Author's Note: This is a story I wrote on SpaceBattles and am now posting on , I hope you enjoy it.
Arc 1: The EscapeChapter 1: Jailbreak
Subject One pulled the bloody lab coat tighter around himself as he walked through the corridors of the 'research facility.' The plain grey walls of that were ubiquitous throughout the facility were unmarred in this area. Subject One liked to think that was because he had only just arrived here.
He knew that there would be guards ahead, and that they would be ready for him. After all, the flashing red lights and the siren wail of containment breach would make it obvious even to these brainless thugs that they should be wary. Though maybe it'd just give them a migraine like it did to him. He certainly hoped so.
Of course, the siren wasn't the worst part, especially not here. Nor was it the low rumbling that he was currently tracking down. No, the worst part was the high pitched, numbing hum in the back of his head. Of all of the things Subject One hated the most, it was that hum. It muffled his powers, numbed his senses and kept him from hurting and [i]killing[/i] the bastards that kept him (and the others, he supposed) there like lab rats.
Now he was going to destroy the Psionic Dampener, bust out Subject Zero, and make them choke on their own 'success.' He knew that he couldn't break out on his own, even with the riot as a cover, but there was one person who could break out, and break them. One person who they kept locked up in Quarantine 05, surrounded by Dampeners. He knew the number because he'd heard one of the scientists talking about it a month ago, when they'd sedated and locked her up after she killed what must have been at least a hundred people.
He didn't know her name, just that she was one of the younger and the most powerful psions in the program. Unlike her, she hadn't survived what must have been more than four years of experimentation and forced fighting just on luck and nerve. She had serious power, enough that shortly before she went on her spree, they had finally decided that after a year of her instantly killing any opponents thrown at her in the arena that they could learn no more from her fights. Subject One still felt lucky that he hadn't been one of the subjects that had to be forced into the arena to face her and certain death.
When he'd first been ship to this godforsaken facility on this godforsaken planet, he'd been thirteen, and when he saw her from a distance after all of the other subjects were moved into the Atrium, she couldn't have been more than four and they'd kept her separated from the rest, given her a lavish room and separated her from all of the other subjects. She had been special form the beginning. Everyone had hated that fact, including Subject One, but he'd seen how they had taken her away for testing just like all the others. And made her fight in the arena like all the others. He knew she had just as much of a reason to hate those people as he did.
That was why he was going to break her out. Only she was strong enough to escape through the gauntlet of automated defenses and guards that they had between the inner and outer facility.
Armacham was paranoid like that.
When Subject One had seen the turrets gunning down they people he'd fought and killed for the scientists' amusement, he'd been both grimly satisfied at their deaths for all of the suffering they'd put him through, in and out of the arena, and worried. After all, if even they in all their numbers couldn't force their way into the Security Complex, what hope did he have. Then he had an idea. A bad idea, but the only one that had a chance.
Subject Zero [i]had[/i] forced her way into Security, and then the offices before she was knocked unconscious by the tranquilizers that they used for her and only her, or at least that's what he'd heard afterwards. All of the other subjects had been locked in their cells at the time or had been gunned down by security.
She might not like him, but he was reasonably sure that she didn't like Armacham more. He refused to die, but was willing to gamble his life on what was likely his only actual chance at freedom.
And so he went onward.
~/~
Subject Zero came to a T intersection. The sign on the wall indicated that Quarantine was ahead, and Research Labs was to the left. Both held bad memories for him, but the Research labs held many, many more and much worse ones than Quarantine. The isolation of Quarantine 02 had been a blessed reprieve from the hell he lived through, but that had only been for their isolation experiments, to se how it affected psychics and he had come to dread in the dark timelessness of the coffin-like apparatus they had put him in almost a year ago.
Seeing no one down the hall continuing to Quarantine, he tried to reach out with his senses to determine if anyone was in the corridor to Reasearch Labs. Unfortunately, the interference from the dampeners kept him from getting a clear picture of the corridor, not that he had ever been good at extending his senses. It wasn't something his 'group' had been selected for.
Bracing himself and gripping the length of pipe another, stronger psion had ripped out of the wall and into one of the guards earlier, Subject One leaned to look around the corner. What he saw was simultaneously a relief and a concern. The thick security doors leading into the labs were torn open, exposing the glass walls and tiled floors within to him. However he did not see an empty corridor and lab. What he saw was blood and the bodies of scientists and guards scattered across the corridor. That was worrying. While it could have been the result of one or more of his fellow subjects, no one short of Subject Zero was that powerful.
