Chapter 364
Our steps echoed through the subterranean factory, though were drowned out by the churning of machinery. The chemical… assembly line? Was it called an assembly line for chemicals? The, uh, chemical factory stretched out like a buried city with layers of catwalks and vats descending into a haze of steam and flickering industrial lighting.
Pipes ran everywhere. They were rusted pieces of junk weaving alongside walkways and plunging into various sections of the facility. Some dripped toxic looking liquids that hissed when they met rusty metal. The entire place was like a tetanus wasteland.
The entire place was built around island-like protrusions of cement sticking up from the below and supporting the structure and machinery. There were several fall offs all over the place down into a dim haze of amber light.
Mechanical arms moved through the air with unsettling precision. They lifted drums, worked valves, and moved around unlabeled containers. Every vat, from what I could see, was filled with one chemical or another. Some glowed faintly in a kaleidoscope of sickly colors.
The low, industrial purr of machinery vibrated through my boots. It was usually a comforting sensation, but now it felt like walking on a bed of nails. Sure, some sections showed signs of decay. Collapsed rails, corroded platforms, and even entire walkways swallowed by rust filled the space. The core systems were alive and kicking. It looked like they had been for two decades.
”I don’t think we’re alone down here.” I spoke up quietly even though the machinery could’ve swallowed a scream. I couldn’t tell them where my info came from, but holding something like that close to my chest sounded like a particularly bad idea.
“No shit, Zuku.” Hope didn’t even bother to turn around. Her attention was purely on navigating the maze of catwalks to get further into the facility. “Even my grandma could’ve seen that coming, and she’s ash.”
”I was just saying…” I followed behind her with silent steps.
“Sorry.” Hope exhaled slowly and rolled her shoulders. She twirled one of her silver daggers around her thumb, and the blade flashed where it caught the light. She tilted her head sideways to a half-filled vat of red sludge. Its surface rippled like something moved underneath.
“This place is way too active.” I stopped near a vat, making the group likewise stop on the narrow catwalk. “I can't imagine a corp still running this place after bankruptcy.”
”They won’t have to worry about inspections.” Hope brought up a valid point. It could be some black site, but I imagine there’d be more security up and about. So far, we hadn’t seen much of anything.
“Or, if the bankruptcy came suddenly enough, the automated systems could’ve been left on,” Garrick replied from ahead of us. His tone was calm and relaxed in a way that grated on my nerves given the situation.
“For two decades?” Not likely. Something should’ve broken after all that time. Not to mention this place would’ve run out of raw materials to keep making product.
”Stranger things have happened.” Hope didn’t seem to think it impossible like I did.
I mean, she was right. Could be some kind of Aether voodoo active. I’d been checking off and on with Aetherial Perception since we entered though, and I had yet to see anything weird like that. That didn’t mean it wasn’t hear though. Could just be deeper into the facility where it wasn’t visible yet.
I didn’t Ling on that and instead focused on small details that didn’t quite line up. Some of the pipes were clearly new, with surfaces mostly unmarked by rust and corrosion. Several vats even had freshly slapped on warning labels with modern compliance codes. I recognized quite a few of them from my limited dealings with chemistry. “Any ideas, Luna?”
”N-no.” She hesitated, and her voice tightened. “It’s n-not just autonomous scheduling, though. M-might be something more, um, a-adaptive.”
“This looks worse than just rust damage.” Garrick lifted a hand to one of the vats with a hole blown open in its side. It revealed a layer of insulating glass within, surrounded by thick walls of metal.
“Chemical damage of some kind.” I eyed the edges of the metal. This was outside my field of expertise, but I had played around with quite a few chemicals over the past year. I stretched out a hand—
“P-please don’t touch that, Shiro.” Luna stopped me just before I could. Probably for the best. Might be some residue clinging to the metal.
”Acid?” Garrick asked.
“Maybe.” I whistled to CJ29 and had him analyze for signs of chemical residue. The chemical composition came back as a mess of chaos that didn’t match anything in his system. “Whatever it is ate through reinforced metal like wet paper.”
