Chapter VIII: There Is No String

AN:

Hey there, Fan-fic-folks!

Next step of the way. This one is a little less Alien and a little more Bioshock.

Thanks for reading and, as always, please review.

"Bug out, now!" I yelled,

Chloe laughed from beside me - "Was that a pun, Ice?"

"Shut up and run!"

Our little trio dashed off, not really thinking about where to go. The mecha-scarabs were hot on our heels, whirring and whining. Suddenly, something else tiny and mechanical whirred past me and for a moment I flinched, stumbling slightly and recovering in time to see a door ahead of us slide open.

Chloe swore and scooped up Max in her arms, putting on another burst of speed.

Nathan flickered into being and soared past me, arms extended like a ballet dancer. He winked at me. I told him to fuck off and kept running. Asshole. Max was typing furiously in Chloe's arms, and drones swooped around us, firing behind us and hacking the doors ahead of us, opening and sealing them in sequence until we finally ended up alone.

I flumpfed against a wall, gasping for air. I hadn't done that much running since- well, ever. "Everyone alright?"

"All chill here, Ice." Chloe drawled.

"Stop." I glared back at the grinning ork, who just grinned wider, still holding Max.

There was an explosion beyond the door, and our little safe space shook. "Max?"

"I'm fine." She looked down at something on her rig. "But we should keep moving."

Nathan flickered into being. "Those things were creepy. Gotta give the freakshow that, he was certaintly a creatively sadistic bastard."

"Of course you admire that," I scoffed.

He bristled, "What are you-"

"Shush." Max cut us both off in an instant. And she had a point, pointing behind me. I turned to see that we were surrounded by shadowy, unmoving figures. Some were staring right at us, others standing around staring at different points of the walls.

We all went silent, even Nathan. After a few long moments, nothing had moved. Something was tickling at the back of my mind, that there was something I wasn't realising. Suddenly, Max's drones lit up the area and- I burst out laughing. "They're mannequins. Oh fuck, they're just mannequins. Hah."

We were in some sort of veneer showroom, the kind of place they put together little displays for their products. I was kind of surprised - the Arcology didn't seem like that kind of place. But hey, it was still here. It was almost impressive.

After we'd all regained our composure, we started exploring. Of course, it took barely a corner before we were back in hell. Chloe had poked one of the mannequins and it suddenly lurched into life.

It made no move to attack though. Merely an animatronic. We watched as it suddenly cowered, flinching back from another mannequin moving along a floor rail up to its side. The second mannequin reached out and grasped the first one's arm, pulling it from its socket and quickly replacing it with an claw-like prosthetic. The mannequin mimicked screaming as the other arm was ripped and replaced too.

We continued through this macabre museum of memories in silence. Every mannequin was re-enacting a new scene of horror and experimentation. Bodies bulging with odd tech, normality replaced with cold steel, people made machine. I knew that I wouldn't be sleeping soundly for a long, long time afterward.

DEUS had kept this place for a reason. Could an AI be… sentimental? Nathan had certainly tried to make us think so. I watched him briefly, walking alongside us through the nightmare. I'd meant what I said - the man admired strength, but his view of it was warped. Spend too much time with Sean Prescott and that's just what happened.

That family was Darwinist in the extreme, and Sean was one of the worst. One of the first times I'd met him, back when his son and I were just dating and not married, Sean had spent an hour talking about how only the powerful, the beautiful, and the strong would survive. Those who were better than others, stood above them - and if necessary, trampled them beneath their feet.

I shook my head, pushing back memories of that man. There were horrors enough right here.

The room ahead stank of something bitter and acrid. It bit at my eyes even this far down the corridor, and the smell was only getting stronger. We crept closer, now ignoring the mannequins actions around us.

The room ahead felt important, and it was drawing all of us in. Even Nathan looked odd, enthralled. That was what keyed me in, his expression. I opened my mouth to try say something about it, maybe going back, maybe being careful, I wasn't sure, and that seemed to be a signal of weakness.

One of the mannequins, idle and ignored, suddenly burst into motion and lurched forward out of position. It raised a hand containing an odd black box and shoved it into my face. The box burst into light as I shoved the mannequin back, brought up my gun and blasted the thing in the chest.

