[CW24] Esc4p3 (Part 2)

Esc4p3 (Part 2)

Tuesday, 2239-07-16 -- 23:17

As the sun had set, the full moon was soon to rise. Now this late into the night it stands high, bathing the city in its cool blue light. Even this late many are still out, still hustling, not to speak of the machines.
Near a large Fenrir building, a storage facility that houses many of their products, an industrial train platform towers over the city. Even if it is not the rich that board it, it’s still them who pay for whenever a train leaves it, so it has to connect to the tracks high above those who can’t afford to rent them.
During the day, loads of workers and machines run over the platform to fulfill orders on the books, but this late only a minimal crew fulfills those placed through word of mouth and handshakes — for much higher prices.
This particular station, headed towards a particular city, has been especially busy at night the past months. This hasn’t gone unnoticed by everyone else not operating within the confines of books or corporate oversight, so while these cargo holds get stocked with weapons and machines, other things might sneak on board at times — given the right price.

Down at the street, at a large industrial gate opened up just enough to fit a human through, a warehouse worker leans against the wall just next to it.
Covered by the shadow the building throws their way, Shiv and Sonja walk up to the man like they belong. Sonja is wearing all the clothes she owns, as well as a cap pulled deep into her face not to reveal her mechanical face.
While she watches, Shiv leans against the wall just next to the worker who takes out a cigarette and lights it.
“Got some fire?”, Shiv inquires with casual voice.
“Depends, can you pay for it?”.
“Of course”, she takes out a large bundle of cash stowed away in one of her pants pockets and hands it over.
The man takes it without much eagerness, and gives it a quick twirl to assess the amount. “Looks good, go ahead”.
The woman gets up from the wall, and gives Sonja an invitational glance, before walking past the man and ducking down under the gate into the building. After a quick glance at the man, busy now properly counting the money, she follows.

Inside the warehouse large shelves full of crates tower floor to ceiling, but right next to them is a set of stairs leading up to a catwalk near the top of the building. Shiv already heads up to it, Sonja catches up.
“This’ as far as money alone takes us”.
Nothing new to Sonja, but she isn’t the one who is needed next.
At the top of the stairs, the catwalk leads to a door that heads to the platform. Shiv heads up to it and opens it just enough to get a glance at the situation outside. While she prepares to lead through, Sonja takes the opportunity to switch. She grabs her notebook and opens it up to the map she had drawn there earlier of the platform.
With her business partner distracted, she goes through a set of thoughts she had practiced many times over the past few weeks — thoughts she knows causes her system to crash, even if she doesn’t know why. Some must trigger the AI Limiter, some others may just put strain on her processing, but regardless they are known to work.

Tuesday, 2239-07-16 -- 23:28

Slowly and quietly Shiv closes the door, and turns around to her companion who is studying the map in its notebook.
“Looks like they’re wrapping up soon, we should hurry”.
A7 nervously glances up: “Ah, yeah, right… lead the way”.
“Gotcha”.
Swiftly Shiv opens up the industrial door enough to fit herself through, and where she fits with her muscular arms so will the doll behind her. She carefully steps through and A7 follows with bend knees and shaky hands.
Just behind the door the large platform expands outwards towards the horizon, a few crates just next to the exit give them some cover.
Covered behind them Shiv takes another peeks around the corner, towards the tracks and the train parked there. A7 can’t really see much from behind, so it awaits further instructions.
The woman goes back into hiding and turns to the doll: “Only a few of these autonomous cars left carrying some stuff, but they don’t look for intruders anyway”.
She quietly gets up, just to look above the box they are hiding behind, and a moment later gestures to A7 to get up as well.
Carefully it follows and gets on its toes to look just above the wooden container, where it can finally also take a glance at the train and the security around it.
Besides a few little cars slowly driving some heavy containers, it can spot a few guards. Most of them are humanoid, armed and stationed at the entrances of the few cars still open, one each. It whispers to Shiv: “How are we supposed to get past them?”, it complains.
“We aren’t”, its business partner whispers back. “I got a key to one of the cars, we wait for a path to open up and head for that one”.
They quickly duck back into cover, where Shiv tries to give it a reassuring smile: “I’d hoped they load back to front, but looks we’ll have to wait and then hurry”.

