Even if it’s a far distance to reach, further into the abyss light begins to seep in, rays that irritate the eyes such that they begin opening even if initially slow. The eyelashes function as a veil that is gradually pulled up, revealing an image at the other end of the tunnel, an image of the lower half of oneself, the rest of the body no longer of a teenager in a casual hoodie but rather an adult in a professional blazer. There are notably scuff marks on the dress however, not from extended use with lacking repair but instead fresh marks of dirt especially distinct on what should be a white shirt underneath instead now cluttered with gray spots.
Down at the bottom of the black leggings are the dress shoes, the base black but with a classy white top, although both shoes aren’t grounded but rather dangle off a dirty brown floor seeming to be made of distinct rubber tiles but with dust and debris everywhere showing lack of cleaning.
It isn’t particularly the state of hygiene in the room that is first important though, as the focus is instead drawn forwards to find a cubical room with that same brown rubber materials for the walls, for at first there is no visible exit.
Given little to explore forwards, focus is shifted to the side and drawn to the arms that are stretched outwards, the right arm being the first inspected to be found with a metal cuff on the wrist, a metal cuff linked to a black wire of concentrated energy attached to the far wall or more specifically a visible projector residing against the wall with a shape resembling a cord reel but the cable emits from a black glassy aperture resembling a projector lens. The wire is straight, as though a solid physical wire and one that doesn’t move despite the attempts to tug at it from the arm as it only slightly budges before reeling the arm straight again.
Glancing to the other arm, there is that same restraint connected to the same projector on the wall, the only two visible pieces of furniture that occupies the room. Similarly to the first, upon trying to bend the arm it is found that the black wire tugs back with great strength, and eventually that strength raises such that it yanks the arm straight again.
After an irritated grunt, another attempt is made to tug at the wire, and then another, yet there is no give. The grunts become gritted growls, rage beginning to fuel strength for another bend, trying to fight back against the restraints, and underneath the cuffs there’s just a sliver of gold that flashes on the wrist.
The familiar whooshing effect of an opening door and following statement of a young man with a sneery voice: “Looks like the princess is awake!” reverts that gold back to natural skin color before attention is brought forward to find a wide open door now where none was present prior, and standing in that door are two men both who seem to be around their mid twenties if not less. The man on the right is dressed in a strange oversized gray shirt with red overalls and the one on the right has a flight bomber jacket on with sunglasses sat over his head, sunglasses with a strangely bulky design.
The one in overall has his hands on his hips proudly as he steps in, exiting the long brown hallway, although the floors seem made of metal. On the other side of the hallway is the opposing wall, and while there are metal strips, it seems the majority of the hall leads to an array of other cubic rooms made with rubber tiles, all of them visible through transparent red screens about the dimensions of the now open entryway into the currently inhabited room. All of the rooms are currently empty, but each do seem to have the same projectors on the far ends, just barely discernible.
The companion follows as the one in overalls jests with the same voice, “How was your little nap? You were good on the ride here, heh it’s good we loaded you up here first or you might’ve made a ruckus!”
Beside him the man in the bomber jacket chuckles and jests back, “Well I mean we already saw what that looked like, honestly maybe we should’ve let her wake up. Could’ve made things more interesting!”
Behind the two men walks a few other adults who seem to be dressed strangely too, a woman in a puffy red dress overlaid with a militaristic vest leading a siege of hovering beds similar to stretchers in that they have visible black energy restraints over the bodies in them, all of the bodies familiar as the adults some wearing professional uniforms and others in black jumpsuits. None of them are conscious, but their true states aren’t known, leading to a terrifying uncertainty.
“Wait, no-!” instantly cries out Dana as she thrusts forward, but is unable to move due to the restraints holding her. Furthermore, the wires flare brighter and the metal cuffs on her flash black before she suddenly shrieks as black sparks of energy surge around her for a moment.
In front of the weakened Dana both of the men glance at each other as a few of the adults outside take a peek of the scene. They then each diverge off towards different rooms while leading a single stretcher where the transparent red screen evaporates to reveal a clear entrance to the room. They each walk inside the room, bringing the stretcher and the body with them before the red screens reactivate.
