Sector 2 Communication Hub: Accessing Mainframe…
Accessed. Non-Terminal Detected.
Local AI disconnecting from Mainframe…
“Wait!” Jack yelled.
A slow “…” rolled out on the screen.
“Terminal can you connect to all speakers? Even in other sectors. Every single speaker in cryo.”
Affirmative.
“I need to do that, I won’t be able to make it to the core otherwise,” he didn’t specifically “know” that, but based on the reactions he had gotten when he asked about it, it was a good guess.
Processing…
Chit and Nano-Trace Cost required.
“It’s for your own task!”
Deferred Payment Acceptable.
So it didn’t actually need all those little fees he was sure it was charging him. This stingy little shit. “That’s fine, just connect me.” He looked around and saw an old microphone. He picked it up and the foam around the head of the device crumbled to dust. He’d be very careful, he couldn’t afford to lose this opportunity.
He heard a shock then a thump followed by muffled cursing float out from underneath the table, maybe Yuma was trying to do something. He couldn’t let her concerns about her family delay his own.
Intercom system connected…
Signal interference estimated in 30 seconds… 29…28…
“My name is Jack. I have talked with Personnel on the Bridge. No one is in control of the ship but we are going to hit some star. We have a matter of…” he decided to increase the pressure, “weeks to reach the bridge, fix the ship, and land it or we will all be turned into paste. Fuck these crabs and fuck the SI keeping us in here with them. You’ve been living like rats here, get yourselves ready, we’re taking the Core.” He looked to Yuma who had just come out glaring at him, “and if you know Yuma…” it cut out with a spike of squealing and popping, “ta.” He tossed the microphone down which broken easily into parts and pocketed his AI disk.
The door opened on its own, he looked into the hallway, all the doors had opened on their own? The SI? Or was that his AI?
“What was all that? What about my family?”
“The truth. You need to find your family which is fine but I need to find the Core so we don’t all die anyways. If we just asked about them there’s a good chance they’re already dead and even if they somehow aren’t, is finding them better than getting everyone in Cryo heading to the Core with us?”
He shook his head, it wasn’t a question he was expecting an answer to. Yuma saw that and didn’t speak.
“Look Yuma, I managed to mention your name and hopefully everyone will be heading for the Core. I think all the doors opening make it a pretty easy choice.”
“No you look, the Core isn’t something that you just walk into. The stories in my family run back lifetimes. We are part of a bigger ship that was meant for long-distance travel. That SI used to control everything in this part of the ship. There’s only two paths to the Core and they are both deathtraps.”
Deathtraps? He was surprised, but only a little. That made sense why everybody was scared when he mentioned it.
“Well, fill me in on the way. Which way to the closest Terminal?” He grinned.
She didn’t mind his grin just not The Smile. She couldn’t help but turn up the corner of her cheeks slightly. She was annoyed about him not warning her about the message and she was annoyed at both herself and him that he had made her smile after annoying her. Thankful for small miracles, he could only see her scowling brow and couldn’t see the grin under her bandages. “From what we’ve studied of the layout in this section and now that the doors are all open there should be a Cryo-Bay with a Terminal in it.”
“Is it…”
“On the way? Yeah.” She took off. He would take mind-reading over charades any cycle.
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They had started out by checking and clearing rooms with their heads on a swivel, back and forth, as they looked through each open door. There were too many openings and any that had a Terminal were either completely smashed, hacked beyond any hope of normal operation, or useless lower-case terminals.
They even managed to find a pristine Cryo-Bay but it didn’t have a working Terminal either. Jack pulled her away from trying to wake up the people sleeping inside.
They had no time. If they were too quick they’d have to go it alone and if they were too slow who knows what mess they would arrive at.
They slowed as they made the final turn to their destination. It was quiet but for a soft giggle that punched through the stillness. They walked closer and closer until they turned into the open doorway.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“Why helloooooo there! New visitors! A guest! I must prepare, so rude so incredibly rude of you!”
What was in the room made the experimental Crab-Cryo Bay look tame. Apparently someone managed to sneak into this Bay or one of the Pods unlocked prematurely for whatever reason. The Nano-metals were pretty consistent but everything tired out eventually. It wouldn’t be the first time that someone came out of Cryo in a bad way. It was a scene out of hell.
Yuma turned her gaze, she couldn’t look anymore, much less process what was happening in the scene before her. Jack was frozen, not moving or shaking, his eyes were locked forwards. She shivered, it didn’t feel like cold, it felt like the heat refused to come near.
“And who are you two uninvited guests if I may inquire?” The man, perched over a body in the room, rearranged his glasses, his other hand comfortably held a knife over a person who looked to be still somewhat alive, even if they probably wished otherwise. She could make out the person’s lips, “he-lp-m-e.”
Yuma, desperate for anything else to look at, turned towards her companion and saw The Smile as it slithered onto his face, “Hello to you! This is Yumata, she’s, oh hmmm, my assistant,” he flippantly waved her away, “Yumata if you would. I see the soul of an artist in you! Let’s fix that my name is Jac…” The door hissed shut as he inserted his AI disk and slapped hand onto the panel. Yuma found herself standing alone in the near silence. She jumped slightly when the screaming started. It continued for longer than it should have, then she heard loud sobbing, and then cackling, unhinged laughter. The following silence lay over her in the hallway like a disturbed grave.
