“Outis is going to the water purification system!” TO shouted as they ran to the bars. “They’re going to get caught in the machinery!”
“Good!” Mira snapped, “Agh, my eyes! This hurts like a bitch!”
“We have to stop them! They’ll die!” TO said, The images came back, the blood red waterfall. Would this water be red or black like the ink they had sprayed? Maybe they were like synths and had blue ink?
“... It’s too late, I think.” Leanaran said, his shoulders sinking. “Even if it’s not, by the time we get in there…” He shrugged, “All we’d find is parts.”
That thought made TO’s head swirl as their mind tried to create the image that might be before them. No, they could not think about that right now. Right now, they had to get away from here and get to DH.
“Shit. let’s go.” Mira said as she wiped at her eyes, “I can’t see shit, get me to the water, I need to rinse my eyes.”
“Water will make it worse right now.” Leanaran said. “It’s full of ink.” They reached out and took Mira by the arm. “Come on. I’ll help you across, and we’ll meet up with the others underground. I’m out of drinking water, but maybe someone has some down there.”
Leanaran and Mira headed to the plank. TO followed behind, but watched the water even as they did. Outis had to know that there was nothing but machinery in there, right? They had to know it’d kill them. Mira said that they pushed a person through there, so Outis had to know the implication of that, right?
“Nah, I’ll just work until I die, right? On worse food, and in worse conditions.”
Had Outis known, and chosen to go in there, anyway? Had they chosen a short but painful death over years of work in a mining colony, or had they simply been ignorant of the danger? Maybe they thought they could avoid the machinery.
“Hey, Tio.” Leanaran called out, pulling TO back from their thoughts. “You coming?” Leanaran and Mira were already on the other side, Leanaran still leading Mira, and Mira still rubbing furiously at her eyes.
“... Yeah.” TO said as they made their way over the plank. “I’m just… wondering why Outis chose that.”
Even TO could catch the expression of sadness that covered Leanaran’s face. Their tentacles fell still for a moment as he looked at the fading clouds in the water.
“I’d say they took a gamble.” Leanaran said, “A gamble which they lost.”
TO crossed to the other side of the waterway, still watching the water. Though the cleaning system was doing its best, it’d take a minute to really clear up.
“... Can you dive in and check?” TO asked, “Maybe they're hiding in the crack again.”
Leanaran’s tentacles stiffened, their eyes widened. “That… might be a thing!” He said, “He’s so small… but we saw those ripples in the water-”
“Is there any way he could have faked that?” TO asked.
“Not sure.” Leanaran said, “I can’t check until the water clears, though. The ink’ll burn my eyes.”
“Please get me down to the tunnels.” Mira hissed, “My eyes-”
“Mira, give me your communicator.” TO said. “You go down. I’ll wait here to see if Outis comes back up, and when Leanaran comes back, we can check the cracks underwater.”
Mira fumbled around in her pockets blindly before she handed TO her communicator. “Here.” She tried to pass the communicator, but It slipped out of her hands and nearly fell into the water. TO caught it just before it did and held on tight. “Now get me down there, or I’m going to rip my eyes out.”
Leanaran led Mira towards the machinery room. “I’ll be right back.” They said before they disappeared inside, leaving TO alone in the waterways.
Less than a minute passed when they realized they didn’t want to be alone in the waterways. Watching the water for any sign of Outis wasn’t particularly mentally engaging, and it left plenty of opportunity for their thoughts to drift, to conjure images of bodies caught in machinery and bloody waterfalls. The tug-of-war over TO’s concentration fought between these awful images and the need to search for movement in the water was suddenly disrupted when their chip alerted them. Though silenced, they could still feel the hum of the chip in their hand.
“DH?” TO said as soon as they answered their call. There was no video this time, so TO couldn’t know for sure.
“Sorry to disappoint.” Vik said. “Where are you?”
“Still in the tunnels.” TO said, their eyes still scanning the water. “Why?”
“OK! So,uh. Minor problem with Pearla.”
That got TO’s entire attention. Looking for Outis in the water and the thoughts in TO’s head were no longer important.
“What problem?” They snapped.
“Well, there was a redirect order on the transport carrying the bodies.” Vik said, “Instead of the transport going to the morgue, it’s going to a medical office in the security district.”
“Well, just redirect it again!” TO said, “It wasn’t even going to the morgue in the first place, it was going to the outer ring!”
“I know, and I can absolutely override that order, but if I did then whoever placed that order is going to get awfully suspicious, you know?”
“And can you tell who placed that order?”
“The biggest problem we’ve had this week, of course.”
“Gyrini.” TO said,
“Right.” Vik said, “Maybe she’ll order a physical intercept on it. Maybe she saw it was going in a weird direction and sent the order to check it.”
That made sense. She hadn’t found what she wanted, and they had left no clues for her. Reopening the indebted center and then just watching to see what happened? What would happen? That would give her more clues to what was going on than anything else.