The man in the overalls unleashes a hysterical laugh before indicating, “I forget that we had the pain inducers on, the best part about them is you don’t even need to be an Exhuman for the jolts to hit!”
“Well least we can confirm big business woman over here isn’t an Exhuman, wouldn’t that have been a shocker?” mentions the bomber jacket man while in the other rooms the black restraints are removed, and the people pull the bodies off of the stretchers. They carry them to the far wall and drop them to the ground before walking to each of the projectors where dangling in front of the black projector lenses are the metal cuffs which they grab and drag, pulling the black energy wire like a rope.
“Man, could you imagine if she was? Someone like that? Nah man, pretty sure the world she comes from wouldn’t let an Exhuman have that kinda power,” retorts back the overalls man while behind him in the other room, adults drag the open metal cuffs over to the slumped bodies and bring them onto the wrists, causing them to automatically clasp and lock into place before walking to the other projector to drag the second cuff.
“Oh right, can’t have the spawns of Satan running the world. They’d rather have children in power than some dude who can hear fish or something!” satirizes back the bomber jacket man while the unconscious bodies in the other rooms are restrained with both cuffs, and the adults leave with the empty stretchers as the bodies are raised off the ground by the automatic reeling of the wires until they’re pulled above the floor similarly to Dana.
The red doors open to let the captors leave with their stretchers before the doors reactivate, exhibiting all the unconscious bodies just dangling, their arms stretched and head down.
Putrid horror is spoken through those terrified wide green eyes, Dana’s breathing becoming more rapid as the situation that’s befallen her sets in, memory of her last time awake and the implications of the environment settling in along with the severity of her circumstances.
Noticing the hyperventilating first with puzzlement, the man in the overalls looks up at the C.E.O before smiling sadistically and mocking, “Aww, is the room not big enough for you? Honestly you should be grateful that you’re in a single, we woulda thrown you into the pits if they didn’t care so much.”
“Maybe she’s camera shy, I mean there’s like fifty different camera systems here isn’t there?” jests back the bomber jacket man, but the overalls man shows some irritation to that comment before reprimanding, “Hey come on, I thought we weren’t going to tell her! Imagine she was hiding a cutting knife or something and tried to escape! That woulda been a joy to watch!”
“Dumbass, I was joking about that,” the bomber jacket man reprimands before shaking his head, “You really think she’d have something like that? The company probably won't even let her near knives, it’ll hurt her little baby fingers.”
He then returns his focus back to Dana before raising his hand up holding a small black flat panel shaped like a sleek matte brick which projects an array of screens with yellow borders in front of him, all of the screens loading in footage from various angles of a single room, a rubber room, this rubber room and more specifically this room in live time as in the footage Dana could see herself and the two other men with the holographic screens visible through the projections. In front of the screens is also a three dimensional model of a cube room facing Dana, the ceiling and direct face missing to allow sight inside the cube to reveal a recorded depiction of herself chained up to the wall, also occupied by depictions of the two pirates and the many screens including the very model they’re looking at.
“Anyway, if you’re lonely feel free to talk, we might not respond but we’ll hear you!” snickers the man with a grin before closing out all of the screens and returning the brick to his side.
Faced with the reality of the layers of surveillance she’s put under, Dana grits her teeth in understanding that she couldn’t act with the impression that she wasn’t being watched. If anything, she had relinquished her moment of action without witness or at least her best chance, as now any motion she’d make would be observed. Although there was some relief in knowing that her lack of Exhuman origin kept her safe from alarms as of now, as the former C.E.O would likely be faced with a tense situation had he triggered the Anti-Exmatter jolt, she wasn’t exactly free to just merely transform and break out.
That conundrum echoes from her conflicted face, for it’s clear all she yearns in this moment is to unleash all her strength and free her coworkers from this hellish prison, and perhaps that would be the truly heroic act. Yet even understanding the selfish nature of her hesitancy, the loss she’d suffer from that reveal would potentially put an end to her public life entirely and likely put many more targets on all the companions she’s made since stepping into the office.
