She quested outwards. Hoping to find food as well as just something to fucking do. Of course, all the doors were blocked to her. She must be in some sort of dorm or something, she mused to herself.
She finally found a door and it led to outside. Wonderful. They couldn't have given her a map?
She rolled around a bit outside until she found the door to an even bigger building. It let her in, thank god.
The hallways were more open here, resulting in an airy feel to the place. Everything was big. The doorways were massive. She had no idea how big the people on base were but clearly they were bigger than she expected. Either that or they straight up drove cars in there regularly.
She could feel her arms aching with strain from the trip already but she was determined to see at least another human.
She found a gym and it was full of military types. They all stared at her when she opened the door. While she liked attention, she found this was not the type for her so she backed out, closing the door. Fuck that. She would just have to strength train her arms the normal way.
And fuck, if the only people around were military she was just asking for a lonely existence.
She found the cafeteria next, thank the good lord above. There was fresh hot food and all she had to do was scan her badge to get it. She may have gotten more than she could eat but she was starving for some good hot food.
She chowed down on some mac and cheese and some kind of meat in BBQ sauce. It was divine. There were other people around her and some of them were staring but she was far too focused on food to give a fuck.
She didn't bother saying anything, just dumped her tray when she was done and went zooming back towards the door.
She was tired. She hadn't had this much to do since before the accident. She was warm and full and ready for a really fucking long nap. Finding her room again took a significant amount of time. It only served to make her grumpy.
Getting into bed felt fantastic and judging from the way the light changed when she woke up, she had managed to sleep a very long time.
She spent the next few days exploring the base. There wasn't much to it. There were a bunch of doors she couldn't get into, an airplane hangar she was avoiding, the main common area, and the dorms. That was about it. She saw a handful of people but there weren't really all that many people. She had no idea what the fuck she was doing there but she explored it all the same.
One nice thing was being on the beach. She didn't get out of her chair and couldn't really travel over sand all that well but she did manage to touch the water once. It smelled good. Like she was on vacation instead of basically being held prisoner.
She didn't see the suit again which kind of sucked because she was loaded with questions. The military guys all avoided her but managed to stare quite a bit which was really not flattering at all. Didn't they have something better to do than stare at the girl in the wheelchair?
She settled into a rhythm. Avoid people. Avoid the gym. Eat every meal in the cafeteria. Spend the morning on the beach. Spend the afternoon playing cards. Go to bed early.
It was all fun and games until she ran out of meds. She was annoyed that it probably signaled she had been there a month because it really hadn't felt like that long.
So she had her next order of business: track down the suit. No one else would come close enough for her to even ask where to refill meds.
It took her two days of annoying ass withdrawl before she found him.
"I need meds," she said in lieu of a greeting.
"Oh," he said. Oh. What was with this man and being surprised.
"I'll have them delivered to you," he said, waving his hand before he took off like a shot in a different direction than he had been heading before.
And she was on her own again. Really there had to be something more entertaining than this. She was bored. Wasn't there TV or something? Anything to break it up.
Her meds were delivered right to her doorstep by someone she hadn't seen.
The next few days followed the pattern. Then it broke quickly and suddenly. She was on her way to lunch when she heard a sharp high whistle come from the airplane hangar.
Immediately she recognized it from her dream. She knew that sound. She didn't know what it meant exactly but from what she could recall from context it reminded her of a fuck you.
She rolled towards the hangar, hoping to get some fucking answers for the dreams that didn't stop but was halted by the hangar being closed. Her damn badge wouldn't scan. She sighed. She just wanted something different dammit.
So she let out the whistle herself, loud and long, glaring down the door. Silence answered her.
Great. She rolled on her way to the cafeteria, thinking far too hard.
There was something in that hangar that they didn't want her to see. She was determined to see it. There was nothing else to do. The hangar doors were sometimes open. She would just need to stake it out so she could get a peek.
It took a few days but she wasn't all that sure she wasn't seeing things when she finally got to see. It was a giant blue robot. Just like the ones in her dreams.
He was standing with his back to her, arms folded and looking down at something on the ground. It was a person and that person was staring at her. She felt her face heat up as she realized she was caught but it didn't stop her from staring.