I know it was a mannequin, but it just felt right.

The draw of the room vanished, but left behind several black spots in my eyes and a groaning horror - and, to my dismay, one hell of a migraine.

I groaned in pain, distracted enough not to notice, well, some things I didn't notice. Chloe recovered first, damn Troll physiology, and swore. "The corridor moved!"

"W-what?" I was still foggy, and it was hard to focus through the light ringing in my ears. "What did you say?"

Chloe grabbed me, claws digging into me, and shoved my face in the right direction. "The damn corridor moved!"

And it had. That room ahead, that had been so alluring, was gone. In its place, a labyrinth. Over the open-archway door, a simple warning - Here Be Dragons. I snorted. At least DEUS was a fan of the classics.

"Fuck it." I lead the way into the labyrinth - maybe I should've brought a piece of string.

The inside was the same non-descript metal bulkhead much of the Arcology was built out of - some sort of prefab, I believed - and lead straight left and right, with a left on the left and a left and a right on the right. What was the rule for mazes? Pick a wall and follow it. I picked my wall and went along to the right right, which turned out to be the wrong direction, leading right into a dead end.

I swore, again, and something in my expression must've said don't frakk with me enough that Chloe and Max - even Nathan - stayed quiet. I followed the wall again, finding the right left leading through a zigging and zagging, meandering pathway with no breaks until it eventually opened up into a sprawl of seven different offshoots, all going in different directions. "I hate these things." I said with a scowl, glaring at all the paths as if they offended me personally. As I took a step into the sprawl, to take a look down each path, I saw a mannequin step into view.

I froze, and it stopped, looked at me. I took a step back, and it vanished into the corridor it had came from. "Did you see..?" I muttered to the others - they both nodded, silently. Max was breathing deeply and twitching, while Chloe seemed to be grumbling to herself, whipping up her bluster.

"Predator mannequins - so cliche."

We hunted through the next maze of corridors for them, catching only the faintest glance here and there. They never stopped us, but just… watched. That was almost worse. Always at the edge of view, darting through the corner of your eye. Everything in me was on edge, all those deep, terrified instincts buried down in the ancient remnants of humanity screaming to run, to fight, to flee, to appease. Anything to survive.

I pushed through, and we went on.

—

The next space was an odd hall, like DEUS had been trying to make a grand theatre without ever having seen one. The boxes looked more like animal feeders, and the curtains were made of dangling wires and ribbon cables. And sitting in the middle of it all - in front of but not on the stage - plaiting three cables together, was a small child. Or what was once a small child. As we approached, we saw more of her, metal and circuitry poking out from beneath her clothing - a pleasant, plain gingham dress.

We were a few feet from her when she suddenly registered us, LEDs all over her suddenly turning a burning red. She paused a moment, something whirring and calculating inside her, then looked up. As she blinked owlishly up at us, her eyes clicked like the aperture of a camera.

She opened her mouth to speak, and a blaring screech of warbled binary sent us all reeling back.

Chloe went on the attack first, swinging wildly at the little girl in a vain attempt to get her to stop. But something caught her hand. It was somehow bigger than she was, this sort of bastardised military drone. Swooped in without any of us noticing. It was like one of the old model Sentry bots. But it was covered in patches of rough, ragged hair and someone had affixed a taxidermied animal - genuine, from the look of it - to the top of it in some macabre approximation of a bear.

It squeezed Chloe's hand, and the troll screamed.

She lashed out, broad, sledgehammer hands slamming into the drone's ribcage. The bot's hands, multi-pronged industrial clamps, burst open and it let out an undulating, modulated screech of alarm.

She darted back, faster than I'd ever seen her move, and I could see her hands starting to purple in a ghastly manner. Chloe did something that might've supposedly been opening and clenching her fists, but looked more like a fish flopping, then shrugged and readied to fight again.

The little girl raised her hand and pointed at us, letting out another streak of that pain-causing binary. The bear-drone-thing roared and made to charge.

I swore.

We ran.

—

I was expecting an auto-door, so when I slammed into the double-doors and sent them clattering against the wall, it was enough to knock me on my ass - if it wasn't for Chloe bouncing me back to my feet, I'd've been left behind with the bear.

