Chapter 11
Hyperion Site, Project Odysseus, Technologies Departments
"Urraru"
"It's OK babe" Gaige called out to the slightly panicked robot "We're fine."
"Wow." The other girl muttered looking around. As the walls had swung in, the chairs had slid up to the desk, and the walls had met in the center, completely covering the doorway, which was why Deathtrap had been in a state. The new space that had opened up was dominated by banks of monitors, dozens of them, along with a few computer consuls. The whole thing had a fantastically spy movie vibe to it.
The only thing that made this seem at all underwhelming was the fact that almost every monitor read 'Signal lost'. Only three of them still showed anything and the girls moved forward to closely examine them.
The first one showed an empty office, lavishly decorated and covered in bookcases, which was dominated by a heavy wooden desk, but empty of all signs of life.
The seconds' view was partially blocked by some shelving and something too close to make out on them, but the rest showed a laboratory. From what they could make out it seemed to be stuffed with all kinds of devices piled everywhere, but since the lights were currently off, they couldn't make out much beyond that.
The third and most disturbing was also partially blocked, this time by cables, but what they could make out was a series of vertical cylindrical vats filled with some kind of bubbling blue liquid, but they were too out of focus to make out what they contained. But what drew their attention was the nearest one to the camera. The giant vat stood filled with some kind of bubbling liquid, and up to it came one of the extending creatures, dragging one of the corpses of the men from earlier. It drug it to the edge of the vat and dropped it before shuffling off. Another creature that they hadn't seen before stepped up from behind where the cables blocked their view and lifted the corpse easily and began stripping it of its armor, casually tossing it into a pile just on the edge of frame. Once the body was out of the plates the creature tossed it into the vat, where it promptly started to bubble and dissolve into a revolting slurry that quickly drained out of one of the thick hoses connected to the side. The creature collected the armor and shuffled off.
"I think I'm gonna be sick." Gaige muttered looking away. "I mean, I've seen some things in my time, but that, that was just messed up."
"What were they doing with it?"
"I don't think I want to know."
"You don't think they were making food out of it, do you?"
"Oh god, I'm gonna be sick, how can you even think that?"
"Huh? Oh, it just resembled the prey of a Tessitract. See they inject their prey with a bio-chemical that they secrete and it liquifies the internal organs of the victim, and then they drink it out like one of those juicy pouches. It's kind of fascinating really, see they've got"
BLARG
Gaige threw up noisily into the trash can.
"Are you alright?"
"Of course I'm not alright! How can you describe that stuff right after seeing that? What is wrong with your stomach that you aren't sick? Is it even human?"
"Oh, ouch, I guess I've just seen so much worse than that, it doesn't affect me anymore. Do you need something to drink? Maybe a mint or something for the, er..."
"Yes and yes. Thank you. Sorry."
Artemis looked up from her bag "For what?"
"I donno, putting up with me I guess."
"That's my line, and here you go."
Gaige took a drink of water and then popped the mint while looking around, trying to avoid looking the other girl in the eye, and avoid the smell coming from the bucket, when her eyes landed on one of the computer terminals and an idea struck her.
She quickly handed the canteen back and moved around to the terminal and tried booting it up.
As she did, she heard another noise from outside as Deathtrap asked if she was alright.
"I'm fine babe." she called back "Just saw something on one of the monitors in here that didn't agree with me is all."
"Urarag"
"He's right you know, once we're done in here, we really should eat."
"Really? At a time like this, you're gonna mention food?"
"What? You should eat something."
"Ugh." Gaige sighed and went back to the computer.
Artemis watched in silence for a few minutes before she couldn't take it anymore and asked "So, uh, you getting anywhere on that?"
"Yeah, bit difficult if you don't have the password, though."
"So you're hacking it?"
"No, I found this taped to the bottom of the desk drawer." She said with a silly smirk, holding up a scrap of paper with some gibberish on it.
"When did you find that?"
"When I was looking for the switch. Alright I'm in, let's see what we've got."
She clicked on the first folder and brought up a long list, each with a dated entry next to it, and clicked the first one.
