Motorplex

A great many ideas were contributed by my friend Red and my friend whose pen name is Lust_Demon! Also YEESH this chapter was a chore to write.

Mike could pick locks much faster than Chuck dared to cut stitches. He thought, maybe too late, that he should have slowed down maybe just a little bit. It may have saved him the horrible pluck in his gut every time the scissors snipped through the slaves' sutures. He swore he could see the bounce of tension cross their skin with every soft meeting of the scissor blades. He didn't know how Chuck could stomach it. Mike definitely needed to step away when the slaves started pulling the sutures out of the holes left in their lips, and a sharp bile taste stuck strong to the back of his throat even after eating a few peas from his pocket. He was not feeling great. The lack of food and the smells compounded the stress. His mind kept copy-pasting those holes onto Chuck's face and telling him that's what would have happened if he had been just a little too late. He was ready to get them both out of here... even if it meant yet another trip up those stupid stairs.

Behind him, the scissor noises stopped. There was a little shuffle of denim as Chuck stood to his feet. "There. That's the last one," he said.

"Then let's get moving." Time to put that stress in the bottom of his gut, turn it into fuel, get moving again. Mike turned back to Chuck. The slaves all gathered around them from every side. Mike spoke loud enough for them all to hear, but only barely, his voice made rough with the effort. "We'll let them out at ground level, while we go out the way I came in."

Chuck wrung his hands and ventured a guess. "Don't trust the front door?"

Mike nodded. "I don't want to chance tripping an alarm I can't see. I don't think I can get everybody up the rope, either."

"Where's the rope?"

Mike hissed. "It's on the roof. I climbed in through the little manager's window."

"Her window?" Chuck whimpered. "You got in here through her room? How are we both gonna manage that?"

Three of the slaves pulled on Mike's elbow hard enough to knock him off balance. While his head was down, the youngest of the three whispered into his ear. Even at his age, his voice was dry and anemic from neglect. "Uniform! Uniform!"

"Uniform?" Mike waved Chuck close to listen in. "What, you mean the vests?"

"Why would we want a-" Chuck gasped. "A manager vest! That's brilliant!"

"Regulation uniform." The little guy continued. "No disciplinary action required."

"Hey, yeah..." Mike realized. "Blend in with you guys, sneak by the guards-"

The little guy nodded. "Same smell."

"Smell the sam-" and there was the bile again. "Oh god."

"Hey, remember when I said today was going to suck?" said Chuck. "I'm doubling down on that to include tomorrow."

Mike and Chuck found themselves pulled to the front door and donning a pair of greasy plastic vests. They ducked down into a crowd of slaves. Nose to shoulder, he and Chuck shuffled through a yard full of sleeping guards and their equally tired dogs. Not a single one of them so much as shifted in their sleep. It was a perfect clean getaway.

Maybe 'clean' was the wrong word. He couldn't help thinking it. Mike took every step through a chest-high ocean of pure hate. These stinking, ugly vests, and who they belonged to, weighed him down almost physically out of pure contempt. As soon as they reached the stairs, Mike peeled off the vest and nearly wrenched Chuck's shoulder pulling his off of him.

"Stay in uniform!" one of the slaves urged.

"I am not associating myself with this any more than I have to." Mike crumpled the vests like the trash they were. It left a film on his hands. A soft click came from within, and he pulled apart the vests to find two name tags. One belonged to Manager Tony, from that morning when things had gone wrong. The other, tucked into a pocket, must have been hers.

The woman who stole Chuck and put him in a cage, gagged and bound and planning to sew his mouth shut, was named Maggie.

The stress he shoved into his gut sparked, and combusted, welling up into flames that surged into his ears and turned his vision red. Mike ripped the vests apart three times and smashed the name tags under his boot heel until Chuck threw his arms around him in a frenzy.

"Mikey what are you doing?! Calm down!" It was the loudest Chuck could whisper, and his voice was ragged trying to mute himself. "You'll wake up the whole floor!"

Mike turned to address the... He couldn't just keep calling them 'slaves'. The word curdled his blood to even think. A different word stuck out in his head, though, one that he'd heard and read since they had gotten here. He always chalked it up to being lingo, but maybe there was something to it. He tried it out loud.

"Attention Shoppers."

They had been staring, aghast, at the shreds of the manager's authority lying on the dirty floor before Mike spoke. Every one of them turned their head to him. He had hit on it. That had to be the word, their actual name for themselves. The Shoppers.

