Maybe it was the silence that was completely unnerving, or the fact that people should have been around, but for some reason weren't. Yet there was no evidence that people had been killed, not in this part of the city anyway. It was almost as if people had just disappeared as a whole.
Makina returned to the worn-out bar, finding his friends for the most part half awake, still curled up in various corners of the small place. Medic hadn't returned yet, it seemed.
"This part of town is deserted," he announced to whoever was awake. It didn't take long for someone to stir and respond.
"Deserted? Whadd'ya mean, 'deserted'?" Engineer arched his back very much like a cat, feeling several satisfying pops.
"I mean, there's absolutely no on-"
The Sniperbot was cut off by Medic waltzing back in, a bag of churros and chocolate in one hand and coffee in the other. "Zhere's literally no one around here!" He announced. "Also I did find a mechanic shop and I may or may not have broken into a 7-Eleven for food. But they have churros!"
Engineer stared long and hard at the chocolate Medic had before pulling his eyes back to Makina. "So it ain't people home during curfew... people aren't even around at all?"
"Basically."
"Ja, zhat's it."
Spy got up fron his seat. "I'm going to ask Christina about this."
The team watched with interest, curious as to how Spy was going to go about asking the hostess about the lie she had told them.
The assassin couldn't seem to find her anywhere. She was not upstairs, not in the backroom. The bathroom door however, was locked. He immediately assumed she was inside, freshening up, perhaps. There was a thump from inside.
He knocked on the door nonetheless. She needed to know that it was urgent and that he needed to speak with her immediately. When no reply came, he knocked again, this time more insistently.
"Christina? It is impertinent that we speak with you." No reply. Spy was starting to get even more frustrated. "Christina?"
He heard a little running water and the shuffle of footsteps. Assuming she was just getting to the door, he took a step back to let her out. Somethig felt a little odd, and reflexively he drew his knife, the solidity of it in his hand providing a little more security.
The door took an awfully long time to open, Spy watching carefully as the doorknob jiggled and turned.
His reflexes were still incredible. He spotted the blood-soaked body on the floor and struck the very next second, twisting the Spybot around and jamming his knife straight into its back. It fizzled and popped, the scream of a woman morphing into static shrieks as the disguise of the hostess shimmered away into nothing.
Dropping the robot, Spy stepped past it and into the bathroom, approaching the pool of blood that had gathered under Christina's silver dress. Kneeling down, he extended a hand to touch the woman's still-warm neck. No pulse.
A thought struck him. Gingerly, he flipped the body around, searching for the fatal wound. At a glance, the kill had been clean. Her front was completely free of blood. Nothing had changed except for a little smudging of her lipstick from where the Spybot had grabbed her to keep her from screaming.
Through the red stained mess he found the wound. It was for the most part a clean stab, straight through the spine and into the heart. At least it had been a quick kill. From his investigation, he also found a tiny sign of a struggle. There was a small tear in her dress, possibly from where the Spybot had accidentally caught the knife on while trying to maneuver for the final strike.
Something a little like relief flowed through him as he realised the bots weren't quite perfect. They slipped up, their movements unable to fully mimic that of real mercenaries. Humans were always a little more skilled, and robots only knew what they were programmed to know.
He stood up again as someone else showed up at the door. "Herr Spy, you're taking awfully long and zhe ozhers are asking fo- oh." Medic had nothing else to say at the sight of the bathroom.
Spy gave Medic an expectant look, the doctor retreating from the doorway to go back to the rest.
Everyone else was awake and waiting, watching him with expecting looks. "I zhink... it's quite self explanatory." As if to emphasise his point, Spy tossed the broken robot onto the ground, the sound of metal against wood flooring echoing throughout the bar.
"So... lady was Spybot," Heavy stated, eyes fixed on the crumpled metal heap.
"Correction, she was just killed by a Spybot." Spy's piercing gaze swept the room, silently hoping someone would get the underlying message. When no one finished his sentence for him, he sighed in exasperation. "I mean there are robots around us. In this so-called abandoned part of town."
Engineer pursed his lips, staring at the Spybot. "I dunno, could have been a stray."
"And you think a stray would have known to kill the last person in this part of town?"
"Shh whhsn't thh lhhst phrrshnm."
Everyone's attention shifted to Pyro, though no one could make out his words. The firebug sighed, popping open the front of his mask. "I said she wasn't the last person. There's still the angry hotel lady across the street."