An escape had an abundance of variables: time of initial escape, method of initial escape, every meticulous motion, routes for escape, methods of stealth, methods of potentially required defense to list only a few. Yet through the hundreds of permutations that she could calculate and simulate, there was not a single one where she could act alone and maintain secrecy on her cybernetic properties. Simply put, the moment she made the first move, she would already lose.
It was clear there was no way she could find a resolution to this problem alone, and thus the second solution naturally came to her by that discovery. If she couldn’t find an escape alone, she’d need to seek out aid. Yet to reach for aid to begin with would imply that she had a strange ability to communicate when not offered a conventional device, thus she couldn’t simply contact authorities or even her own company as it’d only be so long until it was questioned how exactly she managed to make contact when it’d be abundantly clear she had been stripped of any Connect devices. Then again, hoping to find aid in traditional authorities was more of a joke if anything, despite the reputation and tied significance her life may have, she doubted that’d be enough to prompt an invasion of the Rim. There were cases of world leaders abandoned when they were found to have been captured by pirates, for as influential as X-Prints was she surely would not be in a position to set a new precedent. In truth, there was only one direction, one being she could contact.
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The irony of the realization couldn’t help but make her wince, for she had rejected this contact prior when accepting it would have likely saved her this entire situation. Regardless of immature stubbornness to surrender for help, it was inevitable that the knowledge of the mess she had gotten herself into would likely spark anxiety with him when all she was trying to do was assure him that she could handle the business. She could handle the business, she had been doing well the past ten years, or at least relatively so. Perhaps there were conflicts in work but nothing threatening her life to this extent, thus there was irony in that she’d have to make known the danger she fell into when it had only been weeks since his emergence. She was so confident that she didn’t need help, perhaps from a combination of faith in the conventional security but also the desire to prove that she didn’t need his concerns, thus while she lacked any concern of failure in his efforts to free her and the rest of her colleagues, there was an aftermath she's undoubtedly have to deal with.
Yet still, it wasn’t only her life that was being trapped, there were many other adults onboard with their own friends and families who’d soon start worrying about them. It was already selfish of her to disdain from taking action herself in fear of exposure, but to reject help too would not be something she’d let down. In the end, it was her who so aggressively pushed for this project, this mission, and thus the consequences made from it. All the colleagues restrained in those cells were only brought here because of the mission she set forth, and thus she had a responsibility that they’d be returned home safely. Even if it meant leading to some rather awkward discussions that’d likely require a great strength in persuasive assurance, she needed to find a true resolution for not only her sake but the sake of many others.
Thus with a sigh to that very irony that she had forsaken herself to, she closed her eyes and slightly lowered her head.
While her eyes were closed, that didn’t inhibit all her sight, for instead she was able to concentrate on the view she required the most. She had to create a signal to him, his network was vast but there were limits especially this far, but she knew that she had the strength to send a message. All she had to do was establish a single signal hidden from any detection, and shoot a single message that had enough information, that just being her location as it’d be more than adequate in delivering any context. Encrypting a signal and message such that it’d hide from observers was elementary for her, yet through her deep searching, she was met by a wall.
She couldn’t reach far enough, not because she lacked a device capable of sending signals, but instead it was clear to her that she was being restricted from acquiring any connection. The wall she hit was one she couldn’t break through regardless of the technology built within her, as there was a jamming effect occurring and she was within its grasp. It was logical of course, if she did manage to get ahold of a Connect it would put the entire pirate’s operation into jeopardy, thus the installation of jammers was something that should have been anticipated.
While she couldn’t break through the jammer, she was able to at least inspect it, analyze it. The jammer was clearly one set with a defined perimeter, and by comparison of its own properties, it seemed likely that it was a classic case of an obstruction bound to the interior of where she was. This type of jammer was one she was familiar with in the past, one that was most powerful when inside the facility that it was being housed in, but the moment one managed to reach outside the walls the jammer would weaken enough that she could acquire communication. She knew the solution to reach communication, for while this jammer was adequate in obstructing her, any additional ones outside without such rigid bounds would be nothing for her to bypass. Yet once again she circled back to that initial predicament: she had to take action. To acquire a signal she had to relocate to a position outside of the facility she was currently housed in, and the traditional way would yet again require her to break her constraints and thus out her abilities. Every option seemed to have the same problem, and no matter how deep she got she always hit a wall.
