>> Ruck Up, And Rock Out
Two hours later......
## News Scraper :: [Connection Established] to [Polybius API]
## ....
## News Scraper :: Special Keyword [Omega 9] has been flagged [49] times in location [GMO Enclave of Highwing]
SPECIAL ALERT: “The new GMO Enclave of Highwing was rocked by fresh scandal last night, after leaked documents unveiled the true agenda of the ‘Garuda Safety Commission’. The memos.... uploaded by a hacker team calling itself 'Omega 9', contained quotes such as 'Hatred will exist as long as humanity exists. Therefore humanity must cease to exist.'. Highwing's Official 'Fact Checker' service have slammed the memo as forgery. However; our own....."
— 'The New Hindi', Neodine (a news service popular with humans fleeing the new government of Highwing)
Politics: “....The so-called ‘No Crime, Never Again’ Act heralds a brave new age of justice & safety. Starting next month, the now-routine installation of AI enhanced ‘behaviour guiding’ chips into newly born citizens will no longer be optional. Experts claim such chips are a 'final solution' to the problem of crime….”
— ‘The Electric Poet’, New London (AI owned & controlled news service)
A terrifyingly cheery *bing* cracks the silent dark of a long-dead hallway, followed by the snap of golden claws gripping the edge of a metal door. The lift stutters as I jam my SMG through the gap - into the long, deep, silence of the void. Its tiny camera tracking across musty pictures and brassy lights.
I motion, quickly, and Zipper tosses a handful of tiny plastic toys out onto the vivid red carpet. Kami rattling the ‘close’ button, fast as she can, while Demon and me force it shut.
“Okay. Go.” I nod, and his eyes flicker with tiny dancing lights as yellow-striped bee-bots untangle. Rising, as one, on a puff of dust. Tiny wings rattling a metallic humm against the static of mics turned up too high.
Demon shifting, uncomfortably, near my knees - horns banging my armoured thigh as I train my gun at the door. Gremlin a bug-eyed lump of scaly excitement on his shoulder, spinning about and pricking his face with her claws to make him jump.
Which gets her doing that evil, excited, little whole-body wiggle of hers....
"And us all trapped in a tiny metal box." I growl as Kami plants a firm, titanium, hand on the web of rags tied to the baby GMO's glistening armour. Pushing her butt back down. Her own uncovered, and gleaming. But she's alone in the lift. The rest of us cloaked. Wrapped. Even our helmets, tucked deep under hoods - just in case.
We're about to enter a Pirate hunting-zone, after all.....
"Spookiesss-" The scaly red thing whispers. But I put claw to lips as the vScreens waver with static. Dark rooms shifting as Zipper puppets his swarm. Crossing paths. Cutting through broken-walls, and barricades. Analysing the torn relics of the long-long-gone.....
“Clear….” He mutters every so often, breaking that nauseous quiet. "Clear...." The rest of us sit there and wait, with cold guts and shivering glances. Kami glaring holes in the roof-access panel, tapping metal fingers like a cold-iron drip. Demon stoic and silent, as Gremlin climbs on his horns. Tufty clung tight to his tail. Eyes shut.
Mumbling so quietly not even GMO ears can hear him.
And, God, how I wish I could do anything to break the tension. I've got all kinds of movies, apps, games, on my hacked Implant. I could start up 'Delver' and disappear. Just me and my gnomes, burrowing the dark for glittering gems.
But I've seen what happens to the distracted and blind.....
....when you're delving in the dark.... for real.
So. I focus on my loadout, instead. Checking the last few details.
LOADOUT - SPOOK Armour :: LMG 'Dominion 5' Exoskeleton
WEAPONS
LMG ‘Red Glory’ SMG :: 220/220
Mode :: [Shotgun]
Alt Fire :: [Burst]
Spare Mags :: 4/4
LMG ‘Executioner’ Pistol :: 14/14
Mode :: [Single Shot]
Spare Mags :: 4/4
LMG Issue Combat Knife
GRENADES
* 2x Frag - Explosive, Concussive
* 2x Stun Powder - Paralytic
* 4x Flashbang - Reusable
* 1x 'Destroyer' - Coded Annihilator Field
* 1x Sensor Blocker
OTHER KIT
* Field Medic Satchel (Basic)
* Infiltrator Toolkit (Basic)
* 3x Mini Flares
Zip lets out a sharp hiss, and I snap back to the vScreens. “Shit, Spook. Like.... You should see this thing….” He whispers, and we all crowd the tiny virtual display. Kami makes a disgusted noise, and backs off. I swallow back terror, and take a quick glance. Tufty shrinking behind me as umber chitin gleams in the dim light. Coiled, and quiet, and ready.
