Chapter 14

Hyperion Site: Project Odysseus: Sewage system

Artemis

"Of course, I get the sewer level." Artemis muttered to herself, trying to distract herself from the situation at hand as she drug herself forward through the sludge and slime that coated the inside of the pipe. She had no idea what it was or how it had gotten to this part of the system, nor did she want to. She was just grateful that she had though to pack the mask and goggles, another thing that Gaige had mocked her about, but Gaige hadn't been in the caves on Tartaris, where the sulfur fumes were so bad that it threatened to choke you, turning you light headed in minutes and anything longer easily proved fatal. And now it was allowing her to breath in here.

She was still seriously unhappy with the other girl, even though she knew that it wasn't her fault, and she did remember that she had thought this was such a bad idea that she hadn't mentioned it at first, but still, she wasn't the one crawling through the pipe.

She tried not to think about how the stuff around her was working its way into her cybernetics, how it would gunk up the systems and joints, about how she was going to have to take them all apart and clean every millimeter of them. In fact, she was trying not to think at all, but in the darkness, her thoughts couldn't help but sink like the muck around her.

'Well I should be the one down here, I'm disgusting already, so that's probably why she sent me down this way. Down here with the muck and filth where I belong. Maybe I should just stop and sink in, vanish into the filth, maybe everyone would be better off if I did. No, she's waiting for me to do this, can't make her any more disappointed in me than she already is.' She shook her head to try and clear the darkness building 'Keep it together.' She repeated to herself and kept dragging herself forward.

She passed side tunnels as she went, shining her light down them, half expecting to see something horrid moving in them, partially thinking that she might be the horrid thing moving in the tunnels herself. But they were all devoid of life.

Periodically she checked her ECHO to see her progress, and ensure that she was still on the right course, not that there were many branching paths. In fact, it was more to try and make sure she was still alive than anything else. The darkness played funny tricks on the mind.

She had never been one to do much hunting in caves, especially not narrow ones like this, she had preferred to be outside, even though it meant that things could come at you from any direction, there was something about feeling the wind against your skin and tousling your hair that made you feel free, free in a way that she had never felt with other people, at least not until recently.

The truth was, she wasn't very good with people. She knew she had said it before, but it was the truth. Even before her accident, she hadn't had any friends, and afterwards, with her scared and lopsided appearance, she was actively shunned. So she had kept it up, and had learned that the weirder she made herself look, the less most people wanted to do with her. In fact, she had only been hit on twice in all of her schooling, and she strongly suspected that they had either lost a bet or were looking for an easy notch in the belt. She had gotten suspended for testing out her newest cybernetic on one of them, but apparently he had gotten his teeth replaced and was living a normal life, not that she had ever checked up on him, it was just what she had been told when she was let back into school.

Still, she had preferred to be treated properly, after all a monster should be feared. And everyone had treated her like one, except for Gaige and Deathtrap, who had seen enough real monsters that they didn't look at her like she was one.

She wondered, what if she told them everything? All the things she thought she needed to keep hidden about herself, the things about herself that she hated the most. Would they leave her in disgust? Would they want to travel with her anymore? Would they really except her for what she was? Would they still look her in the eye?

No, better to keep things quiet, to keep things like they were. Nothing changes, everything stays the same. And then she could get Gaige home to her family, and that would be that. She could do that, and the other girl would be happy.

She wished she was as competent as Gaige, she seemed to know what she was doing at all times. Able to handle anything that was thrown at her, from locked doors to reading plans, making decisions to making robots, and she seemed to know where she was going, unlike Jinx. She on the other hand had nothing to offer anyone, just a failure of a hunter, one who got scared by a bad situation and ended up quitting. She was nothing, in fact all she could offer the other girl was a ride, take her ship away from her and she was nothing.

She was so lost to the spiraling darkness in her heart that she nearly missed the pipe suddenly angling down, barely managing to catch herself in time. It wasn't like the pipe hadn't been angled slightly this entire time, but the sudden increase in angle was a bit alarming. It also meant she was getting closer to her goal.

There was going to be no easy way to do this, or rather no way but the easy way, she was going to have to slide down. And she knew what would be waiting at the bottom, a large pile of filth. So the hard part, the nearly impossible part, would be to try and slow her decent and not plow into it. Or barring that, to somehow displace the pile so that she didn't end up face first into it. With no room to turn around, despite her size, she was going down head first.

She swore softly and prepped herself as best she could, and then after checking to make sure that everything, especially the ECHO that she had been checking, was securely attached to her, shimmied her way forward till she felt gravity take over.

As she started to slide, she shoved her right hand into the wall, grateful that she had slipped on a glove before entering, and forced her left shoulder into the other side, trying to slow herself down. Only to have the amount of gunk that had built up on them act as a lubricant and destroy all the friction she was attempting to use. She started picking up speed and in return shoved harder, feeling the seams and ridges on the inside of the pipe through her glove as they ran past. She grit her teeth and started to feel the heat rise in her hand, indicating that it was working, and she found herself slowing, but not fast enough. She saw the end of the tube coming up and at the last moment shoved her left hand forward, breaking the buildup there and sliding past it.