Tuesday, 2239-07-16 -- 23:52

After many minutes of agonizing wait, they hear the gate of the last car being pulled close, follow by its lock spring shut. Shiv leans around the crate, to watch its guard leave its post.
They press closely against the crate, as the bot walks past them and out the door to the warehouse. When it finally disappears they hear the train starting up.
With swift step for such a rough woman Shiv jumps out from cover, and A7 hurries after her.
They start running towards the later third of the long train, where she had spotted the car her key is supposedly made for.
The wires over the tracks start to whirl with electricity, as the engine at the front prepares for takeoff.
A few seconds later they arrive at the locked gate, and Shiv hurries to get it open.
The train car starts to slowly move, she struggles to fit the key in the dark.
Click The woman starts to pull the door open, but it unfortunately slides into the direction the train is headed. The car starts to move faster and faster, past walking speed and towards running.
She takes a deep breath, and starts running with the door handle in hand.
With great effort the door finally opens up enough for A7 to jump inside.
It leans out the car, and pulls her companions muscular arm inside before the train speeds up enough to make that impossible without hurting her.
Before they can settle the platform disappears behind them, and the train starts to build speed. Without another moments hesitation Shiv pulls the door shut again.
She sinks to the floor exhausted. “Easy peacy” she chuckles quietly.
The doll gives her a concerned look, but seeing that she is in high spirits her worries quickly ease.
Suddenly they hear steps, so they quickly take cover between two large crates.
Shiv turns to her companion: “Now we hide till we’re out the city, then the patrols go to sleep to conserve power since out there nothing is alive”.

Wednesday, 2239-07-17 -- 00:14

The train is back to accelerating, and no more steps had been heard for the past minutes. Shiv carefully ducks out of cover to double check.
After a few seconds of trying to glean movement in the dark, she gets up and out of their hiding spot.
After a moment she pulls out a glowstick from one of her pockets, and gives it a kink. The dark room lights up in a dim green light.
Now A7 also carefully gets out from behind the crate, and gives a glance down the car just to make sure it can’t spot something Shiv didn’t.
“Now we just gotta kill a few hours”. She gets out a deck of cards from yet another of the many pockets on her pants. “Want me to teach you some games”, she gleams.
“I guess…”.

Wednesday, 2239-07-17 -- 01:43

They sit on the floor, cards laid out in front of them. Shiv pulls a new one from the top of the deck, and puts it next to the small stack arranged in front of her, the seven of hearts is revealed.
“Hah! 21! I’m such a lucky girl”, she triumphantly declares.
With narrow eyes A7 starts to question the result: “Isn’t that like the fourth heart seven you pulled out there?!”.
“Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, I didn’t count”. She quickly picks up the cards and the deck and starts shuffling them.
While Shiv tries to hide it, the normally trusting doll is starting to recognize when she is trying to change the subject. It quickly swoops the deck out of her hand, and starts shuffling it itself instead.
“Hey”!
“Let’s see if your luck lasts”, it smirks.
Steps suddenly startle the two, they come from behind a door that connects this car to the next.
Quickly Shiv hurries to burry her light source in her back, plunging the room into darkness. After a moment of shock A7 jumps behind a crate, where it is joined by her.
They sit in silence for a few agonizing seconds, speculating what in the world would walk around at this time. All the bots on guard are asleep conserving power, and the train is not supposed to have humans on board.
More seconds pass.
A7 wonders if they should carefully investigate, if what they heard weren’t actually steps. It starts to speculate what else could make similar noises, but comes up short.
Suddenly they hear the door creak open, noises of the train running over the rails previously muffled now blare through the opening.
Through the loud soundstage it is hard to make out what else is happening.
It disappears, the door is presumably closed again. So they both can be certain now that the door was opened and closed by someone, and not randomly swung open — something not very likely, but now they can be sure.
Steps ring through the dark and quiet car, sharply contrasting the muffled noises of the train running. They sound metallic and heavy on the harsh floor, raising more questions and concerns.
The steps approach their hiding spot.
They come closer.
Slowly and quietly Shiv puts her hand into one of her pockets, and starts pulling something out. Now A7 starts to wonder if it should prepare as well, but it doesn’t know what, it doesn’t recall any note from Sonja about what to do in a situation like this.
A flash of light.

