Play 2 Wage: Linked

The door slid open as soon as the locks retracted. Ali, who must have been waiting just on the other side, leapt down the stairs and rushed to my side, slipping under one of my arms and helping me rise from my slouching lean against the wall.

“Sir, Nick! I’m so glad you’re okay. The building is under attack!” She said in a rush as she started to help me towards the stairs.

I tried to answer and discovered that my tongue was not in a cooperative mood. While I meant to say ‘I’m alive, we need to get out of here’, all that came out was a string of mushy mumbling closer to, “Owl awah, we’oo geh owa ear.”

“It’s okay, I have a diagnostic medkit I can hook you up to. We just need to get you comfortable first.” She said more calmly, although her narrowed eyes and tight lips revealed her tension.

I grunted and nodded, working my jaw up and down in an effort to reestablish control of my mouth as she helped me into the hallway.

“Nick!” Tevin shouted from the end of the hallway, he had his full armor and battle rattle on, with his faceplace raised. “Glad you made it!”

He looked like he wanted to come help me himself, but remained in place with his rifle pointed around the corner towards where the main entrance to the apartment should be. I managed to give him a wave, raising my arm and showing him my palm before dropping the effort and refocusing on dragging my feet forward.

We turned the corner to my bedroom, and I pulled my head up again to look around, noticing Rin had taken over my computer desk. He had set up all sorts of data and camera feeds spread out over the two monitors built into the desk, as well as a pair of portable computers and even some kind of projector that was streaming a scrolling mass of multi-colored text against the wall faster than I could read.

He glanced over as the door opened and we stepped through, meeting my eyes and dipping his chin in a single nod before looking back to the screen and continuing to tap at his interface. Ali helped me over to the bed and laid me down, pushing my legs up and turning me until I was laying flat on the plush mattress.

I briefly worried about the sweat and vomit I was covered in staining my nice bedding, but quickly got over the worry. Now was not the time to fret over clean sheets.

Once I was horizontal, her worried face appeared above me and she all but whispered. “I’ll be right back, you’re going to make it. You have to make it.” Before she rushed off and left me staring at the ceiling.

With some effort, I managed to turn my head enough to get a look at Rin’s back and the jumbled screens splayed out in front of him. One of the monitors was filled with small video feeds, some of which were showing ongoing combat in the lower floors of the building, while others displayed empty halls, readied and waiting troops, or high vantage points looking out over the burning city below. As I watched, one of the little boxes showing a firefight in one of the lower hallways burst into static before going blank. After a few seconds of dead air, the empty feed disappeared and the whole layout shifted as the other feeds grew slightly larger.

I gurgled at Rin, trying to ask him how we could escape the doomed building, but my mouth was still uncooperative. Growing frustrated that I needed to act yet was as limp as a dead fish on a beach, I gurgled some more and tried to raise my head. The world spun, and I gave up on the effort, falling back onto the bed and abandoning the idea just as Ali came dashing back into the room.

She crouched down at my side, holding a tacklebox sized dark gray case that she placed on the bed next to me. After opening a compartment on top of the medkit, she unspooled some leads and cables from the box and ripped my shirt open before starting to stick and poke the cables and tubes into me at various places.

I managed to roll my head around to look at her as she worked, noticing her lips moving in silent prayer as she worked to hook me up to the machine. After only a few seconds, she turned her attention back to the box and started to prod a series of buttons that blipped and dinged pleasantly in response. After a musical chime, the box whirred to life and I felt a series of tingles from some of the sticky pads stuck to my chest, and a cool sensation spread through my body.

Max appeared, looking rather distracted and standing beside Ali as she crouched next to me and worked the medkit. “I know you’d probably appreciate some actual pain killers at the moment, but I’m forcing the machine to hold back the good shit. I haven’t found any networks within the attacking force for me to break into, and they’re slowly taking out everything I am plugged into, but I estimate we have a couple of hours at most before we’re overrun. Some of your nerves got fried by the backlash when I detangled you from the spin, just give me a few minutes and I’ll get them regrown for you. Things might feel a little wonky for a while though, neurons are finicky little bastards.”

I focused on Max, and managed to give him what I thought was a glare. I probably should have been grateful for his help if what he said was true, and while he may be a total d-bag, I hadn’t ever caught him in an outright lie. He scoffed and threw his hands up in the air.