The much more likely, and dangerous, explanation was that shades and been created or summoned or whatever by the psychic violence the other subjects were unleashing. Subject One peered carefully, breathing as shallowly as possible so as not to attract their attention. They occasionally appeared in the arena, and while their glowing red eyes made them easy to spot, the rest of their bodies were transparent except when they were being hurt, and their claws could tear through the guards' armor quickly, ignoring their kinetic barriers. All in all, Subject One did not want to encounter them in his current state.
After close examination, he saw that there didn't appear to be any disturbances in the pools of blood indicative of shades standing still, nor were there any floating pairs of glowing red eyes. Slowly and quietly exhaling, Subject One began quietly creeping across the intersection before he realized that with the door to the labs open, and none of the shades visible, they must have gone somewhere.
He bit back a curse which could have given him away. He was fairly confident that any shades present had not passed him, given that he had not fought or been killed by one. This left two possibilities. Either the shades had decided to hide in the labs for some inscrutable reason, or they had left for Quarantine.
Or some had left Quarantine and the rest were still in the labs waiting to ambush someone. He bit back another curse.
"No point in going back," he whispered to himself as he started forward, slightly quicker this time, though still trying to be as quiet as possible.
He eventually reached the corner, noticing the many bullet holes pocking the walls, floor and ceiling there. "Fantastic."
He looked around the corner and saw the destroyed auto-turrets and dead guards at the checkpoint. Apparently the barricades had not meaningfully help them. At least he wouldn't have to sneak past them, though the shades would be a problem, whoever many of them made it past.
He cautiously approached, watched for any sign that a shade had remained behind. He let out a deep breath when he saw the clear area at the top the long and wide descending stairwell next to the diagonal cargo lift on the other side of the checkpoint was clear save for some overturned tables and toppled crates. The lift itself had also descended into Quarantine, though he wasn't in an angle to see below.
He approached one the dead guards and looked at his assault rifle. While the heavy, face-concealing armor hadn't helped much, the weapon might be useful to Subject One. One the other hand, it was likely ID locked like all of the other Armacham weapons and would electrocute him if he tried to pick it up.
He almost kicked the weapon away with a curse before stopping himself, realizing that the sound could alert any nearby shades; or guards if they had won, they did have experience fighting shades here after all.
Hearing a loud boom which faintly shook the floor, Subject One decided that he needed to pick up the pace if he wanted to break out Zero before the guards restored order, or decided to flood the facility with gas or something. He'd taken a two gas masks and some medigel from the Subject Medical, next to the Atrium and the Arena, before the others looted too much. He was wearing one of the masks already, cutting off the smell of blood and offal, while he had been forced to use up most of the medigel when Subject 403 tried to gut him with a scalpel. At least One had managed to patch himself up with a makeshift bandage and the medigel.
Unfortunately he then used up most of the remainder of those leftovers trying to fix a several wounds inflicted by a shotgun-wielding guard who tried to kill him and the subjects coming with him. Only he survived that, and he hadn't done a great job patching himself up that time.
He sighed, and realized that he was wasting time thinking about how little he had. Then he gripped the pipe tighter and quietly stalked towards the stairs and the cargo lift, watching the crates and tables in case a shade was hiding behind one.
When he reached the lift he looked down the diagonal shaft and saw the empty lift at the bottom, but couldn't find any signs of violence down there. He went over to the stairs and started to descend, listening and watch all the while, trying to find any threats through mundane and psionic means, even if the dampeners in Quarantine muffled his abilities. The one by the arena had been destroyed shortly after the riot started and on the way to Quarantine had felt the effect lessen as the one next to the atrium was disabled as well.
When Subject One reached the bottom of the stairs, he saw no sign of the guards or the shades. He wasn't sure what this meant. However, he did see the most important part, the locked security door to Quarantine Maintenance 1. He wasn't sure what was in there since the dampeners where somewhere else, but he [i]was[/i] sure that breaking whatever was in there would be beneficial to his plans, or at least make him feel better.
Double checking that the coast was clear, Subject One walked up to the door and focused on his powers. Even with the dampeners he could feel the heavy locking mechanisms of the door, and taste the electrical currents running through the powerful magnets helping to hold it shut. He didn't have much power, but he did have a certain finesse honed from being one of the longest lived subjects in their sick program. So he sent out sharp twisting jabs into the magnetic locks, quietly breaking them one by one. Then came the hard part of opening the door, pushing it open. It would take all his focus, so he looked around to again make sure that no one and nothing had decided to sneak up on him.
Then he focused his mind on the task, concentrating as hard as he could on moving both the door and disengaging the lock at the same time so that it would slide open. This meant severing the connections between the motors and the network, and then mentally making their gears turn so that the door slowly pulled up and open. One if was all of the way, he didn't want to have to worry about crawling or ducking out in a hurry, he forced the bars that held the thick metal door in place into their sockets. He didn't want to have to open the door more than once and expediency overrode caution in this instance.
