[center][b][h1][color=#44F03E]𝔽[/color][color=#42E93C]𝕦[/color][color=#40E33A]𝕥[/color][color=#3EDD39]𝕚[/color][color=#3DD737]𝕝[/color][color=#3BD136]𝕚[/color][color=#39CB34]𝕥[/color][color=#38C532]𝕪[/color][color=#36BF31]:[/color] [color=#32B32E]𝕋[/color][color=#31AD2C]𝕙[/color][color=#2FA62A]𝕖[/color] [color=#2C9A27]𝔾[/color][color=#2A9426]𝕣[/color][color=#288E24]𝕖[/color][color=#268823]𝕒[/color][color=#258221]t[/color] [color=#21761E]𝔾[/color][color=#20701C]𝕒[/color][color=#1E6A1B]𝕞[/color][color=#1C6419]𝕖[/color][/h1][/b][/center]

[center][hider=Deciding the Fate of Entombed Cattle is Just Part of the Game][youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4DmaROWzh4[/youtube][/hider][/center]

[sub][right]With [@Atrophy][/right][/sub]

[color=mediumvioletred][b] “If you look deep enough into a mechanism, grinding its cogs to sparks, spiralling, shredding any foreign component that interrupts the inner workings of a great machine; it seems so vile, but then you start to understand why it exists. Because the decision is all yours—let the gears click on in lockstep or stick your hand in between their serrated edges and feel the metal edges. Feel them twist deeper towards bone. You’ll feel finality in agency.”[/b][/color]

[b][i][color=#ffdf12]ℍ𝕒𝕣𝕥 𝕄𝕖𝕕𝕚𝕒 ℂ𝕠𝕟𝕘𝕝𝕠𝕞𝕖𝕣𝕒𝕥𝕖 
𝕋𝕨𝕚𝕟 ℂ𝕚𝕥𝕪 𝕊𝕡𝕣𝕒𝕨𝕝[/color][/i][/b]
[color=green]>>> …[/color]
[i][color=#ffdf12] “I called the station. We can’t cut the feed. Both vest cams still recording.”[/color]
[right][color=lightgray]“Does Valentine know what’s going on?”[/color][/right]
[color=#ffdf12] “You think he’ll be paying attention? Of course he’s not going to do anything...”[/color]
[right][color=lightgray]“But this is the job.”[/color][/right]
[right][color=lightgray]“And we gotta find something.”[/color][/right][/i][hr][hr]

[h3][color=black][s]𝔾𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕥𝕖𝕣 ℂ𝕠𝕣𝕡𝕠𝕣𝕒𝕥𝕖 ℤ𝕠𝕟𝕖[/s] “ℕ[s]𝟘[/s] 𝕄𝔸ℕ'𝕊 𝕃𝔸ℕ𝔻”[/color][/h3][color=008000][b]ℝ𝕖𝕔𝕝𝕒𝕚𝕞 ℤ𝕠𝕟𝕖, 𝕊𝕠𝕦𝕥𝕙 ℂ𝕚𝕥𝕪 𝕊𝕡𝕣𝕒𝕨𝕝[/b]
[b]𝔸𝕡𝕣𝕚𝕝 𝟚𝕟𝕕, 𝟚𝟘𝟞𝟝 :: 𝕆𝕟𝕖 𝕕𝕒𝕪 𝕓𝕖𝕗𝕠𝕣𝕖 𝕥𝕙𝕖 ℝ𝕖𝕔𝕝𝕒𝕚𝕞 ℤ𝕠𝕟𝕖 𝕕𝕖𝕓𝕒𝕥𝕖[/b]
[b] [𝕎𝕠𝕣𝕞𝕤] ℝ𝕖𝕤𝕠𝕝𝕧𝕚𝕟𝕘...[/b][/color]

The corridors of the factory level’s interior were tight enough to provide the space a unique dynamic in close quarters confrontations. The Bomb Squad was already sweeping the space in between the walls of heavy machinery and snapping shots of their points of interest. Turkish, however, knew to leave his squad to their prep. He had other plans—walked straight past as they deployed laser measurements, kicked the loose layer of rust up along the floor with thick boots that sounded like concrete against the steel walkway. 

An engineer approached the lift shaft, where her foreman paced with stiff limbs. [b] “That Irish guy is back.”[/b]

[color=gray][b] “You mean Turkish?”[/b][/color]

[b] “But his accent’s—”[/b]

[color=gray][b] “I tried calling[i] “Management”[/i] but the lift’s in use. Looks like someone’s coming down.”[/b][/color]

[b] “You think they’ll let us out of here?”[/b] The engineer felt the defeat in her voice before she heard any answer. A calm set of hands smeared grease along her lab coat. His stomping had become almost as loud as the old world lift shaft creaking to life.

