Beyond the rolling shutter and makeshift door that once blocked the entrance, there was only a set of poorly lit steps that led down into the lower portion of the tunnel cut into the module’s walls, which housed it’s disused train station and hopefully, Riot’s hideout as well.
From what they could see, everything looked to be covered in a fine layer of dust and grime, although the occasional hoof print gave away that someone had been here recently. By the way they were orientated, whoever left the prints was walking into the station and not out of it, indicating that they may still be there.
“Alright, we’re going to have to split up.” Lucky groaned, the thought of being covered in dust and grime made her feel dirty just thinking about it. “Matterhorn and I will take one side of the platform, you two will take the other. We’ll meet up on the station’s lowest level when we’ve completed our search.”
“It’s standard Equestrian Transit construction and layout.” Matterhorn offered. “Large open interior platform halls with winding backrooms and corridors, perfect for a madpony to hide out in.”
“Does splitting up really seem like the best idea, I mean this is enemy territory.” Access pointed out.
“We’ll cover more ground that way, this place isn’t the largest but it still has plenty of little spaces to set an ambush in. Besides, you two would slow me down too much and we wouldn’t want him to escape now would we?”
Access said nothing, but his answer was beyond clear to everyone as they made their way down the steps, disturbing the layers of dust as they walked. The buzz of the florescent tubes that lit the area that was once a ticket stand was all they could hear apart from the deafening sound of nothingness, not even the sound of the fighting above could pierce the depths.
What was once the ticket sale area was devoid of its former splendor, and only a glass door on the left and right sides of the room sprung out at them. It seemed like they lead to different platforms if the signage was any indication, but they’d have to check to be sure, as the doors were caked in the same dust as the floors were, blocking their view through the door and the platforms beyond.
“You two take the left door, we’ll take the right.” Lucky ordered. “The moment either of you get into trouble, make as much noise as possible and we’ll come running, same goes for us.”
“Surely there’s a more effective way than to make as much noise as possible, Lucky?” Matterhorn said in exasperation. “Would local comms work, you two?”
“If don’t stray too far from one another, yeah, anything that would have to go through the Net would be a no-go.” Access confirmed. “At best we’d be booted out by the dweller, and at worst it’d try to fry our brains through the link.”
“Let’s keep things local then. Keep us abreast of anything you find, no doubt you’re itching to get moving.”
Matterhorn and Lucky rushed through their self-assigned door, quickly vanishing from view and left Access and Sheet Rock alone to proceed through their own. It led out onto a crumbling station platform, lit only by the failing florescent lights high above their heads and the somehow still functioning schedule boards.
They could see the two crown operatives on the platform opposite them, separated as they were by the decrepit and rusty rails that made up the tracks in the middle of the large, cavernous, room. They vanished into a side room without so much as an acknowledgment after Matterhorn used his horn to blast off what looked like a lock from the door, but given the situation it wasn’t that surprising that they’d want to move quickly.
“They’ve just given us the bitch work haven’t they? We’re just being put out the way so they can do their jobs.” Sheet Rock mused with a chuckle at their expense. “It’s like they already know where to go while we fumble in the dark.”
“What’s new about that?” Access responded with a chuckle of his own. “If anything, we should consider this confirmation that we should steal anything that isn’t nailed down, Riot has to have some useful stuff around somewhere, surely?”
The two looked around on the platform for any other entryways, and almost in the same place on the wall as the other side was another door, but this one wasn’t barred or locked in any way. They opened it slowly, weapons at the ready to deal with anything that might be behind it.
Beyond was a small room, not as dusty as the platform or entrance but it looked like someone had been here recently, evident by the hoof-prints in the dust around some small steel tables, upon which were hastily disassembled firearms and boxes of ammunition.
“Looks like they sure left in a hurry.” Access said, walking over to one of the disassembled rifles. “Most of this stuff is worth a small fortune, and they just left it all behind? Crazy.”
“Probably to save their skin, though it looks like they were in the process of cleaning their weapons at the time.” Sheet Rock responded, holding up a leaking can of gun oil which she unceremoniously threw back onto the table she was at. “It must’ve been something very bad if everyone just up and left in enough of a hurry to leave behind a bunch of stuff they likely paid good euro for.”
Sheet Rock turned her attention to the only other door in the corner of the room and walked over to it, peering through the glass into the room beyond. Her eyes went wide in mere moments, and she frantically waved over Access after a failed attempt to open the locked door, he had been inspecting a dented rifle magazine among a pile of similar magazines of all calibers and sizes and was a little surprised at the sudden commotion.
Beyond the door were a row of loungers like the kind they used when Netrunning, but they could make out some strange machinery attached to one side of each of them. Panic set in as Sheet Rock leveled her Smart SMG at the door’s lock and fired off a short burst, blasting several small holes into the lock and handle.
“What’s got you so riled up, somebody will have heard that!” Access barked angrily. “What were you thinking?”
Each of the four loungers were occupied and their contents were only just visible underneath the frosted glass domes over the top of them. Sheet Rock looked frantic at this point, evidently looking for the lounger’s emergency release latches but what for wasn’t entirely clear.
“Can’t you smell that scent on the air?” Sheet Rock said absentmindedly as she finally found the first loungers release latch.
