by Briana Ervin
“Looks like this is the end of a testing track,” Garenede said through one of the windows. I looked through one of them to try and see him, but I could only catch glimpses of the white hull.
“'Testing track'?” I echoed in puzzlement.
“For product functionality?” he said factually.
Product? What sort of product? I wondered, A new weapon? A new mech? I glanced at the state the room's light was in, dismissing the ideas. Not like anyone is working on it.
“This track hasn't been used in a while...” Garenede confirmed my thoughts, “It's completely cleaned out. There's hardly anything in the logs... Looks like it has two ends and we're at the back.” There was a long pause. “I can unlock the sequence, but it doesn't end anywhere promising: just a separate junction for labs.”
“If it takes us to an engineering wing that's all that matters,” Cyrii said through my comm, “Fiddlesticks won't remember it, but there was some kind of storage area after an engineering wing. That's where we picked out our models.”
Garenede let out an amused “Hmph”, not looking up at me. “I know, but I don't see any wings mentioned.”
“We'll try it anyway.”
He muttered something to himself, but didn't argue. I looked back at the door, assuming it would lead to the track. What does “fiddlesticks” mean? I asked Cyrii. She just grinned.
“Oh, don't worry about it, it doesn't mean anything bad.”
But-
“I remember that most testing tracks lead back to the engineering wing,” she changed the topic, “if we can make it back there we can grab a brand new mech for Krysis.”
You're sure this is the right way?
“It's a way, isn't it?”
I had doubts that running a testing track backwards was a good idea, even an inactive one. Cyrii snorted at the worry coming through the DIAS. “Relax, it's not like there are scientists spying on us.”
Where are the scientists? I wondered, realizing that we hadn't come across one Xinschi-uual.
“The factory is entirely automated. No one comes down here except to inspect things and to grab a mech from storage. We don't even come down for repairs.”
I processed that for a moment. If the workers were Xinschi-uual, there had to be more activity than that... We had only seen mechs. Unless they weren't mechs?... No. That would violate tons of codes against self-mobile AI. We were running from those very codes. Why would the Empire break one of its own rules?
There was a clunk, and the hum of power was restored to the testing track. The door in front of me suddenly slid open, completely dark inside. Garenede sighed.
“Stupid security layers... According to the schematic, that will be one, big, empty room. The rooms after that have a higher clearance, but going through the higher security will allow us to circumvent the rest of the track. There is an engineering chamber at the end, then a storage room attached to that. Not an engineering wing, just a room.” He peeked through the window momentarily. “Well? Go in. I can't unlock the higher security doors until you're in there.”
“I highly doubt that,” I said, thinking of the probability of a trap. The Superiority model stared.
“If you want to be adamant, I can go down there and kick you in myself. This was your idea,” he reminded me I held his gaze for a moment, before shutting my blast shield to hide my amusement and going into the room. Cyrii rolled her eyes.
“I'm going to keep looking for mech models. Have fun irking Mr. Babysitter.”
I will, I said, not apologetic at all, Although...
Cyrii paused. “What?”
I... I felt awkward saying it. Y-You'll still be there, right?
The orange Xinschi-uual scrunched her face up at me. “Fiddlesticks, I overhauled you so I wouldn't have to control you all the time.”
Doesn't that defeat your purpose?
She dodged the question, not really thinking about it. “You'll be fine,” she said, “I'm try to shake Mr. Apathy here and get him a new mech, even though he says it won't be the same.”
It won't be the same, I agreed privately to myself. Without a proper response from me, Cyrii turned down the internal speaker volume and took the DIAS off so she could concentrate. I noticed that not only did her duplicated presence disappear, but her actual presence also seemed to fade. It wasn't like that before... maybe it was just me.
The room remained dark for a few seconds more, but when the door shut behind me I could see somewhat better after my cameras adjusted properly. Garenede was right: it was a big, empty room, all faded white and nothing else. He wasn't lying when he said the track was cleaned out. There were also two doors at the other end, just as he said: a larger left one, which was only a bit more reinforced than the one I came through, and a much-higher-security door to the right that had some peculiar smudges around it. There was some clunking outside as the Superiority model moved down the catwalk to parallel me. I debated between keeping my distance from the door and taking a closer look while he messed with the security, and decided to investigate, walking up to it and turning my scanner on.
Immediately I picked up old combustion particles from the smudges: burnt marks. With how distorted the insides of the marks were compared to their edges, they were made by an intense, searing heat. Fire was too cold and too broad for this kind of precision burning, and there were no bubbles or pockmarks from a hot liquid... Electricity, maybe? Or perhaps thermal weaponry? A thermal blade is very precise, but the markings were wrong. It couldn't be any sort of pulse weapon, as their marks radiate out from the center. This was more like someone had a smelter for a hand and dragged it around the door's rim...
“Done,” Garenede abruptly shook me from my thoughts. The door opened, and I quickly backed up in surprise. “The schematic is less than specific, but there's an engineering room after this... whatever this is...”
“Garenede,” I interrupted.
“What?”
“You're going to want to be down here.”
