Chapter 387
”Down!” Garrick shouted and ducked to the side.
Burst Step strained my leg as I pushed myself into a dodge. A dozen jets of pressurized acid sizzled through the air where our squad just stood. They slammed into vats behind us and ate away at the reinforced metal. A scent sharp enough to make my nose feel like it was bleeding filled the air.
I moved away from the rest of the squad, and the attacks abruptly stopped. They couldn’t see me with my Blinder active, but that just meant Hope and Garrick had even more attacks flying at them. The two skillfully dodged and deflected what they could, using their armor to its full advantages. The acid, instead of sticking and melting the silver, simply flopped off where it impacted. I wasn’t sure what metal the Crusade used, but it was damn impressive.
I dropped to a knee and ducked behind a forklift that’d been left abandoned on the side of the path. I mounted my rifle on it and fired wildly into the fog—or, at least, that’s how it’d look from an outside perspective. In actuality, I carefully sprayed in a pattern, and then watched where light sparked against the fog to get an idea of where our attackers were.
My rifle clicked empty, and I dropped it for my coil-pistol. I estimated the distance and then squeezed the trigger. The grenade disappeared into the fog, and a brilliant blue flashed through the haze. The spray of acid dropped by half thanks to my electric grenade. It wasn’t quite as good as an EMP, but it was also way easier to make for a similar enough effect.
”Nice shot, Zuku!” Hope laughed and charged into the fog without any hesitation. Garrick followed just behind her with his longsword pulled low and ready to cleave through whatever stood in their way.
I slapped another grenade into my pistol, and then dropped the mag from my rifle. It slipped through my fingers and clattered through a layer of metal grating. Well… minus one mag. Good thing they weren’t hard to make. I grabbed another from my plate carrier and rushed after the two crazed Crusaders.
The clangs of metal were a symphony that lead me through the fog. In the short time I reloaded, they’d took down a dozen IndustryFriends. I passed their sparking pieces and the half melted remained of Grinwater Purifiers. Even under intense pressure, the two Crusaders were terrifyingly effective.
The fog parted just in front of me, revealing a large ventilation shaft that stirred the dense fog around it. The shaft plummeted below the complex down toward a section that wasn’t clear on the blueprint. Hope and Garrick were spread out on either side of the clearing, cutting apart bots scattered between rusted industrial machinery and barrels of unknown chemicals.
I moved off to the side of the clearing and fired pot shots into the few standing bots. My Blaze rounds cracked and sizzled against the moisture in the air every time they slammed into the thick industrial armor of the bots. In just a couple minutes, we finished off the bots still standing.
Garrick whipped his sword to the side, and a mixture of acid and oil flicked off onto the concrete. “Is it ov—“
“Garrick!” Hope shouted, cutting off whatever he was about to say next. “I swear, if you open that cursed trap of yours one more time—“
Boom!
Something heavy collided with the ventilation shaft in the middle of the space. The echoes of the massive metallic thunk echoed up the walls of the shaft and clattered against my ears. A gargantuan metallic hand reached over the lip and clamped down onto the floor. Servos strained and whine in protest as something tried to lift itself over the edge.
Garrick reacted first before any of us. His speedware activated, and he turned into a blur even through the slow-timed effects of Dexterity. He flashed in front of the hand and sliced forward with a slash so clean and quick I couldn’t even see the blade glimmer in the light.
The metal hand separated from the rest of whatever it was supporting, and another massive thud echoed up the shaft. It was followed right after by something crashing repeatedly into the walls all the way to the bottom of the shaft.
“That was a close one.” Garrick laughed lightly and sheathed his sword. He leaned over the edge of the shaft and flicked his light down toward the base. “It wasn’t nearly as big as I was expecting it to be.”
I recoiled from the bad omen wearing the skin of a man. He was like the exact opposite of Ligh. Absolutely horrifying to be around, and yet part of me wanted to keep watching and see what other shit he could stir into reality. It was the kind of morbid curiosity similar to why most people watched Baseball these days.
I moved over to the group. “What was it?”
”Just another bot. I think it’s dead.” Garrick backed away from the shaft while spewing more curses. “Which way now?”
I simply pointed down toward the ventilation shaft. “Should be a hall down there that leads to the server room.”
”They really made this a pain to access.” Hope sighed and moved up alongside the Knight. “Who puts a server room down in the depths of a facility like this? Seriously…”
I leaned over the edge and stared down the dark shaft. About halfway down, it fogged up into a shadowy mess I couldn’t pick any details out of. She had a point… were they trying to hide something? The production facility being still active floated through my mind. Surely Lavender wouldn’t be able to operate this kind of place all by himself… an AI? That thought was horrifying, but not entirely implausible. They were rare in daily life, but I never could be sure when it came to the insanity of corpos.
Hope flicked her flashlight to the other side of the shaft. It was a sheer drop the entire way down. “Think there’s a staircase?”
Or I could just jump… nah, probably best I stuck with them. So far I hadn’t been threatened too much thanks to my Blinder, but whatever operated the bots was obviously smart enough to track me off my projectiles. They knew I was here, just not where. “I’ve got rappelling equipment.”
I pulled off my bag and sorted through it for my microwire. I never left home without the stuff. Verticality played a massive part in the city, so it was always good to have on hand. I hadn’t really needed it recently with my Drop Chutes, but it all around good to have on me for more than just rappelling purposes.
