This was written in a train station whilst Storm Gerret wreaked havoc on my travelling plans
Chapter 14: Hide and Seek
Heisenberg was gone by the time Iris woke up, sweating and heart thundering from a nightmare she couldn't quite remember. Flashes of teeth and bloodied fur rushed to her mind. It was better that she forgot.
A glass of water and still steaming cup of coffee was on the table, next to it a note written in familiar scratchy handwriting.
"Come find me"
Odd, her Boss usually took any chance he could to shout at her through the speaker system. She must have been in an awfully pitiful state last night for even the big bad Heisenberg to not want to startle her. Not wanting to ruin this seemingly pleasant mood he was in, Iris downed the coffee and headed straight for the bathroom to change.
Fresh and dressed, Iris hovered by the lift, waiting for instruction to what floor her Boss was working on. Maybe he needed help clearing out equipment? Or someone to document where everything was being hidden?
"Um, Heisenberg? Where should I meet you?"
Silence.
Come find me.
Ah.
He wanted her to try and use her powers. A ridiculous feat seeing she'd only really begun to use them on demand the night before. She wondered how fast her Boss took to his powers. She wouldn't be surprised if he just woke up one day instantly an expert.
The lift lurched and creaked as Iris descended into the very depths of the factory, knowing she'd have to scour the place bottom to top before she'd be able to find her Boss.
Stepping into the dank halls of Level B5, Iris stopped to listen for any shuffling footsteps or gasping breaths. She'd assumed that all the Haulers had been rounded up and either put on standby or exiled to the miles, but she wouldn't put it past her boss to leave a couple lingering around to scare her. Out of all of his projects, the Haulers were the most likely to cause damage. Although Heisenberg had been working on a "Soldat" recently he couldn't get the thing to do much other than hold things, and Sturm was still mostly confined to working on his reflexes and coordination. There was no point using a.. Man? Project? So big and powerful if they were too slow to actually catch their target.
Her Boss wasn't in the scrap room, which was deafeningly loud, the turbines and blades working overtime to shred any unnecessary scraps/dud experiments to then get reused in the foundry for her helmets. Nor any of the lower hallways. This game was going to take hours if she didn't focus.
Staring at a map of the factory, Iris attempted to use her power to sense a Cadou nearby, her blackened fingers trailing around the different rooms of the floors whilst she concentrated as much as possible on Cadou, The Black God and it's threads that connected all of its infected.
Nothing.
"For fucks sake…" Iris hoped Heisenberg wasn't holed up in a security room somewhere, laughing at her sad attempt to use her powers.
The engine room and generator rooms were also empty, but had a faint smell of decay that had Iris on high alert. A hauler must be close by, maybe one had gotten loose whilst being rounded up.
Next was the foundry which had been scrubbed clean, all of her moulds had disappeared, with nothing but some old tools and schematics of windmills scattered around the work bench. A decent display for anyone that'd come snooping around. The forge was on but barely warm, all energy had been turned towards the generators for the scrappers, when Heisenberg said clean up house, he really meant it.
So wrapped up in her forlorn examination of her once warm and bustling workroom, Iris failed to notice the Hauler shuffling down Heisenberg's private hallway until it was just barely scratching at the metal door. Lucky for her it was locked.
"Oh there you are!" She smirked, walking up to the door, "I could smell you all the way from the generators"
The Hauler responded with a hacking snarl, but Iris wasn't one to take these things personally.
The thing seemed offended, Iris had told Heisenberg countless times that these beings still had their souls, to which the man always taunted her for being a silly pious villager. It clawed and scratched at the metal door but was thankfully too weak to be able to open it, presenting a beautiful opportunity for Iris.
Glaring at the Hauler Iris tried once again to tap into her power, this time showing a modicum of success as a faint pulsing near the beings chest presented itself, followed by those smoky, ghost-threads. They were concentrated within the Hauler's skull, Iris bet the inside of its helmet was coated in the sticky black appendages of the Cadou, bursting out of the corpses eyes and nose to intertwine with the helmet that granted the corpse a new life.
Heisenberg was a genius, a disgusting, horrifying genius.
Extending one of her blackened hands towards the door Iris concentrated as much as possible onto the Cadou hiding within the Hauler, feeling it's sticky presence on her fingertips, making them burn, the raw vibrating power of the Megamycete present even now, so far away from its home, somewhere underneath the dark forest.
"Shoo!"
The Hauler screeched and stumbled backwards a bit, with another push of her hand towards the door, the thing turned away and stumbled off into the darkness.
"Now get back to the mines with your friends!" She shouted after it, her hands buzzing from her use of power, heart pumping with adrenaline.
She did it! She controlled it! Without fearing for her life or risking death!
Iris found herself beaming up at the foundry's security camera, and hoped that wherever Heisenberg was, he'd seen her control the Hauler.
