I managed to sleep on the floor. It was rather uncomfortable, but I got to sleep a few hours undistracted. I had my shotgun on my lap, I was ready to shoot. I’m normally not afraid of things, but this situation was different. I wasn't on familiar ground, there were deadly robots flying around and the Astral Plane was disturbing. It gave me nasty feeling. It seemed almost like it was contaminated.
I woke up. There was a strange noise that had woken me up. Someone was coming towards me. When it came to my view it was disturbing, to say the least. It was a huge spider, robotic spider. It looked hostile, so I kicked the door to warn the others. I didn’t want to wait for the others to do something, so I fired my shotgun. It fell down, but was still moving. I grabbed my sledgehammer and hit it. I was about to smash it to pieces when it exploded. I flew across the hallway and hit the wall. I felt my clothes taking some damage.
The whole group ran from the small room. I wiped some dust off my clothes and followed. Another disturbing thing happened. It started raining. Inside. There was a ceiling and everything. I just don’t get it.
We ran a while, and stopped at an elevator. Ronin and Dodger said that we should climb the elevator shaft. It made me sweat. Elevator, it was so small. And we all should just go there? I didn’t mind the climbing. I’m just not good with small places. And nobody asked if I was OK with going to the shaft. Well, apparently it was a safe way up. That’s where we were going, up. To the top of the Arcology.
Nerdy opened the doors for us, and Random went in. I looked in, took a deep breath and forced myself there. We were climbing some sort of ladder; I believe they were for maintenance. My hands were shaking a bit. I still noticed Nerdy coming in after me, and then Shrew. She had started calling me Kitty. It made me a bit annoyed. Nowadays I’m used to it, but back then I got angry when she called me that. It made me feel like she tried to make me smaller and weaker.
At one point I told Shrew not to call me Kitty. Then Nerdy seemed to stop to look at a tiny air conditioning thing. I climbed faster and hoped to be out from there soon. I would've thrown my sledgehammer at Shrew if my hands didn’t shake. I was trembling with anxiety, fear, terror. I didn’t want to take my hands off the ladder for one second. I just climbed.
Another few floors went by as we climbed. Then we started hearing screams from below. I looked down. There were metallic tentacles that had pierced one unfortunate orc. Then the tentacles took one screaming girl. Random kept on going, and I followed. There was nothing we could’ve done for them, so we needed to get out soon.
Finally we reached floor seven. It was out goal. Random opened the doors and climbed out from the shaft. I followed very quickly. My muscles hurt from all the climbing, but I was happy to be out on the open again. I shook my hands to make the pain go away, and it went. The otaku children were not so fortunate. They were complaining about their aching legs and arms.
We had reached some sort of market square. In the middle of it there was some weird structure. It was square, and on each corner there was a tree. The structure was a fountain. I noticed a weird smell, and Nerdy saw something next to the structure. Random went closer to see, and told us that it was a corpse, probably killed by a canine.
Others were indecisive about what we should do next. I watched them argue for a while and made a decision. I took all my clothes off and gave all my stuff to the closest person to me. Then I transformed. I wanted to look at the corpse, and I found out that it was indeed a canine that had killed this one. I didn’t recognize the smell though. It wasn't a normal dog. I had never encountered one like this before, so it was hard to tell what it was. It had come from one direction, stopped to most probably drink from the fountain and then kept on going. It had been hours since then.
I was just about to go and tell my findings to others, when I noticed the canine. It was behind everyone, so the people were between us. It had some powers, which it was using so that no one would see it in the physical world. But it wasn't invisible in the Astral Plane. It was just standing there, but when I started approaching it, it went closer to the wall. I started growling.
I tried to tell the canine that this was my pack, and it should walk away. Unfortunately we were different species. It didn’t understand leopard, and I didn’t know how to speak canine. It growled at me. I growled back, and then attacked. It bit me, but it wasn't so strong. I didn’t mind, I was certain I would kill it. But I minded that Random attacked the canine. He hit the canine with some sort of baton. The canine fell, and I killed it by breaking its neck. Then I raised my eyes from the dead canine and growled at Random.
I was bloody, so I walked back to the fountain, transformed and washed myself. After I was clean I dressed up and talked with Random. I told him that I didn’t like to have someone steal a kill from me. I would take care of my own fights. If I was outnumbered or clearly losing, then I would appreciate the help, but in that situation I was winning. There was only one canine. He seemed to understand my point.
The group wanted to go to a nearby fast food place to have something to eat. I decided to take the canine as my snack. I cut its back leg and wrapped it to a cloth. I couldn't take the whole animal with me, because it was too big. I would've left a trail of blood if I dragged it, and it was too heavy to carry around longer.
Nerdy told us that he wanted to have his mother’s blackcurrant juice, because he was starting to feel a bit sick. I offered him fresh meat, or blood. He seemed terrified by the idea. The otaku told me that they would prefer the energy bars. I enjoyed the shock I caused by eating raw meat. I always eat raw meat. It’s better than the energy bars.
