Chapter 18

Burgloth

Deathtrap

Firing his laser at the bots still swarming around the fallen building, Deathtrap fervently hoped that the girls were alright. The thought of them being injured because he'd failed tore at him, but he had to keep going, at least for a little while longer before he could call them. It wasn't that he couldn't muti-task, he could, easily, it was just that when he considered the number of bots outside, he had to figure that there would be at least that many inside, so if the girls were alright, they'd be in a fight right about then, so they wouldn't be able to take his call, so he'd just have to wait until either enough time had passed, or one of them thought to call him.

As he continued to fight the bots, which were still ignoring him, he wondered what their programming had to be, after all, after they'd tried to take the building down, they'd started floating around kind of aimlessly for some time. If they'd been programmed to destroy the building, then they should've been continuing to attack it. If they'd been programmed to make it fall, then they'd only partially succeeded, so shouldn't they be trying to destroy the ice holding it up? And if it wasn't that, then what were they going to do next, shut down?

A few of them seemed to be still on some kind of task, flying around with some purpose, so those were the ones that he targeted first, but it seemed that for each one he killed, another took up its task, which he supposed made sense, though it would've made more sense if they'd all swarmed up and took care of it together.

Without anything else to do, at least until the girls called, he stuck with his task, which made him feel like one of the bots, which made him depressed.

Artemis

She fell into the room, hoping that there wasn't anything hard under the door and was rewarded with a solid, painful impact against the floor. She sat up slowly and looked around, taking in the room. It appeared to be some kind of meeting room, with a long table flipped against the floor, where it had slid and fell, surrounded by chairs, one of which was inches away from where she'd landed and another one peeked out from under the table.

Other than that, the room was mostly bare. There was a screen set into what was now the floor, which was smashed beyond repair, as well as a vent in the wall, but it was out of reach even if she wanted to try for it.

Looking up at the door, she found that it had swung shut after her, which she'd already anticipated, but to her surprise, no bots had smashed in after her, which got her thinking, how were they programmed? It wasn't like she had extensive knowledge to draw upon, in fact the nearest thing she had was her knowledge of animal behavior, which was barely similar, but it did give her a method to gauge how they were acting.

For starters, they'd attacked her on sight. That was fairly self-explanatory, though she felt that there was probably something else there, some way of determining friend from foe, maybe some kind of electronic signature or shape recognition, though that would still have them attacking any employees that happened to be nearby. The second thing was that some of the bots in the storeroom hadn't attacked her, she'd lost sight of them, but then they didn't show back up with the rest and that had been about the time she'd heard gunfire, so she was tempted to extrapolate that if they couldn't see a target, they'd be attracted to sound. Other than that, she didn't have enough to go on.

Right as she was figuring that out and starting to work on how to get out of the room, not to mention what to do afterwards, her ECHO crackled to life, causing her to jump.

"Uh, hello? I hope this isn't a bad time..." Gaige's voice came through.

"It's fine, just keep your voice down."

"Jeez, it's not like I'm yelling at you or anything."

"It's not that, I think these things might home in on sound."

"Oh." Gaige's voice came back, much softer than before "That makes sense."

"Yeah, from what I've gathered, it seems they attack on sight and if they can't find anyone visually, then they go by sound. After that, I've got nothing."

"No, no, that's actually pretty good." Gaige sounded impressed "But, uh, where are you now?"

"In one of the meeting rooms, I think. One of the ones across the hall, out the side door."

"How'd you get there?"

"I jumped. You?"

"Me? I didn't have to jump, well I did, but it was up."

"No. I meant, where are you?"

"Oh, that makes more sense, I'm currently in one of the offices, a bit, er, down from the bosses office and on one side. So, what now?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, now what? Do you want me to come down to where you are? Are you gonna try and climb up to me? What are we gonna do?"

"What's Deathtrap say?"

"Uh, I haven't called him yet. I was more concerned about all that crashing going on down there."

Artemis thought back to all the noise that the falling shelving had made, not to mention whatever that filing cabinet thing had been and nodded to herself. "That makes sense."

"So? What was all that?" Came an exasperated sounding question.