Opening her eyes again with disappointment on her face, Dana just gazed blankly with little idea of how to progress. She knew she needed to reach her friend, but she couldn’t from where she was. She frowned at her inability to find a solution, as perhaps it was a product of her angst, even if she believed she had herself under control.
“Hey come on now, you’re making her all sad!” mocks the man in the overalls after noticing the sighs and frowns coming from the captive, even if the context behind them wasn’t anywhere as understood.
Crossing his arms over his shoulders, the man in the bomber jacket retorts back, “Guess you’re right, well anyways I think I had my fun and she looks beat. I heard big man is coming down to see her so I guess we should give her some time to get ready.”
“Man this might be one of the craziest things we’ve ever done, I hope we get promoted!” exclaims the man in overalls with a childlike enthusiasm only for his companion to explain, “We weren’t part of the capture, dumbass, we’re not the ones getting anything. But anyways, come on, I’m hungry. Let’s leap.”
“Okay,” innocently accepts the overalls man with a bright smile, and as his companion turns around, he takes one last glance at Dana to sneer, “I’m sure they’ll bring you some slop later tonight, I know you upper class like small portions so you’ll feel right at home!”
He then turns around as well, starting his way for the exit, the both of them turned around away from the captive.
It is at that moment that Dana’s pupils flare gold, and down her body past her blazer and leggings, at the very bottom of her left shoe specifically the black sole of it, a small piece of her foot morphs gold before it then begins secreting golden chains off the bottom, chains that fall not even an inch before they wrap around into each other to intricately form a construct, one with a small body but eight long legs. It takes only a second for the golden strands to complete the shape, and that shape resembles a small house spider, one that colors brown to fit the role. Furthermore the spider animates to life as her whole sole reverts to black, and the spider drops off of the sole falling all the way down on the rubber floor but lands upright from a flip, its color similar to the surface.
That spider which could likely fit on a finger begins hastily crawling down the floor, away from Dana and instead towards the departing pirates, able to catch up due to the leisurely pace they take no doubt meant to be smug to their new inmate.
That pace allows the spider to reach the shoe of the bomber jacket man just as it’s planted on the ground, and in the short window it remains grounded the spider crawls up the heel of the shoe and continues up the body, climbing up the jeans the man wears and reaches all the way up the torso before vanishing underneath the jacket in the very moment that he passes the doorway.
In the next moment, the opening becomes occupied with the materialization of brown nanite particles that form a cloud that covers the gap and hardens, manifesting into the door that again encloses the rubber room as there’s not even crevices to indicate the door. In the very instant that the walls enclose, all sound from outside is completely terminated, the room falling to absolute silence within a second.
Again alone in the room now is Dana, her arms strung up by black chains, her body tired and her mind frantic. Her closed eyes sit above the frown, the defeated upper class, the wealthiest of them all, the famous C.E.O now rendered to a powerless prisoner in a pirate’s den who’d be subjected to any of their sadistic plots.
Yet while her body is marooned to that room, to the ropes, she opens her golden rung eyes that see through a second body, one who’s already bypassed that very room, and one who would help her reach the contact she had first rejected.
Her human body’s two eyes may have white sclera, green irises, and golden rings around the pupils, yet through those eyes and down the tunnel of the dark abyss she saw through a second set of eyes entirely black, although there were eight of them around the head. An operation as paramount and delicate as this required the utmost precision, for even given the scale of the spider being such that no detail would naturally be inspected, the spider’s body was not metallic but rather had the proper fur cover that a spider would. In fact from up close it looked exactly as a spider, its mannerisms and animation was precisely that of a spider, and without an explicit reveal it seemed to exactly be a spider.
Whether it’s from an intimate view or more realistically afar, the spider looks deceptively organic as it crawls up through the large fluffed collar of the bomber jacket, finally able to take in light and with that light brought images.
