Before things could get heated and sidetracked, Merlynn stepped forward examining the room on a physical and magical level then proceeded to silence the others motioning for them to follow her. Working their way around the debris they discovered another two doors; one being labeled by a plastic plate that read ‘Break Room’ in bold letters. “In here.” Merlynn whispered as she pressed against the door with her revolver drawn. With the others gathered behind her Merlynn burst into the break room to find it stocked full of amenities but vacant of any people. “Seriously doesn’t anyone work here? I’ve ran into one other person well other than that crazy robot chick, Haruka.” Abbey asked with a voice begging for action.
“Most of the factory is automated, from what I’ve seen. I’m fairly certain Morgana doesn’t give her employees holidays either.” Merlynn answered as everyone searched the room. “Wait you ran into someone!?” Merlynn asked concerned. “Yeah, it’s all good he’s napping.” Abbey answered astutely. The room itself was ‘L’ shaped with a wider portion on the left to accommodate a small kitchenette and fridge. The other side sat two love seats with adjoining end tables. On the far wall sat a row of three vending machines, one snack with a wide variety, the second a soda fountain machine boasting obscene drink combinations, and lastly one of those fancy sandwich machines with questionable expiration dates. “Ladies…and Hiro…help yourselves and take a moment to recoup we need to work on getting out of here soon.” Merlynn gestured to the room as she walked over and pistol whipped her forty-five clean through the snack machines glass pane fetching a honey bun and bag of chips from within. “Family Discount.” Merlynn grinned through thick lips. She chuckled as she tore into her honey bun with reckless abandon. “You sure it’s, okay? Still feels like stealing to me.” Abbey asked with a parched throat. “I’m sure it’s okay Abbey besides she still owes me for quite a few things. I think some snacks would be of little recompense.” Merlynn acknowledged as she popped the chips and placed herself against a wall. She then waited there quietly enjoying her chips while everyone grabbed a few things and took a seat.
“I’m glad everyone made it safely.” Merlynn spoke abroad as she too settled on a seat. This garnered a stern look from both Hiro and Gloria whom looked at one another with a bit of angered heat. “What happened to you?” Hiro asked Gloria in huffed breath. “Oh no! You first princess! Besides I need a good laugh to take away some of my pain.” Gloria retorted with her own fire. “Well, nothing happened on my end till I ran into you guys that is.” Abbey butted in with a yawn in tow. “Aww bless your heart, nobody asked you!” Gloria steeped salt towards Abbey. “Bitch I’ll come over there!” Abbey roared igniting her hair ablaze. “Ladies! Chill! One at a time please! Gloria, I think you should go first seeing as you have so much to say. Then Abbey despite how easy a time you had we should still hear what you experienced, never know what might help. Lastly Hiro you can tell us what happened to you.” Merlynn clapped her hands speaking with absolution silencing the room.
Gloria - Fine! Fine I guess, since my story is probably better than theirs to begin with. Okay so after leaving the group I went into a wide hallway with large bulkhead doors that I tried to investigate further but turned up nothing that I thought was useful. I lamented for a minute questioning why your spell hadn’t forced them open. Then trying to figure out a way behind them, I discovered a panel that pushed away and revealed a passage that seemed more high-tech than anything we had seen so far, so I figured I was on to something. I went in deeper and ran into a large set of glass sliding doors each frosted over as the corridor opened up wider with pocketed offices and cubicles all housing different experiments. I figured it was a bio lab from the raw materials neatly assorted in refrigerated coolers. I kept noticing that there was one experiment that must have had more priority than most since it seemed to have several stations dedicated to a different stage in the process.
One held this odd pink colored goo in a vat of viscous liquid where robotic arms would pierce the substance and inject different colored liquids into it. Further along the pink goo took on shapes that reminded me of doll limbs and organs which frankly started to creep me the hell out so I quickly switched my focus and checked the frosted glass sliding doors. I had it figured that they were cold but in fact they were actually quite warm. Warm enough to wish my bed could maintain such a temperature for that perfect nap. Anyways each door had a crazy keypad on it that took a card key so I busted out my Resident Evil skills and got to looking for a key card. It didn’t take too long to find and I was even more disappointed with finding it under some messy dudes' desk rather than receiving it as a reward for solving some trivial asinine puzzle. Just once I wish I could go somewhere and solve some crazy puzzles like how it should be.
“Uh Glory, you know no one really goes through all that trouble, right? No one in their right mind says I want a one of a kind keypad to my office made up of a vertical chess board where someone has to use a white bishop and a black knight to access it, both of which I will hide daily at different areas of the building but I will leave clues scattered around just in case someone really needs to get in and collect some other item that’s secretly a key to access yet another room.” Abbey butted in with a haunted look.
“Wow, bitter much Abs? I made you play it one time!” Gloria scoffed with a whine. “What!? Its full of weak ass jump scares anyways.” Abbey added with complaint. After a quick purposeful cough from Merlynn the girls dropped their argument. “Dammit where was I?” Gloria bemoaned. “You got lucky and stumbled upon a keycard.” Merlynn added in with a jive giggle of her own.