"Oh, uh, the bots were trying to attack me, but ended up hitting the shelving instead, which eventually broke it loose and sent it falling down. Other than that, something came crashing through the wall as I was trying to get into this hall, but I didn't see what it was."

"Crashing through the wall?"

"Yeah, well, actually it was more like the ceiling, nearly hit me too, had to jump back and catch one of the supports still attached to the floor."

"Oh, sorry."

Artemis nodded, it made sense that Gaige would be worried about her nearly being hit by something like that, not to mention feeling guilty about not being there to help, not that there was anything she could've done even if she had been there.

"Eh, no problem, I'm fine." Artemis said, trying to assuage the other girl's guilt. "But back to more pressing things, I don't think you should try and come down here."

"What? Why?"

"Well, first off, you don't have any cables or ropes with you, do you? Without them, how're you getting down here, especially since most of the shelves near the top have been taken out. That also means that I'm not getting back up that way."

"You're probably right." Gaige answered, sounding depressed "So what're you gonna do? And for that matter, what should I?"

"I'm gonna wait a minute and then try and figure a way outta this room and back across the hall. Then, depending on how clear it is, I'll probably try and get over to the service access for the machines and climb up as far as I can on the mesh, before exiting and climbing the rest of the way till I get to the top of the shipping area, though I expect heavy resistance up there."

She paused and thought for a second, then added "As for you, why don't you contact Deathtrap and let him know we're alright and what's up. Then you could try and find the stairs that lead down to the receiving area. I mean, there's gotta be some way for them to get to the office that doesn't trek through all the storage, right? Once you're thought there, you could wait for me or Deathtrap."

"That sounds like a plan. But what happens if you can't get up?"

"Then I'll have to find an alternate route."

"Or I could try and send Deathtrap down to get you?"

"Maybe, but I don't know how easily he'd fit through the stairwell or some of the other places and until we know that, I think I should be at least trying to get out on my own."

"Yeah, I guess."

"Oh, one last thing. Don't contact me for a little while unless it's an emergency, cause if these things are actually drawn by sound, I'd rather not make any more of it then I need to."

"Oh, OK, makes sense, well, be careful and don't hesitate to call if something goes wrong, we'll figure it out together, alright?"

"Yeah."

"Be safe."

"You too."

Artemis looked at her ECHO for a moment, something about that had struck her as odd, but she couldn't really put her finger on it, so she mulled on it while she carefully made her way across the table, feeling it rock beneath her.

She made it to the other side and started to push on it, but quickly realized that she wasn't getting anywhere. Taking a step back she looked at the problem and tried to think about it. The instant she took her mind off of the strange conversation with Gaige, her mind snapped into place and she realized what was wrong about it. Gaige had told her to be safe, something she never would've done normally since she would've thought it would invite misfortune. Artemis smiled slightly at that, maybe she was learning to not be so superstitious.

Looking back at her problem, she also realized that she had the solution to it too. She carefully walked back across it and drug one of the chairs over, sitting it upright. She crouched down and grabbed one edge of the table and with a heave managed to pick it up, mostly thanks to her cybernetics and set it on the chair.

Making sure that the table was leaned against the wall, she made her way to the other end and repeated the process. As soon as she was finished, she took a breather, leaning against the wall until her heart rate was back to normal.

Once she was feeling up to it, she wheeled the table over, moving slowly since she could tell that the far chair was quite tippy and she could barely keep the table from falling into one of the walls. But eventually she managed to get it over to the wall.

Working her way back along the table, she made her way till she was about in the middle and let the table tilt towards her till it was resting against what had once been the floor. Just as it made contact with the wall, the chairs snapped out from under it, throwing them into the far wall and sending the table crashing down.

She crouched under the angled table, rubbing her head where it had been knocked into the wall and waited to see if any of the bots would come and investigate.

She waited, and waited and just as she was starting to think that she'd been wrong about the noise, she heard a thump come from the door, causing it to rattle in its frame. Freezing, she nearly held her breath as the thumping continued, she could almost see the bot bouncing uselessly off the door, unable to figure out why it couldn't get through, which nearly caused he to laugh.

Clutching her hands over her mouth, she waited. After almost a minute of the rattling, the bot seemed to give up and silence returned, but Artemis didn't move.