He walked into the Maintenance room which was very large and where an assortment of softly humming machines, pipes and thick power cables. Subject One grinned. He had known that this would be loud, but while he didn't exactly want to fight shades in particular, he had learned a certain bloodthirstiness and always enjoyed whatever opportunity he had to break or destroy things and Armacham employees.
He started lashing out with his mind and body, breaking delicate machines, severing the thick power and data cables, breaking pipes so water, coolant and sewage began to pour into the room, further damaging the machines. Cackling with glee as he broke more and more of Armacham's expensive equipment, he danced through the growing pools of mixed liquid and semi-liquids. He was already filthy, and had spent long enough at the facility to get used to it.
"AHAHAHAHA! TAKE THAT!" he cried out as he psionically smashed the last and biggest machine at the back, causing a small explosion to knock him into a pipe, knocking it from its already loose moorings.
As he collapsed into a pool of muck, the last of the humming died and the lights flickered out, leaving him in darkness until the emergency lights in the floor against the walls came on, lighting the wrecked room in red-orange light where it managed to penetrate the opaque pools. No white light entered to room from the unloading area either.
It was then that Subject One noticed two things. One, the ever present sound of the air filters was gone, and two, he heard splashing coming from the direction of the entrance to the maintenance room.
He picked himself up and grit his teeth, adrenaline rushes through his veins and the need to destroy and break things returning in force from its momentary abatement.
A solitary pair of glowing red eyes appeared above slashes as raced towards him. He was fairly certain he heard only the one, which was good, so he focused and threw a loose metal panel from one of the machines at the shade, which knocked it aside.
Subject One howled and rushed to meet the monster, swinging overhanded as hard as he could, Knocking the shade into visibility, its short, corpselike body being knocked into the slowly rising muck, he didn't let up, unleashing a flurry of blows upon the creature. However, it reacted immediately, lunging towards him, knocking him onto his back with a splash.
He screamed as its claws tore into his thighs and then released so that the shade could attack other parts of him. Not wasting time, he swung again, knocking it to the side where he shoved it into the wall with a psionic push. He knew from watching others that it was more resistant to psionics when it wasn't stunned, so he forced it into the muck with his mind as quickly pushed himself to his knees and then rained blows on its neck, head and limbs until it stopped moving and dissolved into ash.
Drawing a ragged breath and thankful that he hadn't been worse hurt, Subject One took a moment to listen for more splashes.
He heard none.
He nodded to himself and staggered to his feet, gasping as the burning pain of his cuts, which had been exposed to sewage and coolant, made themselves known.
Subject One cursed. "This is bad."
He leaned against the nearby wall and patted himself down, searching for the vial of the remaining medigel.
He didn't find it.
He cursed again, louder and longer.
Eventually he calmed down enough to think. "Okay, well I need to get some medigel to patch these up and disinfect, and the longer this goes on, the harder it'll be to fight so I need to break Zero out [i]now[/i] or there's no chance I'm walking out of here."
He took a roll of soaked bandages and squeezed as much of the muck out of them as he could before tying them tightly around his new wounds. He then straightened himself and limped out into the unloading bay.
It was empty again. "Good. Now I just need to hold it together until I find the next checkpoint, they've got to have something there."
He walked to the large doors which in the gloom were labeled "PSIONIC QUARANTINE."
The doors themselves were locked again, but with only backup power the magnetic locks weren't working, and these large doors opened to their sides, making it slightly easier to shift the several tons of metal. At least the backup generator had only enough power to support one dampener, making things easier and he repeated his earlier process to pry the doors open enough for him to walk through.
After taking a moment to catch his breath, which he abruptly cut short when he heard faint gunfire from up the elevator shaft, he pressed on.
Each Quarantine chamber had its own cubic half-kilometer of space and they were arranged across the very wide hallway from each other with a checkpoint arranged so that it could defend from all directions.
He could hear gunfire and shouted orders in the distance, so it was clear that the approximately seven checkpoints had at least some guards. He hoped they were too busy to notice him until it was too late.
He managed to slowly limp along the wall marked with the odd numbered containment units, refusing to give up, until he reached Quarantine 7. Ahead he saw the several the guards in their standard heavy armor, and two in bulky three meter tall suits of power armor, each arm bearing a heavy weapon.
They were all looking warily in his general direction, though they apparently hadn't seen him yet.
Subject One quietly cursed.
Then he realized that Subject Zero was actually back in the direction he'd come from.
He bit back a much louder curse and turned around.