"Seems like this is a status report list, but it's all coded so I can't make heads or tails of it. Like this
'T 22 NC: Proceeding as normal, D.H.P. Status: normal'. I mean that all means something but without the references, I can't figure it out."
"Try somewhere else then."
She backed out and tried another folder.
"No good, this one's encoded, no way to read it without unscrambling it."
"Is there anything useful on that thing?"
"Don't know, but this is gonna take me a minute, in the meantime, try looking around to see if you can find whatever the ECHO was talking about that was in here."
Artemis shrugged and moved away from the other girl, who let out a near imperceptible sigh, having someone hover over your shoulder as you worked wasn't pleasant at the best of times, and Gaige was quite self-conscious that she must have smelled like vomit at the moment, so she was glad to be by herself at the moment, still she had work to do, and got to it.
A few minutes later, the smell in the room was becoming a serious problem for her, the circulation wouldn't have been that good at the best of times, and this was hardly the best of times. With the door blocked and the air off, it was becoming stifling and the smell was overpowering. Still she was almost done, so she pressed on.
Artemis quickly realized that she had no idea what she was looking for, and worse yet, even if she found it, there was a high chance she wouldn't recognize it. So far she had found three notebooks that may or may not have anything relevant in them, a large canister power source that seemed dead, some circuit boards that she had no idea what the use was and an unopened bottle of whiskey, that she didn't think she should show to Gaige. She had also found a bunch of documents that meant nothing to her and a trashy novel tucked behind one of the drawers, but she didn't think that was what they were after.
Sighing she looked over at the other girl as she worked and wondered, not for the first time, why she was doing this. It wasn't like she wanted to be rid of the other girl, in fact it was just the opposite. She had been so happy when Gaige had called out to her and asked to travel with her, so why was she so insistent on getting the other girl home, where she would no doubt want to stay? Obviously, helping her was what a friend would do, or at least she though that's what they would do, not that she had any experience with friends. She kept telling herself that it was to pay off her debt, or to give the other girl a chance to do something that she could never do again, but that wasn't entirely true. It really was that she just wanted the other girl to look at her, see her and smile, a genuine smile. Something so simple, yet something that she wouldn't admit, even to herself. All she wanted was to make her a little happier. But she knew that no one would really be happy with someone like her around, so she at least wanted to give the other girl a good memory of her, something to think of after she got home, and smile.
Shaking her head to clear her thoughts, she set what she had found on the desk before walking back over to see what Gaige had discovered, spotting a key on one of the shelves that had been hidden. She pocketed it, making note to mention it when they were done here and leaned over to see what Gaige was looking at.
Gaige was preoccupied with her investigation so she didn't notice the other girl approaching her, till a face slid in next to hers. She jumped away in surprise, nearly falling out of her chair as she did so, and whipped around only to be confronted with a look of surprise and a touch of hurt.
"Sorry." Artemis said.
"Damn you startled me, I think I need to attach a bell to you or something." Gaige said, more trying to cover her surprise than anything.
"So, have you found anything yet?"
"Actually, yeah, I think I have. First off, there was a lot of data on here, but it seems to be mostly records of activities or something. Well, considering what Jack said on that ECHO, this might be related to that, especially with all these monitors watching the labs. Or at least I think they are. Anyway, none of that is very useful to us, but while I was in there, I did find this."
She tapped a few keys and a bunch of lines appeared on the screen.
"Is that what I think it is?"
"Yep, a map."
"Can we get it onto our ECHOs?"
"Should be able to. Here, let me get it onto mine and then I'll send it to you. Right, there, done. Now, what'd you find?"
"Just that stuff." She said making a wave at the desk.
"Let's see, most of this is junk, an old power core and some circuit boards of unknown use, but the notebooks might be useful, and oooh, nice, can't let this go to waste."
"Why did I think you were gonna say that?"
"Cause you know me so well. Anyway, they could have been after any of this stuff, but we should get out of here so that I can breathe again, and then go over the map."
After fiddling with the items on the shelf again they managed to make the walls return to normal, which revealed a very worried Deathtrap.
