Cold…So cold…She thinks in-between cycles of absolute darkness. Fluorescent circles moving from the bottom of her vision to the top, and then repeating again. She has no idea where she’s looking or even a sense of what direction she’s facing. Weightlessly floating past bright orbs and white tiles, accompanied by the soft symphony of wheels against a slippery floor. She drifts off into nothingness again.
Why am I so cold? She comes back again. Feeling the burn of frozen metal against her arm, she looks down at her body. She’s in some sort of hospital gown, bound by Velcro straps on her wrist and ankles, being pushed down a bright hallway on a metal gurney. Her other arm is not tied down, but it is in a tightly wound bandage. Why whoever is moving her felt the need to restrain her, is beyond all sense. She barely has the strength to turn her head, let alone leave this gurney.
Whatever drug was administered to knock her out is now flushing out of her system. Yume’s consciousness is returning like waves rippling around a pebble tossed into still-water. Cycles of pain wash over as she remembers she is no longer whole.
Where is my hand? Squeaks from her waking mind. The memory of her defeat begins flooding her thoughts. She has no clue why she is still alive. Why is she here? She’s supposed to be dead. Hell, she’s supposed to be in the pit. Yet here she is, receiving some sort of treatment for her wound and being transported to somewhere else in this facility.
With some semblance of strength returning to her body, she musters up the courage to glance behind her, trying to see what is pushing her. It was another robot. The same shape and proportion of the GuideBot, but with different arms attached to its body. Two small flexible appendages are pushing her gurney down this hallway.
She gets frightened and immediately puts her head back down. Hoping she can just endure this ride a bit longer and think of something when it stops. She looks around to try to get a feel for her surroundings. She passes several doors and peeks in to any that have the lights on. Women, some with freshly born babies in their arms, and others with large protruding stomachs. This is a pregnancy ward, she realizes.
“Why am I here?” Yume asks. “You do know I’m not pregnant righ- “
The cart-pushing bot cuts her off mid-sentence and halts its process, extending an arm into her field of view, revealing a long needle protruding from one of its fingers. Yume got the message immediately and zips her lips, not wanting to be put under again.
Guess I better let this thing get me to where it wants me, she concedes. She resumes staring at the walls. Happy mothers holding children continue to populate the rooms down the hall, until she reaches a vault-like door. It decompresses and opens as the robot approaches it, and then seals tightly behind them. The doors down this new hallway are windowless. The only thing in this hall aside from the bot pushing her, is another bot further down the hall dumping waste down a chute. A remarkably miserable environment, surely this is where they are taking her.
After several more anxious minutes, she turns into a vacant room and the gurney lowers to a more comfortable level, before being locked into a wall. The bot presses her node and scans it, confirming her identity.
“Yume Ripley, you have put The Chamber in an uncomfortable situation. Your bio-signs indicate that you are one-month pregnant, yet you have been sentenced to exile in the pit.”
“That’s not possible, I physically can’t get pr-“
The bot cuts her off once again
“These are facts. Due to the nature of your condition, we cannot simply throw you into exile. You must give birth here, in the safety of The Rung.” States the bot.
Yume is completely dumb founded. Biologically, she does not possess female reproductive organs. There is absolutely zero chance she is carrying a fertile egg in her body. This robot has scanned her face, yet there is impossible data showing up. She can’t process what is being said to her, so she sits there in silence as the bot continues to explain.
” Furthermore, attacking a GuideBot, which is directly owned by The Chamber, is a cardinal offense. Under the circumstances of your situation, you will be sedated during the full term of your pregnancy, and then properly disposed of once the child has been delivered. The Chamber will decide the fate of your child.”
Yume nods in response because clearly her arguments are falling on deaf ears. The robot makes a move towards her left arm and slides off her bracelet.
“Did you really think a contraband charge will help your case?” scoffs the robot.
“Please don’t take that. That’s all I have left from my family. I’m going to be killed regardless, can’t you just leave it here?”
“Certainly!” It retorts, as it lifts its arm and tosses the bracelet into a trash receptacle nearby.
Yume groans and closes her eyes in protest of its actions.
The robot excuses itself to retrieve the stasis machine and she is left alone in the room. She lets her dire situation set in and it feels as though the walls around her start to close in. I will be in stasis forever. I will never have a child to bear, and once they figure it out, I’ll be killed. The dreadful reality turns her body into an adrenaline factory. White-hot anxiety courses through her and triggers a primal response. Fight or flight? Flight.
