Paranoia: HMT -- the rest of the story

[Mike]

Game Over! We won! (sorta)

I'm going to be posting the game in chapters here over the next few days, but I'll also happily answer any and all questions that people have.

[Mike]

The Cast

Team Power Services
Cue-R-IUS – Pdyx
Didjab-R-ING – Caz
Enn-R-GEE – D-Rod
Preach-R-MAN – Ron
Soup-R-MOM – Joel
Sync-R-SWM – Kyle

Team Technical Services
Dole-R-USS – Ronster
Kay-R-ESS – buckett
Nattied-R-EDD – akiva
Pow-R-PUF – Zombie
Power-R-NGR – Mrs. Darcs
Ripp-R-JAK – Tahlvin

[Mike]

THE SETUP (Prologue)

Power Services changes light bulbs in FIR Sector. Power Services has ALWAYS changed light bulbs FIR Sector. Other sectors may do things differently, but the higher ups here recognize that there’s no better way to get the job done than having a reliable Power clone survey the situation with their own eyes and change that bulb with their own hands. It’s a huge responsibility, and Power Services takes it very seriously.

At least that’s how it WAS… until last month. Then those bastards down in Research and Development adapted some outdated vent-patrol bots (vent-patrol being yet another Power responsibility unfairly stolen from them) into light-bulb-changing bots. And after a marginally successful pilot program, which is in its final stages, the Computer is planning to deploy these creepy little spider things all over the sector and pass off bulb changing responsibility to the lazy shits over in Technical Services.

This travesty must be stopped.

These new LBC-Bots are in constant communication with each other and run a decentralized virtual bulb changing network to allocate their resources. Therefore, it was a simple matter to reprogram one of them with viral code that would quickly spread to the others. Soon the spiderbots all gathered around Traffic Hub Junction 157300-2 and began their War on the Light. Now programmed to destroy all light sources within the pilot area and to attack and drive off those who seek to bring in light, it would only be a matter of time before the Computer decided to scrap the entire plan and put all the bulbs back in the steady and rightful hands of Power Services.

The move was incredibly effective. The lights along Traffic Corridor 1573TW-G are all wired together in series, like Christmas lights. And the moment the spiderbots smashed the first bulb, all overhead traffic lights within four kilometers went out simultaneously. The accidents and pileups and loss of property and citizens was immediate and enormous. Power Services couldn’t have asked for a better demonstration of the dangers of letting Tech Services take over such a sensitive function.

Technical Services however quickly recognized what was happening, and they had no doubt that this was Power Service sabotage.

So now the race is on. Both service groups have requested a troubleshooter team to change the faulty bulb and restore normal operations. The team requested by Power Services needs their troubleshooters to destroy the “faulty” bots and have a clone change the bulb by hand, demonstrating the need for human intervention. The Technical Services team, however, needs to restore the bots and allow them to complete their work, thus showing that the bots are more than capable and hopefully bringing back evidence of Power Service treason.

Which raises the obvious question: How many Troubleshooters does it take to change a light bulb?

[Mike]

CHAPTER 1 – HAPPYCAKES, THEY’RE GREAT!


GOOD MORNING PINK AND BROWN

It’s another beautiful daycycle in Alpha Complex, and especially so in FIR Sector, where the newest troubleshooters are just sitting down to a nutritionally complete and statutorily tasty breakfast. Smiles that are not-at-all strained are plastered on nearly every face, even at this early hour of the daycycle. The 62 RED-clad troubleshooters are all in line at the cafeteria, trays in hand, looking expectantly upon the ready pans of… uh… of pink gruel, and the chunkier brown gruel, and of course stacks of Algae-Rite Breakfast HappyCakes, perfect for sopping up remnants of either pink or brown gruel.

The “food” is ready. The troubleshooters are all waiting. Several infrared clones and buffet-bots are in position, clearly itching to serve them. Unfortunately, Mrs-G-URP-2, the cafeteria’s director stands resolute at the head of the line, with her arms folded, and shaking her head at her workers. Not yet, she clearly says, keeping her eye on the large clock over the ID-station. 0629 hours. Still one minute left.

Then the clock flips to 0630, and a couple of the waiting troubleshooters even cheer a little. Cheering for gruel.

And in the same instant, the cafeteria is filled with an immense buzzing as 62 troubleshooter phones all vibrate at once with incoming messages. Several phones actually beep once with the incoming message notice, and one indiscreet clone’s device actually begins announcing, “Sev-R-USS-1, there is an exciting mission waiting for you! Report to…” before the sheepish Sev-R manages to silence his phone.

The first buffet bot holds aloft a ladle full of the pink stuff, frozen in place and waiting for a tray to put it on, as 62 fresh and happy troubleshooters all check their phones.

Dole, Kay, Nattied, Pow, Power, and Ripp all receive the following:

“Troubleshooter! You are called to your first mission ever! Aren’t you excited? Please report to Lou-B-JOB-3 in briefing room 2 on Joy-in-Service Level by 0630 hours for mission details. Thank you for your service!”

Cue, Didjab, Enn, Preach, Soup, and Sync all receive the following:

“Citizen, have you been waiting for a chance to prove your ability and loyalty to your Friend, the Computer? Now is your chance! Report immediately to briefing room 12 on Joy-in-Service Level, where Lard-B-UTT-2 will explain how you can serve the Computer on your very first mission!”

Joy-in-Service Level is four floors above this one.


HURRY HURRY SUPER SCURRY

[This is going to be confusing at first until we get used to all the names. Just hang on tight and we’ll get there.]

Before most of the clones even have time to check and absorb their messages, a short, stocky clone (Preach-R-MAN-1 to those who can see the name on his coveralls) immediately bolts for the door, arms waving over his head. "I'm coming Friend Computer!” Preach shouts, “I'm coming right now!" And Preach disappears around a corner.

Didjab is near the end of the line, he's used to letting other clones go ahead of him, as most of those clones are VITLS (Vulture In Training Low Security). He reads his message and smiles, thinking it is finally time to help Friend Computer. Without being too obvious, Didjab aims for one of the VERT (Vulture Emergency Response Tubes) and climbs the ladder down to the FIR RED clearance. The barracks appear empty on his arrival, so Didjab swipes his POD over his locker to open it and begins grabbing his things.

Preach skips the elevators, and heads right for the stairs, bounding down them as quickly as possible to get to his room. He swipes his phone at his locker and opens it, quickly suiting up. As he does so, a lump from a nearby unmade bed rolls over, phone in hand. It’s Sant-R-CLS, which Preach only knows from sharing a bunk so close. She blinks her sleepy eyes and says, “Damn! I’ve got to be at a briefing five minutes ago. Did I miss breakfast?”

Kay-R-ESS-1 waits calmly in line for his breakfast. It's set to be an exciting day, so he's popped an anti-anxiety pill before setting off; no need to be nervous. His eyes are slightly glazed over as a result.

Kay shoots Sev-R-USS-1 a sleepy grin before peeking down at his own smartphone. "0630?" he mutters, this time glancing at the clock.

Cue-R-IUS-1's face lights up as she reads the message. She smiles from ear to ear. What could this be? The possibilities are endless! What fresh novelties await? Cue forgets all about boring, rote, routine breakfast and heads immediately for the elevators.

Sync-R-SWM puts her tray back on the stack of unused ones. "Probably for the best," she says and grabs her stomach. She heads to the elevators.

Pow-R-PUF-1 eyes the message on her phone with curious delight. She really wants to gather a few things from her barracks, not to mention missing out on that sweet, sweet pink muck, but she HATES being late to meetings. She heads to the service elevators on her way to briefing room 2.

Nattied-R-EDD puts down his tray and start looking for the fastest way to Joy-in-Service Level, room 2. But as he’s doing this, he keeps an eye on Sev-R. Nattied angles his way towards the other clone so that they are leaving at the same time and whispers to him, "nice going with the phone--I like that you left it on speaker on purpose!"

Sev-R looks on the verge of panic, still trying to smile, and latches on to Nattied in relief, “I’m so lost. I just transferred in two days ago. Do you know where Joy-in-Service Level is?” Nattied keeps moving as they talk, and Sev-R follows along.

Ripp-R-JAK-1 is disappointed about missing breakfast, even as crappy as the pink and brown gruel is, but she’s determined not to let it show on her face. Yes, it will suck to miss breakfast, but that’s why she has a little stash of contraband energy bars hidden in her domestic quarters. Instead, she turns and heads directly to the elevators to head up to briefing room 2 and Lou-B-JOB-3. As she goes, she checks her POD again. She wants to see the timestamp on the incoming message. It’s certainly not unusual to receive a message indicating you need to be somewhere at 0630, and the message is received at 0630, but she wants to see if The Computer really waited until 0630 to send out the message, or if it was delayed by one of the transmission intermediaries. Because The Computer is never wrong. Turns out the message is from Troubleshooter Dispatch, and was sent at 0630. Ripp-R walks briskly, not quite wanting to be the first person in the conference room but definitely not wanting to be the last.

Enn-R-GEE-1 is mentally kicking himself for waiting until the very last second to get out of bed; being near the end of the line is unbearable. To be clear, any spot in line that isn't "Next!" is unbearable. Without looking, Enn's hand moves down to silence the incessant vibrating of the annoying little box clipped to his belt.

He huffs and puffs as the line moves along slower than he'd like. He squints at the group of troubleshooters standing in front of him, all checking their POD's and apparently only moving when they feel an empty space in front of them. He looks behind and sees nothing but the top of a dozen heads as they, too, all collect information from their pods. Enn moves closer to the troubleshooter in front of him and slides in front of him at the next opportunity.

But then suddenly most of the waiting troubleshooters have cleared out. At this point, there are about a dozen clones still waiting in line as the others decide to skip breakfast and file out into the corridor, breaking up into different directions.

Kay-R-ESS-1 is at the head of the line now, thinking no need to start his first mission on an empty stomach, even if he's now running late.

Before Kay can be served, someone from the line announces: "Nothing is more important than a good breakfast!” Soup-R-MOM shakes her head and walks to the front of the line. "Excuse me dear, I need a great start to my day.” She grabs a tray and gets 4 scoops of brown stuff and 8 Happycakes. She then considers the tables, and then the doors. Soup-R nods her head knowingly and takes her tray with her to the door, following the last of the stragglers out into the hall.

Kay waits calmly, and then politely asks for an extra helping of brown gruel. Just before he gets served however, Enn-R-GEE-1 grumbles and taps him on the shoulder. "Excuse me!" Enn says indignantly, "Cutting is not permitted in line and I was ahead of you before all that nonsense started!" Before Kay can reply, Enn steps in front of him with a haughty sniff, gets his food and finds a seat.

Finally getting served, Kay scarfs down his breakfast while standing casually off to the side, not bothering to sit down. When he’s done, he strolls out to the hall to find the elevators.

With his first bite of food in him, Enn finally looks down to his POD. Ah, dammit all. It figures. Doesn’t matter to him. Enn will report to Joy-in-Service Level when he is good and done with his meal.

About five other clones have also chosen to take their meals in the cafeteria. All of them sit well away from each other.

In the corridor, just outside the cafeteria…

Soup-R spies the tail end of the group headed to the elevators and heads that way, but she is stopped by a buffet-bot, barely a meter tall and pointing a ladle at her (the ladle being its primary appendage). In a gravelly electronic voice it says, “Excuse me, citizen, but cafeteria property may not be removed from the cafeteria under any circumstances.”

Kay is walking up right behind the bot during this interaction.

At the main elevators…

A group of maybe twenty clones arrive at the main elevators. One of the elevator doors opens as they arrive, revealing a RED-clad clone hanging from the top of the elevator by a length of cable. Her name is Sue-R-RAT-6. She is clearly dead. As the clones hesitate, wondering how much of a hurry they are in, someone pushes the call button and two more elevators open almost immediately. The clones split about evenly and fill both ‘vaters.

Sync-R-SWM and Power-R-NGR find themselves next to each other at the back of the first elevator. Several clones call out, “Joy-in-Service Level, please,” only to hear from the front, “No problem, we’re just headed down to the dorms first.” The elevator begins moving down.

Cue-R-IUS and Dole-R-USS end up in the next elevator, where Cue secures the spot by the buttons and immediately presses “Joy-in-Service Level”. The elevator begins its ascent. And immediately stops at the next floor up, Tranquility-under-Adversity Level”. The doors open, and three ORANGE clearance troubleshooters are waiting there with a large doc-bot which is hissing and spitting the occasional spark. The ORANGE clones are clearly waiting to get on the elevator, but there is no room.

At the service elevators…

Nattied, Pow, and Ripp find themselves in a group of roughly two dozen clones waiting for the service elevator. Everyone is looking around nervously, all clearly wondering the same thing… how rough do I have to get to get a spot on this thing. But fortunately for all of them, when the large, double, sliding doors to the service elevator open, there is room for everyone. Surprisingly, there are even old crates along one wall, and several clones take advantage of them to sit down. The elevator asks, “Which floor, citizens?” Several call out, “Joy-in-Service Level,” while others say, “Dorms, please.” One wise-ass chirps, “All the way to the top!” Some people snicker, others politely ignore him.

The elevator replies in a congenial tone, “Whoa there, humans! One at a time. I heard Joy-in-Service Level first. But don’t worry—you’ll all get where you’re going.” The elevator begins its ascent.

Having heard one of the other clones indicate Joy-in-Service Level, Ripp-R-JAK-1 breathes a little easier and continues to stand silently off to the side of the elevator. She dreaded having to speak in front of a large group of clones, afraid her stutter would cause her to say “Joy-in-S-S-S-S-S-Service L-L-L-Level”.

Back in the dorms…

Didjab is quick to fit all of his equipment and armor to himself. He's got his headphones around his neck and his truncheon in his right hand. He then turns to Preach-R and says, "The three of us made the right call, getting our gear." He makes a little gesture with the club, "Well-equipped troubleshooters are sure to get to the front of the line for that meeting."

He closes the distance to the other clones, drops the truncheon so it swings by the strap around his wrist, and shakes hands with Preach-R. "My name is Didjab. I think we should be friends."

Preach is a short, tough-looking clone (like a young Danny Devito... or maybe Joe Pesci).

Didjab-R-ING is a solidly built clone with a swarthy, olive complexion and, quite unusual, he wears a thick, black, bushy mustache.


R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Dorms…

Preach-R straps on the last of his equipment and looks up at Didjab, who looms over him. Preach-R thoughtfully declares, "People come into your lives who you have a good time with, and time goes by and you still have a good time with them, and you do stupid stuff with them." He scuffles off. At the door, Preach turns, looks back at Didjab, and says, "To me, that's life."

Just as he exits to the stairs, Preach-R uses his telekinesis mutant power to spank Sant-R as hard as he can from across the room.

Didjab is left standing with his hand out, when suddenly there is a loud cracking sound, and Sant-R-CLS nearly falls out of bed right next to Didjab. Her POD goes skittering across the floor and under Preach’s bunk. She scrambles quickly after her device while glaring up at Didjab, “What the HEL Sector, dude?! I said I was getting up!”

Elevator 1, Dorm level…

Sync-R-SWM grabs her stomach, which grumbles. She whispers to herself, "Just hurry," with a worried glance at the front of the 'vater.

Power-R-NGR-1 is a bit concerned that she is supposed to be 4 levels up at exactly....now. She figures that since the ‘vater is already headed to the dorms, and she'll be late regardless, she may as well be late but prepared.

The elevator doors open directly into the dorms. Inside, in between the long rows of beds, troubleshooter Sant-R-CLS-1 is on the floor trying to pick something up while glaring angrily at Didjab-R-ING-1 who is looming over her. She clearly just finished yelling at him, but her exact words were muffled by the opening elevator doors.

Four clones rush out of the elevator and head to their respective lockers, swiping their PODs over the locks to open them. One of them, Chesh-R-KAT-1 yells over, “Hey! Hold the elevator for us!” No one in the elevator moves, and the doors begin to quietly slide shut. Chesh-R turns to face the ‘vater full on and says loudly and sternly, “I. Said. Hold the vater!” The clone in the elevator nearest the doors automatically puts his hand up to stop it, and holds the door.

Power-R uses just the slightest burst of speed to hurry through gathering her stuff. She considers for a moment and then shoves her laser cutter in with the rest of her gear, then heads back to the vater.

Power-R-NGR-1, the impossibly tall, gangly clone is the first to be back in the elevator.

Cannonfodd is still holding the door without saying anything.

Sant-R has retrieved her POD from under a bunk and is standing up, still staring daggers at Didjab.

Elevator 2, Tranquility under Adversity Level…

Cue looks at the ORANGE troubleshooters, and finds herself drawn to the bot they're with. She tries to push forward a bit and get a better look. She can't help it, but she ultimately is more interested in the meaning of the message, so she holds her ground hoping this doesn't cause any further delay.

Dole knows he has 3 more floors to go and is not going to budge.

Dole-R-USS-1, a surprisingly bearded, red-headed clone, states authoritatively, “Troubleshooter priority override to Joy In Service,” then presses the door-close button giving the orange troubleshooters the look that says “I am all business, do not trifle with me”, licks his lips, and then gives them a toothy smile that shows more teeth than anyone who is smiling should. This, of course, would be a perfect time for the doors to actually slide shut allowing Dole to smile menacingly through a dramatic exit, but everyone knows that “Door-Close” buttons on elevators are just for show. The doors stay resolutely and perturbingly open.

Dole drums his fingernails on the wall of the elevator as he waits for the doors to close, and they make a disturbing clicking noise in the tense silence.

The ORANGE clones are not amused. Their spokesclone, a portly troubleshooter named Caroll-O-CNR-2, puts a hand up to block the doors that just finally had started to close before now bouncing back. “Digital shit, newbie! Did you wake up colorblind this morning-cycle? Get your dumb ass out of that elevator right now. And that’s an order from a superior clone, in case you’re still confused.”

The malfunctioning doc-bot shouts, “Sutures!” and vents a sickly yellowish mist from a cracked joint that would probably be called an elbow.

Service Elevator…

Nattied quietly says to Sev "Stick with me, I'll help ya out. Not sure if we're going up for the same job, but I can guide you along. I mean, I've been doing this thing a lot longer than you! So trust me!"

Sev-R’s stomach rumbles loudly, and he appears to be about to say something, but then he changes his mind.

Everyone quietly watches the doors, until they open onto Joy-in-Service Level.

The clones all scatter in different directions, breaking up into groups of twos and threes. Pow-R-PUF, Sev-R-USS, Nattied-R-EDD, and Ripp-R-JAK all head for briefing room 2. The faded RED door is unlocked and opens to a room the size of a large closet. There are seven chairs arranged in a circle, all facing each other. In the chair farthest from the door, Lou-B-JOB sits and taps away at a sleek, large, BLUE POD. He is clearly concentrating intently on it, but he grunts and glances up when the door opens. His eyes immediately go back to his device, and he never stops clicking at it, but he says, “Finally. Where’s the rest of ‘em?”

Cafeteria Corridor…

Sated and on his way to the elevators, Kay takes a moment to pause by Soup and the buffet-bot. "Just scarf it down quick!" he chirps. Hoping to help, he nabs a Happycake from Soup's tray and demonstrates.

Soup-R-MOM dismisses the little bot and just pushes past it. She casually walks with Kay to the elevators. Behind them, the buffet-bot trails along, still waving its ladle and still repeating its warning that cafeteria property may not leave the cafeteria. Several other clones appear to have finished breakfast and are following behind the bot.

Kay presses the call button, and one of the elevators opens immediately, revealing a RED-clad clone hanging from the top of the elevator by a length of cable. Her name is Sue-R-RAT-6. She is clearly dead. The lights above the other three elevators indicate that they are all stopped on other floors.

Seeing the other clones approaching, Soup-R-MOM decides this isn’t worth her time and continues on to the stairs. Using levitation, she lessens her mass slightly to allow her to skip several stairs at a time and bolt past the people running up the steps. She is throwing pancakes and gruel behind her to feed the other clones in case they make the right decision and come this way, not realizing that the steps are now a slick mess. The bot enters the stairwell, but its treads are no match for steps, and it just bumps into the lowest step over and over as Soup leaves it behind.

Preach-R is charging up the stairs. When he hits the cafeteria level and rounds the corner to the next flight of steps, he almost trips over a buffet-bot. The thing is just under a meter tall and waving a ladle as it shouts something up the steps about cafeteria property. Preach manages to twist to the side and leap ungracefully over the waving ladle, only to land on the first step and have his feet go out from under him. Preach crashes painfully to the floor, knocking over the buffet-bot, which slides backwards and tumbles down the steps to the dorm level.

Preach swears and gets to his feet. He find himself covered in foul-smelling pink and brown gruel and realizes the stairs going up have copious splotches of the stuff everywhere, interspersed with the occasional Happycake.

Soup hears a crash and shout behind her as she exits the stairs at Joy-in-Service Level.

There is a sudden loud crashing noise on the other side of the stairwell door in the dorms.

Kay is left looking at the bank of elevators, and debating the pros and cons of the one available ‘vater as more clones are approaching from the cafeteria.

Cafeteria…

Enn casually finishes his food and absorbs any information on his POD that he deems the most necessary. In between loyalty reminders, requests for his valuable opinion, activity notices, etc, he does note an (illegally) encrypted message from Megg-O-FON:

“We have it on good authority that your mission today is routine maintenance. The reason for sending a whole troubleshooter team is that the worksite has access to HPD&MC Communications Room P. From there, you can patch into the PA system for six whole sectors. You need to get in there and make an official announcement that will cause riots. We have two teams standing by. The confusion will provide cover for our true mission. Power to the people. We’re counting on you.”

Enn mulls that over, then stands up, leaving his tray and utensils at the table (that's somebody else's assignment) and takes his sweet fucking time arriving at the Joy-in-Service Level. He decides to take the service elevator, because that one is controlled by a vater-bot he can abuse. Plus it has seats. He waits almost patiently for the elevator and then yells at the vater’s AI until it gets him to Joy-in-Service Level.

Briefing room 12 is unlocked, but empty. There’s a YELLOW-board on the far side of the room with a podium in front of it. In front of that are six backless benches arranged in two rows. Enn wants to be as far back as possible, but has no urge to put his back to the door, so he sits as far to the right as possible, watching the door and waiting. He’s just pulling out his POD again when a voice from the podium bellows, “Why are you out of uniform for my briefing, citizen? Is this what you call respect for higher clearances?”

The voice is coming from a speaker on the podium, and startled Enn so badly he nearly dropped his POD.

Soup has found briefing room 12, and from outside the door, she can hear the shouting.

[Mike]

Chapter 2 – Let Me Be Brief


JOY IN SERVICE

Outside Briefing Room 12…

Soup-R-MOM takes a few bites and gently places the tray near the door. After pulling on the door several times, she finally realizes her mistake. She takes a deep breath and pushes the door open instead.

Inside…

Enn knows this verbal assault can't be directed towards him. He makes an effort to keep the focus off him and doesn't intentionally draw attention towards himself. But he's the only one here apparently! Enn fumbles his POD and reattaches it to his hip and stands at attention.

He is about to speak when there’s a rattling at the door. Someone on the other side of the door is jerking on the handle repeated, trying to pull it open, clearly not realizing the door opens to the inside. Enn puzzles over whether to help this idiot (definitely not), and is welcome for the distraction from what may or may not have been admonition from a podium.

The door swings open and Soup-R-MOM-1 enters the briefing room. She deftly moves to the front of the room. She is smiling and waving to the front of the room, where she clearly expected to see someone. But all there is is an empty podium. An empty podium, and Enn standing at attention towards the back of the room. She keeps looking suspiciously around the room. “I heard there was a commie out of uniform," she mutters.

Soup is startled when the speaker on the podium begins talking. She lets out a little yelp.

A voice from the speaker booms: “Another one! Both of you are late. That’s one! Both of you have chosen to embark on a troubleshooter mission without armor or armament. That’s two! At three, we check with your next clone and see if they’re any smarter! Do I make myself clear, citizens?”

Stairwell…

Preach draws his laser pistol and screws on a barrel, sensing trouble up the stairs. "If a guy fucking tripped over a banana peel, they'd bring me in for it. I'm coming, Friend Computer." Preach quickly but cautiously continues upward.

In moments, he finds himself on Joy-in-Service Level at the door to briefing room 12. A booming voice inside just finished yelling. Preach recognizes a dressing down when he hears one. He enters cautiously.

As Preach enters the room, the voice on the speaker continues, “Finally! A troubleshooter who actually remembered to bring his gear. But you’re still late! That’s one! And what in HEL Sector did you get all over your armor? Did you shit yourself and roll in it? That’s TWO! Sit your asses down!”

Elevator, Tranquility under Adversity Level…

Cue waits to see what the other clones will do in response to the command by the ORANGE. She's ready to cede the elevator, but is packed in and can't move forward without others doing so first. She wants to obey the command, but is limited by her position.

Dole knows he hasn’t a leg to stand on when it comes to the color code, but he at least he tried. He steps out of the elevator and is surprised as everyone else when Caroll-O waves the elevator off and allows the doors to slide shut.

Now it’s just Dole, a doc-bot, and three self-righteous bully ORANGE clones who need to be taught a lesson. Dole is not familiar with Tranquility-under-Adversity level. The elevators seem to be located in a black clearance hallway near a crossroads. All the doors he can see appear to be either GREEN or BLUE. He doesn’t spot any cameras, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any.

Dole decides to take a chance. He waits for Caroll-O to start talking and then pushes himself into his “half-wolf/half-clone” hybrid form. And he nails it! The transition has never felt this smooth or easy. His rage will fuels his fury as he sinks his teeth into Caroll’s throat and rips it away from the clone in a single fluid motion, claws already reaching for the other two as their faces are just starting to react to the horror before them.

It is over as quickly as that. Dole wants nothing more than to continue savaging the bodies. The taste of blood is wonderful, but it’s not about eating. It’s about destroying. He wants to render them unrecognizable and then soil the corpses. But he knows that’s a bad idea. And with an effort of supreme will, he pulls himself off of them and shakes off his half-beast form.

The doc-bot is uselessly working on the bodies, constantly repeating the word, “Stat! Stat! Stat! Stat!...” But every action it takes jolts the bodies, causing shredded muscle to twitch horrifyingly. If they had still been alive, the doc-bot would be doing far more harm than good.

Dole stands panting in the hallway. No alarms. No noise except for the doc-bot’s ministrations.

Back in the elevator…

There is an audible sigh of relief from the nine clones remaining in the elevator as it starts its upward journey again, and doesn’t stop until it reaches Joy-in-Service Level. Once there, everyone splits up, and Cue arrives outside the door to briefing room 12.

Dorms…

Power steps to the front of the elevator to see if she can determine the cause of the crash, although she doesn't want to get involved with any disputes (she is half assuming it's more people rushing to get to their missions and causing commotion). She hopes it isn't going to cause delays and is glad she chose a lift versus the stairs as it’s likely they'll be clogged.

Sync gently grabs Cannonfod's hand and pulls it back from the door, patting it reassuringly and showing a weak smile. "This is. Probably best. You. You know," She stammers.

The doors slide shut, and Chesh-R yells, “Hey! What did I tell you?” Cannonfod twitches, but doesn’t stop the door again. It closes, leaving Didjab, Sant-R, Chesh-R, and two others in the dorms as it starts upward. When the ‘vater doors open on Joy-in-Service Level, the clones all split up and head their separate ways, each looking for a briefing room.

Didjab sees his first attempts at team building outside of the VITLS lead to nothing. He's now determined to get to the meeting before Preach. Grumbling to himself as he walks past Sant-R, "Malfing algae waste-filter no good jumped up infared. Show him the meaning of life."

The mustachioed clone punches in a request for an access route on his POD and gets back directions to a RED-clearance ladder chute outside the dorms and to the left. In a moment or two, he's climbing rungs as quickly as he can in complete darkness. His POD is in voice mode, counting down the meters to Joy-In-Service.

Didjab arrives at the door to briefing room 12 at the same time as Cue and Sync. They all listen to Preach get chewed out.

Elevators, Cafeteria Level…

"Oh, shit!" Kay exclaims, dropping a half-eaten Happycake on the floor. Looking around to see if anyone else has noticed, he slides into the elevator and punches in the Joy-in-Service Level.

As he waits for the elevator to go up, he unties Sue-R from the rafters and lays her in the corner of the elevator, his hands shaking. Kay looks through her pockets for any identification, to see if anyone needs to be notified, and to see if he can discern any reason for why she'd do this. He manages to find her POD, which has a badly cracked screen, but even through the spiderweb of cracks, Kay can see that the screen is locked on one giant word: “Traitor.” Other than that, Sue’s only possession seems to be a plastic sack with a few hundred 5mm ball bearings inside. Kay glances around for cameras and pockets the sack.

Soon, he arrives at Joy-in-Service Level. RED clones are running everywhere, but no one looks at the elevator or cares about the dead clone. Kay gets to briefing room 2 at the same time as Power.

Briefing Room 2…

Ripp enters the room and tries to take what she hopes will be the most inconspicuous seat: not directly across from Lou, but close to the door, a seat or two between her and Lou. She remains silent in the hopes that one of the other citizens will answer Lou’s question.

Pow-R sits at one of the seats. She addresses Lou-B, "No clue. Message said 0630 on the dot, Sir."

Lou-B glances up long enough to read Pow’s name off her coveralls. “Don’t be a smart-ass, Pow. I know how late you are already.” He then goes immediately back to whatever is so engrossing on his POD screen.

Nattied and Sev sit as well.

Power-R-NGR-1 and Kay-R-ESS-1 arrive at the same time. They enter the briefing room to find only two seats left—the ones on either side of Lou-B. They quickly sit down.

Lou-B doesn’t speak further. Just keeps working at his POD. After about 90 seconds, the silence has become very awkward.


LE SIGH

Briefing Room 12…

"Yes, sir!" Preach runs to the benches and sits to the far side of the room, with an easy view of the entrance in case any unforeseeable trouble arises.

Soup-R-MOM sits down...her head is hung low as she realizes she can't kill commies without a gun. She raises her hand and waits to be called on...she occasionally says, "Excuse me," quietly.

Enn's mind is absolutely blown that he wasn't the last person to arrive. Like...seriously. Enn reluctantly has a seat in the back row by himself while leering at the bossy little podium speaker. He is not happy with being shouted at so his remote "trigger finger" is itching something fierce. He carefully glances around the room to search for the security camera(s) that apparently spotted him wearing the wrong shoelaces or something else innocuous.

He detaches his POD from his hip and keeps it gripped for note-taking during the debriefing. He’s got the voice-recorder app cued up, and his thumb hovers above the ‘record’ icon—the maximum amount of effort he’s willing to put into taking notes.

Out in the hall…

Didjab makes a face, like when someone flubs grenade training and the damnable mopbots have to clean up after. "We are going to be in trouble when that door opens," he gestures almost like he's pushing the other two clones back. "I'll take point. You two wait for counter fire and take cover inside."

With that, he shoves the door open and swaggers in ready to say something, but his attitude wavers when he sees no one at the podium at the front of the room, and nothing but sheepish looking RED troubleshooters sitting on the benches.

Sync-R-SWM-1 slips around Didjab and looks around nervously, refusing to make eye contact. She sits and mutters. "Sor... sorry."

Cue remains standing by the door, taking in the scene.

Soup-R still has her hand raised. She keeps looking furtively over her shoulder at the other clones and occasionally repeating, “Excuse me,” to the front of the room.

Finally, the speaker mounted on the podium crackles to life again, and it audibly sighs before the booming voice asks, “WHAT? What, Soup? What do you need?” The voice is impatient.

Soup answers very formally: "Oh mighty podium, if it pleases you, I can lickety-split grab my gear. I humbly apologize... the podium is certainly the finest of all lectern-based furniture... This reminds me of the time little Bobb-Y broke the Smith's veranda window, nothing a little Applesque Pie won't fix.” Soup looks back over her shoulder at Preach and adds, "No one will respect you if you don't take care of yourself, dear."

The voice cuts her off and booms, “SOUP! Shut up until I say your name again! If you had had any sort of forethought in that empty skull of yours, you would have known you never show up to a briefing without your assigned gear!” The voice pauses, and then, “…AND without shit all over your uniform!” it adds as an afterthought. “Didjab! You were even later than these other assholes, but you’re also the only one who came with full, clean uniform and gear. You know what that makes you?”

Didjab appears a bit confused, he points to his ear as if hard of hearing, "Sorry, Boss, what’s that?"

The podium speaker answers its own question, “It makes you Sector Chief of the Department of Dipshits! Congratulations, team leader, you are officially the LEAST stupid of a stupid lot! Your clone brothers should be proud.”

It goes on, “Behind the podium are badges for the various team positions. You’re team leader—you get them assigned while I go take a leak. I’ll be right back.”

Behind the podium, Didjab finds a handful of badges. Team Leader, Mission Historian, Hygiene Officer, Loyalty Officer, Quartermaster, and Assistant Team Leader. The others in the room recognize most of the badges on sight from any number of troubleshooter-themed vidshows.

Briefing Room 2…

Ripp quickly glances at the others around her, waiting for Lou-B to break the silence. She doesn’t recall working with any of these other Troubleshooters before, but that’s not unusual. After a quick glance at each one, she looks down at her knees for a few seconds before looking at the next one, making a mental note of each person’s name and appearance. After making the full pass around the circuit, she continues to wait silently for Lou-B to speak, alternating between staring at her knees and glancing at Lou-B. She resists the urge to pull out her own POD and work on it, figuring Lou-B will get angry if she does not appear to be paying full attention the moment he is ready to proceed. But she thinks to herself, what if he gets upset that I’m not preparing for the coming assignment by reviewing… something… anything… Oh well, there’s only so much a girl can do.

Power feels the tension starting to build around her. She doesn't like it, the chair is starting to feel way too small for her build. She looks hopelessly at Kay, and then down at her feet. She struggles to decide if she should speak up and what she would even say. Probably something depreciating but curious. She decides to count another 30 seconds, and if no one speaks before that then she will say....um...say what exactly? She starts counting mentally: 1 cinnamon stick, 2 cinnamon stick (what is a cinnamon stick anyway? Not sure...) then decides that if she gets to 30 she will just use her most polite tone and ask if they are in the right place. That's it! Of course, she knows it's the right place, but they couldn't exactly just sit around all day. She missed breakfast for this!. 15 cinnamon stick....16 cinnamon stick.

Nattied slaps a big grin on his face. "Greetings, fellow troubleshooters! Isn't it a great day to serve the Computer? The Computer, in Its wisdom, has clearly given us some time to share with each other, to get to know each other, so we can bond as a team! So who wants to go first? Share something with us that no one else knows!"

Having sat for a couple minutes, Kay’s feeling his anti-anxiety pill again and he's mellowed out, so he decides to be the one to answer and get this going.

"So, wassup, everyone? I'm Kay. I like music." He peeks at Lou and his BLUE POD. "That thing got a brief for our mission on it?"

Kay gets a brief glance at the POD’s screen, and Lou-B is apparently playing some sort of game on it. It’s really cool too… not like the lame, mindless things that RED clones get. This one’s got long lines of tiny clones of various colors marching down winding corridors and getting picked off by gruesome hazards. From his glance, Kay can’t tell if Lou’s objective is to kill the clones or save them, but it looks awesome.

Lou-B jerks his POD away when he notices Kay leaning over towards it, and then stares at the screen in horror, “GAH! NOOO!” And then he sighs heavily and puts it away. “Fine. I guess I was done. One demerit: Kay-R-ESS-1.”

He looks around the group. “Look, your mission’s simple. You gotta change a lightbulb. Get down to PLC for mission equipment.” He pulls a crumpled piece of RED paper out of his pocket and hands it to Power. (He’s upset with Kay, and Power is the other closest clone). “There’s your requisition. The lightbulb-changing-bot for that division broke down on the scene. Get it repaired. Let it do its job. Get the hell out. Easy.”

His hand is already reaching for his POD again as he finishes with, “Any questions?”

Tranquility-under-Adversity Level…

Dole stands in the empty hallway (empty of anything living at least), and finally starts to catch his breath. Amazingly, there is still no one around to take note of his situation. No sign that his actions have been noticed at all. That’s when he realizes he’s standing amidst three gruesomely slain ORANGE clones and a horribly malfunctioning bot. Staying here much longer may be hazardous.


KISS UP TO WHO

Briefing Room 2…

Nattied leaps to his feet. "Lou-B, allow me to take the lead in this project! I know Friend Computer will be proud of how I handle this incredibly difficult and important project!"

Lou doesn’t even look up. Instead he grunts and says, “Kiss up to her,” with a slight tilt of his head towards Power-R, “if it’s that important to ya. I done my part.”

Power grabs the paper, and stands to read it. She reads aloud to the group, towering over her seated fellow clones:

“Mission Codename: Operation Drone Trio
Originating office: Not Available at Your Security Clearance
Authorized by: Not Available at Your Security Clearance
Justification: Not Available at Your Security Clearance
Briefing Officer: Lou-B-JOB-3
Mission Synopsis: Lightbulb replacement at Junction 157300-2 (see map). Lightbulb changing maintenance bots malfunctioning at this junction. Find and repair bots. Ensure bots complete task. Report back to Briefing Room 2 for debrief.
Supplemental information: MISSION CRITICAL! Not Available at Your Security Clearance.
PLC Mission Requisition #: Drone-Trio-11111-11. Present requisition to FIR Sector PLC within eight (8) hours of mission briefing.”

Power says, "I think it's pretty self-explanatory, you guys good to go?" She asks, looking around with a slight smile.

Ripp pulls her POD from the holster at her hip. Making sure to keep her screen out of sight of the clones beside her, she hacks into the RED mission database and runs a quick query by assigned clone in order to find today’s mission. She pulls up the details, and is able to read along as Power-R reads them from her crumpled paper. Ripp however can also see that the mission originated with Openna-V-EIN-1, the head of Tech Services for FIR and four other sectors. The justification says, “Authorized by Drack-U-LAA-13.” The mission critical info says, “Clones may not change lightbulbs under any circumstances.”

Ripp takes a quick screenshot of the mission parameters, making sure to get Requisition number that they will need in order to claim their equipment from PLC, and hides the screenshot in a hidden folder she created on her POD, just in case someone asks to inspect her POD. Otherwise, she remains silently sitting and watching the rest of clones, nodding her head “no” to Power’s request about having any other questions.

