But, other than his car (which he had continued to call Ian, because it was apparently its name, no matter how stupid it sounded to Curtis), he wasn't going to bring any of his androids or AI powered machines with him. He was fairly sure they would all obey him if he told them not to do anything to bring the other humans out of Sanctuary, but then, he knew how motivated robotkind was to protect humans, and he hadn't claimed every android in the region as his own yet. If he wanted to keep it a secret that there were other people living inside the mountain, then he'd have to sneak up there by himself, and come up with some cover story as to why there was now another human living in the Lucky Buy. Still, getting to and from the mountain was the easy part. The real issue was getting back in to Sanctuary, waking up Madeleine, and getting out with her without anyone stopping them.
This was something that made him feel a nauseous anxiety to think about. In the short time he'd had, he'd become accustomed to having the fresh air and the wind and the bright summer sun on his face. His sunburn had turned into a tan, with the help of Mercy's various skin preparations, and he knew when he looked in the mirror that he had physically adapted to being out in this world, now. The thought of the air in Sanctuary, the artificial light, the rocky roof always, always above his head, it made him feel uneasy to remember. He found himself imagining something happening to keep him stuck there after he'd gotten back in - the door not working, or Janice and her cronies stopping him and restraining him somehow, and when these imaginings struck him his heart pounded in his chest and he found himself gasping for air.
I think, I honestly think, I would kill anyone who tried to stop me leaving. I could never go back to that fucking place to stay. Not now I've known this life.
Perhaps it was in that spirit that he decided, before he left early that evening, to take the gun he'd asked one of his loyal new police droids to get for him with him. He told himself it was just in case there were any wild animals he couldn't deal with on the mountainside - after all, he'd never been up there at night before - but it was in the back of his mind that it was better to have it than not if any unexpected situations arose inside Sanctuary. He'd only fired it a few times at empty cans on a makeshift range Sarge had made for him at the back of the Lucky Buy - reasoning that in reality, if he needed something shot, he had plenty of armed droid followers who would do it much more capably for him. But he knew how it felt to pull the trigger, and that he could probably make a bullet count if he really needed to.
The gun had come with a holster from a police droid uniform, and so he wore that, but everything else he was taking was in a black leather bag. He'd sourced a bunch of stuff for Madeleine from the Lucky Buy's stock, careful not to be seen gathering up women's clothing in what he guessed was her size by the resident androids. He was sure he could come up with an explanation for why he needed women's clothes should he need to give one to Pinky or Mercy, but he wasn't sure he could come up with one that wouldn't lead to them assuming he had a cross dressing fetish, or actually wanted them to dress up in the mundane outfits instead of their own, far more sexy ones. Androids seemed to all have their own taste in clothing pre-programmed, and could get new items from an AI powered clothing factory in the city. They didn't dress with any variety, usually, their clothes suiting their main role, unless they were told to wear anything different. The clothing the Lucky Buy had sold when it was open, which now lay packed in boxes in the stock room, were more comfortable, functional and boring, which Curtis figured was something the humans who bought their clothes from the same place they bought their potatoes must have preferred. He planned to order a load of sexy new outfits for Madeleine from the androids' factory once it was known that she existed, but for now, the simple cotton dresses, denim shorts, t-shirts and tennis shoes he had scrounged would do - she'd at least be able to leave Sanctuary without having to take too long about gathering her things, and the shoes he'd scrounged for her would hopefully make climbing down the mountain easier than it would have been in Sanctuary shoes.
"Guys, I'm going out for a while. There's something I want to check out over where I came from. It's kinda personal, so I want to go by myself, but I'll have Ian, so I'll contact you if I need you, OK?"
He addressed Sarge, Pinky and Mercy, who were playing some kind of card game on a table in the apartment's living room. Estelle and Dora were making out with each other on a couch, and stopped briefly to hear what he had to say, before accepting he didn't want their services at the present time, and going straight back to fondling and kissing each other.
"OK, we'll stand by in case you need us," Sarge said, and Pinky nodded emphatically, looking up from her hand of cards.
Everything is so much easier when you're the boss. There was I, worrying they'd question me. I have to get used to having this kind of authority - why worry about what a bunch of people who live to obey me think about what I do?
He gave them a wave, and headed out to his car. The roads around here, not to mention the parking lot of the Lucky Buy, were busier every day as more and more androids and machines made their way here, after hearing the news of the human man. Luckily he'd already spoken to today's visitors, and so he made it out and into Ian's pleasant interior without being delayed by any robots on a pilgrimage. He was sure he saw someone in a hooded outfit entering the supermarket's main door - which for the first time since the alien invasion, was now routinely kept open, so that new androids could come and go - but he'd let Sarge deal with them for now. Androids had pretty much infinite patience, and so this one could wait until he got back to be claimed.
