::End Of The Line – Special Delivery::
Crawling in vents was always so much easier in video games, Mysterion had learned. Most air vents were not even half as big as their intakes, and even when they were big enough to shimmy himself into? They often had odd screws or sharp edges left over from construction that no one cared about because the only thing that was ever supposed to pass through them was air. Add on the extra fun of dealing with fans, heating elements, or intersections with full-on air handling junctions, and the whole idea that ventilation shafts were viable routes through entire buildings was a big crock of bullshit.
At best, they were good for what he was doing now- shimmying a short distance through the interior of a ceiling, and cursing every time what was left of his cape caught on an exposed screw head.
Following the directions he'd been given, he had followed exactly the path Future Lyssie had given him- and he could firmly call her that in his head. He'd seen her only as a silhouette, he could not guess what this night was going to do to her, but she remembered it, and she mentioned following along with what he remembered of this, after the fact. That suggested that they were both going to make it out of this alive, and go on to a future where... what? They were still doing the hero thing?
An interesting thought, but there was hardly space to fuss over it as he worked is way through dark shafts that were barely wide enough for his body, no doubt loudly thumping along for anyone in adjacent spaces to hear. Normally, he would have been slower and more stealthy about it, but he'd been told to listen to his gut... and there was nothing in him but urgency since the lights came back on.
The power was back. There would be no more delays.
Taking the last turn in the series of instructions he'd been given, Mysterion could see nothing. He'd been feeling his way along, fingertips his only assurance that he'd made all the correct turns and not missed any passageways. In this same manner, he didn't know exactly what he would need to do at this point. He'd been told that he'd be able to open a gap, but how? He still had the screwdriver he'd used to open this path into the vents in the first place, but it was hard to use that when he was in the absolute pitch black of a claustrophobic space. Reaching forward to continue his shimmying, he fumbled in the dark to try and figure out what it was he'd be working with.
Fingertips bumped against some kind of housing. At first he withdrew his hand, scared of having hit a fan that was just spinning to quietly to hear over the hum of power in the facility, but replaced it a bit more carefully and found some kind of housing was screwed into this part of the vent. Feeling ahead, he found it took up about half the vertical space available, which meant there was no way he was moving past it... and there was some kind of feed running either to or from it...
He felt the edges of the housing. The corners didn't have screws, but bolts, nothing his tool would be useful against... but as he shuffled his body closer to the housing? A tiny sliver of light appeared at the edge of the housing as the ventilation shaft bent beneath his weight.
A sliver that he could slip the tip of the screwdriver into, and wedge it to open a little wider.
A sliver, too thin to see through, became a gap about an inch wide. Even with his full weight leaned on the handle of the screwdriver, that was all the further he could widen it before the screwdriver itself began to bend.
Cheap piece of shit...
"... Kenny?"
A voice from below, one he was quite familiar with... though with a tone he never wanted to hear again. It was Alyssa, but she was shaken.
Scared.
He wiggled the screwdriver, trying to open the gap a little more while sliding his face right up to the opening, peering down into the room below. It was, as he was told, a cell. One of the padded verity, with a mattress on the floor and no sharp edges accessible to the person within. He didn't see anything that would lend itself to an escape attempt from the inside, either; he could guess form the direction of the light that the housing he was prying beneath was both the vent and the illumination for the room, and it was above and out of reach for Alyssa. Even if she could get it open from her side, it was unlikely that she'd be able to climb out without something to stand on.
Though... why was she still here?
"Yeah, it's me." He answered, able to see her. She was directly below the light figure, staring up at him. Her eyes... they were reddened, and wet. Had she been crying? That wasn't the only part of her that was red, either. Bare shoulders, shown off by her sleeveless shirt that she wore under the Buttlord coat, were welted like she'd been bashing into the walls... like she'd been trying to brute force her way out and hitting hard enough to hurt herself, despite all the padding. "... Marie saw through the act?"
"You've talked to Wendy!" She gaped, looking away from him for a moment before her head jerked up again, causing the chaotic red curls atop her head to bounce and scatter in odd directions with the somewhat frantic motion. "Is she okay?"
"She's fine, so is Stan- they're both out in the lab, trying to fuck with the machine." He spoke softly and quickly. "What happened to you? Wendy said you were playing along, how... how come you haven't escaped?"
She went quiet. He could see tension in her face as her jaw clenched, and her shoulders flexed upwards for a moment before she tried to let it go. "... Marie knew how to keep me here." Was all she said through gritted teeth. "Any bright ideas?"
Not really.
"Nothing solid, yet... just a back-up plan."
He didn't like it. Doing this made his skin crawl, knowing where it was leading... but if this was a time loop?
It didn't matter how ugly it was. Fucking it up could cause the whole thing to collapse. Morgan had already warned them how unstable this timeline was; a collapsed loop might unravel their entire universe. Existance as they knew it, erased because he couldn't bring himself to accept an ugly truism about the future that had settled into place enough to come back and help them. Ignore himself ceasing to be, what would happen to Alyssa? Would she fade away, or would she, as a time traveler, be stuck in some kind of quantum limbo?