She felt the sludge slide over her front and a wave of disgust washed over her. She knew if it wasn't for her goggles, her eyes would be burning from the stench. Coughing behind her mask, she fervently hoped that she hadn't cut herself on the slide, or had any open wounds that she didn't know about, cause she hadn't brought much in the way of antibiotics, which in retrospect was probably pretty stupid considering where she was crawling through.

She sighed and shook her head to get her wits back about her, and resumed crawling forward. She kept her ears open as best she could, trying to pick up the sounds of anything moving in the tube, but so far had only heard the dull echoing of her own movements.

The dark thoughts spiraled against her mind as she continued to move, till she almost wished something would move in the tunnel. Then her mind would seize on that, and she would start imagining what it might be, some creature that hadn't seen light in years, something like a the subterranean worms of Murglip, all pale, with dead eyes and ringed rows of teeth.

The thought would continue to pound against her until she was sure that something was crawling up behind her and the only way out was to distract herself with other thoughts, which always led back to her own inadequacies and the spiral would make another lap.

Her mind kept running in circles until once again the bottom fell out from beneath her, only this time she was too far forward to catch herself, and she went sliding down.

The speed was too much for her to slow down so she wound up crossing her arms in front of her and plowed into the pile of filth at the bottom, bruising herself against the sudden leveling out of the pipe.

"Ow" she involuntarily let out with more whine then she would like to admit "This sucks."

She continued pulling herself along and after a little more time found that the pipe was getting larger, undoubtedly due to the fact that more and more of the tributary pipes were feeding in and soon found that she could lift herself to her hands and knees.

It wasn't long after that that she came to the end of the tunnel.

She crouched at the edge and looked over. The pipe ended into a giant cistern, which was partially filled with something that she didn't want to identify. She looked around the sides, mostly to avoid looking down, and found a dozen other pipes that would normally be emptying into it, and spotted a ladder going up the side. Unfortunately, it was two pipes over from where she currently was.

She could shimmy back and try and find a hatch she could open, climb her way over or try and climb up, probably using the cable she had brought with.

Out of those, the first one was something she really didn't want to do. The idea of moving backwards through this sludge was revolting, it would shove the slime up and under everything. Plus, she didn't recall seeing any hatches on her way, so that was an absolute last resort.

The second was alright, but it would require jumping between the pipes, and considering the buildup on her hands, the chance of her either missing or slipping when she tried to catch the edge and winding up falling into that pit of vileness below her was pretty high. It was an option, but not necessarily the best.

And the third had its own issues. Not only would she need to find a way to hook the cable, and even if she could hook it, and securely at that before she would even attempt to climb, and then there was trying to climb it, it ran into the same problem as the second option, the muck on her hands would make climbing extremely hard at best.

So she decided on option 2.5, she pulled out her cable and one of the tools she had brought with and tied them together before leaning out and spinning it. It took her a few tries to finally snag the ladder rung that she wanted and get the cable wrapped around itself properly.

That taken care of, she pulled it taut and started winding it around her left arm. This was going to hurt no matter what, she knew that clearly from the start, but if she could avoid going into the muck, that would be considered to be worth the pain. She hoped.

Sighing once again, she slipped over the edge before she could really think any more about what she was doing and fell, feeling the cable pull her towards the wall with no small amount of speed, she stuck her feet out and felt them hit the wall, only to slide away as the muck slid under her, slamming her into the wall and bruising her ribs on the rungs of the ladder. At least she hoped they were only bruised, but she didn't have time to think about that, she was about to bounce away from the wall and quickly scrambled to get her hands onto the rungs.

She just managed to wrap her arm around the rung with her right arm before she slid to far, though she was going to be sore, she had stopped. She swung back against the wall with another painful thump and this time managed to slide her feet against one of the rungs, though even with her boots, she kept slipping and sliding until she jammed her toes through the rung.

Wincing she started to climb, one limb at a time, making sure to brace herself with each move. Doing it slowly would be a much better thing than doing it twice. With each step upwards she wound the cable around her arm, until she had made her way to where she had hooked the ladder.

She paused, re-braced herself, and very carefully managed to extract the cable and tool from the rung, being cautious to not drop anything. It wasn't that the tool itself was irreplaceable, that was why she had chose this one out of the ones she had brought after all, but she still didn't want to lose it needlessly.

Once it was safely secured, she resumed her painful, slow accent, and before long found that the rungs themselves were getting less and less gunked up, but she had to remind herself not to speed up. Just because they were getting better didn't mean that she wouldn't slip if she moved to fast. In fact, without her tether to the ladder, slipping now would be much worse. Nope slow and steady, hand, hand, foot, foot, one rung at a time.