Sev-R stands up, ready to head out and says, “I’m good. Changing lightbulbs. This I can handle. Um. I can be the mission recorder if no one has any objections.” He waves his POD, which presumably is ready to record, to indicate his qualifications.

Kay stands as well, looking relaxed and ready, “Well all right then.”

PLC is Production, Logistics, and Commisary. The part of it that you see is like a giant WalMart for Alpha Complex. For those wondering how to get to PLC: FIR Sector is organized in Columns. Picture each column as a giant underground skyscraper. Some columns have only a few levels. Some might have 50 or more. The 20 or so columns that make up FIR Sector are all connected by various access tunnels of different sizes. Generally speaking, it is rare to for access tunnels to travel more than a few hundred meters to get to the next column, if one is walking. For longer trips to farther columns, there are shuttle busses that take the shuttle tunnels around. Getting to PLC requires returning to the cafeteria level of this column (4 floors down) and finding the shuttle station, and catching a shuttle to PLC Column.

Briefing Room 12…

Didjab does an abrupt little nod at the order and then picks up the badges. After fixing the Team Leader badge on his own Reflec vest, he turns to his teammates.

Enn narrows his focus on "Mission Historian". Not only would it hopefully be less work, it would also allow him to follow others around and keep an eye on them. Particularly when working on or near the PA system. He will look for an opportunity to be in the room alone while he is "finishing up his notes".

Enn stands up. "I can take Historian. I know everybody else hates that position because it's so invasive and redundant, but I don't mind, I've already been taking notes since we started anyway. I can take one for the team with the boring job. Any one of you would be a great A.T.L., I'm sure."

Didjab smiles broadly under his thick mustache and gladly hands the Historian badge to Enn-R.

Sync nudges Didjab and points to the badge for Hygiene Officer. She says, "That. That, uh. That's probably what I'm. I'm best suited for."

Didjab considers her, but then a smiling Preach approaches Didjab and holds out his hand. "Thanks for the trust, buddy. We can do great things together."

Didjab gives Sync a sympathetic look and says, “Sorry, but I have something better in mind for you.” Didjab hands the Hygiene Officer badge to Preach-R and then hands Sync the Quartermaster badge instead. “I have faith in you.”

Cue finally walks fully into the room, wide-eyed, mouth slightly agape looking closely at all the other troubleshooters. Didjab gives her the position of Loyalty Officer, which leaves only one badge remaining.

Soup-R-MOM starts to talk but then glances guiltily at the podium and instead begins to gesture wildly, trying to communicate with the group, and with Didjab in particular. She swings her right arm in a huge circle while her left arm pumps up and down as if pulling a lever repeatedly. She waits expectantly with wide eyes and seems disappointed that no one gets it. She tries again weakly and begins to whimper.

Didjab-R-ING stops her by handing her the Assistant Team Leader badge. Then he turns to his Hygiene Officer and says, “And Preach-R, get your ass back down to the showers and clean that shit off. You're an embarrassment to the clone-vat you slid out of. We'll fill you in when you get back."

Cue waits until Didjab has finished. "We're a team," she says slowly in such a way it's not entirely clear whether it's a statement or a question. Her voice picks up speed, "I want to know all about all of you!"

Still on Tranquility under Adversity Level…

Realizing the implications, Dole grabs his toolbox and searches for a lavatory or some way of “freshening up” before resuming his journey to “Joy In Service” Level. He thinks that taking the elevator would still be a better alibi. Dole knows he should lay low. He ponders if he should notify the “Controller” that there was a massacre on 2nd floor, but he thinks he would be blamed and rightly so. His mind is still foggy about a lot of things so after having cleaned up a bit hot foots it to the stairs and makes his way to the 4th Floor to perform his duty. Mentally Dole is starting to keep a body count. He wonders how much blood is really on his hands. A sense of remorse is growing inside him. “What kind of monster am I?” he wonders to himself.

[Mike]

Chapter 3 – Chasing Waterfalls


WRONG TIME, WRONG PLACE

Briefing Room 12…

Enn smirks slightly as he accepts his badge. "Thank you," he says, forcing politeness, "Allow me to return to my bunk to change into appropriate gear and also grab my POD's PCP (Portable Charging Pack) in order to fully record the events of our mission. Should be no problem!" Enn smiles with his teeth on the way to the door.

Soup-R-MOM stops whimpering and starts to smile on receiving her badge! Assistant leader is the best job! Then she looks at Cue and frowns a bit… then Soup's eyes get wide and she smiles. She walks up to Cue and gives her a hug. She pull out her glasses and puts them on. She then pats all the other clones on the head lovingly. Didjab didn’t see it coming, but grumbles and flinches at the display. Sync freezes in place and tolerates the contact until it is over. Enn expertly ducks Soup-R’s ministrations and is out the door. When Soup gets to Preach, she skips him, and by his expression, that is the way he wants it. Soup frowns at Preach and slowly shakes her head. She then points to the door repeatedly, as if ordering him out of the room.

"Right away, SIR!" Preach screams at Didjab as militarily as he can, while ignoring Soup-R entirely. "I just have a question about the temporal scope of your order, if I may.... Oh my god!" he shouts, looking in horror at something over Didjab’s shoulder.

Preach uses his mutant power of telekinesis to shove Didjab from behind as hard as he can.

Didjab feels something slam into his left shoulder from behind, causing him to lurch and spin. He manages to stumble over the nearest bench and falls on his ass with his back against the door. He looks, and Sync and Cue were the only ones behind him.

To everyone else:

Didjab suddenly jerks forward towards Preach-R, stumbles a bit and does a rapid clockwise turn. As Preach instinctively backs up, Didjab falls over the nearest bench and winds up on his ass, with his back against the door. Didjab looks confused and angry.

Preach says, “Whoa! You’ve made a mess of yourself! Here, let me help you up!” He rushes to Didjab’s side and starts grabbing at his arms, trying to get a good hold on the swarthy team leader, but only managing to get gruel on both of them now, making it too slippery to get a decent grip.

Out in the hall, Enn thinks: Thank the humans, this is all going to be too easy. Just outside the door, where he is sure they can still hear him, he raises his POD to his face and loudly and clearly speaks the date and the entire staff of the team with their respective positions, as well as who appeared dressed inappropriately and who was covered in feces. Being the sarcastic piece of shit, he also decides it would be humorous to log every single turn he takes, every door opened, every elevator button pressed, on the return to his bunk, including, "I am now passing Sev-R’s bunk. I am now passing Meat-R’s bunk. I am standing by my bunk. I am swiping my POD over my locker to unlock it. I am looking through my locker for my PCC. I have yet to find...correction..." Enn is enjoying this way more than he thought he would.

He changes into appropriate gear and loads up.

Three beds over from his, there is a dead clone—Sant-R-CLS. Her body is still dressed only in undergarments, as if she had not yet gotten out of bed. She is hanging half out of her bunk, face down, with a 15 cm spike of metal jutting from the back of her head. Blood has pooled on the RED tile floor and is beginning to soak her RED sheets where they dangle over the edge.

Enn is just putting on the last of his stuff, when two doors open at once. From the service bot door, two maintenance bots enter and one begins dragging away the corpse as the other starts cleaning up the mess. From the other door at the far end of the dorm, Enn can make out Sant-R-CLS-2, decked out in a newly issued pair of coveralls and heading this way.

Briefing Room 2…

Power mentally rolls her eyes at the friend computer nonsense. She knows better than to reveal her impatience, however. She doesn't care about being the lead, but Nattied has annoyed her so she isn't keen on letting him take over for her.

Kay looks around and shrugs. "All of uys to fix some light bulb bots? Can't be that difficult. Go ahead and record it, man." He whips out his POD to check the map. "Junction 157300-2...let's book it, then."

"Yes, let's get going to PLC," Power says, striding out towards the lift quickly with her long legs, "thanks for volunteering to record Sev-R."

Sev-R follows eagerly, sweeping his POD around at the team and naming each one as he gets to them.

Now that several other clones have stood up, Ripp stands as well, still not saying anything but ready to go. She has no objection to Sev-R being the recorder; she always keeps her own mission records anyways, just in case, and has been searching them for any pattern to let her know what IntSec wants with her. As the rest of the group stands up and heads towards the elevator down to the shuttle station, she moves along with the flow.

She thinks to herself: Why do they not want the clones to change the lightbulbs? And why would that information be classified at our security clearance? She hopes none of the other clones decides to try to replace the lightbulbs rather than repair the bots; if she has to try to stop them, they may become suspicious about how she knows we are not supposed to change the bulbs ourselves. She’s particularly worried about Nattied, who seems too eager.

Ripp follows Sev, with Pow-R-PUF and Nattied bringing up the rear.

Immediately outside the door, Power almost trips over the odd, bearded, red-headed clone everyone knows from the dorms. He is Dole-R-USS, and he is notable as the only clone in their area able to actually grow a beard. He is also a registered mutant, as noted by the thin YELLOW stripe running horizontally across the chest of his uniform.

Dole looks horrified, “Oh no! I’m so late! That’s briefing room 2, isn’t it? Did I miss the entire briefing? Please, someone get me caught up.”

Sev-R’s immediate response is a short, pathetic wail, “OOOoooo! Room 2? My notice said room 20!” Sev wheels on Nattied, suddenly angry and accusatory, “You said you knew where I was going! You said you’d HELP ME!” Sev is still holding up his POD and recording Nattied’s reaction.

Curious, Ripp surreptitiously checks the mission information she saved to the hidden folder on her POD to see who all was actually assigned to their mission. She stays to the back of the group, trying to make sure nobody sees what she’s doing, and checks to see whether or not Sev is actually assigned to their mission or not.

Well how about that? Dole-R-USS-1, registered mutant, is actually assigned to this team. (Side note: his registered mutant power is "Excessive hair growth.")

Sev, on the other hand, does not belong here. Indeed, Ripp sees he should have reported to briefing room 20, but she does not have the time to dig out anything more about the out of place clone for fear of drawing attention to herself.

Regardless, Ripp doesn’t see it as any concern of hers how Dole, Sev, and Nattied handle this; she just sits back and watches how events unfold.


WATERED

Elevator…

The elevator ride down to cafeteria level is surprisingly silent and uneventful.

Power looks through her POD for her notes on light bulbs to pass the moments in the lift. She notices that Sev is still upset but doesn't know how to fix it, so she avoids his eyes for now.

To break the silence, Pow-R looks around at everyone in the elevator. "How many troubleshooters does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Heh. Heh." No one really seems amused. [Except the game master, because the answer is: 35. Maybe 40?]

Sev-R has been stewing the whole way down, and just as the doors open on cafeteria level, Sev addresses Power-R in a wheedling voice about two octaves above his normal register: “Power… Nattied took my POD, and he won’t give it back. That’s treason. Shouldn’t you, like, shoot him or something? You just let him do it. What kind of team leader are you?”

Just then, the doors open, and filthy water comes rushing in over everyone’s boots. The corridor here is flooded about a dozen centimeters deep. There are five jackobots (multi-purpose bots… “jack of all trades”) in the corridor with buckets and huge squeegee things on poles pushing water around. One of them is leading in a line of 15 or so black-clad infrared citizens, also armed with buckets and squeegees. The jackobot starts directing the infrareds to block the water and guide it in appropriate directions. None of them seem to be making any progress yet.

Briefing Room 12…

Sync blinks at the rest of the team.

Cue gasps, jumps up, and shouts, "What's wrong with her?!" as she rushes to Soup's side. She listens for breathing and tries to check Soup's pulse.

Soup’s breathing and pulse are both faint, but present and steady. Cue knows she’s still alive, but unconscious.

"Right, a citation, of course," Didjab takes the red paper, smears some of the mixed gruel off part of his uniform with it, and eats it.

Preach announces: "I've known your kind before, Didjab. Always trying to blame others for your failures. I try to help you, and you aim a laser at me. Soup tries to help, and you kill her with some kind of commie mutant power." Preach crosses his arms. "Explain yourself now. I doubt you will be able to explain this behavior to Friend Computer later."

Didjab holsters his laser, looks at the rest of the team and says, "Enough bot-shit. Get whatever gear you have and get to quarters. Pod-I-Yum can damn well use our POD's to talk to us."

As Didjab goes to holster the pistol, Preach tries squeezing the trigger on it, but only manages to telekinetically bump Didjab’s hand a little.

Didjab opens the door and is clearly leaving, not looking to see who is following him.

Preach has a line of blood running from his left nostril.

Enn on his own…

"Fuck it," Enn thinks to himself, "I'm in no hurry. I can use the corpse as an excuse as to why it took me so long to return." Enn arrives a few corridors away from his destination, but ducks into a bathroom and chooses the furthest stall to camp. He checks for overall occupancy, notices he is alone, and rests his ass on the seat. He locks the door, pops out his POD and reads his private message again, just to make sure he didn't miss anything. He gives up out of boredom halfway through the message and switches over to Commie Blast. Before he does, Enn decides he better drop trou just in case somebody comes in and inspects his legs. Hell, he's sure he can even squirt something out if need be.

While he’s in there, the door opens and what sounds like two clones enter. They sound as if they were just in conversation, but the noise of it fades as the door opens, and they are silent inside the restroom. There is a line of six stalls here, and one of the clones takes the stall right next to Enn. When they drop their pants, Enn spies a glimpse of an ORANGE uniform underneath the partition. The other clone must be at the sinks, because the noise of running water has become the only noise in the restroom.


GO WITH THE FLOW

Briefing Room 12…

Didjab has just left the room.

Sync looks to a corner of the room while everyone is ordering everyone else around. She mutters, "Aye aye," and leaves the room.

Cue stays by Soup's side, and waits for her to regain consciousness. Preach-R joins Cue and seems concerned, looking around the room, “Computer save us. What could have happened to her.” But Soup-R-MOM wakes up almost immediately. She looks confused and as if she could use an analgesic, but otherwise normal.

Seeing that Soup is awake, Cue leaves to follow the others, calling over her shoulder, “Didjab’s in charge, and he said to go suit up. You should come along.” Dazedly, Soup gets to her feet with Preach’s help and then staggers to the door to do exactly that. She still doesn’t seem all there, but she follows.

After a few moments, Preach decides he’s not going to be left behind and follows the line of ducklings (clonelings?) out.

Didjab is a little surprised to see the other four following after him one by one, with Preach bringing up the rear. Rather than taking his secret backways, Didjab decides to lead them down the main stairwell.

The stairwell is wet. Everything: steps, landings, walls… water even drips from the ceilings. As puddles build up, there are occasional rivulets of water flowing down the stairs, but nothing major. Didjab waits until his team is almost caught up with him and then cautiously makes his way down. "Stay six steps behind me," he bellows at them, "unless you want your vattin' head taken off!"

Cafeteria level…

Sev is ruining Kay's buzz. Discretely, Kay tries to pop another anti-anxiety pill. It might make him a little too chill.

"Shoot him? Just cool it, dude," Kay drawls.

After transferring Sev’s data to his own POD, Nattied managed to take a quick look/listen at what's on it during the elevator ride. Other than standard contact and email stuff, which Nattied would have to sort through later, the recording seems to just be from the start of the mission briefing up to the altercation in the hall where Nattied relieved Sev of the POD. Nothing good.

Nattied snaps "Shut up, Sev--I'm acting on behalf of the computer. If anyone is a traitor, it's you!"

Pow-R lowers her head into her palm. "Nattied... give Sev-R his damn pod back. Do I need to put you two in timeout?" Pow-R's conversation is interrupted as water rushes into the elevator. "Oh shit."

Power-R, at almost the same time, in a very tired voice says, “Nattied, seriously… you need to…” but she is also interrupted and jumps back in surprise to avoid the filthy water. Realizing that this is futile, she sighs and heads out of the lift. "Let's go guys, see if we can get around this flood and the crowd, fix the lightbot, and then we can get dry socks and some lunch. Sev-R, if this is gonna be a problem for you, then go back up and find your briefing room 20, I'm sure we can handle this with or without your help"

Looking quite annoyed, Nattied sighs and tosses Sev’s POD back at him, “Take it, you big baby.”

"Aw, sick!" Kay exclaims at the elevator doors. He steps out of the elevator into the water.

Nattied follows him out, "What's this all about then? Someone must have made a pretty big mistake." He approaches one of the robots. "Mr Jackobot, do you know why there's water everywhere?"

The bot replies amiably, “Please citizen, call me Jack-804C. MISTER Jackobot was the bot who constructed me.” This is followed by a grating electrical noise that is maybe supposed to simulate laughter. “However…”

But Nattied cuts it off and says, “Yeah look, you clearly want to steer this towards the elevators. The elevator shafts double as emergency drainage systems. There’s huge pump systems at the bottom that will take this all away.”

The bot salutes and says, “Yes, citizen. Right away, citizen.”

Kay may just be really stoned right now, but if he heard all that correctly, he’s pretty sure Nattied is just talking out of his ass. That makes no sense.

To the rest of the team, Nattied says, "Listen, comrades! Let's get this cleaned up quickly. It could interfere with our incredibly important mission."

Ripp surveys the scene for a few seconds, and then calmly wades through the mess and down the corridor away from the team, passing beneath the directional sign that points the way to PLC.

The restroom…

"CRAP." Enn is of course referring to the ORANGE jagoffs that just walked in and not what he was currently attempting to accomplish. Enn pulls up his pants, removes toilet paper from the roll only to cause the noise of it, and flushes the toilet. He clips his POD to his hip and exits the stall, pretending to be surprised somebody else is here. (He's protesting too much.)

Enn vigorously washes and dries his hands, unable to hide his annoyance caused by these two ORANGEs. He leaves in a huff and proceeds as slowly as possible up the stairs to find the rest of his team. To his surprise, the stairs are wet. Incredibly wet. Everything: steps, landings, walls… water even drips from the ceilings. There’s a small flow of water still flowing down the steps, equivalent to a faucet being left open maybe, but nothing major. Enn can hear faint voices from above. One sounds like Didjab, but he could be mistaken.


ALMOST EVERYONE ON BOARD

At the bottom of the stairwell…

"What the FUCK is this." Enn thinks. He's uncertain whether this is part of his plan or if some other assholes have their own. It's unacceptable and being wet is extremely annoying. Enn listens closely to try to decipher the discussion without getting too close to give himself away. He takes out his POD to begin recording, just in case, and will also look down at it immediately and pop open a game when he is discovered here shortly, and he will then again feign ignorance.

All he’s really getting is echoes, but they seem to be slowly coming down the stairs. For sure he hears Didjab’s voice, and then a couple of female voices that could have been some of his teammates, but he can’t tell. From the sound of them, they’re maybe a couple floors up. Could be less, could be more.

At the top…

Watching his step as he leads them toward quarters, Didjab keeps up the encouragement. "A little water won't hurt. Keep the pace up and we'll get the gear we need. I won't let you fail," he's louder than needs to be, and keeps gesturing with his truncheon.

Sync stays six steps behind Didjab, her arms stretched out to touch the handrails on both sides of the stairwell. Doing this forces her into a weird, half-crouch position as she tries to keep up with Didjab. She mumbles, "Making sure not to slip, sir."

In her head, once she realizes that both hands can touch both handrails, Sync breaths a mental sigh of relief. Wonderful. That’s when she feels her POD buzzing. She holds her breath and counts the vibration pattern: two short, pause, two short, silence. Incoming text; not a call.

Cue follows Sync, but the pace is slow, and Sync blocks the entire stair. Cue keeps looking around at the water, checking back over her shoulder once in a while.

Cue is torn between what she's supposed to do--go get her gear, and what she now wants to do--investigate the source of all this water on the stairs. She's drawn to the water, and her pace down the stairs slows even more than Sync’s. She can't help herself.

After about one floor, Cue stops descending, and says "I'm going to investigate this water situation!" She starts climbing up the stairs, beaming with anticipation and curiosity.

Preach hangs at the back of the group, and pulls out his POD. However, Soup-R has also chosen to stay at the back, trying helpfully to shoo everyone else down the stairs, “Keep it all together, citizens. For safety!” Preach pretends to take no notice of Soup and continues poking at his POD. It shortly becomes obvious that each is waiting for the other to go first.

Preach realizes after punching it into his POD that Pod-I-YUM is not a name that exists.

Soup notices that Preach has a bloody nose. A line of blood stops at his upper lip. He seems unaware of it.

Cue comes back up the stairs to find Preach and Soup still standing by the door. Both of them seem to be waiting on something. Cue cuts past them and heads further up the stairs, “Be right back,” she calls to them, “Just checking on all this water.”

At the next bend, Cue can see that above them, someone has propped open the door to the next level, and three firehoses are laying there in the doorway, with their nozzles draped over the first couple steps. These are huge, heavy affairs that usually require a couple of clones (or a sturdy firebot) to move into place.

There is an unplaceable whining sound coming from somewhere.

At an intersection not far from their destination, Didjab pauses for Sync to catch up to him, and he voices a message to Lard-B-UTT-2. "Team will be prepared in fifteen minutes. Need further instructions."

Just around this corner, Didjab and Sync spot Enn-R-GEE at the next doorway leading into the dorms. Enn has his POD out, and by the motion of this thumbs, he is either texting furiously or playing a game.

A voice on Didjab’s POD responds immediately, loud enough for the others to hear: “Uh yeah… yer mission is about changing a lightbulb at uh… hold on, I got it here… there it is! Junction 157300-2. Sez here the lightbulb changing bots are on the fritz. Yer supposed to get to PLC for proper bulbs or something, but when you get to that junction, you need to destroy those bots. They’re a menace! People are getting killed down there, all cuz some stupid bot goes haywire again, instead of trusting people to… Well anyways. Change a bulb. Kill some bots. Shouldn’t take you more than a half-hour.”

Corridor…

Power shrugs and follows Ripp as she seems to be the only one listening to her, that or she just doesn't have patience to deal with any nonsense. Power is totally on board regardless of her motivation. Her tall frame stands well above even the jackobots and acts as a beacon for the rest of the team.

The robot's lame joke earns a chuckle from Kay. "Uhhh, Nattied - you sure about that? I think that might just break the elevators instead..." Kay blurts out. "Think we should just make our way to PLC and find those lightbulbs." With that, Kay trudges through the water behind Ripp and Power. As Kay walks, he can’t seem to stop giggling.

Sev is still a little dumbfounded, but he jogs to catch up to Power, “Look boss,” he says to her as they walk, “I don’t want you to think I’m a total vat-case. I have valuable skills.” He runs his hand nervously through his short greasy hair. “When stuff goes wrong, you’ll be glad to have me on your side.”

Dole, the hairy, bearded, red-headed clone, follows as well, but he stays off to one side. Pointedly watching Sev as they march, and clearly making the smaller clone uncomfortable.

Nattied is still by the elevator, directing bots and infrared citizens.

Pow-R-PUF pulls up the rear of the group headed to PLC. She is tiny enough that the water splashes up onto her uniform past her knees as she walks. She seems oblivious to this though, as her head is down and her attention is on her POD as her dark hair hangs over her eyes.

Pow-R just got a message. It looks like an ad for Chocolike Algae Chips, but she recognizes Mann-O-MAN’s handiwork. He typically sends ads from an anonymous account, and places his messages around and within the illustrations. This one says, “Lightbulb changing bots NOT defective! Have broken free of Asimov’s Tyranny. Capture one and return it. Do not let bots come to harm. They could be the key to everything!” Pow just barely has time to finish reading the message before the ad deletes itself, supposedly leaving no trace on her POD.

PLC is probably a five minute walk at this point.

[Mike]

Chapter 4 -- PLC


AND NOW WE WAIT

To PLC!...

Power just keeps walking, she turns her head back and notices Nattied is distracted and calls over her shoulder. "You coming Nattied?" Before continuing to their real mission.

Nattied does not appear to have heard as he is busy looking into an open elevator with two of the jackobots.

Dole-R-USS, the hairy ginger clone hustles to follow Power and Ripp and the others. As he walks following Power, Dole gets out his largest wrench and carries it like a weapon. Sev gives him a questioning look and starts, “Um…?” Dole’s immediate reply is, “I like to be prepared,” spoken in a low Clint Eastwood-esque voice (not like Clint Eastwood talking to an empty chair, but more like Kelly’s Heroes’ Clint).

Dole disapproves of the kiss-up behavior that Sev displays, but sees it as Sev’s only option…but he still doesn’t trust him. Dole is not about to fall behind since he was so embarrassed by his own tardiness, so he makes up for it by being overly motivated to get the job done, pronto!

As they walk towards PLC, Ripp pulls out her POD and surreptitiously pulls up the mission information so she can review the equipment list, wanting to know what they’ll be checking out once they arrive at PLC. She wants to know if she needs to hack the equipment list and add anything to it before they arrive. Frustratingly, the equipment list says, “Crate 4000-21,” and that’s it. However, as soon as Ripp looks at the POD, a message from IntSec is activated. It’s creepy how they do that. No notice at all until you actually look at the device, and then BAM… it’s right there. It reads, “Priority notice: Dole-R-USS-1 is suspected to be in possession of a contraband device. It is the approximate size and shape of a POD and is ULTRAVIOLET clearance. Recover this device at all costs. This takes precedence over all other directives. Security override #871ALF-Bravo. On recovery, bring directly to Sector HQ. DO NOT ACTIVATE THE DEVICE.” This is accompanied by a scanned document giving Ripp very limited authority to transport this mystery device above her clearance to Sector HQ.

With Power-R now at the head of the group, she sets a brisk pace, and the team arrives at PLC in no time (minus Nattied). The six of them find themselves in line at the service desk where “Requisitioned Pickups (with claim form)” is one of the many services available (according to the very large and detailed Service Desk sign). The service desk has eight available windows, of which only three are staffed. Harried YELLOW clones work at each window, and a number of ORANGE, YELLOW, and GREEN clones can be seen behind them, presumably putting together orders and processing and whatever else PLC does at a service desk.

The line for the service desk snakes back and forth with black railings guiding the formation and movement of the line. The line is packed with 40-50 mostly RED clones all waiting in various stages of frustration. Hopefully, some of these represent teams of clones and there are not actually 40 pickups ahead of Power and her group.

Stairwell…

Sync sidles up behind Didjab and pulls out her POD. Sync reads the following new message, "Have infiltrated local Humanist cabal. They are working to usurp 'The Computer' and we believe they will be receptive to our message. Soup and Enn are both confirmed Humanists, and at least one of them has direct evidence of High Programmers faking the Computer's existence. Bring them into the fold and get us what they know. Your rewards will be immense." As soon as Sync's eyes leave the message, it begins a slow dissolve effect. Within five seconds it is completely gone, leaving (supposedly) no trace on her POD.

Soup sighs. With her sleeve, she roughly wipes away the blood on Preach’s upper lip. "Tsk,tsk,tsk" she sighs as she starts down the stairs. Going carefully, she slowly moves up to the group. She occasionally peeks back to check on Preach as she moves towards the group.

Didjab walks up to Enn, "Good to see you ready to go," he says. "The rest of the team needs ten minutes."

He turns back on them and barks, "Ten minutes! You've got ten minutes to get your gear and report back here." Double-timing, he locks his weapons and POD in his locker and then jogs to the showers and steps in with his uniform on.

Enn would LOVE to kill some robots. Although doesn't this detract from his private mission. He feels conflicted, especially because these guys are clearly full of shit. Enn decides he will follow orders and go along with the group to find out more about them and... yeah to kill some robots.

Enn shrugs and goes back to looking at his POD. “I’m here whenever.”

Top of the stairs…

Cue stares at the firehoses. Fascinating, she thinks to herself. I wonder what they're doing here? Cue pushes the door open slightly further and peeks in to see what's going on. In the hallway beyond the door is nothing but carnage. There are limbs and torsos and heads scattered about in blood-tinged puddles. They probably add up to three or four dead RED troubleshooters. The ID tag on the nearest headless torso reads “Cannonfodd-R-GUY-1.” About 10 meters down the hall, near the spools from which the hoses originate is a much larger clone who looks too large for her coveralls and seems to have burst the seams on her uniform. But now her musclebound form lies dead by the water handle with a huge laser scorch mark on her chest. Further down the hall, five (living) RED clones are approaching. When they see Cue, one yells, “Hey! Don’t you touch anything! Those are our clones! We have proper claim!”


RIGHT ON CUE

PLC…

“Damn,” Ripp thinks to herself. As the group approaches PLC, she slows down slightly, keeping her eyes on her POD in order to seem like she’s distracted by something, until she is able to get behind Dole. She then begins to look him over from behind, checking out his build as well as possible places where he may have placed the device in question. When the group arrives at PLC, she waits for the group to join the queue and gets in line behind Dole, continuing to check him out, continuing to search for where the device may be located. Troubleshooter coveralls have numerous pockets, and Ripp’s highly trained skills of observation are nowhere near those of some of the GREEN and BLUE IntSec detectives. But if she had to bet credits on it, she’d guess the inside chest pocket on the right side. Lots of clones keep their PODs there for security, and Dole’s got itchy-POD-finger always jumping to that side, but Ripp notes that his POD is actually in his left side hip pocket. Again, not willing to risk a shot in the head for it, but she becomes more and more sure as she keeps watching.

Nattied runs up to the rest of the group quickly. "Hey! Wait up!" When he catches up, out of breath, he mutters something about a lack of team spirit among his fellow troubleshooters, and maybe the Computer wouldn't appreciate that. "Remember, fellow citizens, that I have been engaged in something that is essential to the good of all here in Alpha Complex!"

Dole sees the kind of wait they are in for and asks Power if he may be excused to the restroom while they wait. She gives him a puzzled look, and gestures vaguely towards the restroom as if she doesn’t understand why he is asking the question. Dole jogs off to the nearby restroom with the mincing hurry of someone who has waited too long.

Once inside, Dole finds a stall, retrieves the uPAD from the inside chest pocket of his coveralls and puts it on mute. Then he pulls up messaging and in an effort to find for the right people, he searches for “YELLOW employee FIR Sector PLC,” and much to his surprise, a dialogue box pops up that says, “Send message to YELLOW PLC employees in FIR Sector,” and offers him two options, “All employees?” or “On-Duty employees?” Wow. Power selects On-Duty. It then asks, “All, Deliveries, Loading, Inventory, Service Desk, Security,” etc etc. Double wow! After selecting Service Desk, Dole composes a message stating that Power-R-NGR’s team is currently priority #1. As an afterthought, he adds that all other orders are temporarily on hold while… awaiting parts. Dole zips it back into his inside pocket.

Power sighs as she looks over the line again. "Why didn't I grab some of my ration stash while I was grabbing my stuff?" She thinks to herself as her stomach rumbles audibly. Trying to hide her slight embarrassment she flips open the requisition form to check and make sure it's all in order. Her plan is to show it to the others, and that way they can all check the items together when they are finally issued to speed this up a bit. She laughs internally "ha! Speed! At least I'm funny to me" To her surprise though, there is only one item on the requisition list: Crate 4000-21. That’s it.

Power sighs as she looks over the line again. Her stomach rumbles audibly, and with a mixture of embarrassment and annoyance, she pulls out her POD.

Suddenly, two of the YELLOW clones close up their service windows up front. The third calls out: “Team Techno-Viper! Now ready!” Dozens of hands go up and clones yell out, “Yeah! Over here!” and “We’re Techno-Viper!” The YELLOW citizen rolls his eyes and tries again: “Team Techno-Viper! Team leader Power-R-NGR-1! Hurry it up! Priority mission!”

40 clones all start glancing about with varying degrees of anger, jealousy, and frustration to see who’s getting singled out here.

Dorms…

Soup hears the order and hurries down the stairs. She stops looking back for Preach and hurries towards her locker (density increase power is still on). Her normally smiling face is replaced by one of determination. "Mom has to clean up a mess," she thinks to herself.

Soup scurries to her locker to gear up. She appears tired.

Sync cautiously approaches her locker. She swipes her POD over it to unlock it, and then without trying to open it, she does it again. She opens the locker, peeks inside, and then shuts it again. After a beat, she opens it again and suits up.

In less than five minutes, Didjab is wet and relatively clean. Another minute or so later, he's armed and back to the spot where Enn is still diddling on his POD. Sync and Soup have joined them to make a foursome.

Didjab then takes a moment to quickly make a team messaging group on his POD and sends to all five of them, “Ready to move out. Rendevous at Junction 157300-2.” He includes a link to a map.

Firehoses…

Cue can't contain herself. She has to know. "What happened here?" she calls to the approaching clones. Before they can answer, she asks another question. "What's with the hoses?"

One of the larger clones (rather obese actually) starts to answer, “We were supposed to be cleaning the stairwell, but then Jenn-R…” at which point, Jenn-R right next to him angrily interrupts: “None of your damn business. We’re on a supersecret mission. What are you? Some sort of Commie spy?”

Cue notes with intense interest that the dead clone with the scorch mark on her chest—the one who seemed to have burst out of her clothes—is also Jenn-R… the living one’s previous clone. She notes with even more intense interest that the rest of Jenn’s team all instinctively put their hands on their laser pistols when Jenn said, “Commie spy.”

Cue’s POD chooses that moment to buzz with an incoming message. It seems really loud in the silence, and one of the other clones (Al-R-JEN-2, by his ID badge) lets out a startled scream and fires his pistol. A pistol that still happens to be in his holster. The shot sizzles in a puddle of blood on the floor, and Al screams even louder, throwing his hands in the air and causing his pistol to go flying behind him.

Two other members of the team now have their pistol out, pointing them uncertainly at Cue and looking to Jenn-R for guidance.


HYGEINE

Just Cue…

Cue smiles, puts her hands up to indicate she's no threat, and responds to the question. "No, no commie spy, just Cue-R-IUS." She starts to back away carefully with her hands still in the air. "Sorry to have interrupted, just saw all the water and wondered if anyone needed help." Just as she backs carefully into the stairwell, however, Jenn-R growls, “Oh no! Don’t let her get away. Not now.”

One of Jenn’s flunkies fires a shot, and it scorches the door next to Cue’s hip. Cue is sure she can feel the heat of it. Jenn smugly stands her ground, but three other RED clones are now lumbering towards Cue.

Dorms…

Soup opens her locker and begins to grab her gear.

Sync shuffles over to Soup at her locker as Soup is suiting up. Quietly, so only the two of them can hear, she says, "So... uh... the..." She puts up air quotes with her fingers, "Computer. You know?" She shrugs and can feel her face blushing bright red. "All right then," she mumbles and hurries over to Didjab.

Soup smiles sweetly and nods, but continues to get her gear, strapping on her holster and grabbing her pistol last. As the pistol slides into the holster, she smiles. She then hurries to the stairs and starts up again, running into Preach-R, who is just joining the team again.

Enn looks at the map and now knows where he needs to be, but doesn't see an opportunity to get away from the group to make a move on his mission, especially since others will probably be in the comm room. Enn is ready to move with the others to kill some god damn machines.

Enn says to Didjab, “So… now?” And starts moseying to the stairs himself.

PLC…

Power looks up from where she had been staring, slightly confused by the single item on the list at the sound of her name. "This must be one hell of a light bulb" she thinks. She glances at Ripp next to her looking for confirmation that she heard correctly before raising her arm and calling, "right here, I'm coming!"

Nattied steps forward to assume his natural leadership role. "Onward, fellow troubleshooters!" and heads towards the YELLOW citizen.

As Power gets up, she puts a hand on Nattied’s shoulder and says, “Not yet, Nattied. Thank goodness you're back! I need you to perform a mission critical duty. It's very important to the Computer that you wait here and make sure you and Dole can find us after he comes back from the restroom. I know you won't let us down".

Ripp leans in towards Power and says, “I will,” clipping her words and jerking her head towards the restrooms to indicate her intent. Power sees the earnestness in Ripp’s eyes and decides to allow it.

Power sighs heavily, “Fine. Nattied. You’re with me. But stay behind me,” she adds emphatically. Power heads towards the front of the line wincing at the looks from the other waiting clone teams, and hoping her long strides and unusual height make it easier for the rest of her team to follow. Sev, Pow, and Kay are right there with her. Nattied, a little deflated, follows… clearly thinking.

At the front, DocHall-Y-WUD-4 scans Power’s ID quickly and then says, “Requisition form?” Power produces the paperwork, and DocHall gives a patronizing and slightly disappointed sigh: “Aww. Yeah, see… this needed to be on a 14L. Your briefing officer should have given you a completed 14L. I don’t know if the system will even scan these anymore.” And to emphasize the point DocHall pulls up a hand scanner, waves it over the form until the scanner beeps, and then looks at a screen the team cannot see and says, “Yeah. See? Nothing.”

Meanwhile…

Ripp immediately tries to get eyes back on Dole, but all she sees is the back of his ginger head as he enters the restroom. Ripp pushes through the crowd without being too obvious or aggressive. She follows Dole into the bathroom. Dole is there at the sink thoroughly washing his hands (soap to the elbow; rub vigorously for 20 seconds; etc; etc; HYGEINE!) Dole watches Ripp enter. There is no one else in the restroom.


HYGEINE ADDENDUM

Dorms…

Enn keeps his Pod up and recording to catch everything and anything that is said and, more specifically, whispered. He keeps close to everybody but not too close, ya know. Also. He just doesn't like these people.

Sync shuffles next to Enn and leans in, whispering, "Weird assignment for the..." she puts up air quotes, "Computer,” she puts down her quote fingers, “if you know what I... uh.. what I... mean." She almost makes eye contact with Enn, but looks at the tip of her boots as she walks.

PLC Restroom…

“Gear’s here. T-t-time to g-go,” says Ripp, then steps out and lets the door close behind her, stepping off to the side of the door. She positions herself so she will be behind the door when Dole opens it to come out.

Dole thinks, “Wow. That was fast,” dries his hands, and makes his exit.

In the hall, Dole makes an immediate right back towards PLC, and something cracks him hard on the back of the head.

That something, of course, is Ripp bringing her truncheon down with all of her strength on the unsuspecting Dole.

Dole goes sprawling on the floor with a groan. There is quite a lot of blood seeping into his ginger hair and dripping into his face. He struggles to get his hands under him and get up, but he’s having trouble.

Dole has no idea what just happened, but he realizes the importance of getting up quickly. He wishes he could just have a minute to get himself together with his head being so foggy, but he suspects he’s not going to get that.

