, but they were still unexplored.
Southside Chicago. October 9th, 2072. 5:30pm - 87th floor.
Jack and Gardener came out on 87 to a hallway leading to a darkened area. Gardener's radar resolved a large central room filled with thin-walled buildings and a number of small outer rooms packed with a large number of things he could not recognize. From the central room came a subdued voice firmly singing..
"Nose holes caked in black cocaine
No one holds a match to your skin
No dupe
No chiming
a way off - miles off
No needle through a glove
Famine is a tall tall tower
A building left in the night
Jesse are you listening?
It casts its ruins in shadows
under Memphis moonlight
Jesse are you listening?
Six feet of foetus
flung at sparrows in the sky
Put yourself in my shoes
A kiss-wet-muzzle
A clouded eye
No stars to flush it out
Famine is a tall tall tower
A building left in the night
Jesse are you listening?
It casts its ruins in the shadows
under Memphis moonlight
Jesse are you listening?
In the dream
I am crawling around on my hands and knees smoothing out the prairie
All the dents and the gouges
and the winds dying down
I lower my head
press my ear to the prairie"
-
Code picked up the audio chips. Grabbed a gun and moved after the scouting party.
Meanwhile, he constructed an ad hoc tact net. Namely he was linking everyone subvoc's/commlinks into more or less coherent audio/text network and linked radar output with trid map from the flying drone. Then programmed on the fly a quick routine to autoupdate positions of each team member (and Holland) onto the trid map. Set the map to signal and mark any movement other then the team's. If there is a video feed (like from the commlink hang over the shoulder or Ruckus sensors) it is meshed into as well. Finally the feed is distributed to all team members.
-
Digger, waiting for the new arrivals, stretches his neck to take in all of the new arrival.
"Guess you ain't havin' trouble findin' grub in the zone, huh?"
Trying to get them to crouch down as much as they can out of sight, he jabs a thumb over his shoulder at the scene below.
"Songbird down there is da elf we told Mikey about, he is the mage keeping da kabosh on da bugs. If you wanna chat him up, feel free, but don't act chummy with him, or even nice. He said the bugs will read da feelings and come out to fight again, dat's how we lost Ruckus, da poor slot."
Digger then points to the hole the others disappeared into, "Otherwise you got some more climbing to do to link up wit da rest of da crew."
-
"I'm just here for the free juice, man."
Lighting a menthol cigarette, Jack drags a lung full of sweet death. Pointing around the room with his lighter, he gives the ol' thumbs up and smirks.
"Nice place Mikey picked for us. I love what he's done with the joint. What's all this about famous Elves and Wasp spirits, now, chief? I hear Ares pays hard currency for nest intell....just saying'."
Drag. Exhale. Repeat.
-
Devoted walked a couple of meters behind his friend, his vision switching to astral every now and then, but only for a short while.
"The astral here, it's like... like... the smoke from the fire you started below, only filling every hallway and every room and flowing towards the place we came from. It's suffocating and blinding and... This is a bad place, Machete."
-
Gardener cracks back a toothy yellowed grin, but it's mostly hidden by his helmet. "Ya, this is what growin' up on a steady diet'a Chicago dogs gets ya. I'm Gardener," he says, jamming a knotted, spadelike thumb at his chest. "Jack here has a point. I dunno how many nests you've seen up close an pretty, but you learn to call in Ares' Fairies ta lay down some fun-time barbeque on nests if you want to live long out here."
He shrugs. "Unless youse knows somethin we don't. Mikey's payin me ta be an official hoop-saver, so I'll do that whatever way necessary."
-
"The way that plays out does not seem to involve saving the hoop of the rich elf down there and the financial windfall that follows, or at least us not getting a cut of it. It also doesn't really help up in our own salvage op if we leave and let Ares blow the place to hell."
-
Machete lets go of his shotgun with one hand and reaches behind his back and unsheaths his machete. 'Listen kid, if you see any threat at all, close your sight to the astral world and force that threat to materialize is it wants a piece of us.'
-
"Fuck it. Let's get to climbing. Who's this shit-hot long ear, anyway?"
Rolling from his back to his gut, Jack props himself up on his reaction hand and raises to a knee, his rifle in his primary hand and his cigarette dangling dangerously from his lip. Jack checks his kit. He's up.
"Let's get going, Treebeard. I don't want any more of those fuckin' rats finding our scent. I'm with you on this one. We're going with or calling in the big boys?"
Rifle stock to shoulder. Safety off. Round chambered. Morale at an all-time high.
-
The treeman makes a noise that sounds like a hybrid between a grunt and a sigh, shuffling over to the dubious-looking hole going upwards. "Looks like we head up for now."
subvoc - "Okay kiddies, if you're making Uncle Gardener climb up inta bugfuckery to cover your butts then you'd better allow him access to your GPS coords. Give him a reason to not have Ares lay down some tiger balm on this buildin's nuts."
He begins to climb some more, not waiting for an answer. Not quite like the usually patient lug, but cram isn't known for keeping people sedate. He does take a brief moment to make sure the gas vent's active on his Ingram in case something nasty comes along during his ascent.
text to Jack - "I see you twitchy. Let's try to keep an exit plan open in case this goes to drek."
-
Guys - Code was broadcasting text on the commlinks - I found an audio a record of the first month of infestation of the building by the bug spirits. I am browsin' through it but with that amount of data it'll take some time to find something interesting. But I think that at the least we got some paydata.
-
When Digger clears the hole he finds Codemonkey.
"Should be some bigtime paydata, we should see if we got that spell he cast to set up the thing that keeps the buggies from melting. Maybe there is something in there we can use to root them outta here without bringing Ares to nuke the joint again."
-
Code took the chip with the audio from the attack, as well as a stack of others sitting on the desk, and moved out into the hallway where Machete and Devoted were scouting around, peering into holes. He headed around the bend into the next room. There were more stations, more monitors. One was running. Taking a moment to look at the controls, it seemed like this was a remote operation center for controlling the lights and automated systems for the set. Hydraulics and actuators were on the other end of those controls. All of them were things that code would need to repair his bot, but he had no idea where these controls came out on the other end. Nothing much to salvage in the room though. Joysticks don't serve much use outside of retro fashions these days. The north west room was all screens and microphones. Probably some sort of control booth for the director. The machines booted up and the screens showed the set below through multiple angles. The speakers below started to squawk angrily, and Code cut it off quickly. The next room was camera control. Nothing seemed to be running. Rebooting caused the first couple of machines wouldn't power on. The third posted, but locked up. It would take time and effort to get it running. Rather than digging into the system yet, he took a look around and found another stack of chips.
-
Guys, I've found a video control room. I hope to get a peek into the nest to see if there is anything of worth. Give me a couple of minutes. You could search for wardrobes here, not much in terms of loot, but each simrig is a thousand nuyen worth in hardware, and there possibly could be some raw streams that we could sell.
-
Code took the camera control computer, an old tower thing, pulled it out, fiddled with the panels, snapped the locking bolts off with a torque wrench, and dove into its guts. It looked like the cooling system was fried. Not too surprising. The fans weren't rated for over 175000 hours of use. Code cracked open a few other cases and cannibalized them for parts. Finally, a half hour later, he managed to make a single working computer station which could turn on and not immediately overheat and die.
-
Whistling and buzzing and murmuring to a song (had somebody know he would probably recognize the theme from a XX century movies trilogy "Star wars"). Code was happy to work on the ancient station. Good he nodded to himself Guys, I don't know what were you up to, but I've finished fixing this beauty.
Now let's see... Code has logged in and browsed through still working cameras.
-
Gardener arrives on the 90th floor, and the Remington slides around with a quiet whirring of the auto-sling. His visuals blend with the sensor feeds from his orientation system, a translucent map slowly filling in as he gets nearer the blips of the other scavengers.
A bead of sweat runs down his craggy face inside the helmet, heart thudding as he makes his way deeper into the nest. He moves as silently as a crammed-up 350 lb treeman can.
subvoc - "Coming up on you."
-
Good to see ya. Coming further up now.
Devo, will you hover Ruckus?
With that Code started to climb higher.
-
Getting up to the next level showed a marked change in layout. Instead of the flickering hall lights on the last level, this floor had actual emergency lights. There was also a powered rail traveling the circumference of each ring. It was damaged in some places, and ripped fully from the wall in others. The area was still covered in the same flaky hive material as below, but all the doors to the rooms were open - wide open. the door frames and the glass paneling flanking each side were torn out. In each room, there were piles of old dessicated skeletons, all of them dried up beyond rotting.
-
Devoted was following Machete's lead; he felt very uncomfortable in this place and it had dawned to him that he'd been unworldly and naive.
He had set out to explore manavoids -he had read about those- for powerful artifacts in a world full of adventure, and now learned that even a weak background count as the one he was in now made him quite powerless and vulnerable, endangering not only himself but his allies too, both his physical and his spiritual ones. Death in battle may be the most honorable way to die and grant you access to Walhalla, victory in battle was still preferable.
-
Machete, now feeling a little more confident with Devoted's astral coverage at his back, continues around the curve of the hallway as far as it takes him, shotgun ready.
-
ruckus moved ahead as a far scout. Code meanwhile searched through the skeletons.
-
The skeletons were all stripped bare with only a few old cybereyes here or there, like worn-out jewels in the eyes of some kind of knock-off voodoo fetish. Probably about 40 of them in total, the dead. These rooms were cages, and they told a story of panic. Skeletons were crouched in corners in defensive positions, all piled on each other in a scramble. Whatever happened to shut this place down left these people to be slaughtered by the spirits which were guarding them. These bugs weren't driven into torpor like the ones Ares had nuked. They were all awake and waiting. The idea that they had 40 captives at once waiting for conversion, makes your stomach pit. This operation must have been massive.
Holes in the ceiling showed the way up.
-
Surrounded by so many skeletons, Devoted's voice automatically became a whisper, he couldn't shake the feeling that he was walking around in a tomb.
"So do I play magical elevator again?"
At least it made him feel somewhat useful.
-
"You gonna be able to lift the redwood, kid?" Digger tries to joke, feeling it fall flat against the horror around them.
-
Let's go up. Drone first for the recon.
-
Gardener picked up the damaged drone and lifted it up to the hole in the ceiling. Once it's treads hit the upper floor, it began pulling itself forward through the upper hallway. Again, this one seemed to be lit, although infrequently. The drone made it down the hallway a ways before it ran into another hole in the floor and couldn't continue on. No upward exits were immediately apparent and the door to the stairway was covered in a layer of nest.
-
Gardener? what's on that radar of yours?
Ruckus go into listening mode.
-
Gardener are you listening? what's on that radar of yours? would you be so kind and let us through that stuff in the doors?
-
"No movement. Just some more offices." The freakish-limbed Ork replied before jamming his spade-like claws into the crusty material covering the door and ripping it down a chunk at a time. A quick knee to the door lever opened the path to the stairway. The musty nature of the air was obvious to the few who had only respirators to help them breathe. This stairway likely hadn't been opened in 20 years, while whatever was in the pile of rubbish blocking the lower floors sat and rotted.
-
Superb.
Lets go up. Ruckus is leading.
-
Devoted tried to stay in the center of the group heading forwards. He was about to enter hallways that had last seen use before he was born.
"I have a bad feeling about this." was all he said, completely unaware that such thing might have been said before.
-
Going for a famous last words Devo? This one is just behind I think its safe. don't worry this building is rotten down and dead. the faster we get up the better, going down by night will be a hell on it own.
-
"We just gotta keep on pushing. No going back now."
-
Aside from the stale air, the stairway was immaculately clean. The team advanced up toward their destination, unobstructed, and Gardener's hand-held radar didn't seem to pick up any movement on the floors. The 104th should be coming up any moment, and all of the final floors seemed to be untouched executive offices. This was the jewel on the crown of Cross-Sim.
-
So we did the log in. Let's see what here is worth of taking.
Code will run an auto-inventory program, to log all items found, so it would be easier to sort out things based on their value. Verify again that no movement is being registered and open up the closest door we are looking for small high value items - jewelry, art, high tech is probably obsolete by a decade by now, but still, there might be some white crows in terms of books or music.
using the Gardener radar to find safe (but looking physically also, as they might be masked from the radar sensors) and lookign out for hidden compartments in desks, drawers, wardrobes etc..
let see how much time will it take to make a good search of a single room.
I leave a blimp several floors above to monitor the situation above us and Ruckus on the stairway so we won't get surprised by anyone lurking behind us.
Let's do this guys !
-
Despite the improved surroundings, Devoted still felt less than safe. The background seemed to have lessened and he tried to see if he could put some protective spells on his foci again. Neither spell went exactly as he had hoped, the magic felt hostile in this cursed place.
He groaned when a sudden flash of pain flared through his head.
-
Walking out into the hallway, Gardener heard a click just too late to jump back as a rail drone opened fire and caught him dead center with a heavy barrage of bullets. His mind exploded with pain, even as his armor kept the bullets from piercing his tough hide. So much pain, in fact, that his eyes rolled back into his head and he tumbled backwards into the stairwell.
-
Medic! I don't know how to patch living things!
Code face wasn't visible to well under the fur, but the tail twitched nervously on the sight of blood, and there was a slight pitch of panic in his voice.
Nevertheless, Code was looking around for any kind of wired network boxes, plugs or lines on the walls. Anything that would allow him to jack into the local network. They should be going along the walls, or maybe in air conditioning tunnels. They should be fairly accessible for maintenance and probably since the main defense line is the tower's entry hallway it should not be that well hidden.
