Chapter 29
Apate 3
Artemis
The alarm started blaring loud enough that it nearly caused her to scream in pain. Involuntarily, she slapped her hands over her ears and winced, but then a horrid disconcerting sensation crawled over her skin, one she'd felt before, one she recognized as an EMP field expanding over her.
Eyes snapping open, she saw the crackling blue energy pushing out from the floor, telling her that the trap was set somewhere below her, most likely in the ceiling of the floor below her.
She wished she'd called Gaige before she'd accessed the computer, she'd known she should have, even as she'd talked herself out of it. Now, because of her hubris, she couldn't warn the other two, nor tell them what she'd found. Belatedly she realized that she'd never even told them that she'd got in alright, so they might not even know where to look for her should they want to.
Pushing herself up, she pulled the gun off her back and decided that if that was the case, she'd just have to escape on her own. She looked down at the shotgun she was holding and snarled at it slightly, she'd never been a fan of them, not even the Jakobs models, she'd preferred to be able to place the shot exactly where she'd wanted it, no matter the range. But this was what she had with, so she'd have to use it the best she could.
She strode around the desk, trying to figure out how she was supposed to get out, when the door in front of her flew open and three security bots flew in. They were different from the other bots she'd encountered, first off, they were painted and a glossy black at that, with stripes of glowing blue running down their side, though she wasn't sure what it was for, aesthetics maybe? Or it might have had something to do with how they were still moving around in the EMP field.
They spotted her and let out an electronic noise that sounded a bit like static and then declared "Identity unconfirmed. Intruder detected. Intruder detected. All available units to the head office. Cease resisting and accept execution quietly."
'To heck with that.' Artemis thought, stepping forward and firing the shotgun into the arm joint of the first bot, blowing the limb off in a shower of sparks.
"Alert. Alert. Resistance detected. Deploying countermeasures."
The two remaining bots' hands opened up and started firing at her, even as she dodged to the side and fired a second time, blasting a good sized hole into the second one.
Not wasting any time, she dashed forward and kicked it into the third one, sending them both tipping off to the side as she dove onto them and fired twice more, finishing them off.
Deciding to get out of there before anything else happened, like them exploding, she dashed out, not even pausing as she fired one last shot into the first one she'd downed to make sure it was done.
Slapping a new clip into the gun, she raced across the entrance area, even as two more bots emerged from each side of the room.
She grabbed a vase as she went past and sent it hurtling into the first one, trying to buy herself as much time as she could to get across the room and out the doors.
She'd made it over half way when the bots started shooting at her. Normally she wouldn't have cared, her shield would've easily taken the relatively light firepower that the bots carried, but since she was in the EMP field, her shield was fried, leaving her defenseless.
Forced to take evasive action, she ducked down and rolled under most of the shots, feeling some of them strike her. She would've preferred to have dropped into a slide, since she could still fight while sliding, but the thick carpet would've prevented that.
Coming up, she shoved herself back, trying to throw the tracking off of her for a second and winced as a line of shots tore through a painting. 'What kind of person allows their security to destroy what they're supposed to be protecting?' She thought bitterly as she turned and sunk a shot into the offending bot.
It wasn't like she was some kind of art connoisseur, she knew next to nothing about it, but that didn't mean that she wanted to destroy it, far from it in fact, she liked art, or at least the pieces that she did like, there were whole genres that she couldn't get into, a number of which she would've gladly destroyed herself, mostly because they weren't really art, like the one piece she'd seen at some fancy place she'd had to go one time, for the life of her it looked like someone had floated a cigar ashtray in a toilet and then put a flower in it. What was it supposed to mean? She couldn't even guess, but she'd thought it was the stupidest thing she'd seen. But these paintings were nice, tasteful, even if the man that'd bought them had only done so because he'd been told they were worth money, which was painfully obvious due to the fact that the next one over clashed horribly with the newly ventilated one.
She fired again, dropping the second bot in that direction while she'd rushed towards the front door, only to find it plugged with nearly a dozen bots.
Since she still had two more in the room already to deal with, she let out a string of expletives at them and dashed for the door she'd just cleared, throwing herself through it as a hail of bullets exploded behind her, tearing chunks out of its veneer.
She rolled to the side to get out of the immediate line of fire and checked her surroundings. She'd dove into the dining room, which was now a bit of a mess, with fragments of the door strewn across the table and a few of the chairs looking considerably worse for wear.