Lesser of two evils.
He slid the copper coin through the gap, and watched as it fell into Alyssa's hands. She looked at it, blinked, and looked back up at him.
"... where did you get this?"
"From you." He answered simply. "... about twenty years from now, I'm guessing. It was dark."
"Candy-coated cockrings, are you fucking serious? I'm down here with a spike ball up my ass and there's a future version of me completing a goddamn surfer-scented walrus dick of a time loop?!"
"... getting into alliteration, huh?"
He couldn't really blame her. If that marker he'd been given by Clean Eric was anything to go by, there was a future of Mysterion running around, too, who hadn't arrived early enough to stop what was happening... which meant something was going to happen that was important to their future. The amount of restraint required, to know what that was, and know exactly how ugly it was going to get, and to still let it happen was...
He supposed that was the sort of maturity that came with age, and with doing this shit for a decade or so.
"I hate temporal responsibility." She grumbled. "... what now? I'm just supposed to... sit here? I... I don't think I can do that."
"You- the other you- she told me to go with my gut. That so long as I got that coin to you, it was gonna save your life, and the rest we'd just have to... react to."
"Great, listen to the powers that be, like they've done any shitlicking favors for me."
"... Lyssie..."
He didn't know what to say. Instinct was to try and find another way to get to her; to help her out of that cell and do something, but he'd already been told that was a futile action. Was he supposed to try anyway? He couldn't stand this- to know she was locked up, scared, alone-
Somewhere else in the complex, there was a squealing sound. A long screech of... feedback?
Mysterion feared the worst; that a priming noise was about to sound through the place via some kind of PA, and he fumbled his hand downwards along his person to try and get to the earplugs he'd brought with him that he'd taken out back when he'd first ducked into Habitation. Due to the confines of the space, however, he couldn't and succeeded only in smashing his elbow against the metal side of the ventilation shaft.
Turned out, he was only half-right. The sound was of a PA system... it just wasn't sounding off a priming noise. Instead, someone spoke on speakers that sounded like they were everywhere throughout the facility, echoing from multiple locations and reaching his current place in the vents from all sides at various volumes.
"Kenny McCormick, please report to the main laboratory. Kenny McCormick, to the main laboratory, please."
Marie's voice, calling him- not ordering him, but requesting him.
Why? What the fuck was she playing at?
His reflex was to refuse; why in hell would he come out of the walls and show himself? … and why wouldn't she order it if she knew he was there?
"You have ten minutes before I order your entire family to stop breathing."
What?!
His heart lurched into his throat, and his head bumped hard against the top of the vent as a jolt ran through his body. She wouldn't! … would she?
Would she?
Would he risk Karen on that theory?
"Oh god..."
Of all the curses Alyssa could have uttered, that gasp brought his attention back down.
She almost never swore to god. She didn't believe in capital-G 'God,' and usually had more colorful things to include in her expletives. To hear her mutter something so simple was something that hit harder than any vulgarity she could spew forth instead, and he found her with both hands covering her mouth, shaking, while looking back up at him.
"She wouldn't." He said aloud; in part to reassure himself, but also because, as of yet, it didn't fit with Marie's MO. Everything she'd done, she'd done without actually causing any harm. She'd pulled two sick people from her work force, suggesting that she still had some empathy in her actions. The commands she'd given had not done any mental damage to those he'd seen freed, aside from the initial distress. Certainly, after taking so many pains not to do harm, Marie wouldn't casually suffocate an entire family to death?
Of course not.
"She would." Alyssa whimpered from below him. "She... she came by here, spoke to me; she's too focused in. It's just like Amelia- she didn't do any harm, she didn't want to do any harm, not until she got triggered by someone stealing from her. Marie's already decided what she's going to do, she's already decided what the only way forward is. She thinks she's doing the right thing... that means she'll make ugly choices to get it done."
Not what he wanted to hear... but the truth rarely was.
"... try to find a way out." He told her, grasping the screwdriver again. The way he'd wedged it in had the metal tang of the tool shimmied all the way to one side of the seam in the vent, forcing as much of an opening as possible in the middle where the structure wasn't secured by bolt or otherwise. Turning the handle in towards that middle section, he shoved as hard as he could to make the metal sheeting of the vent bend just a little further.
"I... I understand."
There was a metallic pop as the tool was forced through, dropping into the room below and the opening it had opened snapping shut with little more than a dent to show for it. Not like he cared- he wanted to flood this whole place once everyone was out, but that wasn't his priority right now.
No, he needed to shimmy his way back out of the vents and make his way to the main lab... quickly.
He had nine minutes left.
::The Author's Corner::
I've got no filler here my friends. We're almost to the end of this, and I cannot articulate just how psyched I am.
ONWARDS!
-Buttlord