Instead, we continued on, along a long corridor, the drone in hot pursuit. We turned left into another open hall and suddenly we weren't in an arcology, we were deep underwater. I could feel it pressing in on me from all sides, endless pressure of an entire fucking ocean bearing down on me. It stretched out endlessly in all directions, and I slowed to take in the shoal of some shimmering fish swooping over our heads only to be swallowed by a colossal whale.

Max, visor over one eye, smacked at me. "Keep moving! Push forward!"

We kept pushing, but trying to walk under the weight of an ocean was a tough fucking endeavour. Suddenly, there was the sound of gunshots rattling around us - I saw nothing. Max swore again. "I'm trying to keep the bear-thing back, but we need to keep moving. I only have so much ammo in these things."

Oh. Her drones. They were all around us. But why couldn't I see them?

Holography? No, I'd be able to detect that with my cyberware. It had to be something new, one of the fucked up marvels dreamed up by the mad overlord of this place. Then again, the labyrinth had just appeared too.

I pushed my legs with all I had, keeping them moving slowly but goddamn fucking surely. Frak, the pressure was immense. My feet scraped against the floor with each step, forced and completely fucked.

Around me, the endless blue stretched out, teeming with flowing, glowing life. For a moment, I thought it was just an ocean, but I recognised motion in the darkness. It was like the shadow itself was moving. Whatever it was, it was just that massive. And then an eye opened and pinned me beneath its stare. The pupil alone was enough to envelop me.

Just staring at it - I could fall forever.

Something suddenly shoved me from behind and the shock jolted what little concentration I had. For a moment, just for a moment, my unconscious took charge. I lost focus on remembering that none of this real. And suddenly, for a moment, just for a moment, it was. My lungs and throat spasmed, like they were filling with water even though my rational mind knew they weren't. I was drowning on dry land. I was drowning some eight hundred meters above dry land.

My entire body rebelled, trying to expel what wasn't there. I couldn't think- just an endless litany of ohgodhelpmenopleasenoohgodhelp over and over and over. Helpless. I was helpless.

I clawed at my throat, the panic of it snapping my attempts to remind myself back to reality and drowning me in terror.

I don't know how long I was like that, stuck in the feeling. But eventually, a voice penetrated the surface and dived down to me. "Oh, dog, I hope this works."

I barely registered the voice before a psychic slap rocketed my skin. Like someone had hit me completely over my entire body at once. And then the pressure was gone. The images began to fade, though they stuck around like shadows on my vision, dancing between the cramped steel of the corridors and the endless blue of ocean.

I scrabbled at my throat, body and mind not quite catching up to the fact that I was suddenly no longer fucking drowning. I took a deep, gulping breath, my mind telling me I needed to fill up my lungs with air to replace the water, while my body protested that my lungs were breathing just fine. And I blinked hard, trying to clear the images still swimming in my retinas. They rippled, but stayed, a semi-transparent overlay over everything.

That drek was awful. I- that'll-

The bear-drone shrieked again.

"Run!"

Max's drones swooped after us as we did just that. I've been running so much since all this happened. My calves must be delightful. They certainly burned right now. I turned a corner and suddenly everything was dark and silent. Not again. I couldn't hear Max and Chloe, though I knew they must've been right beside me. Teleportation was impossible, after all.

Right?

I edged my way forward, feeling out with my hands - I could feel the metal of the wall, even if I couldn't see it. My heart was pounding in my ears, some primal 'fear-of-the-dark' nonsense that was all I could do to push through.

But push I did, through and forward. All the weight of the world on my shoulders. As it always was.

I felt along, along and out, some subtle twist in the temperature of the room telling me I'd stumbled into a larger space. Another hall.

Goddamnit.

The shadows quickly cleared, leaving me staring at Max and Chloe desperately trying to barricade the door behind us. For a moment, I thought of moving forward to help. And then I got dizzy and stumbled to the ground again. I needed a moment. To breath? To be? To get the bloody ocean out of my eyes?

Fuuuuck. I rolled over and tried to stare at the ceiling, convincing my brain of the reality of what it saw.