As soon as the shooting stopped, she poked her head up and glanced around the remains of the door. Just like she'd been afraid of, the bots were swarming into the entrance area. A few of them were proceeding through to the boss's office, no doubt to try and flank her, so she popped up and fired twice, taking a few of them out before diving back as the bots resumed trying to hit her through the wall.
She did a quick inventory of herself, most of the wounds she'd suffered were minor, though a few would start causing her problems once the adrenaline wore off, but she could see a few that needed attention, so she dug out a Insti-health vial and let it do its thing. She was grateful that the shots hadn't pierced her cybernetics, since that would've completely fried them since she was still in the EMP field. Thinking about it, the field had been going for an awfully long time, well over a minute by her calculations and showed no sign of stopping, which meant Holloway had solved the duration issue.
Then it occurred to her, maybe there hadn't been a duration issue after all, maybe this was how they'd fist constructed it and the real challenge had been miniaturizing it, which actually made a bit of sense.
Shaking that off, she scuttled over to the servant's door near the back of the room and poked her head in. Just like she'd predicted, she found herself in a small hallway with the kitchen on one side and some doors further down. She didn't know what was in them, or if the bots would actually be going around this way and not cutting through the smoking room, either way, she needed to do something about it and quick, so she did the only thing she could think of.
She dashed over to the table and rolled under it, getting to the other side as fast as she could. Bracing herself, she heaved with all her might, only for nothing to happen except her thinking she might have strained something.
She'd meant to flip the table against the doors, but the darned thing was way heavier than she'd thought. She hadn't even managed to jiggle it, let alone flip it over.
She'd known that it wasn't a good plan, after all, the doors swung the other way, but it would've at least blocked out part of the bots way in. Instead, she was going to have to face them from three ways now.
As she realized that, the door to the entrance hall blew open and the bots started pouring in. Gripping her gun tighter, she popped up and opened fire, killing the first ones through and managing to cause a bit of a bottleneck as the rest of them plowed into them from behind.
Still, the reprieve didn't last long, but it was enough time to reload. Artemis wished she had a better weapon along, preferably some kind of heavy hitter, but right then she would've settled for one of the assault rifles she'd carried, but she'd left the only one she'd brought with with Gaige since she didn't think it would've fit in the air vent with her, and in retrospect, it wouldn't have. But that didn't mean she didn't want it with.
The only other weapons she had with her were a pistol and a couple of Tina's bombs, though Gaige had strongly warned her against using them. She'd said that they should hold off on them until as late as possible, to prevent Holloway from finding out that they had a solution to his EMP field generators. While that made sense, it didn't mean it was easier to run around with a stuffed bunny in your bag and not throw it at someone.
Emptying the shotgun at the hoard trying to push through the doorway, she dropped it and drew the pistol as the other two doors yanked open and the bots trying to flank her flew in. Her only real consolation in this entire mess was that they didn't seem to be able to communicate with the EMP field going, so they couldn't coordinate their attack. Still, they had sensors so they could hear the sounds of gunfire, which meant they had a fairly good idea of where she was in the room and started firing as they entered.
She returned fire with the pistol, punching holes in their joints, which to her surprise seemed to work just fine, since they freaked out and crashed to the floor, which caused her to realize that she'd been going about this all wrong, she hadn't needed to destroy them like normal, she just had to punch a hole in and let Holloway's own tech finish the job for her.
Opening fire, she quickly finished off the ones trying to flank her and then went back to the rest that were finally managing to get through the main door and after slapping in a new clip, finished them off as well.
Taking a moment to sigh with relief, she reloaded her guns and moved out.
The pile of bots in the doorway made attempting to get through a hazardous affair, so she decided to go the long way around, hopping over the few bots that had tried to flank her and move down the hall. She moved quickly, wanting to put as much space between her and the downed bots as she could, unsure of how long it would take for them to explode, but she made it back to the main entrance and back into the hall without them doing anything other than spark and sizzle menacingly.
Getting back into the hall, she realized that she had no idea of where to go, she supposed she could try and get back into the vents, but doubted she could do so without a considerable amount of effort, since the only place she knew of to get in was the conference room and there was no way she could reach the vent on her own. She didn't think that if she stacked the chairs up in there she could reach and that was only if she figured out a way to prevent them from rolling, which left trying to get one of the doors open, a prospect she didn't have much faith in even in the best of times and the EMP field certainly wasn't what she'd consider the best of times.