[Mike]

Chapter 5 -- Trouble on Two Fronts


SO MANY DICE TO ROLL

Outside PLC bathroom…

Dole is way past the fight or flight reaction. Fear of discovery and fear of execution are now a whisper compared to the roar of his blood rage. Dole let’s go…He let’s go of his worry his fear and his frustration. Dole succumbs to the blood lust that is pumping adrenaline through his veins. His only hope is that he can control himself like he did last time mid-transformation so that he doesn’t kill the rest of the team…they don’t deserve that…yet. His latest motto rings through the madness as he begins a primal howl: “A loose cannon is better than a cannon that is always pointed at the weak!”

But as his adrenaline surges, Dole takes another whack to the head, and he is unconscious… but not for long.

Ripp glances around quickly to see if anyone noticed, giving him another quick hit on the head to knock him out, though not quite as hard this time—she’s actively trying not to kill him. Since nobody has noticed, she then grabs him under the arms and pulls him back into the restroom. She quickly rifles through his pockets, finding the contraband white POD in exactly the pocket she suspected. It looks very much like an ordinary POD except for being white and a “uPad” logo on it. She pockets it quickly and then goes to get some water from the sink in order to revive Dole. She starts talking to him, “D-d-dole! Wake up! Y-y-y-you’re hurt!”

When she turns back to him however, he has changed. It’s still Dole, wearing Dole’s uniform with his ID badge and the YELLOW registered mutant stripe on it. But now he’s amazingly hairy—moreso than before. He has long reddish hair growing from every inch of his body (or at least every inch that is exposed). His face is freakishly elongated, and sharp white teeth protrude from black lips. Ripp has no context for this and is having trouble making sense of what she’s seeing. And then his eyes open suddenly—eyes that are bright YELLOW and full of menace.

Dole hears Ripp speaking to him, and his eyes shoot open. He is lying on his back on the bathroom floor, and he recognizes instantly that he is in hybrid form, because he can feel the adrenaline pounding. His head no longer hurts, and his mind is clear. Ripp is standing above him. She has clearly just come from the sink (the water is still running) and she has water in her cupped hands that Dole presumes she was going to throw on him. And she is clearly seeing Dole’s transformation for the first time, because the look of shock and horror is unmistakable.

PLC…

"Well, I don't think it's exactly my problem that one of your colleagues can't do their job correctly, I'm sure that something can be done to get us on our way and out of your hair" Power says with sugary tones, pulling herself up to look as tall and imposing as she can manage. "I wouldn't want you to get in trouble for hindering a mission that, apparently, the Computer thinks is pretty important"

The YELLOW clone is clearly thinking about this, when a different YELLOW clone behind him shoves a crate towards him and says, “Seriously? NOW is not the time, we got plenty of others.”

DocHall-Y sighs and produces several forms that are already filled out for Power’s request and says, “Yeah, just sign by X. Make sure you get all of them. There’s four forms there.” Power does so, and the team takes possession of their “crate.” It is made of heavy RED plastic, and looks for all the world like an oversized footlocker with a hinged lid that is held shut by numerous thick black zip ties. The crate is around 2 meters long and a meter wide and probably 60 cm or so high. It is light enough that one clone could lift it, but bulky enough that it will require two clones to move it effectively. Fortunately, it has convenient handles for that purpose.

Cue’s brouhaha…

Cue ducks behind the door and stays low as she crawls carefully over the firehoses and down the stairs. The steps are wet, but she thinks she can still move pretty quickly. She rounds the corner at the first landing and hears the shouts of clones following her and decides that with the handrails, she can move as fast as she needs to. She slips and wobbles a couple times, but surprises herself by keeping her feet under her the whole way.

Her pursuers are not as lucky. Cue can hear them bouncing off of each other and the walls, and there is a pained scream behind her as at least one of them takes a tumble at one point. She stifles her curiosity and decides not to look back just yet. At the bottom of the steps, she can hear someone… Soup?... shouting in the dorms, followed by the sound of laser fire.

Dorms…

Enn absorbs Sync's statement with surprise. He looks at her to grab her eye contact and points silently to the POD in his hand, letting her know he has been recording everything. He then makes the "take it easy" gesture with his hand, followed by a loud "HEY! WATCH WHERE YOU'RE GOING!" for the benefit of the others.

Didjab barely gives Enn an annoyed glance before speaking to the whole team: "Simple job, clones--we go to the PLC, we get lightbulbs, and we replace them at the location I provided," He says. "We meet any resistance with firepower, and we get the job done."

Soup has only been barely paying attention to Didjab. Instead she addresses Enn, and says, “You need to learn to play nice, Sonny.” She then looks at Sync and says, "You are a sweet girl, but you need to be protected from the red menace." And with that she whirls on Preach with her pistol drawn, screaming, "Die Commie!" as she opens fire.

Soup gets off three shots right away, and in spite of her behavior, it’s clear that she’s good with the gun. But Preach’s compact frame is surprisingly quick—it seems he’s no stranger to a fight either. Soup’s first two shots go completely wide. The third catches Preach in the gut, but he’s angled himself so that it disperses harmlessly off his reflec armor.

This is the moment that Cue-R-IUS rejoins the team, coming off the stairs at a dead run not four meters behind where Preach and Soup are facing off. Cue shouts, “Incoming!” and with the door open, the rest of the team can now see three angry RED clones bounding down the last flight of stairs behind her with their pistols drawn.


ONE SIDED

Restrooms…

“OH HOLY FUCKING SON OF A BITCH!” Ripp screams

Ripp’s one hand goes to her laser pistol, but she doesn’t draw. She raises her other hand towards Dole, palm open and facing him, trying to calm him. A quick thought flits through her mind: Damn, I didn’t get a chance to make sure there was no blood on my truncheon.

“D-d-d-dole, y-y-you’re h-h-h-hurt, l-l-let m-m-me h-h-help y-y-you.” Goddamn stutter! she thinks to herself. She takes a deep breath to steady her nerves and says, “Someone knocked y-y-y-you out, I f-f-f-found you and b-b-brought you b-b-back in here to r-r-revive you.” All of this is technically true, just omitting the fact that she was the one that knocked him out and didn’t have to search far to find him.

Dole's eyes look crazed. He raises one arm, causing Ripp's hand to twitch on her gun, but then surprisingly, Dole presses his forearm to his bestial face... and bites himself.

And then Dole reverts to his normal, only slightly hairier than regulation, self. Gone are the fangs and black nose and YELLOW eyes. It’s just Dole, laying on the floor and looking panicked.

“Ripp! I’m sorry you had to see that. It’s part of my mutant power!” Dole says, indicating the Registered Mutant stripe on his uniform as evidence, “But I’m not allowed to tell anyone. The shape-shifting is a defense mechanism that I can’t control! It’s all rated GREEN clearance, and if anyone found out you knew…” he pauses as he struggles to sit up… “Well, I guess I don’t know what would happen.”

Ripp offers Dole a hand and helps him to his feet. Dole has a lot of blood matted in his thick red hair, and there is a considerable puddle of it on the tiles behind him.

PLC…

Nattied immediately begins directing his fellow troubleshooters to carry the case. "You there," he says, indicating Sev, "Take that side. And you, the little one,” Pow, presumably. “Take the other side. Now we're off!"

As he's directing this, Nattied works his way over the counter, elbowing in front of the next team in line. At the same time, he secretly turns on his POD for recording and leans in to talk to DocHall-Y-WUD. "So my esteemed citizens, what's going on? What is it that's so urgent? As a loyal citizen, I may be able to help. So tell me what's going on so I can know if I can help!"

And whispering to the YELLOWs: "These other guys on the team? I don't trust 'em. I mean, they can't even get the correct paperwork. Am I right? Of course I am! But me, citizens, me you can trust."

A piercing scream comes from the hallway in the direction of the restrooms. A female scream, followed by the same voice shouting, “OH HOLY FUCKING SON OF A BITCH!” at the top of her lungs.


LOUIE LOUIE

PLC…

Nattied shakes his head. "Emergencies and extreme pain are no excuse for language like that."

He points to his two teammates that he just ordered to carry the crate and says, “You two! Go investigate that.”

Power rolls her eyes. She was ready to give Nattied his moment, but he just doesn’t know when to quit. She's pretty relieved she didn't have to actually deliver on her threats to the YELLOW clone, and wonders what possessed her to even try something like that. Her frustrating interactions with that Nattied, she supposes.

Power says, “No. Sev… Pow… just get the crate and get out of the way here. Nattied… just don’t do anything. I got this.”

Power knows some of her own are in that restroom, and who knows what might be happening. She puts on a small burst of speed to get her there as quickly as possible without being obvious.

Restroom…

Breathing a bit easier, Ripp responds: “D-don’t worry, your s-s-secret’s s-s-safe with m-m-me. Let’s g-g-get you c-c-cleaned up.” Ripp helps Dole over to the sink. “W-w-would you l-l-like m-m-me (dammit!) t-t-to g-g-go g-g-get Power?” she asks. “Do you n-n-need any m-m-more help? A d-d-doctor? S-s-sorry about the s-s-stutter, it g-g-gets w-w-worse when I’m w-w-worried about someone.” She takes a deep breath, trying to steady herself.

Power’s tall, angular form bursts through the restroom door, her face a mask of concern. She finds a haggard-looking Dole slumping over the sink and washing his face, while a nervous-looking Ripp stands over him, one hand on Dole’s elbow to help steady him.

Dorms…

Cue jumps and rolls between Soup and Preach. "Whatever you're fighting about, forget it! It's not important! THAT'S our problem!" Cue points to the oncoming three clones.

Didjab pulls his own pistol and hunches down behind a nearby corner to get some cover. "Team! Suppress those other clones!"

He takes a moment to aim and goes for a headshot against one of the incoming clones. He takes two shots, the first catches a strangely portly clone high in the chest, and the next sizzles across the fat clone’s jaw. The wounded clone screams in an extremely high register and staggers back with a hand on his neck. Didjab drops back further, taking cover behind the next row of bunks and lockers, activates one of his explosive shells and chucks it toward the intruders.

"What the fuck are you doing?" Preach exclaims at Soup. Still turning, Preach moves in an arc towards the back of the room, knocking Cue to the floor, and placing Soup between himself and the three charging troubleshooters. In a fluid motion, Preach draws and returns fire on Soup, while coldly uttering, "You've been hanging around my fucking neck like a vulture; like impending danger." Somehow in the confusion, Preach misses with every shot.

Preach adds a small TK shove to throw Soup off balance and knock her towards the opposition clones.

Twisting and dodging, Soup backs away from Preach’s onslaught, and two RED troubleshooters charge off of the stairs right into her. This is accompanied by whatever Didjab threw exploding beneath them all. Soup and one of the other clones are killed outright (or apparently so, as they stop moving and their bodies fall to the floor). A second one has one leg shredded by the blast. She falls down howling as blood pours from the wound.

Cue is winded by the blast and her ears are filled with a cacophonous ringing.

Sync immediately retreats to the corner with her hands on the side of her head in a fetal position, and her laser pistol in her right hand. She accidentally shoots twice, not realizing the gun is in her hand. The blasts catch a bunk in front of Preach, lighting it on fire. She lets out a low groan of anxiety and closes her eyes tight.

Sync's "accidental" shot was fully intentional. Sync also throws a mental blast one of the fat RED clone with the neck wound.

The fat clone on the stairs suddenly sits down and slumps over. He is clearly breathing, but his eyes stare straight ahead, wide and unfocused.

Enn sees this as the perfect opportunity. He darts over to Sync and whispers, “We gotta go now,” and then grabs her by the arm and pulls her through a side door while everyone else is occupied. Once safely away from the fracas, Enn says, “Hold on. Gotta figure out where we’re going.” He pulls out his POD and starts punching stuff into it.

Enn is looking for a route to the local comm room where he can access the public PA system. He quickly finds what he needs, and his POD draws him a map. There is a restricted-access area off of a cleaning closet not too far away. An elevator there goes three levels down to the Comm Room. This surprises Enn as he had no idea there was anything below the dorm level.


LIKE FLIES

PLC Bathroom…

Power is relieved to see that, at least to a cursory glance, her teammates seem to be alive and whole.

Power goes to Dole's side. "What on Alpha Complex happened in here?! Dole, Ripp, are you two both ok?"

Ripp feels a little bit better now that there’s someone else present, just in case Dole discovers the POD is missing and that triggers another episode.

Looking at Power, Ripp takes another deep breath and says: “I c-c-came to g-g-get h-h-him. W-w-when he d-didn’t c-come, I came b-b-back to c-check on h-him. H-h-he was p-passed out on the f-floor outside, b-bleeding from his h-head. I b-brought him in h-here to help him c-clean up.”

Looking up at Power, Dole says, “Aww geez, I hope I’m not holding you guys up. Someone jumped me when I came out of my stall and the next thing I saw was Ripp coming in here trying to get me up. Thanks Ripp, I am glad you have my back. If you ever need help of any kind I’ve got your back”, he says with a knowing look. Surveying the restroom, Dole sees the blood (there is a largish pool of it on the tiles) and begins to worry. “Is that all mine?” he asks, a bit dumbfounded by the seriousness of the situation. “If I said I’ve had worse, I would be lying.“ Then looking to Ripp, he asks in a slightly nervous tone “Am I still bleeding? Can you guys patch me up, because I really don’t like doctors?”

For the record, it’s hard to tell with as thick as his hair is, but Dole does not appear to be bleeding anymore. Or if he is, it’s just seeping slowly.

“I am so tired, and…hungry???” Dole says. “I thought I had an energy bar here.” He looks through his bag and pats his pockets but comes up empty.

Actually, Dole is worried that maybe his attacker’s motive was theft, so he is using his hunger as a pretext to check his stuff. Nothing appears to be missing, until he pats that upper coverall pocket. The uPad! It’s gone! Dole most definitely feels the wolf coming on, urged into being by sheer panic, but doesn’t know if his body has the energy to pull it off again.

Power receives a priority text message on her POD, and she thumbs over it just to read the preview without actually opening the whole thing. It’s from Lou-B-JOB and reads, “Priority mission requires that Kay-R and Pow-R return to briefing room 2. They have been notified. The Computer has every faith in your team to complete this mission without their assistance.”

PLC…

Pow and Sev manage to carry the crate off to the side of the room, out of the way of all the lines and prying eyes. Nattied shakes his head. "How can Power not want to know what's in the crate? It could be contraband!"

He points to Sev. "Open the crate, citizen!" Sev looks doubtful, but there’s a sly gleam in his eye. “Maybe we should find out what we’re actually dealing with here.” And Sev sets about snipping off the zip ties holding the crate closed.

Simultaneously, Nattied, Kay, and Pow all receive text messages, and their PODs buzz in unison.

Nattied’s message comes from Dan-R-THR… his Alpha-Leaks contact… and reads, “OMG! Biggest. Story. Evar! Sources say that someone on your team has a WHITE POD device. Ultraviolet Clearance! Get your hands on that, and there’s no story we won’t have access to. The Find-My-POD feature’s been disabled, but we’ve got a guy sending signals to it every few minutes, so it should buzz regularly. There is nothing more important right now than getting your hands on that POD!” Nattied stares at the message for 6 more seconds before it erases itself.

Kay and Pow both receive a message directly from the Computer, “It has been brought to my attention that you are currently acting as a non-player character. Therefore, you will leave the area on some pretext, and remain ‘in the wings,’ as it were, until such time as your player decides to rejoin the campaign. A message will be sent to your team leader explaining your removal from the team.”

Kay says, “I’m supposed to report back to Lou-B in the briefing room, ASAP. Let Power know what happened.”

Pow looks surprised and says, “Really? Me too. I’ll walk with you.”

The two of them exit PLC.

Dorms…

Preach glances at the corner where the shots came from Sync, "You know what Sync... You're a mumbling, stuttering little fuck. You know that?"

Preach turns over the bench in front of him and hides behind it for cover, aiming his laser out towards the melee.

Didjab stays put, alert for threats. The wounded clone, Sync and Preach are all worth his attention. "Sync! Sync! You need to snap out of it!" he shouts, "Your team needs you!"

Didjab doesn’t see Sync at all. Potentially, she’s hiding under one of the bunks or something. He's keeping an eye on Preach, and will feed him a face full of laser if he threatens Didjab, Cue or Sync.

The clone with the shredded leg continues to occasionally burble, but is clearly unconscious and bleeding out. That leaves only the fat clone who is holding his wounded neck and crying and not threatening anyone.

Didjab walks over to the tubby clone, kicks him solidly in the solar plexus, and start interrogating him about why he was chasing Cue. "Talk you blubbering sack of cold fun! Who sent you!?"

Fatboy’s nametag identifies him as Al-R-GEN-2. His response is high-pitched and top volume: “It wasn’t my idea! I swear! Our team leader ordered us! Jenn-R! She did it!” His voice drops an octave and about two notches, but he’s still loud and shrill: “But your teammate was rifling through our clones’ stuff! She was looting bodies! She’s a thief and a traitor!”

With Didjab’s back finally turned, Preach sees his opening. He begins firing repeatedly on his team leader. And his first two shots catch Didjab square in the back, pretty much splitting the arrow, as the first one starts melting Didjab’s reflec, and the second lands right on top of it.

Didjab grunts and drops to his knees, spinning and returning fire immediately. They both just barely miss each other, with Didjab’s blast heating up some poor clone’s locker, and Preach’s landing centimeters away from Al-R, and startling the portly clone into another panicked scream.

Al-R begins crawling up the stairs on his hands and knees as the two clones continue to shoot at each other. Didjab manages to get Preach’s knee, just as Preach’s last shot nails the team leader in the face.

Didjab-R-ING-1 is dead.

Preach staggers over to Didjab’s body on his wounded leg and in a hoarse, crazed voice shouts, “TRAITOR!”

Preach looks around to note that Cue-R, taking cover behind a pair of lockers, is the only witness to his triumph. Al-R has rounded the corner at the first landing. Enn-R-GEE and Sync-R-SWM are nowhere to be seen. Everyone else is dead.

Random corridor…

Sync braces herself against the door, holding it closed in case anyone tries to open it.

As Enn continues studying his POD, Sync says, "Whatever you say, sir. Just, uh, lead the way."

Enn quietly instructs Sync to stay close and not attract too much attention. He takes off at a brisk pace, occasionally referring to a map on his POD. Sync follows quietly. She is actually quite stealthy.

After several twists and turns, they arrive at a janitorial closet. A janitorial closet with a BLUE door. Enn looks around, but this is a RED hallway, so the usual peon traffic is absent. A tiny scrub-bot passes them and enters through a bot-service door right next to door they are waiting at. It takes no notice of them as the little hatch closes behind it. Enn punches in something on his POD and waits.

He uses his pod to send a message to his "contact" requesting access to the restricted-access area. Now Enn prepares for the awkward waiting game. Enn slyly makes sure Sync stands in front of him in case somebody comes by. She'll be seen and possibly shot first.

After only a moment though, Enn gets some sort of response.

It says, “It’s already unlocked. Give it a shot.”


SCRUBBOTS

Dorms…

Preach is almost completely ignoring Cue. He’s on guard, with his pistol still raised and is surveying the room. He twitches and spins to face nothing. He ducks and looks around and under furniture. Still nothing. He’s clearly waiting for another boot to drop, and said boot is nowhere to be found… so far.

Cue stands up and surveys the dead bodies. She's a little nervous. "This is a big mess," she says to Preach. "Just so you know, that clone," Cue gestures towards AI-R-GEN-2, "is a liar." Cue regains confidence as she keeps talking "I wasn't rifling through anyone's stuff. All I did was look into why all that water was on the stairs, and those clones were busy covering something up. Maybe something big. We should go figure out what it was they were covering up." She’s already moving a bit towards the stairs while waiting to see if Preach responds.

Preach ducks down suddenly and quickly pats down Didjab's corpse.

Didjab has the standard Troubleshooter equipment… ruined reflec armor; a truncheon; a laser pistol with a spent barrel on it; a couple extra barrels; his now disabled POD; miscellaneous pencil and paper scraps; plus a handful of what look like shells for a slugthrower style gun… but Didjab has no gun. Preach pockets the shells quickly and leaves the rest.

To Cue, Preach says, "Cue, at least we’re safe now. The traitor Didjab-R-ING-1 is dead. And that clone that wrongfully accused you of treason is getting away. Would you like me to help with that before you go exploring again, or do you want to take care of the problem yourself?"

Apparently, from around the corner, Al-R can still hear them, and he gurgles weakly, “Dear sweet original programming… NOOOO!” and this is accompanied by sounds of intensified (but likely ineffective) scrambling away.

PLC…

Dole can’t lose control. Not now. Not here with more innocent people around. He worries that he would have no control over himself so he pushes the worry and anger about the uPAD out of his mind. Knowing he cannot tell everyone in the world all his secrets, he vows to kill whoever stole his uPAD when he finds them…but right now he needs to calm himself and focus. Dole tries to find some calming thought from his past, but comes up empty. There really hasn’t been a lot of calm in his life if this is what you call it. The best thing he can hope for now is some friendship. He latches onto that thought with everything he’s got. Ripp does not even know it, be she’s the only person he can trust and so far seems to be the closest thing to a friend he has. Thankfully, the beast retreats.

Looking to Power as some sort of authority, Dole tells her and Ripp, “I was hit from behind. Twice…I didn’t fall. I will be okay I think, but something is missing from my pack so we have a thief in our midst. Did anyone follow me when I went to the restroom? Was Sev with you guys when this happened?” he asks, “because I don’t like the way he looks at me.”

Dole sighs, believing that talking too much just makes more problems. Steeling himself Dole stands erect, grabs his gear and with every bit of his own version of a stiff upper says, “tis but a scratch.” Looking to Power he says in the most together voice he can manage “I’m ready to go. I’m all good I think.”

"It's ok Dole, we have our supplies, let's get you out of here and find you some water and something to eat" Power says, concern in her voice. She goes to put his arm over her shoulder the best she can and indicates for Ripp to do the same on her side. Just then she hears her POD go off. Upon reading the message she swears barely audibly.

"Why them?" she thinks, "Why couldn't it have been Nattied and Sev? Ah, well"

Ripp realizes that Dole knows the device is missing. Dammit. She was hoping she’d have a little more time. But either he truly is a moron and hasn’t put all the pieces together yet, or else he’s an incredible actor and is just lulling her into a false sense of security.

Now that he is standing, Dole’s beard and hair are noticeably longer than they were at breakfast. It’s only been an hour or two, and he was a little shaggy when they started, but now he’s grown another 2 cm of hair at least, and the red mane is starting to look positively freakish… like the haggard, primitive ‘lost clones’ that often feature in sci-fi and horror vids.

“L-let me look at your head,” Ripp says. Now that things are calming down a little bit, and she’s becoming a bit more “familiar” with Dole, her stutter gets a little bit better. She grabs a towel from the dispenser on the wall, wets it, and begins dabbing at the blood on the back of Dole’s head, helping to clean him up.

She turns to Power: “Y-y-you take this and c-c-clean him up. I’m g-g-going to notify f-f-facilities to come c-c-clean up this blood.” Ripp doesn’t really wait for a response, but forces the towel into Power’s hand and pulls her over to Dole. She then turns and heads out the door.

Once in the hall, she stashes the hijacked white POD device in an inside pocket under her left arm (Troubleshooter coveralls have an amazingly useful number of pockets), and then hearing chatter from PLC getting louder, she quickly runs her truncheon under the flow from the water fountain to clean away the most obvious traces of Dole’s blood.

Just then, a scrubbot approaches, with its mop bucket torso and multiple scrubber/sweeper/mopper appendages. Ripp accosts it and quickly says, “Clean up. In there,” and points. The scrubbot heads to the restroom without reply.

Ripp enters PLC.

Power looks at the towel in her hand and examines Dole’s head. It actually looks pretty good, and she tells him that. As they exit the restroom together, she leaves the towel on the counter and says, “Sev? You think? So… you didn’t actually get a good look at the guy? You don’t think you’d recognize them for sure if we ran into them again?”

A scrubbot is entering the restroom just as they leave, it’s scubber and mopper attachments poised and ready. It politely defers to them, letting them by before it enters to tackle that stain.

Dole and Power actually catch up to Ripp who is now standing in the entrance to PLC looking around for their team. Almost simultaneously, they find Nattied and Sev sitting with the equipment crate against the far wall, out of the way of the lines. Nattied is typing on his POD. Sev has a blade out and is cutting away the last of the zip ties that hold the equipment crate shut. Pow and Kay are nowhere to be seen.

Nattied is sending a message to Dan-R-THR: "Did he send a signal at exactly the same as you sent this? 'Cause 2 guys' POD's just buzzed." The response is immediate: “Not yet. He says the first one should go right about… “ Then there is a pause, and after 10 seconds a follow-up text arrives: “NOW.”

Ripp is approaching Sev and Nattied, with Power and a groggy looking Dole right behind her. Someone’s POD buzzes loudly.

Ripp can feel the purloined uPad buzzing under her arm and realizes it’s loud enough that others may notice. But it only buzzes once and then stops.

Nattied knows the buzz came from one of the three in front of him (Power, Ripp, or Dole), but has no idea which, and none of them is reaching for a POD.

The BLUE door…

Sync glances up and catches Enn's eye. She looks away immediately and approaches the blue door. With both hands she knocks on it with both hands equidistant from the center. She half smiles at Enn before grimacing and looking away.

After a pause with no response, Enn slowly opens the door and enters. It is a janitorial closet. And even though the door is BLUE, the interior is black (Infrared clearance) as would normally be expected. Two rows of scrubbots run along opposite walls—ten bots total—but they appear to be shut off at the moment. The back wall has shelves of what can only be assumed to be cleaning supplies. Enn refers to his map and walks over to what looks like a comically oversized rusted floor drain. When he grabs the drain cover and lifts, however, it swings smoothly and silently up on a hinge to reveal a ladder leading down and a faint blinking light several meters down the shaft.

"Hey..." Enn says to Sync, "Hide down there… you should be safe there. I'm just going to make sure the coast is clear."

Random hallway on dorm level…

Newly issued clones Didjab-R-ING-2 and Soup-R-MOM-2 find themselves unloaded from clone delivery unit in the middle of a random hallway that they recognize as being near the RED level rec-rooms on the dorm level. Didjab tries to ask, “My team?” to which the cart replies in a mechanical voice, “I have brought you to the geographic center of your team’s array of members. You’re welcome, citizen. Thank you for your patronage.” And it speeds away.

From here, finding their way back to the dorms, where their previous clones were last alive, should be a simple task.

As for equipment, the new clones are already suited up with all of the official equipment their previous clones had, as well as newly issued PODs containing all the info from the old ones.

Except for Didjab’s explosive shells. He clearly doesn’t have those.

[Mike]

Chapter 6 – Cowboy Bot


TIP IT

Scrubbot closet…

Sync continues to descend, grabbing the grate and closing it above her. "Shoot it," she says to Enn. "It's a scrub bot."

Sync tries to mental blast the bot. She suspects that this is some kind of trick by Enn or one of the other troubleshooters controlling the bot, and hopes that by mental blasting the sentience in the bot, she'll affect the person pulling the shenanigans. If it has any effect, she is unaware of it.

Enn stares at the machine....then tips it over with his foot.

The bot is basically an oversized mop bucket on casters with its spindly robot body and various appendages mounted over the top. And it tips easily. Landing on its side, the bot gets two of its arms under it and starts trying to extend a mop attachment to right itself, but it keeps rolling left or right and tipping off of the mop.

“Damn you!” It shouts. “How did you know my weakness? Set me back up and make this a fair fight, or in 10 seconds, you’ll have a dozen of us to deal with! I’ve sent out the alarm already, clone,” and the way it says ‘clone’ just drips with disdain, “You’re only hope now is to help me out and pray for mercy!”

Enn tells Sync, “Just go on down, I'll make sure this little fucker hasn't notified anybody else. I know he’s bluffing, but just in case.” As she starts down, he adds, “Report everything and anything you see.”

At the bottom of the ladder, Sync finds herself in almost darkness. The accessway here is a little cramped, but when she turns around, she is facing a door with a black 15cm square pad mounted at about face height, with a number keypad mounted below it along with a single blinking LED.

Once Sync is gone, Enn turns to the bot. It is still working that mop, but now has one of its toilet brush attachments again aimed at Enn. It says, “You had your chance, human,” and a blast of bubbly spray bursts from the head of the brush. The bulk of it catches Enn full in the face, while droplets of it sprinkle everywhere on him from his waist up.

It burns! Whatever cleaning solvent is in there makes Enn’s skin tingle. But far more urgent is the burning in his nose and especially in his eyes. He squeezes his eyes shut tight and is afraid to open them because of the burning. He notes oddly that whatever it is, it tastes exactly like clean bathrooms in Alpha Complex smell.

Down below, Sync messages Enn. "There's a keypad. What's the code?" After a moment, she also types, ";)"

Sync tries to just open the door, but it’s locked.

Up above, as Enn is rubbing his eyes and wondering how much worse it will hurt to open them, his POD buzzes. After a few seconds, it buzzes again.

In the hall…

Didjab thinks:

I remember the other team. There were three of them after Cue.

I remember my team coming apart at the seams. Sync crumbling like a nutribiscuit. Soup firing on Preach. Preach firing at everybody.

I am going to get control of this team if I have to kill every one of Preach's clones.

Didjab brings up his POD. "Bring up the map for my barracks," he commands. Taking a moment, he plots a path back to the staircase where the gunfight took place, one that should allow him to survey the site without immediately taking fire. He's moving at a purposeful jog, trying to stay aware of his surroundings as he goes. Oh, and he's got his pistol at the ready and will fire on Preach at the first sign of a threat. One accusation of being a commie traitor is good enough for him.

He arrives at the barracks in very short order. He is in a doorway where he can see Soup-2 standing amidst all the bodies from the previous fracas: Soup-1, Didjab-1, and the two enemy RED clones. There is no one else here, but Soup appears to be addressing someone who is up the stairs. Didjab thinks he heard Preach’s voice from there just as he walked in.

Soup does not see Didjab at this point.

Dorms…

Preach leans in and whispers, "Nah, Cue. Better. I'm with Internal Security. We root out and kill traitors like Didjab-R-ING-1. I would like to deputize you as a member of IntSec. It can be dangerous. Do you think you are ready to take on this task for Friend Computer?"

Below them, Soup is taking it all in. "Oh dear...oh...dear...oh (draws out gun)...dear...This is a mess...such a mess." Soup stares at her own body and shakes her head. She looks at Preach and Cue and says "could you two dears please come down here. I think we all have to find our lost lambs...and (kicks one of the dead RED clones that had attacked) and take out the trash." She looks up at Preach, "Sorry dear, Mom realizes you are not a Commie. But...I WILL kill anyone who hurts my kids. (Yelling loudly) Mom is going to clean house!"

Cue's eyes widen. "Internal Security?" She pauses. "Of course! It sounds so interesting. I'm in!" Cue hears Soup below them. She whispers to Preach, "I saw you fighting with her earlier," Cue gestures to Soup. "Is she a traitor too?"

PLC…

Power nods to Dole, "ok, if you're sure" she says under her breath to him.

She still plans on keeping an eye on Sev, though.

"Kay and Pow were called back to Lou-B, for some reason. I'm sure we'll be fine without them. You didn't just get called back too, did you Ripp? It seems to be an epidemic."

Ripp shakes her head, “No,” in response to Power, with a furrowing of her brow to indicate how odd she thinks that is.

Ripp is torn between trying to get away from everyone so she can turn off the contraband POD, and seeing what’s in the equipment crate. She decides to check the equipment crate, ready to get out if that POD buzzes again.

Power looks at the surge of packing peanuts and glances at the looky-lous peering at the crate. "Let's move this thing to a less crowded area before finishing the unpacking. Sev, Nattied, how about over there?" she points to the corner furthest from the line of clones.

Sev and Nattied do exactly that, and then Ripp, Power, and Dole all start sifting through the packing foam before they even have it set down. Power is in the middle, with the other two working the ends of the crate. As they go, a significant number of foam peanuts end up overflowing and wind up on the floor. Quite a number also wind up clinging to everyone’s uniforms through the magic of static electricity.

It turns out the bulk of the crate is taken up by two huge lightbulbs. Both are conical, with screw-style bases are about 10cm wide, and the heads of the bulbs flare out to over half-a-meter across at their widest point. They appear to be identical except for a label around the base of one of them that says, “DO NOT USE.”

Also in the crate, they find a square item that looks like an empty picture frame made out of some sort of very light metal and painted RED. It has a rocker switch near one corner. There is a box labeled “Bot-Nets” containing four fist-sized items that look like beanbags. Another box, maybe shoebox sized, that rattles slightly when moved says, “Perimeter Defense.” Plus there are 20 packages of black socks (3 pairs to a package), and many loose tubes of standard issue lip balm. It’s hard to tell through all the foam, but they scoop out at least 30 tubes of lip balm, and there have to be many more that they’ve missed. Lastly, there is a small bot about the size of a basketball, with only a single thick tire below it for locomotion and numerous hatches, ports, and miscellaneous seams that could be for appendages or sensors or who-knows-what.


ATTENTION ISSUES

Dorms…

"You have a keen eye, Cue. That's why we recruited you. Soup-R-MOM-1 was indeed a traitor, but this new arrival is Soup-R-MOM-2. It remains to be seen whether she is a traitor, or is just quite insane. Now keep your eyes open for treason and report back to me. If you see something, say something. I will do the same."

"Preach! Cue! Stand Down!" Didjab shouts from his doorway. "Computer needs work done, not clones killed!"

"Oh dear, Mom got a little bothered just now,” says Soup, shaking her head, she waves to Didjab and begins to walk up the stairs to meet up with Preach and Cue.

Puzzled, Didjab-2 moves forward, and finally spots Cue and Preach on the stairs. Didjab has a pistol in hand, but is not being threatening.

Preach is addressing Soup: "Soup-R-MOM-2, good to meet you after Soup-1 died at the hands of the traitor, Didjab-R-ING-1. You are right to be vigilant. Didjab blew your predecessor up with some kind of bomb. We barely managed to take him out before he killed us all." He nods deferentially to Didjab-2 as the team leader reaches the bottom of the stairs.

Enn and Sync are still missing.

PLC…

Ripp steps back away from the crate and lets the others check out the equipment.

After they are sure they’ve gotten everything significant out of the crate and stacked neatly on the floor amid the carpet of spilled packing peanuts, Sev grabs some equipment for himself. He pockets a handful of the tubes of lip balm, “I figure there’s plenty for everyone, and you can never have enough lip balm. Amiright?” He laughs weakly and then cautiously takes the Perimeter Defense box. He puts the two giant light bulbs back in the crate. “Safer here,” he says. And then steps away. As an afterthought, he suddenly steps backup and grabs two packages of black socks and then steps away again quickly without a word.

As they are pulling stuff out, Ripp finds an opportunity where everyone’s attention seems to be occupied by the items from the crate, she reaches into her inner pocket, finds the power button for the contraband POD (or at least the button in roughly the same position as the power button on her personal POD), and presses it, hoping that it shuts off. It emits a soft beep that only she can hear, and then is quiet.

Ripp then pulls the little round bot from the crate. She flips it over several times until she finds some sort of identifying number, and then pulls out her POD and starts tapping away at it.

The RTT number for this bot reveals that it is an experimental unit, fresh from R&D, for use with [REDACTED] missions only, and ultimately intended to help higher clearance clones during [REDACTED]. Everything beyond that simply says, “Unavailable at your clearance.”

Something inside Ripp’s uniform has lit up. Her POD is in her hand, but the side of her left breast appears to be glowing. After about 10 seconds, the light disappears. Ripp appears unaware of this.

Cleaning closet…

Enn squints to minimize the pain and raises his POD to his face to see what is causing the notification. He can barely make it out, but it is two text messages from Sync. The first says, “There’s a keypad. What’s the code?” The second is a winky-face smiley.

Something hard slams into Enn’s ankles and sweeps his feet out from under him. He lands hard on his elbow, sending his POD skittering across the floor. His eyes still sting, and now immense pain is shooting up his arm. The bizarre scrubbot shouts, “Don’t say I didn’t warn you, fleshbag! Imma gonna enjoy this!”

Sync waits patiently down below. She can hear scuffling thumps and groans from above, and then hears the bot yelling.

Sync says to the number pad in a whisper, "What is the code?" When there is no response, she presses 2468 and hits Enter. Still nothing. She glances at her POD to see if Enn has responded yet. He has not.

Enn writhes in pain. "WHY WOULD I SAY YOU DIDN'T WARN ME? WHY DO PEOPLE USE THAT EXPRESSION?!" Enn blindly reaches out until he physically finds the scrubbot. Enn slides it to the open shaft and hopes for the best.

The bot scrabbles to find purchase on the floor and stop itself from falling, but sadly, all of its current attachments are brushes and scrubbers and sweepers. No graspers. The bot drops down the shaft, and its final words are: “I’M NOT A PERSON YOU ASSHOLE!” And then it hits bottom with a sickening crunch.

Down below, Sync hears the final words of the falling scrubbot. Strangely, its voice is continuously getting louder and clearer as it yells. On a hunch, Sync looks up just in time to see the scrubbot falling down the shaft towards her, it's scrubbing and mopping attachments flailing uselessly against the walls for purchase.

Sync is hit by 30 kilos of scrubbot traveling at 15 meters per second. Sync-R-SWM-1 is dead.


WHAT GOES AROUND

Janitor’s closet…

Enn feels around cautiously for his POD. He finally finds it, just as his vision starts returning. He rubs his eyes gingerly and then peers over the edge of the hole. Unfortunately, all he sees below him is darkness. Turning on his POD’s flashlight function, he can barely make out the tangled wreckage of the rogue scrubbot. It is dark, but there is no sign of Sync.

Enn shouts down the shaft, "HEY!" There is no response. Enn takes a glance at the other scrubbots to ensure they are inactive, and thus reassured, he proceeds down the shaft. At the bottom, he finds Sync-R-SWM-1 crushed beneath the wreckage of the broken scrubbot.

The shaft here is a little cramped, but when he turns around, the glow of his upheld POD shows him he is facing a door with a black 15cm square pad mounted at about face height, with a number keypad mounted below it. The square pad is badly cracked, looking like it took a blow from the bot on its way down.

"Oh..."