Oh yeah, so anyways, I tried the keycard on all the frosty doors and nothin. I held onto it just in case but I moved on finding lockers with lab coats and equipment, even a couple more keycards. The new ones were slightly different, ‘Shane’ the messy guy's card I found had ‘S3’ on it where the others I just found had ‘S2’ on them.
I left them where I found them and continued around a corner following the bizarre experiments. As I rounded them, I saw another smaller bulkhead door with ‘S3’ painted on the middle. Felt pretty good with ol’ ‘Shane’ with me but I gave the new experiments a closer look seeing as they were way more familiar with me. Weapons! Gloria smiled brightly as she pulled a small brown satchel from her right hip and carefully dumped the contents within. A healthy amount of 9mm bullets in a clear container, four small black spheres with a dim blue ring around their middle, and lastly a tube of chap stick easily slid out of the bag and onto the coffee table. The bullets I found on their own workbench amongst other various rounds had an active display that read ‘Dragons Bane.’
The little balls are implosion grenades; however, I didn’t have time to read their full specs cause about the time I had pocketed them the ‘S3’ door started to open. I quickly clung to the back of the workstation shifting into the little bit of shadow I managed to curl up into. I expected robots. I did not expect ‘Shane’ and three others in white lab coats to walk through the door discussing their individual projects. As they competed in their measuring contest it gave me the sweet opportunity to slip by all them by jumping through their shadows and through the doorway. “Wait wait, I wanted to be patient and hear you out but explain your ‘shadow jumping?’ Are you physically jumping in and out of their shadows?” Hiro barged in unable to contain his curiosity. Hiro, I promise you later I will tell you in greater detail but to suffice for now I can teleport in and out of shadows but only for so long and at a restricted length. “Sweet I look forward to it.” Hiro beamed a smile then returned his attention to Gloria.
Anyhow I thought I was in the clear until ol’ Shaney came running up the hallway I was traversing looking for a certain keycard. I heard him beating up the hallway cursing, he wasn’t far behind me so I picked up the pace. Turned out the hallway was just part of a greater concrete tunnel that twisted further along. I kept up with my pace even though I couldn’t hear Shane. I didn’t realize it at first but I was actually going down as the hallway perfectly spiraled down. After a few minutes of sprinting at full speed I finally saw ‘B1` painted on a wall above the first door I had seen in ages. I took a quick peek inside finding a stairwell going up and down for quite a way. Not sure what to do I dropped Shane’s badge on the ground and slipped inside. After a few moments I heard Shane’s confused murmurs but left as swiftly as he came. So now with two options I practically flipped a coin to decide what direction to go, which turned out to be down anyway, seeing that as I went up originally, the door above me clack open followed by an inane conversation. So down I went and immediately into the next as a glowing orb shot by me. I figured that it might be a security measure so I began panicking trying to figure out my next move at a dead end. The door that I entered turned out to be a janitorial closet equipped with a garbage chute.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
They must throw away some big shit here because the chute was huge, so I made the choice I soon began immediately regretting. I held my nose and dove into the garbage chute. It quickly dawned on me that I hadn’t thought this through and before I was able to formulate a plan, I heard a loud clang and I was suddenly sucked down. So, there I was currently tumbling down this nasty gods awful chute clinging slightly to the tacky walls with each tumble. At that point I was hoping to fall into a nasty disposal fan or grinder to put me out of my misery. Fortunately for me Lady Luck decided I ‘d suffer a little longer and the chute broke into pieces after dropping quite a few feet before hitting a ninety-degree bend. I landed on Mom and now were up to speed. “More like dat ass broke the chute.” Abbey chided Gloria in a hearty snicker.
Abbey- Okay joking aside I really did have an uneventful time after we split. After I chose my path, I walked for what felt like forever down a breezeway that overlooked the city, the view was gorgeous. I noticed the building was way bigger than I had expected but what really got my curiosity is where we were. After recognizing a few familiar buildings, I figured out we were in the industrial end of downtown not too far from Lynn’s apartment but still the average person would have drove the distance. As the breezeway rounded back into the building, I took one more look out the windows thinking how does Morgana manage to hide all this. What does the public think she’s doing? I kept asking similar questions as I reentered the building proper.
“The public is under the impression that Morgana runs a tech health company, making things from prosthetic limbs to artificial organs, along with several laboratories that develop tech like evac button. More than likely anyone whom works for her, that’s not a psycho killer android, is sworn to secrecy or involved only in things that wouldn’t rouse suspicion if they were questioned.” Merlynn answered then returned to her still quietness.