"Urrgru"
"I know babe, but let's go into one of these work rooms and look over what we've got." Gaige said grabbing the whiskey bottle and giving her robo bestie a pat on the shoulder.
They cleared away the plans that were laid out on the table they had chosen and set Gaige's ECHO down on it, then crowded together to examine the screen. Gaige was able to ignore it, but Artemis found herself quite aware of the metal arm pressed against her fleshy one. Trying to ignore it, she focused on the screen as Gaige began to talk.
"Well, it seems like we are here." She pointed to a room "So that room, would be labeled 'Loader Maintenance', makes sense, and through that large door you were worried about is, let's see, 'Loader storage'. Huh, yeah I guess that makes sense. So we probably don't need to go in there."
"Good."
"Right, now on this side we have storage, probably for the loader parts. I'd love to loot that, but we should probably save that for later. Anyway, above us there are work labs and testing ranges and a bunch of other stuff that would take too long to go through all of right now, but this, this is what's most important." She scrolled through the floors till she got to the top floor and pointed to a section of rooms "If I had to guess, this would be the supervisors' office."
"Weren't we just in the supervisors' office?"
"Wha...yes, we were, but that was the person in charge of this area, I'm meaning the boss of the Technologies Department as a whole. And hopefully their private lab. Imagine what we might find there." Her eyes were practically glowing with anticipation "Also, I think that's probably where the call came from."
"Why?"
"Well, it's probably the most secure location in the wing, so if you were gonna hide, that would be the best place for it. And besides, there's some kind of hidden room behind it."
"Really? I don't see anything on the map. How can you tell?"
"Because there is nothing behind it. I mean, you don't put secret rooms on the map. Duh. But look at this open space, right here, and before you ask, here you can see all the power lines and air vents and stuff, so it isn't that. I'm betting there's something really good back there."
"Well, I'll trust your word on it, you have more experience with this kind of thing. But, how do we get up there?"
"And that's the rub. It's not gonna be easy to say the least. Give me a minute while I check something out."
"Sure, I'll get something to eat ready while you do that, alright?"
"Sounds good."
They got to work and a short time later, with more than a bit of help from Deathtrap, a small meal was laid out before them. Gaige took a tentative bite, more out of concern for her stomach than concern for the edibility of the meal, and suddenly realized she was famished. Putting her ECHO aside she dove into the food with a gusto that shocked the other girl. A few minutes later she sat back, not stuffed but pleasantly full and sipped her coffee, with milk and sugar.
"Whew, didn't realize how much I needed that."
"Looks like we're gonna need to take a bit of a longer brake than we thought."
"Huh? Why?"
"Really shouldn't move around too much after eating like that."
"Bah, I did it all the time when I was a Vault Hunter. Never bothered me back then."
"Well, you are a few years older than that now and"
"HAY. Weren't you the one telling me that I didn't need to hold back just because of my age?"
"Yeah, but that was about liking what you wanted to, not about this."
"Besides I'm not that old. I'm only twenty-five."
"I know, and it's not like you can't do anything right now, it's just that, well, it can lead to an upset stomach or something and that could slow you down at a crucial moment. Better to take it a bit slower."
"Fine, I get your point. Anyway, back to what we were discussing earlier, I think I found out how to open that shutter."
"Really?"
"Yeah, but you're not gonna like it."
"I never do."
"Yeah, well that always seems to be the case. I can't remember exactly how he said it, but Axton said something about that, I think it went something like 'Don't worry about it if your plans seem bad, they won't survive being exposed to reality anyway.' Or something like that."
"Who is this Axton guy anyway? You've mentioned him before."
"Huh? You don't know him? He was an ex-DAHL soldier, and another Vault Hunter with me, but he may be even more famous for posing for Going Commando and some other, ah, content for discerning adults."
"Not to my tastes."
"Really? They've got some pretty good articles you know. Or at least, I've heard it does."
"Sure. So, was he your, er, were you and him, you know?"