Eventually, Chloe and Max came to check on me, and the thudding on the door stopped. It all went quiet. "Oh thank fuck for that. I was hoping that drekhead would fuck off already." Chloe scowled. "Creepy motherfucker."

Max leaned in. "Are you alright, Ice?"

"No. My vision is still fucked up and my head is killing me." I grumbled, rubbing absently at a temple.

Max brightened. She passed me something from a medkit at her side. "That should help your head. And if you give me a minute, I should be able to clear the images again. It's a- well, I'll run you through it later. We don't have time right now. We need to get you up."

I nodded, and took the pill. She connected to one of my implants and began muttering. A few moments passed, and she disconnected. "Should be clearing in a moment."

She was right. The vastness of the ocean compacted down to this weird empty space.

"Thanks."

The three of us looked gratefully at each other before the quiet comfort was undercut by the resounding boom of the bear-thing smashing through those grand doors. The girl-thing was right on its heels, and let out another horrifying binary-shriek that sent us all to our knees.

One of Max's drones, hovering high in the air, suddenly spasmed.

Max looked up at it in concern. "Wha-"

It spasmed again. Max looked back down at her rig and swore, started rapidly typing. "It's trying to take my-"

The drone stopped spasming and turned to us. "It's taken it."

"Wha-"

The drone's gun starting whirring up into motion. "Oh that's just fan-frakking-tastic." Chloe picked me up and hurled me into cover, grabbing Max in a rugby-run before diving us all behind thick metal just before the bullets started flying.

Max's fingers flew over the rig again, and her face scrunched up in panic. "I- Wait." Something in her expression firmed, and her rig flashed through the colour spectrum. She looked up at us and grinned. "I think I can do something about this. I need five minutes. Can you keep it distracted?" She looked at me. "Don't- don't try to hack it. This thing is worse than Black Ice - the only reason I'm trying this is the RIG isn't in my head."

I shrugged. Without the ocean in my head, I was a lot more useful. "I've still got my pistol. That'll have to do."

Chloe grinned again. "That'll do nicely-"

The drone was still firing against our cover, and the metal was shaking under the force of it all.

Max tilted her head. "-three, two, one-"

The gun clicked empty. "Go."

I ran left, Chloe ran right. The bear ran after her. And the girl ran after me. For a moment, I was offended - didn't I seem like a threat? Then I saw the bear take a thick-clawed swing at Chloe and I was over it.

The girl tilted her head curiously at me, her eyes clicking again. She took a breath, ready to scream, so I punched her.

My hand clanked off her body and I swore. Fucking robots.

The girl screeched at me and I flinched back, hands immediately going to my ears. Bitch. Probably shouldn't call a little girl a bitch - even if she's trying to kill me. Oh god, my head. The girl screeched again, and - fuck it. In lieu of earplugs, I needed distance. I dashed away, keeping my hands over my ears. It just muffled the noise, but it kept me from bleeding out my ears, so good enough.

Unfortunately, I remembered that I needed said hands to shoot my gun. What a complex life I lead.

I darted away again, running around like a headless freaking chicken, hands on my ears like this. Absolutely fucking ridiculous. My self-scorn was even powering through the pain of the migraine this thing was inducing.

The techno-bird-thing-girl proceeded to chase me, chirping and shrieking enough to make my head pound. It was dizzying.

She put on a sudden burst of speed and knocked me back, my hands dropping from my ears as she screeched again, sending me to the ground. As I shook on the floor, she reached down and picked me up by the skull, hands on either side of my head as she picked me up with ease and held me so I was staring right into her eyes.

They were bright, a pleasant blue backlit by some LED glow inside her head.

As the girl's hands squeezed my head even harder, I could see her drawing up for a new shriek, this one directly into my face. And then a clawed hand reached in and pulled something in the back of the girl's skull.

The light in her eyes vanished immediately and she slumped. I stared at her for a long moment before Chloe pulled her off me. The motion pulled me out of my shock and I stared around - the bear was fizzing lightly on the ground, still twitching slightly as Chloe laid the girl to rest beside her guardian.

"I really, really hate this place." I said, letting out a deep, sighing breath.

Both of them agreed.