Makina got up. "Well I don't know about all of you, but I'm going to talk to her." Medibot seemed to understand the implications of "talking", already getting up to try stop the taller robot. The two of them left the bar; whether the mercenaries followed or not was not their problem.
Makina knocked on the door of the inn, blatantly ignoring the closed sign crudely pasted on the door. After a moment of waiting, he knocked again, this time harder.
A muffled "fuck off" came from inside. Makina decided to try again. "Come on lady, we just need to ask a simple question."
An even more irritated reply, coupled with some rather insulting words floated through the door. None of them could wait any more, so Makina reared a hand back and let loose, punching a nice hole through the old wooden door. He was made of metal, so the thin door was no issue for him despite his lack of strength. Reaching his hand through the hole, he unlocked the door from inside and swung it open.
The two robots were greeted by an angry woman standing on a table with a pistol in her hands. She looked very much like a madwoman, her hair incredibly frizzy and her dress rumpled and stained.
"You fuckers take one more step and I will shoot you," she hissed, her grip on the single small firearm tightening. If Makina was capable of eye-rolling, he would have.
"Lady, I don't want to hurt you. You saw what I could do to a solid door. Just answer a question and we're outta here. Believe me, no one wants to stick around your ugly face either."
His sentence ended with a loud bang. Still, he was not impressed by the bullet hole in his arm. "Thanks for that, by the way."
He approached the lady, watching her scramble to reload the gun. The second shot missed and in the next second, Makina grabbed her and pinned her against the wall, the pistol dropping to the floor.
"Now, do you want to answer that question or not?"
"Fuck. You."
"Herr Makina, I thought ve vere just talking?"
"And I am, right? I wasn't the one to shoot. So... where did everyone go? Were they killed? What happened exactly?"
The woman trapped grunted, but gave no answer. Makina twisted her arm a little more, a spark of excitement coursing through him as he squeezed an answer from her.
"They- they died-" She paused to gasp in pain. "He- he lured them out to the c-city centre and- killed everyone w-who didn't know where you all were-"
"Who lured them?" Makina didn't twist her arm any further.
"Some girl... and her army of robots... they let me go because I-" She seemed to catch herself before anything else slipped.
Makina hummed in interest. "You told her you knew us. Any chance this girl was wearing a green dress with white trimmings, orange eyes?"
"Y-yeah."
Makina let her go, the woman slumping to the floor. "We got what we need, Doc. Let's go." They left without another word. The team had a lot to know.
Everyone else was gearing up to go when Makina and Medibot returned. "So... what did y'all find?" Engineer asked.
"Well we found out that the woman from the hotel told Olivia that she had seen us. So if anything, Olivia knows we're around."
"Vell zhat isn't good. That means we have an awful lot less time to actually get zhings done now."
Engineer stood up, pushing his arms against his knees. "If that's the case, I think we should get down to the mechanic shop now. God knows what little time we have left and I wanna get at least a proper prototype of the sapper out before she finds us."
A silent agreement rippled throughout the room, and abandoning anything that wasn't of use to them anymore, the mercenaries left the bar. Medic led the way out to the abandoned shop he'd found earlier, the others taking note of the broken glass door of the 7-Eleven on the way.
The shop was tucked away, a short thing squeezed in between two buildings twice it's height. There was a simple, half-closed metal shutter blocking the door - the owner had no time to fully close shop and lock it before fleeing this part of town. The shutter rolled back up without a fight, granting access to the oil-slicked workshop.
It was nothing impressive - nothing at all like Engineer's personal workshop back in Teufort. A single, half-fixed car remained on a raised platform, exposing it's underside. Scattered around the floor were tools unknown to everyone except Engineer, black oil stains marking almost every single surface. To the far right of the shop was a wall with a built-in shelf, bottles of car polish and the like lining on the shelves. The dust on both the bottles and the shelf told everyone that no one really bought anything. There was an off-white cash register on the counter, opened and ransacked of its contents, as well as a shelf of walkie talkies and multiple boxes of batteries.