"Were we a thing? No, no I mean I hit on him a few times, but he always shot me down. Said I was too young for his tastes, in fact I kinda think he saw me as like a surrogate daughter, or his little sister, or something, which would've made that really awkward for him, now that I think about it. Plus he never said it, but I think he was still a bit hung up on his ex at the time. And I didn't learn until later, but apparently Maya told him if he ever even thought about it, she would be, I believe she said 'Very upset.' and trust me when I say that wouldn't have ended well for him."
"She was another Vault Hunter right?"
"Yeah, she was great. Bit aloof sometimes, but a total badass. Unfortunately, she passed away not that long ago. That one really caught me off guard, I mean she was always so on top of things, totally unlike me, maybe that's why we got along so well. She would have totally liked you, I'll bet, and you would have felt the same." Gaige sighed sadly before perking up and saying "Oh, speaking of her, I should have mentioned Krieg when we were back on Pandora, and you and Tina were, you know, discussing the intricacies of psychos."
"Why? Who's Krieg?"
"Oh, he was another Vault Hunter. And a psycho."
"And what brought him to mind?"
"He was like Maya's self-appointed bodyguard or something. He really liked her, well as best he could. And I think she liked him too, in her own way. I mean she never really seemed physically interested in anyone, just kinda carried herself above it all. I don't know, maybe that was just a facade she was putting on, or something. But I still can't believe she's gone."
"Urrara"
"Right, sorry. Enough of that. Back to the plan at hand. So, the shutter can be opened from this room." She pointed to the top floor of the wing, where she had been pointing to earlier.
"That's on the other side of the shutter."
"Yeah, that's why I started there. Second place it could be opened from is, hold on a second, where is it, ah here it is."
"That would be...where are we?"
"It would be the supervisors' office of the bio-lab department."
"So we would have to go through all those whatevers to get there?"
"Yeah, so I wouldn't make that our first pick."
"I'm gonna assume that you saved the actually plausible one for last, right?"
"You know me so well. But there is one other place that might work, but it's about as impossible as the other two, so we'll skip it. Now, this is gonna be a bit of trek so keep up with me on this."
"Now the real problem is that the door isn't powered, much like the first hidden door you had to open, the one that you had to cut the lines for. So, the first thing we're gonna need to do is to reestablish the power to it, and before you ask, I think the offices can probably override the power to open it."
"Anyway, to get the power we're gonna have to get to the power source, which is located here. The best way to get there would be through here."
"Isn't that almost directly below where we came in?"
"Yeah, or at least it's very close to it. But we need this elevator, here. Just past the receiving area, next to this giant room, that I'm guessing is the storage area. Anyway, we get through there and then into this access tunnel which should lead us right to it."
"And if we can't?"
"Can't what?"
"Get the elevator to work, or the tunnels blocked? What then?"
"There is another route, but it really sucks. So, let's hope we don't need it. Anyway, we get the power turned on, then we need to reroute it, which shouldn't be that hard, the controls are right here."
"And what if it's like that other control panel? The one in the entrance that didn't even have power to it?"
"Then that would suck. But with the manual rerouting of the power, it should either reset those or we can bypass them. Anyway, the other thing we're gonna need to do is get into this room" She pointed to a location snuggled between the two departments. One that at a glance seemed heavily fortified. "This would be the security station. And before you ask, no, we can't go there first, even though it's on the way. We need to get the power rerouted before the override in there will work."
"After that we should be able to raise the blast door from the security station and then come back and proceed up. Any questions?"
"Yeah, what are these rooms, here?" She pointed to a few very large rooms in the bio-lab that had no identification on them.
"No idea."
"Alright, well then, what about if what I think that voice over the intercom said is right about the maps maybe not being accurate anymore?'
"Well, then we're gonna have to get creative to get around. But we're still in a better position than we were before we got some kind of map, right?"
"Yeah, probably. OK last question, doesn't this path," She pointed to the route opposite the one they would have to take to get to the elevator "Isn't this the way those guys came from? The ones in the black armor I mean."
"Yeah, so there is a good chance we could run into some of their friends. So be on guard."
"Always am."
"Right. So, I think we've waited long enough to prevent any digestive issues, so you two ready? Good, let's go."