Mech

Chapter 8: What Now

That wasn't the last time we'd see the Moxi. We got lucky when Esclave found a way to distract them while we escaped, but that only meant we were on their radar. Since Esclave had already encountered them and now had escaped twice, we were officially a top priority. I'm pretty sure -no matter if their "master" had eaten enough or not- when we were caught, we'd be killed immediately. I overheard Jason talking to Eslave in the doorway while we all prepared for a night's sleep after we settled in the bakery. He asked her what she had done to distract them, and how she was able to get us out so easy.

"There's a lot you don't know about me," She told him, "And I'd like it to stay that way. If you really want to know, pretty boy, I caught the attention of the Utopian Guard that were trailing us anyway and led them to those Moxi bastards. It's war on sight between the two groups, so during the gunfire was the perfect opportunity to get you out. No need to thank me, but it's optional for a reason."

Jason muttered a weak thank you, as if he didn't entirely trust her story, and the two left the doorway to return to their bed set-ups. We didn't know enough about the second level to judge her truthfulness, but we were alive at least. I pulled out my journal and, with the little bit of light shining into the room from the windows out front, wrote down my experiences. It was the first time I had the chance to test my newly refilled pen. Cycoff blood was smoother than any ink I had ever come across, and it had a slight metallic glimmer that faintly sparkled if you moved the pages back and forth in the light. It was almost beautiful, yet the source of it always drew it back to creepy. Still, what mattered to me was that it worked, and because it worked, there was an abundance of it. I'd never run out of ink again as long as I could find a dead Cycoff. That sounds worse than it seems..A lot more fighting went down here in level 2, so finding a dead, or at least bleeding, one was easy.

I stayed up for a while trying to make sure I got every detail down. A lot had happened since I lost my ink, and I couldn't risk forgetting a single thing. If my story- our story- was going to be told, it had to have every little thing included. I was upset with myself because I didn't understand the technology, so those fine details would have to be left out. I'm not the science type, and forget math. Such things didn't exactly matter anymore, just survival. My accounts were of the events occurring to me and my people in this era of evil. One day, someone, somewhere would read it. Some kid, sitting at a desk in a nice shiny school with birds chirping outside the window, a breeze blowing leaves off the trees, would have to flip through the pages of my story and put a quote in a history paper for a class. Believe me, if anyone was gonna quote me, they were gonna get all the information I could possibly give. Maybe I'd survive and read my accounts to reporters for some newspaper or some historian compiling personal accounts for a super formal history book over this. Mech: The Age of a Dead Utopia it would be called, or something like that. I imagine anyway. It's thoughts like these that gave me a purpose not only to write, but to live as well.

You can quote me on that.

It was some time in the middle of the night, long, long after everyone was sound asleep, that I was still up scribbling away with the little light that shined through the doorway from the street lamp outside. A shadow cut off my field of vision. It was quick, as if something had dashed past the light outside at a running pace. It wasn't fast enough to be a Cycoff, but it was just enough for me to notice. I was intently staring at my pages, so even if it was the inhuman Cycoff I probably still would have noticed. However, I knew it had to be human, so there was no need to cause alarm. Unless it was Moxi. Or Utopian Guard. I wasn't the only one that noticed. I saw Ian wake and sit up, rubbing his eyes. He had been sleeping in the light, so clearly the disturbance was enough to stir him. Jason had mentioned how light of a sleeper he was, and through the recent events he was basically running on maybe four hours or less a night. He was like our night guard. He stood and walked to the window, peering out and observing the street. I noticed him sort of look confused, as if he had seen something that didn't belong, and he quietly snuck out the door, disappearing to the left. I wasn't going to sit and wait for my friend to be kidnapped by the UG or killed by those Moxi freaks, or worse. I stood, gently laying my covers back down to avoid making any noise. Instead of going out the front, in fear of waking Max or Jason, I crept to the back and exited through the rear door.