Ah that makes more sense now. Anyways after I reentered the building, I found myself in a massive stairway and like Gloria I chose to go down although I didn’t ever notice anyone else. After floating down a few floors I checked a few doors on the way. Mainly I found just more hallways that I wasn’t too comfortable exploring so I kept descending until I reached the bottom. There were two doors for me to choose so I chose the one behind me first and it turned out to be a janitors closet with a dude shirking his duties napping on a bucket listening to heavy metal. I shut the door letting the poor guy sleep and went through the other door which is where I found you guys piled on the floor. “Saddle up buttercup, your next.” Abbey smirked at Hiro while supping soda.
Hiro – So, after we split, I went north I believe I’m not sure on that exactly but anyways. I ended up following a short hallway after leaving you all which led to a door nearly blown off its hinges. Your spell really did a number on those doors. I went in and found a stairwell leading up and down. It seemed like it only went a few floors up but when I looked down, I couldn’t see the bottom. After a few minutes of deciding which way to go I kind of chose both. I split myself into two. “Barf, please don’t say it that way.” Gloria blurted retching. Sorry, duplicated myself sending the copy up while I thought of another way to tackle the bottom. The ladies erupted in hearty sniggering.
If your all quite finished, I’ll continue. Where was I? Oh yeah! So, I created a small orb in my hand changing its structure and dropped it. As it plummeted it shined brilliantly but more importantly it took immediate notes of the area it traveled through. After a brief minute I heard a loud smack from what I assumed was it hitting the ground and after another brief minute the orb returned. Afterwards I knew that the stairwell went down for about twenty meters which could end up taking me ages to search through however, I did notice something else during the drop. A few stories down I discovered there were in fact other people here. So, after assimilating my copy I went down to where I detected the people. I wanted to make sure that if we were caught, we would at least know. Once I got there however, I quickly realized they were simply a maintenance crew working on a massive piping system on the `B1’ floor. I watched one go into a locker room just adjacent to where they were working so I slipped in after him. I hid in the nearest locker I could which honestly smelled horrid but anyways he left fairly quick so I started going through the other lockers and found some dude's uniform. My favorite thing about humans is that you guys practically leave your DNA everywhere so once I found what I was looking for it was simple to assume ‘Carl’s’ appearance and walk amongst them unabated.
I left the locker room after finding nothing else of interest and decided to chat up my fellow mechanics. After some odd and awkward probing, I figured they knew nothing about us nor any disturbances on the upper floors. Heck even one guy made an ignorance joke at their being upper floors, until revealing he was still getting used to how big the place was. Then as luck would have it while it looked like I was looking for something I was missing, which in fact I was just nervous, one of the workers blurted out that if I was missing my phone that they noticed it earlier in the server room ahead. So, guise in hand I strode off towards the server room to see what I could gleam. After arriving there I did indeed find ‘Carl’s’ phone as did I one out of uniform Carl, looking like he had seen a movie or two.
This guy upon seeing his clone decided to come at me like a mad boar swinging around a floor lamp like it was a bo staff. I maintained the guise and accused him of being the clone…which in fact actually worked! Sorta well he started going off on a rant of how it could be possible, parallel dimensions, broken times…I dunno I never let him finish. I just beaned him over the head with a fire extinguisher that I tore off the wall during his monologue. So, after handling Carl and making sure he was alive I tucked him away in a cabinet then went to snooping around. I didn’t find much of use other than some building plans which I assimilated so when we went to get out of here, we had some knowledge on the layout at least. I rifled through filing cabinet after filing cabinet absorbing every document, photo, any scrap of paper that had any info on it.
Afterwards I turned my attention to the server and began running lines of code I was familiar with along with some I already gleaned from the paperwork. “My turn to butt in! So, you can eat paper and what process it like a computer?” Gloria asked with a grin. It’s more complicated than that but yes, I can even recreate things that I’ve memorized. I’ve been told there’s a limit but I’ve yet to find it. Back at it then? So, after I had entered my commands, an OS booted up allowing me quite a few options…before I could continue however Carl’s boss Winston whom I totally forgot about poked his head around the door in huffs wheezing Carl’s name. Well, I panicked bad which turned out to be in character as Winston cursed me for not purging the system yet. Afterwards he called me a noobie and explained how to do it. Again my luck prevailed me further seeing as I had already booted the OS and easily found the executable labeled `MainSySPurge.exe’. Giving it a few clicks saved Carl’s job and held my cover although, after activating it we all swore we heard screaming shooting down the garbage shaft moments after running the program. “You….Sonovabitchhh!” Gloria spat at Hiro, whom was just now putting together that she was the source of that scream. Uhhh anyways after that I stopped finding anything useful, I instead found trouble.
One of the terminals in the server room turned on and she started laughing. “Oh, Heeewoe how dare you betray your momma.” She proceeded to chastise me like a child hoping it would faze me or something, but all it did was piss me off. So, I told her how I felt about her and that we were going to stop her, therein which she mocked me and pressed some string of keys then Winston hurled retching as I was sucked out of the room through a small tubing that that had emerged from the wall. I’m still unsure if she knew I would pop out where I did or not.