The man gestured the robot further into the hangar but it was far too late. She had totally seen it. She wasn't crazy.
The robots were real. That was the deal with the NDA. They didn't know if she saw them and they wanted her to never talk about them.
Well tough shit because now all she wanted to do was talk about them. Finally something interesting happens to her and they try and hide it from her.
It became a game. Trying to sneak a peek into the hangar. They kept it closed for a few days but they didn't keep it closed for long. She saw a big black robot and a smaller yellow one. She saw one that was blue and red and she saw one that was the ugliest yellow color she'd ever seen.
What broke the mold was these two smaller ones. They talked in English. She could hear them. Arguing about some color or something. The pink one seemed offended by being pink. She didn't think too hard on it, just added it to her mental list.
She also noticed since she had seen into the hangar, there were suddenly cars everywhere. She spotted a big black truck, a semi truck with flames on it, an ambulance, and a blue sports car.
The ice cream trucks surprised her. She never saw anyone go up to them and they were always playing the most obnoxious music at full blast.
There were also motorcycles just parked in the most random of places.
It was bizarre. One second she had felt like the base was dead and the next it was full of fucking cars.
She had no idea who was even driving them. They almost seemed to drive themselves which didn't make a lick of sense to her. She knew she was on a military base and they would have advanced tech and all, but that seemed a little ridiculous.
She never managed to get close to a car before it sped off away from her which was also a curious thing. She wanted to know more about the cars dammit.
And what ever happened to the blue van? All these cars suddenly appearing and no van. She knew they probably hadn't flown it back as the airplane didn't seem to take off all that often.
Finally she got lucky and the blue sports car stayed put when she came up to it. She rolled close and touched the side of it. It had the same low vibration that the van had had. Curious, she whistled at it. The car jolted beneath her hand and sped off.
Damn. So whistling was something the cars could definitely sense then.
It was a huge mystery and with nothing else to do, she was determined to solve it.
The cars were very careful to not let her get close which just made her all that more curious. How did the car know? Where they intelligent? Or was there someone manning them like an RC car? She didn't spot any excessive cameras that would lead her to that being the right conclusion but what did she know? She had no clue how small the cameras could be. She wasn't a camera scientist.
She began plotting. The only logical thing to do was to stake out the hangar on a day it was open and just say fuck it and go inside. She couldn't think of any other way to get answers. The suit was avoiding her, because of course he was. And the military guys were no help.
She hadn't had someone to just talk to in so long she was getting itchy. She wanted to have a fucking conversation and not just be left to wonder what the deal with all the cars was on her own.
Which is how she found herself back next to the blue sports car. She didn't try making any of the weird sounds. She just sat next to it.
"I'm really lonely," she said quietly. The car didn't move which she thought was a good sign.
"There's no one to talk to. The military guys avoid me. The suit avoids me. The damn cars avoid me. I don't know what to do with myself. I've barely got enough control over my arms to get around base and that's not mentioning the twinge I keep having in my right arm. I miss the hospital," she said with a sigh. The car just sat there, reflecting the sunlight.
"I'm so lonely I'm talking to fucking car," she muttered before reaching out and patting the car.
"Thanks for listening I guess," she said. The car still didn't move. Curious, she decided to make a chirp she knew was nice and friendly. The car rocked on its wheels but didn't move.
"Huh," she said quietly to herself.
"I miss driving, ya know. It's like the one thing I really miss," she said with a sigh, tilting her head back.
Her love of driving was how she got herself into this mess in the first place. She wasn't supposed to be in Mission City. She was supposed to be in Portland. But one day she said fuck it, filled her car, and drove until she was tired.
She had stayed because the city driving had given her a secret thrill. She found herself a cheap place to stay and started job hunting. She wanted to work for a taxi service or something but they seemed to never be hiring. So she worked as a server and drove around town in her free time.
She gave the car one last long look before rolling away. She wasn't going to push the patience of whoever controlled the cars. Maybe they would send her a therapy dog or some shit when they found out how lonely she was.
She really could use a cuddly puppy.
What she wasn't expecting was for a loud metal scraping sound to happen behind her. She turned, glancing at what was the car and was now just a shifting pile of metal. It slowly stood up into one of the robots.
"Oh fuck."