We finally decided to head up, after one of the otaku managed to start an alarm by opening the fast food places door. So we headed towards the nearest staircase. We saw some corpses on the way, but I wasn't interested. Others seemed to look at the corpses closely. Shrew picked up a hammer, and Random took something from one of the corpses. I didn’t care about them, they were dead, I don’t eat people, and they didn’t seem to carry anything of interest.
We were just walking up some stairs when I had a bad feeling. I felt something bad was going to happen. Then we heard voices, people screaming, running, shooting. Some people were having a big fight, and we didn’t want to be a part of it, so we decided to get the hell out of there without being noticed. With all the noise and running no one noticed us.
We decided to hide. Then we saw some people working for Deus walking there. They went to a house, and we didn’t go near it. I was staring to be really hungry. Others decided to find another staircase and get as far as they could from all the gun fighting. I hoped that we would stop to eat soon; I hadn't eaten anything in ages. I had only drunk something from the fountain, but not eaten.
Others said that Nerdy and Opium needed some surgery. They weren't in a very good shape after all the fighting we had been in. We needed to find a hospital for them, but unfortunately all the three hospitals in Arcology were controlled by Deus. So we managed to find a health care center for us. Opium had a fever, and she was stumbling every once in a while when she walked. Nerdy said that he wasn't feeling good either. I thought quietly by myself how weak people were. They needed surgeries and hospitals to get better. I was stronger.
We finally got into the center. The front door was locked, and Nerdy tried to open it. He failed. Maybe he was distracted by his condition. Me, Random and Shrew went to look for an alternative route. It was just because I suggested breaking down the door with my sledgehammer. They thought I’d do less damage if I was out looking for an alternative. Shrew continued calling me Kitty. Oh how angry it used to make me. I think it was because I was more easily angered back then. Now she occasionally calls me Kitty, but I don’t care. I might grin at her, but I don’t get angry.
We found a broken window. Random Climbed in, then Shrew, then me. I had to take a deep breath to squeeze through a small window. We checked the place, saw it was empty, and then let the other guys in. I saw a rat.
Random was going to do the surgeries. Shrew and Alice, the girl who liked Nerdy, were going to help him. I found a quiet spot and started eating. I didn’t get to eat for long before my senses were overwhelmed by the smell of disinfectant. Suddenly I was back in the lab table. I rolled up into a ball and cried. The pain was real. The fear, the smells, the sounds, they were all there. The flashbacks were alive.
It took me about a minute to shake off the flashbacks. I stayed there, motionless, for a while. Then, after a few more minutes, when the flashbacks were just an echoing memory, I got up, wiped my face and continued eating. I was feeling terrible. The strong smell of disinfectant didn’t let me forget. The memories were there, not as alive as they were before, but it distracted me. I wanted to get the hell out from the place as soon as possible, but I didn’t want to go out on my own, there were too much robots and guards. So I waited and hoped.
We spent about half a day in the center. I was quiet and depressed all that time. I kinda wished for a fight, but it seemed like a bad idea. Half of me wanted to go and take on all the Arcology, and half of me just wanted to forget. So I stayed and waited.
I was so happy when we finally left the center. We found a case of stairs and started climbing. I was so happy we didn’t go to an elevator. I had started thinking about Astral walls. What if I was in an elevator and it went through a wall? An Astral wall that is. I think it would be messy…
We left the staircase and found ourselves in a maze. At least it seemed like a maze. Most of the halls ended in a cement wall. We circled around, went through a window, came out from a door, up and down, left and right, the halls were everywhere, and it felt like it never ends. Most of the rooms we passed by were really small, and I had to force myself into some of them. I didn’t like it, but Ronin and Dodger had some aid in walking through the maze, and they seemed to pick the smallest of rooms. Yea, Ronin and Dodger, still can’t tell them apart…
We had managed to get quite near a new staircase when we found that a large door was keeping us from getting there. I used my sledgehammer and broke the door. We all were quite surprised when there were two boars and a bear. They seemed nasty and angry and attacked us.
Shrew and Nerdy shot the bear dead before it got to us, and then one of the boars attacked Shrew. I hit it hard with my sledgehammer and it didn’t move anymore. I had a quick thought about why these animals were here. It was just a quick thought, because I had to defend myself from the other boar. It attacked fiercely. I defended just as fiercely. It was actually fun! Not the part where its tusk ripped me and caused some damage, but even so, it was fun! All the adrenaline and things!
Nerdy fired his gun, and I hoped he knew where to shoot. Unfortunately he didn’t. He hit me in the back. Hooray… I smashed the boars’ skull and turned around. I stared Nerdy angrily. Now I realized why Opium didn’t want me behind her with my shotgun. She didn’t trust me to be good enough shooter. Well, I've never shot my team. Ever.