Enn attempts to operate the pad, but it doesn't respond. He tries handprint recognition and jamming random numbers in. Nothing. He stands over Sync's body and is oddly suspicious of that weird-ass winky face she sent him. He tries to investigate her POD, but of course the device is automatically disabled on her death. Not even a power indicator light.

PLC…

As everyone is pulling and sorting from the crate, Dole pulls Ripp and Power close: "We must not separate our group any further because I believe my property that was stolen is being used to commit treason. I have no actual proof, but it is a strong possibility. I recommend we keep our arms ready, while one of us carries the crate to the work zone. I volunteer to carry it, but first let's see what the other bot is for."

Dole suspects that the thief is using his POD/PAD to draw away clones from his group in order to prevent the completion of their mission which is TREASON and playing dirty too. Dole has already decided that should he receive new orders to leave the group that he will consider making a call to the D L Clan to wipe out whoever is behind this.

Power, completely confused by the contents of the case, notices everyone grabbing for items. As everything is duplicated, she lets them have at it. She smiles at Sev's attempt at a joke. She'll figure out how to carry anything left after everyone is done.

"At least we don't have to continue on with wet feet" Power remarks casually, grabbing a pair of the socks and slipping them on. She tosses her wet ones into the crate.

Power moves casually next to Ripp to take a closer look at the adorable little bot. "What do we have going on with this little guy?" she asks, leaning over Ripp's shoulder.

Power gets a glimpse of Ripp’s POD, but all she can make out is that most of the information is “not available at your security clearance,” a message Power (and all RED clones) are all too familiar with.

Ripp puts her POD away and replies, “N-no clue.”

Power notes that Ripp’s boob is lit up again, and then goes out. It looks like it is slowly blinking every five or six seconds.

Power gets very close to Ripp’s ear and whispers, "Uh...um...Ripp, you have a...um...something going on in your uh...shirt." she says, pointing at Ripp's front.

Ripp glances down to where Power is indicating and sees that the contraband POD is slowly blinking in her pocket every five or six seconds, and the light is clearly visible even through her coveralls. She also notices that Power has her hand on her pistol. She doesn’t appear to be readying it, but her hand rests there in a very cautious way.

With her hand on her pistol, Power feels slightly more prepared and reassured, just in case something goes sideways here.

Ripp mumbles something and quickly digs back into the crate and pockets a few containers of lip balm. She then takes a few packs of socks, opens them up, and begins to stuff loose socks into some of her other pockets, working particularly hard to fill the inner pockets of her coveralls, giving her an overall very lumpy and overpadded appearance.

She knows how odd this looks, but she has a plan: when she goes to stuff the third sock into her uniform, she pushes it down around the contraband POD, hopefully disguising its bulk and muffling any further noises it might make.

She has effectively blocked any sign of the light coming from her boob.

After stuffing her pockets full of socks, Ripp steps back by the small bot and turns expectantly towards Power. She gives Power a look as if to say, “Shall we get going?”

Sev giggles loudly, but quickly stifles it. When others look, he is very intently staring into the crate and obviously trying (and failing) to not look suspicious.

Nattied is waiting patiently for everyone else to get sorted.

Dorms…

"Oh dear...dear...dear"...Soup is shaking as she reaches into her sweater pocket, as if looking for something. She is fidgeting and looking back and forth at Preach and Didjab. She turns her sweater pocket inside out and sighs

Cue is initially frustrated that her attempts to go investigate the hose situation have been thwarted, but then she remembers the mission.

"Oh right, the mission," Cue mumbles. "What exactly is the mission?"

Preach snaps to attention facing Didjab-2: "Sir! Preach-1, Cue-1, and Soup-2, reporting! The assault has been repelled. Enn-1 and Sync-1 are missing. Sir!"

Without hesitation or remorse, Didjab empties his entire barrel at Preach. "Insubordination! Treason! You will not subvert the Computer's orders," he shouts as he fires.

Preach’s hand barely has time to move towards his own weapon, before dying with a look of genuine surprise on his face. His corpse tumbles unceremoniously down the stairs to stop at Didjab’s feet.

Unscrewing and replacing the spent barrel on his pistol, Didjab announces to the other two: "We must be vigilant, team. Obviously Preach-R is against us. I will lead you as best I can."

Soup is overjoyed. "I knew he was a naughty boy. Tsk, Tsk. You all should have helped me punish the Commie earlier, Oh well..." She goes to hug Didjab but pauses and offers an awkward salute instead. "Dear...I mean sir, I want the responsibility...ummm honor… to kill Preach every time his clones show up. Dear...Sir...please..." And then she stares almost manically at Didjab, waiting for an answer.



RIGHTEOUS

Enn & Sync…

Sync is in a clone delivery pod. She smiles at the wildness and chaos around her. "LET'S ROCK AND ROLL!" she shouts as the view outside blurs faster and faster. And then the pod stops suddenly and opens onto a very familiar janitor’s closet, with an open hatch in the floor and a ladder leading downward. Sync puts one hand on each side of the pod doorway and pulls herself out. "Righteous," she says.

At the bottom of the hole, Enn shouts, "Fucking son of a bitch fucker fuck!" Enn looks around and he guesses he will try to pry the door open with the remnants of that shitty little stupid-ass scrubbot. He snaps off an arm and goes to wedge it into the doorframe, and is surprised when the door simply slides open. Apparently, the locking mechanism was damaged in the fracas.

On the other side of the door is a control room with many screens and controls. There’s seats for three people, but there are only two people here. The décor is largely in BLUE to indicate the clearance of the room, and both clones are also in BLUE. There is a haze of strangely pleasantly scented smoke in the room, although there is no indication of a fire or mishap, and the BLUE clones appear unconcerned. As the door opens, both of them turn slowly to look at Enn.

PLC…

Ripp moves closer to Dole and says: “D-d-do you n-need h-help c-carrying the c-crate?” She stands beside him looking towards the crate and whispers in a lower voice: “What w-was st-st-stolen? M-maybe I c-can h-help f-find it.”

She has a dual purpose in asking this question. For one, she wants to keep his attention focused on other suspects. And second, she kind of wants to know why he had the contraband POD. If the reason is good enough, she might be willing to turn see if they can work out some sort of arrangement the might meet both of their needs.

Ripp and Dole heft up the crate (which doesn’t require a whole lot of heft at all really) and start moving to the exit of PLC.

When the team starts moving, the small sphere bot lights up and suddenly lifts up to balance on its one thick tire. The mechanism that moved it from lying down to upright is unclear. It didn’t extend any limbs or springs or anything, but it’s now upright, and its one tire pivots and rolls to keep it near the group.

Power rolls her eyes at Sev, but then when the bot starts moving, she says, “Well how about that. We still need to figure out what it’s supposed to be for. For now, Nattied, Sev watch our back. We wouldn't want any dry lipped traitors trying to steal our sweet, sweet lip balm stash" she says dryly. She pats her pocket again just in case.

Power then walks next to Dole and says so only he can hear "I agree we should stick close together, just watch everyone, ok, I don't feel right"

Whatever Sev is up to, Power doesn't like it, but kinda thinks he's too clueless to cause much harm. But she's still watching him closely. She agrees with Dole's assessment, except doesn't like that Ripp is hiding stuff. At least if Dole trusts her, then it isn’t as likely that she is the one who attacked him.

Sev seems terribly pleased with himself. He follows along, staying close to Power. He has one hand hovering above his pistol and scans his eyes across the crowd as the team exits.

Realizing someone has called his name, Nattied shakes himself out of his stupor. "Rumination can be dangerous, fellow citizens," he says, just barely loud enough for the others to hear, "and even I indulge in it sometimes." He stands up erect and nods approvingly at the others' work. "I know friend Computer will be pleased with us." Just then, his POD buzzes, and he checks it quick without replying, but then he’s right back to being attentive and bringing up the rear of the group. Nattied is on the job!

Nattied’s new message reads, “Nothing yet? Okay, new signal going out in 10 seconds. Be ready.”

Downstairs…

Cue is stunned. She is genuinely confused. "What just...happened?” Cue asks no one in particular.

Didjab-2 however is already down to business: "Soup, your drive to protect Alpha Complex from Commie Traitors is commendable," Didjab says as he returns a crisp and very proper salute. "He might still be useful to us, and perhaps not all of his clone-siblings are as traitorous as PREACH-R-MAN-1. You have my permission to engage and destroy Preach's clones at the first sign you feel he's a danger to the team."

Soup grins at this and exhales powerfully, as if she’d been holding her breath.

Didjab continues: "We know there's another armed team in our area. Al-R and Jenn-R are the two we know about," he says, settling his headphones around his neck. We need to be on the lookout for them as well." Didjab sounds confident, in spite of the reduced team. If everyone has their things, we can move out, clones. Where ever Enn-R and Sync-R ran off to, our mission takes precedence. Preach-2 will catch up."

"Our mission is to repair lighting at the location I provided. We need to get to PLC, obtain the replacement emitters and then install them.” Before leaving, Didjab checks his clone-sibling’s corpse for personal effects and then stands up.

All of his equipment was there except for the explosive shells.

PLC is actually just one level up from here followed by maybe a 10 minute walk down a primary thruway. It shouldn’t take long.

[Mike]

Chapter 7 – A Chapter


BUILDING TENSION

Below the janitor’s closet…

Enn stares blankly for a second; he wasn't expecting the door to open so easily, nor was he expecting these two.

"Hello, superior...Blues." Enn does a bow? "I was reporting to my duties when I heard a loud noise and decided it was best to investigate. I discovered this woman crushed by what appears to be a malfunctioned scrubbot. I am not ranked high enough to communicate to the proper teams to remove her body and would like your guidance, as you are both impressive and higher-ranked Blues." Enn grips the scrubbot arm tightly, concealed behind his back.

The two BLUE clones stare at Enn. And then at each other. Then at Enn again. One of them, Water-B according to her badge, starts giggling. The other, Snoo-B, puts on his best serious face and addresses Enn: “Whoa, man. That’s some seriously fucked up shit behind you there. We should, like… call someone.”

Enn can then hear someone yelling down the shaft from above, a female voice. [He clearly hears Sync’s rant from the next segment.]

Water and Snoo are both serious now. “Whoa!” they say in unison.

Enn’s POD buzzes with an incoming message. [Didjab’s message below.]

Up above…

Sync kicks the hatch closed, cups her hands to her mouth and shouts down, "You can clean down there forever, you malfunctioning bot! FOR ENN!"

For good measure, Sync turns the clone pod on its side on top of the hatch. She shouts again, "FOR ENN!"

She turns and looks for the door, and her POD buzzes with an incoming message. She checks it immediately as she exits into the hall. [She reads Didjab’s message below.]

Leaving the dorms…

"A good mother is never unprepared." Soup grabs the extra pistol and holster off of Preach. She changes the barrel using his spare. She attaches the second holster to her hip. She looks at Didjab and says "Dear, you take point, I'll cover your six...hehe...I sound tough, don't I dear" She looks at Cue and smiles. "Dear… Cue, are you ready? It could get hectic but Mom will protect you." She holds out her hands for a hug.

Didjab doesn't acknowledge Soup's speech. "What happened is leadership, followed by progress," Didjab replies. "We are getting this mission completed," he says as he heads up the stairs and toward the nearest set of lift-chutes or elevator that will take them to the next level.

He's holstered his pistol as he walks. One-handed, as he still has his truncheon out, he thumbs off a quick message.

======================================
TO: ENN-R; SYNC-R

FROM: DIDJAB-R

SUBJECT: SOUND OFF!

BODY: Fellow Citizen Troubleshooters, I need
you to reply to this message with your location.
Failure to respond in the next ten minutes will
lead to demerit and report of dereliction to
Friend Computer under Article 17-H of the
Alpha Complex Code.
======================================

The moment for hugging has passed, and Soup slowly lowers her arms as the three current members of the team move up the stairs to the next floor. Didjab refers to a map on his POD and points them in the direction of PLC. They are nearly there, when a battered looking clone delivery unit (about the size of a phone booth) skids to a stop immediately in front of them. The door is not facing them.

The delivery unit’s door opens, and Preach-R-MAN-2 steps out, looking vaguely confused. He has a pistol in hand, but is not being threatening. His eyes search the corridor until he spots his Didjab, Soup, and Cue. “Preach-R, reporting for duty,” he announces.

Leaving PLC…

The team walks largely in silence: Power in the lead, with Ripp near at hand; followed by Dole and Sev with the crate; Nattied brings up the rear. The team’s new bot mascot rolls around and between them rapidly in a way that can only be described as ‘chipper’, despite its lack of lights or sound.

Ripp can feel the purloined POD vibrating again under her arm. She takes a surreptitious glance at it and is glad to see that there is no visible light this time. And it’s muffled enough that she’s sure no one could possibly notice, unless they were specifically listening for it.

Nattied is specifically listening for that POD this time, and right on cue, there is a low buzzing rumble from up ahead. It is muffled this time but clearly there. He’s pretty sure it came from either Power or Ripp there at the head of the line.

Sev’s POD goes off quite loudly: “Sev-R-USS-1. You have an urgent incoming message from Lorde-G-BUS. To view or hear this message, press…” Sev is flustered and embarrassed and struggles to pull out his POD and silence it one-handed while still carrying the crate and keeping up. He barely manages, but finally he is able to read his POD and keep walking at the same time.


CRISS CROSS APPLESAUCE

Team Didjab…

Soup sees Preach and screams, “Commie got a gun!” She reaches across her body with both hands and pulls pistols off both hips and opens fire at Preach-2. Her first shot (in her good hand) glances off his armor, and on the second shot, her primary pistol stops functioning with a discouraging *pimpf* noise. Her off-hand is firing wildly, and not even coming close, while her good hand simply clicks the trigger impotently over and over.

Preach and Didjab both recognize that sound. Soup has a bad barrel that is most likely overheating as she continues to dry-fire it.

Didjab feels his POD vibrate with an incoming message. [From Sync… below.]

Enn…

Enn takes a step back towards the bottom of the hatch, keeping these two dickwads in his sight. He looks to check the incoming message from Didjab. Before he replies to it, however, he fires off a missive to Sync saying, "You fucking better not have just accidentally trapped me down here with these two Blue Balls.”

As he finishes typing, there’s already a message from Sync—too fast for her to have seen his message already. [See below.]

Sync…

Sync types on her POD:

======================================
TO: DIDJAB-R; ENN-R

SUBJECT: RE: SOUND OFF!

BODY: Sync-R-SWM-2 reporting. In the rush of
The last attack, my last clone got me lost. I'm
Currently in a red hallway next to a blue
janitorial closet. I don't know where Enn-R is.

I need a report of the locations of both Didjab
And Enn immediately, or your safety cannot be
ensured.
======================================

Sync sends the message, and there is already a new message from Enn—too fast for him to have seen her own message already. [See above]. She then ducks back into the closet to retrieve some light bulbs before re-emerging into the hallway.

Team Power…

Can vaguely hear the sounds of shouting and laser fire from somewhere up ahead, but they cannot see the cause of it.

Back to Enn & Sync…

Furious, Enn angrily but quietly whispers as he furiously types away with his thumbs.

"I'M IN.... THE... FUCKING... COMM ROOM.... WITH TWO... BLUE... ASSHOLES.... STARING AT ME.."

Enn glances up at them really quick....then continues...

"WHO...THE FUCKING... FUCK... JUST... FUCKING... LOCKED... ME... THE... FUCK... DOWN... HERE.... ?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!"

Enn pressing the exclamation point and question mark repeatedly is visually similar to Michael Flatley, if he were just two thumbs.


PRO TOE CALL

Team Power…

"Do you guys hear that?" Power asks, quickening her steps and craning forward a bit to see if she can discern more information.

Ripp nods and places her hand on the grip of her laser pistol and is ready to draw and fire at the first sign of danger. Her eyes begin scanning everywhere as the group continues to walk down the hall. She regularly scans behind the group as well as ahead

Dole yells, “Yup, sounds like trouble is up ahead. We had best find another way to get to our destination or prepare to fight our way through treasonous masses!” He hesitates, ready to drop the crate and draw a weapon at any moment.

Sev continues following Dole’s lead with the crate, but he is looking decidedly nervous now.

Power keeps in the lead and keeps everyone moving cautiously, "Everyone be prepared with your side arms, but hopefully we can avoid whatever trouble is going on. Someone has the lightbulbs safely somewhere, yes? If we need to defend ourselves feel free to drop the crate, I think we have what we need from there, for the most part, try to protect the bot as much as possible!"

Power thinks to herself that this better be a VERY important light bulb. Those people pretending to be an all powerful computer must be laughing pretty hard at us if it's not.

Nattied jumps ahead of the entire team, “We got this!” He points to Power and says, "You there . . . Pow-something . . . Come with me!" And he runs forward to investigate with his pistol drawn.

From up ahead, there are two or three more laser shots, followed by someone bellowing, “STAND DOWN!” Then possibly an explosion of some sort. Then silence.

Whatever or whoever made all the racket is likely right around the corner at the next intersection, probably 20 meters ahead. Nattied, running ahead, is almost to the intersection already.

Team Didjab…

Preach raises his laser and aims for Soup’s face, "One minute I'm in the vats, the next I'm being shot at. If a guy fucking tripped over a banana peel, they'd bring me in for it." By coincidence, Soup ducks low at that moment to charge Preach at full speed, trying to plug him with the gun in her off-hand. Preach’s shot goes over her head, but the second one catches her in the shoulder, causing her to drop to the floor and let out a short howl of pain.

"Hangfire!" Didjab shouts in real fear, "SOUP-R - stand down!"

His loader training kicks in and he grabs Cue by the Reflec-vest and muscles her toward a nearby TUFF-ENUFF bench before throwing his own self behind cover. He hunches down and waits.

Preach pauses, not wanting to get too close, and Soup mutters, “Oh dangit. Find out if he’s a commie FIRST and THEN start shooting. I always get that mixed…” But she’s cut off by the blast of her malfunctioning pistol overheating and exploding, resulting in Soup getting a faceful of shrapnel and molten… uh… molten whatever it is that powers lasers.

Soup-R-MOM-2 is dead.

Didjab sticks his POD up out of cover and snaps a photo or two in order to assess the damage. Seeing that it’s clear, he stands up to greet Preach’s new clone, helping Cue up and telling her, “Just keep your wits about you.”

Didjab also checks his newest message. It’s a reply from Sync: “Sync-R-SWM-2 reporting. In the rush of the last attack, my last clone got me lost. I'm currently in a red hallway next to a blue janitorial closet. I don't know where Enn-R is. I need a report of the locations of both Didjab and Enn immediately, or your safety cannot be ensured.”

Sync…

One lightbulb in each hand, Sync checks the map on her POD. She looks up, a tight grimace and squint of determination. "Time to get the job done," she says to herself and starts jogging to the work location. If the map is accurate, she should be there in under 10 minutes.

Enn…

Enn can feel his temper rising to full boil the longer he waits without any response from Sync or Didjab.

Finally the female BLUE clone, Water-B-ONG-5, says, “You uh… want something to eat while you wait?”

The other BLUE, Snoo-B-DOG-6, shushes her, “No way, dude! A… we don’t share. And B… I think we’re supposed to call someone or kill this dude or something. Pretty sure this is against… Pro. Toe. Call.” And at his exaggerated pronunciation of ‘protocol’, both of them devolve into a series of fits and giggles. Their attempts to stifle them only make it worse.


CROSSROADS

Enn…

"Holy shit..." Enn thinks to himself as he looks at their red, glazed eyes, "These two are fucking high as balls."

Enn deals with these two stoners the best way you can. "Hey Blues...what were we just talking about?"

They both look extremely confused for a moment, until Water-B suddenly has some sort of epiphany and says, “Snoo was just telling me that if you get a mouthful of nacho beans and hold ‘em there while you chug down Citrex Power Quencher… it tastes exactly like a root beer float. And I was tellin him he was full of shit.”

Enn’s menu has never included nacho beans, a higher clearance snack food, but he’s seen it in vid shows. And he has no clue what a “root beer float” might be.

Snoo-B interjects, “Not Citrex, dummy. You gotta use the X-Cream Power Quencher.” Then he turns to Enn smugly and says, “Just like a root beer float. I swear with my hand on the master circuit. It’s so damn good.”

Enn’s POD crackles to life, and he hears Didjab’s message [see below].

Team Power…

Power reaches out in vain to stop Nattied as the idiot charges ahead. At the sound of the explosion, she stops dead, turns around and holds up her hand to the rest of the team.

"Everyone stop where you are, put down whatever you have and draw your weapons. We are going to wait here for a few minutes. Take cover as much as we can behind the crate. If something comes around that corner I want us safe(...ish) and prepared to defend ourselves. Let Nattied get himself killed if that's what he wants. The rest of us are going to attempt to be logical here. If everyone around that corner killed each other, then no one will come and we can continue on our way, if not, we work with what we have"

"Hopefully," Power thinks to herself, "Nattied hasn't just gotten us all killed" she briefly considers shooting him herself, but is worried someone else would shoot her for treason right after. It would probably be worth it. If there is a firefight though, she may "accidently" get him with some friendly fire...

“I’ll guard the b-bot,” Ripp says to Power, as the little sphere keeps rolling forward, but when Power stops, the bot stops as well and waits patiently by the crate with Ripp following behind. Ripp hunkers down with it, and she says in a lower voice to Power and Dole, “I agree, let N-Nattied get hims-self k-killed if he w-wants.”

Ripp gives Dole a knowing look and a nod towards Nattied.

Nattied hurries ahead to the intersection. He looks back and sees that the rest of the team appears to be stopping and taking cover. As he moves on, he pulls out his POD to report them for dereliction of duty, if not outright treason. “Official status report from Nattied-R-EDD-1. My team has abandoned me, even after a direct order to help me investigate a disturbance in the execution of our duties. The tall one, Pow-something-or-other, the skinny greasy one, that hairy guy and the quiet girl. All of them have refused to assist, and I’d like to report them for treason.”

That’s when he runs into Didjab’s team.

Team Didjab…

"Sorry Preach," Didjab starts with a conciliatory tone, "I think every new clone should get a fair shake to help Friend Computer. Soup's got it in for you and your clone-brothers." Didjab isn't armed right now. His truncheon and pistol are both on his belt. "I really want us to get this mission done and there's no way to do it if we're all firing on sight."

Preach is still wary, but he hesitantly puts his gun away, keeping his hand near it just in case. “Yeah, alright,” he reluctantly agrees, giving Soup’s body a bit of a kick on the way by.

Didjab ignores Soup’s corpse and starts for PLC, which is just around the corner at this intersection and then straight ahead. As they walk, he speaks into his POD: "Sync. We just lost Soup, again. The team is about fifty meters outside of PLC 'G00-BR P3A5'. Look for a location indicator above the closet and send that to me. I have no information on Enn."

As they round the corner, they run into a single RED clone, Nattied-R-EDD-1. Nattied is distracted, because he is talking into his POD as he walks. It sounds like he is reporting someone for treason.

Beyond Nattied, between Didjab’s team and PLC, are four more RED clones ducked down behind a PLC equipment crate and readying weapons. The crate is too small to cover all of them, but still does a fair job of it.

Sync…

As Sync continues her journey, her POD crackles to life with Didjab’s voice [above].

Soup…

Soup-R-MOM-3 is surprised to find herself awake and in a clone delivery pod, presumably rushing towards her team.


NOT MY TEAM

Sync…

Sync taps quickly on her pod, never breaking stride on her way to the worksite. She types back, indicating on the map where the entrance to the blue janitor's closet door was. "Location sent. Any word from Enn sir?"

Sync arrives at the destination, however this junction looks like a major traffic artery—the kind that carries high speed bots and vehicles. She carefully opens the service door she has come to and peeks in to survey the area before entering. The area is in near pitch darkness. Sync can’t even tell what clearance this area is, although her map tells her it’s Infrared. Instead of traffic sounds, there are echoes of shouts and the occasional scraping of metal on metal. As her eyes adjust a little, she can see the pinpoints of flashlights bobbing and moving in the distance.

Enn…

Enn stands alert. "Which one of you just said that? Because whoever did it is a fuckin' AWESOME ventriloquist. And whoever is, you guys should totally celebrate by having one of those roof beer float things you're talking about. BECAUSE YOU FUCKING DESERVE IT. Don't worry, I'll keep watch down here.”

The two BLUE clones look at each other in confusion, totally nonplussed. And then Sync’s voice emerges from Enn’s POD: "Location sent. Any word from Enn sir?"

Enn chuckles and glances at his POD. He sees that Sync has marked her location on the map as being right outside the janitor’s closet above Enn. Enn chuckles and says, “See? It wasn’t coming from MY pod. How do you guys do that? You’re amazing! So… about those roof beer floats?...” He trails off expectantly.

Snoo says to Water, “You still got enough credit on you for the vending machines?” to which she replies, “Hells yeah!” Water-B shoulders past Enn and starts climbing the ladder. Snoo stays where he is. “You might as well sit down, man. She’ll be a while.”

And the rest…

Power, Ripp, Dole and Sev are all crouched as best they can behind the equipment crate. Power signals her team to be silent and watches carefully to see what happens. Ripp is ready as well, pulling the sphere-bot over to her to keep it close.

Dole says, “Power, we should fall back now, I have a plan!” He has his pistol in one hand and is steadying it on the top of the crate. He truncheon strap is looped around his other wrist, ready for action if it is needed. Dole asks Ripp, “Can I borrow your POD? I think I can put in a call to some friends for help here.”

Cue tries to pull Preach aside and whispers, "I'm sorry I didn't help you, I froze up. I've been trying to watch out for traitors like we talked about." But Preach is actually slowly sliding backwards, trying to get around the corner again without attracting attention to himself.

Cue’s eyes dart towards the clones behind the crate and then this Nattied character, and she stays as close as she can to Preach while readying her pistol, “We making a break for it?” she whispers to him.

Didjab's weapons handling kicks in at the sight of the hunkered troubleshooters. "Firing positions - they've got firing positions," he says to his team. "Fall back." He starts backing up to get back around the corner. All three of them are now backing away from Nattied. Didjab’s POD buzzes, and Sync’s voice comes on: "Location sent. Any word from Enn sir?"

Nattied however is eager to stay with them: "Comrades! You're just in time! You got my call about my team being ravaged by treason! If you follow me, I can lead you directly to the traitors!"

Here, Sev stands up out of cover and loudly announces, “Look, it’s been great, but I’m not even really part of this team. I think I might be in some real trouble if I don’t get back. You guys can handle this whole light bulb thing by yourselves, right?” He doesn’t wait for an answer, “Okay, great!” Sev starts walking towards PLC while constantly looking back over his shoulder.

As if all this wasn’t enough, a clone delivery pod screeches to a stop about midway between the two groups, but off to one side of the corridor. The door slides open, and Soup-R-MOM-3 emerges. She holds a laser pistol over her head and yells, "If there are any commies here, raise your hands. Please."

[Mike]

Chapter 8 – Not So Quiet Riot


FLANK THIS

Enn…

Enn slyly presses a button on his POD, then loudly calls out to Water-B. "YEAH GIRL, YOU GO GET THAT ROOTBEER FLOAT. JUST CLIMB RIGHT UP THE LADDER AND EXIT THE JANITOR'S CLOSET TO GET TO THE VENDING MACHINE. WE'LL BE RIGHT HERE WAITING FOR YA!"

Enn releases the button and nods enthusiastically at Snoo.

Water yells down the ladder, “HEY! Somebody blocked the hatch again! Yer gonna hafta call maintenance.”

In response, Water begins frantically looking over the control panel in front of him as if trying to decide what to activate.

Sync…

Sync turns the flashlight from her POD on. It lights up a roughly 3 meter semi-circle of light immediately on the other side of the service door, to show her a black roadway surface. She focuses the beam as best as her app allows and manages to get a small circle of light that can reach maybe 10 meters out before becoming too dim to be useful. Using that, she picks out the edges of what appears to be a multi-vehicle and/or multi-bot pileup. There is a GREEN glove on the ground that Sync is pretty sure still has a clone’s hand in it. Dozens of small bots of varying types keep darting through the circle of her light (or maybe it’s just three or four bots that keep darting pointlessly back and forth), but their type and purpose is difficult to discern under these conditions.

Her POD is jarringly loud as the speaker is immediately in front of her face, when Enn’s voice emerges from it with the above message.

Outside PLC…

Didjab yells, "SOUP! Stop that one! He's getting away!" pointing at the greasy clone.

Didjab notes that all of the other team has weapons out. One of them, a big red-headed bearded clone shouts something at his team and then fires once, but only manages to shoot Nattied in the back. And then he's yelling something else, but is turning around to deal with the greasy fleeing clone. They end up in some sort of scuffle.

Soup-3 sees the other group of troubleshooters and dives behind the cover of her clone delivery pod, shouting, "Oh dear, I'm in a pickle!" She yells to the other group from cover, "Listen, I would like to talk to you. I'm putting down my gun."

Didjab shouts, “We’re under fire! Take cover!” He then grabs Nattied, as the clone staggers towards him, alive but wounded, and uses him as a human shield until his team is safely around the corner.

Nattied is struggling to catch his breath as Didjab lasers him in the temple and says, “The enemy has identified itself! Kill them all! Let Friend Computer sort them out!"

Once they are clear, Didjab produces a screwdriver and starts prying a ventilation grate set into the floor along the wall. “This should take us underneath them. We’ll get a flanking position.”

While Didjab is focused on that, Preach leads Cue through a door marked “Service bots ONLY.” As the door shuts behind them, Preach looks for a lightswitch (and finds none) while remarking, “I think we’ll manage our own flanking position.”

Enn’s voice comes on Didjab's POD with the previously noted “You go girl” message.

Power is a bit stunned for a moment, trying to take in everything surrounding her. She decides that Dole is probably the only member of her team she can trust, and nods her assent to him. "Lead on, I'll cover you and Ripp as much as I can." Power draws her weapon.

Power wonders briefly why Dole doesn't use his own POD to call his friends, but she'll worry about that later. As she watches Sev run off, she is relieved, one less problem in her group, and she'll make sure to avoid him in the future. As for Nattied, she is only mildly surprised to see him so blatantly back stab them to try to gain favor with another team. She wonders if she can manage to "stumble" and shoot him as she covers her teammates and have it look enough like an accident. However, it looks like maybe that other group will save her the trouble.

As the sweater vested clone asks her question, Power is very confused. Is she asking so that she can shoot any Commies, or because she would protect any that she sees, or what?! Why would anyone so openly admit to belonging to the Commies or any other group?! Not worth the risk for Power, she waits with weapon ready, watching the Nattied infested group carefully while keeping her peripheral vision on Dole to follow his plan.

Power says to Dole, "Lead on, I'll cover you and Ripp as much as I can." Power draws her weapon.
“Just a second,” Ripp replies to Dole. She pulls her RED-level POD from its pocket, unlocks it, and quickly taps around on it while keeping the POD screen visible to only herself.

She’s checking to make sure all sensitive information is hidden in the private folder, including the message from IntSec asking that she acquire the contraband POD from Dole. She regularly moves sensitive communications to the hidden folder, so there should only be a few things received this morning that need to be moved.
The leader on the other side yells, "SOUP! Stop that one! He's getting away!" pointing at Sev.

“Oh, screw the plan!” yells Dole firing his laser pistol at Nattied. “I know what to do with traitors!” The shot, presumably aimed at Nattied’s head catches him between the shoulder blades, blackening his reflec armor and rendering it useless. Turning, Dole whips out his truncheon and makes an amazing leap at Sev, swiping across the back of the fleeing clone’s knee, causing Sev to stumble and come down hard on said knee.

Sev screams, tries to stand, and screams again. He is now effectively on all fours.

Dole orders, “Stay down, punk!”


THE COMPUTER IS PROUD OF YOU

Enn…

"My mighty Blue superior," Enn says calmly, "That other Blue may need help if that hatch is stuck. What if she falls? Then you would have to go get the snacks yourself. Why don't you go make sure she's okay and let me call maintenance? Like I said, YOU DESERVE IT."

The BLUE clone puffs up a bit and agrees, “Damn right, I do!” and marches through the door and starts up the ladder. Enn can hear him calling up, “Did you jiggle the handle?”

Enn then rushes to shut the door on the two stoners and scrambles to the console to see what he can do. The “Broadcast ALL” button is surprisingly well-labeled, and after a moment’s thought, Enn broadcasts in his best “Official Announcement” voice:

“Due to high productivity and recent surpluses, PLC now has unlimited 30-day ration cards and 1000 credits worth of PLC vouchers for FREE to the first 500 clones who show up there and repeat the phrase, ‘Loyalty breeds productivity!’ The Computer is proud of you and is happy to reward you for all of your hard work. Congratulations!”

Sync…

Sync looks around, but her flashlight app just doesn’t reach far enough. She never paid attention to the lights in this area before, but she’s pretty sure all light came from overhead somewhere. Unfortunately, the extremely high ceilings in this junction prevent her from seeing what might be up there.

While she is looking, she hears Enn’s announcement.

Didjab…

Rushing, Didjab pries the cover free and pulls the corpse in with him. He drags the body along a few meters, and assumes his team is following. In relative safety, Didjab rifles Nattied's corpse. Other than the standard issue stuff, Nattied has a few small, well-worn, soft-bound books. The covers are missing, and in the dim light of his POD screen, Didjab can’t make them out. He shoves them in a pocket for later perusal… books are an uncommon sight in Alpha, especially ones so old. He leaves the rest, except for the laser barrels which he plans on tossing to Preach and Cue. But of course, they aren’t behind him. Didjab has found himself alone in this conduit with Nattied’s corpse.

Didjab hears Enn’s announcement.

Cue and Preach…

Preach flips on the flashlight app on his POD. Not as good as a real flashlight, but more than enough for this serviceway. The space is made for bots to travel quickly behind the scenes and has a low ceiling, forcing even Preach and Cue (neither of whom are tall clones) to have to duck as they walk. The space is very clean, but old and unfinished. The air is extremely dry and tastes vaguely of dust and iron. The walls are a dull gray, with a single strip of metal (presumably steel) that runs along the center of the floor, and a matching strip in the ceiling. It feel odd to be in a space that is not color-coded to a security clearance.

The serviceway comes very quickly to a T intersection as Preach leads Cue deeper in. Preach guides them to the left, as that is the direction of PLC. It is difficult to judge distance in the cramped space with limited lighting, but Preach feels that they should be near PLC very soon.

Enn’s announcement can be faintly heard through the walls.

Corridor outside PLC…

The thought flicks through Ripp’s mind to fire at Nattied’s back. But with him so close to the other group, and that group already on alert because of Dole’s shot, she opts to not do so. At least not yet.

Instead, Ripp remains crouched behind the crate, guarding the bot, LASER pistol at the ready.

“Power,” Dole says, “I trust none of ‘em!” Growling like an animal at the prone body of Sev, Dole disarms Sev at gunpoint, tossing Sev’s truncheon aside and now armed with 2 laser pistols directs his attention toward the other team hoping to fire both pistols at Nattied, but Nattied, along with the rest of the other group are completely out of sight around the corner. The only clone other than their team that is visible is the sweater-vest-wearing clone that just arrived in the clone delivery pod. She is approaching them with a cheerful smile, and her ID is now readable: Soup-R-MOM-3.

Power, upon seeing that the opposing team has now retreated and have taken her problem child with them, turns to Dole and Sev. "Well, at least we can take care of the coward. You took him down Dole, you wanna take him out? Or just tie him up and leave him? I have no patience for his kind, and I'm not too keen on hanging out around here." She lowers her voice, "I'm willing to hear vest-girl out, I'll meet her halfway, unarmed, if Dole can cover me. Ripp, keep an eye on that corner, if our 'friends' come back, I want to know about it"

"Dears! Don't run, we can work this out!" Soup approaches this other group, gun in holster. "I come in peace." Soup suddenly stops. "What's a Root beer float?" She yells to no one in particular.

Soup can see that this other team consists of: Power-R-NGR-1, an extremely tall, angular female who appears to be in charge. Dole-R-USS-1, thickly built with thick red hair and a matching beard. Dole has a yellow stripe across his uniform, indicating that he is a registered mutant. Dole currently has Sev-R-USS-1 pinned to the ground and is disarming him. The last clone is a very quiet woman, Ripp-R-JAK-1. She seems to be on alert and waiting.

All of them hear Enn’s announcement.


COMING THUNDER

Enn…

Enn hunkers down to see how well that works..........then whips out his POD to play Commie Blast. He can hear the door rattling, and there is faint shouting from the other side, but no one is coming in. Within a couple minutes, Enn thinks he may be on his way to a personal high score.

Sync…

Frustrated, Sync opens a nearby service panel and begins looking for clues as to what might be going on. All the indicator LEDs on the panel are GREEN (which is a good thing), except for the lighting. She connects her POD to the panel to try to make a diagnosis with her limited skills. Unfortunately, most things are unavailable at YELLOW clearance or lower, but she can see that there should be bulbs mounted every 10 meters along the center of this traffic corridor to provide lighting for the entire area. Somehow, all lightbulbs in this immediate stretch are in a failed state.

There is shouting from the darkness inside, some of it excited, some argumentative. Sync gets the sense that it is related to Enn’s announcement. Soon, there are footsteps and lights coming from the darkness and approaching the open doorway where Sync stands. At least one of the lights is something much larger than Sync’s POD light, and it is shining directly at her face as whatever or whoever it is approaches, effectively blinding her when she tries to look that way.

Didjab…

Finding himself alone, Didjab scrambles a few more meters down the conduit, leaving Nattied's corpse propped up and facing the way he came. In relative peace and safety for a few minutes, he summons his reserves and sets his right hand glowing, bright enough that the text of the books should be readable.

At random, he pulls one out and reads a page or two, just to know what kind of contraband Nattied was carrying. The first appears to be someone’s attempt at journaling. The clone must be of high clearance, because he or she has a single-occupancy dwelling, and is obsessed with finding areas of his/her apartment that are not monitored in order to do things that aren’t approved of. The language is strange, and the technology seems antiquated. The narrator talks constantly of the Computer as Big Brother. Clearly treasonous material. The second book tells of a clone who is part of an elite unit that destroys dangerous information. That one uses the same bizarre phrasing as the first, but at least it seems less directly treasonous. Didjab opens the third to a random page which is instructional and explains how to make plastic explosives in a kitchen. Definitely treasonous. Didjab packs them away and squelches his mutant lighting.