“Ugh, untwist your knickers. We can salvage this, I think. We have to get you back into the trials before it’s too late. I already hijacked a satellite signal and spoofed your user embedding to send a message to your dwarven babysitters, explaining what happened. As long as you’re there through the final day, you can still pass.”

My eyes narrowed further out of a mix of frustrated helplessness and anger that he had impersonated me again, but he winked back out of sight before I could project any coherent thoughts at him. I could have still ranted at him internally anyways, but I was so out of it that it didn’t even occur to me. Instead, I focused back on Ali, who was still clutching at the medkit, her eyes scanning over a tiny glowing screen built into the top of it underneath a protective clear plastic panel.

I watched her for a moment, noticing her own determined dark eyes flick over the information on the display before she glanced over at me and saw I was looking at her. I also realized she was out of uniform, instead of her normal outfit she had on some kind of sleek armored jacket that had dull metal plates that mostly covered her core.

She flashed me a quick nervous smile. “Your vitals look okay. High levels of cortisol and histamine, and your heart rate is high, but everything else reads green.” Her eyes darted to the readout before locking back onto mine as she held her strained little smile. As we looked at eachother, the building rumbled and shook and the lights flickered before dying out entirely, plunging the room into darkness only lit by the glow of tiny screens.

“Fuck!” Rin slammed his hands into the desk, and both Ali and I turned over to look at him. The projector and both monitors for my desktop had gone dark, leaving only the error filled screens of his portable computers to light the room. After a second, a dim red emergency light snapped to life above the door frame.

He swiveled around in his chair to face us. “They killed the power. I think we have to carry you to the checkpoint on 60 before they swarm over it.”

I tried to push myself up, “N-no, I can go.” I managed, stumbling over the words as I swung my feet over the edge of the bed.

“Sir, I can carry you, don’t strain yourself.” Ali offered.

I sat up completely, tugging the medkit against my side by the leads. My body still felt a little numb and tingly in places, and my tongue felt like it was too large for my mouth, but if we were going to make it out of this I couldn’t let my team literally carry me through.

“Guys! Someone’s knocking!” Tevin called from his position out in the hallway.

Everyone's head snapped towards the door, and Rin stood from the chair. I only now noticed he was wearing a dark and slightly lumpy outfit that I’d never seen on him before. “That can’t be good. Hopefully it’s Katie with an escort.” he said as he started towards the door.

I watched him for a moment before turning to Ali, “Get these things off of me and pack it up, please. We need to move, and I need to get dressed.” My tongue still felt off, but my speech was rapidly becoming clear enough to be understood.

Without wasting time on a reply, she complied and began pulling the cables and tubes off of me, quickly stowing them back into the reels she had drawn them from within the housing of the medkit. I left her to it and stumbled across the room to my closet, barely keeping myself from tripping, I shoulder checked the doorframe on the way in and started pulling off my soiled day to day clothes.

While I was busy struggling into an old set of rugged work pants from my days on Rosso’s mountain, I thanked the dwarves and their insistence on the initiates going into the Trials without any equipment. I pulled on my nanoweave shirt, buttoned up a denim jacket over top of it, and pulled on my mag-boots. On my way out, I grabbed the little gray tag of my Megaphone engram from the top of the doorframe where I had hidden it and stuffed it into a pocket on the inside of the jacket.

Ali was posted up by the door and now wearing a bulky backpack, she was also holding a compact and mean looking little rifle that was only about a foot long with a spindly looking foldout buttstock close against her chest. I quickly stopped to grab my pistol and plasma knife from the stand against the wall, shoving the knife into a different pocket along with a couple of spare magazines, before moving across the room to meet her.

I was already starting to feel steadier on my feet and less numb, but a persistent buzzing tingle still coursed through me in irritating waves that seemed to emanate from my hands and feet and bounce back and forth all throughout me. She gave me a serious look as I approached, and then spun around the corner, walking out ahead of me as we made our way to the main room to meet with the others.

We found Tevin and Rin by the door. The big man raised his faceplate back up and beamed a toothy smile at me. “You always had a good sense of timing. What's the call, man?”

A quick series of knocks again sounded at the door and we all looked at it. I turned to Rin and asked, “They can’t be this high up yet, right?” He gave a quick nod in response.

I turned to Tevin, trusting he would have the least dangerous way to answer the door. “We can’t stay here, so we have to open the door. What’s the safest way?”

He grinned again in response. “Ali, stack up against the side there.” He pointed at the wall next to the door. “Nick and Rin, you should get behind the kitchen island and stay low. I’ll see who it is. If you hear gunfire, stay down.”

