[Ten-Hex]

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.

[Sentinemodo]

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.

[Kontact]

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.

[Sentinemodo]

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.

[Sentinemodo]

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.

[Xzylvador]

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?"

[Ten-Hex]

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.

[Crossbow]

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."

[Sentinemodo]

Don't know yet - some of this are plain ancient.

[Kontact]

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.   

[inca1980]

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.

[Xzylvador]

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."

[Ten-Hex]

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.

[Mindset]

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?”

[Kontact]

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"