[CW25] Esc4p3 (Part 3)

Esc4p3 (Part 3)

Wednesday, 2239-07-17 -- 05:43

The train has slowed down an hour ago, presumable when it entered the new city. It is decelerating again now, approaching it’s destined station. The sun must have risen by now, but they can’t see that from inside the car, and neither do they know the layout of the platform they will arrive at — there is an assumption it must be similar to the one they left from, but there are no guarantees.
As the breaks of the train get louder, and the train comes almost to a stop, Shiv and A7 prepare to unlock the door and jump out to the platform, hopefully buying enough time to orient themselves and evade any guards and machines present.

With a click the lock gives, and Shiv starts pushing the door open . As the first lights of the day flood the dark cargo hold her eyes have to adjust, but A7 is not affected by this. It wastes no time peeking outside, glancing the platform underneath slowly passing them by. When it leans out the car, just enough to not be discovered, it quickly scans the environment for threats and hiding spaces.
“See something?” Shiv asks with labored voice.
With half a walks speed passing by are various crates either placed to be loaded onto their train after the current cargo is unloaded, or remnants of previous shipments. Out in the far distance, towards the front of the train as it slowly closes in on the station, A7 spots something dangerous: “Many guards up the front, many robots, and a few people that look important”.
“Escape paths?”
The building where all of this will likely be stored in is just behind the group, and the platform is narrow enough to not give any path around them: “Negative, the only exit is behind them”.
“Great…” Shiv remarks sarcastically. To A7s surprise she starts pushing the door shut again.
“What are you doing?”
“The sun is giving me a headache, I need time to think”. As the lock clicks into place again, Shiv loosens herself from the wall and starts searching around the cargo with her glow stick.
After a minute of inspecting cryptic labels on various crates, she gestures towards A7 to join her.
“You found something?” it starts joining her companion at the large metal crate with various Fenrir insignia.
Shiv pulls out a knife from her pants, and jams it under the lid of the container: “Help me give it a push”.
Without hesitating the doll puts its weight against the lid, as she is trying to put leverage on it.
A moment later, the metal suddenly gives and the container springs open.
The dim green light of the almost expended glow stick starts to revealing its content when Shiv lifts it up and inside the crate. From what Fenrir produces, and how expensive and frequent these shipments were, Sonja and A7 expected machines or maybe weapons for suppressing protests or similar… but not this.
Protected by high grade foam, stacked layer after layer bottom to top, the crate is filled with disruptive technologies — radio jammer, EMP devices, hostile programming interfaces, everything one would need to take out a military machine, vehicle or any other installation.
“Jackpot” Shiv remarks as she pulls out one of the EMP devices: “This should buy us time”.
Looking at it A7 gets nervous: “uh.. shiv.. it.. I mean, we, like I… have you forgotten..?”
“Don’t worry girl” she gives her a mischievous smile: “You’re not as heavy as you look, and I’ done plenty of workout lately, I’ll carry you should you pass out”.
While this does technically solve the problem, there is still concern left with the doll. Their body and mind is already in state of disrepair, it can’t be sure this won’t cause more problems: “This looks powerful…”.
“It is” Shiv starts making her way to the door again: “Powerful and sophisticated, it can be pointed towards things”.
With nervous step A7 follows her: “That’s possible?”.
“If you got the money it is… makes you wonder who bought this”. She starts unlocking the door again: “Let’s hope using it once won’t make them angry enough to track us down”.
Sunlight peeks into the car again, making the glow stick obsolete. The noisy breaks from before become quiet, the train has finally stopped. “Gotta hurry”, she pulls open the door.
Unlike before, she gives it a push to slide open all the way, giving them a wide view of the platform around. Leaning out the car she spots the robotic guards starting to swarm out towards the individual cars, with the few human operators still stationed at the far end.
As Shiv starts fiddling with the EMP device, A7 slowly peeks out the door as well orienting itself — mentally preparing to run.
The device in its companions hand starts lighting up, and she starts inputting instructions: “How long you think that platform is?”
After a few seconds of mental calculations, the doll tries to give a pessimistic expectation: “At least 400 meters? Maybe 500…”
“Let’s do a kilometer then”, Shiv smirks and starts typing.
With the device calibrated, she glances out the car towards a set of crates nearby. She gives A7 a nod to follow, and starts quietly sneaking towards it.
The doll slowly follows her, eyes fixated on the guards swarming out from the end of the platform towards them.
They take cover behind the crates, getting ready. Shiv turns to her metallic companion to give it instructions: “I set it to low, so it won’t fry you too, but that means this lasts a few minutes at most. Once we knocked them out we gotta run for it”. She makes a few final adjustments on the device, before taking a glance at her targets again and continuing: “The people at the back there don’t look armed, probably workers or something, so we should be able to just run past them… I hope”.
Nervously A7 glances past her crate as well, mentally mapping out the path towards the front it will take. It only gets a few seconds to adjust before the first guard is already dangerously close.
With a silent countdown Shiv arms the EMP and jumps out from her cover, with a quick sprint she is in front of the crate A7 is still hiding behind. She points it towards the end of the platform and before the guards have time to intervene pulls the trigger.
A loud bang and flash of light blasts from the machine in her hand, and as the shock settles the bots alongside all collapse — a few lights at the platform are blown out as well, but anything larger like the train doesn’t seem to be affected.
Shiv starts sprinting, and A7 jumps out of cover and does so as well. As they run along the platform she picks up a wrench from the floor, arming herself and giving the doll time to catch up to her.
After half the platform is behind them, they can see the people up closer — confused about why their electronics have failed but seemingly not aware of them yet, but this is soon to change. They do not wear military armor and seem to tend to the robots.
A few seconds later they close in, Shiv aims for the door of the building. When the first of the works spot them, some look on in shock, some others hide behind cover from the menacing woman sprinting at them armed with a large wrench, and the doll just behind her.
Just closing in, one of them seems to contemplate stopping them… but ultimately seems to decide not to intervene, as they both spring past him and the others. Shiv throws herself against the door with her shoulder, budging it open.
Just as A7 follows her through, she quickly closes the doors and jams the wrench into the door handles.
They take a quick look around — they are in a warehouse similar to the one they saw earlier the night. A stairway down is discovered, and there are no guards around, so they go for it.
The metal of the catwalks creaks underneath them as they make their way down to the floor, passively scanning for threats. When Shiv arrives first, she takes cover behind one of the ceiling high shelves full of wares, and A7 joins her. They take a moment to recover and surveil the environment.
“You… okay…?” Shiv huffs out of breath.
“Yes” the doll replies without hesitation.
“Good… let’s… keep going… then” she continues, and starts sneaking alongside the shelf towards the other end of the building.
As they both quietly make their way, they start to hear chatter from the other side. A radio attempts to make contact with someone in the building.
static “Emer” static “Host” static
Shiv whispers to A7 “Dammit, seems the EMP already wearing down, we need to get outta here fast”.
With pressure mounting, the dolls fist tighten, preparing for a confrontation.
They arrive at the end of the shelf, and a glance past it reveals large, open loading gates big enough to fit big trucks through them. But in front of them are two people, one on a handheld radio fiddling with it trying to make it work, and another standing next at him looking outwards disinterested.
Before they can decide on a strategy, he seems to be successful.
static clears “Emergency, we are looked out. Hostiles on the ground, requesting backup. Do you read me?!”.
Before the man can reply, the person next to him snatches it away and replies herself: “Do they pose a danger?”
“Well, one was a scary looking woman and the other was a Sonja—”
“I hate repeating myself”
“Ah… they just run past us, and didn’t look armed…”
“Then stop wasting time”, she shuts of the radio and hands it back to the man looking on confused.
“Ma’am?”, he looks at her scared.
“I though I had made myself clear before”, she stares at him with fiery eyes “This shipment was already delayed, so do not waste my time further by chasing stowaways”.
Before the man can object, she starts walking towards where A7 and Shiv are hiding.
Shiv takes cover again, pulling A7 in as well. She starts whispering to her with as quiet a voice she can manage being still slightly out of breath: “If she walks by, we’re good… if not…” she clenches her fists.
They start peeking through two crates on the shelve they are hiding behind, hoping to see the threat approach. With a few glances A7 sees the woman approach closer and closer towards them. Unlike the workers on the platform she is fully dressed in military gear, but much higher quality than what it is used to seeing. Her shining bright white armor is like a provocation of the enemy, she has no need to hide in order to be feared. Her heavy boots loudly clank on the concrete floor, each step sounding almost as heavy as gunfire. It cannot spot a weapon on her, but there must be at least a few knifes stashed away in her jacket.
Just one row of shelves next to them it can start reading her face — her short snow white hair covers none of it, her yellow eyes look like they have seen many fights and remind it of that of other S0NJ4s. The longer it sees her the more scared it gets of a confrontation.
Just as she reaches the shelf they are hiding behind, she turns towards the alley between shelves and starts to pass them.
But before they can stop holding their breath, she stops. She turns to the man at the gate again: “Remember that I pay you to get dangerous things into this city, off the books. It is not of interest to me if I ordered them, or if they are free merchandise. Whoever enters this city willingly better be of use to me, if they want to survive”.
As she finishes her instructions, she turns back and glances towards the shelf they are hiding behind. They quickly take cover again, but aren’t sure if she had spotted them… A7 could almost swear she saw those piercing eyes, that face that hasn’t smiled in years, directly stare into her.
But before long, they hear the heavy thuds of her boots again, walking past and away from them. They breath a quiet sigh of relieve.