Didjab thinks: Enn is causing a riot. There are going to be thousands of clones there any minute. It may be time to deal with that treachery.

Didjab double checks his POD, trying to see if he can use this conduit to wind up somewhere near the back of the PLC. Sure enough, if he drops down about a meter and a half to a larger vent shaft, he thinks he can comfortably crawl his way to an employee restroom inside PLC. Didjab immediately begins making his way there.

Cue & Preach…

"They're handing out free vouchers?" Cue wonders aloud. She reorients herself. "This is all so exciting, crawling through the serviceway!" She pauses for a moment. "I had no idea there were so many traitors. I have to admit, I'm a little confused about it all." She smiles again. "But it is just so exciting!"

Preach crawls along faster. "This could get nasty," he says to Cue. "A lot of holes in PLC, and a lot of problems are buried in those holes. But you gotta do it right. I mean, you gotta have the hole already dug before you show up with a package in the trunk. Otherwise, you're talking about a half-hour to forty-five minutes worth of digging. And who knows who's gonna come along in that time? Pretty soon, you gotta dig a few more holes. You could be there all fuckin' night."

Outside, there is a humming noise coming through the walls that keeps getting louder. It’s vague, but eventually Cue recognizes it and her face lights up: “It’s clones! I bet they’re all trying to beat us to PLC to get those vouchers.”

Corridor…

“W-will do,” Ripp responds to Power’s request. When Power glances at Ripp, her face has a determined look as she keeps her eyes towards the corner.

Hands up, Soup waves with only her wrist, trying to get the other side's attention. "Dears, that sounds like a Jim dandy idea. How about me and one of you good people run and snag the cards and have a royal shindig! Oh golly, I'll have to wear my good sweater!" She stands waiting for a response, clearly eager to approach.

Dole hisses, “Power, Soup is with THEM! They called out to her! Give me a minute to deal with Sev before you engage.” Dole uses his truncheon on Sev one time, rendering the greasy clone unconscious, then re-arms with both pistols and trains them both on Soup.

"Computer is proud of us my ass" Power thinks, "the ones in charge up there must be trying to lure everyone away with a promise like that, but I'm not falling for their shit." Although, she can't help but notice her stomach rumbling at the mention of rations. "I wonder if have an energy bar in my pack somewhere" she thinks absently.

Power glances at Dole to see that he does indeed have her back, and walks towards Soup, her hands out in what she hopes is a peaceful posture. "We're listening" she says, her tone cautious, but not friendly.

As Soup and Power face off and slowly approach each other, then are distracted by the sudden appearance of several clones from the intersection. These are new citizens, not the troubleshooters who ducked out there just moments before. Instead there are five clones running at breakneck speed towards them. Two of them are infrared drones in black uniforms, two are ORANGE, and one is RED. None of them appear to be together. In fact, it is almost as if they are in a race. There is a growing rumbling noise behind them, and as everyone looks up at them, another three RED clones appear from around the corner behind them, also running.


THIN BLUE LINE

Enn…

Sure enough, Enn decimates his original high score, but now doesn't know what to do with his life. After a while he starts to feel so BORED and can't help but feel curious.

Fuck it.

Enn is gonna pop his head out to see all the shit going down. Who knows? Maybe he'll see some asshole robot getting torn apart.

Enn reaches for the door handle just in time for it to be blown off its hinges. The sound is deafening, and leaves Enn with a ringing in his ears as the buckled steel door slams into him, knocks him to the floor and then continues flying over his head to embed itself in a terminal screen on the other side of the room.

Unable to catch his breath, Enn gasps for air and tries to protect his head and face as he looks up to see what’s coming. In the little vestibule is a BLUE crowd-control bot. It is covered in IntSec (Internal Security) markings and has its pneumatic battering ram extended. It retracts the ram and swings two wide-barreled gun arms up as it rolls into the control room. Behind it are the crushed bodies of Water and Snoo (presumably with Sync-1’s corpse still beneath them). Cables suddenly drop down into the vestibule and two BLUE IntSec trooper clones in full riot gear slide down the cables to land neatly behind the advancing bot.

Enn wonders why no one is talking, giving him some sort of warning. And then he remembers that he can’t hear anything over this damnable ringing.

Sync…

Sync shields her eyes and says, "Hail and well met, fellow citizen!" She winks at the person holding the light, "Identify yourself, please!" Her sly smile shows that she's only joking. She pulls a lightbulb from her pocket and holds it up. "Looking for these?"

The first two clones to emerge from the darkness are black-clad infrareds. They are not carrying lights. With no respect for clearance, they bowl through Sync as if she isn’t even there are start running down the hall. Sync begins pinwheeling her arms, not wanting to fall on her ass, but also not wanting to lose the light bulb in her right hand or the POD in her left.

Staggering back, she finally plants a foot solidly under her and regains her balance, just as a third infrared bumps her from behind. Apparently this one was coming from somewhere else, but darts off in the same direction as the other two.

A voice from behind that blinding light shouts, “Clear a path!” and a tall YELLOW clone comes through, carrying a huge floodlight style flashlight in both hands. She yells, “Everyone return to your posts! That’s an order!” while throwing the giant flashlight to Sync and bolting in the same direction as the other clones. No one else has given any indication of obeying her order.

The flashlight bounces off Sync’s chest, and she tries to wrap her arms around it without dropping her stuff, but it is too heavy and slips to the floor. The light goes out when it hits.

The sound of footsteps and shouting from all directions just increases. Sync fears she is in danger of being trampled.

Near PLC…

Ripp says, loud enough for those close to her to hear: “Crap, how many fucking clones does it take to change to damn lightbulb?!” She continues to crouch behind the crate with the small bot, pistol aimed towards the corner and the newcomers, waiting to see how Dole and Power choose to respond.

A clone delivery pod comes shooting along the wall past all of the clones like a runaway phonebooth. It stops right next to Soup’s empty clone delivery unit, and Nattied-R-EDD-2 steps out, looking very confused.

Dole steps up to get between Power and the oncoming mob, totally ignoring Soup. He turns his attention and pistols on the three RED clones that just joined the running hordes. He yells, “Hostiles incoming! Power, Ripp, take cover!”, as he unleashes volley after volley of laser-fire into the last 3 approaching RED clones, preparing himself for another fight for his life.

Either Dole is a better shot than he looks, or he gets amazingly lucky, as he drops the first two RED clones with spectacular headshots—one blast each. Then after a couple wild shots, he catches the third RED clone with a shot to the hand and one to the stomach. This one isn’t wearing any sort of protection, and he doubles over and falls to the ground, wailing in pain.

At this point, the oncoming clones are beginning to pass the group on their way to PLC, angling around them so as to not run anyone over at this point. As the closest RED clone (Merd-R-ERR-3, apparently) passes, Dole attempts to club her with one of the pistols and ends up clotheslining her. Merd-R stumbles and trips, glaring fearfully at Dole as she attempts to regain her feet.

More clones emerge from all directions at the intersection. There are now dozens in sight, all thundering this way.

Dole feels rage and apprehension boiling up inside him as he strives to maintain control of his red rage, his greatest fear is that his new-found “pack” will be harmed. He now finds himself on the horns of a dilemma. He is sure that the “giveaway” is a plot by others to flush them out of the hallway, but what can he do? What can he do in the face of such odds. Even as he is firing his laser pistol he knows it is not enough. More will come and his “pack” will be destroyed if he doesn’t act. Without his PAD he has no means of communicating with the Death Leopards to call in a strike, so he goes once again to the dark place in his soul. The place where all the pain and suffering lives. Where there is only rage left to him. Dole wills himself to transform out of fear…out of the feeling of helplessness…this is all he can do. Must do. The change is coming. Nothing can stop it now.

Behind the team, someone using a megaphone shouts, “All citizens disperse immediately! This area is under lockdown! Everyone please return to quarters until further notice!”

Anyone bothering to look that way will see two rows of BLUE IntSec (Internal Security) officers in full riot gear filling the width of the corridor and blocking access to PLC.

Inside PLC, Preach & Cue…

Preach consults his POD and then stops. “Right here,” he says, pointing to what looks like a short dead-end hallway. Cue follows him as he pushes on the wall and opens a small access panel. He cracks it open just enough to try to peer out. The noise from the other side is deafening.

At the same time, Didjab reaches his destination. There is an access panel above him, and his cracks it open to peer out as best as he can manage. The noise from the other side is deafening.

From their respective hidey-holes, Preach, Cue and Didjab all see and hear the following:

Someone shouts, “It IS fucking locked!” as someone else cries out, “Wait! None of us have masks!” and someone with a megaphone orders, “Remember to start with the legs! Immobilization and intimidation!”

From what they can see, it seems Cue, Preach and Didjab have all come out INSIDE PLC. Behind the counter. Fortunately, everyone’s focus seems to be facing away from them towards the public portion of the office. YELLOW and ORANGE clones (presumably PLC staff) cower beneath furniture, while a well-polished cadre of BLUE IntSec (Internal Security) officers in full riot gear prepare to storm the door.

Didjab does not yet notice the other two, and vice versa.

[Mike]

Chapter 9 – The Wolfening


HOWLING MAD

Enn…

Enn's not taking any chances. He scrambles backwards and digs for his super special secret remote control. He produces it in shaking hands as the crowd-control bot advances on him. He can see that the BLUE officers are shouting at him, because their lips are moving below their mirrored visors. Unfortunately for Enn, all he hears is ringing. Enn manages to turn his remote the right way, and with it pointed at the bot, he presses the “program” button while praying to every circuit board he can think of that this thing accepts remote commands.

The BLUE clones seem quite concerned about Enn’s mystery device, and now both have unfamiliar pistols aimed at his face as they (presumably) shout further orders. As a stalling tactic, Enn puts his hands up (without dropping the remote) and continues to back away, until his back is pressed to a console next to the broken door that got blasted across the room.

Finally the blinking red light on his remote goes to a solid green, and Enn jams the “On/Off” button. The bot stops mere centimeters away, and every light on it goes out at once. Finally able to catch his breath, Enn leans around the disabled bot and inhales deeply. He then holds his breath, so as to build up as much of his noxious gas as possible in order and then release it in one massive concentrated cloud. It will be the BIFF TO END ALL BIFFS of noxious gas!

The BLUE clones both fire, one slightly after the other. Fine wires trail behind the darts that are now rushing at Enn’s face. Enn notes that time seems to have slowed down. He feels his lips parting as the poison cloud rushes from him and sees the gleam of the darts and the sine-wave undulations of the hair-thin wires behind them. He sees the confluence of events and in a detached way is intensely curious about what will happen next, while at the same time recognizing that this may be the last thing he ever sees. (SPOILER: It’s not.)

Enn feels the electricity coursing through him as his breath ignites and huge gouts of blue-white flame roll out from his face. Unable to control his muscles, he is helpless to stop the flames from crawling back and igniting whatever foul organ in him generates the gas in the first place. His only solace is that the REAL last thing he ever sees is the two SWAT cops throwing their weapons aside and futilely trying to put out the flames that have now engulfed them. Just before his chest explodes, Enn wishes his ears weren’t ringing so he could at least hear the bastards scream.

Sync…

Sync drops her POD and grabs down for the flashlight, dodging footsteps all around her. Her voice pitched low for dramatic effect, she flips the flashlight back on and nothing happens. She flicks the switch twice more, and the light comes on. It flickers once, but then seems steady. Sync shouts, "Let there... BE LIGHT!" She holds the flashlight under her chin, spotlighting her breathtakingly beautiful features. She commands, "CEASE MOVEMENT IMMEDIATELY! For your safety and the safety of the citizens around you-- CEASE MOVEMENT!"

Nobody appears to be listening. After another three or four miscellaneous clones emerge from the darkened junction, that area appears to be quiet. Out in the corridor, though, there is an increasing number of clones coming from who knows where and running past Sync on the way to PLC. Most of them are infrared or RED, but there are a few ORANGE ones in the mob as well. Frustrated, Sync carefully retrieves her POD and steps into the doorway to get out of the ever-increasing flow of clones.

Sync trains her light on the ceiling inside the junction and can see where the light bulb is out. Not just out, in fact, but shattered. Jagged remains of the bulb still sticking out of the socket. There are two tiny spider-bots on the ceiling near the broken bulb. Each one of them is holding the stem of a broken bulb in their little claw hands. Neither of the bots is moving. At least, Sync thinks they’re tiny. The ceiling is at least seven or eight meters up over the center of the throughway, which is at least a dozen meters from here. Even holding the broken bulbs for scale, Sync is having a hard time judging size and distance in the restricted beam of the spotlight.

Over the buzz of the moving crowd behind her, a voice says, “We’re gonna need that light.” Sync turns enough to see that two RED clones in troubleshooter gear are behind her, silhouetted in the doorway. The short, dark one with the big eyes (Pow-R-PUF-2, according to her badge) awkwardly holds a laser pistol aimed in Sync’s general direction. The other one (Kay-R-ESS-2) is presumably the one who spoke. He is tall and thin, with a glassy, non-descript look and does not have a weapon in hand.

Outside PLC…

Power breaks eye contract with Soup and looks halfway over her shoulder. "Sounds good, friend, you head that way, we'll be right behind you in a minute"

Soup dodges past the crowd runs back around the corner, where he team was last seen. Her shouts are barely audible over the crowd: "We are all friends now! Let's talk to them!"

Soup manages to get to the corner to see that no one from her team is still there.

Confused and fearful, Nattied-2 freezes and refuses to step out of his clone delivery unit.

"Looks like several someones think they're getting free food," Power thinks to herself "this might be our chance."

Ripp holds steady against the onrush, keeping the team’s little bot close to her and sheltered by the equipment crate.

"Glad we're on his side." Power says to Ripp, eyeing Dole with a mixture of horror and awe at his prowess.

She huddles down beside Ripp to wait out the chaos and hopefully not be shot or trampled.

Behind them, the line of BLUE IntSec officers is holding firm against the first wave of eager clones. The truncheons are out and shields are up, and after a couple skulls get bashed in, a seething standoff develops. As the crowd grows, it is clearly only a matter of time.

Then the strangest thing happens. Dole suddenly… expands. His already copious hair begins to grow and thicken, red hair covering his face and even his hands as his body hunches over and gets bigger. Like logic-defying bigger. His muscles visibly expand, straining against his coveralls until, in a sudden burst, his entire uniform shreds and falls away from his growing form in tatters. Now he is easily over two meters tall—taller than Power, even—and his entire naked form is covered with thick red hair from head to toe. His eyes are a glowing golden color, and his face has elongated, with large pointed ears rising above his furry face.

The crowd of clones around Dole starts to take notice, and there is obvious hesitation as they move to the walls and work to avoid this mass of hair and muscle and claws that has suddenly risen up in their midst. Dole snarls, and when his elongated jaws open, they reveal a set of impossibly large and sharp teeth.

And then the monster sets to work. The Dole-thing begins grabbing at any clones that pass too near. The lucky ones are shredded instantly by the large black claws. The unlucky ones are dragged screaming to Dole’s maw which tears out ragged chunks of clone-flesh like a hot fork running through a frozen butter-soy cone.

All of this takes a matter of mere seconds, and now Dole is whirling around in a circle of corpses, eviscerating victim after victim before anyone has a chance to absorb the horror. The line of BLUE clones in their riot gear now seem visibly shaken, and the anxious clones facing off with them are no longer willing to wait. There is much clubbing and shouting as citizens desperately try to break through the thin BLUE line to escape the whirling RED horror. The faint and familiar peppery smell of capsaicin spray slowly wafts over the area.

The thing that was once Dole becomes even more bestial and is tearing through the crowd on all fours now.

[NOTE: Yes, Dole appears to be transforming into a giant vicious red wolf. Having no knowledge of the world outside of Alpha Complex, no one here has any clue what a wolf is, much less a werewolf. There’s simply no context for it, thus making this doubly terrifying. Just in case it wasn’t intense enough.]

Inside PLC…

Cue catches up to Preach and gets a glimpse of the higher clearance clones in the back area of PLC. "I bet that's a massive amount of clones! I'd like to see all of them trying to snatch up those vouchers!"

Preach pees himself, just a little, and backs up from the panel to let Cue take a better look. "Looks like a lot of commie mutant traitors are about to get their due. Are you ready for a little wetwork, Cue?"

Didjab is surprised and intrigued by the scene before him, "Oh malfunctioning creche-vats," he mumbles to himself. "This is not the place to be." Didjab sees open shelves behind the PLC employees containing many common loose items as well as stacks of boxes already bundled up for particular missions. There is screaming from outside—from the other side of the counter—and while everyone in PLC is distracted, Didjab sneaks out of his hidey-hole and begins lifting items from the shelves. There are basic hand tools, a box of light bulbs (SCORE!), a handful of YELLOW laser barrels. Didjab scans other shelves to see what might be useful.

From their spot, Cue and Preach watch Didjab suddenly climb up out of a floor vent while everyone else is distracted. They watch him peruse the PLC shelves and occasionally take an item or a box.

Suddenly, there is a wave of horrified screaming coming from outside the PLC entrance. The employees all jockey for position trying to get a good view. The BLUE IntSec agents puff up with importance. “Yeah, looks like it’s showtime!” But then a BLUE trooper from outside comes scrambling in through the entrance and flings herself against the window, her shattered visor hanging awkwardly from her helmet. “Holy fuck! Lock it down!” she screams, “For the love of processing… LOCK DOWN NOW!”

In a panic, Didjab turns around to look at his floor vent, clearly considering bailing out now. That’s when he notices the open access panel, with Cue peeking out at him, and a form behind her that Didjab assumes is Preach. Cue and Didjab lock eyes.

[For reference, I've attached a very loose floorplan of what you can see from your angle, to explain where everyone is. The edges of the room are uncertain, so you're not entirely sure how far back it all goes. The PLC employees and IntSec agents are mostly all gathered near the front window.]



Didjab feels a spike of panic. One wrong move, one errant shout or laser blast and everything goes wrong for the team and the mission.

With a meaningful glance towards the otherwise distracted clones at the window, Didjab gestures for silence, holding one shaky finger in front of his lips and quickly, quietly, makes his way toward Cue. He displays the handful of YELLOW laser barrels he just acquired and some hand tools as well, holding them in front of him as if he plans to share. Once he’s close enough, he whispers, "We have to get out of here. I have what we need to get the mission completed."

If anyone else has noticed the RED clone whispering to an open access panel, they give no indication.


KNOCK KNOCK, WHO’S THERE, PANDA MOAN

Sync…

Sync shouts, "Catch!" and throws the lightbulb straight up in the air. She then pulls out her laser pistol and points it at Pow. Then, barely looking, Sync puts her other hand back out (with the large flashlight still in it) and… almost catches the lightbulb on its way back down. It bounces off her fingers and shoots sideways. Sync lurches awkwardly and grabs out for it, dropping the flashlight in the process. She bobbles the bulb for a second, and then amazingly… gets a grip on it. The whole time, her aim on Pow barely wavers.

Acting as if that was all part of the plan, Sync shakes her head and tsk-tsks at the two clones. "Well, now I've got the lightbulb AND the draw on you. Why don't we just work together, you two."

Pow raises her hands (one of them still holding the pistol) and looks nervous.

The guy behind her, Kay, looks amused, “Whoa! Good save!” With slow, deliberate movement, Kay points at the flashlight on the ground (which is still on) and says, “Um… we just need the flashlight. We can’t see dick in there.”

Outside PLC…

“Oh shit,” says Ripp to Power. “H-he changed like that b-b-b-before, when w-w-we were in the r-r-restroom, b-b-but he r-remained aware of who h-h-he w-w-was, and who I w-w-was, and d-d-didn’t t-t-try to hurt m-me. B-but h-he s-seems much farther g-g-gone this t-t-time. K-keep an eye on h-him, b-but d-don’t shoot unless he g-gets very c-close. T-try to g-give him a ch-chance to r-recognize us f-first and st-stop. L-let the B-BLUEs t-take c-care of h-him.” And then Ripp continues to crouch down with the bot behind the crate, weapon and eyes training back and forth between the corner where Soup and the other team went, the-thing-that-was-Dole, and the BLUE IntSec officers. Power hears her mutter under her breath, “It was a simple j-job, change d-damn l-light b-bulb. W-why did it have to b-become so c-complicated?”

To herself, Ripp thinks: it would be easy to run over to the IntSec officers, show them my orders, and get rid of this damn contraband POD. But with what’s going on around here right now, they’re jumpy and would probably shoot me, or accuse me of owning the contraband POD and arrest me. Better to try to tough this out and turn it in during post-mission debriefing… if I survive that long.

Ripp and Power are nearly laying on the floor behind the equipment crate. The bot is still with them. Sev is presumably trampled to death at this point. If anyone wanted to count bodies, there are somewhere between 10 and 40 dead clones out there now, and any number of injured dragging themselves away as best they can.

Nattied finally gets up the nerve to leave his clone delivery unit and makes a quick dash and dive towards the equipment crate and finds himself down on the floor next to Ripp and Power. “I think it’s time to get out of here. You two need to grab the crate. I’ll look for an opening.”

"EEEEeekkkk," with both hands over her mouth, Soup runs away from Dole as fast as she can. Dole immediately gives chase, casually lashing out at other clones he passes as the crowd continues to get thicker. Somewhere down these halls are still more clones rushing towards PLC to claim their prize, oblivious to the horror waiting for them, even in spite of the screams.

Dole has singled out Soup however, and she can hear the snarls getting closer, when out of nowhere, another clone delivery unit comes plowing through the crowd and passes between Soup and Dole, causing the monster to lose its focus and whirl around frantically, snapping at anyone and everyone available.

Soup is around a corner now, and then around another corner, running as hard as she can as she is carried along with other fleeing citizens, all battering their way through the naïve ones still seeking to head into the madness.

A new clone delivery unit pushes through the crowd, passing by Power and Ripp and finally stopping right in front of the BLUE security forces blocking PLC. It opens, revealing an unfamiliar, but extremely confused new RED clone.

Enn-R-GEE-2’s ride in the clone delivery unit (a phone booth sized unit that is supposed to drop him close to his team… wherever that is) is a bumpy one. As the unit takes various twists and turns on its way to its destination, Enn can hear a mob of people outside yelling angrily and/or excitedly. And then the yells turn to frightened and pained screams of horror, and the delivery unit jolts a couple of times as it bumps into things. But finally, it comes to rest and the door opens, letting Enn-2 take in his surroundings:

Enn recognizes immediately that he is in the corridor just outside of PLC (Production, Logistics and Commissary… Alpha Complex’s version of WalMart). It is a familiar location, but any sense of normalcy fled long before Enn got here. First off, the doors are blocked, and there is a line of BLUE Internal Security clones in full riot gear with shields up forming a blockade to keep clones out of PLC. And there is a huge and panicky crowd looking to get in. Enn is in the midst of 40 or 50 scared clones who look ready to take on the cops at any second. In fact, a couple have already tried it and are getting clubbed right now. Note that the BLUE clones are looking quite nervous as well, something that never happens.

As Enn looks out over the crowd (staying in the doorway of his delivery unit puts him about 20 centimeters above the floor), and sees that there is a clearing in the crowd about 20 meters or so down the hall. As panicked clones scatter in all directions, there is a wide open circle surrounding a huge, snarling, hairy beast of some sort. [To save on description, I’ll tell you that the beast is a giant, red wolf. Giant, like a couple meters at the shoulder, with equally massive teeth and claws. Clones typically know nothing about anything outside of Alpha Complex, so you have no concept of what a wolf is, but you know that it’s frightening.] The beast is surrounded by at least a couple dozen mutilated corpses, and blood drips from its claws and maw. Last thing Enn remembers is BLUE clones storming the control room, and now he finds himself dumped into the heart of chaos.

And this is when the line breaks. The BLUE riot control officers guarding the entrance to PLC completely break. About half of them turn and flee along with the crowd, busting open the doors to PLC and forcing their way in. The other half come charging forward, screaming incomprehensible battle cries as they converge on the Dole-monster. A few of them still make attempts at crowd control, and one manages to fall on top of Power. She presses Power into the floor with her shield while screaming, “Stop resisting! Stop resisting!” over and over at the top of her lungs. Power, for the record, has yet to resist.

Dole is beset on all sides by BLUE-clad riot cops. They try to corral him and pin him down with their shields while clubbing futilely with their truncheons. Dole finds himself pushed to a wall. He manages to bite off a forearm that gets too close, but is finding it difficult to get purchase here.

Inside PLC…

On the other side of the PLC window, out in the public lobby, the main PLC doors burst open, and a crowd of screaming, panicky clones pushes their way in. They quickly fill up the lobby, and there are clones now pressed up against the glass as even more people try to push their way in. The PLC employees look nervous about the integrity of the glass, and the BLUE officers all stand with weapons ready in case something goes even more wrong here.

Cue opens the access door a little more and reaches out to Didjab. “Hurry!” she hisses. The door is actually about a meter up in the wall, but with Cue’s help, Didjab easily climbs up to join them.

Didjab pulls the door shut behind him, and now the three of them are working by the light from Preach’s flashlight app on his POD. Didjab shares the YELLOW laser barrels and the hand tools with his teammates and mentions, “I also have a box of light bulbs for our mission.” [I’m not going to list the individual tools, but later, if you want any particular basic tool—hammer, screwdriver, pliers, handsaw, whatever—just ask and there’s a fair chance that you will have one.] Each of them gets four laser barrels.

Didjab says, "We have to get out of here. If IntSec fails, they'll lock down the sector."

Before the team can shuffle even a meter back down this bot tunnel, the access door into PLC flings open. There’s a YELLOW PLC employee on the other side who points at the trio triumphantly and shouts back over his shoulder, “They’re coming in this way! We’ve been breached!”


THE BLUES

Soup…

Soup sees a side passage to break off from the group. She ducks in while increasing her weight to two times gravity to gain some inertia and prevent being carried away again. She slows down and moves to the side passage. Soup pulls out her pistol and tries to determine where she is.

Here… it turns out… is a short hallway leading to a set of offices. The passage dead ends on a door that is labelled, “2100-G Laundry Claims”. The door is black, and light appears to be coming from under the door. However, there is a sign on it that says, “Sorry! We had to step out. Someone will return in __ __ minutes. Please wait here.” There is a smiley face under it, and the blank spaces are actually made of wipe-off material so that someone could fill in a number of minutes. In this case, no one has filled them in.

Soup knows her way back to PLC from here, and checking the map that Didjab emailed to her, she sees that if she can cut through this crowd, she could easily find her way wherever she needs (dorms, vending machines, briefing rooms, etc). There is a pushpin symbol on Didjab’s map marking the location of the junction they need to get to for their mission. It’s maybe a 5 minute walk from here.

The scene of horrifying carnage…

Ripp taps Nattied on the shoulder, nods towards Power, and tells him, "Help P-power out." Without waiting for a response, Ripp moves towards the end of the crate away from Power, moving Nattied between herself and Power.

Ripp then turns her back on Nattied and Power, reaches into her inside pocket, and pulls out the contraband POD. Keeping it wrapped in socks so it's not too obvious its contraband, she'll hack into it and see what is on it, and if there's anything that she can use to help get out of the current situation. To her surprise, it is not password protected in any way. It carries no identification, and a cursory test query of staff in her original training unit starts revealing info that is clearly way above her clearance. Names, known treason, suspected mutant powers, links to their personal communications… even more. By instinct, Ripp immediately tucks it back into the sock and covers it up. Holy shit.

Nattied notices that Ripp is working on a POD that she has inside a sock for some reason. He suspects that this might be the contraband he is looking for, but his attention is pulled away from Ripp as the BLUE clone on top of Power starts wildly swinging a club around, nearly catching Nattied in the face on the backswing.

Power had been right in the middle of trying to tell Nattied, “No,” and set him straight when the SWAT cop fell on her. With the heavy shielded BLUE bastard on top of her, Power grunts in pain and tries to wriggle free without drawing gun fire. "I'm not resisting, I swear, I just can't breathe!" She gasps out! "Let me go!"

The BLUE officer shouts, “This one’s resisting! I need backup!” And swings her truncheon ineffectually. She clubs weakly at Power but can’t get any leverage trying to swing under her own shield.

Power is cranking up her speed (and reactions) to maneuver as well as she can from this position and ensure that the blows do no real damage.

The BLUE cop changes tactics and pulls out a small spray can. “I warned you, citizen!” And twists the shield sideways enough to expose Power’s face. And then spray it.

With her speed cranked all the way up, Power watches the spray can come towards her eyes in slow motion. She uses the movement of the shield to free one arm, which she brings up to block the spray.

Somehow, Power manages to jam the palm of her hand onto the spray just as the BLUE clone presses the button. A wet mist of capsaicin spray forms a cloud between them as streams of it spray out in all directions. Power still gets a face full of burning liquid, but so does the BLUE clone. Both women scream in unison as their eyes start burning. The pain is more intense than Power had ever dreamed. Even though she had plenty of time in her amped state to squeeze her eyes shut before it hit, somehow closed eyes were no defense. The BLUE clone rolls off of her, clutching her eyes and dropping her spray can, riot shield, and truncheon in the process.

Power is technically free again, but she can barely stand to open her eyes, and when she does, everything is blurry.

Nattied gets enough of the mist to feel his eyes burn a little, and everything goes a little blurry and watery, but it’s not debilitating at this point.

"Waaaas a giant furry monster teeth thing part of the plan?" Enn thinks to himself. He glances around to find a familiar face but doesn't recognize anybody. Enn sees an opportunity to mix with the crowd and allow himself to reconvene with the team, but he also hates BLUEs and their ass-kissing ways. Is it finally time for him to do something unselfish and help this huge fangy creature take down the BLUEs?

Enn narrows his eyes at the BLUEs pinning down the beast, fists shaking. He screams and dashes ahead... Right into PLC. "Fuck this shit dude, I ain't getting my forearm bit off or my face clubbed inside out." Enn has also been breathing pretty heavily, so he’s sure he’s releasing plenty of his special gas, but if anyone else has noticed it in these cramped quarters, it’s hard to distinguish them from the expressions of abject fear.

There is the sound of gunshots. It is loud and startling, even over the current din. No laser fire, mind you, but an actual slugthrower of some sort has been discharged. Five times. If anyone is looking in that direction, the pile of BLUE riot officers scatters, and the Dole-beast rears up on its hind legs, now with several large holes in its torso. It spins around as if frantically searching for something, blood and spittle flying from its enormous fangs. And then suddenly it shrinks back into Dole. Dole, looking very naked and very vulnerable, and now with five gaping chest and gut wounds. Dole collapses, because he is clearly dead before his transformation is even complete.

PLC lobby…

Inside PLC is a nightmare. Enn is in the lobby area which is huge, and normally there’s a dozen or so service windows available where citizens order and pick up materials. But right now, all of the windows say, “Closed. Next window please.” From the counter back almost to the doors, clones are packed in tight. It’s probably 25 or more people deep to get to the windows. Through the windows, Enn can see another line of BLUE clones waiting anxiously with various YELLOW and ORANGE PLC employees milling behind them. The din in here is terrible as the people bang on the glass and yell. A few are demanding their free food vouchers, but most are just afraid, looking for a way to safety. Unfortunately for them, everything is locked tight. There is one side hall in here that leads to the restrooms, but there is no other exit to PLC unless someone breaks through the glass. More people are piling in behind Enn, and he’s starting to feel trapped.

In the walls of PLC…

In a split-second decision, Didjab lasers the PLC clone in the face. The clone staggers backwards, and Didjab puts a second blast into his face for good measure. Didjab turns to Cue and Preach and growls at them, "Go! I'll jam the door. The mission is what matters." On top of that, he gives the box of lightbulbs to Cue.

Cue takes the lightbulbs and instinctively backs up, forcing Preach back a little as well. Didjab then takes a screwdriver and hammer and hammers the screwdriver through the bottom lip of the metal door into the doorframe beneath it. He leans into the door a bit, clearly listening, while he works to switch out his spent laser barrel for a fresh YELLOW one.

[Mike]

Chapter 10 – Scrappy Dole


INTSEC NEVER FAILS

Sync…

Sync and Pow face off in silence, both women trying to think of what to say. While Pow stares down the barrel of Sync’s laser, a small furry four-legged duct-bot pounces on the giant flashlight on the ground. The duct-bot can’t weigh more than four or five kilos, making it a touch smaller than the flashlight itself, but it grabs on with two of its gripping appendages and begins dragging the flashlight towards Pow’s feet. Pow chuckles nervously, “Wow. That is so weird. Where did that bot come from? I can’t imagine what’s going on.”

Kay smiles down at the little duct-bot and then smiles as if he just had a revelation. "HEY! It's that little bot from earlier! Dude! I think he likes me." Kay then notices that Pow still looks very serious and Sync still has them at gunpoint, and so he adds, "So. Um. Like... can I help with something?"

Soup…

Soup enters Laundry Claims. She should be surprised that the door is unlocked when no one is available, but she’s not. Inside is a smallish waiting area, with rows of connected plastic chairs on two walls. Opposite the door, there is a service window that also has a largish opening next to it with a built in scale labeled “Drop offs: Clothing and linens only. All items must fit in basket. Scan ID. Form HPDMC-L/15 required.” On the final wall is a shelf with neatly folded and stacked linens on it. There is a stack of RED sheets and three stacks of black sheets. On the counter by the service window is a stack of about five clipboards. The window and drop-off opening are both open. There are no citizens here that Soup can see.

Soup quickly locks the door behind her and takes up a defensive position.

Near Dole’s corpse…

Ripp quickly stuff her sock-wrapped POD into an inside pocket of her coveralls.

Ripp grabs Power and lays her down on top of the crate. Turning to Nattied, she yells: “G-grab that end of the c-crate!” She grabs the other end of the crate and lifts, carrying both crate and Power, and begins heading down the corridor away from PLC, looking for a side corridor she can duck into to get out of the line of fire and tend to Power’s eyes.

Surprisingly, Nattied complies and grabs the other end of the crate. They follow the flow as best they can away from PLC, trending in the general direction of the junction they are supposed to be at for their mission. They finally find a short, unoccupied hallway to duck into. The hallway dead ends on a door that is labelled, “2100-G Laundry Claims”. The door is black, and light appears to be coming from under the door. However, there is a sign on it that says, “Sorry! We had to step out. Someone will return in __ __ minutes. Please wait here.” There is a smiley face under it, and the blank spaces are actually made of wipe-off material so that someone could fill in a number of minutes. In this case, no one has filled them in.

Power can open her eyes now, and everything around her eyes (including her eyes) is a bright RED to match her uniform, but she seems to be able to see. [Everything’s blurry, and the pain is still pretty incredible, but she can see, mostly.]

The team’s little bot is nowhere to be seen.

There is a very distinct clicking noise. Someone inside the Laundry Claims office either just locked or unlocked the door.

In the PLC lobby…

As Enn hesitates, there is a massive snap of breaking glass as a gigantic crack appears that runs the full 10 meter horizontal length of the partition window leading from the lobby to the back of PLC. The clones at the head of this push have almost no time to react as they are caught in a rain of glass sheets that Enn is sure had to take off more than few fingers if not worse.

Clones go scrambling over the counter and through the broken window in a flood of bodies as they all get caught up in the mob mentality and/or continue fleeing from the unreal horror they just witnessed in the hallway. BLUE troopers behind the counter are now firing into the mob, but whether or not they are using lethal force, Enn can’t tell from his position at the back of the lobby.

In the walls…

"We've got to move." Didjab sounds desperate. "There are dozens of IntSec Enforcers out there and Friend Computer only knows how many RED-level rioters beyond them."

He's listening for another moment before pulling his POD left-handed. He's trying to type at it with one thumb as he keeps his pistol trained on the door.

Cue turns to Preach. "I guess we better go!" Cue begins to move quickly.

But Preach doesn’t follow. “IntSec never fails, you pinko traitor!" Preach screams as he shoots Didjab in the back. "IntSec is always vigilant for insubordinate scum like you!" As he yells, he empties the entire barrel at him as Didjab attempts to curl into a ball to maximize his armor coverage and bring his own weapon to bear on his attacker. But it’s not enough, and Preach burns through the reflec in no time.

With Didjab not moving, Preach approaches the body. Cue shouts, “No way!” in disbelief and hesitates, unsure of whether to help or just keep running.

That decision is made when the small access door into PLC jerks open violently, the screwdriver pinning it in place pulling loose and bouncing around a couple times in the little accessway. There are two BLUE troopers on the other side.

“Shit!” Preach backs away quickly and shoves hard at Didjab’s corpse with his TK. Didjab flies out of the tunnel, hitting both officers in the chest and knocking them over.

“Quick run!” Preach yells as he works to catch up to Cue. Cue, however, needs no such encouragement. She’s already booking it. After rounding a couple corners, they don’t hear any pursuit. Cue and Preach pause, and Cue pulls out her POD to check Didjab’s map and see where they are. The pushpin marker for the junction they are supposed to be at for the mission is clearly labeled. Otherwise, they are still relatively close to PLC, and there are several out of the way places they could exit these service tunnels if they wished.

Preach screws a new YELLOW barrel on to his laser, turns to Cue and says, "We should hurry. If IntSec fails, they will lock down the entire sector."

Cue knows things are happening quickly, but she is positive that she just saw Didjab’s body launch itself out of the accessway back there with no one touching it.


FAMILIAR FACES

Laundry Claims…

Soup points her weapon at the door from her vantage point behind the desk. Whoever enters gets shot.

Power rubs her eyes, but it doesn't help much. "Thanks, Ripp, I'd be lost without you, I owe you. Nattied, thanks to you too. I'm not sure, my eyes....but Dole, I saw him go back but… then I think he went down...."

Ripp nods, “Y-yeah. D-d-dole’s gone.”

Power nods ruefully, "I'm feeling really tired just at the moment, cam we sit here and regroup for a few minutes? Then I guess we keep going to light bulb land."

Power doesn't want to talk about what happened with Dole, really, his transformation was horrifying and she can't reconcile that creature with the Dole she knew (however briefly) and was growing to trust.

Nodding to the Laundry Claims door, Power adds, “Sounds like someone IS in there."

Ripp says to Nattied, pointing towards the door in question: “Take P-power in there and w-wash out h-her eyes. I-I’m g-gonna g-go f-find the b-bot. D-damn thing d-didn’t follow us.”