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“Jonah, we have to move. We don’t want to be late. Hurry up.”
“We don’t want to be early either, we’re fine.” Always in a rush her; they would die today, tomorrow, maybe it was waiting just around the corner.
They finished squeezing out of a wall panel. It had just been the two of them for a while now. He had been banished for stealing food and Eilien had been sent out right alongside him for having partaken of the stolen food. She insisted that she had no idea it was stolen but he knew that he had told her beforehand. That particular argument had been hashed, rehashed, then scraped out of the toilet for another round.
“Do you think he really talked to someone on the Bridge?” Eilien asked and he thought. On one hand, the story of communicating with someone outside of the Labs is a story as old as… well as old as the Labs themselves.
“He sounded confident.” Not many people sounded confident in the Labs.
They had both heard the announcement come from the speakers. He was familiar with the systems, more than most. The intercom lines were mostly used as single-shot early-alert systems to warn your home base. You just had to splice into the auxiliary lines ahead of time and relay an external mic run through an pseudo-SI shell, but that took a while. No one had been able to find a way to access a relay room, trying to splice the pad to get in would burn a person to a crisp and carving through walls was nearly always a bad idea.
This guy, Jack, must have burned out every single aux line throughout the entire Lab. With every line down and more and more crabs crawling through the labs, they had already committed to joining on the Run. The opening doors reinforced their choice but it didn’t make it for them.
“Coming?” He took a moment to really look at her, he still did like her smile, “Yeah, I’m coming.” There was no other choice but to head to the Core and hope that others were making the same choice.
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“Kala! Keep running, if you slow down you’re fucked! Hahaha.” Shit shit shit. That idiot, she had the same Endurance as him, of course she could keep running. She would absolutely plunge a Magno-Tube into the back of his skull but that wouldn’t help her get to a Terminal afterwards. Or even be able to hack one; shit, that’s why I keep him alive, she reminded herself for the third time.
What she wouldn’t do for some more Allocation in Agility right now though. The crab-wave had come out of nowhere, it was just shit luck. The doors magically opening was the start of this run of bum-luck and why her small gang of 6, now 5, had been caught flat-footed, mid-Terminal hack. In an ironic twist she didn’t appreciate, the open doors were also the only reason why they had managed to stay ahead of the crabs for this long. Each door the crabs passed stripped individual crabs off of the mass and slowed the swarm.
“Worry about yourself Uller, if I get a chance to set up my cannon the first rounds are going up your ass!”
She’d never admit it, especially to her crew, but her ugly-as-sin, multibarreled hard-light cannon was heavy as shit. She had Allocated enough Strength that carrying it around wasn’t a problem. Carrying it around while she ran for her life was another story altogether. She absolutely didn’t have the Endurance for this. Who knew that she’d be ambushed right as she was about to insert the Catalyst to upgrade her Constitution.
She wasn’t entirely sure how to feel about anything in general at this point, she knew that everything was getting tighter, always had been. There had been fewer and fewer people to rob over the last few years. More rooms were infested. The crabs had somehow learned how to destroy Terminals. They were usually pretty sturdy. There were fewer weapon and a lot more crabs. That dickhead had stripped any choice by opening the doors; she’d never admit it but she was actually ok with the last option remaining, the Core.
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Cursing herself as the silence dragged on, Yuma’s curiosity won out over common sense. She had to know what had happened, what was happening, in there; she summoned every extra scrap of curiosity and courage floating inside her.
Her hand moved to knock but as it descended towards the door, it slid open and her vision filled with a gleaming, grinning, ceramic white, strained blue by the hall lights. The unsettling stillness was shattered as a hand wrapped around her throat.
She let out a zapp with so much juice that she felt instantly drained.
“Aghhh you bitch!”
The shock had thankfully wiped The Smile off of his face.
Jack rubbed his hand and looked behind him in surprise.
The man who had first greeted them was now hanging off of the back wall, intestines strung up like lights back and forth across the room, ends held up by ribs jammed into cuts made in the wall, it was Christmas in hell. The man with glasses, now pinned to the wall, arms and legs spread, was quietly sobbing. It looked like Medjel had been delicately and repeatedly applied to prolong his life.
“What the fuck. Who would do shit like this? Look! Over there, a Terminal.”
Yuma’s eyes bored into the back of Jack’s skull before she moved to follow him to the Terminal.
She had suspected, but now she knew. He was insane, actually insane. She didn’t say anything, there was nothing to say. She looked at the back of his head again, then considered, then dismissed the idea of killing him. At least for now. Whatever his mental state, she had never seen anyone hate crabs as much as him and she just lost her father to them. He had saved her life which extended some credit. Maybe they could actually leave this awful place.
Usually so perceptive, Yuma missed the fact that for the first time since being woken up in restraints, she was not thinking about her family.
She’d watch him, she’d keep an eye out for The Smile and when she couldn’t see his face, she’d keep her distance. She’d stay awake, sharp, and alive and that’s the way she’d survive. This, she knew.
A deep desire for understanding and a feeling of missing something caused a thought to plant itself in her subconscious. She needed more EQ.
Of this development, she knew not.