As Kaleb slowly took apart the mechanical bits of the raccoon-dog, he was eerily reminded of his time dismantling one of Cog’s robots. TekNik’s tiny creature was far more biological than Cog’s robots had been, but the joining of biological and mechanical was the same. However, where Cog had smashed a human corpse inside his robot’s casing, much more care was given to the raccoon-dog. Its old eyes had been carefully extracted and replaced with red-tinted cybernetic replacements. A metallic thread was sewn through its regular fur, and a power supply was carefully grafted onto the inside of its body.
TekNik had gone through great pains to make sure the animal or animals would survive the procedure. Kaleb still couldn’t tell if this was an alien creature or if it was two earth-born creatures smashed together. He hadn’t seen any proof of the latter, so he was assuming the creature was some alien variant he hadn’t seen before. The natural way its organs sat in its body backed up that assumption as well.
He triple-checked that the power-supply wasn’t live before wiping it off for a fourth time and setting it aside. Kaleb was used to getting dirty while working. But all the blood and viscera that came with dealing with organics were a bit much. His work table was covered in gore and he eventually had to drain the damn thing of blood. The floor next to him was slick with it, and there was a small collection of towels around his chair. His initial attempts to clean the mess were fruitless, so he gave up and went back to work. He found a cabinet full of sanitation fluid while he was searching for the towels, though. So all the mechanical parts were submerged in a tub of the stuff.
Even so, after thirty minutes of work, he couldn’t find the source of the creature’s telekinetic powers. He was beginning to suspect that the alien creature just had the powers as standard. But he couldn’t be sure. He discovered that the eyes were designed to help the creature see in the dark and that the metal fur help diffuse energy weapons. The excess energy was fed into the power supply and could be released slowly back out of the metal threads. Which explained why his Cybar wasn’t as effective as it should’ve been.
He found more bits and pieces of cybernetic parts. Like someone had started several other projects on this particular raccoon-dog, but later stopped. He set them aside in the tub of sanitizer as well. He wasn’t sure what use they would be. But they were interesting all the same. Once Kaleb felt he had gotten all he was going to out of the corpse. He tossed it aside and started looking over his haul.
A pair of cybernetic eyes, a large amount of metallic thread, a power supply that was nearly full, and a few other bits and bobs. Immediately he went to work on the cybernetic eyes. Taking them apart was tricky with the surgical tools he had to hand, but he managed to gather what he needed. Combined with a set of safety goggles he found in the lab, Kaleb made some decent, if bulky, night-vision glasses. Of course, the tiny power supply and lenses themselves were strapped to the outside of the goggles with tape. But he was always about function over form, anyway.
Once that was done, he collected everything else into his pockets and hurried back out the door. He had spent well over an hour down in the depressing, empty lab. The red tint to his new goggles was annoying, but not as much as being unable to see. Now the hallways were lit up and completely visible to him as he dashed back toward Lab #3A. The hallway beyond the animal containment room was still unexplored, but Kaleb was left disappointed by what he found.
Beyond Lab #3A was a collection of more mundane offices and restrooms. There was even a break room and a tiny kitchenette shoved back in the corner. All the rooms were well-used, and the offices were secured. Every terminal was locked down and switched off, while the cabinets and drawers were locked up tight. Kaleb ripped open a couple of drawers to check their contents, but all he found were heavily redacted lab notes and personal missives. There were no names on anything and even the trash cans had been cleaned out.
With the whole thing a wash, Kaleb ran back to the V-junction and chose the right-hand path this time. He was expecting to find the second lab down the hallway and he was proven correct after several minutes of walking. Lab #2A was on his right-hand side as he walked down the hallway. Immediately, Kaleb got his guns ready and peered at the door. Even through his new red-tinted lenses, he could tell that the door was significantly different from the ones for the other two labs. It had all the same locks and protections, but appeared to be built of much thicker.
The metal door sat in the wall like a giant monolith. Kaleb could see that it was three interconnected metal plates held together with some heavy duty welding and rivets. Everything about the door screamed that something dangerous was on the other side. So, obviously, Kaleb quickly blasted the keypad off and began trying to break in. He couldn’t blast his way in like he had with the other doors. So instead he got into the door’s security panel and tried to create a short. After several minutes of cutting and testing wires, Kaleb was eventually successful and the heavy door lurched open.
