"Finish what you're doing there. Now, skinbag!"
Revenant didn't bother looking back to see if the hacker had followed his command. He charged down the aisle at a full-speed run. When he reached the door, he found that it had been automatically closed and locked. A heavy steel door- even his mechanical body couldn't generate enough brute force to pry it open. If it came down to it, he could neutralize the electricity that powered the locking mechanism-
...but he was in a decent tactical position right here. The enemy had to open the door to get to him, a loud and slow action that he'd have plenty of time to react to. Then they'd have to maneuver carefully around their server equipment, which was worth much more to the corporation than it was to him.
No footsteps came from outside the door, nor any subtle, telltale vibrations transmitted through the structure around him. Whoever was coming for him, they hadn't arrived yet.
The assassin walked the perimeter of the room until he found a vent on the ceiling.
The only sound in the dimly lit room was the alarm. It sounded over and over, each of its tones precisely one and a half seconds apart. Revenant instinctively timed his less subtle movements with the alarm, ensuring that no one would hear him.
He reached up and pried the vent cover away. The bulky plating that covered his shoulder joints unfolded and retracted, which made his body narrow enough to climb through the opening and fit inside the ventilation ducts. He replaced the cover over the opening, and waited.
The minutes passed at an intolerably slow rate. Revenant despised idle periods- he needed to be doing something, killing something, always focused on a task. It kept the flood of human sensations from lingering in his processor… slow, careful breathing, a pounding heartbeat, the sticky feeling of sweaty flesh against the metal surface of the duct. Sharp pain tore through his imaginary rib cage from the damage he'd inflicted on himself earlier. He focused on the sight of his metal arm, the sense of which wires had a current running through them and which did not, the warnings from his systems that his internal temperature was still running high- it wasn't enough to fully obliterate the phantom human body that would never let him go.
Now he knew with certainty: that human consciousness was a part of him, too. He'd long ago convinced himself, when he found out about the scientific research and technological development that made the Apex Games possible, that another being's syncording data had been mixed with his own somehow- that was why he shared the memories of a human whom he'd never met.
Realizing now that the disgusting organic creature who'd been an intruder in his mind for so long had been the basis for his consciousness… He'd never be free. More than anything, he wanted to rip those human parts out of his body.
He fought the impulse, knowing that they didn't really exist- and yet the feeling of them never went away, never gave him a moment of peace.
"Revenant!"
Rushed footsteps sounded on the tiles below. Crypto must have been looking for him. The assassin made no move and remained silent, in wait…
The door burst open. Several armed guards rushed into the server room. Half moved left of the doorway, and half moved right, in sync as a single, cohesive unit. Crypto stopped in his tracks- he looked around in panic for a moment, then began climbing up one of the metal racks that held up the servers. The first guards to make their way down that aisle reached him, and one of them pulled him down by the leg. He hit the ground hard and cried out.
The guards called to each other over their radios- Revenant couldn't make out the fine details of what they were saying, but it was simple enough to guess. They came running from the other aisles to surround the hacker. The first guard who'd caught him hauled him to his feet. They zip-tied his hands together in front of him.
"Found the intruder. Server room, level two," one of them called over their radio as they pushed him along.
They filed underneath the opening to the vent shaft. The two guards who were dragging Crypto now stood directly below the assassin.
As he dropped from the ceiling, he shifted into his transient state. Black smoke swirled around him. His form seemed to blend into it, taking on the appearance of something extracorporeal, coalesced from ash and crackling energy. The guard below him shouted in surprise as he landed- his ghostlike state was distinctly solid on impact, and the shout turned into a scream of terror, which cut off when his blade pierced the guard's lungs.
All eyes in the room turned to look at the simulacrum. The remaining guard who held onto Crypto let the hacker go, in favor of readying their weapon. He barely had time to move his finger inside the trigger guard before Revenant sliced through his throat. His body collapsed on the ground at Crypto's feet- blood spurted from the fatal wound and pooled on the floor, coating the programmer's shoes.
The dozen or so guards in the room all fired at the ghostlike form of the mechanical being. Revenant dropped low, then leapt up on top of the rack of servers behind him with seemingly impossible force. He dropped down into the aisle on the opposite side of the servers, struck the rack with as much force as he could produce, and sent it toppling over. The guards scrambled out of the way as computer servers and metal shelving crashed to the ground.
In the chaos, Crypto was forgotten. He turned away and ran as fast as he could, his blood-soaked shoes slipping and leaving streaks on the smooth tile floor- no one followed. He heard a scream behind him, which abruptly ended with the wet crunching of bones being crushed. Under normal circumstances, that would have shaken him to his core. At the present moment, he couldn't care less what the simulacrum was doing. There was only one thing on his mind: escape.
Now in the distance behind him, the hacker heard a whooshing, accompanied by a sort of electronic crackling- Revenant's transient form had absorbed critical damage, which returned him to a prior location. Crypto had little understanding of how that worked- it had something to do with quantum physics, something that perhaps Wattson knew more about. Something to do with the duality of waves and particles…? Why was that, of all things, playing in the background of his mind as he ran for his life?