Not letting the feeling of the Cadou go, Iris attempted to widen her net towards the other rooms on her floor, the surgical suite, Heisenberg's personal quarters and the experiment storage hallway where a dull buzz led Iris to coming across his first Soldat. It was on charge within its pod fitted in the wall, a huge muscular thing with a drill-like weapon attached to one arm, with a jagged blade on the other. An intimidating thing, even when secured into its pod. The Cadou within was near its spine, again with most threads concentrated towards the control monitor Heisenberg had fused to its back.
"No matter what, these monitors will be a weak spot. The haulers have to have them near the frontal lobe for better control, but the big guys like Sturm and my Soldats, they can afford to be dumber if it means having that weak spot hidden better" Heisenberg had said whilst manically showing Iris all of his plans and schematics for a fully automated Soldat production line. It was going to be his Piece de Resistance. His metal army that would storm Miranda's secret lab and shred her to pieces.
Iris tried not to think about how he'd be able to procure so many corpses for so many Soldats.
Trailing up the dark stairwell, heading closer and closer to the mines, Iris felt her head throb as she continued to concentrate on the faint pulsing of each Cadou she'd come into contact with. The brighter one from her lost Hauler was still making its way towards the mines, seemingly stuck in a corridor the floor below. As if she had X-ray vision, she could see the thing stumbling back and forth between each wall of the corridor, helmet bashing against cold metal.
"Just stand there and I'll get you later" She called out, as if the thing would be able to hear her from here. She honestly wasn't even sure if they could hear things, or if she was just humanising the metal corpse too much.
Either way, the Hauler didn't respond.
As Iris made her way further towards the mines, skipping over a large pipe that acted as a bridge over the cavern that would eventually become the automated production line, the pressure behind her eyes worsened. Stabilising herself at the mouth of the pipe, Iris could sense two dozen Cadou, all Haulers hard at work within the mines.
It was overwhelming, she could identify every single one, some emitted a stronger pulse, perhaps Cadou that had been within their host for longer grew stronger, or maybe the other way around. She'd have to ask Heisenberg about it later, maybe she could help him with some experiments.
Her eagerness at helping her boss manipulate corpses for his own design made Iris stop for a moment, her sudden lack of concentration cutting off her power like a blown fuse. Suddenly the factory felt much colder, larger, and Iris felt alone and weak.
Shaking her head, she tried to reconnect with her power. It was vital should she try and descend further into the mines in search of her boss. Maybe he was lurking around the cavernous grinding shaft, a room that extended several floors of the factory that would certainly throw her off if she was trying to locate him by going through each level.
If she wanted to hide from Heisenberg, it would probably be where she'd go first.
"Come on now Iris, think, think," She scolded herself in a biting whisper, hitting the side of her head like an old TV, trying to get the signal back.
Her headache reared its ugly head and the dozen energy signals were back, although significantly weaker than before. She'd need to hurry up before her headache bore too much, and her powers died like an old flame.
Slipping through the mines, dodging any energy signals that seemed too close for comfort, with the minimal lighting of several oil lanterns to guide her way, Iris hurriedly made her way to the grinding shaft and ventilation room.
Here, the light was blinding, the whole room fully powered up unlike the rest of the factory. Iris quickly scanned each of the bright, metal bridges that ran towards the main shaft. She could sense a Cadou somewhere on the bridges, but it didn't feel bright enough to be Heisenberg.
"Well well, little Iris, you've done a pretty good job so far" Her boss's voice boomed from the multiple speakers littered around the room, Iris snapped her head up and was embarrassed to see how happy she was to hear his voice.
"Come on Boss! Am I close? Did you see what I did to the Hauler?" She yelled into the room. The Cadou hiding within the room was yet to move, she assumed it was another lost Hauler and was ready to guide it back to the mine and continue her search.
"Yes yes, very good. But you've got a long way to go maid, moving around Haulers is no help for what I need done"
"Well no but-"
"Let's see how you deal with this" The speaker's feed cut out, the Cadou energy suddenly brightening up like a firework.
"What? Boss? Boss!"
A familiar whirring, one she'd only heard on Heisenberg's CCTV tapes, made Iris's stomach drop. Stumbling across the bridge opposite herself was Sturm, who'd likely been locked into place by Heisenberg, under the cover of the grinding shaft.
"Boss! Please!"
His sluggish steps began to speed up as his fans whirred faster and fast, the red control monitor in the centre blinking frantically. Sturm was raring to go, and the only thing stopping him was Heisenberg.
"Heisenberg please!" Iris screamed, heart thundering and backing away. The metal shutters back to the mines slammed shut, locking her within the room.
Fuck.
Iris began to run around the outer bridge circling the shaft, but knew that behind her Sturm had been released from her Boss's invisible bonds. His Cadou was burning bright, its threads evenly distributed around his torso, arms, and legs in the same manner as Heisenberg. She wondered if an even distribution correlated with a better host/parasite relationship.
Stop theorising Cadou science and fucking run!