A loud whirring sound emanated from the door as it swung open on its own. Kaleb was too busy holding the appropriate wires together to get a proper peek inside. But once the door was fully open, and he dashed in, Kaleb nearly squealed in delight. Before him was a fully automated mechanics bay and workshop. Everything was quiet, and the machines weren’t powered on, but Kaleb could clearly see that it was a robot assembly line. Pieces of robots were scattered about the place in different bins and tubs as mechanical arms hovered over them.
As he cast his eye around the room, Kaleb counted four variants of the TekNik branded security robot. He recognized the one from the TekNik company building, but the other three were just as impressive. All four were humanoid in design, but ranged from seven to nine feet tall. Two were barrel chested with massive arms, while the other two were slimmer and had digitigrade legs designed to push them forward. But none of that was what caught Kaleb’s attention the most.
“FUCK YES!” Kaleb screamed into the darkness of the room
He rushed toward a bin on the far side of the room that held his prize. It sat along the track designed for one of the slimmer variety of robots. It was the arm assembly for the robot, complete with an energy weapon attachment. Both slim robots came equipped with melee and energy weapons, but only one was unattached. The other was a wrist-mounted model, and Kaleb didn’t like the idea of dragging a giant robot arm around. The one he was looking at now, though, was a heavy-looking rifle that was grasped in the robot’s unattached arm. Its metal fingers were curled around the grip of the gun and held in places by multiple screws and ties.
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Grinning like a madman, Kaleb began running around the room, looking for the right tools. The room was geared toward automation, so finding the correct tools took some doing. He had to steal a few things off the various automated machines around the room. But once he got what he needed, it was quick work dismounting the rifle from its arm. The silver behemoth of a rifle fell into his arms and immediately Kaleb knew something was wrong. He threw his prize onto a nearby conveyor belt and gave it a quick look over. The problem was obvious.
Kaleb slapped himself in the head. “Of course, dumbass. They don’t send armed weapons down to the assembly lines.”
The rifle was missing an energy pack. But, thankfully, judging by the connector ports and the size of the pack’s housing, Kaleb guessed it used a standard energy pack. Which meant that once he was out of here, ammo would be easy to find. But right now, the thing was just a giant hunk of metal. He searched high and low in the room for a bin of energy packs. But he came up empty. The activation of the robot’s weapons probably happened last on the assembly lines. Which meant he had to follow the assembly lines. However, they led into the back wall and disappeared behind large, closed metal shutters. The shutters obviously lead into the next section of the lines, so Kaleb was extremely to get back there. Not just for what he could find… but for investigation purposes… clearly.
Kaleb sent three blasts from his Cybar into the shutter and then ducked out of the way as his blasts ricocheted back at him. He swore as he hit the hard cement floor and covered his head. His blast hit a few robots and cracked their chest plates. Kaleb rose to his feet and glared as a red shimmer flared to life over the closed shutter.
“If you have energy shielding, why don’t you use everywhere?!” Kaleb shouted indignantly.
The shielding was obviously a surprise. But it also marked a strange uptick in security for what should’ve been just a standard assembly line. Kaleb scratched his jaw as he tried to think around the problem. Energy shielding could be tricky, because you never knew what energy the shield was keeping out. Was it keyed to just plasma energy or would it stop fire and electricity too? Hedging his bets, Kaleb brought out his quad gun and spun it to ice. At the very least, a sheet of frost would rebound back at him.
Kaleb planted his feet and sent a wave of pale blue ice at the large shutter. Its red energy shielding sparked to life as it tried to match its own kinetic energy to the potential energy of the ice. Electricity snapped in the air and sparks of color flashed everywhere until the shielding puttered out completely. Kaleb did a fist pump and flipped off the metal barrier as he holstered his weapon. Approaching the metal shutter, he poked a finger where the shielding had been. Nothing popped up, and he was blasted backwards, so he the barrier was clearly down. Now, with that out of the way, all he had to do was deal with the heavy metal shutter in his face.