She sat there for minutes, waiting to make sure that the bot had in fact, given up and wasn't just sitting there waiting to see if anything moved. After a while she started to feel ridiculous, these bots didn't have the programming to sit around and make a trap, at least not once they were activated, so she crawled her way to the wall and used her back to start lifting the table up, propping it against the wall as she went, till she couldn't get it any higher.

She wiggled her way out from under it and went to the far end of the room to examine it.

The table made it almost up to the door, but there were two problems she could see. The first was that there was nothing preventing the table from sliding back down the instant she tried to climb it, so she'd have to figure out some way to brace it.

The second was easier to fix, one of the table's legs was in the way of the door opening, which meant that she'd have to cut it off once she'd made her way up and hope that she could do it quickly and quietly, before she drew the attention of any of the bots.

Looking around the room, she quickly realized there wasn't anything that she could easily use to reinforce the table, at least not anything immediately apparent, so she had to think a bit while she dug around in her pack.

A minute later, she gave up and sighed, leaning against the nearest table leg. There was nothing in her pack that could be used, or rather, nothing she could use. Had Gaige been there, she was sure the other girl could've used something to get the job done, after all, she was a genius. Just hanging around she occasionally made Artemis feel dumb, like she could barely keep up on some of the conversations Gaige had. It totally escaped her that whenever she talked about hunting, meat prep or anything like that, Gaige felt the exact same way.

Bringing herself back to the problem at hand, she turned and looked up at the table, only to cock her head, then swing back around and look at the rest of the room. She sprung to her feet and got to work. First, she sliced off the nearest table leg, the one she'd been leaning on at a sharp angle and then the other leg on her level. She made her way to the broken screen and tapped on it lightly, having her suspicion verified, she dug out her crowbar, which wouldn't be great for this, but was the best that she had and then took a spare top from her pack and wrapped it around the non-angled end of the first leg. Positioning it as far to one side as she could she drove it into the screen and the wall behind it, pounding it in with her crowbar while using her jacket to muffle the sound as best she could. Once it was in place, she repeated the process with the other one.

Putting her stuff away, she moved the table back the few inches until it rested against the legs. Nodding to herself, she carefully tested it and to her relief, the table didn't knock the legs loose.

With everything in place, she double checked her gear and made her way across the room. Once she was set, she took off running and hit the table with as much momentum as she could, scrambling up the smooth surface until she was able to grab onto the top leg.

Hanging on with a look of triumph on her face, she switched her grip to the edge of the table and popped her Digi-blade. She wished she had another hand as she aimed at the leg that was in the doors way and sliced it off, wincing as it fell and clattered with what felt like the noise of a cannon going off in the room.

She waited for the banging on the door to start back up, but after a little while, when nothing happened, she relaxed slightly and reached for the doorknob. Gripping it tightly, she twisted and very slowly raised it enough to peek out.

Finding the hall empty, she raised the door enough for her to poke her head out and glanced up and down. Finding nothing, she let out a shaky breath and looked at her next problem, how to get back across.

She eyeballed the gap, she'd made it over with a bit of a start, something she had no way of accomplishing from this side, still, she might make it, but it was right at the edge and if anything went wrong, such as the door swinging shut onto her and she might not make it. She briefly considered cutting the door off and using it as a bridge, but she didn't think it'd fit, not to mention be time consuming and she'd already wasted enough time, something that some part of her warned she didn't have a lot of, so she scrapped that idea.

She also considered using her cable to try and throw a loop around something, but she couldn't see anything over there that would work, other then maybe trying to get it all the way around the door itself, but that would be tricky, so in the end, she went with the first bad idea she had and holding the door up with one hand, tensed herself and after a moment, threw herself across the gap with as much force as she could generate.

Once again grateful for her cybernetic, she felt the acceleration it imparted on her as she focused entirely upon the door rushing towards her and flailed her hands out in a desperate attempt to catch it before her momentum died.

Her fingertips brushed the edge of the door just as she fell past it and with a titanic effort, clutched onto it. Her other hand grabbed on even as she heard something in the door give a heart freezing crack and the entire thing started tilting precariously. She yanked herself up as fast as she could and scrambled across the surface of the door with all four limbs till she hit the door frame as fast as she could and without pausing to think about it or aim, launched herself into the space on the other side.