If it could do that, skin and bones likely wouldn’t be an issue either. Why would this place be making acid, though? It was a water treatment plant. Luna seemed to have similar concerns. “I-I don’t k-know about this one, Shiro. M-maybe you should l-leave?”
“Trust me, I want to.” I should’ve left a crow up there. I hadn’t wanted to risk anything about Nightshade linking back to me. It was a bit too late now, though.
Hope kicked a rusted valve off the side of the platform. It plummeted into the haze below, and only after several seconds did a wet plunk sound echo back. “Any ideas where we should go? Wandering down here seems like a decidedly bad idea.”
Knight Garrick, unsurprisingly, seemed to have a plan. The scheming bastard was definitely waiting to backstab us… or maybe not. He seemed just as confused about all of this. “Maybe we should try the factory control room? It should have info to figure out what we’re looking at here.”
Her light flicked toward him briefly, reflecting off his heavily chromed out body. “You know where it is?”
”No.” Garrick moved over to one of the vats of chemicals being stirred by a mechanical arm and leaned against it. He pulled out a holo puck, and a hologram of the facility popped up. “But I can find it. Just give me a few seconds.”
Hope eyed the puck, nodded, and moved to a position to better cover him. CJ29 moved with her and swept slow arcs across our surroundings. The light passed over pipes and tanks stretching down below the hazy fog of this place. It was dense enough even I couldn't see through it.
I also moved closer, though kept my distance enough to hide my voice from the other two. It was easy with all the motion around us. “Anything?”
”N-not yet. I-I stopped doing wide sweeps, though. Visibility is poor, and I d-don’t want to lose another drone.” Luna popped the Dragonfly feed into my HUD. One of them was perched on my shoulder, and the other hovered just above us. I’d have a warning if something moved to us, but vision of the chemical plant was limited.
“What about the others?” I waved a hand and my HUD cleared off.
”The distribution and reservoir squad have run into trouble.” Another feed popped up and showed a chaotic scene of Crusaders clustered together. Water blasted from a ruptured valve with enough force to cut metal. A squire lay on the ground and clutched at her severed arm while a Knight tried to stop the bleeding. “A-a valve turned j-just as she walked by.”
“Damn.” Pressurized water was no joke. Crazy how something generally harmless like water was deceptively dangerous.
Luna shifted the view to the other squad in the filtration section of the treatment facility. They moved between vast vats of water, fighting off something skittering fast between the vats. The Dragonfly flew lower and revealed a swarm of crab-like robots. “T-the others are having issues with rogue robots.”
One of the Knights stabbed forward with, skewering five crabs in one clean flick of his sword. He swept it sideways like a club and ended three more in a spray of sparks. “At least they don’t look too dangerous.”
The cams dropped from my HUD and I shuffled back to Hope’s side. Garrick pushed off the vat, and held the puck out. The hologram blew up so we could see. “Got it. The control room is over here.”
I cross-checked with the blueprint of this place burned into my memory thanks to Eidetic Schematic. He was right. Whether that meant he was clean, or leading us into an ambush wasn’t quite clear yet. “Luna, go scout it.”
“R-roger.”
Hope eyed the blueprint for a moment and then motioned forward toward one of the catwalks between platforms. “Lead the way.”
I stayed between the two while we moved deeper into the plant. The air grew thicker with every step, and I could feel my skin start to itch from the sharp chemicals in the air. The darkness thinned, replaced by emergency strips that lit up the haze with a sickly amber glow. Shadows stretched between the machinery, and danced on the edges of my vision.
While the darkness wasn’t too big of an issue, the haze definitely was. I shifted my focus away from sight and listened intently to my surroundings. Background Noise, a mostly useless Perk since I got it, finally had a moment to shine. The noise throughout the factory dimmed, allowing me to focus on irregularities.
The sound was faint at first. Even with the added help of my Perk, it was almost lost beneath the industrial grinding. It came as a soft, irregular clicking that didn’t match the rest of the pistons and pumps. It seemed to come from everywhere around us, and nowhere at the same time like a broken echo without a source.
“Wait.” Hope slowed, and her hand tightened on her dagger. “You guys hear that?”
