Dropping down a floor is the main sprawl of the station, the truly baffling maze of corridors and twisting passages in various states of upkeep, patrolled by security droids and maintenance bots alike attempting to keep collapsing roof panels and dying lights from giving out entirely. Its layout is a wheel and spoke pattern with the center comprised of another security hub (which is a bit too large for its own good) that stretches out into the maze-ways. Beyond the mazeways, large sectors are laid out in a clockwise fashion. Medbay up north, flanked by the biology labs at ten o' clock and the research hub at two. The canteen rests at four, the recreation sector at eight, and six o' clock houses the Mechanus labs. All very simple, except for the halls.
No matter where one starts, no matter how bizarre the hallways seem, finding one's way to their destination is surprisingly straightforward. Various rumors about the configuration remain, but most agree the mazeworks exist to keep humans and robots separate as often as possible, with a few crossover passageways and vents acting as crossroads between the two.
Yet there are rooms in the wheel and spoke that no one is entirely certain how to get to but always manage to stumble across at the right time, most of them small. Maintenance closets. Storage rooms. Server racks. They seem to bud from nowhere and rest in no specific spot that makes sense.
No one has seen the sub-surface basement, considering the clearance level required to reach it by the freight and personal elevators that take individuals between floors, and even the vents that reach that low are usually full of spider-bots that waste little time in shredding unauthorized entrants. One can only imagine what sort of mysteries await there aside from arachnid nests.
The floors all have one thing in common: one is hardly ever more than a few dozen steps away from an interface to contact I0-N4 or a WAYSEC station/Nutrinna dispenser combination. This was obviously not a place built for all of four people.
TRT's patrol starts off a blissfully uneventful one, aside from the bustle of the Mechanus sector. Machines do not subscribe to any sort of downtime unless there is danger of breakage or a catastrophic failure, judging by the states of ill repair some of the roving patrol-bots and broken med-droids are in; even more impressive are their sheer numbers. Rows of tables, some stacked two and three high, each with a lifeless husk of machinery being tended to by compact workers with power tools and torches, scraping away broken parts that are discarded haphazardly.
Perhaps things are not quite as pristine as they first appear. Spots of industrial lubricant and frayed bits of wire are copious enough that even the most diligent of cleaners cannot keep the pace. It doesn't help that every 'bot in the complex pauses its work as TRT-377 strolls by. Few of them have proper eyes, but it still feels like they're staring. Especially the red-eyes, but they actually bear their namesake.
The red-eyes are the largest of the monstrosities, as tall as a man with heavy-duty tracks and thick chassis, built to drag broken, twisted hunks of metal through the halls without assistance. In emergencies they surely have the sheer brute strength to tear a man in half, but that's just an unpleasant assumption.
Probably.
“There ARE no orga-nic creatures here.”
They should not have given them vocalization modules, that much is certain. It's less a mimicry of human speech and more a crackling, grinding echo dragged straight from the bowels of someone's nightmares.
Thankfully, the bay is soon far behind him and the throngs of 'bots thin out to clean, bright hallways. Isolation can be more soothing than spending time in the pits of the Mechanus sector and, after extensive wandering, his patrol route would likely lead him past the research labs and its sub-maze of small labs and open test tables.
That, and a partially metallic woman fiddling with a tech-pad.
AM-5's nightmares come true in the sense that nothing can truly be more frightening than confrontations with the unknown. The medical bay is large, cold, clinical, and just as empty as before, with only the smallest of medical implements shuddering on their surgical trays as the closest thing to movement she can readily notice.
Finally, contact, but it's hardly alive. Some enterprising technician has taken the frame of a spider-droid and bolted it to the treadlike tracks of a laborer red-eye, resulting in a less mobile but arguably sturdier creation; the arachnid-esque legs are intact but with the addition of crablike pincers for the same of lifting and operating manual tools.
This particular 'bot has seen better days, judging by the scuffed chassis, a half-powered tread, and enough slack in one of its operating pincers to make proper operations questionable.
“Designate: AM-5.” It speaks with some clarity, a thin green band of light flickering around the exterior of its hull as it navigates closer to the technician. “Designate: AM-5. Designate: AM-5.”
Perhaps stuck in a loop, it shudders to an uncertain halt and tilts back for a better glimpse of the pad-clinging woman, if she hasn't fled for her life already.