I dropped my sledgehammer and walked to Nerdy. I grabbed him by the jacket and lifted him up. His feet didn’t touch the floor. I was so angry, even though the wounds had healed already, I still didn’t accept it. I yelled at him a while and finished by saying that if he ever did that again I would let my sledgehammer do the talking. He tried to defend his actions by saying that the boar was attacking. Yeah, it was. It was attacking me. Apparently Nerdy had tried to help it…
I left Nerdy be after a while, when I had calmed down. I went and cut legs from one of the boars to take with me. I didn’t want good food go to waste. Nerdy found thirteen golden coins from the floor and Shrew cut her a golden ring that had been on the other boars’ snout.
We kept on going. On the other side of the big hall the animals had been in there was another door. I kicked it down and Random went ahead to scout. We heard a thump and went look. Random had fallen in a pit. He climbed up and looked puzzled. Then he started bandaging his ankle.
There was a door nearby and Shrew went to try it. She got an electric shock. She stepped back, trying to get herself together after the shock. I walked past her and looked around a bit. It was a narrow hallway. There was a torch there. Actual torch. In Arcology, the science place. There were robots, Artificial Intelligence, electricity, everything. And then there were torches. What a weird place.
I walked to a place where there was crossroads. I walked back. Shrew went there to pull the torch. A secret door opened. I and Shrew went to see what was in the secret room. There were a lot of shelves, and on the shelves we saw some flagons made out of leather. I grabbed one and opened it. Then I tasted it. It tasted bitter and bad. Shrew said it was very good red wine. Good quality. I took a few with me and sipped the opened one so that I wouldn't be thirsty. We went back to others and Nerdy said that alcohol was bad because his mother told him so. Yea, really. His mother. I’m serious…
We kept on going, and we reached a cement wall. It had a face. Shrew went to talk to it, and it replied. I noticed another torch, and decided to see if there were more doors around. I pulled the torch and a brick fell on me. I was startled a bit, but kept pulling it. Well, I went next to the wall first so that I wouldn’t be hit with a brick every time. It was fun for a moment.
The wall told us that we were not allowed to pass through, unless we solved a riddle. And there was more. If we had it wrong, one of us had to die. The wall told us we had to choose one to die in case we didn’t know the answer. I suggested one of the otaku could be sacrificed. They weren't much of a use there anyway. I noticed some terror in their eyes, and kept pulling the torch. In the end there were a hundred bricks until nothing fell anymore.
Common opinion was that I was the best candidate for the person to die. I was pretty loud when I said that I had taken more bullets they had seen in their lifetimes, and I wasn't a volunteer to take more damage because of these kids. I had died a few times in their missions, well, theoretically died, and we should sacrifice one of them now. Then I calmed down. I realized that even though everyone knew I was different and able to heal in a blink of an eye from mortal wounds, I shouldn't be shouting it to the world.
Finally Random volunteered. The wall told its riddle. “The more there is of it, the less you see it”. I didn’t have a clue. Others suggested I should plant some explosives to the wall. I started doing just that. Shrew called me Kitty again. I promised to tape her to the wall with the explosives if she didn’t stop.
Others were thinking about the riddle. They came up with darkness, but they weren’t sure it was the right answer. I had planted five kilos of explosives on the wall. I suggested everyone to take cover. I thought about the answer. I was about to answer the riddle, but the wall said it didn’t sense the one volunteered to die if I got it wrong. I decided to just press the button on the timer. Then I jumped over the pile of hundred bricks and took cover with the others. The wall didn’t resist.
I always program my explosives to go off after a certain time. I want to make sure everyone gets out of the way, but no-one has time to disarm it. After a minute and half the wall exploded. When we got back there, the wall was gone, and there was a hole instead. And I was five kilos of explosives lighter. The group promised to find another way the next time. I hoped there wouldn't be a next time. I liked making things explode, I really enjoy it from time to time, but I didn’t like to use half of my wares at one explosion. I would've wanted to take fifty kilos of explosives with me, but they were kinda heavy to carry around. But then I would've been able to explode walls for fun. Well, maybe next time we are in Arcology…
Finally we got to go up. Others wanted to stop for the night. We made a stop in some office floor. We chose an office, and it was full of small cubicles. I got goose bumps. It makes me sick to think about those small places people work in. Terrifying idea…
I tried to make others change their mind, but in vain when they decided to sleep in some meeting room. It wasn't as small as the room they were before. I still had to make myself go to that room. Shrew called me Kitty again. I threatened to throw her out of the door. She called her spirit there. I didn’t know why. I curled up in a corner and tried to get some sleep. I didn’t want to transform, because I thought we might have to leave pretty quickly, so I wouldn't have time to transform and dress up. It was uncomfortable to sleep on the floor in human form.
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