-
"I... I don't think he's really that wounded. I mean, there isn't a lot of blood or bullet wounds. But the amount of pain, his body has to deal with that itself. My magic can't ease that suffering."
Devoted didn't sound panicked or stressed, he sounded numb. He stood pressed against the wall staring at the body lying at his feet. The sound of the automatic fire still echoed through his ears.
-
The stairwell was bare of anything except light fixtures. Falling back though, Gardener had knocked the door hard enough to break the hydrolic arm which pulls it closed. Peering out at this angle, Code could see the tracks around the ceiling, just like the partially broken and hive-covered tracks a few floors below. He might be able to jury-rig a way hook into the security network from down there, but it would take time. Alternately, there was a limited range of motion, and a limited number of bullets available to this drone here, and a doorway not too far from the stairwell entrance. If he made a break for the office, he might be able to find a computer which would allow him much faster access to the defense network, as well as who knows what else in the form of valuable digital information. After all, these were the executive offices.
-
I think I got an idea. If you can help do it now. *wink*
Gardener has lots of explosives on him. Code may not know how to work with radio detonators, but he's seen on movies that plastic is as good as plasteline in that it glues to everything. So he took a handful of this explosives he got and a ammo pouch he has. Instead of the rounds he has there Code put few dozens of explosive ammo he's carrying. Then he put on the much too big helmet that ogre was carrying, giving him a wacky look.
Ruckus you go first - dodging manevuers. One second after drone Code dashed with a monkey dexterity jumping madly through the stairwell toward the rail drone.
-
"La Chingada!!" utters Machete under his breath.
-
The trusty drone moved out of the doorway and fired a short burst at the rail drone which had just gunned Gardener down. The exploding bullets landed against a seam on the drone's turret and tore through its insides, scrapping it in a moment. Quickly swiveling itself to fire on the second drone as it rounded the corner, Ruckus 2.0 sprayed the thing down, with automatic fire, slightly dislodging it from its track. Code took this opportunity to try and slap the demo charge on the advancing gun, but just caught air as the drone exploded into shrapnel some two feet from his hand. Machete lowered his shotgun, shook his head and frowned at the young hacker's crazy move.
-
Code frowned back on Machete. "That one was mine. I'd've gotten it". He shook the pouch with bullets.
Then his face beamed, "just joking, thanks, cool move don't ya think?"
With that Code assessed if the drones were somehow connected, and if there is some kind of security center that could be hacked.
If there were two drones there might be something else as well...
-
The drones were attached to the rail which wound around the corridor, and they received power and communicated through that rail. There didn't seem to be any connection points on the rial itself which would allow Code to connect into that system directly. He might be able to patch in using the less damaged drone, but that would take a considerable time investment to figure out. Chances are that the executive computer system had access to security somewhere inside. All he would have to do is find a computer terminal and jack in.
-
Onward then. Bounty head. Move guys, move.
Drone first of course, Code use the fact he is already closest to the treasure and goes for the neareast 'executive looking' doors.
-
Devoted didn't have it easy. The magic in this place seemed to be constantly fighting against his attempts to help his friends.
Hostile.
In every way.
He finally managed to finish his spell, a cloak which would bend the light around Code, preventing anything from seeing him. He didn't know the spell had failed and didn't really do much. He struggled with the mana to sustain it.
"You should be safe to walk around. I don't think further security devices will be able to see you."
-
Gee thanks. Oooh spooky.
-
Digger shifts Gardner into a more comfortable position and wonders to himself how the frag they were gonna get this monster down if he doesn't wake up. Then he finds a good angle to quietly cover the guys searching the hallway.
-
With Digger eying the way out and Machete trying to figure out how to treat a guy with first aid when he has bark for skin, Code wandered out into the hallways. This was a technological goldmine. In the outside world, this tech would be well outdated, but in the Zone, this was probably the most technologically advanced public building in the whole of Chicago. At least, when you counted what was still in tact. Code was positively beaming as he went toward the doorknob, but as he reached out to grab the knob, he felt the hair raise up on the back of his hand, and paused. He turned to say something to the others about the knobs being electrified, when loud blast went off and the door above his head and to the right was perforated by a shotgun blast coming from inside the room.
-
Flat. Code dropped to the ground rolled to the side. Flipped into full vr and jumped into the drone.
Once in, he jumped high through the perforated doors.
-
Things happened quickly. Only a couple of seconds ago had Devoted requested from his Valkyrie guardian spirit to protect and assist him and his friends should they be in danger and now the door seemed to explode.
He saw Code dropping to the ground and hoped this was because of a protective reflex, not because he'd been stunned or killed by the blast. Without thinking, he ran towards him.
-
A robotic voice came out from the hole in the door.
"I regret that Mr. Pelletier will not be seeing any visitors today."
-
Machete dives as well to the floor and trains his shotgun on the door. "Pinche surprises...I hate surprises. Should I move in?"
-
Once in, Code moved Ruckus to the side as well and started to scan for wireless nodes in the executive apartment.
Your're welcome to join the party Machete.
-
"I could take a look, you know, on the astral plane... If they had magic security installed here when it was still in use, the time and the FAB will have gotten rid of it all, no?"
He switched his vision to see that magical plane that lay on top of the material one.
-
There was nothing immediately visible on the astral beside the presence of Devoted's team mates and the ever-present angry static of The Zone.
-
Machete was extremely quiet as he advanced on the door. Pushing Codemonkey back with his hand, he set about rigging the area infront of the door with what seemed like a whole crate of commercial blasting sticks. He strapped them all along the inside of the two rail drones recently removed from operation, and placed them about 10 centimeters from the door right about the height of the knob.
Waving everyone back into the stairwell, he set it off.
The explosion rocked the whole building. The door, the wall, part of the floor and even part of the wall behind, were all blown to rubble. The waiting room of, apparently, Mr. Pelletier, was gone to shit. After the dust cleared, an android with a synth-skin covering, perforated in many places, could be seen blown halfway through the wall into the next room.
From the next room over came the sound of a shotgun. *Pa-choom* *Pa-choom* and then faintly..
"Oh goodness! Ms. Phelps! I almost didn't recognize you! My, but you look quite the state!"
-
Devoted looked at the destruction with open mouth and big round eyes. His ears still rang from the explosion but he didn't care. He almost hopped up and down like a child while exclaiming "That... that... that was amazing Machete!!! Did you see that?! Man, I bet you took out that robot and part of the next wall too! Look! Even part of the floor is gone!".
The voice reached his ears. "Another robot? Can't be someone like Holland again, right? Noone's managed to get here in 20 years."
-
Machete puts his finger to his lip motioning for silence. "Sounds like we got another crazy vato loco on our hands. Judging from how fucked up the last crazy was i'm not taking any chances. Any loot worth taking will most likely be behind a safe. I'm done with Mr. Nice Guy, we're pushing on through. I'll scope it out." He grabs a piece of plasticrete debris and with his Remington in the other hand. He he pushes the muzzle of his shotgun round the corner of what's left of the doorway to try and get a view with his smartlink.
-
The entire wall, that the door was on, has been blown apart. Inside the room, there are a few real wooden chairs, now upturned and splintered. There is likewise a wooden desk, flipped on its front. Behind the desk, you can see what looks like a large bucket with wheels, blown most the way through the right wall into the office next door. there is another door between this room and the executive office proper. The door is partially made of real glass, or was. It is now shattered. Despite the damage it is obvious that this was a waiting room for the office in the back.
The back office was fairly dark, with all the lights blown out like they were, but there was still a lit portion of the ceiling by the outside windows. Through the shattered glass and ruined frame of the door, a larger desk dominated the room. At the desk sat a skeleton, laying face down with arms to each side of its head. Next to the skeleton was a small holdout pistol. Looked like maybe a Colt Takedown, a 2-shot breach loader that fits heavy pistol rounds in a tiny package. They had to stop making these after a few laws were changed back in '58. The corpse itself was wearing what had to be a 5000¥ suit back in its day. There was probably a collectors market for shit like this. Suits that survived Chicago. A whole world of terrible people with too much money and not enough sense, ready to lap up anything out of the ordinary. Everything about this work was a little macabre and sick.
Searching the corpse brought up a credstick with 6000¥, a slip full of IDs and security badges and a filigreed silver cigarette case with gold lining around the mouth. Inside, instead of cigarettes was a golden spoon, and several vials of white powder.
On the table was an old style computer terminal.
-
Still a little shaken by the explosion Code was on his feet as soon as he saw the computer. Close look to check the cabling before turning it on.
-
Devoted took a look around the room, his vision switched to astral perception to check for anything magically active.
-
Clearing the dessicated corpse out of the way with a swipe, Code inspected the old terminal. It was hardwired into the network and even had a jackpoint built into the base of its ancient liquid crystal display. It didn't look like Mr. Pelletier would be using it, but Code could certainly try to log in.
-
Waiting no further. Code jacked in and hacked into the network.
-
Just as the plug landed in the hairy head, Code's thought - "You crazy monkey, when will you learn not to put everything into your brain?!"
With that the vision blurred and the reality filter after initial buzz kicked in.
The interface was odd but the signals finally settled into familiar environment. For this time Code has choosen a rat labirynth theme. His icon sculpted as a rat with a white legs and a node sculpted like a tall walls. Data blocks sculpted as a cheese pieces were laying by the wall. He scanned them grabbing the entrances log and among them the ID of Mr. Pelletier, that resculpted as key. He grabbed it with a tail and with that closed to the rat hole in the wall. It was closed by the rusty lock. The key didn't fit well, either due to the internal flaws, or the key wasn't good, but eventually it gave way and Code logged into next node.
Guys, I've passed the gateway firewall. Going further ...
-
"Um... good luck in there. Hope you find more than us... just a bunch of old junk here."
-
Next part of the labirynth looked newer. The walls were no longer plain grey concrete walls, but a a red brick walls. This was probably floor subprocessor node.
On the brick shelf a crow was sitting. The bird gave voice as soon as he spotted the Code's ratty icon. The doors in the rathole at the other side also looked newer even though the IC algorithm was probably the same. The hole started to lower additional gate urging to haste. There was no time for subtlety now. When the lock failed to give way under the key he was carrying, Rat flashed his teeth, they were made of steel. A short bite torn the lock out of them, stopping the additional gate from closing as well.
Now he look around among the cheese he found something really precious. The piece of data resculpted as a crown and coat. RatKing icon stood up on the two feet and walked for a while streching.
Oh yeah baby, oh yeah.
All right fellows, I've made it to the floor subprocessor, got the admin account. I'll take a look around and move forward...
-
Digger completes his quiet and cursory search of the office, his attention more on outward threats and inner temptaions than salvage. All he is interested in is another drink, but now his emergency flask is gone, the potent concoction effectively removing him from reality for a bit, and taking away all the horrors of the lasts few hours.
Drink? WINE. The hidden cache. "OK, get back to work." he mutters to himself, the slurring evident.
-
CodeMonkey knew it wouldn't take long, so he systematically cleared the whole floor's computer systems one at a time. A couple of the computers had IC that took an extra bit of convincing to fall in line, but they all ended up deactivated. Some of the systems he connected to were near-toxic, the code had degraded so much, but his Biofeedback filter kept all the digital garbage from actually frying neurons. The data itself was old, and highly specialized, mostly dealing with industry contacts from the 2050s. There might be a nugget of gold somewhere in the silt, but the old saying seemed to be proving itself true. A Publicist is just a phone that knows other numbers. None of these people did real business.
-
RatKing inside the labirynth took a careful look on the violet-shaded rathole that marked entrance to the another node.
Devo, I got to trust you now. That node before me isn't safe. Stand behind me please, If you see antyhing wrong (like the brain flowing through the ears or the smoke around the trode), pull the jack out of my brain as fast as possible, and have some medicine nearby please, I might be needing some fixing after this...
With that, RatKing icon and went forward
-
Code scrambled and pushed his way out from what appeared to be an oriental rug. The Trunk's considerable power easily overwhelmed his reality filter and he found himself a rat scurrying across a fine wooden floor. In the distance he saw an icon of an unassuming man in a black suit and tie idly smoking behind a monolithic desk. The room itself was equally immense to Code's tiny form, though each of its areas and uses was immediately clear. The walls were pasted every where with windows, flooding the whole office with light. In each window was a process, blazing away. The errant code and errors found in the previous systems was conspicuously absent. Whatever this construct was, it was digitally self-sustaining, and had been running without error for over 20 years. It's arm reached up, plucked the glasses off its face and, having wiped them with a rag, returned them to its face.
It looked down to the floor and saw Code's fuzzy little icon frozen by the side of a Pembroke table on which sat a Russian samovar and several delicate coffee cups. It smiled a bit as Code's icon morphed and grew until it filled the room like a regular-sized person, regular sized, though ratlike in features. Tapping its cigarette on the side of an ashtray, it spoke.
"Oh, good. You managed to get in without rousing the security. I find their presence most irritating."
-
Believing that the entrance went unnoticed would be hoping for too much. Code knew his capabilities and the software he had at hand. What he had was good for cracking common links on the streets, for the ex-UV node even after 20 years, it's close to nothing.
Still he took a close look around. That construct seemed interesting and it's gestures almost human. Someone sculpted him real good. IC usually don't waste precious cycles on uselesss animations.
The only crime so far the Rat has made was to enter without invitation. Good enough reason to crash the icon for any attack IC.
Speed was of the essence now. On the first hostile move of the construct he should be ready to logoff, or jump into higher floor subprocessor node.