"I'm spending too much time with that man" Iris huffed, Sturm was luckily still a very slow runner, and fortunately mindful of his arms, so balance was also not his forte.
However, the pounding in Iris's head wasn't exactly doing wonders for her own abysmal athleticism.
She rounded towards the centre bridge, heading towards the shaft, hoping that the hulking metal cylinder would shield her for long enough to gain some control over the situation.
"Sturm stop!" She shouted, raising a hand once again and focusing as hard as possible on his Cadou. He seemed to stumble for a moment, but the control monitor flashed frantically, urging the thing on.
"Heisenberg you bastard!" Iris screamed, answered only by bellowing laughter from the speaker system.
"You'll have to try harder than that buttercup!"
The taunting made Iris's chest burn with rage. The audacity of this prick to throw her into a life or death scenario purely for his own entertainment.
Oh sorry, "Scientific curiosity"
She was flushing his cigars down the toilet once this was over with. And spitting in all of his whiskey bottles.
His toothbrush? Oh that thing was destined for the toilet bowl.
Circling around the shaft as Sturm attempted to catch her, barely squeezing around the thing and scratching the brand new metal with his blades, Iris once again tried to stop the thing.
"Why don't you go FUCK OFF and go find Daddy to play with huh? GO AWAY"
Sturm one again stumbled, the blinking red light shutting off for a second, causing his blades to slow.
"Yeah that's right! PISS OFF!"
Iris turned on her heel and ran once again towards the metal shutters, hitting them with her fist and yelling
"Open the doors! Let me out!"
Behind her, Sturm was walking now, fans whirring too quickly for comfort, but not at breakneck speed like before. The red light blinked steadily.
"Sturm! I said GO AWAY"
He stopped. Iris laughed hysterically, his fans slowed to a stop in a manner that almost felt dejected, perhaps guilty. His barrel sized arms extended towards her, Iris was surprised that they were still intact.
Breathing hard, with her eyes blurry from the pain of her headache, she kept her hold on Sturm's Cadou, as tight as a vice.
"Good… Now, go away. Go back to bed Sturm"
His fans whirred slightly, the red light blinking frantically, indicating Heisenberg's interference.
"Boss please don't"
"Ah ah, I'm sending him back to his room, don't you worry. You did well. Now, come find me. You're almost there."
Sturm turned heel and plodded off obediently, as if his attempt to attack her had never happened.
Iris much preferred her Haulers over this beefed up idiot. She hoped Heisenberg's precious Soldat was smarter than this.
Behind her, the shutter screeched open. Iris rushed back through the mine and over the pipe, standing in the middle of the factory waiting for a hint of Heisenberg's bright Cadou. Like the north star in a dark, clouded sky.
There.
Somewhere above her, Heisenberg was hiding. She stormed through the corridors and halls, bursting through storage rooms and maintenance walkways in a fury. The Cadou she had locked into was definitely her Boss, there was no experiment that burned as brightly as his.
He was in a dark corridor, near his study. He'd been so close to their living quarters, and she'd not noticed.
She was furious.
When Iris saw him, leaning against a wall, hat turned down over his eyes, puffing on a cigar she saw bloody, savage red. She stomped up to him, ripping off his hat and
SLAP.
Her Boss's head snapped to the side, but his shit-eating grin stayed frozen on his face. Leisurely, he turned back to look at her, eyes burning.
"I COULD'VE DIED!"
"You're brilliant"
"You used me as FUCKING STURM BAIT"
"Oh my brilliant, beautiful girl"
"Fuck O-"
Smokey lips touched hers, a firm leather grip holding her chin in place.
Iris had never been kissed before, she'd heard the other maids talk about it and honestly couldn't imagine anything worse, the thought of someone's mouth being so close to hers, a foreign tongue inside her mouth? Like a slug?
Heisenberg's tongue wasn't like a slug.
He nipped her bottom lip, the hand not holding her chin squeezed her waist, his beard was scratchy and his scent muddling her mind.
She broke it first, staring up at her boss, who was smirking down at her like a cat that'd caught the canary.
Breathlessly she pointed a finger at him.
"If you think that lousy kiss makes up for all that bullshit you just put me through you can think again"
Her boss laughed, both hands now circling her waist, rubbing up and down in an attempt to soothe her. But Iris would be damned if she'd let him.
"Now come on, I've got some thoughts about the Cadou and my powers, and have already wasted enough time pissing about with your silly game" Iris snapped, breaking away from her boss and heading back to their Living quarters.
She knew she was pushing it but was too spitting mad to care.
Heisenberg didn't seem all too bothered about her horrendous attitude towards her superior, as he followed her at heel, still chuckling to himself.
"So… Daddy huh?"
It may not be obvious but this is before Miranda goes and helps create Eveline. Heisenberg is only just gaining momentum with his experiments as from my pov playing the game, he only started really churning out Soldats after Miranda ordered the villagers to start getting killed. I think after that order, he knew something big was going to happen and started really focusing to take her down.