They have been discovered, the bot on patrol is looking right at them covered between the crates. Without a moments hesitation Sonja pulls a knife out of the pocket her hand was in, and jumps at it — While A7 sits there frozen.
A short exchange follows, Shiv tries to go for its neck to disconnect a few wires, but is intercepted before she can land a hit. She follows it up with a kick, trying to get it off balance, but her boots are not making a dent into its stance — the thud of her foot against the metal sounds painful even.
The bot suddenly grabs her arm, its hand is large enough to fit entirely around it even thought it is this muscular. It’s grip tightens and Shiv lets out a short cry of pain.
“Identify”, it demands.
“Fuck you”, she refuses.
It’s grip grows tighter, her face contorts in quiet pain.
For a moment A7 considers looking through its notebook, but that would take too long and is unlikely to contain anything useful.
“Identify”, it demands again.
Shiv doesn’t look like she can answer.
There is no time.
With full force A7 pushes its leg against the floor, leaping into the air past the woman, almost hitting the ceiling of the car. When gravity catches up with it, it puts most of its energy into its right leg, and quickly extends it towards the adversary. A loud thud and the creaks of metal bending light up the room as its foot connects to the bots head. It gets thrown against the opposite wall.
Intuitively A7 lands on the floor on all four, and quickly takes aim at the machine in front of it again before it can recover from the impact.
It doesn’t think, it doesn’t device a tactic, something in it just does. It raises from the floor with all force into its legs, then into its arm, its fist extends into the chest of the bot — punching a hole right through it.
Chunks of metal fly through the room, as well as electrical whirls.
The light that had blinded them previously, originating from the upper chest of the bot, turns off bathing them in protective dark.
A few seconds pass, in which nothing happens.
A7 stands there, frozen, with its arm through the bots chest, starting to comprehend the situation.
A hand on its shoulder startles it, but it thankfully is too frozen to really react.
“Damn, I knew your type is strong, but that was impressive”, Shiv chuckles — but her laugh gets cut short as a sharp pain in her arm interrupts her.
Slowly the doll pulls its arm back out of the bot with some effort, and inspects it with its other hand for damage. It doesn’t feel like anything is really broken, whatever it was made out of must have been much weaker than its own chassis.
“I thought you’re owner didn’t get that combat subscription or whatever”?
The doll turns around, and looks up at its companion, holding her arm in pain but carrying a small smile in the dark. “It… ehm, it… it does’t… ehm”, its voice is shaking.
“Hey, you’ okay?”, concern fills Shivs voice.
But A7 doesn’t really know how to answer.
Lacking any response, she takes a step closer to the doll, trying to look into its eyes in the dark. But it doesn’t look back, its gaze is fixated towards the ground, trying to search within.
The large woman is confused for a moment, but then decides to act. It takes the bot into its arms, and pulls it in tightly even with her badly hurt arm.
Pulled out from its shock, A7 begins to stutter again: “Eh, Shiv? Ah, it, what”.
“It’s okay”, still pulled in, she puts her hand onto its head: “first one’s tough”. She pulls it in a little closer: “Thank you, you saved me from having to splurge on some replacement from our doc myself”, she gives her a modest laugh trying not to make the pain flare up again.
Finally A7 starts to hug her back. It doesn’t really know what to say, so it remains quiet.

to be continued

[CW24] Esc4p3 (Part 2)