Access sniffed at the air for a moment, the smell was acrid and unpleasant, like something had been burning recently, but it didn’t smell like wood, rubber, or even textiles. The realization began to dawn on him as the first lounger’s dome quietly opened to reveal a barely recognizable and severely charred body.
“What the hell happened here?” he said in disbelief, recoiling from the grim sight. “Is this the dweller, or what’s left of him? It looks like he went through the wringer pretty bad, the smell says this was recent too.”
Sheet Rock peered at the other loungers all of which were empty, but showed recent signs of usage. Whoever had been using these at the time had likely ran for the hills with everyone else, everyone except the pony who ended up as a charred corpse, trapped in what would soon become their tomb.
Before she could even suggest it, Access had connected his neural link to the loungers. Doing so was ill advised, but given the fact they had a dead runner on their hooves it was unlikely to draw attention to them now.
His irises danced with a pale blue light as he quickly glanced through key portions of the lounger’s systems. He scrunched his nose for a moment, as if he’d seen something unpleasant before he uttered an unsurprisingly gruff grunt.
“Yep, that makes sense.”
“What does?”
“This lounger belonged to the dweller we encountered a little while ago, turns out that Riot was using this pony as an organic guard dog of a sort.”
“To guard what exactly?”
“Their systems I would assume.” Access grumbled, removing the lounger’s cable from his neural link socket. “Since there’s three loungers with what look like life support harnesses on them, I would assume they were supposed to be a team of three.”
“What killed this runner, Access?” Sheet Rock said suddenly. “We should know ahead of time if something else is gonna come for us.”
“Feedback from his socket I assume.” he replied. “Looks indicative of an overload brought on by anti-runner software, see the burns around the socket itself and the eyes?”
“Black ICE? You, me, and X9 were the only ones in the system, how could have the dweller have ran into Black ICE on his own system?“
Access didn’t like what that question implied. Neither of them employed Black ICE when on jobs as a general rule, their methods were to disable, stun, and misdirect as opposed to what they saw before them.
Black ICE was used on the most secure systems in existence, mostly of the corporate variety, and most varieties of Black ICE directly attacked the runner as opposed to his or her hardware, the most common of which was an electrical charge delivered to some part of the brain or nervous system, and less common was the mind-wipe which would leave the victim alive, but rendered them comatose and unable to pose a threat.
“Let’s figure this out later, first and foremost is Riot.” Sheet Rock offered.
“Yeah, yeah, agreed.” Access responded, turning his back on the loungers and positioning himself near the door into the corridor. “I didn’t see any more doors on this side of the platform, did you?”
“There was the one at the far end of the corridor that I noticed, but other than that, no.” Sheet Rock pointed out. “Only way is down I suppose.”
The two peered up and down the hallway, both at the door they had entered from and the only other door located at the far end of the hall, curiously devoid of the same dust prevalent on everything else. Access spared one more look at the charred body in the lounger before he ran off down the hall, his face twisted into a doubtful grimace.
“What is the meaning of this?!” Golden barked angrily as jet black VTOLs touched down around the compound, troops clad in heavy body armor pouring out of them.
“You’ll find out soon enough.” called one of the troopers as she approached. “I will warn you to keep your weapons holstered, attitude respectful, and language kept in check.”
“And who are you to set rules about what we can and can’t do in our own home?”
“This isn’t your property to be occupying, I believe it belongs to Petrochem actually, but shall we agree to disagree before you say something you’ll regret.”
“Now, Flow.” a synthetic voice said calmly. “Perhaps you shouldn’t be riling our hosts up, they’re being quite permitting considering the fact we’ve show up unannounced.”
She turned to face a VTOL that had just landed roughly in the middle of the courtyard, and the enigmatic Director Luna and a group of her inner circle of agents stepped out of the aircraft, forming themselves into a defensive circle around her.
“Whoever you jokers are, you need to leave.” Golden ordered. “You have no right to be here, this is our home and we reject your attempts at taking that from us.”
“Fortunately for you that’s not why we’re here, I believe you made a certain deal with one of my agents, Matterhorn.“
Golden let her temper cool somewhat, but she still remained suspicious of the synthetic that stood before her.
“Listen here you worthless-”
“I wouldn’t complete that sentence if I were you.” Luna responded menacingly. “I might be a Synthetic now, but I once ruled these lands and you would do well to remember your place.”
“Director, we should head inside.” Flow offered. “Given what happened to your contractors, we wouldn’t want to invite an attack on us while we’re here.”
“I agree, may we come inside, miss?”
“Golden Dawn.” she responded curtly. “Your soldiers can stay outside, we don’t want any trouble inside.”
“Flow, is that agreeable for you?”
“Perfectly, Director.”
Golden reluctantly stepped aside so that Luna could head into the building behind her, beyond angry that they had shown up unannounced and effectively invaded the one space they could call home. As they entered, those inside the building scattered to other wings of the building, seemingly intimidated by the Synthetic and her entourage of guards.
“Go ahead and wait in my office over there, I’ll be right with you.” Golden said, pointing out a door off the main room. “Your guards can remain outside, nobody will disturb us.”
“Golden, what’s happening, there’s soldiers everywhere and… and…” Flywheel practically screeched, her eyes eventually settling on Luna. “Who…?”
“Run along, Flywheel, our guest was just about to explain themselves.”