21. Save Aurealian Rodentia only Rodentia can save Aurealian
Not all of the kips would follow them. Simon had said that they might not, and that there was nothing the Rodentia corps could do about the ones that refused to cooperate. They would face enough difficulty with just the ones who were. There were hundreds of kips following the Rodentia, and only seven Rodentia left alive. And of those, three were injured. Pleasant Scent may be their leader, but the lingering pain that the impact of being thrown into the wall by his tail caused him made communicating difficult. One of his squad had injected him with painkillers, taken from the med-kit of one of the deceased, but still he hurt.
But they had killed the monster that was hurting the wonderful song singers, and that was worth the price of pain. It was worth the price of death.
The others gathered as many of the kips into the central room as they could. He was surprised that they had not realized how important it was before, but he understood. The holograms were the only things that were truly drawing power, and they had been turned off while the kips had been asleep. The Rodentia had been looking to sabotage a building filled with tech, not rescue a bunch of rag-tags. They had mapped the volume of the rooms from the air vents earlier, not realizing that the ‘classrooms’ were effectively cubicles crossed with prison cells. They had seen the space where the kips were kept, but not understood the significance.
Fifteen minutes passed. He wondered what the humans were doing to help them. He thought the humans must not have known that the singers were down here, but knew that they would figure out a way to help them soon. Until then, Pleasant Scent would do his best, along with the squad.
His holoemitter suddenly kicked on, and the dancing monkey Simon was back.
"Hello Rat Corps it’s me again I am working very hard to help you help them. You all did good work earlier mapping the maps and now I have the maps and Athena has the maps too and I have the cameras and heat sensors and security measures as well. I am updating your map programs your map programs are different now. Green rooms are safe rooms empty rooms or rooms with only Rodentia or Aurealian kips. Safe rooms are safe. Red rooms are not safe rooms danger rooms rooms with predators that kill Aurealians and Rodentia. Rodentia must lead Aurealians to safety to evac point away from danger using only green rooms. Doors of all rooms locked unlock for Rodentia and Aurealian not for predator. Sometimes doors unlock for predator and turn green room red room will turn blue if door unlocking between red and green room run out of blue room soon as can. Yellow room next to red room mean door unlocked but no predator in yellow room but predator can. Save Aurealian Rodentia only Rodentia can save Aurealian."
Pleasant Scent could wrap tails with Simon, if the primate would let him. Clear instructions and a useful update to their mapping system. The facility was a complex map, but the Rodentia were expert labyrinthians. If anyone could guide the kips to safety, it would be them. Squeaking to summon the attention of his squad, he waited briefly while they assembled.
"How long until we are ready to move out?" he danced gingerly.
"We have opened all of the doors to the cells and the song has played many loops. All of the Singers have heard it, but not all have listened or are singing it back. Some do not leave their rooms," one of the squadmates answered him.
"Are they unwilling to leave the dead?" he inquired.
"All the rooms with dead in them are empty. All the Singers with blood on them are following us. It is the rooms that were unblooded where those who will not follow us hide," came the answer.
"Then there is nothing we can do for them I believe they are children and wish we could save them, but we must save those we can and leave those who will not follow. You all saw and understood Simon?"
"We saw and understood Simon is clever and helpful," they agreed.
"Simon’s plan is good plan wish humans or dogs to protect from predators but we will solve labyrinth," Pleasant Scent informed them. Their holoemitters had already switched into map mode, and the promised changes to the displayed information were present.
Pleasant Scent had noticed when the song his speakers were playing had changed, and how the singers all sang it back in unison when it repeated. It repeated three times, and then all went silent. That was the signal, he realized, and, looking carefully at the map, he began to plan the safest route outside.
Like a parody of the Pied Piper, a swarm of children followed the rats to safety.
~~~~~~~~
She was Nameless, but she was not stupid. She knew when the reactor that she had shut down had started back up again on its own, things were going to begin going very badly. She had spent twenty years learning how to run the facility that made the Aurealians for the elites to play with. It was why six of her mates had fought each other to earn her attention. It was why she had nine children. She was Nameless, but in the scheme of things she was more important than Gone.
Which is why, when the power turned back on and she realized that they were under attack, her instinct had been to protect the work. She fought with the computer, but every time she changed a setting or told an instrument to shut down, it would fight back, and soon the errors would force her to restart her terminal.