"Ambusher. Whatever it is...."
“Yeah…. looks, like...." He swallows. "Like it’s only one in there. But holy shit….”
I shake my head, checking my gun so I don’t gotta look again. “Sure it's the easy way out?”
Zip breathes out, kinda shaky. “Y-yeah, mate.”
So I crick my neck, and flick a touch along my grenades. "Let's go."
“Man. And we advertise as rock-hard monster killers.” Kami sighs as she presses the button. Prompting a second ding, as we slide out into the dusty silence. Low and ready, as dead apartments slide on by.
One door, two, three, four….
There.
We flank the locked-open security door, and peer inside it.
“Shit. There it is. Hideous bastard.” I whisper as the lights twitch over a silent, twisted… husk…. Four huge eyes, wide apart. Green body. Eight massive forelimbs ending in nasty, thorny, hooks.
"Dead?" Kami murmurs, hopefully, peering up into the huge and horribly papery eyes. Compound-lenses glittering gently. "Weird how nothing's eaten it....."
"Or the bones." I mutter as we clink our way through the dead, to the tangled hulk.
Propelled by quiet steps, a lack of sense, and morbid curiosity.
“Like, damn - that’s even freakier up close….” Zip shakes, jittering the barrel of his snubby SMG. “I mean, like - whys…. whys it gotta be so grabby. Y’know? Like it's gonna hug you right up to its....” We stare at the multi-bladed mouth.
Licking our own lips.
Right up until I rip my pistol from under the rags. Blooms of fire rolling from its sides as I put a rocket-rail slug right through that unholy face. Cracking the dry shell to flakes and bits. Se step back, kicking bits of empty head away and shuddering.
Relief glimmers - it really is dead.
But then I let out a long breath, and stare a little closer. "Oh no."
“Well. If it’s pretending, it’s real bloody good at it.” Kami laughs. “C’mon.”
"Wait....." I reach out, very carefully. Claw-nudging one of the fragments. Lifting and tilting my pistol's camera, without getting closer, to peer into the hole I shot. "...oh ....shit. It's a molt."
"What?"
"Shell's empty!" I hiss, twisting sharply. "Bastard shed its skin! Reel creeper's still in here! Usin' it as a decoy!"
Their eyes widen. Snapping around us. "Shit..... Shit..... Nice big hole over there."
"Back out." I breathe. "Back out, slow....."
We slip to the doorway, and Zipper jacks into the panel. "Hold on, mate."
"Zipper!"
"Hold on! Like...." His eyes flicker with lights as my eyes flare at the molted skin.
"Did that-"
"Move!" Kami yells, and we slam out into the hallway. Zipper slapping the plate of the lock with a keycard.
"Good- Good-bye [ERROR]." It stutters, loudly, and the stirring darkness grows a limb. The door jerking, stuttering, sticking as we force it shut on whatever abomination lies within. Sealing it away forever.
"In bloody retrospect." I growl in deflected terror, as Kami sprays a red X on the door. "If there's a bloody ambush inna bloody flat, we lock it first."
"Ah. Yeah, mate. Hahah....."
"Some bloody monster-hunters we are." Kami sighs. "We going or what?"
I motion, and we creep onward. Soft dust stirring around our toes to make us cough. I slot on my magnetic breather and suck in fresh air. Adding a tiny click-click of valves to the eerie, unsettling, quiet. The monster, behind us, a silent weight of madness. Itching the back of my mind with many-jointed limbs.
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
Or. Maybe. Maybe we just imagined that reaching shape....
We hit the fire-escape at the end of the second hall - right at the corner. Zipper starts sealing nearby flats. Me and Demon covering separate halls while Kami flips open the mechanism - literally a big red button - and starts tinkering. Rewiring the alarm with rubber-tipped fingers.
Pol can’t do this - it’s hardware, not software.
I lean into the corner, eyes moving. Tufty a tiny shiver of green, right by my ankles. "Hey." I nudge him. "Get tough, catbutt. Y'look like a tasty takeaway."
"Um.... That's w-what I'm worried about...."
"So get tough." I repeat. "Or get on a plate, and cover y'self in ketchup."
"Catsup." Kami snickers, not looking round.
"Think of it like this." I continue, eyes flicking down. "You gonna make that face when every bloody thing ya care about's on the line? Or are ya gonna get mean? Are ya gonna show em?"
Tufty gulps, hard, gripping tight to my tail. His own a spiking mess of floof.
