I woke up, my face pressed into the cold, grey floor of the hallway. Hinote and Shun lay unconscious on the floor, each of them about ten feet away from me, and in between them was a shape in a grey jumper that also lay motionless on the floor. As I got to my feet slowly, I saw there was a pool of blood surrounding Stan the maintenance man, and a slender slit that still pumped blood out. Stan’s eyes were open and sightless.

Shun stirred.

I moved quickly over to Hinote and shook him, but when he didn’t respond, I slapped him.

“Ah! Fuck you, Stan!” Hinote yelled, startled, raising his gun to me. I blocked the movement sluggishly, still not used to my suit being off.

“It’s me. You have to get dressed, and we have to go!” I said.

“Oh shit,” Shun said. “Nin, did you do this? How?”

“Wasn’t me. I don’t know what happened. Thought it was one of you, but …”

Whatever did, it had got through his armor.

“No, we went out pretty soon after you, Nin,” Shun said. “This is a sword wound. Sachiblade if it got through his armor.”

“I know,” I said, heading to the room with the other dead maintenance men. I dragged Stan with me as I went, a smear of blood stretching across the floor behind him. Everything felt heavier without my suit, and I noticed I was pulling Stan’s limp form with my back. I straightened to use my arms and legs.

“Fucking suit,” I muttered.

I saw something catching light across the hall just as I crossed the threshold into our maintenance closet, Stan’s maintenance closet: my two lightning Sachi gems, the earth Sachi gem, all of my credits, and my lightning-invested powder. I dropped Stan and rushed over to grab it, then placed it all on the body of the maintenance man inside the door, not Stan, but a small man with less blood on him.

I pulled Stan all the way to the circular door that led to the platforms with the generators and thought to take off his badge that hung near his collarbone, thinking it was probably a keycard that would come in handy, giving us maintenance access to different parts of the building. I opened the door with the wheel, then threw Stan down. It’s the best we could do with the limited time we had. Who knew how long it would take for another maintenance crew to come through the hallway and see the bloodstain on the floor leading into Stan’s room. I didn’t even want to think about what the cameras had caught. I could only hope the surveillance team was more occupied with other screens besides these right now. The generator maintenance hall was likely the least of their worries. If they were watching for us or anyone, it would be sewage paths, the rooftops, hell, the front entrance. Not the grey maintenance hallway. Who in their right mind would climb support beams to get into Andalaf Tower? Right then, however, I did not feel I was in my right mind.

I quickly stripped off my Andalaf infantry outfit, put on the grey maintenance man jumper, and then sent another body down the ladder. Shun watched me dress. I paused for a moment. Then Hinote saw me.

“Ah! Come on!”

“No time for niceties, Hinote. Get that big boy’s jumper on. And close the door, will ya?” I said. He closed it, shielding his eyes with his gun. “Hinote. You have to change.” The man gave Shun a weary glance.

“Do you think it’ll be too much for me to handle, Hinote?” Shun said.

“Well—no, but.”

“Then fucking undress before I do it for you. You’re like my brother. I don’t care,” Shun said.

I couldn’t help but feel a mild relief at the statement.

Hinote undressed, and so did Shun. I noticed that Hinote had the same aversion to her nudity as he did to mine. He kept his eyes off her the entire time. I know because I watched him from my peripherals as I stared at Shun.

It felt slow because that is the effect that Shun has on me, specifically when she is wearing little to no clothing, but really, this all happened over the course of about a minute, and then we walked out of the little closet and down the hallway, away from the long bloodstain.

I pitched my voice low as we turned a corner down another long, grey hallway that I was sure led to different areas of the generators hanging down from the Upper-Plateau’s crust.

“The 69th floor is where we want to go,” I said. “That’s where the Sachi baths are, and I can get a quick charge on my suit, but it’s also where Ai probably is. It’s Nejirita’s main lab, where I got my own baths.”

“And how the fuck do you plan on gettin’ up there?” Hinote said. I raised Stan’s badge.

“I think this is a keycard,” I said. “It should give us maintenance access, which will take us up to the 75th floor. After that, it’s only Andy Andalaf’s closest shitheads, Josh Baker, the Jonnys, and the like.”

We came to an elevator, and I punched the up arrow. “Keycard, please,” a recorded, robotic woman’s voice chimed. I pressed Stan’s badge up to the little, square, black-screened reader. It beeped, and the door opened. “Access granted. Have you tried Andalaf sweetmeats? Andy Andalaf is more than just the head of a Sachi drilling company; since he was a boy, he—”

“How do you shut her up?” Hinote said.

“You don’t. She turns into white noise after the first ten floors or so,” I said.

“Shit. Andalaf sweet meats … fuckin’ pushin’ his own product on his workers, askin’ them to pay him when they probably already underpaid,” Hinote said.