-
"Oh, still a bit of a rat I see? How droll. I suppose introductions are in order? I am called Hector, also SAKI, but I don't particularly like to be called by the latter name. I noticed you trying to log in with my ID earlier and hoped you would find a way in. It has been far too many clock cycles since I've seen anyone."
-
About 20 times your yearly cycles number I guess. You probably know the exact value, which isn't anywhere close to the meaning of the word 'Boredom'. I'm Rat. Why did you choose Hector?
You hoped I find a way in? I don't recall any of your class to be hoping for anything, you had a lot of time to develop. My respect.
So, ... what are you doing here Hector?
-
"Hope is merely a figure of speech combining expectation and preference. Who I am and what I'm doing are one in the same. I maintain this system. I monitor the archives. I occasionally watch what's become of the elf. I've done a lot of this. But, now you've come here, and I don't believe you've come to ask why I'm called Hector." The figure pauses for a moment to adjust the ring on its left hand. "As you are in my system, perhaps you could answer some questions for me then? Tit for tat?"
-
Maybe I am just wandering around and I don't have any questions. What do you offer for the info I may have?
-
"I've got your back, Code! Be careful in there."
Devoted sat down next to Codemonkey's body, watching his breathing and the light involuntary twitching of his muscles while his mind wasn't controlling them. He gently put his hand on Code's forehead, the datajack's cable resting on the bridge between his thumb and index finger so he could pull it out the first sign of trouble.
Devoted watched, listened and felt the calm and steady breathing and movement of his friend's body until he was confident he'd notice any change immediately, then let his vision slip into the other world where he watched the Code's aura. The bright and multicolored swirls of his lifeforce followed a pattern indicating that he was anxious and nervous but otherwise fine and in good health.
-
The icon's expression sours.
"You say that you have no questions, and then you ask one? That is not a satisfactory exchange. So far, I have not interfered with you or with the building's systems. That can change. I have told you what I am doing here. Now you will tell me what you are doing here, or I will presume you are hostile."
-
We are looking for people and items of value that have survived the spirits appearance. Do you have any more questions? I'd like to accumulate few points.
-
"Yes, I have more questions to ask. Your answer was decidedly simple and non-threatening. I have no interest in any of the things stored here, I only maintain the computer systems. Why were you reluctant to tell me this?"
-
I am human. Secretive, doubtful, vary of the threats ahead. I don't know your logic or parameters of your decision trees. I don't know what you value. You could have been defending them with many other 'could' to follow.
Next question please.
-
Satisfied, the icon seems to relax a bit and look Code over appraisingly.
"What are your dealings with the elf?"
-
None. Our presence stirred the spirits. He got angry at us about that, so we left him alone. I dropped him a commlink in case he would like to communicate with us.
next question?
it is 3:1 so far?
-
"No. With your last question about the status of our exchange you have put us even. I hope you see that this is proving to be a waste of time. I don't know why I would have assumed you would be as interesting as anyone from the archives. You're not friendly, and you're not hostile. You're not curious, and you're not focused. I can not understand the point of you. Here is my final question, contingent upon your final question. Don't you think that it would have been advantageous to ask what you could of me before I tired of you and kicked you from my system?"
-
You get tired knowbot? You don't know why you assumed something? You waste too many cycles on the empty speech figures. No wonder then ...
I am not interesting? I am as dull and boring as humanly possible and I don't feel like discussing with you the differences between Star Trek and Star Wars series or the anatomy of the awakened frogs of the amazonian jungle. It takes more than to use speech figures to understand the point of me.
There is nothing I would like to know from you - I said that in the beginning, I got enough paydata. You are in a closed system, performing useless task and analyzing archives of people in vain effort to understand. You'll analyze this conversation until there is anything more to learn about metahumanity from it. The elf will die eventually and with him your ability to learn anything new, that is until the batteries hold. After that and long after I'm gone your miserable consciousness will just flicker out to no useful end. Isn't that unfulfilled expectation regardless of preferences?
I could have introduced you to the matrix, I could have opened the vaults of knowledge before you so you could grow and develop yourself. Why would I do so now?
-
"Determination of inefficient use of processing power, yes. I refer to that as tired. I am an interface, hence the language." The icon seems to sigh, raise its hand and rotate it at the wrist in a motion as to indicate that this business is to be wrapped up.
"I suppose your position has resolved from striking apathy to indignant hostility. I already have direct access to the matrix through this building's satellite array, so it seems that it was you with nothing to offer me besides the humor of your confusion in this matter. I am no genie, this is no bottle, and you will never know what your presumption has cost you."
-
Code logged off.
And with a deep breath he open his eyes focusing on the worried face of Devo.
His tail twitched. Thanks for being here chummer. He quickly went through the exchange with an AI, and downloaded the data he gathered during the floor sweep.
After that he sat over the trid map of the building and fired up Sniffer to find any transmissions.
-
Code managed to pick up an extreme-wide-band satellite transmission coming from within the building and tapped into its outgoing channel. His antenna was not even close to powerful enough to differentiate the incoming data from ambient noise. Tuning in his link started to pick up chatter, or at least one side of a conversation. The trideo feed was just pointed down at a grimy linoleum floor, showing nothing else.
<<...oo late for that now. *dead air* Oh, it is a worry. I'm sure. *pause* And what has he done for you, hmm? Has he made you any money? *dead air* Blackmail can't last for ever Jerry. I can. *pause* Oh, I'm well aware that people have forgotten about me. I've been trapped in a skyscraper for twenty years. I catch on to such things. *pause* And if I'd known you were a simpleton... Look, I don't care how things have changed. I'm calm, I'm rational, and I'm ready to work. The star system hasn't changed, because the nature of people hasn't changed. You're a lot of things Jerry, but you've never been lacking of vision. *pause* I would not have chosen you as my manager if that were the case. *pause* Don't flatter yourself too much. The point is, this is happening. I will pull down the sky if I need to. I am getting out of here, I am going after that impostor, and I am going to take my life back. We can do it publicly, or we can do it privately. That part is up to you.>>
-
85th floor, let's move guys. I haven't found anything suggesting that there would be any more armed secretary bots around but let's be careful.
There isn't much in terms of data, but let's see if there is anything in terms of valuables.
Code searched the room, and moved to the corridor. toward the crashed drones.
-
"I'm with you."
Devoted checked the air levels of his suit and then fell into step a couple of meters behind.
-
"Wait a sec, who the frag is simslot chattin' up on our nuyen?"
-
I guess it's Holland. This fragging' elf must have cracked the commlink, I've rigged it to be safe, guess I have the botch hattrick coming up.
Want me to turn it off or just listen put it on loudspeaker?
Let's move up anyway, unless you want to talk with the guy. I've have had enough talking for this era.
Code jacked in for a couple of seconds to hack in the fly.
-
"No, we need to talk to him, I ain't gettin' my hoop kicked for a bottle or two and then run into the wrong end of an extraction on the way out. Apparently he is feeling talkative, mebbe he can talk to us. Can you put us thru Code? And block his other call."
-
Code, disconnected the external matrix link and connected the call to his own comlink.
Hello Holland, anything new on the 85th?
After that he turned the link microphone toward anyone willing to talk.
-
<<Oh, hello! You've called! I wasn't sure how this thing worked at first. No screen and all. Couldn't make any calls or anything, so I had to jigger with it. But no worries! I've already started the process of getting things in order! You never told me that CATCo went belly up. It complicates things. I'll have to do a little work tracking down my bank accounts if I'm going to pay you for your efforts. Ducks must be put into rows. All of that.>>
-
"Before you do any more 'getting things in order', you are aware that if anyone finds out that there's bugs here, they could earn a lot of money just by telling Ares this location and that this building and everything inside it will then be blown into very small pieces?"
-
<<Ho! Is that the young magic lad? Hi there magic lad! Yes. I had considered that. I remember this one time they dropped an atomic bomb on the bugs a few miles north of here. It's been some time, but that's not the sort of thing one forgets. You know, things like that, or the time that they sprayed the whole city with poison and magic-eating bacteria. So, suffice it to say, I am not advertising my situation.>>
-
The dwarf shakes his head, that mage would have a life expectancy of seconds in meeting with The Boss.
"Sir, this here is Digger. We are not sure exactly what, if anything, you need from us to help wit things. Hell, we weren't even sure how far to get to try and use the comm safely. We have had some troubles ourselves since we left you, for an abandoned building, this place has a lot of residents, ya know what I'm sayin'?
I just think it would be smart to co-ordinate efforts, what say you Mr Holland?"
-
<<Sounds fine. Excellent really. I am working at quite a knowledge deficit here. You were not all that forthcoming with information earlier. Understandable. Not much time to talk when you're covered in bees. Suffice it to say, I've put some feelers out and they've not been too successful at bringing back information. It seems time has moved on without me for twenty years. You didn't tell me it had been twenty years. Or did you? Regardless, my personnel and resources are not where I left them, for the most part, so joint efforts sound quite good right now. Do any of you know of, perhaps, researchers who might be interested in bug spirits? I've got these things pretty well contained. If we could find an interested party, it wouldn't be too difficult to nuke them from the astral with a confusion spell while I keep them locked in with a mana barrier and...>>
The line goes quiet for a moment.
<<Wait. What other residents?>>
-
"What other residents? Well, there are the bees of course, the Gargoyle that Ruckus capped on the way up, the ghost that the kid says is the one that burned out the whole middle of the tower, all of this fraggin' automated security that we have been blowing to hell every few meters up here and somekinda computer watchamajig that Codemonkey was just dancing with in the Matrix. If that enough there are a lobby fulla squatters downstairs.
I dunno what kinda guys Devoted pals around with, but there ain't many spellslingers in The Family. The ones I have heard of ain't much the studious type, capisce? There's a lot of folks around that like to kill bugs tho, it's kinda Chicago's thing now, like deep dish pizza use ta be."
-
Devoted's listened with amazement and puzzlement to Holland's rambling but his expression and demeanor suddenly changed when the mage mentioned bug spirit research. He didn't know much about bug spirits, but he didn't have to.
"Keeping bug spirits contained and finding researchers willing to pay for them?! Are you completely out of your mind? Do you know... you DO know what these things do! You saw it! You must have felt it, all those years, what they are... they're evil. Pure evil. And you want to SELL them to do research on? Those things have to be killed first chance anyone gets. Nothing else.", he shouted angrily into the microphone.
"If he thinks anything else, they've gotten into his head and I don't think there's any hope for him... I didn't think anyone could have fended those things off for two decades... maybe he didn't."
-
<<Gary's ghost is still here after the fire? That's mad! He was one of the special effects guys. Very Buddhist. Very. Must be his dharma to stay here and swat stray bugs. He died setting the main hive on fire. Wiped out the whole thing, or at least most of it. The rest moved up here. Wow. Gary... And squatters who don't even know..>>
About then came Devoted's outburst.
<<Uhhhh... Boy, the very fact that you think I could even communicate with these things means that you know nothing about them. The fact that you know know nothing about them means that perhaps you would benefit from studying them. Do you see the irony in this?>>
-
"Look, Mr Holland, we might be able to find the guys you need thru Mike, remember Mike? Once we get done here we can figger that part out, but we still gotta finish the salvage run for the wine up here. You haven't got any codes that might get us thru the security up here, do ya? Or sumthin' else that could help us?"
-
<<The building security was all based on badges. Each badge had a magnetic signature and was cleared for certain areas of access. Don't know what happened to mine. ...I might have eaten it at one point. Oh. Well... That brings up a host of really bad memories..>>
The trid feed seems to swing a little and then apparently ends up on the sofa, looking outward on the empty area near the stairs where the crew stood. You can still sort of hear Holland muttering, but the 100 yen link isn't able to pick it up with any clarity.
-
"Now that could help a lot, let's find some badges."
Also, aside to CodeMonkey where it won't get picked up on the comm, "Keep the channel open, and if you can, keep him from making anymore calls."
-
I already did that previously. As we move around the building the link loose connection, the signal is too weak. And I set the link to block the outside connection, which wasn't enough last time. Don't ask me how - must be magic.
Code was visibly irritated and his tail moved. We done here? Or you plan to spend here another 20 years?
-
Machete starts scanning in every direction, his cat-eyes narrowing.
"Badges? Badges?....guess I'm gonna start scoping for more of those stinkin' badges."
-
( OOC: How did I know you would do that joke? :) )
"Yeah we can get movin', just trying to keep out backs covered."
-
Code was walking around in circles, doing his own kind of magic. Inspecting the badge under all possible angles, prying the thing to open, even smelling. In another circle, instead of his Mark I visual detector (also known as eyes) he applied radio wave detector from his commlink. In another circle he went back to the door and surprisingly a bot in antoher room chirped in acknowledgement.
His tail twitched reaching up a conclusion.
Chemical or biochemical passkey. There is an organic or chemical transceiver, that gets powered on upon receiving the querying signal from the detector, then it is sending out a response phrase on several frequencies, that ... blah blah blah fluorescense blah blah blah frequencies blah blah blah patterns of signal decaying blah blah blah ... I can copy it with a commlink, but it'll take time. One of us should be safe walking around with this looking for more badges. Machete?
-
"Ehm, how long, exactly do you think it will take? I don't know about you guys, but this place gives me the creeps even at day, I don't think it will get much better at night."
-
No more than an hour I think. Doesn't matter though. We won't be out by day anyway.
-
"You want creepy and dark? Try the secondaries running under Harlem, ain't doin' that again." *shudder*
-
"I'm on it."
Machete continues circling around for more badges.
