All Aboard

Factor's words grate on my ears as he read out the next departure time. Their high, almost whining voice like roofing nails dragged across clean steel, sinking into my teeth. In spite of that, I don't dare remove my helmet and its integrated earpiece. I need to know how many elevators are left. I cannot be left behind.

In the near-total dark, the gentle pinging echo in my ear is my only guide. Warmer, it whispers to me. Warmer, you're getting closer. Almost there, a few more turns, just a little more luck and you'll be out. We call it the 'Beacon,' and each of us claims to love its sound the way we love parents, children, lovers; the truth is, we fear it just the same as we might any of those. For different reasons, of course.

Calling us home, the Beacon tells us when we're close, but never where the lift is. Tells us that it's time to return, assuming we're in range. Promising us a way out of the horrible, stifling dark if only we're lucky enough to make it. Often enough, it lies.

A glance at my watch tells me that I have a chance. Despite how far I have left to go, I have time. The words in my earpiece aren't echoes, bouncing around the impossible labyrinth luring the unlucky to their deaths. My team, my code, and I have three more lifts after this one. Time is on my side. Maybe the only thing left, but still there, giving me a chance.

My knees complain whenever I shift, old before my time, but I keep the comforting groans and moans that escape my lips when topside silent. Whatever is out there, whatever snatched Signet and mauled Mindeep so bad we had to leave her behind thrives in the dark. That means scent and that means sound.

Nothing I can really do about scent. Before coming down below the Dominion I never thought that fear had a smell. Players up on stage used to talk about it, I remember that from when dad used to take us. And after that, it turned up on occasion in the media. A monster would say that it loved the smell of fear, or someone hiding in the dark would whisper that an enemy could smell it on the point of view.

I know better now. I can smell it on myself, wafting up, soaking through the thin fabric of my uniform. Sour, awful, notably different from and yet a part of my own rotten stench. It sticks in my nose and burns where it finds purchase, but I don't scratch. Cannot scratch. Because out there, somewhere in the dark, is the thing that got Mindeep. Somewhere, the cousin of whatever stole Signet is prowling, hunting, hungry.

Hungry.

Stomach clenching, reminding me of my since-abandoned pack and the nutrient bars inside, I gather my courage. "Screw your courage to the sticking place," my father used to say. It was a line from a play he had loved as a boy, though not one he had ever found a production of to take me to. The words, the memory gives me just enough to wrap my arms around my prize and gather my legs to dash.

A light flashes. A blinding blade of sickly orange-ish yellow knifing through the perfect dark, revealing it.

Oily skin glistens as the rotating light passes over it again and again. My breath catches in my throat and the muscles in my legs, poised to dash, seize. A near human head lifts into the air and tilts back, shaking slightly it looks like it’s sniffing.

My heart thunders in my ears, I can’t hear it if it’s making a sound. It doesn’t seem to know where I am, even if it is trying to smell me out. I don’t know how long the monster has been out there, waiting in the rusted corridor for me to poke my head out. Thank the Gods for the power coming back. Thank the Gods!

Factor’s voice mumbles in my ears and I move only my eyes to glance at my watch again. Two more lifts. They aren’t that far away, if I could only get up and move, then I could still reach them in plenty of time. In the rotating flashes of light, I can almost see my prize.

Round about the size of a backpack, the heavy weight in my arms is clearly the main body of a spider drone. One of the legs - my plan was to explain that it was all I could find instead of explaining that all six would have been too heavy and awkward to carry - comfortably strapped to my back in place of my pack. This thing does not belong down here. This thing is going to be very interesting to Factor and their boss. And interesting means valuable.

Turning my attention back to the monster, I try to focus on the money. My percent on something the Uppers pay big for might just move me up in the world. Not into the Tower, certainly, but closer. Little Cal won’t have to follow my footsteps down here. He could have a trade, a proper one. If only I get out of here with this treasure. Only if I can get past it. Not to mention anything else like it.

Movement catches my eye, the monster’s too. Something harsh and guttural, sounding almost like words if I strain my ears, filters into the derelict room where my tormentor waits. Its head tilts to one side, the spinning hazard light glinting off its skin. As I watch rivulets of slime gather and tumble down, vanishing into shadow. Prayers to the Nameless Gods fill my mind that I will not step in whatever that was.

Slowly, the monster slinks out of sight, following the harsh almost-words like a dog to its master.

I count heartbeats. Waiting to see if this is a trap, waiting to see if they come back. A leaking pipe somewhere in the darkness sounds like thunder as I strain my ears for anything, ANYTHING. Nothing. Just the unsteady dripping and the gentle sighing of wind through the maze of tunnels as ancient fans sputter on and off.

Clenching and releasing my muscles a few times to try and get some kind of useable blood flow back into them, I ready myself and… Go!

Behind and above me as I rocket around a corner, something screams with glee and slaps to the ground. Immediately, like it didn’t even break stride, the wet patter of oily legs racing down the hall echoes around me.

Not daring to look back, I push myself harder. Pounding the cracked and decaying concrete, breath rasping in my ears, I hurtle through echoing chambers strewn with the rotting detritus of a thousand scavenging missions. Everywhere this close to the lift has picked clean ages ago. Now the only things worth digging through are deeper in. Buried in blackness.

The drone’s weight in my arms actually spurs me on, gives me strength and vigour and pushes me to run faster. Faster. Faster! I found it by a collapsed bit of wall, under a gaping wound in the ceiling that lead to an old pipe. We didn’t have time to explore it, but the rad tag we left behind meant that other teams would be able to find it again. Even if the information from Signet’s recorder contacts was lost now, we could find the place and corroborate my story.