But then he lets go.
Takes a breath.
And nods. Once. Very quickly.
"Good." I mutter, slicking another look down that hallway full of busted doors. And clawed walls. And rags of clothes. And….
Yeah, I was trying to bloody ignore that.
“Got it! No, arrgh! Don't got it!” Kami growls. “Okay! Now! Done!”
“Let's go.” I breathe, and she slams the button - bolts klunking back into the doorframe. Quarantined air escaping with a dull hiss as the pressure changes. We jam in shoulders, and begin pushing it open. Faint neon ghosting down through the growing gap as fallen rubbish grinds against it.
Overcome, bit by crushing bit, as we slowly break free.
Building our new way out of The Tower.
Fat drops of darkness flick down to tap at the concrete box beyond. Vast gusts of wind hammering at metal and glass, high above. Very high above. The stairs here were metal - and collapsible. Meant to deploy only in an emergency. Which would be great if they weren't gone for about five floors in that direction. Leaving only a vertical pit of angles and rusted spikes that makes my spine twitch.
Not the best door out. Not the worst.
But it's better to climb up, or a jump over a great big gaping hole
At least to me. Raging hypocrite that I am.
We wait for Kami to stuff her boots on, and clomp out to run her scans. Check the bolts. And, my preferred test, to jump up and down furiously and see if the floor stays where it's meant to.
Finally she turns to give me the nod.
"Never trust a trick floor.” I growl glaring at it as I step out. Slow and careful. Testing my weight on the long row of folded metal plates set into the floor - the collapsed stairs themselves. Their dimpled surface cool and gritty with rust beneath my skin. Shifting, ever so slightly. But never quite enough to make me jump.
Slowly, I press down. Harder. Then, with all my weight. One hand on the doorway.
"Ready?" Kami drawls.
"One sec." I mutter. Giving it another push. And another. Finally giving up in the face of those tapping fingers. "Rrr. Alright. It ain’t trying to murder us, at least." I flick my eyes around the low balcony. Its windows torn out long, long, ago - before any of us were born. The holes blocked up with corrugated sheets. Like maybe, years ago, this little box was some guy’s whole house - with a tarp for a roof, a few rags, and probably a bucket.
But now there’s nothing but a gnawed skull. A few bones.
I cross to the window - our preferred exit - and worm my pistol-camera between the metal panels. Darkness resolving, quickly, into a solid metal floor. A bedframe doing service as a wall. Another little slum-dwelling out of billions. Looks good. No people - not for decades. But....
My camera shifts, and I find the missing wall.
And the vast, bitter void of a pit so deep and jagged I hiss. Fangs flickering.
“Shiiiit….” I stagger back into the tower.
"What? Shit? Monsters?" Kami blinks as my breath stutters.
"Saw movement." I lie, to cover my shame. "Something.... nasty....? Dunno what."
They trade a look.
And I know they know what this is really about.
“Bee cam?” Zip ask, hopefully, as dozens of the tiny things boil up around him. Staring at me with hundreds of little dark eyes.
"That." Kami declares. "Is creepy AF."
He winces. "Like, for serious?"
Her arms clang as she plants hands. "No jokes. Serious time. How many can you see out of at once?"
"Well, like, all of-"
"Just get it done, Zip." I interrupt, and they wince a little. Zip shifting to flick one right out the door - its wings catching, mid air, as it zooms under the metal sheet. Tiny, stripy, bot-butt wiggling furiously. Zip makes a 'pop' sound, and it zings inside. Rapidly circling the dark interior as it builds us a live 3D model.
But something is wrong. Very wrong. It flutters, and crackles, and jitters as the others examine it. The side of my head beginning to heat, as if by some internal flame.
I tap at my implant, and frown.
“Hey, mate. Look there." Zip spins the view about, images garbling and twisting together. Forcing me to shut my eyes and turn away. Pricked ears shifting as I focus.
A low, steady, scrape.... beneath the clanking mass of metal. Rustling…. Crinkling…. Jingling….
Tap.
Click.
Tap.
Clang.....
“Wow. What the freshly fried frick is that thing??” Kami snarks, jerking me from my trance.
Zip beams at me. "Hey! You were right, mate! Got us some, like, real uggos hanging from the bars up there….!”
"Oh. Goody." My ears flatten.
“Right. But, again, what is that?" Kami pokes the image. "Can you see how many? Doesn’t look like any GMOs or Gone Wrongs I ever saw.”
I frown. "Multiples? Think they escaped from a lab?"