Maybe because science and technology were interesting to him, and they were a distraction from the waves of primal fear that threatened to overcome him otherwise. Those strange thoughts playing in the back of his head distracted the part of his brain that would otherwise be distracting him. It must be working, as he successfully found the door, swiped his key card, and sprinted out into the hallway.
No point in bothering to hide from the cameras now- the corporation already knew exactly where he was. He needed to get out of this building, make it somewhere safe so he could properly evaluate what he'd learned here… but which way was out?
The hacker sprinted from one hallway to the next. None of them were labelled or numbered. This place was like a maze- he'd been able to find the server room by following the path of electrical wiring on the ceiling, but that wouldn't help him find the exit.
The sounds of the guards had faded. He'd been alone in the corridors for some time, but was only now able to process the realization- the only footsteps echoing on the smooth floor were his own. His heartbeat raced in his chest and pounded in his ears. He stopped in front of a locked, unlabelled door - like so many others that he'd run past - and looked back as he caught his breath. The guards were nowhere to be seen. Neither was Revenant.
Crypto wondered, for a fraction of a second, if he should go back and find the assassin. He laughed silently to himself- as if Revenant would want his help, or care what happened to him… That man - machine, whatever one would call him - was a real piece of work. However, they were both victims of the same tyranny. All of the Legends were- the hacker saw that much more clearly today. The corporate network that ran and sponsored the Apex Games had the lives of every sentient being in the Outlands in a vice grip. He'd learned the hard way that they were corrupt, but he was only now beginning to realize just how deep it ran…
Surely, if he managed to get out of here, he could find a more dependable ally than Revenant to help him expose their workings.
Well- that alone was a big if. One step at a time… He had to keep moving.
He walked at a steady pace- brisk, but not so fast as to draw unnecessary attention to himself. When he reached the end of the hallway, he paused and peeked out around the corner cautiously. No guards- not another living being in sight. He turned left and found himself in another unremarkable gray hallway with identical, unlabelled doors and a lack of distinguishing features. If he turned the same direction every time, he'd eventually find a way out, right?
That, or he'd end up going in circles…
It seemed that this facility was largely, or entirely, automated. Aside from the guards who'd ambushed himself and Revenant in the server room, there hadn't been another living being in sight. He couldn't count on that to last, he knew- someone, somewhere, was still aware that there were infiltrators in the building. They'd send more guards.
As the beginning of a sense of panic from the eerily identical hallways just started to creep up on him, Crypto found his way to a freight elevator. It was of the sort that looked like a mesh cage affixed to a platform with minimal safety features, meant to transport cargo rather than people… The unwelcoming design didn't make him any more uneasy than the rest of the facility already had. He glanced over the control panel, pressed the button for the topmost floor, and braced himself against the side of the enclosure as the elevator lurched.
When the machine stopped moving, and he slid the grated door open, it became clear that not quite the entirety of the facility was automated.
This floor afforded several human luxuries that he hadn't seen throughout the rest of the building- wallpaper, décor, furniture. The furnishings weren't cozy or comfortable by any means, and the art consisted mainly of bland blues and greens that were reminiscent of a hospital waiting room… Still, they made the space appear noticeably more welcoming than the rest of the sterile gray facility. Instead of heavy steel doors, the hallway was lined with varnished wooden ones, with glass panes that allowed Crypto to see the offices beyond them.
Those rooms were empty, and they were modest in size. The hacker suspected that mid-level management worked in the offices- they were too comfortable for maintenance-level employees, and too humble for executives. Further down the hallway, he found two offices across from each other which were much bigger and more ornate than the rest. Clearly, whichever of the corporation's employees those had been assigned to were in charge of this facility.
The hacker swiped his key card at the door to his right and stepped inside.
According to the nameplate on the desk, this was the workstation of Alan Rinzler, Facilities Director.
Crypto rifled through the man's desk drawers and found what he was looking for: a laptop. He set it on top of the papers that cluttered the desk and turned it on. A login screen popped up- he inserted a data card into a port on the left side, and booted up a second operating system. That would allow him access to whatever files were stored on this thing's hard drive without having to take the time to run a brute-force attack for Rinzler's password.
Architectural drawings of the arenas, electrical schematics of the network of transmitters that created the Ring… Not what the programmer was looking for. A file stored in the same location, however, did catch his attention.
It was a project of Hammond Robotics- that name caught his attention first; the corporation that Revenant blamed for putting a virus in his code… Not a virus, a real human consciousness, as it turned out. That was a whole other level of messed up, Crypto thought as he looked through the drawings and data associated with this project.
Harvester… A towering, monstrous device that they were building on Talos, to harness geothermal energy from the core of the uninhabitable planet. Well- mostly uninhabitable. Wasn't Talos the planet where Bloodhound's tribe lived…?
It seemed that the corporate network was going back on their word. Bloodhound's participation in the Games, in exchange for the rest of the tribe being allowed to live in peace… Until they could make more profit off of draining the life from the planet than what the hunter's cooperation with them offered.
He copied the files to his data card, along with a list of all ongoing projects and facilities that Alan Rinzler had procured. If he got this information to Bloodhound, maybe they'd help him make a stand against the corporation. Even if they didn't, they deserved to know that their peoples' lives were once again in danger.