He gave me a long look of disbelief, but I didn't take my gaze off of this room, not at the state it was in. I heard him walking away, and for once I actually hoped he would show up quickly. A familiar sense of immense caution had washed over me, which remained even when I heard him enter the room behind me
“If this is a trap I'm a lot more powerful than you think...” Garenede's warning trailed off as he came up to my side. We both stared into that room.
It was like a bomb of acid and fire had exploded in there. Everything was either singed, burnt to a crisp, or melted to something else, and patches of bizarre discoloration and texture dotted the room. Inset bars on the walls sectioning off the left half of the room indicated a powered-down energy wall. The one light in the center of the ceiling was hanging by a wire and sparking from the restored power. There was no blood or any signs of life, but it certainly didn't look safe.
“You mentioned a lack of specific labeling?” I prompted Garenede. He blinked, recovering from the shock.
“Apparently Chamber 4A is not a safe zone.”
There was a moment of silence.
“After you,” I said.
“Don't be ridiculous,” he said.
“Oh, of course,” I mocked, “I can actually take a hit!”
“What is that supposed to mean?” he said, glaring at me, but I went on ahead without answering. I flashed my scanner again to pick up anything unusual, but the burned walls were no more different than the smudges I had investigated. The room was small in comparison to the one we left, so a quick swivel assured me that there were no threats around; though just be sure, I swiveled to check the room again, this time recording what I saw.
“Hm. I was hoping a drone would lunge out at you from nowhere,” Garenede said, entering the room.
“I'm a dark color. It hasn't seen me yet,” I joked.
“Drones don't see in color.”
I stopped turning and reviewed my recording, flipping through frames in search of anomalies.
“Perhaps I'm a low-priority target. If I can't see it, I'm not a threat,” I persisted.
“Shut up and look at this.”
I turned to look at where he was standing. He was looking at a warped, molten glob of something on the ground. Upon approaching the object, it looked like a table that had been balled up and tossed into an incinerator for a few days.
“How is this important?” I asked, finishing up my recording review, thinking nothing of the object. Garenede turned it over with his foot, examining it.
“An intense, external heat burns the outside faster than the inside. I might be able to extract data from inside of this,” he explained.
“Wouldn't the heat melt the electronics and destroy the data?” I said. I came to the end of the recording and deleted it with the assurance that we were alone.
“Not necessarily,” Garenede answered.
“How would it be useful, anyway?”
“It might have an emergency log in it that can tell us what happened here.” He looked at me. “There's nothing more to do on the consoles outside; not unless someone sneaks over to them and locks us in here,” he added dubiously.
“Oh,” I responded, lacking interest. What good would a log about the past do now? We weren't here to investigate the testing track.
Garenede just rolled his eye and crouched down, opening his retrieval panel to grab the object and rotate it to see if it could open. My interest piqued again upon seeing his arms: they were more advanced than mine, designed similarly to Xinschi-uual paws... I just needed to grab rocks to eat them, so I only had clamps. What in the world did he use his for that required such complexity?
He looked up at me, realizing I was staring at him. “Do you need something?” he asked.
“No. I just have nothing better to do than to creepily watch you,” I said. He gave me a tired look.
“How about you go into the next room?” he suggested testily.
“Don't you want to watch me back?”
“Just go in there!”
I suppressed a laugh – instead emitting an amused hum – and turned around, searching for another door. It wasn't too hard to find, being the only thing in the room that wasn't burnt, which was odd. It must have been open when whatever happened in here happened.
I walked up to it, gave it a scan, came closer, and it automatically opened, making me jump. Garenede chuckled at the full-body convulsion and I shot a glare at him.
Nice to know that they're automated, I grumpily thought, looking into the room before entering. I took note of everything in case the creator of the burns was still trapped in here, though the only burn present was a fading blast mark coming from the door. Even still, caution marked my every movement as I went in.
It appeared to be vacant, though it was a pretty decent-sized room, and the lights still worked as normal. It didn't appear to have any doors or windows. The room itself looked like an individual engineering room, where products were meticulously pieced together one copy at a time, and finally, I had discovered what the testing track was for: mechs! Powered off bare-bones models were posed up against the wall, waiting for finalization. A stand in the middle held one of these models, still partly-assembled, waiting for the engineers to return to it. Tables floated in neat rows to the left, their screens blank, and a mechanism in the ceiling that looked like a conglomerate of a Support model's tools and various robotic arms dangled over the one, unfinished mech in the center. Monitors and controls could be found in the walls, and at the far end was a temporary storage area with stacks of crates and barrels.
For the most part, none of this was particularly relevant to me, except for the partly-assembled machines. I found myself staring at the model in the center as I slowly came into the room. The bare-bones mechs were a bit creepy as they had no armor, coatings, or even blast shields. I didn't know how to interface with the control panels or the tables beyond what certain buttons did, as that was Cyrii's area of expertise, and the storage area I assumed to have tons of different parts in it. So the first thing I did was come up to one of the skeleton models, examining the framework, noticing that the computer was held in by easily-moved latches, studying how the wires and crystals were strung throughout the machine in all of their different coded colors.
