Chapter 19

Burgloth

Deathtrap

He was getting worried that no one had contacted him yet. He'd been getting bored of melting the bots as they continued doing whatever it was, they'd been programmed to do and was seriously considering flying up to the entrance, whether to make sure it was clear for the girls or to bust in after them he wasn't sure, but it would beat floating around here killing time and wasting energy, so when he received an incoming message the first thing he thought was 'About time.'

"Hey babe." Gaige said to him "You good?"

He replied that he was and that he was glad she was alright, he'd been worried when the building fell over.

"Yeah, that was a ride wasn't it?"

He told her he didn't know, he'd been outside when the bots had started attacking the supports and asked where they'd been when it happened?

"Oh, uh, we were in the office when you warned us, thanks for that by the way, and we were trying to get out when everything went sideways."

He nodded to himself and asked if they'd found anything.

"I think so, we'll have to see once we get back to the ship."

Well, that's good he told her, at least it was for something, so where were they now, how long before they made it to the door and what did she want him to do?

"Yeah, um, about that, see, the thing is that we kinda got separated."

What? How did that happen, he wondered?

"It's, well, uh..."

She saved you from falling and fell herself, didn't she? He guessed.

"Yeah." He could hear the depression in her voice, he knew that she didn't like being saved all the time, nor the fact that Artemis kept putting herself in harm's way for her and he sympathized, not just with her either. He understood how she felt, how stressful it was to watch someone put themselves in harm's way over and over, he knew how down she got when she watched the other girl try and sacrifice herself for her, but on the flip side, he also sympathized with Artemis. He understood her instinctive desire to protect Gaige, her willingness to act without thinking to do so, it was one of the things they'd bonded over the first morning. So, he was a bit torn on how to react, which is why he was a bit grateful when Gaige continued "She's making her way around and up so we should meet her when she gets to the shipping area. Oh, and she figured out the bots programming, well, at least what she said makes sense. She thinks, and I have to agree with her, that they attack first on sight, then, if they can't see anything, they follow loud noises. After that, well, we don't know. So, what do you think?"

He thought about it, it would've made sense, except he wasn't being attacked, so that was a fault in the theory, unless they mistook him for one of them, which he doubted, so he told her as much.

"Hmm, that does put a rather sizable dent in our theory. Dang, I thought she'd got it. Oh well."

Deathtrap shrugged and asked again what she wanted him to be doing, explaining that he'd been frying the bots as they went about, well, he didn't know what they were doing. Did she want him to continue with that, or should he come to the door and wait, or should he enter and try to join up with her.

"Hmm, that's a good question. How far can your sensors reach inside? Like, did you hear any of the gunfire as I was killin the bots in here?"

He responded that he hadn't heard anything.

"Alright, so, why don't you stay there for a couple of minutes, make sure they aren't trying anything, then come and get to the door, make sure that it's clear and when you hear gunfire, you bust in here and start kickin ass. We'll try and keep this place clear till Artemis gets here, that sound good?"

He had no problem with it and let her know, she'd just started to respond when the entire building shifted slightly, the end falling another ten feet or so as a bit of ice gave way, allowing it to slide down. Hurriedly he called out, asking if Gaige was alright.

"Yeah, I'm fine. I think I'm pretty near the, well, what used to be the ground floor so it didn't shift that much, it's a good thing I'm not at the other end cause that would've been terrifying." She said with a thin laugh, obviously trying to mollify him. He shook his head, seeing through her was easy after knowing her for so long, but he was glad she was alright.

"Well, I better get going. See you in a few babe."

With that, she signed out leaving him alone again. It wasn't that he wasn't used to operating by himself from time to time, it was just that he preferred the company of being with her. It made him feel more at ease to not have to worry about what was happening to her, what kind of trouble she was getting herself into. He was a lot more comfortable now that she'd got back in the groove of things, for a while there, she'd been awfully shaky, between the booze and the self-denial. It wasn't that she had been incompetent or anything like that, it was just that she was much better off once she remembered who she was, which was something else that he was grateful for Artemis about.

The thought of her suddenly reminded him of what Gaige had said, about her having fallen further down, which made him wonder where she'd been in the building when it had shifted and if she was alright. He knew she could take care of herself, but there were things that you couldn't do alone, like shift a large piece of machinery off your leg. Still, he figured she'd call if she needed help, or if it came to it, that once him and Gaige were back together, they could figure it out if she didn't arrive within a reasonable amount of time.

His mental clock told him that it was time to go and start towards the meeting point, so with one last caustic beam, he flew up and towards the entrance.

Artemis

After poking her head into the stairwell and finding out that, while it wasn't impossible to traverse, it would be extremely difficult, having to use the railings to climb up and down to get around the floors, Artemis went to the elevator, pulled out her crowbar and got to work opening it up.