Information and the prize still clutched between sweating palms, those are my tickets out of this place once and for all. Cal’s ticket to a life better than his dad’s. But money only has value if you live long enough to spend it. Dreams only matter if you’re alive to see them through. So I run.

A short flight of stairs appears before me and I tumble headlong down them, the body of the drone flying out of my hands and rattling away. Just before I fall a sticky, slimy, something touches my trouser leg, tugging it oh so gently before the contact breaks. I scream more from that than the fall.

Hitting the ground hard, I manage to roll unsteadily to my feet. I’m close enough to the lift that faint red emergency lights blink on the ceiling, giving me barely enough to make out what’s around me within a couple meters. There, almost dead ahead is the drone’s corpse.

I lunge forward and sweep the heavy mass up, clutching it tight to my chest and careening away, sprinting towards freedom. In my ear, the announcement comes in, only one lift left.

Desperation gives me a new burst of strength, grey and black flash past me as I hear the unmistakeable splat of whatever is chasing me hit the bottom of the stairs.

My breath is the only thing I can hear. I have no idea how close the monster is. It’s close. I know it’s close. I push myself harder, my knees and ankles crack from the effort. Down a tunnel to the right stands an empty doorway illuminated by two nearly burnt out flares to either side.

I want to sob. I want to stop and fall to my knees and suck down tremendous lungfuls of air and weep. But I can’t stop. I pivot hard, bouncing off a wall to help my turning and build my speed back up. Behind me I hear the wet skittering of too many legs capped with too long nails trying to match my turn. It was so close. So very close but the unexpected turn saves me.

Nearly through the door, I hear Factor’s voice again any my blood runs to ice in my veins. “Last call for the final lift. Last call.”

“WAIT!” I shriek, and erupt into the lift chamber.

There, a hundred meters away I can see the beautiful, saintly yellow lights of the lift. I spy nearly a dozen people clustered around the metal seats bolted to the middle of the lift platform and the urge to sob for joy nearly overtakes me. I run. Harder than I have ever run before, I bolt for the lift.

“WAIT!” I scream again, hoping against hope that someone, anyone will be able to hear me over the rumble of the engines that will soon get them out of this Hell hole. Hoping that someone will see me.

I can hear the engines now, almost feel their blissful heat on my face. Aboard, I see a silhouette press itself against the railing. I can’t tell if it’s facing me or facing away, but I risk releasing one hand from its death grip on my prize and raise it. Waving frantically, I scream a wordless, desperate scream. Behind me, wet slapping of the monster’s feet slows. It’s scared. Good.

Shouting from the lift, the terrible whine of the engines before they begin their assent sputters and dies. There’s an argument on board, people pointing my direction. Someone shoulders out of the group and levels something long and thin in my direction. I don’t flinch when the gun fires, and push myself all the harder to maintain my pace when I hear the piteous cry from behind me as the bullet finds its mark.

A woman runs out to meet me, the rifle that maybe saved my life slung over her shoulder. She tries to ask me a question but I say nothing, not daring to stop in case the lift leaves me. It consumes my mind, the desire to get on that thing. To sit in the uncomfortable chairs and be shaken to my bones for the hour or so it will take to get back topside sounds like an invitation to Heaven itself.

Top of Central Tower - the home of the Gods - or a bone jarring seat I’ve detested for years, the choice is obvious.

I don’t fully realize that I’m on the lift until the woman kneels before me, looking into my eyes with naked concern written across her face. She asks me a question, then repeats it, I can only hear the slowing pounding of my own heart.

Gasping for breath, I flap my hand on the drone and try to hack out a report. No one listens, or maybe I don’t actually say anything. She reaches out and pulls the drone towards herself, then carefully inspects it from every angle.

“No manufacturer’s marks. Where are the others?”

“Dead.”

“You’re lucky,” she whispers as Factor strides over, two Upper mooks a step behind him. “No one’s come back for ages. We were leaving early. Don’t think anyone’s ever got on after last call before.”

“Our little odds beater,” Factor’s voice is cold and slick, it reminds me of the monsters in the dark. The oily filth that beaded and dripped off them. “Tell me that you have good reason for delaying us, and maybe I won’t leave you behind.”

The lift begins to rise and the collected treasure hunters on it breathd a collective sigh of relief.

“Spider drone,” I begin, pulling the leg off my back and handing it over. “No maker’s marks, found in the deep tunnels. Looks like it was going through pipes and found a weak patch, fell through in the Depths.”

“And this is important to us… why?”

“Look at the leg, sir. Can’t tell much from the body of the drone,” the body is smooth, without any obvious joins. Nothing to say if it was from the Founding or fresh off the assembly line. “But that leg’s modern. Whoever this little guy belonged to, they lost him recently. Nothing like what other of his kind we find down here.”

“Hmm,” Factor looks at the leg more keenly, then laughs a harsh, chirping laugh. “My friend, if you tell me you can find this place again, I’ll believe there’s a substantial reward coming your way.”

“We left a rad tag on the edge of the broken pipe.”

“Fantastic! That means we can forgive the abandoning of company property, since I assume you didn’t recover Asset Signet’s recorder when you lost her?” My heart sinks and I shake my head. “Ahh well, maybe it’ll turn up. In the mean time,” Factor pulled a heavy scrip coin out of his pocket and pressed it into my hands, “you enjoy yourself tonight. Tomorrow, why I might just have someone important who’ll want to hear the whole story.”

Numb, I take the coin. Recover the recorder? Why would I… the tightness around Factor’s mouth gives me pause. Then I focus more on his eyes, and see that same tightness there. This person he thinks I might have to talk to scares him. And anyone who scares Factor must be pretty high up. Maybe even Tower high.

Important person means important cargo. Important is the same as interesting. It means valuable.