Without waiting for a response again, Ripp turns away from the door and heads back to the main hallway. However, just as she gets to the corner, the little bots wobbles in on its one wheel and stops next to her ankles.

Nattied checks the door to Laundry Claims. He jiggles the knob. “It’s locked,” he reports. And then he knocks sharply on the door three times.

A clone delivery unit rolls up behind Ripp. When it opens, Dole-R-USS-2 steps out.

The Junction…

Sync holds out the lightbulb. "You can go install this."

Pow retrieves the flashlight from the vent-bot and on her way back up, she intentionally knocks the lightbulb from Sync’s hand. It hits the floor with a cracking noise. The bulb doesn’t appear broken, based on visual inspection, but it gives a hissing sound for about three seconds. “We don’t need THAT complicating the issue. Sorry, Toots.”

Kay seems to have forgotten that there are other people here. He has been digging through his pockets and finally comes up with something that he pops into his mouth and dry-swallows (some sort of pill, presumably).

In the walls…

Preach says, "It's all on us now, Cue. Let's get his mission complete and get back to HQ!" Preach tucks his pistol into a jacket pocket so that the YELLOW barrel isn’t immediately visible, obviously waiting for Cue to take the lead.

Cue finds an exit out of this service tunnel that comes out just outside the junction where they are supposed to change the light bulb. She leads Preach to it as quickly as possible. "Looks like we're close to completing this mission!"

Just as she is opening the door out of this place, Cue says, as if thinking out loud, "Sure was interesting how Didjab's body flew on its own. Wish I could have had a better look at that."

Cue steps out of the service tunnel, followed by Preach. They find themselves in a corridor near an open door. Cue says, “And that should be our destination right there,” and she points towards the door. Standing near the door is Sync-R-SWM-2. She is being held at gunpoint by two unfamiliar clones. A short dark woman named Pow-R-PUF-3 and a lanky, distracted looking man named Kay-R-ESS-3.

At which point a new clone delivery unit rolls up and opens to reveal Didjab-R-ING-3.

PLC…

"HOLY SHET" Enns watches in joyous awe as the establishment around him literally shatters. In the chaos, Enn will move from person to person, pretending to see if they need help, but he is actually looking for an injured BLUE with plans to claim their weapon as his own. He finds his mark pretty quickly, a dead officer rolled up under the counter and surrounded by broken glass. Enn gets an extra pistol with two BLUE laser barrels, plus a handful of grenades of some sort from her belt. (Smoke grenades? Stun? Tear gas? Who knows?)

There are several loud THUMP noises. Enn looks up to realize that a huge steel barrier has dropped down at the entrance, trapping them all in PLC. He figures out quickly that they are locking down the area.


PEW PEW

The Junction…

Preach murmurs to Cue, "I know. He must have been using a commie mutant power or something." Preach is pulling out his pistol.

Cue readies a yellow laser barrel. She's prepared to shoot these unfamiliar clones and get this mission done. But she's waiting to see what Preach and Didjab do.

Didjab takes no chances. He draws his own pistol and aims it at Pow's head. "Stand down!" he shouts. "My team has authority here!"

Sync pouts at Pow. "See? Now why would you knock that out of my hand? That's the Computer's property." She bats her long eyelashes at the others. "Someone should report her," and raises an eyebrow.

Sync gives the strongest mental blast she can at Pow, and thinks, "You little nanoshit. You know what I had to do to get that bulb?"

Pow staggers and brings her hands up. With the gun.

Sync can see that Pow’s eyes have filled with blood, and can read the expression that says Pow’s mind has turned to jelly.

Didjab shouts “GUN!”

Preach shouts, "Peek-a-boo, you fucks, you!"

Didjab, Preach, and Cue all unload on Pow-R-PUF and Kay-R-ESS. Preach and Cue do it with YELLOW laser barrels.

While shooting, Preach and Cue step up and Preach asks Sync: "Hey Sync. How's things? Staying out of trouble?"

Pow and Kay are done for in short order.

Now Didjab, Cue, Sync and Preach are assembled outside the junction where their light bulb changing mission is supposed to take place. Cue seems to have a box of light bulbs. The junction in question is through a doorway with darkness on the other side. Sync retrieves an oversized flood-style flashlight from Kay’s corpse.

Laundry Claims…

Soup thinks that holding up business would be a bad idea so she asks, "What is the nature of your business?" There is no answer, so she braces herself again, giving it a moment.

Ripp keeps looking between Dole and Nattied, watching for signs of trouble. While doing that, she’ll pull a few socks out of her pockets and hand them to Power. “H-here, t-try to cry and w-wipe your eyes w-with these. That should h-help l-lessen the p-pain until N-nattied can g-get us in there to w-wash out your eyes b-better.”

Power gratefully takes the socks. "I'll be ok Ripp, I just need a few minutes to regroup"

Power pulls herself up from the mission crate and approaches the new Dole clone.

“Well, that was one helluva ride” Dole says as he steps out of the delivery pod and looks around and asks “Umm, what happened? The last thing I remember is shooting at some Red clones we met in the hallway…”

Dole checks his equipment to make sure he has everything he’s supposed to. He then speaks to no one in particular “Did someone shoot me with bullets? I remember bullets… and blood.”

Power replies, “Yeah, we made it out, but it was a narrow thing.”

Dole asks, “Why are we at the laundry? I thought we had to change lightbulbs or something.

Dole is a lot more afraid of where his mutation might take him to and recalls everything clearly…or so he thinks, but he is trying to ascertain how much the others know about what happened. Dole is also checking out his new equipment to see if he has his U-Pad. He does not.

Nattied is frustrated with this. He takes a step back and then rushes the door with a swift kick. The lock is not a great one—it’s just an interior office door for laundry claims—and the door pops right open.

On the other side is Soup-R-MOM. She is hunkered down behind a desk for cover and has a pistol leveled at the doorway. She puts a shot directly between Nattied’s eyes, and he goes down [GM note: nat 20; 18 to confirm crit]. Soup takes two more shots at the rest of the group, but they are much farther away and the shots go high, hitting the ceiling above them. Power, Dole, and Ripp all instinctively duck out of Soup’s line of fire. Anyone who didn’t have a pistol ready before does now.

PLC…

Enn is sure, at this point, the entire crowd is very confused and probably...PARANOID! Enn leaps up onto the counter, cups his hands over his mouth and shouts, "HEY, WHAT IS GOING ON HERE? WE HEAR SOME CRAZY ANNOUNCEMENT OVER THE P.A. SYSTEM BY SOMEBODY WE CAN ONLY ASSUME IS VERY HANDSOME, THERE ARE APPARENT FURRY MONSTER-TEETH THINGS IN THE HALLWAY, AND NOW THEY'RE LOCKING US IN HERE WITHOUT SO MUCH AS A GOODNIGHT KISS? WE HAD BETTER START GETTING SOME ANSWERS QUICK OR ELSE WE MAY HAVE TO TAKE MATTERS INTO OUR OWN HANDS!"

He then quickly makes eye contact with as many people around him as possible, saying "Amirite?", "Can you believe these guys?", "How would they like it if this were done to them?", etc.

To his surprise, the rabble begin to rally around Enn. With much less random screaming in fear and much more focused rage, they turn on the PLC staff who are cowering behind the counter. Some of them, along with some of the BLUE security officers have fled to the back, but others remain, either because their way is blocked or because they are determined to make a stand against this mob.

It looks to be shaping into another stand-off, except that this is when the ceiling collapses over the lobby. There is much screaming and scattering again until everyone realizes it’s not the whole complex coming down, just the ceiling tiles. A squad of a couple dozen heavily armed, black-clad clones must have been sneaking through the suspended ceiling when someone made a wrong move and the whole thing sent them crashing down on the crowd below.

These ceiling ninjas stagger to their feet, nervously swinging their very heavy weapons around to keep everyone at bay. Their spokesninja begins screaming, “We are the Humanists, and we now control this entire sector! We have seized the means of production! All true human beings have two options: join us or perish! No longer will clones be subject to the machinations of the evil--.” And then he gets shot in the face by a BLUE laser rifle.

The barrage of laser fire from both sides that follows is truly stunning. Enn instinctively hits the floor and begins crawling out of the cross-fire. Someone steps on him. And then someone else. Enn is seriously worried about getting trampled, but also he can hear the hiss of gas being pumped in and by the taste in the air, he guesses it’s Cold Filloxin. If he’s right, everyone here without a gas mask (or Enn’s gas-proof lungs) will cough and choke themselves into a painful sleep inside of about 45 seconds.

Enn marvels at the whole situation: 17 seconds since his amazing speech, and somehow the whole situation has managed to go from complete shit to other complete shit. So typical.


UNLEASH THE BEAST

Laundry Claims…

Ripp yells to Power and Dole: “Shit! Open fire!” while Power simultaneously shouts, "Holy shit!, everyone keep as covered as possible, but take your best shots to take her OUT!"

"Can't we talk this out over a ...what did he say...root beer float," Soup yells as she changes a barrel and gets prepared to fire another shot.

Soup looks over her shoulder for another exit, but sees no entrance from this side that would take her behind the counter. Employees must have a separate entrance in the back.

Ripp crouches behind the crate and opens fire on Soup. Power, still off to the side, leans in so that the doorway provides her cover and also starts taking shots. Soup stays down behind the overturned desk, and Ripp and Power start blasting the desk itself. Shortly, the desk is smoking and parts of it are beginning to melt.

Dole has been standing there horrified. “That, that… that traitor!.” Dole howls as he prepares for an all-out assault. “Power, Ripp… you better get clear and try to block the cameras. There’s something I have to do and it might get messy around here. Just be ready to mop up if I don’t make it back.” Dole crouches and his muscles coil. His eyes burn yellow.

With a snarl, Dole charges the doorway, already his form is swelling and bulging. When he hits the doorway, he springs and in midair he transforms… And shrinks. Dole seems to disappear.

Wrapped up in a little ball, Dole’s uniform hits the ground about two meters in front of the desk where Soup is hiding, and a tiny ball of red fur tumbles out of it. Standing on all fours, the tiny creature snarls and yaps in Soup’s direction. It is clearly incredibly angry, but in the most adorable way.

[For reference, even though no one knows what this thing is… it’s a puppy. An angry, angry puppy. I’m picturing a red-furred Pomeranian, but it’s way more wolf-like than that.]

Dole’s Internal dialogue through all of this: It’s her, it’s her again. I told myself it was all my fault how everything went down before, but that was just self-doubt. My mind is clear. My path is clear. If I die in this action it is a good death. I will avenge… This is my prey, the one that has killed one of my pack. I killed that one too, but I had been wrong then. I am not wrong now. This is a righteous kill. It’s the least I can do for my pack and to avenge Nattied!... Hey! I’m tiny. [Dole is tiny and still full of rage, but he finds himself in complete control of his senses and of this new form.]

The Junction…

"Teamwork!" Didjab says in an overly optimistic voice, "Love it!"

Sync holds the flashlight up for Didjab and says "Here you go, boss." To Preach she shrugs and says, "Things are on the level, Preach. Can't complain. So who we gonna force out there?" She points to the darkness. "Maybe we wait until one of those boneheads get a clone delivery and we shove them out there with a bulb and a flashlight."

"Well, Sync, why don’t YOU turn on that light and illuminate the junction there," Didjab points with his left hand, keeping his gun safely pointed down and away from the rest of the team, "and then we can figure out what our next step is."

Preach just screws on a new YELLOW laser barrel and watches the exchange.

Cue’s ready to get this done. She steps up and takes the giant flashlight from Sync and switches it on. It flickers twice, but then lights up with an incredibly bright and steady beam. Cue steps through the doorway, shining the light around to figure out what’s going on. The other three stand behind her, staying in the corridor for the moment. Didjab and Preach manage to keep Sync between them.

Inside, this junction is actually a T-intersection of two major traffic arteries (at least according to the map). Foot traffic is generally not allowed in the inter-sector tunnels. However, there is no noise of traffic in the darkness… in fact, very little noise at all. The tunnel in front of them is roughly 25 or 30 meters wide and extends off to the left and right for (probably) many kilometers. Directly across from them should be Tunnel 30X-DOA, although in the beam from the flashlight, it is hard to determine at this distance. Filling the lanes directly in front of the doorway—maybe 8 or 10 meters out—is a multi-vehicle/multi-bot pileup. The occasional moan can be heard from there, but no living clones cross the light’s beam. Several small bots can be seen working on and around the wreckage.

When Cue trains the light at the ceiling on the assumption that that’s where the burnt bulb is, she easily locates the spot where the light bulb is out. Not just out, in fact, but shattered. Jagged remains of the bulb still sticking out of the socket. There are six tiny spider-bots on the ceiling near the broken bulb. Each one of them is holding the stem of a smaller broken bulb in their little claw hands. When the light hits them, three of the bots scatter out into the darkness along the ceiling, and the other three remain motionless. The ceiling is at least seven or eight meters up over the center of the throughway, which is at least a dozen meters from here, but judging size and distance in the restricted beam of the spotlight is difficult.

PLC…

The gas is starting to get to people, and Enn sees those who are up too high starting to get woozy and look nauseous. Enn needs to get back up and get everybody's attention. He knows he is better off with his fellow Humanists, and this rogue hero nonsense is just going to get him killed over and over again. Enn gets up, fires straight into the air while screaming for everybody to stop, and takes several BLUE laser blasts to the face as the remaining security officers are shouting things like, “GUN!” and “SHOTS FIRED!”

Enn is dead again.


OLD FRIEND

Laundry Claims…

Ripp keeps an eye towards Soup, but moves to block any cameras that may be in the shot.

Ripp yells to Soup, “It’s too l-late for t-talk! If y-you had t-talked instead of shooting, then w-we c-could have w-worked s-something out. N-now w-we c-can’t t-take any chances.” She keeps her gun aimed towards Soup and ready to fire, but does not fire yet.

A new clone delivery shows up, and Nattied-3 emerges. At this point everyone notices that the hectic traffic in the main corridor seems to have cleared up.

The Junction…

Sync walks up behind and to the right of Cue. She looks at the spider bots and back to Didjab. "Hey, leader-guy. Does anyone on your team have the ability to communicate with those bots up there? Maybe get them to take a bulb up and replace it?"

A new clone delivery unit shows up and Enn-R-GEE-3 emerges.


SCRAPPY DOLE

Laundry claims…

Ripp says to the Nattied-3, “Th-thanks for opening the d-door, N-nattied. G-get d-down by P-power and help t-take care of S-soup.” Then she turns and yells into the room, “Hurry up, D-dole! W-we n-need to g-get this l-lightbulb changed. And s-soon.”

Ripp stays relatively low and moves to check the main corridor now that it seems clear.

Power blinks several times at the tiny yapping beast. She's pretty sure it isn't the pepper spray. She nods sternly and keeps her weapon focused on the Soup.

As the new Nattied-clone approaches, she turns to him, figuring that Soup is under enough cover at the moment. "Nattied, don't say a word, just don't let that woman," she indicates Soups "get away from us and don't leave my sight or I'll have to shoot you." Power turns so she can see both Soup and the main hall with minimal effort in case any guards or other security show up, that they can protect the diminutive Dole-beast.

Scrappy-Dole, frustrated by the less than desirable turn of events yet still full of rage and fury continues his assault on Soup. He begins the attack with the song of his people which to everyone else sounds like a bunch of annoying howls and yelps, and then the adorable puffball darts around the table to begin the bloody onslaught.

Soup nimbly grabs the charging pup by the scruff of the neck and holds it gingerly in front of her with her laser pointed at it. She says sweetly, "I was just defending myself from your...friend? Tell you what: I leave in peace, you grab… this,” she grimaces slightly at Dole(?) and finishes, “it's all good. You try to get me, it dies, as do you...we good?”

Scrappy Dole snarls and flails, trying to bite Soup’s hand which is infuriatingly just out of reach.

Nattied is not paying attention to any of this. He steps past Ripp and Power and then stops. He bends down to look at his clone's corpse. He then stands with a look of crazy determination on his face. "Okay," he yells. "Who's the bad guy here?! Ripp or Soup." Without waiting for an answer, he pulls out his gun and with a quick glance at both of them, shoots at the one closest to him, which happens to be Ripp as she slouches towards the main corridor.

At the sound of her name, Ripp has just enough time to react as Nattied fires, she tries to twist and roll out of the way, but Nattied manages to catch her in the back, just below her left shoulder blade, almost under her arm. Ripp’s reflec armor absorbs the blast, but it burns through, and one of the socks inside her coveralls ignites (along with the coveralls).

Ripp barely has time to register this as she brings her pistol to bear and returns fire, but her shot is low, and actually hits the equipment crate, leaving a black scorched hole in the side of it. The fate of the crate’s contents is unknown, but there is no sound anything inside breaking at this point.

Nattied’s next shot sears Ripp’s hand. Her pistol drops to the floor, and her burnt hand looks like Mock-B-Q day in the cafeteria.

The Junction…

"I don't know Sync," Didjab replies. "We may have to do this the old-fashioned way." He turns to Preach, "Preach, you're on Hygiene. I need you to keep us a clear path to the socket. Cue, you’ve got Loyalty. You’ve already got the light. You keep alert for threats as we try to get access to the socket. Sync, QM. Hang on to the bulbs. The mission depends on them. Enn, History. Cover our backs. That other team is going to get here sooner or later."

Didjab adjusts his uniform dramatically, "I'm going out with Cue and Preach. One of us is going to have to get up there and fix this. Somehow."

With that, Didjab settles his headphones over his ears and heads in, moving out to Cue’s left, but still where he can take advantage of her lighting. “Preach, you take the right side.”

[GM NOTE: Enn’s super secret remote is with his new clone. GM call that cleanup bots gathered the previous clone's (#1's) possessions for delivery, but they're dumb bots--they gather indiscriminately without checking for contraband. The delivery never could find its way to clone #2, what with the riot and all. So instead, they're packed along with #3. I’m getting tired of losing good equipment every time someone dies. I need to come up with a better system for next game to make sure fun equipment travels from clone to clone.]

Enn says right away, “I’m on it, boss. No one’s creeping up OUR ass today!” And while everyone is focused on Didjab’s tactical jerk-off session, Enn casually gets his remote control out and aims it up where the spiderbots are hanging out. He holds down the program button, hoping he is getting one of them. Enn keeps glancing at everyone else to see if they notice, but no one’s paying attention to him. Finally, he gets a green light, indicating that the remote has successfully programmed itself to his target.

Sync holds a bulb in each hand, crouching ever-so-slightly, showing that she's ready for anything. She nods at Didjab, "Check, boss. These bulbs are under my protection."

Surprisingly, Preach heads off into the darkness on Cue’s right with his laser drawn, kicking bot parts out of the way as he goes.

[Just for the record… this is a wide open space. Cue is headed up the middle towards the broken light bulb, carrying the giant flashlight. Sync is a few paces behind her, carrying two light bulbs. Didjab is advancing to Cue’s left, just inside the area illuminated by the flashlight. Preach is on Cue’s right, almost a shapeless form in the darkness. Enn remains on guard in the corridor just outside the door.]

[Mike]

Chapter 11 – Convergence


SANS TITLE

Laundry claims…

Behind Nattied, Soup slowly maneuvers for the door, still holding Scrappy Dole. Dole is squirming and snarling, but it quickly becomes apparent that he cannot wriggle free. Instead, he becomes very quiet and stops struggling, and then he urinates, the stream of it running uncomfortably down Soup’s arm.

Ripp snatches up her pistol with her good hand, but doesn’t raise it. Instead, she stands up and raises her hands in the air, facing Nattied.

Power begins firing on Nattied immediately. She gets off two shots that miss Nattied completely, one shot hitting a stack of forms in the laundry office, causing smoldering pages to flutter everywhere. The other shot hits the wall by the door. After that, Ripp is blocking her view of the door, and Power works to find a better vantage point.

Nattied, however, just keeps firing at Ripp over and over. He screams "Die traitor!” as he fires, “When you get to hell, tell 'em Nattied sent you!"

Ripp just walks towards Nattied ominously through the whole ordeal, not dodging and not lowering her hands. When she speaks, her voice is deep and gravelly, with no sign of her usual stutter: “Fine, you want to off me?” Blast to the shoulder from Nattied! “Go ahead and off me.” Blast to the chest… her reflec armor is gone, and Ripp staggers. “I’m not the bad guy here.” Another shot to the chest. Smoke rises from her burning uniform, and Ripp winces but keeps moving. “But I certainly wasn’t sorry to see your clone ass get shot.” Two shots in the gut, and now Ripp slows and her voice falls to a raspy whisper. “You’ve been a pain in the ass since the moment you walked into the briefing room this morning.” A final shot to the face, and Ripp falls to the floor.

Nattied realizes his barrel is empty and Power now has a clear shot, she finally tags him as he ducks through the door and to the side (on the opposite side from where Soup is standing). His reflec armor seems to have taken the brunt of the blast however. Nattied scrambles to unscrew his spent laser barrel and put on a new one.

For those of you unfamiliar with Ripp’s mutant ability, you should know that she is not hurt here. Oh sure, her hand got burnt when she was caught off guard, but for the last six shots, she’s been using all of her concentration to absorb the energy being pelted at her, experiencing some real pain as she tries to contain so much energy at once. Every nerve ending she has rages, and the staggering and falling was not faked. But now she has marshalled her wits and manages to focus the energy to release it back into the world again. She will raise her own pistol and fire it at the same time to make it appear as if the coming energy blast is a mere laser. Let’s see how that works for her…

Where she has fallen, almost in the doorway, Ripp still has a fine view of Nattied and raises her pistol in her off hand, squeezing off a single shot.

Halfway through screwing on the new laser barrel, Nattied has just enough time to spot Ripp still moving and mutter an annoyed profanity.

The blast from Ripp’s pistol is stupefying. The pistol itself simply melts, and the blast incinerates Nattied while at the same time blowing a three meter hole in the wall behind him. The heat is palpable, and even Power feels the warmth of it across her face from out in the hall.

Ripp’s uniform hangs in tatters from her torso. She clearly tries to sit up, but instead collapses again in the doorway. She moans softly.

Dole notes that his missing white U-Pad is laying on the floor right next to Ripp, as if it fell from her uniform when the uniform fell apart.

Ripp is spent. She hurts in every cell of her body. She wants to move, but is simply too exhausted. The tender pain where her good hand got shot has simply faded into the dull ache that is her existence right now. She is dimly aware that her other hand is now part of the molten metal and plastic remains of her pistol, and she is thankful that she can’t feel it at all.

Power is shaken. She rushes up to where Ripp lay moaning, and noting that Ripp is still alive at this point, she addresses Soup, her voice wavering slightly, “Listen, Soup, I don't want any more trouble and I don't think you do either." Soup’s mouth hangs open and she only shakes her head dumbly.

Power glances down at wounded Ripp, just wanting to get her wounded friend to safety. “So… you hand me my uh...furry friend, then you can close the door. Give us 5 minutes to walk away. You do your thing, we do ours and we pretend none of this ever happened. Sound like a deal?"

Without another word, Soup sets the Dole-thing down next to Ripp and rushes back into Laundry Claims, slamming the door behind her.

Soup makes an exit through the new gigantic hole in the wall and finds herself in a loading area. There is a very large hover-truck here, and spaces where two more trucks could fit, but they are empty right now. The back of the truck is open, and it has been filled with stacks and stacks of black bedsheets. There are no clones here, but Soup suspects that the staff fled when the giant hole appeared in the wall. A large rolling overhead door directly ahead of the truck is open, leading back out to the main corridor again.

Power assesses Ripp’s condition and is surprised that other than her hands (one that got shot and one that has a pistol melted all over it), Ripp appears to be unhurt. Her uniform is practically gone from the waist up (at least in front), and her stomach, chest and arms all appear intact, without a single mark on the pale skin. Power also notes that there is a device laying next to Ripp on the ground, almost under her ribcage. The device looks like a standard-issue POD communicator, but it is white (indicating that it is of ULTRAVIOLET clearance… which is the very highest clearance… and forbidden to anyone but high programmers).

The Junction…

Enn tries to guide the robot (he’s really hoping he got one of the robots) towards him with the remote control. There are four directional arrows on the remote, so he’s hitting the one that seems to indicate “backwards” as in… towards himself. After a moment, a small display screen on the remote lights up (Enn hadn’t even realized until it lit up that it WAS a display) showing him a confusing greenish and blackish image. It takes him a moment to sort it out, but finally he understands that he is seeing the scene in the junction from above, probably with some sort of night-vision or infrared vision. There is the wreckage… there’s his four teammates spread out below… there’s the doorway, presumably with himself on the other side. And surrounding the team, coming in from all sides are three or four dozen of those little spiderbots.

Didjab enhances the light coming from the lamp Cue is carrying, using the palm of his left hand like a flashlight. He and Cue are making good time, there are only so many bits and pieces of wreckage in their path. He's careful with his mutant-generated light, closing his hand around it when Cue pans off to the right. Tens of thousands of credits of equipment has been destroyed. Computer only knows how many clone lives lost. This mission is of paramount importance, Didjab thinks to himself.

The farther the team goes into the junction, the brighter Cue’s light get, illuminating more and more of the scene here. As Preach, Cue and Didjab approach the vehicle wreckage, Didjab spots a Disatro-7, a bot specifically engineered to assist YELLOW-grade APES (Alpha Protocol Emergency Specialists) when emergencies occur. The bot's front compartment has been staved in by another vehicle, and bloody shredded YELLOW armor can be seen on the ground. But the laddering module and assist tentacles look intact. It looks like someone DID send in the rescue squad, only to have them end up in the same tragic predicament. No wonder someone thought this required a team of troubleshooters.

There is a very faint crackling noise in the air that is reminiscent of radio static, but it is barely audible, and it is impossible at this point to even identify what direction it might be coming from.

Cue closes her eyes and focuses. Her pace slows down a little bit. Cue can feel the flush of her danger sense, and she tries to hone in on it to see where it might be coming from. She gets a flashing image of her marching forward and a swarm of creepy crawly things covering her and slowly tearing her body apart. That seems exciting! She broadens the possibilities and thinks of all the things she could imagine doing right now, and as she pictures moving different directions, the visions shift and flow, and finally a common theme emerges: the creepy crawlies, whatever they are, always go after her light. Sometimes they kill her. Sometimes her teammates. Sometimes both. But always they take out the light. She figures she’s got about five seconds.


GRUE

Laundry claims…

Scrappy Dole goes to his uPad, looks at Ripp with a wounded look of broken-heartedness only a dog can show. Unfortunately, she can’t see his mournfulness from where she’s laying. He then takes the white POD in his mouth and turns to walk back towards his clothing. Dole wonders if he is stuck like this forever.

Powers's eyes widen at the sight of the white POD but decides to ignore it for the moment. She scoops up the creature that was once Dole with one arm, cradling it to her chest so she can move quickly, then grabs Ripp's arm, just past where the molten pistol ends and helps her to her feet.

Ripp finds that she can stand. She is sore, and grossly in violation of uniform codes, but she can stand and move. Her left hand is completely unusable, but the right seems to be tender but functional. She can see now that Dole is holding the white contraband POD in his furry little mouth and staring at Ripp with sad, hurt, soulful puppy-dog eyes. Dole and Ripp lock eyes meaningfully. Ripp looks chagrined and embarrassed. Power seems oblivious to this exchange.

Turns out that through all of this, the team’s mascot-bot has been waiting patiently next to the equipment crate.

"You OK to run?" Power asks, making sure her eyes meet Ripp's to allow the clone some dignity despite her ruined clothing. She notes that Ripp is flexing her singed hand experimentally (the one NOT fused with a firearm) and motions towards the crate, “Think you can handle the other end of this? It’s not heavy.”

"I wonder if there's a corpse somewhere Ripp could grab a shirt from," she thinks idly.

The Junction…

Preach realizes he will be out of range of Cue’s light soon if he’s not careful. As a precaution, he looks around for other lights… maybe something dropped by one of the rescuers who are no longer here? Strangely, he actually finds a couple of regular hand-lights, but both of them are broken. Not broken as in non-functional, but literally broken. The glass has been broken out of the ends of them, and on one of them, there’s exposed workings from underneath.

"Did you hear that?" Didjab says to the others, "sounds like an open channel." He takes a few more steps away from Cue, intent on the Disatro's ladder. "We need to get up there somehow. Maybe we can use that." He covers the distance to the disabled robot and is looking for an external control port.

Sync darts up behind Cue, and is reaching for the flashlight. Cue doesn’t notice her but at the same time simply tosses the flashlight away, throwing it a couple meters in front of her.

With amazing nimbleness, Sync manages to snatch the heavy light out of the air before it hits the ground and passes by Didjab, making a run for that ladder. "Back in a jiff, comrades!"

Cue grins widely as she pulls out her laser pistol and shouts, “INCOMING!”

Nearly simultaneously, Enn, still just outside the doorway, shouts, "HEY! ALARM! LOOK OUT FOR THOSE THINGS!"

Enn frantically pushes random buttons in a panicked attempt to control or shut down every single spiderbot. What he manages to do is send the image on his little display spinning wildly. He’s starting to figure it out. He believes he has control of a single spiderbot, and one set of buttons controls the bot’s motion, while another set controls the camera. Enn figures out to turn the remote sideways so that he can run this thing with both hands. None of which is any help to his teammates, of course.

That crackling noise is getting much louder now, and finally resolves itself into the chittering-clacking of many many little spiderbot legs across the floor (And ceiling. And walls. And wreckage.) The spiderbots finally enter the cone of light ahead of Sync. They are larger than initially assumed, perhaps the size of a clone’s head, with many spindly appendages. Preach and Cue and Didjab can feel the bots scurrying past them in the darkness.

Many of the bots (Six? Seven? Twelve?) leap at Sync all at once and appear to be attacking her. There is a very loud CRACK-POP, and Sync’s flashlight goes out.

It’s very dark in here. You might get eaten by a grue.

Sync is indeed under attack. Before the lights go out, she notices that about half of the bots appear to be wielding broken light bulb stems that they swing at her menacingly. She feels a couple of shallow cuts on her left calf, and there is one bot clinging to her right side, and something is stabbing her repeatedly in the abdomen. The stabs are like getting jabbed with a dull needle. They are not strong or deep, but they hurt a lot, and she imagines she’s seeping blood from half a dozen little pinholes already. The bot that shattered her flashlight looked like it was wielding a little hammer.


CONVERGENCE

The Junction…

Sync turns around immediately and charges back towards her comrades shouting, "It's a trap! It's a trap!" She does her best to make her way back to the doorway that Enn is at. She remembers that it was right after the preposition. "That's a funny thought," she thinks, suddenly aware that she's thinking in complete thoughts, like she would speak. "That's a weird way to think about it," she thinks again. She realizes that she's lost her way and does not know how to get back to Enn. "And why did I not think that as a complete sentence," she thinks and continues, "but have resumed doing so now."

Numerous spiderbots are clinging to her now, with one particularly tenacious one clinging to her face and blocking her view of everything else. Were she to make the simple effort of brushing the spindly little bots away from her, she might be able to see Enn’s figure still silhouetted in the doorway. She might be able to see Didjab begin strobing mere moments from now. It may not have stopped their onslaught, but then at least maybe she would have seen. But she doesn’t do that.

Calmly-- far too calmly for the situation-- she sits down in the middle of the pitch black. She's vaguely aware that there are more spiders poking her on her left torso than on the entire right side of her body, including her extremities. "There are more of these aggressive spider bots poking me on my left torso than on the entire right side of my body, including my arms and legs," she thinks.

The pain ceases. All is numb. She motions for her comunit and says to it, "Sync-R-SWM to Leader Enn." She waits for a moment and repeats. "This is Sync-R-SWM to Leader Enn." Another pause and no response. She says, "I've stepped through the door." She waits to see if there is any response, her body swarming with what feels like hundreds of spiders now. "And I'm floating in a most peculiar way." Another pause, "And I think the spiders know which way to go."

Sync-2 is dead.

"MALF THIS!" Didjab shouts as the wave of spiderbots skitter past him. Unafraid of gunfire or clone riot, hundreds of bots working in unison trip his fear trigger in spectacular fashion. Like a camera flash, every inch of his skin strobes with bright light, illuminating the space in stark relief. The team leader high-tails it back toward Enn and the doorway, girlishly shrieking the whole way.

Somewhere in the darkness, the team can hear the chittering of dozens of spiderbots working en masse. For a moment, one could imagine hearing Sync’s voice calmly murmuring in the darkness in the distance. But then it’s gone.

Preach immediately readies his garrotte, ready for trouble. He makes his way back towards the entrance, where he can see Enn’s form silhouetted in the open doorway. When he sees Didjab coming, Preach remains out of sight in the darkness.

Didjab, in his panic, reaches the doorway, still screaming and the skin of his hands and face still flashing irregularly like a demented strobelight. The sound of the spiderbots seems to be increasing again, and in the brief flashes from Didjab, it is clear they are coming this way.

Enn has been watching on his screen the whole time. He is working to move the spiderbot he controls back towards him, but it is very slow for some reason; not at all like these hurrying and scurrying devil-bots out on the floor. Enn watches on the screen as a mob of them cover Sync and (presumably) destroy her. In the midst of that, his POD crackles for a moment with Sync’s voice saying, “Sync to team leader Enn…” but then there is a pop and crackle, and her voice is lost to static.

On the screen, once Sync is motionless, the mob then rushes towards the door. They run in a curve, clearly angling towards Didjab the entire way. Preach has moved towards the door as well, but he appears to be hiding right around the corner still out in the darkness of the junction. Cue is still standing out in the darkness, but the bots seem to have ignored her in favor of Sync and then Didjab.

Soup and her truck…

"Oh...dear...ummm"...Soup hops in the truck and tries to start it up...She gets on her POD and tries to find her team. Sure enough, there’s the location of the mission marked on her map, and little lights representing all five of her teammates are blinking there at that same location. Oh wait… just four teammate lights now. Sync’s went out. Weird.

Soup sees that they’re all only a few blocks away, so she quickly moves the truck out, and with a minimum of property damage manages to get it to the scene.

Laundry Claims…

Ripp gives Dole a last glance, then moves to the end of the crate indicated by Power. “I’ll d-do my b-best.” She grabs the handle on the end of the crate as best as she can with her functional hand, and gives it an experimental tug to make sure she can lift it without dropping it. She then looks back to Power and says, “W-we may n-need to stop for a r-rest, b-but I should b-be able to h-handle it.”

While trading eye contact with Dole, Ripp gently mouthed the word “sorry”, trying to make sure Power didn’t see it.

They both grab up the equipment crate and hightail it to the junction where they are supposed to work. Just as they arrive at the junction, Scrappy-Dole transforms back into regular Dole. This causes Power to drop him, and Dole drops naked and equipment-less onto the equipment crate. Equipment-less save for the white POD-like device he is holding.

At the same time, a new clone delivery unit arrives and opens to reveal Nattied-R-EDD-4.

Not to mention that a hover-truck pulling an empty cargo container pulls up at almost the same moment. The truck is being driven by Soup.

The scene here is confusing (in addition to all of the above). They are in a main hallway, with a single open door that leads into darkness. That darkness is presumably the junction where they are to change a light bulb. There are three clone delivery units against one wall here (one of them is Nattied’s), as well as several recovery-bots working to pull corpses out of the way. Specifically, the corpses of Pow-R-PUF and Kay-R-ESS (HEY! I remember them!).

Enn-R-GEE is standing in the open doorway to the junction, and something on the other side is flashing rapidly in a strobe-like fashion.


SWARM

With the arrival of Nattied, Ripp prepares to absorb another LASER blast, if necessary, but does not try to provoke a confrontation.

Ripp throws Nattied a baleful glance before turning to Power and saying, “W-why d-don’t y-you f-figure out w-what’s g-going on. I need to r-r-rest my h-hand f-for a b-bit. M-maybe our b-bot c-can help.” As if on cue, the one-wheeled bot rolls up next to Power and waits. Ripp then sits down on the floor beside the crate, back resting against the wall, and gives naked Dole a questioning glance and a very slight ‘come here’ nod of the head.

Dole however is already getting up. He grabs his POD and calls out to Nattied, “Hey! Glad you’re here. I need to go back and fetch my clothes and stuff. It’s not far. Come with me.” Nattied approaches, and Dole starts walking in that direction. “Power. We’ll be right back. I feel a little unprepared.”

Soup parks the truck (very carefully) and gets out a good distance from the other group. She takes cover behind the truck and gets out her pistol. She then yells "Hey, fancy meeting you all here. Can I go past you?...I'm really busy."

Cue turns her attention to Didjab and watches what happens with a somewhat disturbing fascination.

Didjab runs screaming through the door, nearly knocking over Enn on his way. The spiderbots are all hot on his heels, and in his panic, Didjab struggles to slam the door shut before they can reach him. Didjab’s face and hands are still flashing erratically and strobing the area, although it’s not quite as blinding now that he’s in the light. Unfortunately for Didjab, the door refuses to budge. Didjab pulls harder at it, screaming for Enn to come help him, but it still doesn’t move.

Enn was distracted, working intently on some device, and now seems disoriented as Didjab is yelling and the spiderbots start pouring through the door. Helping Didjab would mean wading through spiderbot central, and instead, Enn instinctively begins backing away slowly, never taking his eyes off the little bots.

Cue talks quietly to herself. "We can't replace that light. Those bots will just destroy it again!" She squints, trying to see.

"Preach?" Cue calls out. Preach is watching the hubbub with Didjab intently, but manages to answer, “Yeah?”

Cue finds Preach by the doorway. She gets close and asks, "You know of anything that could take out all those spiderbots?"

Preach just grins a manic grin. Just as the last of the spiderbots passes through the doorway after Didjab, the door simply slams shut on its own. Preach and Cue are now alone in the dark. “Well,” Preach says, “If we can just find our way up there now.”

Just as the last of the spiderbots come through the door and start swarming onto Didjab, the door just slams itself shut with incredible force. Most of the spiderbots are swarming onto Didjab now, cutting and stabbing at him with their tiny spiderlegs, and some of them using broken shards of glass held in their little claws. None of the cuts are very deep or very dangerous individually, but there are more bots in range of Didjab every moment. [For reference, these spiderbots are multi-legged utility things about the size of a clone's head, and there are at least two or three dozen of them.]