"We're coming back for all of you." Mike slipped himself out of Chuck's grip. "We're getting the cars and we're taking this place down, as soon as we can. Take care of yourselves until Chuck and I come back with reinforcements."

Maybe he'd gone too far into English, because the Shoppers murmured and gasped to themselves in little whispers rather than respond.

"You really mean that?" asked Chuck.

Mike chanced a little grin. "I'm not letting this dirty little Deluxe keep abusing these people. I think all we'll need is some of the big guns, Mutt, Texas, and a nice big plastic boat."

Chuck grinned right back. "Add in flamethrowers and a vat of disinfectant and you've got a deal."

"First stop, electronics department." Mike wrapped an arm around Chuck and lead him up the stairs with him.

After one flight, he really missed Mutt.

Electronics was a long journey away, made on the ground with Mike leading, looking for the spots in the floor the least likely to creak. Chuck followed in his footsteps, closer and closer as the morning rolled on. Chuck was practically on his back by the time they reached Electronics, but from there, it was a manic split up and silent mad dash to grab every little fiddly bit Chuck needed to make his transmitter. How this particular store wasn't wired with a security system, Mike couldn't imagine. He just counted themselves very lucky as they got away with the parts they needed and nothing more.

The rest of the trip upstairs was made with purpose, a steady rhythm keeping their pace all the way up to the fifteenth floor. Mike hoisted Chuck up into the hole in the ceiling. Chuck caught his hands as he jumped and pulled him up the rest of the way. It was easy. Effortless, almost, other than the pain in his muscles from... everything. Chuck was even smiling as they worked their way up the stairs in the dark, lit by the magnet-powered flashlight. The last floor, the 20th floor, the doorway to freedom, was almost fun to look over now. The little abandoned bits of junk, the torn clothing and dog-chewed toys, painted a much more domestic picture of Motorplex life than anything downstairs. The quiet was almost healing.

There, at the very top floor at the very top of an uneven set of stairs, was a door labeled "Roof Access". Mike popped the lock open with the long needle before it finally gave up the ghost and snapped in half. The door opened to the center of the roof. Chuck nearly giggled with joy as he leaped through the door. "Finally! We can talk out lo- aaugh this is the worst smell in the world I forgot-!"

Mike staggered hard enough to lose his grip on the door handle. It hung half-open behind him. "Yep... still smells like a lake of acid."

Chuck upended the bag of goodies and started ripping the components apart immediately. "And here I thought it would smell better up here, away from the fumes."

"Nope. Worse." Mike coughed. "Really worse. It didn't smell this bad when I went down to the boat."

"Why were you down at the boat?" Chuck asked while he wound wires around a metal core.

"I was gonna wait for you!" said Mike. "I thought you'd gone back to the garage, which is dumb, I know, I was still upset-"

"Mike don't make me come over there and hug it out with you again!" There was no anger in this jab. In fact, Chuck was smiling big enough to show his teeth. "Because I will come over there!"

Mike couldn't resist. "You know if you want hugs, you can just come get them, right? You don't have to contrive situations like that."

Chuck laughed and started hacking hard enough to whimper in pain. Mike dipped back inside for the cleanest-looking scrap of shirt he could find, ripped it in half, and tied the halves around his and Chuck's faces. They looked like the weirdest pair of banditos- the cloth was ducky print- but at least they could breathe a little easier. The acid fumes still stung at their eyes, but it was manageable for now.

Chuck worked, and Mike watched, and time seemed to crawl.

Finally, at something like four in the morning, Chuck's transmitter produced a solid blue comm screen.

"I'm getting a signal!" Chuck's voice nearly cracked from the strength of his joy. "C'mere! Hurry!"

Mike slammed down next to Chuck and watched the comm screen wiggle and flicker in front of them. Just a little more...

Mike and Chuck both screamed as soon as they saw hair. "DUTCH!"

Dutch, very unprepared for a video call out of the blue, jumped right the hell out of frame with a yelp. He was at the garage, and from the look of the big screen in the background and the collection of snacks, he was... having a pizza party with Julie, Texas, and Jacob.

The detail did not escape Chuck.

"Is that Rock Band? You're playing ROCK BAND?!" Chuck wailed. "I got sold into slavery and nearly got my mouth sewn shut by a princess with a blond fetish and YOU'RE PLAYING ROCK BAND?! AND ON MY SAVE FILE!"