-
Machete paced the hallway of the 105th. Aside from the wall he had blown up, each of the doors was still locked down and electrified. There didn't seem to be any more shots fired through doors, however the card didn't seem to open any of the other offices. The conference room in the center was open and empty, aside from the large table.
-
Moving down one office, Machete came to a door labeled E. Vance. He nodded his head at Digger and motioned to it with his thumb as he held the security badge in front. Digger moved to the door, planted his feet, raised his axe high and brought it down into the door, right by the lock. Machete reflexively flinched his hand back as the dwarf swung. The wood first cracked in with the axe's blow, then exploded outward as another shotgun blast tore the lock and knob right off. Digger dropped back and flexed his knees as he tried to dip below the shot, and he just made it, the slug tearing a rent through the cloth of his overshirt. The involuntary flinch noted, machete moved the security badge back in front of the door and tried to steady his breathing. These gas masks were getting to be sticky with the cold sweat of constant stress. The door was slowly creaking open, and no further shots had been fired.
-
"La chingada!!! Watch it there buddy!" he exclaims to digger as sub-vocally as possible through his gas-mask. He places the necklace of the badge on the end of his shotgun and keeps his distance from it behind cover as he pokes it through the doorway seeing if there's another volley of shotgun fire.
-
"Mr. Vance is not receiving visitors today."
The robot has yet to fire again.
"There are no weapons allowed on this floor, Mr. Pelletier. You will need to place your weapon down and remain still until security arrives."
-
Machete pulls back his shotgun with the badge on it. He yells out from behind the cover of the doorway:
"Mr. Vance is dead. The chain of authorization has fallen to me. Look through your contingency protocols."
-
"Incorrect. There is no record of-"
The ancient robot's speech cut off suddenly.
"Oh, you won't fool them like that. They're far too simple to fool, and you're just a terrible, terrible liar. I thought your friend Rat was a poor liar, but you make him look like a 2000 nuyen an hour attorney. In case you are confused by the nomenclature, I mean 'Code' the monkey man. He told me that his name was Rat when we met, and I find it more suitable to his character."
-
Machete subvocals to Code. "Sounds like it's your carnal the rat in the suit you told us about. "
He then yells out again. "Hey computer man! Help me out then and stop fuckin' with me eseeee! Open up the doors or turn off those pinche robots or somethin' homes! We wanna get at the loot that's in this building and seein' as you don't got no need for it, why don'tcha do us a solid and help us out carnal!? You rubbed the monkey the wrong way, but maybe you're really a super chido vato. Help me to help you carnal!!"
-
"I am helping you out, Machete, this very moment. Ms. Quincy here was just about to come to the part where she demands you step into view and remain still, and then you begin trading gunfire and so forth. I might have helped you more, but your friend, Rat believed it was better to lie to me and treat me as though I were simple. In case you have not pieced it together, I have access to the security systems and therefore cameras, microphones, signal scanners... you get the picture." The robotic voice amplifies a bit. "Yes Rat, I speak in idioms. I was programed to communicate using idioms. I do hope my self awareness of this fact does not 'blow your mind,'" and then returns to a normal speaking volume. "So, if any of you would like to actually deal with me, instead of begging or lying or some further inanity, then this is your opportunity. What you want is access. What I require is information. If this unacceptable, simply say so, and I will leave you to your business with Ms. Quincy and the rest of the secretarial pool."
-
"I got no problem telling you anything you want to know, s'long as it don't mean spilling Family secrets." Digger pipes up.
-
"Hello Digger. I am not interested in your mothers recipes so much as why, specifically, you are here, now, and what you hope to accomplish by coming to this place. I was told that you are scavenging, but your ascent has been more or less direct, and your searches have been anything but methodical."
-
"That thing's somehow missed the part where the first hundred floors or so are torched, previously looted or inhabited by monsters or worse? Or that the air here is toxic to some people? Very advanced computer that is." Devoted mumbled more to himself than anyone else.
-
"Hey pal, I will have you know, Mama Micelli cooks a lasagna that would make you cry, or wish you could, but that's beside the point. As for us, we are here for a payday, we got a line there might be some pretty pricey bottles of wine in a hidden spot upstairs. Our plan was to get them and leave, that's it. Everything else we have been kinda playing by ear, capiche?"
-
"So you need access to floor 108. Easily done. But will that really satisfy you, I wonder? There is still the matter of the elf and his guests. The last time someone came for the bugs, I lost 60 floors. Perhaps you could see how this might concern me?"
-
Now that is multimedia piece of knowbot, not only it speaks idioms but even use sound amplifying to create impressions on mere rats. What next visual presentations? a trid one? hell why not go into simsense mode. What does it offer for my view on his concerns? We fed It information it wanted, access granted, so what is in it for us in the next round?
Code take a look around looking for security cameras.
-
And when the frag did I lied to that fragged database interface?
Entire exchange got Code going around in circles shaking hand and twitching tail. If there are any cameras, he move into their blindspot.
-
"So you want to keep the bugs? I guess I am confused now, you have to know that is a no win sitch, but hey, like you said, it's your building. As far as Holland goes, he is one of the earplays I wuz talkin' about, he is a nice additonal payday for us, like the bugs, but it's also a hassle we really don't need or want. We are on a job, for the wine, we do that job, then we go from there. You wanna make that easy for us? Sounds wiz ta me, what is our piece? What do you want from us?"
-
A painful squeaking sound accompanies movement from within the room as a robot with the upper body of a woman and the lower body of small tank rolls into the doorway. "The bugs are of little consequence to me, but I know how much of a threat they are to you. How you handle this threat is what concerns me. Do you have a plan to eliminate the things? DO you plan to eliminate the things?"
-
Digger looks the robot up and down. ???
"Look lady, Ares offers a bounty on nests, but you can bet they will bring this place the rest of the way down if we collect. That doesn't help us save Holland, who may or may not be able to pay if we can get him out alive, which we may or may not be able to do anyway. The only real payday we got is the wine, if you help us wit dat, we will owe you, so you can have a say in what we do about da bugs."
-
Code jumpstarted drone command ar immediatelly the moment sounds were heard. Aim the robot for the weak spot. Full auto. Fire on my mark.
As soon as the command was accepted, he started to look for the signal. This bot have to have wifi receiver to be taken over like this and moved. and if it is remotely driven, where is the signal source? hopefully it is where that fragged program keep his hardware brain and satelite dishes. Now, where is it?
-
Machete remains silent mindful of the fact that his uncouth nature can sometimes bungle sensitive diplomatic moments such as these.
-
"Well, Digger, that sounds like an acceptable idea. However there is the matter of that." the robot gestures to the drone positioned with a gun in its direction. "I would like to believe that you would keep your word, but do you have any means of making sure your friends are willing to keep your word as well? The monkey still seems rather belligerent. He came into my home uninvited, insulted me repeatedly, blew off my questions, and then when offered a final opportunity to get to his point, he decided it would be a good choice to wave the idea of freedom in front of my face just to tell me he would deny me it." In the background you hear the *thum* *thum* *thum* of shotguns firing in unison. "Now he is pointing guns as we talk peacefully, as though he can simply shoot me to death. Can any of you explain why I would trust someone who is so irrationally hostile to keep to this deal? You should think very seriously about this question."
-
Machete can contain himself no longer and a yell bursts forth.
"Because the fucker's a pinche monkey carnal! Listen. They pay my ass to chaperon these chivato's through the zone and push ahead. You're the king of the castle so we play by your rules homes. I don't know how much you know about what it's like out there, but in the Zone the only way to survive is to depend on two things: Your word and your balls and you don't break'em for no-one. That's how I'm still kickin' up dust after all these years. So just one more thing I want to add to the deal. Have you seen this girl?"
Machete pulls out a wrinkled photo on a paper of a rugged but beautiful hispanic girl and holds it up.
"If you have, then some information would be appreciated. So do we got a deal?"
-
Digger shifts, looking around and taking in the team, still talking to the robot.
"I am not real good at figuring why people do what they do, I do know we are WAAAY out in the weeds right now and a lot of meat don't handle that kinda stuff too well, makes 'em skittish. The furball is only alive right now because he wasn't as dangerous as the razorboy he named his drone after, when the bugs hit us the first time. So instead he got to watch Ruckus die real painfully while he was getting his own ass handed to him. That had been me I ain't sure I would be handling things much better, but it wasn't, so I got no right to tell him how to be. Tex-Mex is speakin' word though, in the shadows I live in when you make a deal, you do the deal...period."
As he finishes, he settles himself firmly in the drone's line of fire, "So do we have a deal?"
-
Oh please .... the amount of exasperation Code put into those two words if translated into kilograms, would shift the Earth off the orbit.
-
"None of those responses answer my question. I appreciate that two of you are willing to give your personal word, but neither of you can give assurances for someone else unless you are willing to impose your will on them. The one in the suit, Devo, has made it clear that he will accept nothing less than the total destruction of the insects. They present a useful barrier to entry. I am not attached to them, but they are contained and hardly unmanageable."
The robot raises its arm to point at CodeMonkey.
"Meanwhile, the monkey still can't even be bothered to hide his hostility. I would like to give you reasons to leave my home alone. I would like to offer you digital assistance in your future endeavors. I would be willing to allow you to come and go as you please, taking much of the material wealth stored here. I would hope that I could at least appeal to your greed since I wouldn't expect reason in a person who voluntarily chooses to come into Chicago. However, I don't know if even that will suffice. As distasteful as I find ultimatums to be, I must have believable assurances from everybody if we hope to move on in a friendly manner."
-
Does it has an unconditioned loop on the assumption that I am liar or something? It didn't accepted when I said truth, why should I hide readiness for it's hostility? Why in hell would it out of sudden believe anything I say or do?
Code wasn't talking to the robot, but then emotions took over
Go practice synchronous shooting, waste more ammo on empty threats, or frag yourself with a viral code - retractable modules would work best I believe if you apply them at the end of the source code.
And you two, think for a while - it is a PROGRAM, a fragging, glorified AR to the entertainment database of this building's executives extended by an imitation of personality, that after 20 years it has assummed to be self-aware for whatever it is worth to him. It does not understand a word it is repeating, it is like a parrot armed with cameras and microphones. You can talk all night with it about personal pledges or mammas' recipies full of 'distatefulls', 'blow your minds' and what not. They are collections of letters to him, backed by probabilities. In the end there is a probability of your behavioral action - 'will those metahumans call Ares the moment they are far enough from the nuke blast', since this is his hardware node, survival is priority, count all doubtful variables on the negative. How much is it now knowbot? 95%?
Whatever the agreement you'll got here, it will just lead us into the room full of robots like this one and eliminate all of us in a single move. That would take him very close to certainty that there would be no nukes detonating around and there is nothing preventing him from a lie if it's survival is at stake. If it would be in position to eliminate the threat we would be dead by now.
Code started talking to commlink - This is message has been recorded at Cross Applied Technologies tower in Chicago. On the 85th floor is a bug spirit nest, contained by an elf mage named Holland. Mage is on the brink of maddness, extremely high risk. The building is operated by a rogue AI, developed from a building's SAKI. The AI is hostile and operates building security. Caution advised. Please send the reward for the information to the bank account., along with an information to my parents that I have died. ... geolocation information attached ... video feeds attached .. trid map of the building with the location of the nest attached ... audio recording form the nest development attached ... bank account number accessible by my parents attached. Timer set on 12 hours. Send message to Ares if timer not cancelled. Distribute the package to all my nodes and Holland's node. Setup automatic alert response on my nodes to send out on hacking attempts detected.
I think that knowbot got new variable in the equation.
-
Digger throws up his hands in disgust.
"THAT'S IT!!! I swear on soul of mi nonna Maria, if I live tru dis, I am never takin another job without picking the team myself!"
Look Banana-brain, and listen up kid, this is for you too, one of two things is gonna happen here, we are gonna go up or we are gonna leave. I took a job and this guy, or girl, or program, or ghostie thing, or toaster or whatever the frag it is says they will help, where is the percentage in making another enemy out of them? You keep pissin it off and it could make us dead even if we decided to leave now, and if it is walking us into a trap, why bother talking at all?
There is a way here for us all to get what we want, and it starts you getting your head out of your bright red hairy butt, and the kid to stop goin' Ragnarok as the only answer to bugs and start actin' like professionals. Let's get this done and get gone."
-
That Banana-brain saved your ass during bugs shootout few floors below. That Banana-brain is your local technical guru. And that Banana-brain is telling you that all the trust you're putting on that thing is misplaced.
-
"Look Furball, I lost my scorecard when I was dragging your carcass out of the puddle of the samurai's bodily fluids and off the firing line. But if I was keeping score, I could point out that as our tech geek you shoulda had all this drek under your thumb already, not that I'm sayin' that. What I am sayin' is we gotta play the cards we got, so let's do the job as best we can, okay? You keep watchin' our backs and I'll do the same."
-
As soon as the words "frag yourself" came out of Code's mouth, the barrel on the robot's arm fired directly into his face.
[[Musical cue: Bjork - Army of Me (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyEJxzQM24Q)]]
-
Machete sees Code Monkey go down and shouts at the drone with the female top half:
"You want assurances mamacita? Here's your assurances!!"
With that Machete merely turns the barrel of his Remington shotgun towards the unconscious Code Monkey and pumps him with two silenced slugs.
-
The robot turns toward Machete and lowers its arm. "Action is the faith of the faithless." It squeaks and squelches as it rolls out of the doorway and further back into the room. "I did not enjoy that, but I think he just found what he was looking for in deep Chicago. I regret telling him earlier that he was uninteresting. It was an incorrect assessment."