Now that he was up close with the metal shutter, Kaleb could tell it was the same material as the door to the hallway. Which probably meant it was just as thick, too. He sat back on the assembly line’s conveyor belt as he thought through the problem ahead of him. After making a mental list of his current load-out, Kaleb brought out his magic gun and grinned as a thought hit him. He still rarely used the bulky gun, but it had its uses when he wanted to think outside the box. Like right now.
Fixing the image of a white-hot beam of fire in his mind, Kaleb felt the gun pull in his magic. He let the magic flow into his arm and down into the weapon itself as he kept track of his mana pool. His pool wasn’t large like Jar-lock or Vivienne, but he was sure he had enough for what he wanted. With a mental pull of the trigger, he felt the gun in his hand kick back and a red stream went sailing toward his target. When the stream of lava hit the metal, Kaleb felt his MP drop sharply and hissed. His own hiss was joined by the snapping and popping of metal as it was wrapped by his weapon.
Kaleb quickly cut off the flow of mana and let the stream of lava he created do its work. Already the metal shutter was being burned through as the lava cooled. Kaleb sat on the conveyor belt and waited for his mana to recharge as he watched. He knew it was going to take a few shots to get through, but he still wasn’t in any real rush. The labs were empty, and no one was chasing him. In fact, he had all the time in the world to do things. Although Farrah might send in a rescue party if he didn’t at least get his comms working again.
It took two more streams of lava at his max mana to make the shutter buckle under its own wait. When it did, the noise was enough to give Kaleb a headache. But the portal was open now and already Kaleb could see row and rows of robots standing ready. They were standing next to large containers waiting to be loaded up by the automated loader bots. Kaleb carefully passed by the wrecked shutter and took in the second half of the assembly line. It was a much bigger room, with dozens of robots waiting to go out. There were so many robots in the room that Kaleb froze as a thought occurred to him.
“Who the hell ordered all of these damn things?” He asked out loud as he hopped off the conveyor belt and looked around.
There was a small army of all four variants of robot waiting to be packaged and shipped off to wherever they were going. Kaleb quickly found the station where the power packs were installed into weapons and grabbed a couple. His lab coat pockets were weighed down heavily, but he thought it better to have back-ups. Besides, he could reverse engineer the thing when he got home. After his brand new rifle whirred to life, Kaleb happily sauntered around the new room.
All the shipping containers were blank. With no logos or discerning marks on them at all. They were all blue with medium wear and tear on them. It looked like they had been used a few times before, but otherwise Kaleb could glean nothing. Even the packaged robots weren’t marked in any way with a destination. He found a service elevator designed to take the giant cargo containers up to the surface, but it was inoperable.
He was making his way around the back half of the room when he finally spotted something helpful. It was a squared off area of the room that had clearly been someone’s work area. It included a shitty desk, a terminal, several boxes, and a small garbage bin. Someone had clearly been thrown in here to annotate what was coming in and going out. Kaleb did not envy that person’s job. To be surrounded by loud clanking machinery all day while filing paperwork? Ick!
Kaleb spotted several loose sheets of paper and data pads as he approached. He could already tell that the papers had been redacted. But one of the data pads shone with a light, showing it was merely in sleep mode. Quickly scooping up the pad, Kaleb woke the device up and crossed his fingers. A bright blue home page flashed before his eyes, and Kaleb did another fist pump. Someone hadn’t powered off their device and left it idle.
“Lets hear it for lazy office workers!” Kaleb mock-cheered.
His fingers found the recent files button and clicked on it. A series of worksheets and data tables opened before him. Judging from the massive numbers and the occasional credit symbol on the sheets, Kaleb guessed he was looking at another invoice. Unfortunately, the buyer's and sellers’ names had been redacted. He could guess who the seller was. But the only clue to who the buyer would be were the letters O and Z. He ran a search on the datapad for those letters and found several messages between the pad’s owner and this OZ. They were fairly benign chats about TekNik’s robots and what they could do. But what stood out to Kaleb was the fact that all signatures and logos had been wiped from most of the messages. There was only one message that had slipped through the redaction and it made Kaleb smile as three little letters were emblazoned on OZ’s first message.
H-L-O
“I’ve got you now, you fuckers!”