He hadn't used Ian all that much, thus far - everything he needed came to him, after all, and he'd been putting off making the move to the city until he had a better grasp on what to expect, as well as having moved Maddy safely out of Sanctuary. He knew the red car drove off by itself to wherever it was it went to recharge its battery, and he'd had a few runs around the area in it with Mercy, Pinky and Sarge, but he still wasn't entirely sure about how specific he needed to be in the directions he gave to it.
"Hey, Ian. Do you remember the location where you first picked me up?"
YES, CURTIS
The display flashed up a map, with a yellow arrow showing their location at the Lucky Buy, and a big red dot a distance away. Curtis looked carefully at it - it seemed to be the right spot - there was a chunk of empty map next to it that was probably the mountain, since this map only had roads. But what made him curious was what the road did after that. It branched off after the probably-the-mountain patch, with the broader road going straight on, and a narrower line of road going off and around, to what would probably be the other side of the mountain's base. There was a block there that looked similar to the block representing the Lucky Buy, only bigger.
Could that be the place the people who ended up in Sanctuary came from? It's got an access road, but it doesn't have a name marked on the map, unlike the supermarket. Man, I really need to check that place out one of these days.
The car bleeped, snapping him out of his thoughts.
DO YOU WANT TO GO TO THIS DESTINATION?
"Oh, yes. Yes please, Ian. And then I'm going to need you to wait there for a while. You are all charged up, right?"
BATTERIES AT 94%. SHALL WE GO?
Curtis took a last look at the supermarket - the window he'd broken now fixed, the lights on in the apartment up above. It had been pretty cool being the only human in this part of the world, for a little while. But now it was time to bring back the friend who'd made all this possible.
"Yep. Let's go."
Ian smoothly carried him off of the ugly, battered parking lot and onto the road.
Chapter 3
He was glad of the flashlight, that was for sure. He could roughly remember how to get back onto the mountain trail from the road, but everything looked different in the dark. He could hear creatures, too - hooting owls, and chirping crickets, nothing that a normal person would be afraid of, but nonetheless things that were still quite a
lien to Curtis, so he kept on his guard.
Once I get Maddy out of the main door of Sanctuary, we should wait in the tunnel until it gets light outside. I don't want her to get scared, having to deal with the mountain in the dark.
He had the code for the door in the pocket of his jeans. Pinky, always good at her job, had diligently taken it out of his pocket before washing his clothes when he'd been stunned and Mercy had stripped him off to treat his sunburn. He didn't like to think about what the situation would be now if she hadn't. He'd have had to leave Maddy in there, or enlist a bunch of industrial robots to tunnel into the mountain, or blast the door open somehow, releasing everybody else from Sanctuary in the process.
It wasn't easy progress up the mountain, but he found himself enjoying the physical exertion. Aside from sex, he hadn't been getting anywhere near as much exercise as usual since he'd been living at the Lucky Buy with robots to wait on him, and climbing up was helping him burn off some of his nervous energy as well as keep his mind away from any scary thoughts of the things that could go wrong with his mission.
One problem he had was the suspicion that Sanctuary operated on a different clock to the outside world. He had noticed this when he'd first left, and it had seemed to be later in the morning than it should have been, based on how long it had felt like it had taken him to climb up from the main door into the open. He couldn't be sure, as he hadn't had a watch, and he had been scared and excited, too, so it was possible the adrenaline had made what had actually been a long journey feel like a short one, but if there was a discrepancy, then he needed to be sure he didn't enter Sanctuary too early. If what was 2am according to the digital watch he'd got from one of the city droids was actually only 11pm in Sanctuary, he could find himself wandering into a place where people were still up and roaming around the communal areas. And he at the very least needed to go through the farm to get to the chapel, and Maddy's room. He'd therefore decided to get down to the door straight away, but wait until 3am on his watch to go inside. He couldn't really push it to much later than that, given if the time in Sanctuary actually was the same, and he needed to get Maddy out before the early risers started milling about, it would only give him around an hour of safe time to get to her, wake her, and get her out of the door.
This time, he noticed different things from on the way down. It was so silent that every fluttering of bird or bat wings, every bit of bracken he trampled, every stone he kicked away, seemed to make an uncomfortably loud noise, but when he couldn't hear those things, his heartbeat thudded in his ears. Too loud, too fast. The air felt thin, too, as he got closer and closer. The moon was a small sliver in the sky tonight, and it occurred to him that he still hadn't seen a full one. There was still so much he hadn't seen, even if he'd experienced more of life since the last time he was on this mountainside than he'd expected to in all of his days when he was still living inside its bowels. He wondered where, in relation to where he stood now, Maddy's room was, but he had no real sense of that at all.
And there was the opening. It looked so unassuming, for what it really represented. All there was now was to do the thing. His watch said it was 1:57. Down he went, disliking the rocky ceiling of the tunnel with an intensity he hadn't been expecting.
Just keep going. You won't have to be cooped up in here for long, and when you get back under the stars, you'll have saved her.