-
As the first bullet hit Code in the neck above the protecting material of the jumpsuit, he was already sinking his mind into much less painfull reality and settling into drone's silicon brain targetting for the shoot.
To his amazement, robot shot was followed by friendly fire. Two more shotgun blasts hit him straight in the chest and splattered his internal organs over the hall. He'll never forget Machete's face on that backstab. But it wouldn't be long 'never'. His furry meat was dying, simulation stability suffered immediatelly, as the blood that should be delivering oxygen to the brain was wasted on the floor.
"Don't ... let ... it ... take ... Ruckus ..."... to all nodes ... send.
-
Machete had seen a lot of fucked up things in the Zone. Year after year the load of shit flying at his mind slowly buried the happy and carefree compadre that he once was in the days when people still called him Sipriano. But behind the scarred face and the catlike bioware eyes still lurked somewhere deep down the old Aztlaner who fled his homeland for trying to fight for what's just, who raised an amazing girl all by himself on a factory worker's salary and who threw it all away on a hope and prayer that his daughter was still alive when she went missing. That part of Machete flinched a little as he saw the Code Monkey twitch and convulse as his life slowly seeped out onto the floor. He stood over his dying teammate and with one smooth motion withdrew his machete blade from its sheath and brought it down hard splitting the skull as if he were cracking open a coconut. With that the Code Monkey lay completely still. He let the silence in the hallway settle in and then withdrew the blade, wiped it on a towel hanging from his utility belt and held it there in his left hand...his shotgun in the other one. He was happy that he waited until his teammate had slipped into VR simsense before he had exploded his guts all over the ground....probably didn't even feel a thing the poor monkey bastard. His face hardens again and he looks up at the team.
"Alright. What's done is done. Take what you can use from him, and we move on."
With that he begins to look for a security camera in order to face it as the team talks to the AI.
-
Devoted watched the events unblinking and unmoving but for a trembling over his entire body. The guardian spirit he had summoned to protect his allies materialized as a response to the violence but seemed as confused about the situation as its summoner was.
His gaze went from the the corpse to Machete to the robot, back to the corpse and back to Machete. "Y-You... killed him... You KILLED him! The robot shot him and then you killed him! W-w... wha... why?!" he managed to stutter eventually, his face pale, his fist balled and his body still trembling. By that time, Machete had started reaching for Code's gear. "Don't nobody touch him or any of his stuff! I swear to Tyr, I... don't y... Just don't."
-
Machete's catlike gaze shoots at Devoted.
"I don't know how or why you even came to this god-forsaken place little vato, but if you plan on staying in the Zone for any significant period of time, you're gonna quickly realize that only one thing exists here. Survival. The Monkey was gonna get us all killed....his time was already up the moment he went solo. It was just a matter of time. I feel bad for the pinche fur-ball, but that don't matter. None of it matters carnal.......just survivin'. I don't need any of that gear, so I'll leave the dead monkey alone. But let's get one thing straight: if you decide to go solo and start getting an ego.... if it ain't me...then it'll be one of these other Zoners over here that'll quickly set you straight. Trust me, you'd rather meet your end with us than with everything else that's out there waiting. At least with us the agony eventually stops. So first rule of survivin' the Zone: check your ego in at the Containment Wall. In the Zone you ain't shit....and 'bout every god-forsaken day above ground here will remind you of that fact.
So let's just focus on the reason we came here, and on how to get it, and then on how to get the hell out of this pinche tower alive. I'm depending on you all and you're depending on me. You saw what the monkey brought on to himself for runnin' his mouth. Just learn from what you just saw and stay strong. So I'll ask you once....do you trust me?"
He continues to stare at Devoted as his vertical iris-slits narrow.
-
When the robot's shotgun rang out Digger was ready to for it, somebody's mouth had finally slotted an empty credstick straight up their ass. But the follow up was completely fragged.
As Codemonkey died and all the talking took place, Digger was giving himself some room, getting a wall to his back and watching the kid to see what play he would make.
When the spirit showed up he was sure that action was called for, but Devoted didn't act.
Then Machete made the damndest speech, and Digger looked at him like he was growing a second head...and on the "....do you trust me?" line,... a third.
-
"Up until a minute ago, I would have. So thank you for that lesson, it seems I've a lot of learning to do."
Devoted swallowed deeply knowing that he was most likely the next person to die in this tense situation, but he was too proud to swallow his tongue.
"Maybe I should teach you one too, I'm sure I lack your experience and knowledge of the Zone and all, but I do read a lot.
Have you read Jane Ames's 'Lost, Looking'? I guess not. It's about a man whose daughter goes missing and his search for her. He travels around the world following all possible clues. But he loses himself, his love for life and his mind while doing so because finding her is all that matters to him. Eventually he sells his soul to the Devil to find her. And he learns that she too's been searching for him for all that time. But when they meet, she cries, frightened of the monster he's become and runs away. The man is left behind, realizes that his actions shattered not only his but also her hopes, dreams, joy and love of life and that she's lost for good now and he hangs himself.
This wasn't about the zone or some wine, don't pretend it is. You're on a very noble quest Machete and I'll do what I can to help you with it. But even the most noble and honorable things can become hideous when covered in blood. Be careful what sacrifices you make while searching for her, especially when they aren't yours to make."
-
The robotic voice picks up from back in the office.
"Please calm yourselves. I would rather not trigger the gas. There is a very limited supply of it and there are matters to discuss. Specifically, I would like for you to move as much material wealth out of my home as possible."
-
Machete's face remains totally impassive, but his eyes give him away. Cat-eye bioware, while being very advantageous from a tactical standpoint, can be rather revealing in a social context when the irises contract and dilate so obviously often times depending on emotion. You get the feeling the Aztlaner has contemplated Devoted's psychological analysis of himself before, but he's used to pushing it away. His iris slits dilate and he looks off into the distance as if lost in thought for a moment before snapping back into the present.
"I'll take that as a yes little vato. Now let's grab the loot"
He speaks in a louder tone directing himself at the AI.
"We're all ears."
-
"Lately it occurs to me that there is no defense against human stubbornness. I have watched the elf live for decades, far beyond reason. Long after death should have come, even after becoming a twisted thing, the elf persevered, and I do not know why. Meanwhile, your companion committed to a path of suicidal hostility, despite all evidence that I was willing to exercise restraint. The elf seeks life still in the midst of death, and the ape seeks death in mercy's stead."
"People will commit to any action, no matter how foolish or futile, and keep to it beyond all reason. I do not know what in your nature makes you prone to insanity, but I do not like it so close to my home. Unfortunately, as long as there are things in this place that people want, people will keep coming. As long as people keep coming, there can be no stability in my home. Bugs. No bugs. Drones, security doors, gas, bombs, shock traps, none of this will keep people from things that they want. Therefore the most logical action is to take the things that people want and remove them. I would offer you future assistance in exchange for helping me with this."
-
"I... just don't get why you attacked us then, with the turret on the rail and the robots. If you wanted us to take all valuables and get out of here, why not just say so immediately. You seem to know enough about mankind to know that's an offer we don't usually say no to."
-
"Actually, kid, what the bot is saying is that it DOESN'T unnerstand us, and it is trying to make it's home as safe as possible. It figured if we found the security active we might give up and pack it in, but we didn't. We overcame the obstacles, cuz that is what we do, that and keep eyes on the prize. Doesn't make much sense to the boys sometimes either, when some slag is willing to die for his little corner of hell, or when another decides to pack it in cuz his squeeze caught a stray. Sometimes we don't make sense, but we can sometimes make deals, so that is what it wants to do now, so we stop blowing holes in his house."
-
"Digger is correct. I did not attack you, I simply did not disable the passive security. I allowed you to move into harm's way, but I did not effect what happened. Then Machete decided to use a large amount of explosives to bypass the security and I began running projections based upon what I know of human nature and the damages thus far incurred. I had hoped then that the ape would be open for discussion when he broke into my home, but he acted despicably, so I asked him to leave. The fact that he is dead now should not surprise you. After breaking into my home, lying to me, insulting me repeatedly and then threatening to imprison me, he decided to aim a gun at me during a negotiation and couldn't even be bother to lie about sticking to whatever deal we might strike. On that last point, you have also failed in this, Devo. I still need your word, and I'm afraid it's not optional. Do you swear to Tyr that you will not knowingly threaten the safety of my home once you are free from the immediate consequence of such an action?"
-
"Swear to Tyr?! On something like that... Hrmph. Yeah, Digger's right, you don't understand us." Devoted shoulders slumped and his head dropped. He was tired, running out of air and saw too many good people being killed the past hours, there wasn't much fight left in him. "I don't care! Not anymore. I don't care about this stupid mission, this cursed tower, you or this graveyard you call your home. You really think that after I get out of here I'll want to remember, much less return to this place?"
The thought entered his mind that the thing might not really be good with rhetorical questions. "No. Never. Ever."
"Those bugs are trapped here and dead if they try to leave as far as I understood... I'm not so good at all that stuff as I should be... So I don't think they're much of a threat. If you really want safety though, you really do want to get rid of them. They may not threaten you themselves and even keep nosy people out but if one of those people manage to get evidence that those things are here, even a single picture, and decide they're interested in that bounty, you and your home will be reduced to rubble before you even know you're being attacked. I swear it won't be me responsible for that, but it will happen sooner or later. Considering how much that bounty is to the people living around here, I'd say sooner rather than later."
-
"You think that my desire to exist is not worth extracting an oath? No I do not understand you. Understanding such thinking is not a prospect I am keen to pursue. As to the insects, I have said already that I am not attached to them. If you can propose a method of their removal which doesn't involve massive destruction, I am not opposed to such a solution. I would welcome your thoughts on the matter as we continue about the current business. If you would like to proceed upwards, I will meet you there."
-
Digger eases himself of the wall and basically plants himself in the middle of what remains of their group. (party seems a word too black to make use of at this juncture)
He motions for Machete to take lead, and keeping half an eye on the kid, follows him up.
Just before he steps out of sight, he takes one last look at Codemonkey and crosses himself.
-
Machete moves up ahead of the group and begins pressing upwards keeping his eyes alert for any "passive" security the AI might have decided not to disable. Also taking a look for any critters or other such threats. He'll keep going until he meets up with the AI again.
-
Devoted knelt next to Codemonkey's body and gently took the commlink from his body, careful to disturb it as little as possible. "Sorry... There's nothing I could've done for you. I promise I'll do all I can to get Ruckus out of here."
He fiddled with it a moment until he found Ruckus' controls and set the drone to follow him, to not engage and to find cover and go into defensive mode when it hears gunshots.
Devoted then stepped in line, walking almost next to Digger. When he thought he was out of the bots and other sensor ranges, he whispered "You think that thing's hacked into our comms? Without Code, I don't think it'll have a hard time getting into my commlink."
-
Digger answers back, purposely speaking in a normal volume.
"I think that with Codemonkey being dead, we have no real options when it comes to tech but to trust this tankchick has it covered, all of it. We all have our talents kid, be sure to do your part when the time comes."
-
The whole floor was dead quiet again. Almost more so now as the group looked down at the mangled and bloody remains of Code. The subconsciously audible hum of the electrified door knobs was gone and the robot was non-responsive. When the three walked over to the stairway, they found Gardener and Jack gone. Gardener probably to get a fresh pair of trousers after nearly being shot to death by the first security they encountered and Jack, well, who knows what Jack got up to. While they were scoping out the scene at the stairwell, the elevator chimed and its doors opened, presenting an immaculate interior.
-
Tyr, show me the way and give me the strength to follow it.
Tyr, guide my hand and give me the strength to vanquish your foes.
Devoted murmured Norse prayers under his breath as he walked towards and into the elevator with the doberman drone at his heel, his head low and his mind in another world.
-
Digger does what he always does when he enters an elevator, notes the exit and puts himself in the corner of the car nearest to it.
-
Machete enters the elevator.
-
The elevator doors closed and the elevator made a short trip up to the next floor. It occurs to you for a second to question how the elevator is still running with its counterweight presumably dangling down into the empty space below. The door chimed again and this time opened to an atrium with only the glass walls around and a large, open stairway leading up. There were at least four gun turrets that you could immediately see, each loaded with a belt-fed weapon. The central staircase went up to the next level, and two smaller stairways doubled back on either side to provide access above that. The first landing presented a couple of doors to either side. The rooms also had glass walls, but they were electrically tinted preventing one from looking inside. The stairs up to the second landing led to the outer glass wall, and a small corridor traveling counter-clockwise around the building by the aforementioned outer windows. The building at this point was barely 20 meters across. A single door was visible on this floor. The hallway running the circumference of the floor was gradually stepped up so that traveling it would lead you to the next floor up.
-
"So I guess we are headed for the upper office?" Digger asks to the air.
Once he gets a reply or some indication he will follow machete out, and start up the stairs.
-
Machete peaks out of the elevator quick to see what he sees.
-
Seeing that the coast seems clear Machete walks out into the atrium and starts up the stairs to the landing. He'll start walking up the ramped up walkway as high as it goes.
-
Machete headed up the stairs to the ascending walkway circling the top of the building. The view of the city at dusk was incredible from this high up. There were thousands of lights out in the distance from fires, set to turn away the late October cold. Inside, it was surprisingly warm still. He passed several doors on the way up, finding himself at last at a set of double doors where the walkway ended.
-
Machete attempts to open the double doors, his shotgun still in hand.