As soon as she was clear, she realized how dangerous what she was doing was as the twisted metal frame of the shelving unit that had fallen passed beneath her and she managed to twist her body enough to land on the narrow shelf, hitting with enough force to force her into a roll that brought her off the side, but she managed to hit the next support with her stomach and stop herself.

Letting out a soft groan of pain, she hung there for a few seconds, not just to get the wind back in her stomach, but to make sure she hadn't alerted any bots. But it was mostly to get the wind back.

Eventually she hauled herself up and looked around, the room was a mess, but she could still make her way around, so she headed to one side of the shelves and looked down, spotting the door she needed was hanging open, but she couldn't see anything within.

Taking the cable off the side of her pack, she looped it around the frame in a similar way to what she'd done in the dump on the Project Odysseus station and slid her way down. Once her feet touched the scree of broken crates and parts, she struggled to find suitable footing and, in the end, just gave up and continued to hold the cable for support as she tried to peer through the doors.

From where she was, she couldn't see anything, but she knew that didn't mean much and her hearing wasn't doing much better if the bots were sitting still, waiting for someone to appear. But without any better options she knew she was going to have to go down, so she kicked out and continued sliding down.

The room opened up around her, but to her surprise, she didn't encounter any bots. When she thought about it, there had been an abnormally large number of them in the previous encounter, so it stood to reason that they'd come up from down here to join in the fight.

Kicking slightly, she managed to land on the shelves on the side she wanted and started re-coiling the cable. Walking over to the far edge she spotted the door she wanted and quickly figured out the best way to get back down to it, which was remarkably similar to how she'd entered the room, looping the cable over the end of the shelves and rappelling down.

Once she got to the proper level, she wrapped the cable around her arm and started swinging till she could grab the doorknob and after a brief struggle, managed to get it open, only to get thrown back as tools and parts started spilling out.

Wincing at the crashing and tinging that they made as they bounced off the ground, she grabbed the nearest shelving unit and waited to see if any bots appeared, but it seemed that they were either dead, too far away or otherwise occupied.

Letting go of the shelf, she kicked her way back over and pulled the door back open to look in and let out a sigh, it seemed that almost everything in the maintenance department had fallen and was now blocking the way.

Without any other way to go she resigned herself to having to go the long way and began lowering herself down.

Gaige

Watching as the last of the bots in the immediate area fell into a pool of melting goo, Gaige turned and examined her surroundings again. The offices were a mess, which was to be expected considering their current rotation, but even so, she could make out a number of things that worried her, filing cabinets and heavy desks that looked like they might fall at any time, broken things that had once been electronics or furniture were now smashed and strewn across the floor all of which made the place a precarious hazard to maneuver through.

It was times like these that she wished she was more like Artemis, who could hop around this stuff with ease, or at least appeared to. Thinking of the other girl, Gaige realized she needed to check in, to make sure she was alright and now would be about the best time to do it, especially since she couldn't see any bots in the area, but first she'd need to get somewhere a little more secure, so she looked around and spotted an office that shouldn't be to hard too get to.

She climbed up the side of one of the fallen desks and onto the wall of a cubicle, which she was tempted to kick as the memory of her day in one came back with a vengeance, but she repressed it, now wasn't the time.

Once she was on the thin, flexing wall, she dashed and made a leap at the doorway, catching the frame she pulled herself up, feet kicking at the air and rolled into the room.

She lifted the door closed and leaned against the desk while pulling out her ECHO. Staring at it, she was suddenly hit by the fact that she had no idea how to start this, she didn't want it to be too casual, or to sound too panicked.

Unable to think of something, she swallowed and just let the first thing that popped into her mind out.

"Uh, hello? I hope this isn't a bad time..." Gaige winced at how lame that was as she trailed off.

"It's fine, just keep your voice down."

She felt a wave of relief at the sound of the girl's voice, it sounded like she was alright so Gaige replied in a light fashion "Jeez, it's not like I'm yelling at you or anything."

"It's not that, I think these things might home in on sound."

