"They- found this place…"
Cade's voice was distant, monotone. "We aren't safe here. We have to leave."
"No," said Revenant. Crypto and Wattson both turned to look at him.
"If the Syndicate cleared this building, they aren't going to look for us here- they already did."
The enforcer took a deep, angry breath. He would have loved to beat that simulacrum into the ground- unlikely though it was to happen; he was well aware of how easily Revenant could overpower him. His hands clenched into fists at his sides, which he shoved into his pockets. How dare Revenant be right? How dare he say something useful, instead of doing something that Cade could use to turn the others against him? He was an agent of the Syndicate, after all… It showed constantly in his knowledge of how their organization functioned. This was his fault.
"I'm going to search the facility," the assassin growled. "Make sure there are no surprises waiting for us…"
"Yeah, go," snapped Cade. "Get lost."
"I'll go with you," Wattson said quietly. She followed Revenant out into the hallway. Crypto slipped out alongside them without uttering a word- he didn't want to be left behind with Mauser's still, unmoving form and Cade's rage. He closed the door on his way out- before the latch clicked, he heard the enforcer muttering: "I just talked to him. How the hell did this happen between now and then?"
Crypto didn't know the answer to that, either. Cade obviously blamed Revenant, but the way the hacker saw it, this was on him… He'd dragged all these people into his conflict, and Mauser had been the one to pay for his ill-preparedness.
Surrender crossed his mind again. This couldn't go any further; the government's covert operations team sending their agents and assassins after those who'd helped him- people he cared about… It was worth trying to make some kind of arrangement with them. His sister's freedom and the safety of his friends in exchange for his cooperation– he would submit to a lifetime of servitude, without question, if it would protect the others.
The hacker was willing to make that trade.
Revenant systematically opened each door and checked the hinged side, then the side away from the hinges before clearing the rest of the room. He ignored Crypto and Wattson; carried out the task as if they didn't exist- though they stayed at his back, and surveyed each room as the assassin opened the door.
Supplies and equipment had been grabbed in a hurry. What had been left behind was strewn about the floors– maps, hard drives and other computer equipment, unopened totes… Shelves had been toppled, and one rested on top of an unmoving figure. The chaos of the scene conflicted with its haunting stillness.
The assassin kept going, unaffected. None of this was new to him– he was immune to the shock and horror that the others felt. Mass casualties were something he'd seen - and caused - hundreds of times. They were ordinary.
He pushed open a heavy steel door. Beyond it was a workshop of some sort- metal tables and shelving stocked with tools. Revenant hesitated. The layout was similar to one of Hammond's fabrication facilities, a place that he despised…
"Someone you know?"
Crypto gestured to the Syndicate agent lying prone on the floor. Though they were caught without warning, it appeared that the faction hadn't given up their command center without doing some damage. Revenant didn't acknowledge the hacker- he stepped over the body and checked all the areas in the room where an enemy could lay in wait.
"I'm going to start moving them outside," said Wattson. Though she felt no excitement whatsoever about what was going on, it took her a great deal of conscious effort to suppress the expressions and behaviors that other people associated with the emotion. Putting up a front was too much for her right now… Instead, she decided, she would simply remove herself from the situation.
The engineer grabbed the Syndicate agent by the shoulders of his uniform and dragged him out into the hallway, toward the parking garage. Crypto watched her as she backed away. He would have preferred that Wattson stay at his side, where he could offer help if anything happened- but he recognized that she needed the distance, and let her go without complaint.
"I'll help you with that," Revenant growled, "after I finish clearing the building."
He backed out of the room he'd just secured and continued down the hallway. The hacker glanced at him in surprise for a moment before following- it was so unlike the Revenant he'd known, offering to help someone else with a difficult task… Was it possible that the predecessor - the human consciousness - had been the evil one all along? That without its influence, the AI could learn to do better- be better…?
No, it would be too easy to blame everything that Revenant had done on something else. He was still a monster, and perhaps Crypto was corrupt for working with him. From a programming standpoint, though - strictly for technical theory - it was certainly interesting.