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It was a good idea, and TO couldn’t help but admire her thought process.
“Alright.” TO said, “Plan?”
“I was hoping you’d have one.” Vik said.
TO’s first idea was to go out there on their own, catch up to the transport and get to Pearla themself, then take off and hopefully evade any drones or security following them. Without their armor, however, that was a very dangerous, idiotic idea. Even if they had their armor, Pearla was still unconscious and wouldn’t be able to defend herself if something happened! No, at the very least they’d need an armored vehicle, and even then, how would they escape in something so easily tracked?
Then it occurred to them; they had such a vehicle. Another moment of thought, and they had an exit plan.
“Requesting confirmation.” TO snapped as they got up and rushed back to the other side of the waterway, “Is the entertainment district further in or further out from the security district?”
“Further in.” Vik said, “The security district is almost like the wall between the good parts of the city and the bad parts. Why?”
TO jumped into the vehicle and closed the door behind them. “I have an idea. I just need you to forward your tracking on Pearla to me.”
“Done.” Vik said, “I hope your idea’s a good one.”
“It is.” TO said with absolute certainty, “Just do what I say; there’s no time for explanation.”
“Gotcha.” Vik said, “It’s all you TO. DH doesn’t stop raving about how clever you are, so now I'm kinda interested.”
Despite the situation, TO felt their ears warm slightly as they turned on the spider-bot. DH doesn’t stop talking about them to Vik?
They couldn’t wait to be home.
======
At a flat run, the industrial Spider-Bot (model UC-159) can reach speeds of fifteen miles per hour assuming an unobstructed path. At least, according to the manual. This wasn’t especially fast compared to bots designed for land speed, but it was fairly agile for construction equipment.
Thankfully, the Spider-Bot’s fundamental skill wasn’t in reaching high speeds on a flat track; it was in swiftly getting in and out of small spaces, climbing over wreckage, and moving debris. Now, admittedly, when it left the waterway at first, it took a moment to shift back to its normal state. The nearby guards hardly paid it any attention as it rose, shifted, and then headed not down the road it had come from originally but towards the buildings. It activated its climbing, and it climbed up the walls of some very tall buildings and took off between them, much like the insect the original engineers modeled it after.
At that point, the guards paid attention. Of course, it wasn’t because they realized the bot was acting strangely and that there was no way its orders told it to climb up undamaged buildings. They paid attention because as soon as the bot wandered outside the range of the monitors the guards carried, over thirty alerts went off at once, alerting the guards that all the indebted under their supervision were gone, and getting further away in the spider-bot’s direction. Of course, they briefly and with much cursing discussed the impossibility of over thirty people fitting into a single spider-bot, but once they checked the waterway and found it entirely empty, they sent out the alert.
“Took them less than a minute.” Vik said, “Just got the alerts in here.”
“Good.” TO said as they navigated the bot through the narrow alleyways between the buildings. “What do they have after me?”
“Only two vehicles from the indebted center.” Vik said. “Oh... but wait!” He was silent for a moment before coming back to TO, “Look at that; fifteen seconds after the indebted security set off their alerts and Okoian authorities set off theirs.”
TO took a needless turn, then another. They had their map in front of them, of course, and it showed Pearla’s location, but they didn’t want to make it too obvious where they were going. “Is that normal?” They asked once they maneuvered through a difficult section with pipes crossing between buildings.
“Nope!” Vik said, “You’re just special! And I guess Gyrini is still looking for weirdness, so it’s likely she has standing orders to get Okoian authorities involved in anything that happens.”
“Great.” TO muttered. “Do you have footage for me from outside?”
Another video flashed on TO’s display, showing the spider bot making its way through the narrow alleys.
“Yup. Got two drones following you for good measure. If need be, I can get one to crash into a vehicle that gets too close.”
“Good. Get me an image of what’s going on overhead and show me that.”
“Got it.” Vik said, “Looking out for vehicles overhead?”
“Exactly.”
“Good. Well, this at least takes Gyrini’s attention from the transport. Want me to redirect it now?”
“No. Let it go where it’s going.” TO said, “I’m going to intercept it.”
“But how will you get away-”
“Just do it.” TO said. They came to a road between buildings, but thankfully they could get the spider-bot to leap between them. As they did, they could see the vehicles turning onto the main road to intercept. Of course, they were still a little farther behind.
“Alright.” Vik said as the video of the view of the sky between buildings replaced the view of the spider bot. At first all they saw was the blue-green Arkanian sky, but shortly after they glimpsed the vehicles overhead.
“Heading to intercept.” TO said, “Keep monitoring the airwaves and keep this line open.”
“Understood.” Vik said with an exaggerated formality. “Shit, you’re a little scary when you’re like this.”
Were they? Well, that didn’t matter. All that mattered was getting this job done and if they needed a scarier version of that, then so be it.