And then she found herself at the top.

She pulled herself onto the grating that surrounded the pit, and after a glance around to make sure that she was alone, flopped out in a most undignified fashion.

Artemis lay there for more than a few minutes, feeling the bruises and the tiredness that had sunk into her bones and decided, if she ever got out of here, she was going to invest in one of those electric whips she had heard about.

Eventually she couldn't put it off any longer and sat up with a moan, feeling the glop that was covering her stick to the grating as she did. She looked around the room in earnest, there were a number of control consuls covered in dials and switches, pipes led here and there, some coming in, some going out, some just seeming to move around the room without much purpose. There were two more large cisterns that she could see, and a number of tanks along one side. All of it was on at least two floors, with metal catwalking ranging out on her level.

And then she spotted the best thing in the room. Tucked away on one side, most of the way down. An emergency chemical shower.

She made her way over, trying and failing to not get her hopes up that it would still be operational.

Standing clear she pulled the ring down only to be met with a stomach dropping growling noise, followed by nothing. Her head dropped and she sighed sadly.

And then the mechanism made a dry coughing noise, and the pipes started groaning. She took a step back, while watching it suspiciously, when it coughed twice more and a rusty muck sprayed out. It spit and spattered for a few seconds and then the water started coming clean.

She laughed as she waited for it to run clear and the instant she though it was enough she stepped into the spray, head down, and fully dressed.

The water pounded against her hood as she stood there, watching as the goop and glop slid off her. It wouldn't all come off she knew, but still, it was better than she had hoped for.

Eventually she pushed her hood back and took the spray on her mask, and pulled out the neck of her top to let the water rush underneath.

She didn't know how long she stood there, letting the muck wash away, before she pushed the ring back up to stop the flow and just stood there dripping. She knew she still smelled foul, and that her cybernetics needed a thorough cleaning, but she felt better, if a bit squishy.

She shook herself and pulled out her ECHO to find her place on the map. Looking at it she could see that she needed to go up to the top and find a door near one end.

She hooked it back on her belt and opened her bag, reequipping herself before setting out.

Gaige undoubtedly would have been able to find the door by doing something logical, like following the power conduits or some such, Artemis figured as she walked, but she had no idea which ones were which, so she had to rely heavily on the map. Outside she could have found her way any number of ways, from the stars to land marks, but inside, well, she had more trouble. Not that she didn't know her way around machinery, it was just that when she compared herself to the other girl, she felt lost.

But she still found her way to the door, without making a wrong turn, so she wasn't completely helpless.

She double checked her ECHO just to be sure that it was the right one. 'Right, just through this door there should be a room, I need to find the vent on the far side of it, easy right? Wait, what did Gaige always say about saying things like that? Oh well, it's not like I said anything I only thought it, so that doesn't count."

And with that she pushed the button next to the door without thinking about it. To her surprise the door slid open without any fuss, reveling a mid-sized room that was surprisingly empty. Two curved desks were set on either side of one of the other doors, and directly opposite it was a huge grungy yellow door that seemed to slide vertically. The only other thing of note was that the floor in front of that door was angled down and ended in a lip directly in front of the door.

She spotted the vent she needed on the other side of the room and made her way towards it and had made it half way through the room when the small side door hissed and slid open.

Artemis spun and found herself face to face with two men, who froze staring back at her. Even though her mind usually was on top of things, usually causing her to react even before she knew what was happening, the surprise of meeting anyone down here stopped her thoughts and instead she found herself observing them like some kind of bizarre specimens.

They were wearing high end armor, colored in black with green and purple trim. Both of them had helmets covering their faces, with a white smear down the front, as if they had dipped their hand in paint and drug it down the front. She could make out a necklace on one of them, though she couldn't see what was hanging from it. They both had guns in hand, which after a moment they pulled up to fire.

Artemis drew her pistol as she threw herself sidewise and fired, killing one of the two, but taking shots to her shield in return. She hit the ground and rolled, coming up to shoot the other only to have had him close the distance and slam his shoulder into her, throwing her into the wall where she felt something impact her back and knocking the gun from her hand. It skittered down the ramp to the door as yellow lights spun up on both sides and the door began opening with a grinding screech.

She popped her blade and thrust it at the head of her attacker causing him to lift her higher and throw her aside to avoid it.

Hitting the ground, she managed to roll with the impact and threw herself forward as soon as her feet were back under her, just managing to go under the shots he had fired. She landed at the edge of the ramp and rolled forward, sliding down it till she came to a rest against the lip, her hand finding her pistol.

The man, seeing what was about to happen dove forward, grabbing her. She twisted and tried to throw him off, only to toss him over the edge and through the opening door, only he didn't let go of her and pulled her with him into the dark pit that had opened up and they fell into the garbage chute together.