As she heaved against it, she realized that she'd been using the tool quite a bit lately, it along with the cable were proving to be invaluable additions to her pack. While she'd carried the cable while she'd been a hunter, the crowbar was a new addition, after all, there wasn't much call for it while hunting, not many creatures required the bar to pry them open.

The door creaked open with a grinding noise and after a readjustment of her grip, she was able to get the doors open wide enough to slip through.

Poking her head down through the gap, she had a brief vision of the doors snapping closed on her, but shook it off and focused on the shaft stretching ahead of her. Looking down, she realized that she was lucky and that the elevator had been on the ground floor when the building had fallen, so she wouldn't have to try and figure out a way around it or worse, have to go through the stairs.

Dropping into the hole, she landed lightly, trying to make as little sound as possible so as not to alert the bots that might be waiting and started padding forward. The going was a bit difficult since the walls of the elevator shaft hadn't been designed to be used as a walkway. There were support beams and electronics amongst other things sticking out, not to mention the grime of years of use.

Still, it was a lot easier and faster than going through the stairs, so she couldn't really complain as she made good time getting to what had once been the ground floor.

The real challenge came once she was at the other end, first she had to climb up the elevator itself, grateful that the floor had been made out of reinforced grating so she could find purchase on it. Once she was to the top, she had to find something to hook her legs through while she worked on getting the doors themselves open. Remembering what Gaige had done on the Project Odysseus station elevator, she unlocked the backside of the doors and jammed her crowbar into the gap. These doors opened easier, no doubt due to her having undid the opening mechanism on the back and she soon drug herself up and onto what had once been the ground floor's wall.

Taking a second to catch her breath and look around for bots, she was relieved to not find any floating around waiting for her.

The room was pretty much how she'd imagined it would be, boxes and parts were strewn across the floor, shelves tilted dangerously, but it would still be manageable.

She stored her crowbar and got her cable back out. She looked around and found the most secure looking route upward. She'd have to throw the cable up and over one of the supports of the shelving up one level, then pull herself up, climb the rest of the way up the side, then repeat the process all the way to the top. Once she was there, she'd probably have to call Gaige to get her help, or barring that, try and loop her cable around one of the doors.

She knew she should figure that out before she got there, but she wanted to get out of there as fast as possible, so she'd worry about it when she got there.

Just as she started to spin the cable to throw it, the building gave a terrifying shake and the ground vanished out from under her. Flailing desperately as she fell, she smacked into the ground as the building came to a sudden stop.

She guessed that she'd only fallen about ten feet or so, but the combination of the terror of it and the unexpectedness of not just the start but the stop, had left her bruised and battered worse than the initial fall of the building.

Then she heard the noise from above and realized that the shake had knocked loose crates and parts that had been wedged higher up and they started tumbling down, smashing into the shelves below them, shearing them off and adding to the force hitting the next one down till a virtual avalanche of metal was flying towards her.

Acting on instinct, she dove back into the elevator shaft and curled into a ball, waiting for the cacophony to stop.

After what seemed like hours, but was probably only a handful of seconds, it petered out with one last tinging as a small bit of metal bounced down the newly formed piles.

Nervously raising her head, she looked around. A few small bits had fallen in with her, but nothing too bad. Looking up, the door didn't seem bent or dented and she could still see a way up through it, so she wouldn't be forced to go all the way back, so that was at least something, so she set to work climbing back up, keeping in mind that the bots may well have come to investigate the racket.

Poking her head up, she did a quick sweep of the area, but didn't see any bots. With everything falling like it had, they probably wouldn't be able to investigate all the sound in all the rooms, there was probably enough to keep them occupied in whatever room they'd been in to prevent them from coming here, which she was grateful for as she pulled herself the rest of the way up and surveyed the damage.

The room was a mess. It was worse than she'd anticipated, with the shelves tangled and piled together into an almost impassable wall. Looking up she could see that at least two thirds of the shelves in the room had been taken out in the fall, meaning that she couldn't get up that way.

Sighing, she turned and looked through the mountain of scrap towards the last place she wanted to go to, the factory floor. She couldn't see the door from where she was, but it was her last way out, barring calling Deathtrap and having him come in and carry her out, which was looking increasingly tempting. But she couldn't do that, if he came in, all the bots would attack and despite his immense capability, without at least one other person there to help, he'd probably get overwhelmed, so she wanted to try and not have to rely on him if she could help it.

Besides, he needed to make sure Gaige was alright.

Thinking of her, Artemis wondered if she was alright. She should be, after all, she should be closer to the hinge point of the building, so she shouldn't have had as much of an impact.

Still, she was simultaneously grateful that the girl hadn't called her and a bit disappointed she hadn't. She didn't want her calling for nothing and giving away where Artemis was, but it would've been nice to know that she was at least a bit worried about her well-being.