I set up an anchor around a forklift and dropped the wire over the side of the shaft. It barely reached the bottom and pooled into a coil. I lifted my ascender and offered it to the two Crusaders. “Who’s going first?”
”I will.” Garrick took the ascender from me and moved toward the edge of the shaft. He figured out how to get it set up and dissapeared over the edge.
”You go next, Hope.” I shuffled back toward the forklift. “I’ll stay up to guard the wire.”
“You sure?” The Inquisitor sheathed her twin daggers. “Maybe I should stay, and you two head on in.”
“I’ve got it covered.” I tapped my bag. “A fall won’t do anything to me if they cut it on my way down. ‘Sides, you really want to leave me alone with him?”
”No.” She hesitated a moment longer and then slid the flash drive into my hand. “Hold onto this.”
“You think it's about to happen?” I instinctively hid the drive in one of my pockets. It was a massive sign of trust that she was giving something like this over to me… Right, after this—no matter what—I was going to tell her.
”Now would be the time.” She backed away and headed for the shaft just as the ascender came back up. “Watch yourself, squire.”
”I will.” I grabbed my rifle from its sling and held it tightly in my hands as I was left alone once more.
To be honest, if Garrick turned I wasn’t so sure about our chances. He was chromed up, which wasn’t a super big issue. The big issue was the speedware. It wouldn’t matter how many tricks I had in my arsenal if he closed the gap instantly and cut me in half.
Thankfully, my worries about protecting the wires from a bot attack were entirely unfounded. I didn’t even hear the scrape of metal outside of the factory working away, let alone see one of Grinwater’s robots. It was… unsettling. Either the whoever ran this place wasn’t very intelligent, or they were planning something big. My money was on the latter.
I stuck around for a couple minutes just to make sure nothing would happen and then took the descender down the shaft. By the time I hit the bottom, Garrick and Hope were digging around in the big bot’s internals with their weapons.
”What are you doing?” I climbed up onto the bot, sending pulses of Technical Expertise through it with every step.
The Front End Low-Level Overflow Waterworker was a pretty basic design, to be honest, but that could only be expected. FELLOW was two decades old, probably even older. No inbuilt weapons, like most of the bots here. It had pressurized tanks and mass on its side, though.
”Making sure it's dead.” Hope slid her dagger into an important looking vent and cut up a bunch of wires.
I shook my head and looked around the place. Unlike the vast expanse of the chemical production facility, the lowest levels were a series of pipes and tunnels leading all throughout the SmileFriend Purification Zone. I thought they would be small, but they were surprisingly wide. At least, wide enough for the big bot to get around without an issue.
Garrick planted his sword in the FELLOW and leaned on it. “Which way from here?”
”Did you not look at the map?” I sighed and got my bearings. “That way.”
”Thanks.” Garrick flicked his sword out and casually braced it on his shoulder. The Knight hopped off the FELLOW and flicked his light toward the dark tunnel.
I slowed down my and let Hope get further ahead of me. Once she did, I stashed a Spectral Flock crow off to the side of the path just in case. Hopefully, I wouldn’t need to use it. It’d directly expose me as Nightshade. I was okay with telling her my name, but that didn’t mean I wanted everything known. ‘Sides, Nightshade was a wanted mass murderer.
The path I originally tended to follow was caved-in, so we had to reroute around to a different tunnel. Signs of movement scattered throughout the tunnel. Rubble was shifted, and debris looked recently disturbed. I paused at a scrapped IndustryFriend that’d been crushed underfoot.
”What is it?” Hope called back to me.
I eyed the dozens of shadows that sprung up across my vision thanks to Panther’s Sight. “Looks like its planning a final holdout.”
”I’d expect nothing less.” Hope nodded to a spot further down the tunnel. “How many?”
”At least one more FELLOW.” Garrick pointed his flashlight to a heavy print in the middle of the tunnel. “We won’t be able to take it out as easily as the last.”
”A bunch of Purifiers.” I glanced around the tunnel. “At least a dozen IndustryFriends. No telling, though. There’s at least one other path leading to our destination.”
We continued as the tunnel widened. Pipes and catwalks flowed deeper into a vast cylindrical chamber with a domed ceiling. Catwalks clung to the walls of the chamber like rusty ribs and dripped condensation that hissed when it slammed into the floor.
Along the back wall, reinforced glass shined with light from hundreds of server banks spread across several floors. Standing in front of it—
“INTRUDER DETECTED.” A FELLOW rose from a crouch. It was just as big as the last and covered in thick layers of industrial plating. Hydraulic muscles flexed and servos whined as it shifted. Along its spine, translucent acid tanks lit up with a sickly glow.
Its head turned toward us. Similar to the IndustryFriend’s, it had a smooth dome. The FELLOW’s featureless face was only broken up by a single vertical optic that glowed with a light blue shade. A mist of acid cloaked it like a shroud, making the servers’ light behind it warp.
Movement exploded from around it. IndustryFriends dropped from the walls and ceiling. Their lanky limbs clattered as they slammed into the ground. Purifiers rolled into positions on top of the catwalks at the perfect angle to fire down on us. It looked like every last bot in the factory was gathered here.
”Zuku, suppress the IFs!” Garrick pointed his sword forward. “Hope, go for the Purifiers. I’ll—“
”PLEASE VACATE THE PREMISES.” The FELLOW moved forward. The ground cracked under it, and acid jets hissed through the air as it opened fire.