When they felt the air was clear, and the man at the gate wandered off to coordinate unloading the train, they quietly and quickly went for the gate and far away from the facility.
Initially when they were headed for this city, they expected to quickly have to locate this cities underground to hide in, to navigate it. Many years ago Shiv was here before so she was familiar with the paths they would have to take, and was fully prepared to serve as the smug mentor guide to the clueless Sonja giving her a tour of the underworld… but there was no need.
Unlike their “hometown” the streets they found themselves in are ravaged. There are no pristine sidewalks and no lights coordinating traffic. By all accounts they should be in the middle of the middle class district of this place, but it looks like a war zone. The buildings are mostly intact, but various cars are ransacked, the streets are empty apart from shady figures and fires where desperate people seek warmth this early in the day. Were it not for the expensive constructions it would look exactly like the slums or the underground back home.
But this isn’t a slum, these streets must have been as bustling as theirs maybe just a few months ago. But armed gangs roam and windows are nailed shut to protect from them, the air is filled with the static of violence and there is no military to be seen to force order.
Thankfully due to Shivs intimidating Aura and the dolls dangerous military markings nobody tries to pick a fight with them. They make their way through the eerie environment, looking for a place to rest and plan their next move. After a half hour walk they find an abandoned and ravaged shop they can take cover in, there Shiv takes an exhausted nap while A7 and Sonja watch over her. They are unsure if this situation they found themselves in makes their business easier or harder…

[CW25] Esc4p3 (Part 3)