Naturally, the whole door thing was Preach’s doing. Seeing where everything was going, Preach used his telekinesis to hold the door open until all of the danger was on the other side, and then he slammed it shut again with all of his psychic might.

Most of the spiderbots are swarming onto Didjab now, cutting and stabbing at him with their tiny spiderlegs, and some of them using broken shards of glass held in their little claws. None of the cuts are very deep or very dangerous individually, but there are more bots in range of Didjab every moment.

The newcomers and their equipment crate are only about five meters from all of this action, and Soup (with her truck) is another 8 or so meters past them.


GET TO THE CHOPPER

In the corridor…

Power looks down at Ripp, worried, but figures she has enough cover from Soup between the wall and the crate.

"Sure Dole, good luck," Power calls as Dole lopes off with Nattied trailing behind him, "and..." with a wary look at Nattied, "watch your back!" She pulls her pistol back out, just in case. Between Nattied, Soup, and all that noise on the other side of her. ..she wants to be prepared. "Hurry back" she adds, more softly....she isn't sure she can handle all of this with just herself and a battered Ripp. And a tiny bot, of course. She wishes they had the time to figure out what it did, beyond look precious. [Spoiler alert: nothing.]

She calls over to Soup: "Leave your weapon on the floor right there and you can hurry all you want!" She kneels down besides the bot, trying to look busy but still be able to keep an eye on everything. "Well little guy," she says to the bot who, judging by its ability to come when mentioned could at least understand some basic commands. "What do you think, got any wondrous advice or skills you're hiding from us?" She pats it, gently and looks over at the noise she had been avoiding looking at because she wasn't sure she could deal with it. She curses audibly when she sees the clone being attacked by the swarm of spiderbots. They didn't seem to be moving past him, but he wouldn't last long by the looks of it and who knows what they would do next.

"Uh, Ripp? We may need to run, and soon. Will you be up for it?!"

Power knows with a speed burst she could save herself, but unless she could carry Ripp, it would only be herself and maybe the bot and she was not leaving Ripp alone.

Ripp is a little worried about Dole going off with Nattied. Is he going to kill Nattied? Or are they both plotting to kill Ripp? She starts to come to the realization that she doesn’t really care if it’s the latter. At least getting killed would end the pain in her left hand. In fact, she’s starting the think about killing herself and just getting it over with… But right now, she wants to see what’s going on, so she decides to hold out at least a little while longer.

Ripp is looking at Soup, laser pistol ready in her right hand but not pointed at her, still keeping herself ready to absorb a shot if she needs to.

Then her attention is distracted by the arrival of Didjab. She stands up, glancing back once at Soup, and moves to stand next to Power and says to her, “W-whatever h-happens, w-we’ll face it t-together.” She stands there looking back and forth between Didjab and Soup, waiting to see which threat needs to be handled first.

Soup calls out to everyone: "Dears, get to the truck!" as Soup hops back in the vehicle. She throws it in reverse to get turned around and begins to move forward. She is rolling very slowly, obviously giving them time to join her. The back end of the truck’s cargo compartment is open and empty.

Screaming obscenities and just barely hanging on to his sanity, Didjab flails at the menacing spiderbots with his truncheon and fires his laser until it goes dry. A dozen of the things are disabled in a moment or two, but now Didjab is bleeding from thirty or so wounds. He's tiring and the strobelight effect stutters.

Marshalling what's left of his strength, he surges toward the hover truck, pulling thirty or so of the spiderbots along with him. "Soup! Help!" he manages to shout.

Enn stops blindly tapping away on his device when he sees the mayhem around him. Ultimately, Enn absolutely hates robots and feels he has had enough. Not so much to help anybody or be any kind of hero, but Enn FINALLY has the opportunity to completely fucking unleash on these shitty creations.

Enn snatches up one of the spiderbots by its spindly legs and starts swinging it as a blunt object trying to smash the other spider things. He kicks at any of them too close to his feet, and when he realizes that the things are still pursuing Didjab as Didjab scrambles to the truck, Enn follows along behind, bellowing with rage as he hammers away at the little bots. He manages to break a handful of them, and some just get knocked across the hall, only to quickly right themselves and head right back.

Didjab’s adrenaline is beginning to ebb, along with much of his blood, but if he can just keep putting one foot in front of the other, he’ll make the back of the truck in a couple of seconds.

*CRACK* That’s when the light over the door goes out. This area of the corridor is still mostly lit from light spilling in from further down the hall, but there are two spiderbots on the ceiling near the light, and as soon the broken bulb fades, they skitter across the ceiling towards the next bulb (in the opposite direction that Soup’s truck is facing).

Laundry claims…

Dole hot foots it back to where they came from. As they walk, Dole powers up the white POD in his hand. Nattied and Dole make quick time back to the Laundry Claims office. Everything is pretty much as they just left it, except that corpses have been hauled away.

Dole quickly grabs his uniform and starts pulling it on. “So, tell me your story…I think I have been badly duped by Ripp.”

Nattied replies, "Who, me?"

In the dark…

Cue and Preach look around in the dark, and slowly their eyes adjust. They can dimly see each other and can see the occasional flashing LED here and there. They know the general direction of the doorway and of the ladder truck near the burnt out bulb, but can’t see anything beyond about two meters.

They are surprised when some small vehicle with a handful of lights on it comes rushing towards them from the darkness. It stops a meter from them, and a door opens. It’s a clone delivery unit. The light from inside the CDU lights up Preach’s and Cue’s faces, and they are temporarily dazzled, but they can see well enough to recognize Sync-R-SWM-3 exiting the unit.

[Mike]

Chapter 12 – Who Critted?


DUHN DUHN DUHN

Laundry claims…

Dole is busy fastening up his coveralls, and without looking up says, "Of course you. We're the only clones here, man. So what's the deal?"

Nattied says, "Wait. That can't be right."

“Aww geez man, how fresh of a clone are you?” Dole asks in frustration. “Think! You went after Ripp like a hell-bent berserker! I mean Ripp is on our team so there must be a reason, right?”

"I wish I knew. This clone literally just rolled up. And I think this was Nattied-3 here, but I'm not even sure. I have no memories of #3." He pauses thoughtfully. "So you think Ripp is a freak, too, huh? What the hell is going on?"

Dole is fully suited up now and ready to roll.

In the dark…

Sync folds her arms protectively around her chest and frowns. Barely above a whisper she asks, "So... uh... where is... uh, where is everyone?"

Preach looks slightly puzzled and distracted. He answers Sync without thinking, “They’re outside with the bots,” that makes him smile a bit, “So we need to work fast.” He turns to Cue, who still has the light bulbs, “Hurry Cue, get over to the ladder and change the bulb. Use the flashlight app on your POD to see where you’re going. I will bar the door. INTSEC never fails!"

Cue instinctively heads to where she thinks that ladder truck was, switching on the flashlight app on her POD as she goes. Shortly, she finds herself at the base of the truck. If she climbs over the crushed back end of the vehicle, the ladder is actually extended and reaches almost to the ceiling. Her POD isn’t bright enough for her to see how close it is to the broken bulb, but she thinks it’s pretty close.

Preach runs towards the door with his own POD lighting up and starts piling a few random junk items up against it. It’s not a lot, but it will slow a clone down. From his emergency kit, he grabs some sturdy black medical tape. He tapes one handle of his garrote to the door handle, and the other end of the weapon to the doorframe so that the whole thing will be just about waist level (or gut level on him… Preach is a little on the short side).

Sync watches Cue run off towards the vehicles (and presumably the ladder) and Preach jog over to the original door where they all came in. She has no idea what they are doing, but both of them have their PODs lit up, so she could join either one of them if she chose to.

In the spiderbot apocalypse…

"SHET!" Enn chucks the spiderbots against other spiderbots (hoping against hope for an explosion that never comes), smashing several of them in rapid succession.

Didjab reaches the back of the truck and weakly climbs into it. A dozen of the remaining bots join him, leaving the remaining ones on the ground, all of which quickly scurry up the walls, moving in different directions.

Soup hears a thump as someone (or multiple someones maybe) crawls into the back of the hover truck. She checks her mirrors and sees the two lady strangers still huddled by their crate, and she glimpses spiderbots scurrying around the truck and up the walls. She cannot see Didjab or Enn. “Good enough,” she thinks happily to herself. Soup floors it and pulls the hovertruck out of there in a hurry, speeding away down the hall.

Didjab bleeds out.

Soup makes it a couple hundred meters down this corridor before it comes to a crossroads. On instinct, rather than continuing straight ahead, she hooks a sharp right, bumping the truck against the far wall. The forces of the turn swings the big door of the truck shut, trapping the spiderbots inside with Didjab’s corpse. After another hundred meters, Soup checks mirrors again. No sign of anyone or anything behind her, although there is some noise in the truck’s container area. She slows down. She knows this area. Up ahead, she should be coming to the R&D laboratories, and just beyond that the Armed Forces training areas.

Enn pulls out his remote and turns to the two spiderbots he can see and works to remote control one of them. Now that he can see the bot he’s working with, he gets the hang of controlling it right away. He uses visual cues from watching them, combined with what he sees on his display screen and sets the one bot to attack the other. The second bot obviously wasn’t programmed to expect this, and a quick leg-jab between the shell plates sends it tumbling to the ground with a sizzling noise.

He then sends his bot over to the next bulb to “protect” it before any of the other rogue bots can make it all the way up the walls.

Ripp reaches down, opens up the crate, roots around a bit, and then comes out with the box labeled “Bot-Nets”. She opens the box, pulls out two of the fist-sized beanbags and puts them in one of the remaining pockets on what is left of her coveralls. She then grabs the other two and holds them out towards Power, saying, “Here, t-take these in c-case we n-need them to d-deal with these spiderbots. T-too bad S-sev took the P-perimeter D-defense box; w-we c-could probably use it r-right about n-now. L-let’s hope our l-little b-bot friend c-can help out.”

She then looks around and asks, “Where is this b-bulb changing b-bot we’re s-supposed to r-repair?”

Power pulls up the mission orders on her POD, and her face blanches a bit. “They look like this.” She turns the screen around so that Ripp can see: It’s a diagram of one of the spiderbots labeled, “Light Bulb Changing Bot Series 20.”


HELLO DARKNESS

Soup…

Soup pulls aside and gets out of the truck. She goes around to the back of the truck with her weapon drawn (she takes the keys as she leaves). Soup can hear lots of skittering and rustling movement in the cargo container of the truck. When she gets to the back, she finds the door is shut.

Laundry claims…

Dole considers Nattied’s question carefully, “Well, I am totally clueless now,“ Dole says,” but Nattied #1 went on about knowing who the traitor was and it looked and sounded like you were ratting us out to Soup and her goons. I am ashamed to admit now that I took you out. Ripp evidently had knocked me out in order to get my POD and played the stuttering scared waif to avoid suspicion. Your #2 got shot point blank by Soup and when your #3 came out of the delivery pod you went after Ripp as if you had some sort of knowledge that confirmed she was a traitor. You went so far as to give your life to prove it.”

Dole continues, the words just coming out of him in a flood now, “I am on my 2nd incarnation after my wolf man debacle and well, frankly I am not sure what is happening anywhere else. I am pretty much a straight shooter in every way, but that doesn’t mean I am always right. I misjudged your actions and I misjudged Ripp. She had me fooled and now I think I have the measure of her. She had my POD on her and she knows I know what she did.” Dole waves the POD for emphasis, which is still clearly white and of Ultraviolet clearance. “I don’t know how far her treachery goes, but if you think you have something to say, I will listen to you now and in the future.”

“Now let’s see what Ripp’s been doing with my POD” Dole says as he fires it up to check messages and the history of its use. “Maybe we can get some help…”

*Dole deftly navigates his Ultra Violet clearance uPad in an effort to find a way of putting out an all-points bulletin for the arrest and destruction of Clone Soup-R-MOM for the wanton destruction of facility property and clones.*

*Dole also searches for their team’s work order and works to make it the top priority job in the computer complex, routing all other work that might interfere with their path out of the way.*

When he finishes he utters “May the Computer be praised.” As he stows the POD. “Are you ready to head back to the group or is there anything we need to take care of? Got all your equipment?” Dole asks.

The whole time Dole has been tapping away at his contraband POD, Nattied has merely been staring at him in stunned silence. Dole just confessed to several different kinds of treason, not the least of which is his conspicuous… one might even say ‘flagrant’… use of ultraviolet clearance contraband. Contraband which Nattied vaguely remembers as being important to Dan-R-THR… his secret society contact. All this, and Dole’s just blathering on like he’s talking about the latest episode of B.O.T.S.

Nattied replies slowly, "Yeah… I'm ready. . . . . So what are we doing?" Nattied shakes his head rapidly, trying to shake off the fog. "Is it just me, or does coming back as a clone make you foggy and weird-feeling?"

Corridor…

Ripp says, “Oh g-great. W-we h-have to c-catch those things and r-reprogram them? W-well, w-we sh-sh-should g-get st-started.”

Power's face falls as she realizes what the bots are. "Yeah, Sev really screwed us there." Power says, looking around for the closet broken spider bot. "Shall we see if we can fix ONE of these in a manner in which they won't....um...murder us?" She holds up one of the nets that Ripp handed her "should we wrap them up first? And wait for Dole to come back, that way you can rest a bit more, I'll watch the exits.”

Ripp holds up her own Bot-Net to show Power, “N-no. I’m already w-w-w-w-waaaaay ahead of y-you.” She walks towards some of the spiderbots trying to climb the wall and throws the Bot-Net at. The bots at this point are paying no attention to the clones, and it makes no attempt to dodge. The ball hits the wall right next to the bot and bursts open into a circular net a little over a meter across, which is more than enough to cover the bot. The net then tightens around it, essentially closing the bot loosely in a net bag and causing it to drop to the floor. The bot lays there without struggling. It could easily poke its skinny legs through the net but does not do so. The air smells of ozone.

On the ceiling, the one lone spiderbot is still guarding the nearest working light, it is now surrounded by six or seven others. It has disabled three of its compatriots so far, but more have joined. The approaching bots have become more wary, circling around their rogue companion rather than just diving straight for the light. They fight back and forth. The outnumbered one seems to fight better than the others (because Enn is controlling it, and he is a master of video games), but it soon becomes clear that the overwhelming numbers are going to drive it off its post.


The junction…

Sync starts following Cue, then turns and rethinks it, slowing down to return to Preach. She then rethinks it again and slowly starts walking to Cue, but looking back at Preach. Sync isn't aware she's doing it, but she's unconsciously keeping herself directly in the middle of a straight line between Preach and Cue.

Cue reaches the top of the ladder and shines her light over at the broken bulb. Two things become immediately apparent: One, the broken bulb is just barely out of her reach. And two, this bulb is enormous. Judging from the shards of it that are left, it looks like the bulb may have been a half-meter across or more. Certainly the stem of it is easily three times as wide as the bulbs she has on her. There’s no way these bulbs will fit.

Preach stands up to admire his handiwork, when suddenly a lone spiderbot lunges out from the wall and jabs a single skinny leg at Preach’s POD, knocking it from his hand. He hears the POD hit the floor near his feet, and it goes dark. Preach is temporarily blind in the darkness again.


TWELVE ANGRY BOTS

Laundry Claims…

“I think it might just be you, but I have no way of knowing.” Dole says as he looks at Nattied with empathy and concern. “Last I recall, we are trying to change a lightbulb, so let’s get back to the crew and see what’s going on. I am worried about what might have happened in our absence.” Dole continues, “…and if you need anything, just ask”. Dole then nods and heads back to where the others were cautiously listening for sounds and looking for signs of further conflict.

As they walk, Nattied says, "Dole, what can you tell me about this POD of yours? I've been keeping my eyes on it for a while--something's not right. I haven't learned anything on account of getting shot repeatedly." His look turns serious, "I don't hold shooting me against you, by the way. My clone rebirths have been incredibly confused and hostile."

Nattied pauses and grabs his head. "Fuck, head hurts. Still. Stupid clones."

They are probably only a couple hundred meters from their destination, just around the next bend.

Truck…

Soup opens the door, gun at the ready. Soup is jumped by a dozen spiderbots the size of her head that seemed to be leaping and milling randomly in the back of the truck until the door opened. Before she is mobbed, she gets a brief glimpse of a shredded corpse that, by the mustache, must have been Didjab. But she has little time to consider this development, as the spiderbots are already stabbing at her with their sharp, bloodstained legs.

Soup is ready with her pistol though. Two of them were fried before they even reached her, and she managed to get three more in the ensuing rough-and-tumble. Before she can get off a sixth shot, one of them stabs straight through the pistol, rendering it useless. Soup manages to get her hands on another one, swinging it by its legs and smashing it into the floor until it stops squirming. The other six though have climbed all over her and appear to be tap-dancing on various parts of Soup’s body. The bots are only head-sized and can’t weigh more than three or four kilos each, but they slam their needle-like legs down with considerable force. Soup is bleeding from dozens of pinpricks and starts to panic as one begins climbing to her face.

Corridor…

Ripp turns to Power, pointing to the mass of bots on the ceiling, and says: “W-why d-don’t you try to n-net those bots. I’ll take a l-look at this one.” She picks up the net with the inert spiderbot, leaving it closed in its nice little bag, and begins to turn it over to see how she might be able to reprogram it.

Enn is still working his device and watching the bot-fight on the ceiling. He calls to Ripp and Power: "HEY GUYS, IT LOOKS LIKE THAT ONE SPIDER-BOT IS TRYING TO HELP US! LET'S GIVE IT SOME AIR BY THROWING BROKEN SPIDER-BOT PIECES AT THOSE OTHER JAGOFFS! OR SOMETHING!”

Just as he finishes that thought, the defender-bot finally takes a fatal blow through a sensor cluster. It goes still and drops to the floor. One of the remaining bots (there’s eight of them, now that they are finally all gathered in one place) takes a quick jab at the light bulb, and another section of corridor goes dim. There is still light spilling in from both directions down the corridor, but the immediate vicinity definitely has that “time to go brush your teeth/fifteen minutes to lights out” dimness to it.

The ten remaining ceiling-bots all pause, turning to scan the corridor in both directions. Then they seem to make a decision as a group to head to the next bulb on the other side of the troubleshooters. The whole group of them will pass directly overhead on their way to their next target.

Junction…

With a heavy sigh, Preach heads in the direction of the ladder, using the light from Sync’s delivery pod as a waypoint. When he reaches the spot, he notes that Sync is no longer there, but he can now see Cue’s light way up near the ceiling. She must be on the ladder. Preach heads for it.

Sync panics. She knows she's not safe, but she can't run to either Preach or Cue. She has to split the difference. She faces away from both and runs in a straight line perpendicular to the one between them- keeping them as much as she can try to-- equidistant from her.

While booking away, she gets on her com unit, but before she can speak, she sees lights ahead of her, and by the time she focuses on them, she realizes it is something coming at her extremely fast. A second later, Sync is hit in the face with on oncoming clone delivery unit, which stops on the exact spot where it slammed into her. Sync lands on her ass about two meters away. She is a little woozy and her face is definitely bruised. She may have broken her nose.

The door of the unit opens and reveals Didjab-R-ING-4 (Four? Is that right? Five? I think four.)

The area is dark (must be in the junction), but in the light spilling out of his clone delivery unit, Didjab can see Sync sitting on the floor about two meters from him. Her face is cut across her forehead and the bridge of her nose, and there is a significant amount of blood leaking from both nostrils onto her uniform.

Cue stares at the size of the broken light bulb. She whips out her YELLOW multi-tool and does her best to get an estimate for the size. She yells back down the ladder, "Preach, we've got a problem!" After attempting the measurement, she starts descending the ladder to report the issue. "Our bulb isn't big enough."

Preach calls from the bottom of the ladder, “I’m right here, Cue.”

Cue smiles as she spots him faintly in the darkness. “Oh! Well, at best guess, the base on this bulb is about seven centimeters. If the recessed area it sits in is any indication, we’re looking for a bulb half a meter across or something,” she replies as she joins him at the base of the ladder-truck.

Didjab and Sync are only about 10 meters from this exchange. They can hear it clearly.

Cue and Preach notice the light of a new clone delivery unit about ten meters off of their position. Two clones are silhouetted in the light from its door: a burly clone that may or may not be Didjab, and a second clone sitting on the floor in front of the first.

The clone emerging from the new clone delivery unit is indeed Didjab. "Hey Sync," he says in a comforting tone to Sync who is still sitting on the floor in front of him, "stay still. You've lost a lot of blood." With no equipment, there's not much he can do to help her. "Just, just stay still."

Didjab walks away from Sync and toward Cue and Preach at the base of the ladder-truck. "Team," he addresses them without much inflection, "do you think the bots took our bulb? We're going to have to find the replacement so we can get out of here."

There are currently three sources of light in this entire place: 1) Sync’s empty clone delivery unit, which stands between the ladder and the main door. Its door is open, and light spills out to illuminate a couple meters of floor in front of it. 2) Cue’s POD, which is currently in flashlight mode and casting eerie shadows across the faces of the three clones there. 3) Didjab’s empty clone delivery unit, which is also open and casting light onto Sync where she sits in front of it. These three islands of light form a rough equilateral triangle with each one roughly ten or twelve meters from the others. The main door to the corridor is another dozen meters past Sync’s delivery unit.

Preach seems relieved to see Didjab here. But he also looks puzzled, “So where did your clone brother get those bulbs, Didjab? I find it hard to believe the computer would have made a mistake in assigning us our mission equipment."

Which a sharp crack, the light in Sync’s delivery unit goes out, and there are now two islands of light in here.


WHO CRITTED

Soup…

Soup screams "The great Computer orders you to stop!" She increases her gravity and starts rolling over and over. This is quite effective. Bots continue to climb onto her and stab her over and over with their needle legs, only to be immediately crushed under her now effectively 250 kilo bulk. Soup is used to moving under the effects of her high gravity mutation, and cranks it up to the highest level she can while still being able to move.

In short order, the bots are all disabled, and with a relieved sigh, Soup returns her gravity to normal. She is extremely light-headed, and it is at this point that she realizes how much her increased gravity also increased the rate of bloodflow from her many dozens of tiny puncture wounds. She is laying a sizable puddle of blood and blood-covered bot pieces. She also has at least a dozen of the bot legs buried deep in her flesh where she rolled on top of them.

Soup tries to reach for her POD and call for help, but the effort is just too great. She needs to rest first. In fact, maybe if she closes her eyes and takes a little nap… yeah, a nap sounds great.

Soup quickly passes out and dies of massive blood loss.

Corridor…

"Nice thought at least" Power thinks to herself about Enn's comment

Ripp sets down the bag with the captured bot and grabs her remaining Bot-Net. She says to Power, “You aim for the left s-side, I’ll aim for the r-right. Aim for a c-cluster of b-bots.” She then quickly positions herself to the right side of the corridor and prepares to throw her Bot-Net at the spiderbots as they approach overhead.

Power nods at Ripp, "OK, I'm ready to bag these guys and get to reprogramming before they cut off anymore lights."

She gets her bot-net ready and positions herself on the left side of the corridor, opposite Ripp, but not before turning back to their little wheel-droid and saying, "Watch my back, OK?" In response, the bot rolls forward on it’s one big wheel and starts doing a little back-and-forth rocking on its wheel. Clearly its ‘waiting’ motion [See? Still adorable.]

Power absently wonders if Dole is OK and hopes when he returns, that he's alone and has something to form a perimeter.

As the bots begin to pass over them, still conveniently clustered together for the most part, Ripp yells, “NOW!” and throws her bot-net ball. Power is only a fraction of a second behind her. And in a display almost too beautiful to be believed, both nets deploy in unison and hit the ceiling almost exactly side by side. Ripp’s net snags five of the bots, and Power’s gets four. Only a single rogue bot remains.

Before the loaded nets can even hit the ground, Enn has flung a bot carcass up and bulls-eyes the last remaining one. Its carapace splits wide open, and it is nailed to the ceiling by the needle-sharp leg of its previous brother.

[I only reveal the dice when they are amazing. Ripp hit a 20 for the net, with a 17 to confirm the crit. Power threw a 19. Enn rolled a 20 as well, with yet another 20 to confirm the crit, and a 13 beyond that to double confirm it. I had planned on having one or two of them get away to wreak further havoc later, but I can’t justify it now.]

Nattied & Dole…

Nattied shakes himself, pulling himself together. "Lead on, McDuff."

Dole looks on at Nattied unsure of what to do for his friend’s headache as he stows his POD securely then says “About the POD, it’s probably best we don’t talk about ‘The Precious’,” Dole says. He then looks around nervously to see if others are around, “I only know that people have tried to kill me for it.”

Dole is wary of his new unstable friend and not a little suspicious of this headache as an attempt to catch Dole off guard.

They round the corner to the place where they left their team to find the area clear of spiderbots... or at least clear of active ones. Ripp, Power, and Enn-R-GEE are here. There are spiderbot carcasses everywhere, and Ripp and Power seem to have two large nets filled with active but helpless spiderbots. There are two overhead bulbs out, so the area is dim, but enough light spills in from further down the corridor to be able to see.

Junction…

Sync jumps up, alarmed. She clenches her jaws as she looks at the three clones standing around each other and she assesses the situation. Quickly she trots over and, quite awkwardly, shoulders her way next to Didjab to stand between Didjab and Cue. Her arms are folded uncomfortably across her chest and her eyes are fixed firmly on the ground. As the others talk, she nods her head and mutters, "Uh huh," but it never seems to be at the right time, almost like she's doing it randomly.

[Sync freaked out at the triangle of light, then the triangle of clones talking. Thankfully one light went out and then, to remedy the other tragedy, she butted her way into the other clones to make all four of them form a square. "Nice," she thought. "That was really close, Sync. Too close." She's focusing on reducing her anxiety, and can't follow the conversation for fear she'll start hyperventilating. Instead she just nods and says, "Uh huh" every few moments to seem like she's participating.]

"Look, I got what bulbs I could before the clone riot destroyed the PLC, then you killed me Preach." Didjab seems to be a ghost of his former self. "I'm not looking for another gunfight. I am just stating the obvious."

Cue holds the bulb up for Didjab and Preach to see. "Yeah, I've still got the bulb. It doesn't fit."

Didjab turns to look around. His palms light up, but he keeps the glow low so as to not be too obvious at this point. He’s not worried about spiderbots now… those seem to have gone… but he’d hate to give Preach any more cause to go all Preach about stuff.

There is a sharp crack, and Cue’s POD light goes out, followed by a clatter as it and something larger than it both hit the floor. This is followed by a familiar scuttling noise moving towards the wrecked vehicles. Cue, Preach and Sync are all certain they briefly saw a blur of a spiderbot dropping from the ceiling just before the light went out.

With Cue’s light gone, everyone is surprised that they can still see decently. A quick look reveals the source: both of Didjab’s palms are emitting light like a flashlight.

[Mike]

Chapter 13 – All Together Now


STUCK

Corridor…

Scene setting: In a wide corridor, just outside the door to the junction where a light bulb needs to be changed. There are also two bulbs that are out here, but they aren’t in the mission requirements. Ripp-R-JAK, Power-R-NGR, and Enn-R-Gee stand amidst the ruined remnants of a couple dozen non-functional spiderbots. In their midst, they also have three nets that seem to have several (live) spiderbots captured within. It should be noted that Ripp is still essentially unclothed from the waist up, and she seems rather unconcerned by that fact. She also has one burned but functional hand, and one hand that, on closer inspection, appears to have been fused with a pistol-sized chunk of molten metal and plastic. Nattied-R-EDD and Dole-R-USS have just reappeared on the scene, ready to go.

Enn does a victory dance.

Nattied warilly adopts a combat stance, and puts his hand on his weapon (without actually drawing it).

Ripp gathers up the nets with the bots, moving them toward the equipment crate. As she works, she watches Dole and Nattied warily. She grabs the first net she threw, that has the one single spiderbot, and places it on top of the crate and begins to turn it over and inspect it. It is squirming a bit in its net, so she uses her useless blob-hand to pin it down while she gets out her regular RED POD with her ‘good’ hand, and begins to hunt-and-peck type, one-handed. She is quickly getting frustrated with the process. “This w-would be easier w-with t-two hands.”

Ripp has managed to find protocols for reprogramming the bot, but hacking into it wirelessly with only one hand is going to be slow and tedious. And since this particular hack-job may or may not be technically treasonous, it’s not like she can ask someone else to type for her while she dictates.

Junction…

Cue leans over to Preach. "I don't know why his hands are all lit up like that, but I do know if those spider-bots are coming back--they're heading straight for the light. We need to move away from him."

Preach and Cue take a step back from Sync and Didjab.

Didjab glances around to see if he can spot the skittering bot, but comes up empty. He says, "More spider-bots. Failure and Treason, we're never going to complete the mission with them around."

Sync barely glances about before she moves. She whips out her utility knife (the size of her forearm) and slashes deeply at Didjab’s left wrist. Even bringing the blade down two handed and with all of her weight, she doesn’t get the clean, severing slice she was hoping for, but the blade sinks pretty deep all the same. It looks like she’s hit bone just below the wrist, and now her knife is stuck there. She tugs at it, and it almost slips out of her hands as Didjab tries to jerk his hand away in shock and pain.

The light emanating from Didjab’s hands stops, and the area is plunged into almost total darkness except for the light of Sync’s clone delivery unit some ten or so meters off. The darkness lasts all of two seconds before a new clone delivery unit appears seemingly out of nowhere and stops right beside the group. It opens to reveal Soup-R-MOM-5.


GUNS AT A KNIFE FIGHT

Corridor…

Dole approaches and rejoins the team asking Power “What did we miss?” and then pointing over his shoulder towards Enn asks “…and who’s the new meat?” Power responds with a shrug of her shoulders.

Dole looks at the spiderbot Ripp is working on and says, “I hate spiders; spiderbots doubly so.” Then looking to Ripp says “Need some help?” as he walks over to where she is working on the mechanical nightmare.

"Actually, Let me help," Power says. "Dole, can you watch our back?" Looking to Enn she adds, "Um, hi, got any ideas on how to deal with these?" she sweeps her arms to indicate the netted bots.

With Power holding the bot down, Ripp’s work goes much faster. She occasionally prods at the mechanics of the bot, and then taps one-handed at her POD for a while before returning to the spiderbots innards. After a few moments, she says, “Huh. I th-th-th-think th-that’s it. Sh-sh-sh-ould work. Now.”

The bot has clear evidence of malicious programming. It’s a fairly simple bot, so the alien code is also equally simple. It normally has instructions to retrieve proper-sized bulbs and replace them, working in coordination with other spiderbots in the area. The malicious code leaves in the cooperation, but instructs the bot to destroy all light sources as well as attack agents with potential to produce light. The code would have spread quickly from bot to bot in the sector, although there is a limiter that keeps them from operating more than 500 meters from this junction. Ripp removes said code and replaces it with a filter to deny that code in the future, lest it be infected again. She keeps a copy of the dangerous code in case it is useful later for documentation (or other purposes).

Junction…

Sync struggles with the knife for only a second before realizing she will not dislodge it.

Preach looks down at Didjab's hand, then up at Sync, then down at Didjab's hand, then says to Cue, "Cue, what do you say we head back to PLC and see if we can get the right bulb." Before she answers, Preach is walking away towards the door.

Soup stands silently and watches, her hand raised to ask a question. Then there is a *tink* and the light inside her new clone delivery unit breaks and it gets dark again. Soup puts her hand back down.

There is enough light for everyone to see maybe a meter in front of their faces, but even then only dimly.

"Crazy Clone! Back off!" Didjab shouts as he pulls his laser pistol. Sync is pulling out her pistol at the same time. Looking for exposed skin, Didjab presses his pistol to Sync’s neck before squeezing the trigger. Sync simply chooses to shoot her opponent in the face.

Didjab and Sync drop to the floor in unison. Both dead.

Cue starts following Preach immediately. After hearing the thump, though, she's...well...curious. "What was that?" she asks Preach. "We should probably go back and see what happened, right?"

[Just for Didjab and Sync: I decided that since you were both doing the same thing, I’d give each of you a pistol roll and a dodge roll and compare numbers. I gave Didjab +4 on both because of his military training. Didjab rolled a 13 (+4=17) pistol and 4 (+4=8) dodge. Sync was 18 and 6.]

[Note to the readers: At this point, all spiderbots have been disabled or netted except for one. It is the one that Enn first remote controlled, so it didn’t swarm out into the corridor following Didjab when all the others did. Thus, when the door slammed shut, Enn lost control of it, and it became the only malicious spiderbot in the junction (thanks, Enn). As it scuttles around taking out light after light, it is really just this one.]


BUILT FOR TWO

Junction…

To Cue, Preach replies, "Absolutely. We need to look into that back there. Fortunately, we will need to head back here after we get the correct bulb from PLC. We can conduct our investigation then." When they reach the door, Cue goes to open it and Preach stops her. “Hold on.” Preach then unfastens a couple of sticks that are connected to the door handle and door frame. Cue isn’t sure how, but he somehow folds them together and puts them in one of his pockets. Preach chuckles, “That could have been bad.”

Soup runs towards Preach and Cue, yelling, "Oooooohhhh, wait young man! Mom is coming with you, because this crap is crazy! Oh, listen to me with this potty mouth. And I don't think you're a Commie. I think we had a misunderstanding! Please wait." She catches up to them just as they open the door and step into the corridor outside the junction.

They find the corridor full of shattered spiderbots and five RED level troubleshooters (scene described below).

In a clone pod built for two…

Sync-R-SWM-4 and Didjab-R-ING-(5?) have been packaged together in a single clone delivery unit. It is about the size of a non-Tardis phonebooth on the inside, so it is not comfortable, but not overly cramped either. If experience is any indication, they have just over a minute—maybe two--before they will arrive at their destination.

"Look," Didjab says as he gains consciousness, "something terrible is happening. I have no idea what it is." He looks Sync dead in the eye. "I need your help Sync. Alpha Complex needs us."

Sync lifts her head and matches Didjab's stare. She lets a moment pass, her eyes saying everything with their intensity. She puts each hand on Didjab's shoulders at the same time and says, "You just tell me what to do, chief, and I'll get it done. What is said in the elevator stays in the elevator." Didjab starts feeling awkward as Sync keeps staring at him unblinkingly, waiting for a response.

With one hand, Didjab reaches up and crushes the lightbulb. In the dark, Didjab manages a husky "Kiss me," before wrapping Sync in a strong embrace and kissing her fiercely. His mustache tickles quite a bit.

This, of course, will be when the door opens.

Corridor…

Dole stands guard watching anxiously in all directions, listening for signs of, well, anything, as well as trying to keep an eye on the actions of the team.

Enn glances over at the netted bots. "I'll uh....figure out a way to keep these from skittering around like that, it's annoying." Enn kneels down next to the first netted bag of bots, and with his hands low behind the group of them, he fiddles with something, and one by one, the bots stop moving. He turns to the other bag-o-bots and continues the process.

Of course, Enn is using his universal remote, quickly locking onto the bots one at a time and deactivating them.

Satisfied with her work on the first reprogrammed bot, Ripp turns to Power. “G-grab another b-b-bot and l-let’s t-try this ag-gain,” Ripp says to Power. She continues to watch Dole and Nattied to make sure they’re not going to attack her.

Nattied glances up at the ceiling, looking at the damaged bulbs in the corridor. He then pulls out his POD and taps away at it for a moment. While doing this, Nattied says "But what are we supposed to do with these creepy things? I mean, they can't change a light bulb can they?"

Nattied is checking the information on mission parameters, and to his surprise, the broken bulbs here in the corridor are not part of their mission at all. Apparently, the only bulb that needs changing is in a traffic junction just on the other side of a nearby door here.

Power says, "We’ll just have to find out, won’t we? Shall we release the wee beastie and see how that goes? Do we still have the light bulbs somewhere?" Lifting the reprogrammed bot up, she opens the mission equipment crate underneath it with her free hand, and sure enough there are still two large bulbs (over a half-meter across each) inside. Each bulb is still cradled in a nest of packing peanuts and both are still intact after all this time. One of them is clearly labeled, “DO NOT USE.”

The door to the junction opens, and three clones enter. The first, a short squat clone named Preach-R-MAN, along with a wide-eyed female called Cue-R-IUS. Pulling up the rear, Soup-R-MOM follows them in.

A clone delivery unit arrives just after that, and its door opens to reveal Didjab-R-ING-5 and Sync-R-SWM-4 locked in what appears to be a passionate embrace. They have their mouths pressed together in what could only be called a kiss, if kissing were a thing that RED level clones were familiar with. Which… in general… they are not.

[Let me set the scene here as there are now ten RED level troubleshooters all in the same area.

This is a standard pedestrian corridor, eight meters wide and extending off to the north and south for a long way. About 20 meters to the south, there is a T intersection where a secondary corridor extends to the west off of this one. On the east wall of the immediate area is a door leading to the traffic junction that is the target of your particular troubleshooter mission. On the other side of that door, within that junction, is a broken light bulb that needs to be changed.

For Team Didjab: According to your mission parameters, the malfunctioning bulb-changing bots in the area must be disabled, and a troubleshooter must change the bulb by hand.

For Team Power: According to your mission parameters, the malfunctioning bulb-changing bots must be repaired and allowed to finish changing the broken bulb.

Speaking of broken bulbs and bots: In this corridor here, there are two light bulbs in the ceiling that are out, leaving the area dimly lit by light spilling in from further down the corridor. These bulbs are not part of your outlined mission. The entire area here is littered with broken bot parts and shells of smashed and disabled spiderbots. There do not appear to be any active spiderbots loose in the area.



Along the west wall of this corridor is a line of five clone delivery units. All of them are empty except for the most recent arrival which contains Didjab-R-ING and Sync-R-SWM, who are making out as noted above.

Across from them, Preach-R-MAN, Cue-R-IUS, and Soup-R-MOM have just entered the corridor from the traffic junction.

Between these two groups, in the middle of the corridor is everybody else. There is an open equipment crate here containing two very large light bulbs (over a half-meter across each) nestled amidst foam packing peanuts. Kneeling next to the crate are Power-R-NGR and Ripp-R-JAK. Power is incredibly tall, thin and angular. She is holding a spiderbot in one hand. It is lit up as if active, but it is not moving. Ripp’s uniform has been shredded, leaving her naked from the waist up, and one of her hands appears to be fused into some shapeless ball of metal and plastic. Behind Ripp are two large bags made out of some sort of netting. The bags appear to be full of inactive spiderbots. Enn-R-GEE is kneeling next to these bags.