With our plan set, we all moved to our positions. Despite Tevin’s warning, I couldn’t help but peek around the rear edge of the counter, watching as he pulled his rifle up and aimed it at the door. “Alright Ali, hit the emergency release on the door on a three count and then back up a step and get ready.” He said before closing down his face plate.

She tensed up and pushed a panel on the wall, which unfolded out into a small crank handle that she gripped tightly in one hand. Then they both dipped the barrels of their weapons in unison, once, twice, three times. On the second dip, Tevin turned a blindingly bright flashlight on and spotlighted the doorway before Ali pulled down on the crank, causing it to release and the door to slide back.

Standing in the spotlight was a huddled together group of well dressed people that raised their hands to shield their eyes from the blinding light from Tevins rifle. The big armored man lowered his weapon and aimed the light down at the floor, which still lit the room and hallway brightly as it reflected off the polished tiling. Ali swept away from the wall, her short weapon still trained on them as she yelled out.

“Hands, show me your hands! Who are you and why are you here?”

The group shrank down, three of them crouching down as the last one standing raised her hands to reveal a familiar face. “Holy shit! It’s me, Kaylee! I’m a friend of Nick’s. I’m dating Tevin!”

I glanced over at Rin, who had a pinched look to him as he thought over the situation. Tevin drew my attention back to the door by opening his face plate and wavering. “Damnit, sweets, you shouldn’t be here, but…” He turned to me, giving me a pained and worried look. We both knew if we left them here that the swarm of attackers, whatever group they might belong to, would find them eventually.

I looked back again at Rin, who was pinching the bridge of his nose and scrunching up his eyes as he crouched behind the counter. As I watched, he slowly banged his forehead against a cabinet door a couple of times.

I sighed and stood, looking over the cowering group and recognizing the four tower dwellers that we had met for a day of fun at the arcade near the bottom of the tower. Why were they here, and what the hell was the call? Everyone except Ali, who was still locked in and aiming her weapon at them, was looking to me to make the decision.

I hardly knew them, only having spent the one afternoon with them. Tevin and Rin knew them better but were stubbornly remaining silent. On the one hand, I knew it would be risky to double our groupsize, I wasn't even sure how the hell we were going to escape yet. Still, I couldn’t just leave them here to the mercy of the violent crowd that was rampaging its way up the building towards us.

I guess that’s the thing about being in charge, you have to make all the hard choices.

“Gah, damnit, let them in. Ali, lock the door down and search them. Tevin, stay sharp.”

I saw the relief wash over Tevin’s face, yet true to form he took a few steps back and kept his rifle up and pointed at the group's feet as they moved into the room. Ali cranked the lever a few times, ratcheting the door closed and keeping her firearm pointed at the group at the same time. I raised my own pistol but kept it pointed away from everyone as I looked over the group.

“So, why are you here? And how did you even know to come here?” I asked.

Kaylee again answered as Ali patted her down, removing her comm and emptying the bits of makeup and gadgets from her pockets. “I wanted, we wanted, to make sure you all were okay, and… we’re scared, we didn’t know where else to go.”

Raschel spoke up as soon as Kaylee finished, “All of the Link rooms were locked down, my dad was stuck inside and we couldn’t get them to open or find anyone else! You’re like, some big-shot right? You have to help us.” She pleaded.

Ali continued to search them as they made their case, tossing everything she found onto the large table opposite from the kitchen island. She stopped when she found a pistol in one of Bree’s pockets, giving her a look and shoving it into the back of pants waistline.

“What? Can’t a girl defend herself?” Bree said, giving a displeased look.

Ali ignored her comment and moved on to search the last of them, the lanky guy who I remembered was named Andy.

I scratched through my hair, feeling a brief flashback of the tar that had covered me within the Link only moments before. I really didn’t want to leave them, and they seemed like decent enough people. Plus Tevin was laying the puppydog eyes down pretty hard in my direction, he’d be pissed if I made him leave his girlfriend and new group of friends to the mercy of the frenzied crowd.

I started to answer, despite not really knowing what I was going to say, when another knock boomed against the entrance. This time quite a bit louder and followed immediately by a familiar, if tinny, voice that buzzed through the door like the steel itself had been turned into a loudspeaker.

“Consul Spenser, this is C.L.E. Roderegious. We need to evacuate from the building, please open the door and we will see you safely escorted out of the city.”