Shaking the thought out of her head, she turned to the pile in front of her and got to work. First, she needed to figure out a path over it or maybe through it. Tilting her head, she examined the problem and her eyes flicked across it, picking out the layers with the unconscious ease of someone trained to spot camouflage. It really wasn't all that different, spotting things and figuring how far back they were, the harder part was trying to figure out what was stable and what might slide, not to mention how much weight it would take to cause it to slide.

After a few seconds of this, she got to work picking her way up and through the mountain. Grabbing onto juts of metal, slipping around the arches the shelves had made and occasionally having to crawl her way through. It reminded her of the dump for some reason, only this was a lot more pleasant, even if she was having to crawl a lot more often. It was probably the fact that there wasn't as much glass in it, not to mention no strange beast trying to eat her.

Using that to keep her mind occupied, she picked her way through till she could see the doors that led to the factory. Unfortunately, the lower of the two doors was buried under a scree of trash, so she couldn't get to it and the piles didn't reach the second one, leaving her wondering how she was going to get out.

The thought of calling Deathtrap resurfaced, but she pushed it down and looked at the upper door. It wasn't all that high up from where she was and the door itself was hanging her way, the problem was that she didn't have any means to climb up to it. Looking around she spotted a part that could be useful, so she picked her way over and carefully pulled it out. Attaching it to the end of her cable, she gave it a spin, building up momentum until she launched it at the door.

It took her a few tries, wincing each time it clanged against the wall and fell back into the trash with another clanging noise, but eventually she got it to wedge into the corner of the opening. Giving it an experimental tug, she nodded, it was good enough, so she kept tension on it as she made her way to the wall and started climbing.

It didn't take long for her to make it to the door and after detaching the scrap and re-coiling the cable, she looked into the factory floor.

Gaige

The stairs had provided her with some good exercise, being forced to go up and down, walking on the rises of the steps, which were narrow and steep, making it a bit hard, but eventually she made it over to the loading bay door.

Pulling it up, she scouted the area to make sure that it was safe and that she had a way down, before closing the door and pulling her ECHO out. She needed to check in with Deathtrap and make sure that he was alright, not that she had any doubt about that, but mostly to let him know that they were alright and what was up.

She took a deep breath and tried to put on her calmest, most nonchalant voice as she keyed him in and said "Hey babe. You good?"

"Urrgurgu" His welcome voice came through, sounding a bit relieved at the sound of her voice.

"Yeah, that was a ride wasn't it?"

"Urggurgugr"

"Oh, uh, we were in the office when you warned us, thanks for that by the way, and we were trying to get out when everything went sideways."

"Rugurr"

"I think so, we'll have to see once we get back to the ship." She didn't say that she wasn't sure if it was a trap, or that Holloway was still alive like they'd suspected, him knowing wouldn't change anything now, besides, he probably already had a good idea of that anyway.

"Ugrruug"

"Yeah, um, about that, see, the thing is that we kinda got separated."

"Urgu" And there it was, the question she didn't want to answer, not just cause it was embarrassing, but also because she still thought she should've found a way down to help Artemis.

"It's, well, uh..."

"Urggr rurrug" He hit it on his first shot, causing her to wince at the predictability of it all.

"Yeah." She felt down as she said it, she hated that she was having to be saved all the time. 'One of these days, I'm gonna be the one doing the saving.' She told herself, determined to make it happen. Knowing that Deathtrap would see through her, that he'd know that she was down if she didn't keep going and not wanting to worry him, she quickly continued "She's making her way around and up so we should meet her when she gets to the shipping area. Oh, and she figured out the bots programming, well, at least what she said makes sense. She thinks, and I have to agree with her, that they attack first on sight, then, if they can't see anything, they follow loud noises. After that, well, we don't know. So, what do you think?"

"Ugrgruu"

"Hmm, that does put a rather sizable dent in our theory. Dang, I thought she'd got it. Oh well." Gaige felt like she was missing something there, some part that would explain what was wrong with the theory, but she couldn't grasp it, she wished Artemis was there, it wasn't that she was particularly good at robotics, in fact she wasn't as good as Gaige's dad at it, but she was fairly good at behavioral analysis, not to mention she seemed to pick things up that Gaige had missed, which is what she was feeling at the moment.

"Urrgurg" She could hear him frying a bot in the background, so she thought about it for a moment, then asked him something.

"Hmm, that's a good question. How far can your sensors reach inside? Like, did you hear any of the gunfire as I was killin the bots in here?"

"Urur"

"Alright, so, why don't you stay there for a couple of minutes, make sure they aren't trying anything, then come and get to the door, make sure that it's clear and when you hear gunfire, you bust in here and start kickin ass. We'll try and keep this place clear till Artemis gets here, that sound good?"