As piece after piece of the ancient equipment was destroyed, she realized that she was out of her league. This was a planned, coordinated offensive. A rival facility? Perhaps. They were the only ones who would have known how to run the archaic computers, after all. But she couldn’t figure out how they had gotten access in the first place, Gone was paranoid about that kind of security.
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Gone was stupid, but he was right about many things. He had seen the attack coming before anyone else and tried to stop it. It was good that he had gone to terrorize the kips and gotten out of the way of the ones who actually knew what they were doing. Except there was nothing they could do. They only had so many terminals, and yet the aberrant commands seemed to be coming from all over the network.
There was only one thing she could think of to protect the work, and she was glad that she thought of it in time. She ran to cold storage, donned the protective gear, and began pulling out the protected embryos, placing them quickly in the emergency storage containers, disconnected from the network and cooled by liquid nitrogen.
Eventually, they would figure out a way to rebuild. The Horthians had been studying the facilities for centuries. While they had not been able to reproduce them themselves, they had fixed several with the knowledge they had. The damage to Gone’s facility was extensive, but as long as they had those precious embryos, they could rebuild.
~~~~~~~~
He was nameless, and he was locked in the toilet.
It wasn’t even his fault. He didn’t lock the door, the door locked itself. He didn’t even have to use the toilet when he came in, he had been sent to find the source of whatever their leader had smelled that had triggered him to enact emergency intruder policies. He thought he smelled it too, but he wasn’t certain. It didn’t bother him, it actually smelled kind of nice, but Gone thought it didn’t belong, and so they had to search the facility.
He didn’t mind too much. He didn’t mind being told to search the facility, and he didn’t mind being stuck in the toilet. He knew he was just an extra Nameless who had been pulled in from nearby and given a blaster. Before that he had been minding his own business, but when a Named One told you to do something, you did it, or at least you tried to do it, or you got your heart ripped out by a pissed off Named One. And he liked his heart where it was.
Well, he hoped that the Named One Gone wouldn’t be too angry at him. Maybe someone else would come into the toilet and he could get out before anyone realized that he was trapped. And while he hadn’t had to use the toilet when he came in, he had nothing better to do …
He was washing his claws when the door suddenly opened. He dashed through without thinking, having been trapped for almost an hour, without looking to see what was on the other side.
It was Aurealians. He had never actually seen one before. He wasn’t important enough to be allowed to hunt them, and he wasn’t trusted enough to be part of their production and transport to the hunting grounds. He was just a guard who watched the road gates outside to make certain that nobody who shouldn’t be coming to the facility was coming to the facility.
He heard the screaming of the kips as they suddenly ran away from him. He lifted his blaster, but he didn’t dare use it. He would be murdered if he actually hurt one, they were for the elite to play with, not a lowly Nameless like him. But despite that, he felt himself grinning and salivating as the hallway was filled with the scent of their fear pheromones. Perhaps just one bite?
The sudden pain in his leg came out of nowhere, cutting into his muscle. He did not fall, but looked around for the source. It was a small, dark brown thing holding a knife. It dashed at him again, but he was ready this time and he caught it.
It bit his hand, and he let it go.
Growling, he picked up his blaster and took aim.
The sound of a blaster echoed through the room, but it did not come from the one that he was holding.
Nameless, he fell to the ground, staring at the mess he had made on the wall. It was a shame, he had liked his heart where it was.
~~~~~~~~~
The recoil of the weapon knocked Yellow to the ground. She dropped the thing in shock of what it had done – what she had done with it! She had killed something, blown it apart and made a horrible mess. It was horrible that such a thing existed, and that she had been carrying it around without knowing what it was or what it did. She had just seen that this Other, too, had one of these evil devices and was trying to copy how he used it when it had gone off on its own.
No, not on it’s own, she realized. Her hand was different from an Other, they scrape their claw over the trigger on the side when they want it to kill something for them. If she held it like this …
Purple Dots picked up the device that the dead Other had dropped, looking at Yellow meaningfully. Yellow nodded at her.
"You push here when it is time to kill," she sang sadly, indicating the button. "I would not point it at anyone but an Other, because they seem to go off by accident."