"It ain't as great as home," Engineer mused, "but it's something. C'mon Medibot, we'll get to work on that prototype sapper. The rest of y'all, well, I'd suggest scouting around for anything of use and maybe some info on what Olivia knows. Without getting caught. And before y'all go, take a walkie talkie. Gotta stay in contact." For some reason, the last reminder felt needed. Once he felt like everyone got the message, he and Medibot retreated to the counter, Engineer finding a box of blueprint paper to use.
Pyro and Heavy seemed to take it upon themselves to leave the stuffy workshop to explore the rest of the town and try to find out more about Olivia's whereabouts - mostly because the sickening smell of oil was getting to them. Medic was content to head back to the 7-Eleven to raid it of more food. Demoman took to examining anything in the workshop closely for use, and Spy left for a smoke break.
Despite the empty street, Pyro clutched his flamethrower close, his fingers lightly tapping against the cool surface of the weapon in an attempt to drown out the painful silence. Heavy's shadow seemed to completely shade the smaller mercenary out, the two of them remaining in stony silence.
"You are not bad fighter. I see you on field, you are very good." Heavy did not look at Pyro, fixing his eyes on the grey road instead.
"Hh… thhnks. Yhh're nhht bhhd yhhrshlf."
"You realise I do not understand you."
Pyro popped open the front of his gas mask again. "You're not bad yourself. You always seem to catch me around corners which is… impressive, given the weight of that minigun."
The faint sound of clanking stopped their conversation there. Quickly ducking into an alley, they barely missed a troop of Soldierbots marching by, their guns ready in case they encountered any mercenaries.
They were incredibly tense as the Soldierbots passed, too ignorant to notice both mercenaries hidden in the shadows of the alley. Only once they passed and the clanking of metal feet faded away did they dare head back out to the street.
"They are patrolling streets. We must tell others." Heavy seemed ready to turn around and head back right there and would have, had Pyro not grabbed his trunk of an arm and tugged him back. The Russian frowned, staring at Pyro's hands wrapped around his arms and waiting in stony silence for an explanation of the violation of personal space.
"There might be more. We need to find out where exactly they're coming from."
"Nyet. We tell the others first. They will know what to do."
"Sure, okay. We tell them, then what? What do you think anyone's going to do with that little information? We need to know where they're coming from. If we can pinpoint where all these robots are coming from, we'll know where that little girl is."
Heavy wasn't convinced at all. "If you go out, you will die. It is just two of us against many robots."
Pyro scowled behind his mask. In a rush of childish stubbornness, he huffed. "Fine. I'm going on my own then. Come look for my body later." The firebug turned and continued down the street. For a moment Heavy decided to just stand there and watch if Pyro would come back when he realised he wasn't following. When Pyro didn't slow and turned down the next street, Heavy found himself following against his ringing internal alarms.
Heavy caught up with Pyro, who was clearly delighted to have had his way. Heavy's frown deepened on his face. "You are very stubborn," he stated. If Pyro reacted, it was concealed by the mask. He just closed the filter back and turned into a building as the sound of conversations floated towards them.
The few, working fluorescent lights hanging above provided just enough light to guide them towards an elevator. The tiny screen with little green LEDs claimed the lift to already be on the ground floor waiting for someone to use, but upon pressing the elevator button once, twice, six times, Pyro decided the LED screen was lying.
Heavy nudged Pyro aside, cracking his knuckles. "Let Heavy do it." He dug his fingers through the gap between the polished doors, struggling a little to get his grip. The doors didn't fight back once he got a firm hold, giving way to the massive pressure asserted on it. Sure enough, the actual elevator cabin was waiting there.
"Ohh… nhhce." Experimentally, Pyro entered the lift and pressed the highest number he could find and much to their surprise, the elevator moved after a second of waiting. In the awkward seconds of waiting for the lift to reach its destination, Pyro fixed his eyes on the screen in the lift, watching the numbers increase as the elevator took them up to the top floor. The cabin gave them a little ding to let them know they had reached their destination floor, the doors opening with a little protest.
"Rhhf acchhss… rhhf acchhss… thhrr!" Pyro headed straight for a door with an acrylic sign that read Roof Access pasted on it, heading out of the dark building and onto the exposed rooftop.
Immediately Pyro went to the edge of the building, leaning over to survey the area. Heavy squinted against the sudden exposure to sunlight. "Why did we come here?" He watched Pyro scurry from edge to edge of the roof, slowly making his way over to join him. When he got to where Pyro was so fixated on something, he realised why Pyro had taking him all the way there.
