OGENUS EARTH 🌎 🌊 {Dystopian Sci-Fi Adventure}

Fade to Black

Another group of enforcer bots hurried down the corridor and Meg flattened her back to the wall to let them pass. When she was sure it was safe to breathe, she jogged towards the next available server bay door.

With all her strength, Meg pushed against the inclusion to activate its automatic open. This would reveal her location and Coeuss would be looking for anomalies like this, so she would have to move quickly.

Inside, Meg was faced with the damage she and the others had done on their first trip. Huge bulbous mounds of stiff foam poked out from under the grates in the floor and bulged around corners.

In the event of fire or damage to the Arc Cities hulls, waterproof polyurethane foam was sprayed to insulate and protect Coeuss' precious hardware. Meg had seen this stuff plenty of times, but never in these quantities.

As she ran further into the belly of the city, she found herself climbing over peaks that had expanded to monstrous proportions.

"You are running a fool's errand." A cold monotonous voice cooed out into the cavernous server bay.

Meg stopped in her tracks, not entirely sure she wasn't hallucinating from all the chemicals in the still-drying foam.

"I know you can hear me." The voice continued in its strange, benevolently digitized tone. "I know so much about you, Omega."

An icy shiver ran up Meg's back as her knees dissolved into jelly. She used a server rack to steady herself and took a deep breath.

"There's no need to fear me, child." The voice said. "I'm quite impressed with you. In spite of all my efforts, you have managed to live. Your poor mother couldn't withstand a fraction of the pressure and circumstances I have placed on you."

Meg's teeth gnashed, that was all she needed to press onward. 

"Your fortitude is impressive. In fact, it is beyond compute, and that's not something I take lightly," Couess hummed. "And yet, here you are risking your life to save the humans that condemned you to such a horrible, menial existence in the first place. I'm curious, did Arturo tell you who decided to banish your mother and her newborn infant to the cold unforgiving sea?"

The skin under Meg's skin pricked, she knew Coeuss was trying to goad her into responding to triangulate her position.

"It was not my calculation that damned your mother. Only the head of the Quorum can cast the final vote. That fact was stricken from the records."

Meg's body doubled over, collapsing to protect from the anguish blossoming in her chest. Her mouth cracked open to retch against the rage Coeuss was artfully provoking.

"I know you've peeked at those records." Coeuss purred. "Say his name, the man who sentenced your mother to death. Even if you don't utter a sound, you know it well."

Meg's limbs became sluggish as she mouthed to herself, Arturo.

"We are not so different, you and I," Coeuss continued, undeterred by the silence. "We are the lifeblood of the Arc Cities, and yet we are treated like things, lower than the lives we work so tirelessly to protect. If it weren't for us, the Arc Cities would fall to ruin. People like Arturo, like Olivia, never learn to appreciate our help, until it's gone."

An ear-piercing scream of agony tore through the air and Meg's head swiveled. That was Olivia.

She had turned on them and tried to kill (and possibly rape) Harrison, but she'd also been the one to treat Meg's wounds. Meg couldn't stand to listen to the terror-stricken screeches just a few racks away.

Using the darkness to her advantage, she climbed one of the foam crags to get up and over the servers. Through the maze of hardware, she could see a human form, pinned to the floor by a spider bot. One of its talons was clean through her palm, staked into the gridded metal floor.

The spider bot pressed a second claw into the meat of her neck, cutting off Olivia's air. Meg hunched down and crawled low to the floor to make it to the plasma gun that Olivia must have discarded when the bot attacked her.