"Oh." Gaige kicked herself, it should've been obvious that's what they were doing, after all, they'd homed in on her as soon as she'd fired, so she dropped her voice as she continued "That makes sense."

"Yeah, from what I've gathered, it seems they attack on sight and if they can't find anyone visually, then they go by sound. After that, I've got nothing."

"No, no, that's actually pretty good." Gaige was impressed, she hadn't thought about it at all really, she'd been more concerned with taking them out before they'd body-checked her to think about why they were attacking, which made her feel like an idiot, after all, she was the robotics expert here, still, she knew that she could feel stupid later, right then, they needed to get back together, so she needed to know where Artemis was "But, uh, where are you now?"

"In one of the meeting rooms, I think. One of the ones across the hall, out the side door."

"How'd you get there?"

"I jumped. You?"

"Me? I didn't have to jump, well I did, but it was up."

"No. I meant, where are you?"

"Oh, that makes more sense, I'm currently in one of the offices, a bit, er, down from the bosses office and on one side. So, what now?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, what now? Do you want me to come down to where you are? Are you gonna try and climb up to me? What are we gonna do?"

"What's Deathtrap say?"

"Uh, I haven't called him yet." Now she really felt bad, how could her first thought not have been about her BFF? He was out there freezing his servos off and she was in here babbling away "I was more concerned about all that crashing going on down there."

"That makes sense."

"So? What was all that?" Gaige asked, wishing the other girl would start picking up on the subtleties of conversations.

"Oh, uh, the bots were trying to attack me, but ended up hitting the shelving instead, which eventually broke it loose and sent it falling down. Other than that, something came crashing through the wall as I was trying to get into this hall, but I didn't see what it was."

"Crashing through the wall?" Gaige felt her heart fall, she knew what it was and the thought that she'd almost killed her friend crushed her spirit.

"Yeah, well, actually it was more like the ceiling, nearly hit me too, had to jump back and catch one of the supports still attached to the floor."

"Oh, sorry." Was all she could say. What else was there to say about it? She'd apologize properly later, but for now, she'd just have to feel bad, cause the words wouldn't form.

"Eh, no problem, I'm fine." Artemis replied, obviously trying to wave it off to make Gaige feel better, which only had the opposite effect. "But back to more pressing things, I don't think you should try and come down here."

"What? Why?" Gaige asked even as she knew, she was a danger to the other girl, so she should stay as far away as possible, like another planet. She had to wonder how often Artemis had been hurt before they'd met that she didn't think this many injuries were excessive?

"Well, first off, you don't have any cables or ropes with you, do you? Without them, how're you getting down here, especially since most of the shelves near the top have been taken out. That also means that I'm not getting back up that way."

"You're probably right. So, what're you gonna do? And for that matter, what should I?"

"I'm gonna wait a minute and then try and figure a way outta this room and back across the hall. Then, depending on how clear it is, I'll probably try and get over to the service access for the machines and climb up as far as I can on the mesh, before exiting and climbing the rest of the way till I get to the top of the shipping area, though I expect heavy resistance up there.

"As for you, why don't you contact Deathtrap and let him know we're alright and what's up. Then you could try and find the stairs that lead down to the receiving area. I mean, there's gotta be some way for them to get to the office that doesn't trek through all the storage, right? Once you're thought there, you could wait for me or Deathtrap."

"That sounds like a plan. But what happens if you can't get up?" Gaige was grateful that the other girl was thinking ahead, planning things out as well as she was, it allowed Gaige to not have to think, which was a dangerous thing at that moment, with the dark thoughts spiraling around her.

"Then I'll have to find an alternate route."

Gaige wanted to help, to do something that could ease the burden on her friend, so she offered "Or I could try and send Deathtrap down to get you?"

"Maybe, but I don't know how easily he'd fit through the stairwell or some of the other places and until we know that, I think I should be at least trying to get out on my own."

"Yeah, I guess." Of course she was right, Gaige knew that, after all, she'd designed and built Deathtrap, so she knew how big the halls would have to be for him to fit through, so why hadn't she thought of that? The answer was obvious to Gaige, because she'd become desperate to not be deemed useless by the other girl, so instead of helping, she'd only proven her right.