Dutch took up the frame fast, as did Julie, Texas, and then Jacob in a big hurry. Dutch said, "Waitwaitwaitwait wait back all of that up. Unpack it."

Julie cocked an eyebrow. "Why do you look like you're about to hold up Shining Time Station?"

"No time!" Mike cut in. "Get ROTH, get over here, and get us airlifted out of his hellhole pronto!"

Texas leaned in a little closer. "No wait I wanna hear about the princess wit-"

"Guys, I am not fooling around here!" Mike shouted. "We're STILL on the acid island! Neither of us have eaten in over ten hours! I had to break Chuck out of a cage!"

"I'm gonna send some plans your way for a field dampener." Chuck pulled up a keyboard and hammered away at the virtual keys. "It'll be enough to keep ROTH from getting woozy out here, and you should be able to build it on the way if someone else drives. Please, I am begging you, get here fast! I don't wanna chance anyone-"

Mike's blood ran cold. He could hear it. His breath stopped along with Chuck's as it echoed up from the bottom floor.

Screaming. Not just screaming, shrieking, a primal enraged noise which tore from a throat like a wild beast and came back stronger with every new breath. It reached up 20 floors and through to the roof. Chuck's voice spilled out of his mouth in a desperate attempt to escape without him, and he only managed a hoarse whimper.

"It's her!" Chuck pleaded. "She knows!"

Dutch ordered, "Texas, you're driving. Julie get the medical gear. ROTH, BUST A MOVE, BUDDY! YOU'RE GOING INTO THE FIELD!"

The floor under their feet was shaking. A rumbling stampede sounded up from below, an ocean of people moving along creaking floors, and to Mike's horror, Chuck's transmitter started to bounce. He could nearly see the parabolic wiggle of the roof as it hopped up once, twice, and then shattered on the third bounce. Their signal was gone, and the little manager was still shrieking, and he could hear all if it through-

Mike gasped. "I LEFT THE DOOR OPEN!"

"You what?!"

Below, somewhere, a floor must have collapsed. There was a deafening crack of splintering wood and a mass roar of people in agony, overlaid by that demonic shrieking getting louder and louder. It rippled through the entire Motorplex with a kick that sent the two completely off their feet with a powerful push. Mike crossed the floor in three steps and slammed the door shut, and Chuck was right behind him to throw himself against it.

"I let in a draft!" Mike realized. He could feel the ground warping under his feet. The line of the acid lake in the distance bobbed in and out of sight past the edge of the roof. "The smell- it must've got in and it woke everybody up-"

"I-it's okay!" Chuck assured him. "They're all downstairs, they won't look for us up here!"

"Actually," Mike admitted, "They chased me all the way up here earlier today..."

"So this is now the FIRST place they'd look." Chuck huffed and leaned harder against the door. "Okay, we can't panic, everybody's coming to rescue us-"

The shrieking was getting closer, and loud enough to make out words. Licky-Lips had nearly shouted her voice raw screaming "THIEF! THIEF!"

"-and that's good, and that's okay, and I think I'm gonna panic now-"

Chuck would need something to concentrate on, to get him out of that panic attack. Mike jerked his head back to the pieces of the transmitter. "Try to get that back together. I can hold them off here."

"They're already on the way!" Chuck argued. "I'm not letting you take them all on by yourself!"

"It's a choke point!" Mike took one of Chuck's shoulders and shoved. "If I need backup, I'll call you in! Go!"

He pushed Chuck away just in time, too. The doorknob was starting to jiggle, and each bodily impact against the other side rocked through his shoulders. Mike dug his feet into the roof and held tight as he got his staff out. Hold them off as long as he could this way, only break out the moves once there were too many to keep back.

He had the plan all laid out in his mind, until an arm burst through the roof and grabbed his ankle.

Mike shouted every swear he could think of and stabbed his staff down into the floor, losing the door and falling backwards. Instincts kept him on his feet, bashing the faces of the solid wall of Shoppers who flooded out of the doorway. They stunned easy, fell in single hits just for the next one to mindlessly climb over them in an ever-higher wall of meat. The worst part was the floor. Shoppers seethed under the floor, pressing and punching against the roof below. A few strong ones got their hands through the thin layer of drywall that passed for a ceiling, but Mike could handle that. No, it was the random rolling and rocking of the floor under his feet. It was like standing on a tarp on the lake. It was frankly making him seasick, and Mike's steps started to falter.