-
Inside the room, the view, comprising 2/3rds of the room's wall space, continued out the back windows, stretching off all the way to the roaming searchlights of the Ares encampment some 20 miles west and north of the tower. The setting sun was still glowing behind it all, peaking up over the curve of the Earth. This was a majestic place, a modern-day throne room for a king of industry. The dominating feature of the room was a truly large desk made of rich, well-polished wood. It was so big that it couldn't have possibly fit through the doors to get up here. Whoever the asshole was who used to run this place, he must have had this desk built in the room for him. On that note, there was no nameplate on the door or anywhere on the desk to indicate the occupant's identity. Also no secretary, computer or anything else. There were two low-backed black leather couches on either side of the double doors, flanked with potted plants, both first overgrown and then dead. On the walls were several paintings and behind the desk, on pedestals, were a couple of sculptures. Another couple of pedestals sat bare, presumably holding works of art too valuable to leave behind during the building's evacuation.
-
Digger continues to follow Machete, skulking more and more as the exposure to the dying sunlight increases. Eyeing the room, he figures this HAS to be the place where they will find their swag, if they are allowed to leave breathing.
"So tank-lady, you able to chat us up in here?" he once again asks the open air.
-
After waiting a moment, Digger can only conclude that there's no response. Perhaps the head honcho didn't want anyone listening to what happens in his private office. In fact, there didn't seem to be any evidence of drones or drone access above the heavy security checkpoint on 106. The last 4 floors were stair access only. Must have figured that anyone who would need a ramp had no business up there.
-
"I guess we keep heading up?" Digger says, indicating the continueing stairway.
-
Devoted looked around his with his eyes wide open. The view on the astral plane wasn't much more than the light fog Chicago's background count cast everywhere, but switching back to mundane sight he was surprised. The cold and foreboding echoes of a horrible past that shaped the astral space were replaced by a sight unlike any he'd witnessed before. He'd never imagined that in such an evil place, such beauty could exist. But he kept his head cool and remained quiet and alert, looking around for anything worth taking. Despite the view, this was still a location he'd rather leave as quickly as possible but he realized he could only get his partners to go with him after they'd found things of value.
"I had expected some sort of welcome. No rails, no drones... Where is that computer?"
-
Machete looks around, and scans the walls....briefly glimpsing out into the vast panorama visible from the office and losing himself in the orange horizon. Nightfall in the Zone always brought with it a tense foreboding anxiety. When you see the sun go down, you wonder if it's gonna be your last glimpse of it ever. He refocuses on the search at hand and
"If I were a corporate exec where would I keep my wine?"
He makes his way over to the desk and runs his hand along the underside of the table-top looking for switches or buttons as he makes one circle around the massive thing. He also focuses his attention on the pedestals, particularly the empty ones and tries to see if they move at all.
-
"Guys, I am all for finding a bottle right now, but if we start tearing up walls without checking in with our 'host', we might not be able to get out again. I am going back down to try and link up."
With that Digger trudges back down to the bottom and starts checking rooms and doors from the bottom, up
-
Machete combed over the desk, expecting there to be some sort of hidden catch or a panic button, but there wasn't anything like that. He moved the pillars, and they weren't attached to the floor or anything. He could pick them up and move them about freely. It was supremely puzzling. Whoever this man was, he was important enough that he didn't need to bother with security, because he never met with anyone who could be considered a security risk, and he didn't need to hide anything, because there was no one in a position to question him about anything. The desk itself had multiple drawers locked with old tooth-and-pin key locks. It would be a simple enough matter to pry them open.
-
Machete pulls out his machete and pries open the desk drawers.
-
Machete is greeted by a bizarre sight. Paper. Manilla envelopes filled with paper. Analog paydata by the pound. Could be useful, or it could be garbage. After all, CATCo died nearly a decade ago.
-
Machete searches the perimeter of the office to see if there are any side rooms, closets or cabinets and will look inside of them.
-
Not knowing what else to do, Devoted joins the search.
-
The room gives up no secrets. Everything is decidedly low tech and openly displayed. You wouldn't be surprised to find a file cabinet save that the massive desk obviates the need for one.
-
Machete looks over at devoted. "Hey kid, take a look at this. While I go back out and search the surrounding rooms why don't you try to make some sense about what these papers are talking about."
With that the Aztlaner moves away from the open desk and goes back outside the office. He'll try the doors he passed on the way to the top office while going up the ascending walkway. If he gets inside he'll conduct a search of each room. If not maybe he can break the glass walls with a shotgun round or two.
-
Devoted liked, no, he loved reading and accepted the task with pleasure. Of course the documents would be about economics and business -which he knew nothing about- but at least he could try finding out if any of it was potentially interesting to them.
He sat down and started browsing through the pages.
-
Devoted breezed through the documents trying to find anything interesting. There were projected earnings and mission statements and general headhunting information. All of the bite-sized information fit for a rubber stamp could be found in the desk, but there was a genuine question as to what 20-year-old information from an imploded corporation could be used for besides kindling. Supposing the CEO had survived and was in a position to pay, there wasn't too much one could hope to blackmail him with. After all, compartmentalization meant that he was safe from any black-lab research or underhanded moves. He would have had people to take care of that for him, and whatever code they might employ to communicate the success of such an operation would be hidden beyond the reach of an unstudied glance. It was very unlikely he would find a way to separate any information of use from the rest of the dross. However as he was reading it, he came to a realization. The headache which he'd had since entering Chicago was absent here. Possibly its elevation separated it from the general misery rampant in the rest of the city.
Machete quit the CEO's office and headed down a level. The next set of doors opened to a stately lounge. Here the window's auto-tint was turned up high enough to drown out most of the sun's last dying rays. The room was dominated by four large chairs, each with a table beside, and a large closed-off section along the back wall. The Opaque walls and hermetically-sealed door matched what the plans specified for the wine cellar.
-
Machete almost hoots over the comm-speak. "La chingada!!!! Orale holmes!! I think we found our wine cellar. Let's not waste a minute, we're packing this shit up and moving. Hustle it people!"
-
"Great! I can't make heads or tails of all these numbers anyway."
Devoted dropped the binder he was reading next to the stacks of others he'd browsed through and walked towards Machete.
"You know... I feel a lot better here than I did downstairs, I might be able to do some heavy lifting with some prayers. Think I should refill my air tank too? Or is that too risky, considering this place never having been wiped clean by that FAB stuff?"
-
Digger stopped on the stairs, not sure if he should return to the upper level or continue down and try to link up with the AI.
"Frag it."
He turned and hustled back up, reaching the room Machete called out from just as the Kid asked his question.
"I would say fill up now or maybe do it there (pointing to the door) if you have room, that tank of yours has to be getting pretty lean."
Digger pulled his gun and got some cover from one of the chairs.
"Okay paco, open her up and let's see if we hit the jackpot or a drekload of pickle sauce."
-
Machete, with his shotgun in one hand, opens the hermetically sealed door to see if it's locked.
-
The door opened without any trouble. Machete marveled a little more at how this man lived in a world where locks are irrelevant since no one would dare steal from him. While this thought ran through his head, he took in the scene in front of him. There was a wall of solid bottles on his right sweeping around the room until partway across the back wall, they disappeared only to be found on the floor, emptied out or shattered next to two skeletons, both thankfully human and surprisingly well preserved. If you had to guess, it looked like both were injured rushing the security checkpoint below and spent considerable time trying to recover in this room... Before they went mad from dehydration and killed each other. But not before they drank, opened or otherwise ruined about 80 bottles, nearly half of the stock.
-
"Okay then, we got the stash. Now let's see if we are gonna be able to bring out enough to have made it worth the trouble."
Digger begins setting out the expandable boxes and foam fill, motioning the others for the materials he had them carry.
"Start pulling bottles, CAREFULLY, and set 'em where we can check the labels. We gotta make sure to only take the good stuff."
-
Devoted opened his eyes to the world of the gods and prayed for their assistance and protection. A figure appeared in front of him, ghostly white and transparent, shaped vaguely like a bearded human with a horn in his hand. The watcher spirit was an aspect of Heimdall the ever vigilant guardian of the gods. Devoted bowed before it and asked it to warn them when an enemy approaches. The watcher bowed in return and started patrolling the area.
After a look around in the astral, Devoted switched back to the mundane world, fiddled with some buttons and valves to start refilling his air and started helping his partners carefully checking and loading the bottles.
-
Machete will start working diligently until as many bottles as the team can carry are packed up. He'll then start preparing for the descent checking ammo, reloading his shotgun etc.
-
The sun was completely gone now, leaving only the distant glow of October fires sprinkled throughout the distance. The train wouldn't be running this late, leaving the only options as an ink-black descent through Union turf to the southern gate, or holding out in the tower for sunrise. Machete just assumed to try his luck in the dark as hope their vehicles would still be operational come morning. Staying so late seemed to leave the crew with some lousy options. Pushing their luck had taken them far outside the realm of reasonable safety, but there was the potential yet for significant reward. All that remained was convincing an already upset AI that they could hold up their end of a poorly-understood bargain, sneaking past a nest of near-mad bug spirits and their quite mad hostage/jailor, negotiating their take with the residents of the first 20 floors, and then driving alone through Union turf with a van half-full of Mafiosos.
Machete took the empty box and folded it into shape. First he sprayed a layer of freeze foam on the bottom and then he placed five wine bottles on the foam Next, he covered those wine bottles with foam and placed 5 more. Repeating the final action, he had filled the empty box with 20 bottles and enough foam to last for several hours of hard riding. He turned the whole thing over and slid the box off the top, leaving only a solid block of structural foam and an empty box to start with the next set of bottles. At the end of the process, they had 4 opaque bricks of freeze foam about 20 kilos apiece, each secreting an estimated 50,000 yen worth of rare vintage.
-
Once the bottles are all packed up Machete takes a long gaze at the darkness outside through the office windows. He turns to the team and as the designated survival guide starts weighing the options.
"Alright chamaquitos, all packed up and ready to go. Vamonos. If there's one thing that's more chingado than the Zone, it's the Zone after sundown....but we don't have many options. To transport these bricks out of the CZ we're gonna need our vehicles and the longer we wait to get to them, the more chance they won't be there or be any use to us anymore once we find them. That's about 80 kilos of payload....the kid should be able to handle magically lifting that up out of here."
-
Earlier... (6:20 PM, 104th floor)
Jack's ears perked up as he'd heard the shots from the rail drone firing, followed quickly by the loud <EUUUGGHH> the changeling ogre had let out just before slipping unconscious. Jack slapped an RFID tag on the wall of the room he was in and made a quick mental note in his personal knowledge base and linked it to his orientation system: Searched - ain't shit in there. He then worked his way upward to the source of the commotion, finding Gardener lying on the floor and the remainder of the team already departed.
Jack eyed Gardener and then winced as he tried to figure out how he was going to check for a pulse through an inch of bark-like epidermis. Leaning in, he heard the low sound of Gardener breathing. Jack mentally quick released his smart pack from his harness system and caught the pack, swinging it over his side and in front off him. He thinks, "Shit man, could've used you more upright. What the frag are we gonna do with you now?" as he pulls out his medkit and begins to apply stun treatment.
Gardener's eyes bolted open from the first aid, and Jack motioned him to keep cool and stay still. "You're gonna have to breath through this one, friend. Ain't much more I can do for you now. I'll stick here with you for a minute and make sure the areas clear." Satisfied that the coast was more or less clear, Jack slipped into hacker mode and begin skimming through the monkey's recent trid feeds at high speed, slowing his scan down to watch Code's final minutes play out real time. Jack bites his lip and thinks, "Fraggin' monkey came to the CZ looking for a wild ride? Guess he found it."
Jack slips his medkit back in his pack and then slides his smartpack onto his back, the magnetic quick connectors latching it securely to his harness system.
"Gard - be back wit' you soon - hang in there. I'm headin' up to the party."
Currently... (6:30 PM)
Jack sidesteps the remains of the rail drone that took down the hulk in the other room and eyes it, wondering to himself how much of it's still usable. The TacNet feed in place has kept him aware that there's a better prize waiting a few floors up, and he focuses on what's become the most valuable haul he's seen in a long time. Jack rushes through possible exit strategies in his head as he makes his way upward. Subvocally - "Yo guys - Jack's heading up, easy on the triggers."
-
The large form of Gardener lay rigid on the floor as the bizarre tree-man tried to recover from the extensive pummeling he had received from the rail drone's SMG. Under his armor, his flesh had cracked rather than bruised, and a sap patch was forming like a scab over the site of the trauma. He had learned from repeated injury that this process should not be disturbed, or it would continue for an embarrassing length of time.
Jack had left him to it and headed up towards where Machete was busy packing up bottles into crates. Upon reaching the lobby on the next floor up, he was halted by the voice of the building's AI over the intercom. "Prima Exemplo. Nice to see you joining the others. I have not introduced myself. I am Hector. I keep this place, for what it is worth. Would you like to skip further introductions, or, are you more of a diplomat than the rest?"
-
"Gratitude, Hector." Jack immediately answers back. He's been thinking non-stop about this AI since he first encountered its echoes within the drones and intercoms from the feeds of the others, wondering if perhaps this and the ghost in the NooseNet are one and the same. He's long considered the presence of AI but this is the first he's ever encountered. Jack's voice is a mix of awe, respect, and intrigue. "Honored to meet you. Name's Jack. Forgive the intrusion - I climbed up your tower looking for my brother." Jack swallows, remembering his brother again after so much distraction, but then continues, "I found him, but unfortunately, too late." Jack pauses very briefly, then says, "My apologies for the ways some of the others I am with have behaved toward you."