She stares down at her arm, one bound, the other free, but in a bandage. She can see the very tip of the Velcro peeking out just a fraction of an inch. She doesn’t have time to think. She whips her bandaged arm around and flails it, trying to connect with the Velcro tip. The strain of her shortened arm trying to reach the other pulls several muscles in her abdomen. She screams out in pain.
The white lights beaming down on her start to blink, and an alarm begins to sound from behind her gurney. Something was triggered by her yelping. That definitely alerted the bot, she thinks. Another layer of urgency rushes over her and she has no choice but to ignore her torn muscles. The bandage finally meets the Velcro, and she rips her arm free. It doesn’t come without a cost though, the bandage that is melded to her wound is snagged onto the Velcro. In another shriek of pain, she uses her free hand to separate the two. The wound underneath opens and slowly stains the white covering.
In a split second she releases her legs and lunges out of the gurney. Adrenaline gave her confidence that her legs couldn’t back up. She stumbles into the door and collapses against it. She can hear something outside, so she presses her ear to it. The bot was making its way back to the room, quite hastily it sounds like.
“The bracelet!” she exclaims as she reaches towards the garbage.
She knocks the receptacle over and kicks it to try to get the bracelet out. She has very little time and she knows it. The pain of her toes crunching against the hard metal of the bin cause her to weep in agony. It finally falls out and in one last pain-fueled groan she bends down and snags it.
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Yume hears the robot right outside the door. With no time to figure out how to put on a bracelet with one hand, she puts it into her mouth and clutches one end of it with her teeth. She desperately scans the room to look for a hiding place. No luck. The door swings open at her and she catches it, leads it back to a stopper on the wall, and hides in the small space between it and the door.
The bot notices her absence immediately and examines the room. It can’t find her with its vision, so it tries another method. The lights suddenly go out and Yume is in absolute darkness. Tiny green beams of light shoot out from holes around the bot to form a grid around the room. It’s studying the room’s geometry to look for irregularities.
Yume is fighting hard to not succumb to her pain, but it’s too intense. She lets out a tiny squeak as she grabs her stomach. The scanning robot senses a change in geometry as her head peaks out from behind the door. It’s over, her hiding spot can’t mask the misery she’s in.
The green dots painting the walls all shift towards Yume’s forehead and create a circle, then merge into one red dot. The bot starts to home in on Yume and lifts its arms up to grab her. She grips the door and tries to hide behind it for a moment. It’s no use. She decides to make a run for it.
Right before the bot meets the door she flings it back, knocking it to the ground. This is her chance. She makes her way towards the door frame, limping and grasping at the wall to support herself. Taking a deep breath, she steps one foot out of the door.
The lights along the entire wing loudly shut off and then come back on bright red. Attacking that robot seems to have tripped an alarm system. Yume knows that the few seconds she has to make a move are burning, but so is her body. She clumsily moves forward as fast as she can, using her shoulder against the wall to keep herself up-right.
The bot at the end of the hallway turns towards her as it abandons its duty of dumping garbage. Oh great, another one, she thinks, not much of an option now, huh? She moves towards the center of the hallway and puts her good hand up, readying to try and take this thing on. Her body is teetering and trembling as it gracefully glides towards her. Yume watches it’s position intently as she wants to be prepared to land a critical attack. She was watching so intensely she forgot how dizzy she was from the anesthetic.
“DO NOT RESIST” came from behind her.
“Hm?” Yume says disbelievingly through her teeth that are still clenching the bracelet.
She turns around to see that her door-slam wasn’t that effective. The original bot has regained mobility and is coming after her with its arms raised to restrain her. Her fast head movement to look behind her is a bit too much too soon. She becomes overwhelmed with dizziness and falls to the ground.
The two bots speeding towards her collide above in a horrendous crash. Bits and pieces of their exterior rain down as Yume’s balance regenerates. The bodies of the bots spark and sputter and voice-lines warble out of their dying speakers. I can’t believe that just happened, she thinks as she chuckles to herself. These highly sophisticated robots don’t have the best reaction time seemingly because they’re designed to treat patients, not apprehend criminals. It’s quite clear just how uncoordinated they are outside of their roles.
It's safe to assume that these bots are out of commission. They rest limp against the floor, reflecting the crimson waves of alarm lights and occasionally twitch their arms. She is by herself in an otherwise empty hallway. All the doors around her are vacant and locked; there isn’t a clear path out of here or any promising hiding spots. The red lights are now flashing on and off and white beacons lining the edge of the floor join in with them. It’s becoming apparent that these bots aren’t the end to Yume’s escape.