Still, it wasn't like she had many other options, so she figured she might as well try it before giving up.
Proceeding down the hallway, she quickly found what she'd been afraid of, that the stairs down were blocked by another shutter, much like the second floor. And just like the second floor, she couldn't see any control panels around.
She looked around, unlike the lobby, this one had a number of chairs, mostly uncomfortable looking antiques, but there were a few that she assumed were for the workers since they were much cheaper and covered in a bit of grunge.
Blocking the way to the back of the building was a secretary's desk with a small waist high door in it to let people through. The stairs were straight ahead and the elevators were on the far wall, making her realize that this floor was a bit shorter on the front side of the building, which would make sense since she hadn't seen any steps up on the second floor. She jumped the secretary's desk, looking for any way to open the shutter, but there was only what she assumed was a communication panel for letting Mr. Holloway know that someone was waiting, which wouldn't have been a help even if it hadn't been fried by the EMP.
She gave one last look around, trying to think of any other ways to get out of there, then it hit her, someone like Holloway must've had another way out, there was no way he would force himself to walk all the way to the front of the building just to leave, especially not if there was some kind of emergency, so he had to have an emergency exit of his own somewhere in his office. The only problem was that she had no idea of where it would be.
Standing there, she debated heading back to his office and looking, or just going with the simpler route and trying the vents again. She supposed it would be more time efficient to just go back and try getting back into the vents, especially since any secret exit would no doubt be hidden and need something to open it, which he likely would've kept on himself. It wasn't like he'd just leave it lying around. Even if he had left it, he would've hidden it somewhere.
Then she remembered what she'd found in the book.
Digging through her pockets she quickly found the small remote and stared at it. It did look like the kind of thing that could open a secret exit, so the only question that remained was whether it had been shielded from the EMP or not.
Figuring it was worth a shot, she headed back to his office and upon entering pressed one of the buttons with no small amount of trepidation, after all, she had no way of knowing what it was really for and was only hoping it would open some hidden door and not summon another wave of bots or something worse.
To her relief, a small click echoed through the room and a section of the wall slid out to reveal an elevator door. Rushing over, she tried it, but to her dismay, found that it wasn't in operation. She figured it had probably been fried by the EMP.
She pushed the other button on the remote and the opposite wall slid back, revealing a set of stairs. She wished the elevator had started up with the button, but she'd take what she could get, so she headed over with haste.
Slowing down once she was inside, she made her way down the narrow flight of stairs. Her first thought was to be surprised that it was so cramped, but she remembered that it had to fit inside of the wall in an inconspicuous way, so the narrowness was really to be expected. Her next thought was that she wished she had some kind of light, because it was fairly dark. Not too dark to make her way, but surprisingly dim, not that she'd expected it to be well lit, but a few more lights wouldn't have been amiss. Still, she could see light coming up from below her, so she must be getting near an exit.
That thought stopped her, she'd only gone down a little ways, not quite a full floor, but it was starting to get lighter? That didn't seem right at all, so she tightened her grip on her pistol and moved forward.
What she found explained a lot about the building.
The light was coming from the other side of a transparent wall, one she assumed was only transparent from her side and no doubt would've looked like a plain wall from the other. She figured this mostly by the fact that a couple of filing cabinets were pushed up against it, not to mention the poster and calendars still hanging on the wall, which looked quite odd seeing them from the back.
But what had gotten her attention was the rest of the room. It stood in stark contrast to the rest of the building, with an almost clinical look to it, white walls, floors and ceilings that seemed to be made out of plastic. The illumination was coming from the EMP dome projecting from the ceiling which bathed the place in a soft blue light.
The room was dominated by stacks of servers and other computer cores, while the rest of the room was filled with white desks, each of which had a monitor built into it and a stack of papers on one side. From where she was standing, it was hard to make out what was on them, but as she took a couple of steps, she was able to get a good enough angle to be able to read one of them, despite the distance.
It appeared to be some kind of transcript of a conversation, one that she wasn't familiar with, but some of the names stood out to her, notably Zane and Tannis, which was what confirmed where she was.
This was Holloway's information gathering department.
This was where all the data that the bots sent back was compiled and gone through, where he'd stolen all of his tech.
Knowing that, she could piece together the technical printouts on one of the desks, not to mention the conversation that had been overheard on Sanctuary 3. It also explained the secret passage she was in, Holloway wouldn't trust his employees, so he'd want to be able to come down and make sure they were working without them knowing.