”Barely.” I dropped a hand onto CJ29 as the hound dropped into a low guard posture. Electricity briefly crackled in the metal hound’s maw. Background Noise was finally pulling its weight, and I picked up what she did.
Garrick glanced back toward us and flicked his flashlight around the place. “Is it just the machinery? I don’t hear anything.”
The clicking abruptly stopped like it noticed that we noticed. It was such a clean cut off that it couldn’t have been anything but intentional. Hope tensed up behind me. “You have a cyberaudio suite too, Zuku?”
”No.” I coughed lightly. “Just young. My hearing hasn’t faded yet.”
I scanned the haze between dimly glowing vats. My eyes strained against the murky air. For the briefest moment, there was movement. When I locked onto it, it was just a mechanical arm stirring a vat of something rancid looking. I whispered, “Luna?”
“A-almost there.” The drone locked into a heavily sealed command room. The plating on the door and the viewing windows was far too thick to be just industrial. Why would Grinwater Holdings reinforce a simple command room that much?
Insight trailed across my body. It’d been on low hum for a while now, but now it turned into a chill that crawled up my spine. Someone, or something, watched us.
I locked onto a shadow stretching across one of the vats. It was tall and lanky, contorting into awkward angles as it crawled along the side of the vat. Its limbs angled sharply. The shadow didn’t line up with any of the machinery we’d seen so far.
A crane swung into view with a vat suspended in its grip, completely covering the shape. I shifted and tried to look around it from a different angle. When the crane finally moved, the shadow vanished without a trace.
Silence settled for a moment as I listened closely. Nothing. No—not quite. A faint clicking came once more. It was irregular against the background noise.
I swallowed lightly and activated the Blinder on my bag. The haze seemed to twist between the vats. Shapes warped at the edges of my vision, but there was nothing there when I looked again. Every instinct in my body screamed to just stop and leave, but the reinforced command room was just across a catwalk ahead.
Thankfully, nothing happened on the catwalk. We easily moved across it to the last platform where the central command room for the facility was located. The command room itself stuck up out of the platform like one of those old nuclear bunkers. It looked even heavier fortified in person than it did through my Dragonfly.
Luna’s voice crept along the back of my mind. ”S-Shiro, I s-swear—“
Bang!
A pipe leading into a vat burst right behind us. Its contents sloughed outward into a cascading wave of luminous fluid that hissed and ate at the metal surrounding it.
Garrick dodged just in the nick of time to get away from the pouring acid, and Hope dragged me backward. It was a useless action since Insight didn’t even warn me, but the thought was appreciated.
Not all of us got out of the surging acid, though. CJ29 repositioned himself the moment the acid burst out and took a torrent across his side to buy Garrick time to get away.
“CJ!” Acid devoured his metal armor with an angry hiss. Warning lights flared across his back, and he staggered toward us with a distorted whine.
Servos along his legs screamed and then cut out entirely. The thick plating that seemed so resistant just moments before sloughed off to reveal sparking internals. The sparks didn’t last long as even those were devoured by the. His legs buckled, and the front half of the jaeger collapsed with the entire back half melted by the acid.
”Fuck!” Hope dragged a hand back through her hair. “Grab his subroutine core.”
“Ch-chek.” I hesitantly approached and cracked open the metal of the jaeger’s head. As long as it was salvaged, the loss wasn't too terrible. It could be put into another body, and he’d be back. I stuffed it into my bag. “Got it.”
“Good.” Hope swept our surroundings with her light. With the loss of our jaeger, the lighting grew a whole lot dimmer. “Let’s keep moving to the command room. We’ll wide swing the vats just in case.”
“Roger.” The tension got to Garrick too, and he drew his sword. The two maniacs seemed deadset on using melee weapons. I had a feeling that wasn’t the wisest choice given what we just witnessed.
I took a shaky breath. I checked my coil-pistol and ensured I had blaze rounds loaded just in case. My gear was fully ready to go, and I neared full charge on my kinetic ability—
“Look out!” A psychic shriek tore through my mind from Luna. Just as we neared the reinforced door, movement exploded from the haze.