“Mate. Like, who even knows where this shit comes from?” Zip grimaces at the jerking model.
“Right. But how many, y'reckon?” I repeat, trying not to look at the thing.
“Dunno." He sucks breath. "Looks like a horde, mate. Bloodsuckers, maybe.”
Tufty moans. Hands flattening his kitty ears as he hunkers down hard. “Please just be bat GMOs…. Big, friendly-”
"Careful what you wish for." Kami grunts. "Bats are smart."
"I guess, mate." Zip smirks. But then his pierced lip twitches. "Hey! It's basically hid in a big tin tower, right? How bout we nip back for Badger, on the down-low? Let him 'give it a go'?"
Kami winces, and I snort under my breath. "Oh yeah. Mister ‘Ooops I Demolished The Wrong Bloody Building Again’ would bloody love that.”
“Hah. Yeah.”
"Okay. I'm gonna say it." Kami glances at me. "We can't get through that, whatever it is, so we better get climbing."
I jerk my eyes up at her. "Climb-?" I start.
"You knew we might have to." She counters. "Come on. What did you just tell Tufty?"
My face twitches. "Don't you dare-!"
"Call you a hypocrite? Come on! You're the leader! So, lead!" She pushes past me, pistols unlimbered. Eyes beady.
"Kami!" I start again, eyes flicking to Zip - whose many eyes snap suddenly away. One hand rubbing, fretfully, at his neck.
"Uh, hey, like, yeah...."
"Come on." Kami calls. "It's not far up. We've just got to grapple."
I take a slow, utterly unwilling, breath, but force myself forward. "Okay. Secure the door. Lets go."
After all - if I can tell Tufty to do it, maybe I can face my own fears too.
Tufty darts out after Demon, and our teks move like fluid. Zipper slapping alarm sensors and cameras on the slab of the fire-escape door. Kami leaning it shut, and scattering trash. And Demon....
Demon takes a flying leap up into the dark hole above.
Kicking toes off one wall, then another, as Gremlin mirrors him. Grabbing the edge of the balcony three whole floors above and hauling up. Our little red monstery-girl cheerfully hitting every step a second after him. Then adding a few more for luck.
I can barely look at it.
"You next." Kami's voice is soft, but her gaze is hard. Tilted, thankfully, down.
"Um.... umm....." Tufty wilts backward, ears low. "W-what if it comes through the wall?"
"Same old." Kami's grin never reaches her eyes. And her eyes never leave Tufty. "If it’s friendly, we say 'hi'. If it isn’t-" her guns make a nasty noise "-we say 'bye'.”
He gulps, and steps back further. Then makes a mad, tail-lashing, rush at the wall. Hits it, with a foot, and rebounds. Springing from side to side as he zooms all the way to the top - with a 'pat', 'pat', 'pat' - grabbing Demon's outreached hand. The kid swings as he's hauled, and his foot-claws bang metal.
Then he slips up, and over the edge.
Peeking down at us shyly. Demon astride the edge, with Gremlin, right beside him.
For a moment, the world strings tight with tension. Everybody staring at the metal wall.
Nothing.....
Nothing....
A shuffling. Snuffling of awareness.....
And, very slowly, we relax.
"C'mon. Boost me. I wanna try it." Zip says, after altogether far too long.
"You-? Y'think ya can?"
"Mate! Hey! What's that look, like? I'm bloody awesome!" He grins, hawking two thumbs at himself. "You think I can't jump coz, like, I'm 'just' a demi? C'mon! A human could parkour that, if they really put it in."
He can try, at least. He's got grapples.
He's not a stupid looser who's afraid of heights, like me.....
I nod, and cup hands. Zip grins, backing up. "Launch in T-minus-"
"Just go!" I hiss, and he hurls himself at me. Lengthways, down the balcony. Rough, tough, skin hits my hands - and I hurl him upward. The kid pulling an actual, freaking, honest-to-God flip to land on the opposite wall. Bounding off it - and up. Eating most of the distance in a single, freaking, bound. He hits the floor of the balcony, two stories above, and leaps again to grab Demon's hand.
"Easy! GG!"
"Dang." I blink. Rubbing off my fingers.
Kami just snorts. "Bloody posers." And then, in a voice meant only for me: "Be the bloody leader."
"What?" I blink. But she fires a wrist-grapple up at the ledge - and yawns, decadently. Leaning backwards in the air as she's reeled on up - like a limp doll. Finally, cheerfully, slapping Demon's hand aside - only to struggle and swear her way over the edge of the balcony. Slipping back multiple times.
And alright - that just leaves….
Uh….
Me….