After far too long, he made it back through the gloom to Quarantine 05, where the scientists had said they kept Subject Zero sedated. He sincerely hoped that they hadn't seen fit to move her somewhere else yet though he did remember hearing from that same conversation that they had been building a new Quarantine chamber for her specifically.
"If they've already moved her…"
He set to work again, slowly prying the much thicker doors up and open before jamming them in place. It took entirely too long and all of the psionic effort left him lightheaded. Or maybe that was the definitely-infect wounds. Or Both.
He stumbled into the chamber and through the barely-lit rooms until he reached a wide open space with a large block of metal in the middle.
That was the coffin, as he called it. While it was hard to tell in the emergency lighting, it looked like a giant metal box with a great many tubes and devices attached to it. Someone versed in antique technology might have likened it to an automobile engine, but Subject One had no such knowledge.
He extended his wavering sense and felt the muffled rage and suffering of a powerful psychic.
He was in the right place, or at least someone was in there.
Now he needed to open it up.
Which could be a problem.
He heard another muffled explosion echoing form behind. He needed to open in [i]now[/i].
But in his state he could barely distinguish the various mechanisms from each other, and he was hopeless with the circuitry. He didn't have the time to disassemble it. "What do I do?"
Then he saw a lever labeled:
EMERGENCY RELEASE
WARNING: DO NOT USE EXCEPT IN A CODE BLACK
"Convenient."
Subject One limped over and pulled the lever, causing the machine to rumble and a nearby panel to unfold so that a glass tube could move out and be set so that it and its occupant were suspended vertically with tubes and mechanical arms connecting them both back to the coffin.
Within was Subject Zero, hooked up to several catheters, not that Subject One knew that particular word, and a breath mask, even though the fluid that filled the tube was technically breathable. Likely it was another way to send in sedatives. She had long dark hair, pale skin from lack of sunlight light him, and was otherwise what he'd expect from an eight-year-old.
Subject One looked at the tube and the unconscious, though somehow still angry, Subject Zero for a moment, before using his pipe to smash open the tube, spilling fluid and occupant onto the floor.
He crouched over her, hissing in pain from his thighs. "Listen, I know some part of you is awake and that you're angry at Armacham. So am I, but neither of us have any chance of escaping on our own. We can work together. We help each other, and we both get out, or at least you do, so we give those bastards in their high-rises hell for sticking us in here. What do you say?"
He waited for an uncomfortably long moment before he felt acquiescence from the unconscious psion.
"Good, I'll carry you out to the checkpoint. I forgot to look for medigel and I have some pretty nasty cuts that are definitely infected, and I'd rather not die." When he again felt acceptance directed towards him, he pulled her up and set her so they she lay over his shoulder.
He stood and limped slowly towards the exit from Quarantine 05.
"You know, it's kind of freaky that you're aware even when they've knocked you out."
…
"Not that it's bad, I think it's good, but you will be able to kill them for us right? I'm not in too good shape from getting here."
…
"Perfect."
As he neared the door he heard footsteps approaching from both directions.
Armacham guards.
Then he heard heavy thuds in the middle distance.
Armacham guards and mechs.
"It just keeps getting better," Subject One muttered quietly to himself.
He felt Subject Zero emit annoyance.
"I'm not blaming you, it's just that every choice was terrible and this was a longshot anyway," He whispered.
He stood still for a moment.
"I doubt I'll live to escape now…" He sighed. "…but you're strong enough to be aware even when they've put you under. And you're only, what eight?"
Several footsteps approached. He wanted to fight, to go down screaming and swinging, but he was barely standing with the pain and the lightheadedness, so he decided to set Subject Zero down. Instead he fell to his knees and barely kept her from hitting the floor.
"You've got a life ahead of you, a shitty one, but its there, and you'll get stronger too, with or without their amplification experiments. I remember how my powers, weak as they are, got stronger too. Helped me steal this nice collection. You should read Dickens sometime. Didn't think much of it myself, but its literature, so you might like it. I bet Mike burned them by now, that asshole."
He carefully set her on the ground as she began to stir, but he found it hard to pay attention to that with the way the world was swaying.
"But anyway, you'll get stronger and eventually the drugs won't stop you, and their boxes won't stop you neither, okay?"
He could see the shapes of guards standing by either side of the doorway, probably aiming guns at him.
He looked down at the floor and grabbed his pipe and struggled to stand as the guards shouted at him.
"When you break out of here and make the Armacham execs choke on their own livers, tell them Jack Shepard sends his regards."
Then the guards opened fire.
"In other news the Church of Unitology has built yet another temple on the Citadel as more and more become disillusioned with the Citadel Council's failure of vision. They say that the new temple, which is located in Bakera Ward, will be completed within the month.
"This has been the Omega Update, giving you the news you need, and now a thanks to our sponsors:"
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