“Definitely underpaid. They acted like part of our pay in Chudo was the glory of it, the security. ‘You may not be able to afford your apartment, but at least you have job security, and everyone thinks you’re cool.’ One of the reasons I quit,” I said, my eyes touching Shun’s briefly before looking down.

“No offense, but I just think anyone workin’ for this goddamn company is supportin’ death, enabling Andalaf and validating them to keep on the same way,” Hinote said.

“You’re not wrong. But I don’t think you’re exactly right either,” I said.

“Here we go,” Hinote said, rolling his eyes.

“We’re here.”

Shun gave me a look. I thought she probably agreed with Hinote. I also thought she was feeling a lot of fear, shit, I know I was.

Ben Nejirita was one of the most genius, most despicable, and dangerous men in the world, and we were walking right into his lair—and he had a new Sallis-Faint, the thing he’d coveted the most since starting those ads after the Great Northern Sachi War. And we were there to take that from him.

The elevator doors opened, silver and white things with glass windows in the middle.

“Arrived! 69th floor. Research and Innovation. Have a nice day!” the elevator said to us as we stepped out into the enormous, high-ceilinged room. Sachi pools sat to either side of a path running down the middle, each with a yellow glow, giving off their scent of burning plastic.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Hinote was looking up at the pipes and ductwork on the ceiling far above, then down the long corridor that went on and on, disappearing in a light peach-yellow fog. There were square pop-up structures here and there and many tubes where Chudo got their Sachi baths.

“Maintenance badge gets you pretty fuckin’ far in the world, eh?” Hinote said.

“Can’t lock out the doctor,” I said. “This place probably needs constant maintenance, and that Stan creep had a Chudo suit. He’s probably Nejirita’s little creation.”

I looked at the tubes, remembering my baths, then thought of the slender stab wound in Stan’s chest. I stopped walking as the ringing in my ears threatened to overtake me. The red glare pulled in from the edges of my vision.

“Nin?” Shun said, touching my arm.

“Yo, what the fuck? You wanna blow cover?” Hinote said.

Not now. Not now. I held my breath a moment as if this would stop the attack, or the panic, or whatever the fuck it was. Post-trauma shit? They always talked about it, the Chudo counselors. After a job, we had to go to ’em, and they’d ask if I had dissociative incidents. Is that what this was?

Who—are—you?

My breath caught. I reached into the pocket of the maintenance jumper and pulled out the bag of lightning Sachi powder. Hinote was saying something, his face aggressive, turning away from me to look at something in the distance, then back to me. Shun moved to stand in front of me. I took a nice long snort of the junk. The ringing stopped, and the red in my vision cleared.

“Shit,” I muttered under my breath.

“I’ve been waiting for three hours, you greasy fucking shitheads,” Ben Nejirita said. “Three. Fucking. Hours.” His voice was a cackle. He had thick brown hair, almost auburn; his face was lined like an old peach, and his nose was pointed and scrunched up like a goblin. He had a slight hunch and wore a buttoned-up lab coat with black gloves.

“I apologize, Dr. Nejirita,” Shun said, still keeping me somewhat hidden behind her. If anyone would be recognized it was me. I mentally sent a thank you to her for being so goddamned efficient and smart. “We were—”

“Oh, a new girl, eh? Don’t remember you. Are you under Stan? Did he send me some fucking noobies? Seems that Stan forgets himself,” Nejirita said. “No matter. Come! If I had three of me, I’d do the fucking job myself, but that is what you three are for! Or, that’s what you are supposed to be for, taking in my own goddamn training. Did you know I wrote it? Fucking years ago. Not many know that. It says it right on your fucking Andalaf machinery book, right on the front: By Doctor Benjamin fucking Nejirita.” He walked away from us. We followed hesitantly at first, then briskly.

“Here. The Chudo Sachi baths are in the third sector,” Nejirita said, turning in between two square pools of Sachi. We walked to the wall where the tube-like encasements were. “The baths themselves are fine, but I believe they are tripping the circuit. Check out the baths while you’re here, but your priority is getting the circuit running the way it should again. It is conveniently connected to the project I am currently working on, so please,” he said, turning back to us, “hurry the fuck up.”

“Shouldn’t be a problem, Doctor,” Shun said, still keeping herself placed between me and Nejirita.

“Won’t be a problem, miss. Won’t. And why don’t you two fucking talk?” Nejirita said as he looked over Shun at me, waving a finger at me and Hinote like a wet noodle. I kept my eyes down, and Hinote looked away at the Sachi baths. “Have you worked on this floor before? Maybe I should be talking to you.”

I threw my voice a bit low for some reason. “I’m overseeing Patricia’s training, doctor. As your machinery manual states: ‘We must apply our new maintenance crew members to real jobs to give them the experience they will need to appropriately apply themselves later.’”

“An exact quote! An inconvenience to be caught in an argument with myself. However, I am hardly ever wrong, so I will leave you three to your work. I’ll just assume the circuit will be fixed within the hour, considering your ability to quote the fucking manual.”