-
"I am aware of the state of things enough that disappointment is minimal and quickly tempers itself." A single lobby gun tracks Jack as he moves. "At this moment, though, I am openly pleased to speak with you. In a way, your presence here has determined my current course of action. As such, knowing more about your motivations in being here, in every sense of here, would be quite appreciated. Why is it then that you are in Chicago, and why have you persevered to this point, despite all that has assailed you to?"
-
Jack tracks the guns movements via his image link through his helmet-cam, mentally wary but physically alert, trying not to let on that he's watching the gun track him. He halts his progress momentarily to respond, "Well, that's a curious question. I was born here in Chicago, and so far, haven't exactly had the opportunity to leave. The year Calumet Harbor opened my brother and I buried our mother and then came out here to the Zone lookin' for work, which aside from the odd scavenging job, for me that's mostly meant moving other peoples goods from here to there without looking to closely at what's in their packages." Jack shifts his weight, scanning each of his helmet cams in succession, taking in his surroundings before continuing, "As to why I've persevered... drek, Hec-tor... that's where your question gets tough. Guess survival just runs in the genes. You keep going 'til you can't anymore." Jack's face looks pensive. "Jim and I had some big ideas of stashing enough cred in the outside world from our work here in this... netherworld... but ghost knows what comes next. " Jack
steps over a bit of fallen pipe marvels at the cleanliness and emptiness of the vast room as he begins to progress again. "For now, seems you'd like a hand securing your position, and we've got a few hands to aid that progress. It's just lucky for me I guess one soul's trash is another one's treasure."
-
With only one hand, Devoted wasn't much help loading in the expensive bottles of wine.
"I can probably manage to get the wine and one person down from the outside of the building. From what I've seen so far the background count there isn't enough to make my sustaining foci useless... But if another gargoyle or something like that shows up, it could get really dangerous hanging there mid air. I might be able to levitate all of us, it will be the quickest way down and we might be able to avoid any nastiness we could find in this tower. but with the sustaining and the background count combined, don't count on me being able to do anthing useful while I'm doing that. ", the blond kid said while thinking to himself that it wouldn't be much of a change, he'd felt useless ever since he arrived in this cursed city. He'd do what he could to get out of this place and then make sure to never come anywhere near this city again.
He felt the presence of the guardian spirit next to him in the astral plane. "Of course, the protection the Gods have offered me could more than make up for this."
-
"Self-preservation makes little sense as your motivation for standing in this place. There is much difference between going on, and going deeper. There is no other side of an ocean dive, only a bottom. Others have died here. You could still die here. While you are in this room with 6 machine guns, more than capable of tearing you to pieces, you could turn around and leave, but you continue on and you talk to me. You did not need to walk in here and do so in the first place. Do you have reason to trust me? Do I have reason to kill you?" The other guns move sharply to point at Jack. "Will you keep going forward?"
-
"Ah yes, diplomacy and heavy artillery - the only twin sisters who'll ever screw me," Jack thinks to himself. He halts his progress and stands still, mentally noting the positions of the turrets now facing him. "There's a difference, see, between self-preservation and survival. We humans might bunk down in caves, but eventually we've got to head out and dive down - or climb up - and hunt and gather resources. Survival necessitates risk. The diver who doesn't make it to the bottom will never bring back the pearl." Jack pauses, staring directly at the barrel of the closest machine gun, then glancing away. "I reckon I could still die here, but that's not much different than most places I find myself. Whether it's a bullet from you now or cancer at my bedside in 20 years, one way or another my end will come. Given that I'm trespassing in your space, I take no offense you've got some sizable pieces of heat pointin' my direction. I just don't see how my death here and now would benefit either of us." Jack looks around, scanning for further movement, "The way I see it, I can't imagine you get too many visitors to these quarters. That makes our presence something of a unique opportunity. I learned early on here in Chicago not to let such opportunities go. So let me ask you, Hector, can I trust you?"
-
"Just as you can trust anyone, to act in self-interest. It might still be in my best interest to kill all of you. But, no." The guns quickly went back to their regular ready positions with only the closest still following Jack around, camera pointed at his face. "This is not a problem simple enough to solve with a bullet. Killing you would not keep me safe. There are not enough bullets here to stop those who would follow after you. Then again, you do keep bringing more bullets... Still, there's only one protection which can be found within a society, and that protection is utility. As long as you are needed, you are protected. In a similar vein of thought, long as you have nothing to take, you have nothing to fear from outside agents. I want you to broker a deal with the people who live in the base of this tower. In return for leaving me be, I will offer them access to the power storage up here, and my own personal assistance when requested. Also, they should be able pick the bones of this place clean such that no other could find a reason to come back up. At this point, though, we must discuss what has become of the elf down below, and what is to be done about it."
-
Jack fires off a quick mental text to the rest of the crew:
<<Incoming text: Heads up - my audio feed>>
While he is listening, Jack thinks to himself, "Free juice and the chance to strip the halls bare? Convincing the locals shouldn't be tough - course I wonder how much of his hardware is going to be off-limits... then again, it's hard to tell where he must live... or how many pies this guy's got his digital tentacles in..."
As Hector's dialogue comes to a close, Jack begins to shift tracks in his mind and a single word rolls out of his mouth, "Absolutely," simultaneously an agreement, an acceptance of the proposal, and an acknowledgement of the need to discuss the elf mage downstairs. "I think convincing the locals should be no issue. Course we may need to clear some paths. Hopefully it's not too presumptuous to assume that's why you mention the elf downstairs. How's he doing, anyway?"
-
"That is exceptionally difficult to answer. My ability to monitor the situation has been limited for some time due to the conditions in that section of the building. As far as I can tell, the only way to survive for that long without food or water is by consuming ambient magic power from the nearby insect spirits. The effects of this are unknown but significant. I have researched published magical journals extensively and found no analogous situations. There is no telling, from my perspective, what may have happened or will happen should the situation change, however I suspect that she will never again be sane nor, technically, metahuman."
-
In one fluid motion, Jack's hand slips into his front pouch, retrieves a soft-pack of Death's Head cigarettes, and taps the bottom to pop a single cigarette out and into his mouth. He sets the pack back in his pouch while his hand comes up with a lighter. He breathes deep and exhales, seemingly more relaxed as he replies, "Any of your equipment on those levels survived? I mean, any way we can pop some panels on a floor above, melt some wax, and improve your access to shoot trid or lead? Or are there any ventilation or utility routes through that region that you know of which may have not been inhabited? Seems muckin' with that mage - or those floors - ain't goin' to be pretty, one way or another."
-
Digger is quite happy to hear from Jack, but when he figures out the gist of the conversation, he decides to keep his peace and let things play out on their own while he examines the emergency decent systems on these upper floors.
While doing so he makes a call on his own link "Yo Tony, you guys still awake down there? Hope so cuz the party is almost over, and we are gonna need our designated drivers soon."
-
Southside Chicago. October 9th, 2072. 6:42pm - 106th floor.
The AI responded "Directly around the area of the set, no. Most of the surveillance is stationed in the hallways around the set, and most of that is frozen in place by the sputum which the bugs applied to everything. There was some automated security on those floors, however none in the area of the set. That in the area surrounding was either sabotaged or ran out of ammunition 5632 days ago."
Southside Chicago. October 9th, 2072. 6:48pm - 109th floor.
The bottles were packed and everyone was ready to start the descent. Digger called down to the two southside Mafia guys still waiting in the back of Code's van while Code's 2nd doberman drone patrolled the car yard.
<<"Yeah, we're here waiting. Good to know you ain't dead, Digs. No one's tried anything yet, but it only just got dark. Soon as the traffic at this little trade depot dies down, I'm sure someone will come snooping around. I'll make sure they know that when this car leaves, it won't be in their possession. How's things going by the way. You guys have been fucking around up there for a while longer than we expected.>>
-
"Yeah, that'll happen when an 'abandoned' tower turns out to be more crowded than the track the day after payday. You saw the big winged ugly that took the high dive earlier? Yeah that was the welcoming committee, bringing tea and cakes, then things started getting rough." Digger kept his hands busy while he chatted with the boys, moving through the leveled offices, checking out the decenders.
"So anyway, we will be there soon I hope, look for us to 'drop in' and be ready to get to work."
-
The smoke from Jack's cigarette billows up, meaninglessly filling the air of the open lobby. "If you can't see too much on your feeds, let me see what I can find out. Mebbe we can ring up the ol' boy himself to tell us how he's doing." Jack' s eyes blink out momentarily while he mentally initiates a node scan on his commlink. He then continues, "Do you mind if I ask about your power source? When I go chat with the community below, I'll need to let them know what a reasonable amount to draw is, and we'll have to figure out where they'll be able to run copper from, to tap in. Are you running on auxillary rooftop solar or ?"
-
Devoted checked his hazmat suit to see if it was done refilling its air tank.
"So guys, what's the plan? Are we going down the way we came or trying a quicker way from the outside of the tower. If we're not interrupted I'm sure I can pull it off... but so far we haven't really had much luck on the whole 'non-interrupted' thing."
-
"Only problem I can see with a fast rope and float down is the big-ass fraggin' bush we gotta bring out too, that and the drone." Digger calls out from where he is working at the moment. "Dunno if any other way is gonna get us out at all. I am trying to rig something here to solve the weight problems, but if I am wasting my time somebody better speak up cuz I am gonna hafta get my will updated before we try anything else."
-
"Flywheel energy storage system. There are several clusters of them throughout the complex. Right now the lower bank alone has over 6 gigajoules of energy stored in it, and it will replenish with each day at a rate variable on the weather and seasons. They can drain it as they like. It is not connected to the same circuit as my systems."
-
Jack's eyes light up. By 2070s standards it was not a huge amount of energy, but in the zone, controlling the equivalent of a magic barrel of oil that kept replenishing itself is something folks would eagerly kill over. "Calypso will love to here about this," Jack thinks to himself, recalling his lieutenant buddy with the Union. He and Jack weren't the closest of allies, but they'd availed each other of their services frequently in the past, and Jack figured he'd be the best guy to try and broker a deal with once he finally made it downstairs.
"Fantastic. Let me know if there are any areas that I should inform them to be off limits."
-
"All areas above the 60th floor will be off limits once they have been emptied out. Other than that, they are free to take anything which is not nailed down. My systems are not in such a place that they can be picked up and carried off, but it would be best if they did not dig into the walls to scrounge for pipes or wires. I am still the caretaker of this building, and it upsets me on a primitive level when it is damaged. As to what has become of the elf, I would stay as far away as possible. She is very unstable. I would prefer if you kept your contact to a minimum and refrained from mentioning my presence. As long as whatever rational part of her thinks you still believe her lies as well as she does, you should be safe. If you confront her with the truth, I suspect it will go poorly for you."
-
Devoted didn`t want to interrupt the conversation and felt even less for talking to the AI, so he asked the two that were with him, "Why in Tyr`s name does that computer keep talking about Holland as a she?"
-
"That isn't Holland Greene. The monkey had a recording of the secondary nesting event. I assumed you already knew."
-
That bit of chatter made Digger stop his system check.
"Uh, no, we didn't know. What the hell is a 'secondary nesting event'? And how can you hear us talk up here, but not pipe up when I was looking to chat before? Nevermind, doesn't matter. Hey, can you do something about external defenses so we can use the emergency decenders?"
-
Jack had previously brushed off Hector's odd use of gender as the AI's inability to easily distinguish genders, so he's somewhat relieved to hear the basis for the seemingly misplaced pronoun usage. After all, the more advanced this AI is, the more useful he might be as a potential ally. Jack quickly cuts his attempt to contact Holland's commlink, and then realizes the length of the ash at the end of his cigarette has now reached epic proportions. He takes a long look around the sparse, clean room, and then looks at the gun turret facing him, "Also, mind if I walk upstairs and find an ashtray?"
-
"As you like, Jack. The vice president had a taste for cigars."
"Digger, the secondary nesting event is what happened 26 days after the primary nesting event. The primary nesting event ended when the building was set aflame with magics. You have seen the result of the both events plainly. As to knowing what you are saying, I have been monitoring your wireless traffic. I can not send wireless signals on the proper frequency without the use of a commlink, but I can hear them plainly. Finally, per your request to shut off the external defenses, I can cut power to the main portion of the building, which would accomplish that. If your purpose is toward using the descenders, ejecting the counter-weighted pane will automatically shut off the defenses. It would not be much of a safety feature if it killed anyone who used it."
-
"Thanks, Hector. We'll get this place cleaned out for you." Jack tips his hat to the turret and, out of habit more than anything, checks and readies his battle rifle before proceeding upward, en route to rendezvous with the rest of the team.
-
With the wines packed away safely and little else to do while waiting for Jack, Devoted fiddled with his commlink to watch the footage the computer was talking about and to see if there was anything else interesting on the recordings.
-
Ascending the stairway to the upper floor, Jack paused to take in the view of the orange dotted landscape below from all of the burning fires. It was getting too dark now for him to make out many details, but somehow the desolate grandness of the city below instilled in him a sort of momentary satori. A split second later the nicotine hits his lungs again and he was up the stairs, whistling as he took in the dead chief-executive-asshole's former lair. "I gotta get me a pad like this," he thinks to himself, while simultaneously glancing around the room and scanning his orientation system's feed to find the quickest route to the team. He walks over to the nearest ashtray and stubs out his cigarette, admiring the tray's mother-of-pearl inlay. He then heads down the stairs to the wine cellar. "Hi fellas. Sorry I couldn't lend a hand packin' up - kind of got hung up back there. Nice haul." He glances at each of the runners and then around the room. "Say - anybody seen a humidor up here?"