Heat rushed past his ear, and a manager fell backwards screaming against a ball of plasma.

Mike laughed and swung back into the fray. "Chuck, you're the best!"

"KEEP HITTING THEM!" Chuck shouted from behind his targeting screen. "We're losing ground!"

"I have them cornered-" Mike's foot sunk into the floor and came just barely came back out of it through the sea of grasping fingers. "Oh you mean literally!"

"YES I MEAN LITERALLY!"

"Have I mentioned-" Mike jumped back from a too-close hand and smacked the flat end of his staff into a green-vested belly. "-that I hate this place? More than I can put into words? We got an ETA?"

"I can't keep track of time like this!" Chuck answered. Another plasma bolt fired, but Mike didn't see it. He dared a look over at Chuck and found him shooting down at his feet at hands coming out of the floor. Mike was over at Chuck's side in a flash, beating the hands away from Chuck and stomping on them where they were close enough.

He could just barely feel it. He wasn't sure how they could see him from below the floor, but all the Shoppers converged on where he and Chuck were standing, and the Motorplex started to lean. Chuck yelped and grabbed onto him for dear life, and Mike hooked an arm around him and ran them over to the other side of the roof. The shift was immediate. The floor surged behind them, sprouting hands at random while more Shoppers poured out of the door and shoved at their fallen comrades to get to them.

"I hate this!" Chuck wailed. "I hate this!"

Mike scanned the roof for something, anything, that could help. Damn this boring flat roof, nothing on it except the end of the stairwell-

The stairwell had a metal roof! Mike hooked his arm behind Chuck and vaulted them up onto the little island. The corrugated metal held the hands at bay, as small as it was, but he could feel the nails attaching it to the building straining under the force of all the people beneath.

He bought them maybe a minute.

This probably wasn't the bed idea he could have had.

Mike had stranded them on top of a twenty story building, with only a sheet of metal between them and hundreds of people at the beck and call of a furiously angry amateur surgeon.

"Chuck..." Mike swallowed hard. His hand stayed clamped tight around Chuck's waist. "I screwed up bad."

Chuck returned the grip and pulled close to him. "Mikey..."

"And if anything happens to us-"

Mike froze. Chuck was asking him what he was going to say, but he couldn't answer. Everything was happening all at once. He could see ROTH swooping down from above, arms out, ready to catch him. He could feel arms at his pants legs, and his eyes darted down to catch a flash of blond hair framing a fat, greasy, furiously red face. His center of balance suddenly shifted as the metal buckled out, pitching him and Chuck forwards.

Making his decision fast, he pocketed his staff, wrapped Chuck up in both his arms, and leaped backwards.

It took all his strength to make the jump and clear the edge of the building. He didn't usually make jumps where he couldn't see the ground below him. All he had to look up into was Chuck's face, half obscured by dumb ducky print. His eyes mirrored back everything he was feeling: good healthy sense of terror, the odd distance from reality that an adrenaline overdose caused, confusion. It all cleared up in a hurry as thin-fingered hands clamped down on their shoulders and pulled them up, away, and out from the reach of the Motorplex building. Chuck, holding tight onto him, started to manically laugh like he did during crazy high jumps. Mike grabbed tight onto one of ROTH's arms and pulled out of joy! They were safe!

Mike twisted to get one last good look back at the Motorplex before they left that stupid building forever. The Shoppers had all gathered on edge of the rooftop, watching them leave. He could make out the faint outline of Manager Tony, with little manager Maggie running out of sight through the throng behind him. Mike kicked at the air in spite while Chuck flipped them off with both hands. "THAT'S WHAT YOU GET, YOU BUNCH OF CREEPS! JUST WAIT 'TIL WE COME BACK AND TEAR THIS WHOLE PLACE DOWN!"

"Good job, ROTH!" Chuck called up to their hero. "I am so proud of you right now!"

ROTH chirped and bobbed. Dutch's quick-built field dampener, made to Chuck's speedy specs, made him glow faintly blue in the light of Motorcity. He flew with an obvious ease that he hadn't been able to do before, and he deployed a few extra hands to gently pat Mike and Chuck on their heads, assuring them that they were homeward bound. Mike chuckled and turned back to the Motorplex to throw up some deuces of his own.

Maggie was leveling a shotgun at them.

The muzzle flashed orange, and within an instant, ROTH had lost his blue. They all started to drop.