They found another agent collapsed in the stairwell. Judging by the blood trail, he had struggled for a good twenty minutes before finally losing consciousness- the Syndicate didn't prioritize taking care of their own. Revenant stepped over the body and opened the door to the next room.
The simulacrum paid close attention to the data relayed by his environmental sensors. Unusual vibration traveling through the building structure, electromagnetic waves, spikes in thermal energy- being able to pick up on them let him maneuver around security systems with ease, which made him superior to human assassins. When he'd thought he was human, he'd interpreted the data as instinct. Without that weakness, he had more control, more precision…
There were no unusual signals in the building. It was unlikely, he determined, that any Syndicate agents were still here- but he couldn't rely on that. There were authorities within the corporate network - within the Syndicate - who knew how he functioned. They knew, now, that he was working with Crypto. If they knew that Crypto was working with the faction, they might find a way to hide their agents from detection by his sensor system.
The industrial, concrete corridor terminated into a cheaply decorated hallway with mousy brown carpet. Revenant glanced over his shoulder, then straight ahead at the four-panel wooden door he was about to open. He hated this building; how it appeared to be- almost cobbled together from spare parts, as little sense as that expression made when applied to architecture. The atmosphere made him feel… threatened, somehow. He didn't know why.
They arrived at the final door on that side of the building. Beyond it was a warehouse made of cold steel and imposing gray concrete. Shelves rose far over their heads- typically, those shelves would have held stores of parts, weapons, rations, and other equipment that the faction stole from various shipments belonging to the corporation. At the moment, they were mostly empty.
A wooden crate had fallen on its side and split open. Batteries had spilled out onto the warehouse floor. One of the technicians who worked with the faction was collapsed on top of the crate, unmoving. He'd been hit with some kind of directed energy weapon- the fake skin was burned off his cybernetic arm.
Crypto rushed to look him over, as if his stony gray pallor and wide eyes staring into endless nothingness weren't telltale enough. Revenant ignored the hacker and the lifeless technician, instead walking deeper into the desolate warehouse. Though he was both trained and programmed to move near-silently, the soft metallic ringing of his footfalls echoed in the empty space.
More mechanical components and electronic devices were strewn about the floor here and there, having fallen from broken crates or boxes that were no longer there. Marks on the warehouse floor showed where heavy containers had been dragged out- another discarded worker lay under an empty shelf, blood pooled around their body.
The hacker stepped up beside Revenant, head lowered, eyes squeezed tightly shut. Maybe he could will himself to wake up from this nightmare. Maybe he would wake up in his cramped quarters aboard the Syndicate ship, on the way to the arena with Octane's obnoxious music blaring through the walls, right back where he'd started and none of this would have happened…
"This was a massacre," he whispered into the cold, empty atmosphere. "Retaliation– for what I did…?"
"No."
Crypto looked up at the assassin.
"It wasn't a massacre," Revenant continued. "They weren't here to kill- or there would be a lot more bodies. These are just the skinbags that got in their way."
He took several steps forward, following the smudges along the concrete floor where something heavy - multiple things, from the looks of it - had been dragged out the door. That had to be what the agents were after… Compared to the number of workers he'd seen in this facility earlier, they really hadn't found many bodies– nor any indication that others had been removed. From what he saw now, most of the occupants had been allowed to escape.
"What was this facility used for? Other than hiding from the Syndicate…"
The hacker frowned. "Eum– creating false identities. Doing neural implants and cybernetic upgrades, off government or corporate records. I– I'm not entirely sure what else."
"They were here to confiscate resources," growled Revenant. "They cleared materials out of the building and left."
He pulled the technician's body off the overturned crate and carried it away, true to his word that he would aid Wattson in clearing the dead from the building. As he walked toward the warehouse exit, a small part of the despair that Crypto felt was replaced by confusion.
"Why? What would that accomplish?"
"You tell me, skin-suit. You were allied with this faction."
The assassin kept moving. Blood from the tech's limp body dripped down his metal frame and onto the floor. As Crypto sprinted to catch up, he thought about how strange it felt to be here, in this moment– following Revenant down a hallway in some isolated industrial building, unconcerned as the simulacrum carried a dead body. It was like he was standing off to the side, watching himself… Watching somebody else's future, as it felt too disconnected from his past experience to be his own present.