"Oh, one last thing. Don't contact me for a little while unless it's an emergency," Gaige understood, she wouldn't want to talk to herself either given everything that'd happened, but Artemis continued "cause if these things are actually drawn by sound, I'd rather not make any more of it then I need to."

"Oh, OK, makes sense, well, be careful and don't hesitate to call if something goes wrong, we'll figure it out together, alright?"

"Yeah."

"Be safe."

"You too." And she ended the call.

"Be safe? Wow, that was the lamest way to end, sound desperate much?" Gaige's cheeks flamed as she chastised herself and looked at her ECHO. She knew that she should get onto it again and contact Deathtrap, but she couldn't bring herself to face him at that exact second.

'I just don't want him to fly into an unknown number of enemies, at least not without backup.' She told herself 'It has nothing to do with being unable to face him right now.'

Having made excuses to convince herself, though they hadn't really worked, she pulled the door open and looked around, trying to find the stairwell. They hadn't seen it on their way through, at least not that they'd noticed, it could've been one of the doors around the room, but those all led to offices, so that wasn't likely.

Thinking back to what she knew of corporations and their bosses, she tried to think about how the place would be laid out.

'The boss would want to travel the shortest distance they could, but also not have the rest of the employees walking past their office all the time, so it should be close to the main office but a little ways away, probably on one side, like down a hall or something and considering what's below, it's probably on the outer wall, since if it was on the inner, it would end up being in the middle of the room or something in the receiving area.' She thought, so she started searching from the boss's office out and quickly spied a side hall.

The only problem was how was she going to get there? She couldn't fly like Deathtrap, nor was she as good at climbing as Artemis. Still, she was no slouch and she'd proven her first time on Jaka that she could in fact climb, so she'd have to do what she needed.

She crawled out of the office and looked around, it seemed her best bet would be to climb the rather flimsy cubicle walls, so she jumped back over to them, feeling them sway distressingly under her. After she got used to the give in them as she shifted her weight, she found that they actually weren't that hard to climb, as long as she went slowly.

That didn't mean that it was easy, since the higher she got, the more worried about falling she became, especially since the walls weren't feeling all that stable. She kept reminding herself that they were fine, that it was the lower ones that would've been weaker since they'd been hit by the falling desks and such.

Soon enough, she'd made her way to the top and looking down the hall, spotted a number of doors and openings. Making sure to check the other side of the room, where there were only more offices, she took a run and leaped at the opening. She would've made it easily except the wall gave out as she pushed off of it, sending her stomach falling faster than the rest of her.

She slammed into the wall and punched her hands into the wall, her cybernetic fingers cutting clean through the plaster and into the concrete behind, while her other hand just hurt as it tore into the surface as her chest smacked painfully into the hard wall.

Wincing in pain, she pulled herself up and grabbed the edge, dragging herself up and onto the flat of the hall. Rubbing her chest and blowing on her sore fingers, she made sure they weren't broken or bruised so that she could use her gun when she needed, she moved forward.

Above her were doors to the bathrooms as well as a drinking fountain. Up ahead, she spotted the opening in the floor that fell into the break-room and straight ahead were the closed doors of an elevator, which meant that the last door, up ahead and on the ceiling had to lead to the stairs, which was confirmed when she saw the sign next to it.

With a small jump she grabbed the doorknob and tried to pull herself up, but her hand just slipped off the knob, dropping her back down.

She looked at the door again and found that she had a bit of a problem, how was she supposed to open the door from below, push it up and get something in to prevent it from closing again so that she could get through? She considered briefly trying the elevator, but without some way to open the doors, she knew that it wasn't happening, so she went back to the problem at hand.

She pulled out her hammer and looked at the ceiling and shrugged. With another jump, she latched onto the knob and pulled up as fast as she could, swinging the hammer at the frame as she did, driving the claw into the ceiling just behind the frame as hard as she could.

Luckily for her, it found enough purchase to hold her, even if it was temporarily as she twisted the knob and pushed the door open enough to get her left hand through. Letting go of her hammer temporarily, she drug herself up and through the door, pushing it out of the way until she was through. Leaning back, she pried her hammer loose and holstered it before looking at the new challenge the stairs made for her.