"Urru"

She nodded to herself and opened her mouth to respond when the entire building gave a giant shake that bruised her tailbone when she slammed back down onto the step she was using for a seat. Wincing, she leaned forward, rubbing her butt. She was glad she was alone at the moment due to how utterly undignified she looked, but right then she didn't care, it hurt.

"Urgurr" Came the slightly panicked call, which did wonders for calming her down.

"Yeah, I'm fine. I think I'm pretty near the, well, what used to be the ground floor so it didn't shift that much, it's a good thing I'm not at the other end cause that would've been terrifying." She said with a thin laugh, trying to put him at ease and not convey how much her butt hurt.

"Urgur"

She smiled at the ECHO and said "Well, I better get going. See you in a few babe."

Disconnecting, she hung the ECHO back on her belt and stood up, still massaging her tailbone. Taking a couple of experimental steps, she found that the ache was going away, so she made her way back to the door and lifted it to peek out again and see what, if anything, had changed in the tremor.

Her first impression was that she was looking into a different room, similar, but in no way the same. Everything that had managed to hold on when the building had tipped over was now smashed against the far wall, completely obscuring the doors that she knew were there. Of the stuff that remained, there was only a small office off to the side of the unloading docks and a few racks that must have been bolted to the floor that she guessed were to stack parts to organize them as they were unloaded.

The real problem she was facing was how to get across the room. Actually, before that, she had to get down. Looking around she saw that she could drop down, if she swung a bit and landed in the small indent that held the elevator.

She pulled the door open as far as it would go, but the auto-close feature was still functional, so it wouldn't stay. Letting it close, she pulled out a couple of tools and fixed that. As long as she was at it, she knocked the pins out of the hinges and just picked the door up and set it aside.

Lowering herself though the opening, she had a moment of clarity as she realized how bad of an idea this really was and swung over, letting go to drop into the few inch wide space in front of the elevator doors.

Grabbing onto whatever she could to hold herself, she took stock of her situation. From where she was, she could see that there were no bots in the room, at least not active ones, she could make out a few busted ones amongst the wreckage strewn across the floor. Other than that, if she could drop down properly and throw herself about seven feet to the side, she should be able to catch the shelving that had been bolted to the wall and use that to try and climb down.

Sighing, she shimmied as far as she could towards it and lowered herself down till she couldn't go any further and then let her legs swing out into space as she dropped the few feet to grab onto the edge.

Panting and feeling sweat pouring down her back despite the cold temperature, she took a moment to calm herself down till she could feel her heart-rate slow back to normal. 'If I'm this bad with just that drop, how long will I have to sit after the next part?' She wondered.

Not looking forward to finding out, she started swinging her legs, building momentum till she let go, falling with a sickening feeling, she couldn't have screamed if she'd wanted to, in fact, all that came out was a thin whimper when she flew past the first rack.

Her hands flailed desperately for it, but she was too far away. Realizing that she was still falling, she nearly succumbed to panic, but managed to stave it off as she continued falling, moving closer as she did, till her hand locked around the hard metal frame, nearly pulling her arm out of the socket as she slammed into the metal with a cacophonous crash.

Wincing in pain at the pain in her chest and arm, she still managed to throw herself into the shelving and behind a broken piece of pallet that had wedged a short ways over just before the bots arrived to investigate the noise.

They seemed to take forever, drifting around the room, looking for anything. Gaige knew she could easily take them, but the sounds of gunfire would draw more and while they weren't a challenge to take out, she'd need to reload. Not to mention that she couldn't dodge from her current position, so she was stuck there until they left.

Eventually they drifted off, seeming to have come to the conclusion that there wasn't anything there. If they'd been smarter, they probably would've thought that it was just another crate falling after the last shake, but they weren't programmed that well, so if they couldn't see anything, then the room was clean and they left.

Gaige had been afraid that they'd just stop where they were once they'd swept the room, waiting for the next sound to activate them, but to her relief, they drifted off, back through the door to undoubtedly wait by the entrance.

She gave it a little bit, just to make sure they were gone, before slipping back out and climbing down.

Once she was at the ground, she let out a small sigh, it was good to not have to worry about falling for a moment. Of course, if the ground gives way under the weight of all the junk on it, that was a different matter, after all, she'd seen that happen once here already. Granted, the floor had a bit of help from the filing cabinet she'd dropped, but still.

Walking quickly but carefully around the room, trying to avoid the bigger piles of junk, she eventually made it to the far wall and climbed up the shelves there. Occasionally she had to climb over a cabinet or two, a few of which had warning labels on them that worried her about their contents leaking, but before long she'd made it to the door into the shipping area.

She peeked in, but didn't see Deathtrap, which wasn't a surprise since if he'd been there, she'd have heard the racket of the bots attacking by now. Instead, she saw a fleet of the bots hovering in the center of the room. So many in fact that she couldn't see the other wall.

'Great.' She thought 'Now how am I supposed to deal with them?'