* THUMP - screeeeee*
* THUMP-screeeeee *
'Oh, what now? Fucking Pyramid Head?!' Uzi mentally hissed and took a glance at her sword. 'Yeah, screw that.'
Forward wasn't an option, and going back carried the very real risk of getting her caught between at least two hostiles. She looked around frantically for an escape and quickly spotted a door marked "Lab 5" that was slightly ajar.
Forcing it open was easier than expected, and thankfully quieter as well. Using the Solver to close it back after she slipped in was an exercise in patience she barely had, but she managed that as well. She also managed to resist the temptation to take a peek at the monstrosity as it passed by. And when the shrieking and roaring started, she resisted the even greater temptation to venture out and witness an honest-to-goodness monster mash.
?*#&@: Proud of you.
'Shut up,' Uzi grumbled back in her head.
With the battle still raging outside, she decided to search the lab for anything useful. The pickings were slim; apparently Lab 5 wasn't one of the cool ones. But one thing did catch her eye.
Near the back of the room was a cluster of workstations, with one clearly belonging to someone important. A more substantial desk, two huge monitors and next to them a beefy sleeper of a PC. It tried to look innocuous, like any other office computer, but the size of the case, as well as the various vents and intakes hinted at the serious hardware inside. It was wildly out of place in a facility where everything was undoubtedly server-based to control information, but to Uzi that just meant whoever it had belonged to was trusted by the company and had a lot of pull with the people in charge.
?*#&@: Do you really have time for that?
'Antlers won't talk and once I get out, coming back won't be an option. I don't want to go home with nothing but more questions that'll never be answered!' Uzi thought as she walked up to the computer and pressed the power button. "This is my one chance," she whispered, praying to anything that would listen for the device to have intact internal storage.
She received her answer in the form of a single sentence in the upper lefthand corner of the right monitor.
Operating System not found.
"Fuck!" Uzi hissed, doing everything she could to hold back a sob.
She should've known better. A place like this? The moment things went tits-up every drive in the facility probably wiped at the same time. Hell, if there was a server room on-site, it was probably either a pile of melted slag courtesy of some thermite charges, or vaporized by some strategically-placed bricks of C10. That's what she would do if she didn't want someone who could do something about it finding out that she was making Grey Goo in the basement
'So why didn't I think there would be a failsafe?!' Uzi grit her teeth, baring her fangs at her own reflection in the monitor's black screen. The only thing stopping her from putting her fist through it was the thought of what might be listening.
?*#&@: All might not be lost, Host Uzi.
'Looks pretty fucking lost to me.'
?*#&@: Because you are too busy agonizing over perceived failure to see what is right in front of you.
Uzi just glared even harder at her reflection, and in so doing spotted something she hadn't seen before. The words in the corner of the monitor were tinged brown, like the screen was tinted or burnt. A quick scrape with her finger revealed it to be the crusty residue of some dark, long-dried liquid. Whatever it was, the monitor was almost completely coated in it. So was the keyboard, to the point the keys were so bound up that the thing might as well have been a brick. In fact, the whole workstation was splattered in it.