He followed Revenant out into the parking garage, where the assassin dropped the body on the ground with a thud. Wattson flinched at the sound- Augustin looked up from the others, which he'd lined up in neat rows and covered with ragged blankets. They'd moved six out of the building so far; the one that Revenant had carried out brought the number up to seven. Mauser's notebook lay on the ground in the doorway. Crypto knelt and picked it up. He held it with both hands, unsure whether it would be a violation of the young radio operator's privacy to look through its pages. Finally, he decided that he'd just hold onto it, and slid it carefully into his pocket.
Mauser had been a big fan of the Apex Games– always admired him, even though he'd used a false identity to take on the title of Legend and never passed the qualifiers. Crypto hadn't known him well, yet the realization that he would never again see Mauser dashing about, stocking shelves and taking inventory in that electronics shop downtown came as a shock. He wasn't sure who else lay on the ground in that neat row– people that he'd only ever passed in the hallway, or never met at all. He wouldn't miss them, but knowing that his attack on the Syndicate had led to their deaths weighed heavily on him all the same. It felt like he was trapped in cement– he could never go back to the way things had been, but after everything that had happened, how could he move forward?
Revenant stepped past the hacker and dropped another body on the ground. It hit the pavement with a wet crunch as the ends of broken bones grated against each other. Crypto inhaled sharply. How long had he been standing there? He hadn't even realized that the assassin had left.
"Hey– be careful, zanmi."
Augustin's tone was quiet, but he spoke with a sort of conviction. He gestured to the body of the resistance fighter that Revenant had tossed onto the concrete like it was a broken thing to be discarded– which, as far as the simulacrum was concerned, it was. He glared at the corporal and grunted in response. Idiotic human sentiments.
"Yeah, I get that," Augustin muttered. "How dare somebody ask you to show respect for the dead when you have never been shown respect, as a sentient being? But it's up to us to have honor– to rise above the broken system that–"
"Your so-called honor is as useless as you are," Revenant growled. "An empty word for whatever makes you skin-suits feel good about yourselves– but the only thing that matters are results."
He turned away and pushed past Crypto, back inside the building, before anyone could argue. If Augustin was upset by his harsh words, it didn't show. He kept on with what he was doing as if the hostile interaction hadn't taken place. Working delicately, he lined the body up with the neat row he'd established, cleaned his fallen comrade's face and hands, and folded their arms across their chest. Wattson placed a blanket over them; she and Augustin patiently aligned the edges and smoothed out the wrinkles. He carried out the task skillfully and stoically, like it was something he'd done dozens of times before.
Crypto silently followed Revenant back inside. He wasn't sure what he could do to be useful– or, at least, appear useful… Everybody else around him knew what had to be done next, and they were doing it. He seemed to be the only one who felt thoroughly lost. Why, he asked himself? He was a top-ranked competitor in the Apex Games, for fuck's sake. He was the last person who should be awkward around death. He was the one who wanted to ambush the Syndicate, expose their corruption, free his sister… He should have everything in order, like Bloodhound, like Augustin, like so many better leaders and fighters than himself…!
It caught him entirely by surprise to see Cade standing in the middle of a hallway, staring at nothing. Revenant pushed past the enforcer and kept going. Crypto took a quick step back, fully expecting the two of them to end up in a fight– but Cade ignored the assassin.
"They took all of our goddamn supplies," he muttered before Crypto could ask if he was all right. "How did they find this building? I don't get it. Do you think that damn sim gave them our location?"
"There's no way."
The hacker shook his head. His answer came instantly, without any hesitation. The only thing Revenant hated more than humans - and cyborgs who looked human - was the government.
Cade met Crypto's eyes with a cold, dead stare.
"Well, my charger is gone," he said in a monotone voice. To Crypto, it felt like he was watching the enforcer's body act on autopilot without conscious effort. "You know– the one that keeps my cybernetic organs running… And we don't have the equipment to put together a new one, either, so I guess I'm a dead man."