“Designate: AM-5. Entered MEDBAY for PANIC ATTACK leading to LOSS OF CONSCIOUSNESS. Diagnosis: REQUIRES PRESCRIBED INJECTION PERIOD. Medication has been dispensed. You are safe. There is no need for panic. Do you require additional help?”
It freezes in place and watches, waiting expectantly, innards clicking and buzzing in their damaged cycles.
Finally back in the game, plotting and scheming is starting to seem like second nature to PR-451. Or Craig. Or Jim.
All of them, really. With weapon in hand and a destination in mind...he blanks. Where the hell is the medbay? Right, a floor below where he is now. This brings up the uncomfortable decision of exactly how to proceed: stroll into an elevator and get dropped towards the ground at terminal velocity, crawl through vents and hope the spiders are elsewhere, or just slide down a service ladder and skip the middleman entirely.
But before decisions can be made with reckless abandon, his tech-pad rattles. There's no alert to this one, that's too easy to get a bead on if he's stowing away in a closet with the men in riot gear trying to find him before he finds them. Two short pulses, then a long one. He's got a message.
_________________
RECIPIENT: C
SENDER: FONT
C -
Sleeping again? I believe they ran the cycle anew. If they did, that probably makes little sense to you and I apologize but only because that means you probably do not remember me, either.
We have worked together in the past. If this message becomes too lengthy it will be intercepted and I would rather no sordid details be found by our friendly overseer.
If you have been cycled and that natural curiosity of yours gets the better of you, or if you simply trust messages from strangers, I have sent out a runner. The runner has a gadget for you, the one you requested a few days ago, but procuring it took time.
A piece of contraband hit the center security hub and I would very much like to study it. Use the present, bring it through the mazeworks, slide it through my drop-box. I doubt it's anything you would actually want to use, but I understand if you feel the need to keep it.
Drop it off and I will catch you up on what you missed. Or don't. I'm sure someone will convince you it's not a good idea. Whatever you do, watch for the patrol. Tenna has one of you on security detail again.
- Font
_________________
Suspicious. Then again, official communications would be even more suspicious, right? PR-451 didn't run with the best of crowds.
But that means anyone who knew him would make it look unofficial to catch him off guard. Then again, Font is a terrible name to take if trying to appear less suspicious.
So many puzzle pieces to slot together.
Whatever the case, reaching the medlab from his corner of the universe is a bit of a jog through the mazeworks. None of his handy eyes in the station showed any reason to be alarmed, aside from the woman in the medbay, but that's just the wild life he lives.
A life involving watching women through cameras.
Craig needs help.
The luxury of time could not be afforded to X-1, judging by how quickly she's about to be discovered in the heat of the moment near a major crime scene. Hitting the right touch-buttons is something of a struggle amidst the pain, the sense of loss, or simply trying to avoid crushing the puny tech-pad with her mighty, mighty hands.
Part of that might be an exaggeration, but she flips through the appropriate screens with ease. Her clearance gives her more leeway than most and she's onto the security feeds in seconds, or those that are active; at least half of the cameras in the area are flickering, dead, or so full of ghosting that she can barely make out even the most bare of details.
Thankfully, the cameras overlooking the lab are in proper working order. This sector must be important enough to receive proper maintenance, but even those don't help when it is revealed that only the past five minutes or so are available for her to comb through. She gets a nice barely-there shot of her own figure crawling out of the closet, stumbling about, and prodding at her datapad.
Not helpful.
On the other hand, what can be seen of the closet is empty, contrary to what her mind might tell her otherwise – and more worryingly, taking another glance into the small space just confirms that, yes, there is an absolute lack of corpse and blood. Still remaining is the contraband pneumatic knife, though; this does nothing to waylay any doubts she might be having.
“I hate to interrupt, Artemis, but I believe you have...company approaching. Quickly, too.” That same voice crops up out of nowhere and everywhere all at once, its rippling echo betraying what hellhole it might be originating from. “Can't have a lady looking so disheveled, but I sincerely doubt there's time for a run through the showers. Shame, really. He's tall. You enjoy the taller types, right? Nevermind, we haven't time to dally. Posture up! Straighten out that spine. Polish up the servos. He might not notice you if you don't take some initiative!”
It makes even less sense than disappearing corpses, really.