Simply from inside the prison cell it seemed there was just a single hallway strip with a few cells aligned, but from the point of view beyond the cell it’s revealed that there are in fact several stories of cells, and that the prison room is rather spacious with bridges overhead and multiple rows. Many of the cells are inhabited by familiar colleagues, as discernible by either the professional suits or black jumpsuits with a latter one’s familiar beard identifying him as Thompson, but it’s clear too that there are a great abundance of other prisoners. Many of them are dressed in zany outfits, one dressed in a large pink fur coat open to reveal his intensely muscular build, but there were also a diverse range of subspecies including a man with blue skin and a sharp jagged nose dressed in a buttoned up colorful shirt.
As the spider drone crawls to the shoulder of the jacket instead of residing on the fluffy collar, it surveys the prison but also the great number of other pirates roaming the area, both in the base hall but the bridges too.
Observation of the prison lasts for only so long though as the pair of pirates walk to the other end as discernible by the tall walls and smaller doors that form a solid divider. Those doors dematerialize though from the proximity of the two pirates, allowing the spider to follow along to the next sector, one filled with vastly more chatter recognizable immediately upon entrance.
While the floors and walls still follow the aesthetic of the brown material which does notably resemble wood in the way the floors aren’t perfectly smooth but rather have visible long panels that resemble boards, this new sector is vastly more busy with the room just as tall as the former equipped with multiple higher floors, floors like balconies with bridges connecting them in a network that lacks any railings revealing the truth in that while this facility was run by a band of pirates, they were no small squad like many were, rather they had a mass more akin to an organization, an army. For crowds covered all floors, rivers of people walking up and down the many bridges high above the spider and there even being swarms directly ahead of people navigating about what looks like a lobby area.
Rather than there being cells along both ends, there are instead lounges equipped with extravagant leather sofas and tables that groups of people play at. One of those is a long green table that has an odd contraption of two metal poles projecting a net in between, one that levitates in a motion up and down along the center as on both ends there are two people both wielding small paddles that they use to smack a ball bouncing between both sides, a version of table tennis in a way. At that table, one of the adult’s hands grows abnormally thrice its twice and along with it the paddle does too, vastly increasing its surface area which allows him to far more easily slam the ball over the other side, failing to be struck back as it instead flies far from the table before a blue light flashes over and consumes it to which a woman on the other side with short blonde hair begins reprimanding the man angrily.
There are other lounges further down, and now when surrounded by a greater concentration of pirates it’s clear just how vast the group truly is, for while there are young men who look like they may actually be teenagers brushing up against the two pirates being followed, in one of the lounges there is a senile woman who looks to be past the age of eighty just seated at one of the sofa chairs, reading a hologram laid out in front of her like a book.
In fact, some of the passing people greet the two walking down, which they greet back, one greeting calling for the bomber jacket man to raise one of his hands for a wave to which the spider had to more desperately cling to the shoulder. Yet with the great density of the crowd, it’s unclear who exactly that interaction was towards as whoever it was, they had already disappeared with the rest.
It’s overwhelming, the size of the ecosystem, and at the same time the sheer quantity of immediately surrounding pirates so close to the prison. At first there were about ten members visible in the chamber but now there were what seems to be well over fifty in this next room alone. There is still not a full grasp of the true size of this space, as the two rooms that have been entered have already given the notion that this fortress must be large, but the true extent of that magnitude is a mystery that results in angst, uncertainty about the future. Such little is known about this group, for the host doesn’t know of their identity nor their leader or record, but depending on the scale of the group it was likely that she had fallen in the hands of greater predators, likely those with the force that had enslaved ten worlds to ceaseless mayhem.
In the center of it all, sitting on the shoulder of the unsuspecting man, the spider just gazes around, unable to exhibit human expression given the lack of a face yet there’s an understood awe that it’s feeling, or at least the host of the drone is experiencing. Perhaps it’s an exaggeration due to the vastly smaller form taken for the drone, but from being raided by a few bikers to the sight now beholden, the true scale of the operation that she had gotten herself roped up into begins to set in.
This would be the facility she’d be ultimately trying to break out of.
And this would be the army she’d be facing.