He tried not to think about the other people in Sanctuary, now so close. He wanted to get his dad out at some point, but it was too risky to try and break out two people, and besides, he hadn't been all that unhappy down there. Any rebelliousness his father might have once had against Janice and the others had probably been squashed after Curtis' mom had died, because all he'd done in Curtis' memory was toe the line. Even though it never seemed like he actually agreed with the more draconian rules of the place, or with the way his son was treated, he'd kept quiet and kept the peace. It had pissed Curtis off not having him in his corner, seeing him take all that crap and never doing a single thing that might antagonize the old bitch, but it was a lot easier to forgive his dad for wanting a quiet life now that he had his freedom. Curtis just hoped that whatever the people in there believed had happened to him, whatever lie Maddy had had to tell, it hadn't been too upsetting for his father.
He also tried not to think about Sophie and Fliss. They'd had a taste of the kind of consequences their stupid games could have when Janice had decided that Curtis was to be chemically castrated, but now, if they believed he'd escaped, would they have learned nothing? Although, wasn't that better than them thinking he'd committed suicide, and it was their fault? He didn't like how either option felt, so he forcefully told himself that it didn't matter, that none of it mattered, because he never had to see them again if he didn't want to, and because really, he'd won, hadn't he?
2:28, and there was that big door. The lock was much the same as the one he'd used before on the other side. He'd taken a look at it when he'd first left. Now, he just had to wait a little longer, and he'd have all the fun of entering that long ass code again.
Chapter 4
Getting into Sanctuary had been just the same as getting out, and Curtis was back on the internal side of the big, heavy vault door by 3:02 on his watch. He didn't like the air in here, and he was constantly having too push down some new instinct inside of him that made him feel on the brink of panic at being inside what now felt like an unbearably oppressive space. How had he lived this way? How did they all live this way now? He tried to focus all of his own dread at the place into motivation to rescue Maddy from it, as flashlight in hand, he moved as silently as he could down the path that lead to the lake, and the farm.
Whatever the time was in here, it was certainly night. The farm's lighting was as bright as ever, but there were no people here tending to the plants, thankfully, and the lights were off in the hallway that lead off from the farm towards the residential spaces. He crept, holding his breath as he passed doors, his flashlight off, now, since he knew the layout of this place so well and some residual light from the farm created a dimness that he could just about make out each door in, until he reached the door to the chapel. He remembered that there was a door to Maddy's sleeping quarters inside the chapel, and for some reason, it felt safer to go in through there than the door next to the chapel, that opened into the hallway. He felt like once he was in the chapel, where surely nobody would go at night, he'd be able to relax a little more.
He tried the door and found it open. It was weird, sneaking around Madeleine's home, but he knew she'd be OK with it once he reached her and woke her up. Still though, there was something about creeping into a woman's bedroom while she slept that made him feel a bit wrong, so once he'd made it inside the chapel he put his flashlight back on before opening her door, so at least he wouldn't feel like he was skulking around in the dark. He cast the light around the chapel briefly, reminding himself of the last time he was here, that terrifying night when he had first made his escape from Sanctuary. Fucking Madeleine on the floor, then waiting for her on the hard bench while she sneaked around Sanctuary getting supplies to help him survive. The bible where she'd hidden the code for the door was still on the lectern, under the big cross. Everything looked the same. That was good - it felt like it meant that whatever had happened after she'd left, Janice et al couldn't have been blaming or punishing her for his disappearance. In fact, it was reassuring that nothing had changed at all in the parts of Sanctuary he had seen - no extra security, no changes around the main entrance, no signs that anything had been done to Maddy or her church.
With a deep breath, he tried the only other door, and found it too to be unlocked. It opened with a gentle push, soundlessly, and before he even looked in properly he could tell that the sexy minister was asleep in her bed from the soft sound of breathing. He smiled to himself, relieved, although unsure why he felt that way - why wouldn't she have been here?
He left his leather bag full of stuff for her to wear for their escape in the c
hapel for a moment, and entered her room. He'd never been inside it before, but all Sanctuary bedrooms he had been inside were laid out the same, and so he was fairly sure of where her bed would be. There was no luxury for anyone in Sanctuary, so unless she'd moved things around for some reason herself, the community's spiritual leader (and secret tentacle porn enthusiast) would have just the same crappy furniture in the same places as everyone else.
His torchlight found her, sleeping peacefully, her face frowning slightly, as if indignant about something in her dream, but otherwise, she looked well. He felt a little overcome with emotion, thinking about just how important what he was about to do would be for her, and about the promises they had made each other that night just two weeks ago. He stroked a stray lock of hair off of her face, and, crouching down by the bed, gently kissed her lips. He hadn't been planning to do that to wake her up - in fact, the urge to do something so weirdly romantic kind of surprised him - but it felt like the right thing to do in the moment, better than shaking her.
Her eyes flickered and she opened her mouth to speak, a sleepy confusion on her face, but he put his hand over her mouth - almost as she had enjoyed him doing so much when he'd fucked her - and spoke in a low tone close to her ear.
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