Yume looks far down to the other end of the hall. She can barely see the hefty door she came through still sealed shut. That’s how she came in, so surely that’s how she’ll get out, right?
She thinks there must be some sort of access key or something on these bots to get it to open, so she kneels to search. One of the fallen bots has its arm extended out towards her with one of its fingers curled upwards. She takes the bracelet out of her mouth and hangs it on the finger, allowing her to put it back onto her wrist without using her other arm.
She digs through their wires and feels all around their bodies in a frenzy, occasionally touching wires that cause their arms to jolt. There’s no card or chip sticking out with any signs that it would grant her access through those doors. Would there even be a card? Maybe they are coded with the key, she thinks, as she realizes her spelunking may be a futile effort.
The search is cut short by some commotion past the doors. Yume peers down the hall again to see the doors open, revealing several rows of heavily armored SentinelBots. These bots are the militarized police-force of The Rung. These are called on to eliminate a threat.
Yume takes her hand out of one of the bots’ chest and wobbles her way upright, dropping pieces of its innards in shock. All of this, for me? The clunks of their heavy feet send slight tremors against the ground. They move in a precise tempo down the hall, so precise it’s as if they’re moving as one. Such a powerful force being called to stop what, a suicidal adult? No…that can’t be the whole story. Was it because I damaged more bots?
She doesn’t have the time to sit here and ponder. Their rhythmic feet beat like war-drums and inspire Yume to move. She gets up and throws leg in front of leg, but her body does not want to cooperate. She stumbles and braces part of her fall with her crippled arm. The pain shoots down her spine and out to each appendage, viscerally reminding her how she got here.
The Ladder wants to harvest me. The Ladder wants to hold me hostage for a baby that will never be born. She pushes herself off the ground and lets anger contort her muscles, rapidly moving down the hall. I won’t let them have their way! Her instinctual reactions now infusing with rage and sorrow. The drive to avoid destined death overpowers her absurd level of pain.
She reaches the end of the hall, with one thought racing through her mind, this is where they dumped the trash. A moment of clarity comes to her amidst her tunnel-visioned rampage as she’s staring down the open garbage-chute. Is it safe? Is it sanitary? It does not matter anymore. She rids herself what little sense she has left and climbs in.
The door to the chute closes behind her and she finds herself engulfed in darkness, slowly sliding down a metal tube. Her feet glide against the surface until she suddenly feels nothing below them. She can hear liquid flowing and crashing from where her feet are dangling. There is no other clear path out of here, so she takes the plunge.
She gasps as she falls several feet down and splashes into a pool. A familiar putrid scent coats her nostrils; this is runoff. She has got herself into the intricate system that flows across The Rung. This maze could lead her miles away from here, or worse, to a free fall of death. Some of the pipes she has briefly glanced at while on the pod-system fall straight from the supports of the ceiling to the depths below The Rung. She would rather gamble her life than hand it in to be butchered, so she presses on.
She feels around in front of her and determines that there is one way out, a gurgling drainpipe. She touches the edges of it, and deduces it is roughly four feet wide. She sends herself down the pipe without much care. She’s made her choice already and the only way out is down.
It’s not as steep as her last tube-experience, but she is gaining speed. Every turn and bump sends her flying into the sides, plummeting through unknown parts of The Rung. She can barely keep her head out of the water to catch a breath without slamming her face against the tube. Her frail body is playing with the frayed cloth on death’s robe.
Each time her stomach drops from a fall, she thinks it may be to her death. Much to her luck, the height of the drops has only been enough to knock the wind out of her. Not that there was much wind in her to begin with, but it’s still tolling on her body.
She can no longer accurately tell how long she’s been falling. Has it been seconds? Hours? The never-ending sludge-slide continues to tear her apart. Several bones are now pulverized from the sharp turns and sudden drops. Her hospital gown has ripped, and the shreds still attached are barely hanging on. After an eternity of darkness and vertigo, the pipe finally seems to slow.
As the steep angle of the pipe starts to wane, so does her consciousness. No one is angry enough to endure this much pain, certainly not someone who was already injured going into this. She feels some sense of accomplishment having lived through the last twenty-four hours, but it’s not a feeling free of fear. She is badly injured and can’t grasp her fading spirit. Her last waking moments are spent in a muffled panic, staring vacantly ahead.
Light begins to shine off the red sludge and she can see she’s being led towards a reservoir of waste. Her bare, cadaverous body catches on a shallow grate at the pipe exit. She cannot keep her eyes open any longer. The lullaby of rushing liquid flowing around her puts her to rest.