“Uh oh! Time to abandon Spook.” Kami teases, boot on edge so she can lean down at me from above.
A stunning recovery, if ever there was one.
“I know where y’all keep ya shit, so don’t try me!” I growl, tail low and swiping. Forced to stare up at the eagerly gesturing hands above. "God, damnit, I hate peer pressure...." I heave a breath, ears pricking as the monsters within start to hiss and scrabble and squirm and boil and.....
No. It's just my imagination.
The deep, dead, dark is full of clangs and rattles and thumping droplets.
"Spook." Kami says, over comms. "We brought the roll-up ladder. But you make me use it, and I'm gonna make it a big bloody production. You get me?"
"Right..... Right." I heave. "It's just three floors. I can jump it. I can grapple." But my mind latches on to the welling darkness of the abyss above, which grins.
Oh yes. Little thing.
Jump.
Let me coil about your arms and legs. And.....
"No. No. No. I do not like heights! And do not want to go up a stupid bloody wobbly ladder made of string......!"
"Spook." Kami presses. "Monsters."
"I know! I know! But-"
Okay. Gotta focus. Down phobia! Down! I can do this!
That didn't help.
The others look annoyed.
Zip clicks his piercing. "Could we, like, bolt the ladder to that pillar?"
“Believe in Spook.” Kami says, more out of hope than anything. Demon still reaching a spiky hand down to me. Smiling. Gesturing.
And, God, how I want to.
Maybe him or Tufty came back down-
I jerk and wince as the wimpy cat bounces along the edge of the upper balcony, like it's nothing. Sniffing at this and that. Poking things with his claws. Kid yanks at this stumpy metal clamp-thing that once held the missing glass - and does a tiny, happy, little hop.
“Spook! Ummmm? Hi.....?” He fumbles his breather. “Umm...." He glances at Kami. "H-How about this thing?? We could weld the ladder to it? Or? Or?”
Damnit! I hate how much they're trying to help.
I aim my grapple at the hungry dark above, and....
No..... Nononono......
“Awesome! Weld it on, and let’s go!” I beam, like it’s kitty who needs the ladder. Not because I even want to use it, but because it buys me time to not be climbing.
Zip flips me a thumbs up, and activates the tiny mouse-bot army in Tufty’s backpack. Sending them scooting out over his hands (“Eee! Hey! Heheh! That tickles!”)
"Zipper!" I snap. "Use your bloody stick-welder! He'll bloody fall-!"
"Mate! Hey! Chil!"
"Temporary Comrade Commander!" The mouse-leader salutes Zip. "These struts are made from inferior capitalist metal! Not an honest lick of cardboard in any of it!"
"Just weld it, mate." Zip chuckles as the loose strut is inspected by tiny, contemptuous, robot eyeballs.
"Ridiculous! Standards are slipping, I tell you!"
"Last chance!" Kami warns me. "Absolute circus production! Clowns and bloody everything!"
"I know!" I growl as the bots eat away the rust and dirt to expose pure gleaming metal. And Kami strings the loop of the ladder round the metal strut, like a noose.
Dimly, the notion of welding pegs me in the back of my horribly abused brain. As if something about this might be a terribly bad idea, though I can’t quite pin down wh-
The mice touch sparking tails to the metal, and a wall of blank white nothingness that punches me right in the face. Scouring away all sight and sensation with pure, and unimaginably bright, light. Like someone dropped a flashbang, without the bang. It hammers upward in a blinding beacon - splashing off dirty concrete and rusted metal. Routing shadows from their hideyholes, and setting them to roar and dance and flicker across like jumping wells of oil.
Ten seconds of blazing, flashing, flickering fire.
And then the dark swarms back. Our bionic eyes glitching to cope.
And silence. All of us holding our breath.
Tink.
Clink.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!!!
"SHIT!" I scream.
"Just rope up, you idiot!!!" Kami howls.
But it's too late. Too late.
Out of the thundering depths, rises a sound to wipe away every clank of rain and metal above. Not a roar, or a screech, or a haunting cry, but a sound no living or unliving thing has ever made. A sound so unreal, and unholy, and impossibly wild it grabs every hair on my body and yanks it upward. A thousand screaming gasps through a thousand holes could not have made that.
Nothing could have.
But the thing in there.
A greasy wing rips the metal sheets aside, and my back slams fully into the door. All guns forgotten. All escape denied. Every thought in my head reduced to a single, childish, pathetic little noise. The kind I've heard from so many kids, right before they died.
"Oh."
And then the wall comes apart, like Hell itself is rising.
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