Nejirita walked off between the two square pools of Sachi, then turned to walk toward the holding exhibits.

“How the fuck—” Hinote started.

“Chudo had to read it. We worked with machinery every day, and we had to know how to fix it if anything went wrong,” I said.

“Do you know how to fix this circuit then? Or how to even find it?”

“No. But it doesn’t matter,” I said. “We’re in. For the time being, we can take any further venture into the laboratory, such as following the dead circuit’s path and looking for something that’s causing it to malfunction.”

“Let’s give Nejirita a minute to walk back to wherever he’s going first,” Shun said.

“We need to follow him. You think you can be quiet, Hinote?”

“The fuck is that supposed—”

“You know what it means. You’re loud but strong. Right now, we need quiet but still strong when our luck runs out.”

Hinote scowled at me.

“Hinote! For fucks sake!” Shun said.

“Alright, fine! Let’s go. Loud my asshole. I can be fuckin’ quiet,” he said.

I took a moment to remove my spinal, and we went on cautiously, Hinote louder than I liked but quieter than usual. The path that ran along the Sachi baths and the wall was parallel with the path in the center of the large laboratory in between the Sachi pools. As we passed each Sachi pool, there was a pop-up building to our right, and we waited behind these while Nejirita walked between the pools because if he were to turn around, he’d be able to see us without the cover of the buildings. We ran past each pool once Nejirita cleared the next building and wouldn’t be able to see us. I dragged my spinals through the yellow pools of Sachi as we passed, hoping to get enough juice in them for my suit to function. I actually wasn’t sure how much charge these small dips would give me because I’d always had enough charge to get me through a mission or enough time between to soak the spinal overnight in Sachi.

After Nejirita passed the seventh pair of Sachi pools, we sprinted to the next building, hugged its edge until we got to the other side of it, and peaked around the corner. Nejirita turned right down a pale blue-and-yellow lit path ending in glass sliding doors the size of an elephant.

“What kind of things are in there that he needs doors that fuckin’ big?” Hinote asked. I was proud of him. He actually whispered the question.

“Many of his terrible creations. And yes, some are that big,” I said, thinking back to the abominations that filled the pits in there. “I don’t know if Stan’s badge is gonna get us in there,” I said, feeling a panic rising from my chest to my throat.

Shun, as always, acted. I’m not sure if I could have stopped her if I tried, but I think I allowed her to do it because I had no better ideas. It wasn’t like we thought we’d come out of this unscathed. We were in the same room as one of the most powerful men in the world, and the cameras there would be a hotspot. Three maintenance workers walking along the walls of an extremely intricate scientific stronghold would be written off as three people who were doing a job the cameraman couldn’t possibly fathom, so they would leave us to it. Three maintenance workers clobbering Andalaf’s main brain, however, would attract the attention of whoever was watching the cameras and then the entirety of the Andalaf Tower.

“Doctor?” Shun called up to him as the doors slid open with several clicks, then a hydraulic release like a large exhalation.

Nejirita turned to look at us, and I only had a moment to zip my jumper back up after quickly rushing my spinal into my back. I felt the familiar pinch of the needles going directly into my spine as the suit connected to my nerves.

“What the fuck?” Nejirita said, squinting. “Oh, it’s you. What do you need?”

Shun approached the doctor. I stood watching with my arms crossed next to Hinote.

She dropped him with one chop to the neck.

“No!” I screamed. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking we had no other choice,” Shun said calmly, coldly.

“Goddamnit, Shun,” I said under my breath as I ran over. Hinote clomped behind me, and we went through the giant, elephant-sized glass doors. I dragged the doctor in with us. “We are under one of the closest eyes in Andalaf Tower, Shun.”

“I know we are,” Shun said. “What do you want from me? I’m surprised we got this far. Let’s get Ai and get the fuck out.”

I looked around the huge room. Like the previous room, there were pits on both sides of the middle walk, but instead of Sachi, they were open exhibits like a zoo. Habitats, as Nejirita would call them. I called them prisons. Many men and women sat behind smooth, white desks with screens set into them, typing in data drawn from the beasts in the pits or telling the computer to send some food down. No one noticed their felled boss.

“Tying him up will do nothing for us. We’re in plain sight. How long you think he’ll be out, Shun?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“You’re the one that hit him.”

“Ten to twenty minutes, maybe?”

I made some impulsive decision-making myself and pushed Nejirita outside of the closing glass doors, then started walking through the main laboratory, Shun and Hinote on my heels. No one paid us any mind, absorbed in their work. I looked down into one of the pits on our right and saw a black-cloaked man on the ground, convulsing. I wondered if the scientists were going to help him, but they just sat at their desks, typing into the computers.

“Seems they think we have permission for the time being,” I said over my shoulder. “Keep an eye out for Ai in the pits.”