[h1]Katrina Meyer[/h1]

Once the banking of the Grit against the door stopped, Kat breathed a sigh of relief. The pounding, scratching and growling was setting her already tense nerves even closer to the edge. Thank goodness she’d already recovered from her hangover.

[quote][b]”Uhhg.”[/b][/quote]

Looking over to the groaning middle-aged hooded man, Kat almost exclaimed in shock. She hadn’t really paid much attention to any of their companions so far, but this guy looked like he’d been having a really bad day. And, given that it was highly unlikely that anyone in the group she was in could be said to be having a ‘good day’, that was saying something.

The man crawled into one of the hospital beds, looking exhausted.

[quote][b]”We’re in bad shape, people.[/b][/quote]

[i]Speak for yourself.[/i] Kat thought, looking around the room. Her first priority was getting down the wall to Periphery itself. The sign mentioning ‘stairs’ looked like a good start- but on the other hand any time spent wandering about the wall could be the difference between life and death at this stage. Kat felt adamant she couldn’t make any mistakes.

Walking up to the robot, she moved her right hand towards the base of its neck to check the model number.  It was a pretty old one, not quite ancient but certainly not the most up-to-date. That served Kat fine though- newer models she had less experience with, since her job was to fix up broken down bots when their owners had worn them out.

Pulling out a fat disc-shaped object the size of her palm out of her rucksack, she flicked a switch on the side and waited for the disk to display a small menu screen at its centre, listing several different model names. Scrolling through, Kat reached the model name which matched the robot in front of her.  [i]The robot would probably recommend the evacuation route to Periphery if we asked it now, but perhaps there is a faster way…[/i]

The tall muscled man, who introduced himself as Liam, suggested they get armed and off the wall, distracting her from the screen of her her PalmPulse. She looked up and watched him walk into the surgery room.  If it meant they could get off the wall with all their limbs attached, then armour was a good plan. Another question for the robot perhaps, but it was unlikely it would tell them where any armouries were located on the wall- not unless they were royal guards. 

Looking around at the rest of the ‘group’, Kat gave a casual wave.

“I’m Kat. I’d say it’s nice to meet you all, but I kinda wish I was meeting you in a different circumstance…”

Hoping she hadn’t come across as too rude, she quickly looked down at her PalmPulse, and then raised it to show the screen to the others still in the room.

“I’m a mechanic, do all kinds of jobs really but my speciality is robots. I think I can try and get some useful information out of this robot if I just quickly adjust its loyalty circuits with this.”

Moving the PalmPulse so the base of the disk pointed towards the robots head and the screen towards her, Kat pressed the model number on the screen. To avoid just anyone screwing round with a robot’s core, most models responded to specific pulses which allowed the computational core of the robot to be accessed. The pulses changed quite regularly to try and outsmart hackers, but through the local mechanics guild Kat had access to them as soon as they were updated. 

The Palm Pulse glowed faintly blue for a moment, sending out an electromagnetic pulse towards the robot, and then stopped. Sure enough, at the back of the robots head part of its outer casing hinged away in response to the pulse. Quickly skirting round, Kat pointed her right hand through the gap left in the robots outer casing.

[i]That bit looks like the loyalty circuit… If I just bypass it entirely then it’ll give out sensitive information to anybody instead of just authorised personnel.[/i] 

Kat replaced her PalmPulse in her backpack and pulled out the soldering finger attachment, putting it on her left index finger. Kat touched the base of her finger with her right hand and recalled the fear she’d felt on the trolley just before, the fear Vincent had snapped her out of. The tip of her soldering attachment began to glow slightly red, as the heat sigil on her left finger did its work.

Forming an ‘ok’ sign with her right hand, palm facing towards the robot’s insides, Kat raised her right hand to her eyes. Activating the magnifying sigil on that hand, she leaned in towards the robot, reaching her soldering attachment out and into the dense circuitry inside.

[i]Deattach this one…  attach to this… Then this… Ah, I should check to make sure the overrides don’t trigger…[/i]

She didn’t realise it, but Kat was humming tunelessly to herself. Complex circuitry and machinery was the equivalent to a fine wine to her; it was something to be relished, something that when you tasted it consumed you, asked you to take your time on it. The whole exercise took only a few minutes- the complexity of the circuitry didn’t mean that for Kat, this was difficult work- often the first stage in a more complex process if the robot was seriously faulty was ensuring it considered you authorised to run a full diagnostics.  Here, she was removing the entire concept of an ‘authorised person’ to save time, and so that others in the group could ask it questions, which was much less elegant but also a lot less effort.

“There!” She said, breaking the magnification sigil’s circle and closing the back of the robot’s head. She deactivated her sigil as well, keeping the soldering attachment on her finger as it cooled down. [i]I don’t know why, but that helped calm me down. Maybe we can beat these Grit together.[/i]

Circling round to the front of the Robot, Kat gave it a once over.

“Please tell us the fastest route to Periphery from this room. Also, please indicate in your description any nearby armouries.”