So THAT'S what we look like on the inside... I thought in wonder. There was something morbidly fascinating about it; at least, for a machine. I backed up and took a picture of the creepy model, storing it on my hard drive. A brief curiosity flitted through my mind about how I was okay with seeing wounded mechs, and I was okay with looking at this, but not the image my first Scatter Drone encounter gave me... and the second one didn't even provide an image... it must only be a distraction, and the panic was induced by a forced hack.
Cyrii was right. I'm doing fine by myself. I'm even learning things! I thought, taking a few more pictures of the bare-bones models. This is exciting!
I heard a thump in the room I came from, making me glance over in reaction to it. Garenede must still be fiddling with the molten table piece. Funny, he just had to come in here for the information he sought. I didn't say anything though, switching my focus to the mech in the center and heading for it. It had basic, internal plating already on it, but was still vulnerable, though what I found interesting was its design... A bare-bones mech doesn't have any hands or feet, and the tail end of the main hull is always missing due to the potential of attaching features to it, but this model had a very short tail that could hold no such features already welded on to it, and its limbs were complete as well. Spidery, long, fragile limbs. There were three claws on each hand, splayed out in a fashion best for latching onto things, and the four-clawed feet could grip any surface and let go just as easily...
My threads were drawing a lot of conclusions I already didn't like. My excitement diminished.
Cyrii, I mentally prodded her, Cyyyyrii.
“Gah, what?” she grumbled, putting the DIAS back on.
Are you still researching mechs?
“Yeah?”
Start looking at Superiority models.
“What? Why?” she asked in confusion. “Krysis wants a Sniper, not Superiority. He doesn't even have the code clearance for Superiority.”
I know, I said, taking a few steps back, looking at the unfinished mech as a whole. It almost matched...
“I see you making connections, you know,” Cyrii said. “What is it now?”
Search for the one file I made recently, I ordered. She sighed, moving through my database on another search. There weren't very many Superiority models, so it didn't take her long to find it. She pulled it up on an internal screen, incredulous.
“Wait... you think this thing is 433?”
Not 433. His model type, I specified.
“Fiddlesticks, he isn't a Xinschi-uual mech,” Cyrii said positively, “he can't be. I know he looks like one, but he doesn't exist anywhere in the database. I literally uploaded the entire military archive into you. If he was a mech, he would show up in it.”
I didn't believe her claim. Data on the machine could be missing because of sabotage, Empirical secrecy, or even an incomplete archive, but coincidence? Only the lax fool would say it's coincidence during a war.
What do you suggest? I said, curious of her opinion and circling the machine.
“He's a drone made in the likeness of a mech. We already know those scumbags work for the Enemy; how far-fetched could it be?” She closed the file and went back to her initial search. I didn't believe her theory though, as plausible as it was.
Why would a mech down here, in the factory of a giant military complex, half-assembled, resemble a golden machine constructed by the Enemy?
“I don't know, maybe some scientist somewhere was reverse-engineering it thinking it would get him something,” Cyrii shrugged.
There's a link here, I pressed.
“I don't see why you care so much; it's not like that thing is active.”
I tried to reverse the DIAS's informati
on flow to see why Cyrii was so indifferent, but only a few hints of her true emotions came through: she didn't believe it was a threat, or that 433 was even a significant threat because of his fragile form. Well, she didn't blunder through scrambled thoughts because he slapped her across the face...
She took the DIAS off to try and concentrate again, punctuating her argument. I guess I'll muse by myself, I thought, leaving her be. I stopped in front of the mech to squint at it. Throw some gold paint on there and the appearance would be uncanny. The lack of coatings, wiring patterns, and quality of the frame were too unreliable to discern who's side the mech came from, yet the structure matched the skeleton models up against the wall, so it had to be Empirical. If it was created by the Enemy, they would have had to capture a mech and reverse-engineered it to mimic the structure so perfectly.
My deductive thoughts ran into a wall. I realized that I knew nothing concerning prisoners. The Enemy fought with drones that were useless to us and pawns to them, and nothing in my database said that they had taken mech prisoners. Why wouldn't they though? If they did, why would we not know about it? Did my encounter with Scaln count?
“Really?”
I jumped at the voice and whipped around, seeing Garenede in the doorway. He looked annoyed.
“You could have said something, you know,” he said, gesturing to one of the tables. When I realized he was referring to the data he was trying to obtain I relaxed.
“You looked occupied,” I excused, looking back at the mech in the center.
“'Occupied'. Hah hah,” he said sarcastically, “You could at least beep or something next time.”
“Beeeep.”
“Not now!”
I figuratively smiled at him, making sure he knew I was enjoying myself. Rubbing it in was fun, but I had to make sure I didn't press too many buttons or he might change his mind about letting me escape redemption. Garenede looked at me sternly before walking over to one of the tables, his retrieval panel still open to interact with it. “I'm going to find the exit so we can get out of here,” he told me.
“Okay,” I said, watching him raise the table up to his level. He waved a paw over the interface to activate it before typing, ignoring me.