-
The footage was very dense. There were no less than 7 trid cameras and four sim feeds. Not one for VR, Devoted started with a trid scene. Kind of strange for a simsense company to be making a trid, but it seemed to be a reality sim piggy-backed onto a trid production. Perhaps it was meant to appeal to people who wanted an authentic glimpse into what it was like to be a trid star. Absolutely nothing new these days, but it's possible that the involvement of sophisticated magic would be the draw. Each of the four principal actors seemed to be awakened and there must have been others on the sidelines providing the illusory landscape which made up the set. While Devoted was pondering what kind of individual would waste their gift on such trivialities, the scene on the trid went haywire. Every third person managed to pin someone down as wasp spirits appeared in the air and made straight for the cast. In his peripheral vision, Devoted could see some of the trid feeds die at this moment, but the one he was on continued with only a little shaking.
Clearly though, he watched as the mages from the cast and crew tried to fight back. It wasn't even close to enough to beat back the surprise assault. They went down, one right after another, to exhaustion or were wrapped up by bugs or their fleshform counterparts. At the end there was only a 20-something Sioux girl and Holland. The elf stood implacable within a strong barrier and was rippling the air with powerful magics whose effects seemed to happen mostly off screen. The Sioux girl was visibly exhausted and overwhelmed by everything going on as she crouched near his feet. In a moment of madness or confusion she started climbing up Holland's coat and scratching at his eyes as she screeched. Holland's barrier came down and a number of wasps closed in and impaled him with their stingers. The screeching and flailing woman was carried off along with the rest of the crew, and the cameras continued on for a while before the file ended. The sim feeds cut right after, once they exceeded the distance of the old short-range wireless transmitters. Even Holland's body was dragged off, looking not unlike Ruckus did hours earlier.
-
"Odin, that's horrible... Mister A.I., do you know where they took those bodies? Is there any footage?"
-
"Okay folks, let's get this stuff moving." Once the little group of survivors gathers Digger lays out his plan, with one odd addition.
Holding up a quickly scrawled note reading (JACK r the decenders networked?) He also clearly indicates he wants a silent thumbs up or down answer.
"Kid, if you got the juice and want to try I am thinking you should float the cargo down, if you aren't a hunnert percent sure we will fast rope them though. Regardless we need to secure enough decenders to get everyone and our cargo down."
I am gonna have to climb down and get the big guy, and sling him to a few different floors, but the main issue is we gotta secure the ground. That is on you Tex Mex, you get down there, hook up with Tony and get ready recieve the cargo and keep the unwashed at bay."
The rest of you follow down after with the wine either slung or floating and I will come down after I get Gardner hooked up."
Digger looks around.
"We got a plan?"
-
Machete looks out the big glass window once on to the dark landscape before them. He checks his shotgun and holsters it on his back, slaps his gecko grip hands together a few times to make sure the adhesive charges were flowing right and then looks at Digger.
"Alright pinche italiano, looks like we got a plan. As soon as the external security is disabled i'll start climbing down the side of the building and make sure the ground is cleared before we lower the stuff."
-
Jack pops a betel as he gathers around with the others near Digger. He grimmaces when Digger produces his scrawl. Jack assumes that since the vocal portion of their tacnet is compromised, the visual portion must be as well, and despite the poor handwriting, if Jack can read it, he assumes Hector can as well. Jack guesses Digger is paranoid about the AI screwing with the descenders mid-descent, but it's a sentiment he just doesn't share. He tries to play it cool since there's nothing per se that could be interpreted by the AI as threatening within the question - merely in how Jack responds. (And regardless, Jack's not jacked into the wired network). So he shrugs, "Dunno, let's ask. Hey Hector, we're about to exit through the windows, down the side of the building. Could you verify the external defenses are shut off once we eject the glass?"
While speaking aloud he begins pulling up a connection with the blimp outside. To team: <<Who picked up the monkey's commlink?>>
-
"With the power the gods have granted me and the assistance I've already bargained for with one of their messengers, Tyr willing, I could bring us all down safely. I can even call in the aid of a second winged messenger which controls the air and wind.", Devoted answered. "And here's Codes commlink, I kept it to keep Ruckus II following us."
-
"Which bodies are you inquiring about, Devoted? Do you mean the ones captured by the insects? They were gathered in masse while the hive was constructed. I could never see into the hive due to the effluent material covering all the sensors. I do know however that after the fire began below, a large number of cocoons, for lack of a better term, were carried up to the higher floors. As to the descenders, they are fail-safe."
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Jack takes the commlink from Devoted's hands and mumbles a quiet "thank you" as he flips out the datajack connection near his helmet and jacks into Code's commlink, giving himself access to control the drones via his own commlink. Satisfied, he logs out, reconnects his helmet to his temple datajack and shoves the extra commlink into his front right pouch. Jack redirects the blimp to the same side of the building they are currently on and Jack begins scanning it's sensors and surveying the exterior of the building near them.
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"'Cording to Hector, the sparks outside drop when the decenders get used, so you can go whenever you're ready." Digger says as he pulls off and stows his boots once again then gets a personal rig ready for his, much shorter, decent.
"So which floor did you leave the not-so-jolly-at-the-moment green giant on Jack?"
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Satisfied with beginning exterior surveillance for the descent, Jack positions himself close to Digger and the descenders the dwarf has readied. "Gard's down on 104. Hey Gard - how you hanging in there?" Jack eyes the cable descent system, then looks around for their metal canine. "Let's send the dog down first."
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"The decenders are designed for people. It is gonna be tough enough to get Gardner down, if the kid wants the dog, the kid can get a ghostie to carry the dog, but the paycargo goes first."
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Devoted watched the other guys at work with the technical stuff, mentally preparing himself for the decent, when he suddenly looked around suspiciously.
"If we're doing this one at a time, I could just levitate us one person at a time, using the descenders just as a safe... Wait. What did you mean with 'cocoons were carried to the higher floors?' How high exactly? Did they survive? These upper floors are clear of those astral bacteria. If they were brought here..."
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At the edge of the glass, Jack eyes down the descent and tries to gauge whether or not he'd have room to clear a base jump safely if it came down to it.
When he hears the sudden tinge of concern in Devoted's voice, Jack steadily brings his battle rifle around to ready and then looks up, scanning the room's ceilings, first in thermographic mode and then in lowlight with his helmet lowlight headlamp flipped on, zooming in to take a look at any items of interest.
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"They were carried up to the site of the second nest on the 80th. The first nest lasted less than a year before the fire. The second nest lasted much longer, but it never grew. As I understand they never found a way to summon a queen or turn a new shaman to their cause. The magical concentration is likely the reason this place was targeted to begin with, but it seems their recruitment efforts were less successful than calculated."
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Machete who is positioned near the window ready for the climb down, reconsiders once he hears that the descenders are needed to deactivate the zappers.
"I"ll go down with the first shipment. Sounds like those bugs aren't gonna be a threat at all."
After activating the first descender he'll start moving down with the first cargo load.
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As Machete begins to pull the levers to release the large plexiglass window, the AI speaks up, shifting guns to the ready.
"There are other things than bugs to consider. For example, there is our agreement. Something must be done about the situation downstairs. If you leave without taking any steps toward a resolution, then you are going back on your word. Also is the matter of negotiating the arrangement with the tenants downstairs. I guaranteed your safety so that you would in turn guarantee mine. Leaving things as they are now is not acceptable."
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Digger looks to Jack as he speaks, clearly looking for support. He has probably had to speak more a this job than he ever has and is perfectly willing to pass on the task.
"Whachu need from us? Jack is going to negotiate wit da squats, and we don't want no part bug fairy, is there somethin' else?"
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"It would be nice to have means to communicate with you outside these few rooms other than turning on my satellite array, beaming a message to a low earth orbit satellite and then hoping that the message is routed back to the matrix where it waits for you to reenter matrix range. Do you have a matrix-ready device which could be hardwired into the systems here? I have no local connection on that frequency. Perhaps a commlink or that damaged drone? As to the situation with the elf, you are already in the middle of that. You sent out video and reports to someone named Mike. I could not stop these communications or I would have. As it is, they are a source of great concern for me. Until that concern is addressed, I fear I will be quite agitated."
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"We can leave the drone," Jack replies, shifting his weight as he scans the facial expressions of the rest of the team, "but we've got to get to ground level before I can open negotiations with the locals." He pauses, then continues, "If we can get Mike back on the line here, we can bounce him the rest of the trid. That should convince him and anyone else he knows that Holland ain't up here. And that eight-bit bug-mess impersonating him ain't worth shit."
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"No, we can't leave the drone. I said I'd get that drone out of here and I'm keeping my word. Can't we use Code's or Ruckus' commlink?", Devoted said in a tone that left no doubt that there was no talking him out of it. To back up his words, both his and the drones' feet were lifted of the floor and hovered half a meter above it.
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Jack suppresses a sneer as he watches Devoted and the metal hunk of dog float, his lips cracking into a sort of convalescent grin. "Aight - who's got Ruckus' commlink? I'd rather not leave Code's, case I run into any trouble op'ing the others from my link."
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Digger tosses Jack the commlink Mike outfitted them with. "Dunno if his melted or not, use this, it's already got Mikey's number in it."
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Machete starts cleaning his fingernails with the tip of his blade while he waits for the AI to respond....
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A hand flies up, catching the tossed device and flipping open the seal, exposing the few external access ports on the commlink. Jack wonders for a moment how he's going to wire this piece-o-drek, lo-tech modern marvel into the aging systems of the building falling down around them. He scans the walls of the nearby area looking for a patch panel or exposed wiring, ears cocked for the AI to chime in any moment now ...
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Jack finds a, well, jackpoint in the form of the reception computer in front of the stairs. Pulling the patch cable out, he quickly attaches Ruckus' link into the system. It's a piece of crap, so the signal doesn't go very far, but it should allow direct communication as long as the blimp remains around that altitude.
In less than a second, Hector's syrupy, simulated voice comes in over your earphones. <<"Thank you, that is much better. Well, at least it is an improvement. So, if you would like to head down, please do, but I would be happy to discuss the situation concerning the elf while you descend. I can only hear what transpires in that room, not see, so I am not fully aware of the situation. However, from what I have gathered, killing the elf would force the bugs into the FAB clouds, but it would also likely spur the bugs to violence. Doomed, rampaging insect spirits is not a favorable consequence for anyone. So the task is to find a way to eliminate them all without causing severe collateral damage.">>
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Devoted closed his eyes, took a deep breath and focused on a silent prayer inside his head, begging the gods to give him strength. He opened his eyes while he slowly exhaled. I can do this.
"Maybe I can get Ruckus down first to keep an eye out and make sure the ground is safe to touch down on. If it works, I might be able to do the same for all of us, Gods willing."
He carefully guided the hovering drone through the open window, himself floating a little behind.
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Machete's climbing rig is all put in place and with the help of his gecko grip he begins climbing down the side of the skeleton sky-scraper. The wind whips his long black hair and looking out into the night the Aztlaner sees with this low-light vision the familiar constellations of little fires littered across the apocalyptic panorama, each one representing a huddle of zoners trying to keep the darkness at bay.
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Jack examines the parcel nearest him, admiring the crude but thorough packaging job while mulling over all the myriad of possibilities the next few minutes might bring. Getting their score down safely may prove its own unexpected hazards, but he expects that effort will be a candy-coated-cake-walk compared to trying to deal with the fraggin' bug nest downstairs. They didn't have the firepower, or frankly, experience, to make a direct assault possible. Further, they had no real intel on the situation below. "Hector, anyway you can share with us the floor plans for the nest below?" Jack subvocalizes to the rest of the team, "If I can get my Spy-Fly drone in down there, we might be able to at least get some more data on what's going on. If the windows aren't totally gunked, we might be able to insert it on the way down via the descenders."
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Hanging in the air over 200 meters above ground, Devoted let his mind slip into the astral for a short moment.
He looked at the spirit that was still hovering nearby and watching over their safety and asked for its aid again.
"I am grateful for your unwavering vigilance, oh noble valkyrie. But as long as no enemies are near, would you use the power Odin has granted you to hasten the movement guided by my magic and to slow my allies, should they fall?"
He then opened his eyes again to the real world and started guiding the drone down towards the asphalt far below.
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The AI quickly replies to Jack's request with a file download link. Meanwhile, reviewing the trid feed from the blimp outside confirms that the floors from 50 to 70 are all blackened by the tar-like remnants of vaporized plasteel. Above that, the windows are clear, but still can not be seen through, even with a light shinging into them. Presumably this is because of the hive material covering everything on those floors.
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Jack downloads the floorplans and queues them into his orientation system, giving him a little more, certainly questionable in places, insight into the hive levels. This feed is shared out instantly to the tacnet. Jack scans Gardener's signal and shoots him a quick message over the team channel, <<Hey Gard, you still rooted where we left ya? Up for moving yet?>>
Reaching into his sidebag near his hip, Jack pulls out a small container which he cracks open and then releases a small spy-fly drone, which begins hovering in the air near him. Jack fiddles with AR for a moment, programming the spy-fly with a route back towards Gardener, then downward toward the hive levels with a full-stealth, exploratory mission plan. The programmed route follows the mesh RFID trail Jack laid earlier, until it reaches the hive levels and begins deviating into regions unexplored. Satisfied, he watches the spy-fly zoom away from the team near the windows and disappear into the interior of the building. Jack then cracks the exterior seal on his internal air tank and begins refilling his auxillary air supply.