"Oh…" From the rooftop, a major gathering of robots of all sizes could just be seen on the city streets. It was almost like ants crowding around a dropped piece of chocolate, tiny little things circling a massive blue tank in the center. Olivia was nowhere to be seen amongst the crowd. From the looks of it, the crowd was not growing - that was good. It meant Olivia did not have a mini robot manufacturing plant on her hands. It means she only had a limited supply of robots. But even so, her current supply of robots was huge.
Pyro reached back to his belt for the old walkie talkie, popping open his mask filter and holding the device to his mouth. "Hey guys? We found where Olivia's robots are… and there's a lot of them."
The first static-filled reply came from Spy. "Great, where are you?"
"Some uh… some building. It's… blue and pretty old. I'd fire a flare from here but the robots might see it."
Makina was the next to pick up. "Oh, so you found Olivia? About how many robots are there?"
Pyro took a moment to scan the crowd again. "We haven't actually seen Olivia, but there's maybe a few hundreds, and a massive tank."
Whatever Makina said after that was interrupted by Engineer, who had Medibot holding the device while he worked. "Fellas, good news! The prototype is comin' along real nice, should have a proper working one in a few days."
"A few days?" Spy snapped through the walkie talkie, "We do not have a few days."
"Yeah uh, Spy might be right. The robots look like they're spreading out and they might get to our part of town in… maybe 36 hours at the most."
Engineer went silent for a moment, only the sound of a drill whirring. Finally, he responded. "36 hours huh? Well… I'll try. I'll keep y'all updated. You can put it down Medibot."
When no one else responded, Pyro tucked the device back into his belt. "Let's go back."
36 hours. 36 hours was a very short amount of time. Engineer didn't have that much time to build the perfect long-range sapper, so he tried every prototype he had. Medibot tried not to mind constantly getting sapped, though after the fifth time it was getting tiring. Still, he said nothing about it, letting Engineer do his work. A lot of scrap metal and bit and pieces littered the floor around him, as well as multitude of tools that weren't being used lying around like an audience.
Engineer got off his seat once more, and Medibot knew he was going to get sapped again. This time, he went all the way across the room, as far from Medibot as he could get. The goal was to have the sapper be able to be remote controlled and have as far a range as possible. He placed the small metal device on the floor next to him, biting his lip a little as he activated it.
Nothing. Medibot stared at the device. "Guess it needs a little more work," Engineer mused, turning it off and heading back to his seat.
"Maybe you can try ah, increasing zhe size of zhe EMP emitter?" He suggested. Engineer muttered something in agreement, dismantling the little device again once more. It was going to be a long night for him.
Engineer didn't realise he drifted off to sleep until Spy walked in, shaking him gently. "Wake up." Next to him, the last of his sapper prototypes sat. He hadn't tested it out yet, having left the battery to charge.
"How long was I sleeping?" Engineer asked, his words jumbling up through a yawn. He took the device into his hands once more, intending to continue working on it, though instead his hands merely rested on its cool metal surface. Medibot had since left the room, his and Makina's voice audible from outside, as well as Demoman's.
"Long enough. How's the sapper going?"
"I dunno, I haven't tried this one out yet." Spy gestured to the metal box, silently prompting Engineer to turn it on. The Texan took the remote and flicked the switch on. For a second there was nothing, then the sapper hummed, some sparks were heard outside, and Demoman showed up at the door.
"Oi, what's the big idea lads? The robots were telling a bloody good story, wot ye sap 'em for?" Demoman accused. Immediately Engineer was fueled with energy, excited to know that his sapper had worked. He took it and hurried out, delighted to see both robots temporarily stunned.
Flicking the switch off, both robots whirred back to life, not quite happy with the sudden drain of energy. "You know, you can inform us next time before you use that thing," Makina hissed, "but great that it works. And we have… maybe 10 hours left."
"If ve only have 10 hours left, I suggest ve just take zhe fight to zhem before zhey spread out any furzher. Besides, zhe closer zhey are, zhe more ve can sap, ja?"
"True, true. Anyway we might catch them by surprise. Alright boys, gather up your things! We're gonna take Olivia down today." Pocketing the sapper and the remote, Engineer and the rest of the team hauled their belongings together. The fight was finally coming. It was time to take back what was theirs and make Olivia pay for the deeds of her father.