It also explained the rest of the building, why it was so much fancier than anywhere else, he'd been treating them well in an attempt to keep them satisfied and not spill the fact that they were all engaging in criminal behavior.
Still, the knowledge didn't do anything to help her current situation, so she pressed on.
The hall ran a short ways and then went down again, exiting out into the airlock room she'd first entered the building, swinging one of the control panels out of the way so that she could get out.
She watched the panel swing closed behind her and marveled at how seamlessly it merged with the rest of the controls. She bet that it actually worked too.
Shaking her head, she turned and opened the airlock door. Stepping in, she hit the button to cycle it and got ready to make her way back to where Gaige was. She should be able to make it easily. Of course, that didn't take into account the fact that she might run into a security patrol out there, but she should have enough time even if she did.
But when the air started getting sucked out, her Oz kit didn't kick in, the bubble around her didn't form and she suddenly found herself struggling to get a breath.
In a bit of a panic, she found the cancel button and slammed her hand into it as hard as she could, as fast as she could and to her great relief, the air started returning.
She slumped against the ground, sucking in deep breaths until she started to feel lightheaded from it.
Reaching up, she pulled her Oz kit off and turned it over, looking at it. Nothing seemed wrong, but it wasn't working. It hadn't been hit by a stray bullet, which is what she'd feared, so why wasn't it working? Nothing had happened since she'd got here that should've affected it, so what was up?
Thinking back on everything she'd been through she quickly cycled through the events, entering, searching the front, searching the rooms, crawling through a vent, landing in the boardroom, entering Holloway's office, searching it, finding his computer, setting off the EMP, fighting some bots...
Suddenly she paled. That was it, the Oz kits hadn't been shielded from the EMP like the rest of their gear. No wonder it hadn't worked.
But that did present a new problem, how was she going to get back without it?
She couldn't get through the main door, it was probably still sealed. There was no way it had opened after the alarm had sounded. In fact, it would likely be harder to move around since a good number of the walkway doors would be closed. So how was she going to get back?
An idea hit her, but even she knew it was an extremely bad one, one of the worst ones she'd come up with and that was saying something. Still, it wasn't like she had a lot of choices right then, so she'd have to give it a go, she only wished she could tell Gaige what she'd learned, just in case things went wrong, but the ECHO's couldn't be used in the middle of the EMP field, so she'd just have to survive to tell her in person.
With that decided, she started taking deep breaths, trying to oxygenate her blood as best she could, as if she were about to take a deep dive into the sea and once she'd got them as best she could, hit the airlock cycle button and sucked in one last deep breath.
The light seemed to take forever to turn green and allow her to swing the door open, her lungs felt like they were burning even with just those few seconds, but she knew it was an illusion. She was grateful that the planet had at least a slight atmosphere and that the factory had reinforced it a bit, so that she didn't die from being in a vacuum, she would've been more grateful if they'd made the place completely atmospheric, but she'd take what she could get as she turned and bounced out, scanning the nearest buildings and walkways for what she needed.
Unfortunately, none of the buildings had what she was looking for, but she did spot something that might work on one of the walkway intersections, the only problem was it was on the far side from her.
She bounced in the direction of the walkway, calculating how much longer she could go and figured that it would be a close one at best, but she didn't see any other way, so she sped up, heading towards the nearest corner of the building in front of her and jumped as high as she could, aiming at the wall. The instant her foot hit the building she launched herself up and out, landing on the top of the walkway. Another two hops and she was over the tube and sailing through the air.
Coming down lightly she slid up to the hatch on the side of the small building and got to work, popping it off without much difficulty. To her relief, inside was an emergency hatch, just like the red arrow on the outside had led her to believe. She grabbed the handle inside and twisted it aside, feeling the pressure inside nearly blow the door out. She managed to get out of its way and as it clanged off the side of the dome, scuttled in on her hands and knees, wedging herself into the small space and pulling with all her might till the door closed.
Ignoring the siren blaring around her, she punched the button on the inside as soon as she'd closed the hatch, relishing the air that blasted her face.
In next to no time the small area was filled with air and she was able to heave open the inner door. Spilling out in a rather undignified manner, she looked around the small domed room.
Just as she'd feared, the shutters were closed, though whether it was due to the alarm or the airlock being thrown open, she didn't know. What she did know was it meant that she was going to have to go back outside.