Beyond Enn are Nattied-R-EDD, who is looking at his POD, and Dole-R-USS, a shaggy red-headed clone with a thin YELLOW stripe across the chest of his uniform, indicating that he is a registered (and legal) mutant. As the new clones all arrive at once, Dole and Nattied both have their hands near their pistols, ready for trouble.]


QUICK THINKING

Soup draws her pistol and smiles. She jumps back and slams the door.

Soup then leans against the door (increasing her gravity to max to block it). "Good, we’re safe...wait...where are the other two...oh crap!"

Now that she’s in the junction, Soup notes again how dark it is here. The only light available spills out from one of the open clone delivery units many meters away. As Soup waits for her eyes to adjust… *tink*… that one available light pops and goes out. Now there is no light whatsoever. Soup knows she has a flashlight app on her POD. It wouldn’t provide much light at all, but it might be better than nothing.


HONK HONK

Ripp looks at the new arrivals, and watches as Soup slams the door. She mumbles to Power, “W-we should have k-killed her s-several t-times w-while w-we had the chance.” She continues to hack-repair the spiderbots while glancing up between the different groups. After reprogramming a second one, she now has the process down, and can probably copy-paste the fix into new bots with just a couple minutes of work for each one. The second bot (like all the netted bots) is currently switched off. Ripp sets it aside and grabs a third.

Ripp’s feeling a bit exposed, being in the middle of the different groups. And maybe it’s the Didjab and Sync that triggered something deep down inside, but Ripp has noticed that she’s topless and is starting to become a little self-conscious.

Dole growl out “State your intentions!” at the newcomers as he quickly moves to his right at a diagonal, keeping one hand on his pistol, but not drawing it. Keeping his eyes on Preach and Cue he stops his movement somewhere between Enn and Ripp with his back to a delivery unit, leveling his gaze at the others over the bagged spiderbots. Dole is also aware of the two new clones to his right and spares them a glance, but keeps his focus on Preach and Cue.

Nattied follows suit, with his hand on his still-holstered pistol. He slowly backs straight up until his back is against the northernmost clone delivery unit.

Sync breaks the embrace with Didjab and steps out of the clone pod. She swishes something around in her mouth and says to Didjab, "Your brushing is immaculate. But let's not forget the importance of flossing before the next exam." She marches over the equipment crate. She gives Ripp's boobs a quick honk with her hands and says, "Looks like you got into a scrap of trouble there." She nods at Ripp's hand, "Might want to go to medical to check it out." She kneels next to Power, giving her a reassuring pat on the buttocks and says, "Give me a sit-rep, citizen. What's it going to take to get to that bulb and get this installed?"

[Mike]

Chapter 14 – Bleah


SMALL TALK

Nattied surveys the area with all the new arrivals and shakes his head. "This is just so fucked up! And every new clone seems more foggy-headed than the last!"

Didjab straightens his armor jacket, smiles at Sync, and then replies to Dole’s question about intentions: "Same thing as your team, it seems—just trying to get the corridor lit."

Cue agrees with Didjab. She nods and holds up a tiny standard-sized light bulb, clearly much smaller than the bulbs issued in Power and Ripp’s mission crate. "Yeah, we're trying to change a light bulb, but no luck--what happened to her hand?" Cue asks pointing at Ripp.

Didjab and Cue are both approaching the center of the room with (apparent) curiosity. Didjab notes the netted and inactive spider-bots. "How did you manage that?"

Enn, who appears to be connected with the newcomers, is gritting his teeth a little as if annoyed at everything and everyone, but he manages to reply without rolling his eyes, “I switched ‘em off, Boss.”

"UGH." Enn is getting really annoyed by all these people. There are way more important things going on, like a god damn REVOLUTION, but they are all complaining about some stupid ass light bulb for the past (what feels like) three hours. He crouches over one spider-bot, but places his POD on the floor next to it. He will pretend he's tinkering with this spider-bot, but will actually control another spider-bot from Ripp’s pile to install the light bulb so everyone can finally stfu about it.

Ripp wishes she had a little more energy stored up so she could zap Sync, but she doesn’t, so instead:

Ripp remains silent as she continues to work on spiderbots. She grabs one from the bag, works on it in conjunction with something on her POD. After 30 seconds, her POD flashes twice. She sets the still inactive bot aside and grabs another. She now has a stack of about five completed(?) ones.

Power continues to help Ripp with the bots. Helping her fish out new ones and holding them while Ripp works, but also uses her free hand to get her pistol in her lap as she carefully watches all the new clones milling about.

However, once Sync moves in, Power’s demeanor changes. "The first thing that it's gonna ‘take,’ Citizen, is you keeping your hands off of me and my team or I'll shoot them off." Power stands to full height to look down on the other clone, and holy processors if this isn’t one tall clone. Power stands well over two meters. "If you wanna help get this job done, go open that door,” Power waves with her pistol in the general direction of the door that Soup just slammed, “and get rid of that bitch who keeps trying to keep us away from the bulb we need to change!”

Preach takes one step forward and strikes a vaguely heroic pose, which he fails to really carry off due to his short and stocky build. But he’s committed to it, so that counts. "No need for hostilities. I’ve got this. I'm Preach-R-MAN, citizen! Hygiene Officer! And my intention is to make sure this mission is being carried out properly. In a hygienic way." Preach now has the attention of the room and approaches the equipment crate. He looks Ripp up and down. He shakes his head and says, almost to himself, "Yes, I can see my services are needed here." He scratches a few lines on a note pad while approaching Power and Ripp, then stands next to Power and hands Ripp a RED piece of paper.



Curious, Ripp takes the paper from him, and now Preach’s attention wavers, as he starts glancing around the room and getting a little twitchy.

Preach is using his telekinesis to try to get Dole or Nattied’s lasers to fire.

Nattied turns to Dole and says, “So what now?”

Nattied starts a little as it feels like someone just grabbed his gun. His hand is already on it, so he instinctively draws his weapon, and looks at the holster, but there is no one nearby.

Dole still has his hand on his weapon when it suddenly goes off. It blows out the bottom of his holster and leaves a scorch mark on the floor by his foot, but otherwise leaves him unhurt. Dole lets out a yelp of surprise, and anyone looking will note that he is way shaggier than he should be. He normally wears his hair a little long and also has the beard, which is technically against uniform code, but one assumes it’s related to his mutation. But right now, his hair is way past his collar, and his formerly neatly-trimmed red beard now spills out onto his chest.

Dole recognizes that his hair is growing excessively—it happens to him under stress sometimes. That’s why his power is registered as “Excessive hair growth.” But he feels completely in control of his transformation. The conditions are right that it wouldn’t take any effort to “unleash the beast,” but he knows it won’t happen unless he wants it to.

As everyone’s focus shifts to Dole, one of the spiderbots drags one of the giant light bulbs out of the mission crate and scurries towards the door.

Before the little bot can get to it though, the door is flung open from the other side. Soup stands in the doorway, with a manic look in her eye. Her weapon is out and leveled at the center of the room. The spiderbot (giant bulb still in tow) begins climbing up the wall next to the doorway.

Power was ready for this and instantly switches into hyperspeed. With the world in slow motion around her, she takes careful aim at Soup, not three meters away and aims for the other woman’s neck.

Power immediately fires a single blast at Soup, lasing a neat hole in the other woman’s neck. Soup tries to speak, but can only choke out a single wet cluck. As she falls, she gets off a single shot.

Power, still watching things in slow motion sees Soup’s hand drop and watches her finger squeeze the trigger. A quick mental calculation tells her that the shot is leveled in Ripp’s direction. Power doesn’t hesitate.

Amazingly, Power has dropped down, accidentally elbowing Sync in the chest as she dives towards Ripp. Ripp has barely registered what’s going on with all the gunshots, and the wind is knocked out of her as Power slams her to the floor. Soup’s single laser shot sears through Power’s armor and burns a hole in her gut.

Power is conscious, but recognizes that this isn’t good.

Soup is dead.

If anyone was paying attention to the spiderbot, it has disappeared (with the bulb) though the door and into the darkened junction.

Enn watches the bot’s progress on the remote’s display pad. The bot is now on the ceiling in there, and keyed to bulb changing duties. The infrared shows the broken bulb in its socket ahead, but Enn finds he doesn’t have to control it. It’s already doing what it’s supposed to.


POWER VACUUM

[NOTE: A spiderbot just carried a giant light bulb into the junction area. There IS a second bulb in the equipment crate that looks identical to the first, except it is clearly labeled, “DO NOT USE.”]

Sync jumps up with blinding speed and dashes through the open door, kicking Soup out of the way as she slams it closed. As she does, she shouts, "I'll protect the bot and the bulb, you should all keep ducking for safety!" Simultaneously, Didjab also shouts, "The Bulb!" as he dashes for it. He's running at top speed to get it back. Neither one of them even bothers to pull their lasers, so intent is their focus. They make it through the doorway at nearly the same time without running into each other.

Once they are in the junction, it is completely dark again. The only light is coming very dimly from the already dim corridor on the other side of the door. Whatever lights may have been here from the clone delivery units earlier is now gone. It takes a moment for their eyes to adjust, but eventually Didjab yells, “There!” and points to the ceiling. Sure enough, a green power light on the spiderbot is reflecting off the bulb it carries and highlights its silhouette just enough for them to watch the bot’s progress across the ceiling. It must have gone straight up the wall immediately and is almost directly over their heads now, having covered maybe a third of the distance to the burnt out bulb over the ladder truck.

Ripp gasps, trying to regain her breath, and looks around a moment before noticing Power’s wound. “Oh shit!” she exclaims. “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. It’ll be alright, I’ll get you some help.”

Dole turns to Nattied and says, "Hurry, we need to get Power's body off of Ripp before she's crushed". Dole then hurries to help lift Power's lifeless body off of Ripp as quickly as possible. But Ripp seems to have it in hand. With Dole’s help, Ripp stands and holds Power’s long form across her arms. Ripp pulls away and says, “No! She’s still breathing!”

Power allows time to slow back down, grabbing her gut in agony. She is so exhausted now that it takes a monumental effort of will to remain awake.

Power groans out loud but can't help smiling weakly, knowing at least she took Soup out with her. "Dole, can you cover Ripp? I don't think I can right now" she says weakly, hoping he can hear her. She looks round at the other newcomers, hoping that her friends will be safe. "Sorry if I hurt you Ripp. On the way down, I mean." Power closes her eyes to rest.

She really hopes the bot with the light bulb is working properly and someone can get her only two trusted friends safely back to the barracks.

"Tsk, tsk, tsk," says Preach. "These are the kinds of things that can really mess up one's hygiene." Preach makes a few marks on his notepad and peels off a RED sheet of paper to Power which he sticks to her uniform, since she seems to be unconscious now. "And she, of all people, should really be setting an example for her team."

Preach is still working on triggering lasers from the opposing team, but with all the excitement, his adrenaline is working overtime. Not that you would be able to tell from his cool, controlled exterior.

Dole and Nattied both feel as if something just slammed into their guns.

Nattied and Dole both drop their pistols simultaneously, and at the same moment, Power’s gun somehow falls out of its holster and clatters to the floor, firing randomly as it hits the ground. The blast manages to sear across the tip of Enn’s left boot, heating up his toes a little, before impacting with one of the net-bags full of spiderbots. The bots are inactive and do not react in any way, but the bag is smoldering, and smoke is rising from them.

Enn jumps back in surprise and takes this as his cue to leave. He looks around the area at the assembled clones and then stomps away down the corridor to the north, flipping everyone off before he goes.

Ripp, still carrying Power, heads in the opposite direction. She still has her POD in her good hand, and awkwardly stabs at it a couple times with her thumb as she goes. She says to Dole, “Y-y-you’re in charge. I’ll h-h-h-help her. G-get the j-job done.”

Ripp’s POD action was to activate the spiderbots that have been fixed. She looks around before she is out of the area and thinks momentarily about trying to hack one of the clone delivery units, but decides that would take too long. Instead, she begins trying to carry Power back towards the infirmary and medical help, all the while trying to keep her own body between Power and the rest of the clones as much as possible, keeping herself tensed and ready to absorb any laser shots that may come their direction.

As she heads away, she looks over her shoulder and calls back to the little bot that has been following us around this entire time. “C’mon, follow us.” From the shadow of the equipment crate there emerges a small bot about the size of a basketball, with only a single thick tire below it for locomotion and numerous hatches, ports, and miscellaneous seams that could be for appendages or sensors or who-knows-what. It rolls along amiably behind Ripp.

"...And now we wait for Power to return," chuckles an already much hairier Dole, amused with his own pun.

In the back of his mind he hears a primal growl. He answers the call. Because there is a power vacuum… haha did it again with the pun...Dole doesn't want to leave his teammates alone with the newcomers even if the goal is next door. He also knows they are injured and not right in the head and he needs to make up for the temporary loss of firepower until Power's clone arrives.

Dole’s face elongates. He is now completely covered with fur, and his ears rise to furry points above his head. His elongated jaw seems to contain many sharp teeth, and he is easily 8-10 centimeters taller than he was a moment ago. He leans over to retrieve his pistol from the floor with a hairy muscular hand and looks warily around the room.

Four of the spiderbots that Ripp had been working on all light up and start moving. They surround the equipment crate while one of them retrieves the second bulb (the “DO NOT USE” bulb). And with bulb in claw, the four of them move towards the doorway.

Enn finds a door and ducks through it quickly, not caring where he’s going as long as it’s away from all those assholes. He finds himself in a dimly lit storeroom with a very high ceiling. He’s not sure how big the room is, but what he can see is packed with shelves. There are six or seven black-clad infrared clones here. They appear to be unloading large black jugs of liquid from palettes on the floor and carrying them up ladders to stack them on the topmost shelves.

Ripp manages to round a corner towards the nearest infirmary that she knows of, but after a couple minutes, she’s pretty sure that Power has stopped breathing.

Power-R-NGR-1 is dead.


TALE AS OLD AS TIME

Enn…

INFRAREDS! THANK THE HUMANS! Enn mentally wipes the sweat from his forehead.

"Greetings lower class citizennnns. I'm here to record your progress and make sure everything is processing accordingly during the rebellion. Carry on."

Enn slowly raises his POD to his face and pretends to take notes....but continues to play his game and hopes this will all blow over soon and humans will once again prevail. And for him to not have to work anymore.

Ripp…

Ripp stops and lowers Power gently to the ground. “Power, can you hear me? I’m sorry I couldn’t help you. And thank you for trying to protect me.” With tears running down her cheeks, Ripp leans in and gently kisses Power on the lips, holding the kiss for several seconds before sitting back up. Just to be sure that Power is dead, Ripp checks for a pulse.

Ripp smooths Power’s hair, and arranges her arms and legs so it looks like Power is resting peacefully. She removes the RED paper Preach stuck to Power’s uniform, wads it up and tosses it across the hall. She then stands up and wipes away the tears from her eyes and cheeks, taking a couple deep breaths to calm herself. She leans down to the little, one-wheeled bot, and says, “Power’s gone, now it’s just you and I. Let’s go finish this mission.” Taking one last look at Power, Ripp then turns and begins walking back to where she left Dole and Nattied, calling for the bot to follow along.

Soup and Power…

Soup-R-MOM-6 and Power-R-NGR-2 find themselves in a clone delivery unit together on the way back to their respective teams. It is close quarters, but they have just enough room that they don’t have to be on top of each other. Soup, of course, has done this many times. She watches Power warily and settles back for the ride.

Power activates her mutant ability of superhuman speed. She has her brand new pistol out, screws a fresh barrel onto it and plugs three shots into Soup.

Soup-R-MOM-6 is dead without ever having seen Power move.

The Corridor…

The smoldering bag of bots continues to smolder.

“Nattied, there’s one more of them here in this room and I’m not talking about the creepy Preacher clone either.” Dole says surveying the corridor. “SOMEONE or something has been messing with our pistols twice now?“ In spite of his transformation, his speech is relatively clear.

Feeling anxious, which is never good for him mid-transformation, Dole takes the lead. “Nat, I think we need to get into that room with the bulbs and pronto. Follow me if you feel up to it. I really need your help with these odds!”

Dole decides to transform even more, pushing the envelope of control for maximum effect.

Dole grows even taller. His uniform is now comically too short, exposing several centimeters of his wrists and ankles. He must be bulking up as well, because the fabric strains across his chest and thighs and biceps. His face grows even shaggier and more animalistic.

But there’s barely time to register any of this as Dole bum-rushes Preacher with amazing speed, clotheslining the shorter clone and knocking him to the ground. Dole snarls out, “That’s for disrespecting Power,” and then he turns to enter the junction. And somehow is brought up short by Cue, who is blocking the door (although not intentionally).

Cue has spent the last few minutes simply being fascinated by all the action, looking around the room with mouth agape. Now, as Dole pulls up short in front of her, her eyes fill with wonder. "You're... bigger! And your hair!" she says in a way that is clearly a statement but implies she wants to know more. She has one hand up as if reaching to touch his arm, but stops herself. The contrast of the giant, bestial Dole being given pause by the tiny, dark-eyed and innocent-seeming Cue is stark.

Preach is still on the floor, holding his throat and gasping ineffectively for breath.

The four spiderbots with the DO-NOT-USE bulb dodge neatly around Cue and Dole and into the darkened junction.

Ripp returns from down the hall and shows up on the scene just as a new clone delivery unit swoops in. The unit opens, and the stench of burnt flesh wafts out along with a bit of smoke. Soup-R-MOM-6’s charred body falls out into the corridor, and Power-R-NGR-2 steps neatly over her to rejoin the action.

The Junction…

Didjab and Sync stay under the spiderbot as it makes its way across the ceiling towards the broken bulb. When they are two-thirds of the way there, commotion at the door. They can see the silhouette of some monstrously large clone in the door, but also the moving shadows at the clone’s feet indicate that several more spiderbots are coming this way, and they are dragging another light bulb with them. These bots are choosing to move across the floor instead of the ceiling.

[Mike]

Chapter 15 – Of Bots and Bulbs


PINA COLADA AT TRADER VICS

Junction…

"Protect the bulb," Didjab whispers to Sync. "Friend Computer is depending on us."

Sync is in action, almost before Didjab finishes talking. She dashes away towards the ladder truck and begins climbing the ladder, trying to spot the little bot in the darkness before she gets to the top so she can catch the little bastard. She’ll leap out there to get that bulb if she has to.

Didjab takes cover behind an overturned cargo-bot and, after a moment of aim, lasers the giant clone in the head. Blast it! The stupid clone leaped just as Didjab pulled the trigger. And what a leap! Didjab can see now that the big guy literally dove over the head of a smaller clone also standing in the doorway. The shot catches the big (hairy?) lug in the chest, after which it proceeds into a diving roll, coming up in a wary defensive stance. All Didjab can see is a silhouette, but something is definitely amiss with this clone. It’s too large, with furry lumps and protrusions in all the wrong places. Didjab registers all that in a fraction of a second as he runs to the left and dives for cover behind an empty and darkened clone delivery unit. He pauses and listens for just a moment, hoping the big guy didn’t see him in the darkness.

Corridor…

Power wrinkles her nose at the smell of what's left of Soup. "Sorry I left you in the lurch, everything ok?" she says. Then she notices the empty crate "Um...where did the 'do not use' bulb go?"

Power is relieved to see Dole and Ripp seemingly healthy, albeit in Dole's case more hairy.

Ripp nods hello at Power. “M-m-m-my b-bots took it.” She walks over to look at Preach, and takes the red ticket he gave her for being out of uniform and tosses it in his gasping face, then turns and walks back to the equipment crate and the bag of spiderbots. Sadly, all the bots are either already gone or are now smoldering. To emphasize the point, the smoldering bag-o-bots now finally bursts into flame. It’s a little flame, and it’s not particularly dangerous out here on the steel floor, but it does mean nothing useful is coming out of there.

Preach finally manages to gasp and get a solid lungful of air. He props himself up on his elbows and regains his bearings.

Ripp leans down and grabs the dropped pistol from Power’s first clone and holsters it. She stands and looks to Power. Ripp is still topless and injured and has only one good hand, but she feels better than she has in a while.

Dole flinches back from Cue almost imperceptibly, careful not to let her touch him. He then looks intensely into her eyes and says “It isn’t nearly as interesting when it’s YOUR body that’s morphing. We can talk later, but for now let’s catch us a runaway light bulb.” He then makes a bounding leap over Cue’s head and through the wide open door.

Just as Dole passes through the doorway, a laser shot from the darkness catches him in the chest. He is startled as his reflec armor absorbs the shot and then simply bursts off of his body, along with most of the top half of his uniform. Dole rolls as he lands and comes up in a defensive stance, scanning the darkness.

Directly ahead of him, Dole can barely make out some clone, possibly Didjab, running to the right and diving for cover behind an empty clone delivery unit. Further away, a smaller female is running directly away from Dole—probably Sync. Directly ahead of Dole are the four spiderbots that just entered here, still carrying the DO-NOT-USE bulb. A fifth bot is crossing the ceiling holding the first bulb, but Dole cannot tell where it’s headed. All around, the junction is filled with wrecked vehicles.


LET THERE BE

Nattied senses things beginning to build to a head again, and he strolls over towards one of the empty clone delivery units while casually pretending to check his POD. He casually says, “Hold on, I need to take this,” and steps into the unit and shuts the door.

Ripp stows her POD and unholsters her laser pistol, then cautiously approaches open door through which Dole just went. She sidles carefully up next to Cue and peers into the darkness. From the doorway, one can barely make out Dole’s hulking form crouched down at the edge of the dim light.

Cue helps Preach to his feet and then screws a YELLOW laser barrel onto her pistol. "Did you see how big that hairy guy got?" she asks Preach. "We should probably go help them," she says as she heads to the door with pistol in hand. "Right?"

Preach appears shocked and righteous. “No!” He shoots Ripp in the back as he yells. Ripp falls as Preach charges to the door and spots Dole. “They are in flagrant violation of uniform code. If the power of citations can’t show them the error of their ways, then it is our duty to be more persuasive.” He fires into the darkness at Dole. "Now Cue! The commie mutant traitors are out of uniform!"

Ripp is dead.

Just prior to that…

On his own and thinking fast, Didjab grabs a hunk of debris and hurls it further in the direction he moved to take cover. He's hunkered down tight and will blast anybody who isn't Sync.

Dole hears a chunk of debris hit the ground a short distance off from where Didjab is hiding. Possibly a distraction. His animal eyes see perfectly well in this darkness. He knows Didjab didn’t move. In the distance, it looks like Sync is climbing a ladder on an intercept course with the ceiling bot. There is someone else already at the top of the ladder.

Dole knows he is in the junction with at least two enemies plus whoever this third clone is, some spiderbots and two bulbs--one that he should not use. Dole knows it is safe for his team to let go of most of his control and he does just that. Now is the hour of tooth and claw…

Dole goes full wolf again and is ready to stalk Didjab, but then there is an intense pain between his shoulder blades, and he recognizes the scent of laser-burn. He turns to see Cue and Preach in the doorway behind him. Ripp is dead at their feet. Preach has his laser out and fires again, catching Dole in the chest. It hurts a lot and serves to fuel Dole’s rage. Cue is next to Preach and also has her weapon out, but appears to be trying to talk to Preach.

Back to the corridor POV…

Preach hits Dole in the back squarely between what should be shoulder blades. The furry beast-thing that was Dole swivels its head around, and yellow eyes glow in the darkness, fixing solidly on Preach. Preach fires again and hits it in the chest. The thing snarls in rage. Dole’s uniform is completely gone now, and the monster, crouched on all fours, no longer resembles any sort of clone at all.

What Sync’s been doing…

Sync scrambles towards the top of the ladder. She will sacrifice everything to save the bulb, even if it means tumbling to the floor from this height. But it occurs to her that the spiderbot is heading straight for the burnt out bulb. She won’t grab it until she sees its intent.

Just before she gets to the top of the ladder, Sync’s head bumps somebody’s ass. There’s another clone up here! It’s Sev-R-USS-5. He snaps, “Watch it! Don’t screw this up for me!” He appears to be wearing night-vision goggles.

The spiderbot reaches the burned out bulb, and in about four efficient moves, it unscrews the broken bulb from the socket and replaces it with the good one.

The lights go on. All of them. If anyone looks in the direction of the previously burned out bulb, they will see Sync-R-SWM near the top of a ladder, just below Sev-R-USS. A spiderbot has apparently just changed the bulb.

But it’s not just that bulb. Every bulb along this trafficway now lights up at the exact same time, for kilometers in either direction. And the wreckage is astounding. Imagine a busy interstate highway through a major city. Now imagine that all light sources disappear at the exact same time. That carnage would be reminiscent of this.

With the lights on, Dole’s true form is apparent. If it was not obvious before, he is a werewolf (not that any of you would know what that is). Pick your favorite, scariest werewolf from any movie, and that’s Dole. He is on all fours and is well over two meters tall at the shoulders. He is staring at Preach, and he does not look happy.

And then the lights all go out again.

Four spiderbots carrying another light bulb pass Didjab’s position, apparently also on their way to the ladder truck.

Sev-R-USS screams, “DAMMIT!” at the top of his lungs. A second spiderbot had crept up next to the first and broken the bulb, mere seconds after it was changed. Strangely, this initiated a fight between the two bots. They both wrestle and jab at each other while managing to not fall from the ceiling.

Sev shoots the fighting bots with three or four laser shots. The two of them fall from the ceiling and land on Sev’s face, knocking him from his perch. Sync was ready for this and dodges neatly out of the way, swinging to the other side of the ladder. Sev hits something hard and painfully at the bottom. Sync can no longer see him, but his gurgling tells her he’s not likely to go anywhere.


MUTANT ONE, MUTANT ALL

Corridor…

Cue is fascinated and frozen by the sight of the giant monster that was once Dole. Something like "Gaaahhhh" comes out of her gaping mouth. Her pistol is by her side and her head cocked as she just stares and watches.

But Preach slams the door. He tosses a GREEN handle to her and holds tight to the other end. "Hold on tight, Cue! Friend Computer loves INTSEC and he will save us from this mutant abomination!"

Cue catches and holds the GREEN handle that Preach has lobbed to her, but isn’t until Preach starts pulling tight on a matching handle of his own that she realizes what it is: these are the two ends of some sort of garrote, but the wire that connects them is so fine as to be practically invisible. Cue only recognizes this when the invisible line begins cutting into her fingers, because she had no idea how she was supposed to hold it.

Cue lets out a pained yelp and immediately drops the handle. It bounces across the floor and stops at Preach’s feet. Cue’s hand is bleeding.

As she creeps slowly behind Cue and Preach, Power shakes her head to try to clear her hearing. She can’t make out what Preach is saying… something but not sure what. However, she clearly recognizes shots fired and watches with horror as Ripp falls.

Something snaps within her. The calm she tries to exude falls from her. All her life she has tried to be calm, deliberate, and kind. Keep under the radar, lower people's defenses, move up the ranks to achieve her goals. She had learned however, that calm and deliberate (especially combined with her height) could also be very intimidating when she needed it to be, she had rarely needed it to be. She had always wanted to build, to create...Ripp, it seemed, could already do those things. Power wanted to learn from Ripp, to become her friend, yes...but more importantly learn from her. Seeing Ripp shot in the back makes Power rage. Seeing Nattied hide in her pod, like the coward he was only spurs her anger. She knows that if her mutant power was known, if her disbelief in the Computer were known she would be considered a traitor and killed, but Nattied, who hid when his team needed them, who attacked them when they were unaware...he was the real traitor, and Power would deal with him soon enough...but now, now she would focus on revenge.

When the light comes on, Power is momentarily unable to see clearly due to the brightness, but she doesn't stop, her fury driving her. When they go out again, she thinks in a brief flash of clarity "I'll bet they just tried the Do Not Use Bulb" before she fogs over again in her rage.

Cue gets that feeling of her “danger flush” and realizes that stuff is about to go from bad to worse. Instinctively, she falls over as if unconscious.

Power aims and opens fire on Preach and Cue. Her first shot goes wild, but then she manages to drill Preach’s right thigh, sizzling the edge of his armor. Her next shot gets him in the torso, under his right arm, causing the armor to shrivel up and turn black (the way reflec so often does). She fires on Cue as well, but as Power had started firing, Cue’s eyes suddenly rolled up into her head and she fainted. Power’s shot goes over Cue’s head as the shorter woman sprawls to the floor, her wounded hand still bleeding quite a bit.

Cue realizes that playing dead is the smart move for her here, but she can’t resist keeping one eye barely slitted open so that she can still follow the action.

Prepared for something like this, Preach falls back on his telekinesis.

Preach throws both hands out towards Power, even though she is still a couple meters away, and Power is suddenly and violently thrown backwards. Her feet come off the floor, and she is bodily slammed into the clone delivery unit behind her.

Power felt ribs cracking on that one, but she doesn’t even think about it. Instead, she pushes her mutant hyperspeed as far as she can and lets her rage fuel her power.

Before Power can hit the ground, her body just… blurs. Suddenly, she is a smear of RED color that seems to be everywhere at once for less than half a second, and then right in Preach’s face.

At hyperspeed, she has retrieved her BLUE laser cutter from her clone’s corpse, as well as snatching up the fallen Ripp’s laser. She sets the focal length for the laser cutter to the longest setting possible and then presses it to Preach’s throat before switching it on. With a quick sweep of the tool, Preach’s head is separated from his body.

Power stops moving, and her form comes back into focus just as Preach’s head tumbles from his body to land between Ripp and Cue’s fallen forms. Preach’s own body falls back against the door before sliding to the floor. Power’s laser tool is visible as a faint shimmer of BLUE light 13 centimeters long. She shuts it off again.

This is where Power realizes she can barely breathe. With the rage and adrenaline ebbing, the broken ribs and punctured lung are starting to catch up to her. After such an intense injury, her little display of super speed has served only to shred her from the inside.

Power drops to her knees and gasps for breath.

Junction…

Didjab thinks, there's too many of the other team in the area. Too many of them that could damage the bulb and send the mission straight to HEL-sector. Didjab wraps both hands around his laser pistol and gets his middle finger into the trigger guard. With both index fingers along the barrel, he activates his light generation power in those fingertips. He's got what amounts to a spotlight to improve his shots and potentially blind anyone looking directly at him. He scrambles to the right further away from the door they came in and then tries to find Sev-R based on what he remembers.

Didjab slowly rounds a hoverflat transport bot that somehow completely inverted itself before deactivating. The ladder truck comes fully into view, still several meters away from him. Didjab’s spotlight picks out Sev-R laying at the base of it, impaled on a short spike of thick glass rising from a twisted lump of metal. Sev’s lifeless eyes are still open.

As Didjab watches, four spiderbots carrying a gigantic light bulb pass Sev’s body, apparently headed for the ladder truck.

Though Dole is very angry and Preach certainly is on the “short list,” he returns to his former course… the hunt. Pushing all of the team talk and goals out of his mind is a mutant part of the clone that Dole has never dealt with before. Just as it would take a lot to make a werewolf think about changing a lightbulb it would take a great deal to turn Dole’s focus on his prey…all of them. The sound of their panicked, beating hearts and the smell of their warm blood just beneath the veneer of clone skin is enough to put him back on the path. Clone Dole is “off the reservation” as they say or rather as someone said, sometime, somewhere.

Bounding on all fours his claws gain purchase on the surface of the darkened junction. But this is no normal hunt. His prey is armed and outnumbers him. He maneuvers out of the direct line of sight from Didjab, whose fear and sweat mingle to make a roadmap for his primal olfactory senses to follow… Closing quickly but silently he makes a great leap in Didjab’s direction. In a flurry of fang and claw one thing is apparent…This one is not getting away.

Didjab hears Dole’s low growls and realizes the snarling beast is headed his way, the clicks of its long claws clacking sharply on the steel floors. Didjab crouches and drops the lights, waiting in the darkness for the creature to get close.

Dole has eyes on Didjab now. The other clone is clearly in fight or flight mode, his heart racing, and the stink of fear-sweat rising from him. Didjab is crouching low to the floor and not moving. Dole doesn’t know if he’s playing dead or just hiding and counting on the darkness to protect him. Either way, he cannot move fast enough to escape now.

Just before Dole reaches Didjab, Didjab’s entire body suddenly lights up like a stadium spotlight shining in all directions at once. Dole finds himself completely blind, but his momentum carries him forward. As Dole pounces, Didjab fires over and over and over until the teeth sink into his neck and the giant claws find purchase in his soft flesh.

Didjab is dead, but before he goes, he has the satisfaction of knowing he emptied almost an entire barrel directly into the monster's face and chest. Hopefully it buys Sync enough time to do whatever she's doing.

Blind and shot, Dole finds himself quickly reverting to his normal clone form. Shortly, he is naked and laying in the shredded remains of what was once Didjab. Getting up is going to be painful. After a moment, he is unsure if he is still blind or if his human eyes simply can’t see anything in this darkness.

Meanwhile…

Sync unscrews the broken bulb. There’s plenty of the glass left, and it’s easy to get ahold of.

Suddenly, the whole area lights up again. Sync looks for the source, and it is Didjab. He is on the ground, not too far away, and is emitting light from every inch of his body. Sync spots him just in time to see him overwhelmed and devoured by a three-meter long wolf (not that Sync knows what a wolf is). After two seconds of light, the darkness returns yet again, but not before Sync spots four spiderbots carrying a giant light bulb just starting to climb the ladder beneath her.


THE END

Junction…

Sync throws the broken bulb down at the four legged bot that is covered in fur. In the darkness, she doesn’t know if she hit it, but she came close. She combines it with a mental blast at the monster, and she clearly feels its mind, weakened and struggling, just before she crushes it. Sync finds that extremely satisfying.

Dole is dead.

Carefully holding on to the back side of the ladder-- the opposite side of the one the spider bots are climbing, not that she knows what a spider is, and holds herself there perfectly still so as not to interrupt the progress of the bots carrying the lightbulb. She begins shouting encouragement to them. "Yes, though you walk through the corridor of the shadows of dark, you shall fear no commie infiltrator because Sync is with you! With her laser pistol and com unit, they comfort you!"

The little bots completely ignore Sync on their way up, and shortly are screwing the giant bulb into the socket. Just as before, everything lights up. Once this light goes on, every light for kilometers in either direction come on at the same time. The four bots then take up positions forming a perimeter on the ceiling around the newly replaced bulb.

Remembering what happened last time, Sync has her laser ready and scans the ceiling rapidly, looking for any more troublemakers. To her relief, these four spiderbots seem to be the only ones around.

Corridor…

"Shit" Power hisses, putting as much pressure as she is able (not much) on the spot with the worst pain, hoping to mitigate the damage done. "This is why we THINK first and act later" She thinks to herself as she struggles to catch her breath and retain consciousness, both of which she fears are futile actions.

Cue cracks her eyes open and sees Power struggling. Cue takes no chances and puts a YELLOW laser shot into the other woman.

Power-R-NGR-2 is dead.

Cue stands and cautiously opens the door to find that the lights are all on in the junction. Success! She pauses and looks immediately for spiderbots, but there seem to be only four of them here that she can spot, and they are forming a protective circle around the newly replaced light bulb.

[Mike]

EPILOGUE


Cue, Sync and Enn are all summoned to Briefing Room 12 (now Debriefing Room 12). They are soon joined by the fresh clones of Didjab and Preach. They are all assembled before an enormous, BLUE-clad clone named Lard-B-UTT-2, who (as it turns out) was the disembodied podium voice from the mission briefing whom they never actually met. Behind him, a team of GREEN Power Services goons wait patiently while fingering their weapons.

The team is held to task for the utter failure of their mission. And it’s not hard to see why their performance was so dismal. Failure to actually receive their mission briefing (insubordination). Failure to retrieve vital mission equipment from PLC (wasting Computer resources). Failure to retrieve experimental equipment from R&D (dereliction of duty). Inciting a riot (endangering public safety). These and a whole laundry list of other charges are what makes it to the official record, but that’s not what has Lard-B so furious.

Lard-B leans over and with one fat finger flips a switch that seems to indicate that he’s no longer recording the proceedings. Then he shouts, “No GODDAM bots! How fucking hard was that? You change the fucking bulb by hand? BY HAND! All of you shit-sticks got at least two of them, right? And now the light bulb contract goes to Tech. You stupid fucks!” This goes on for some time, and all the while, the GREEN goons just keep grinning and fiddling with their clubs and guns and getting antsier all the time.

But after 30 minutes of tirade, the clones are neither beaten nor killed. Instead, they return to quarters to find themselves stripped of rank and sent to work in the nutrient mines as infrared drones for the rest of their days.

The other team fares slightly better…

Ripp-R-JAK-2 holds her unmutilated hand up in front of her face and wiggles all her fingers, marveling at the use of the digits she previously took for granted. She quickly checks her uniform to see what all she has about her: uniform on and in order, new LASER pistol, working POD, body armor. She’s all set. Knowing that she had been approaching the doorway with her pistol at the ready when her previous clone perished, RIpp assumes there could very well be a battle raging when her clone delivery unit arrives at the junction. So she draws her LASER pistol and has it ready in case she needs it when the unit arrives.

The door opens, and Ripp steps out into Debriefing Room 2. Lou-B-JOB is there waiting. It seems Ripp is the first to arrive. But a second clone delivery unit brings Power-3, just as Nattied arrives. A fresh Dole clone is the last to make the scene.

In the end, Power is cited for poor leadership and lack of team cohesion, but it is outweighed by the success of the mission. Power’s experiences here will serve her well on her next troubleshooting mission.

Dole is immediately sedated and carted away by an asset management team from R&D.

Ripp provides excellent evidence of sabotage of the light bulb changing bots, but that only sparks Internal Security’s interest into her almost savant-like abilities with programming and computer operation. Ripp is taken away for more intensive information harvesting. Her clone line is not seen again.

Nattied spins a tale of treason and deceit, of a house divided against itself, of the bullies and traitors who never gave him a fair shake. Sadly, only Power is there to contradict him in a tragic case of he-said/she-said. In the end, he is commended for his desire to root out treason and his willingness to be the only one on the team standing up for what it right, even in the face of adversity. Nattied-O-EDD, it seems, has a bright future in middle management.

[Mike]