Turkish peered down the hallway. He had a console probing the space with green and red light as it scanned its surroundings.[b][color=lawngreen] “The security ‘round ‘ere?”[/color][/b]

Meanwhile, Lott stared unblinking as the red LED number above the door of the elevator changed as she went down and down. There were no blackouts to speed up the process or a kind, armed man to keep her from feeling the passage of time. It didn’t help the woman that time had slowed to a crawl for her, an odd side effect likely brought on by mixing Dr. Howland’s miraculous meds with two Manhattans that were so strong the fumes alone made the eyes water. Perhaps living life in bullet time would be nice if she were to face off against the violent mob, allowing her to fully articulate the illegality of their actions and how their right to assemble was negated the moment they stepped onto private property, but alas Gatch had handed her a different destiny. 

He just hadn’t mentioned the destiny would involve her being trapped in an elevator for what felt like months. If he had, she would’ve swiped the whole bottle instead of just bringing herself a third Manhattan that was dangerously close to being little more than a whiskey soaked cherry. She should’ve spent her exile coming up with a plan of attack for how she would ingratiate Turkish so she could use him as a stepstool to boost herself up to new heights under Gatch. 

Instead, she found herself entranced by her own appearance in the reflective surface of the elevator door. She was a mess, but she was standing taller—if only to make sure she didn’t spill the overfilled drink she had made for Turkish. The doors slid open with a ding followed by the scraping noise of a rusted lattice gate used to seal off the lift from allowing undesirables access to the nicer parts of the corporate world. Lott stepped out of the elevator, her suit a rare sight amongst the lab coats and jumpsuits, as the gate screeched shut behind her. Her dead eyes swept her surrounding, settling momentarily on the foreman and the engineer. The auditor in her flared up as her eyes captured images of the employees who should have been working instead of socializing. Just because there was potential that they would all get hammered and sickled to death by a violent mob of rabble rousers did not mean that productivity should be threatened. 

[b][color=lightgray]“Shouldn’t you be working? And shouldn’t you be making her work?”[/color][/b] asked Lott, addressing the engineer and the foreman. There was no malice in her voice because it wasn’t needed, the thread count of her suit was proper intimidation enough. Any protest against her was clear career suicide. She didn’t necessarily enjoy telling them off. She was just playing her part in the great corporate machine, a small cog pushing around smaller cogs to keep things moving. 

Lott turned and eyed the man she recognized as Turkish, even though she couldn’t recall a single time they had ever actually spoken. Had they met before? She tried running a quick scan of his face through her archives, but nothing was flagged. She realized that it looked like she might be ogling him, and then she realized that she had been. Lott cleared her throat, looked down at the nearly full tumbler of whiskey in her hand, and held it out for Turkish.

[b][color=lightgray]“It’s good to see you again, Turkish,”[/color][/b] said Lott, still unsure if they had ever met. [b][color=lightgray]“The Mayor has sent me in his stead to catch you up on a current situation, should you need it, and to assist you with...”[/color][/b] 

Nothing. Lott’s mind went blank. Why was she here? Had she been sent to only give the man a drink? Had Gatch just been trying to push her away instead of bring her into the fold? No, no, no, that wasn’t possible. Her heart rate quickened and her watched beep, a slight sedative administering herself into her system to keep her barely above comatose. Mimicking Gatch’s nonchalant movement from earlier, she shrugged her shoulders as if she wasn’t fencing with a panic attack and said, [b][color=lightgray]“You know.”[/color][/b]

Both workers seemed averse to Lott’s gaze. The moment their eyes connected, the foreman’s attention suddenly slipped away. He turned back to a series of cabinets and a desk, a little space he’d created trying hard to pretend it was an office. Another burst of laser radiation emerged from the device in Turkish’s palm, marking the low edge of the corridor’s corner with a pulse of unseen heat. He turned to Lott at the mention of his name—stared her down with perplexed brows that looked bent into a caricature’s pose for a few seconds. [i]Good to see you again, she’d said.[/i] Turkish searched his memories, but his static gaze fell to her offering before anything came. 

He took the drink in one hand, continued to direct the laser with his positioning beam in the other. His eyes didn’t stop scanning the corridor as he spoke. [b][color=lawngreen] “I’m looking for the security room. Some console or office where there’s gotta be a detailed map of the place or something. That’s what they’ll be after.”[/color][/b] Turkish pressed a button down on his belt’s communicator and its brief feedback came from further beyond. Another one of the exosuited squad members jogged down the hall, kneeling in front of the infrared marker and bolting a device to the wall. 

[b][color=lawngreen] “The team’s setting up the defensive perimeter—workin’ their way in, but it’d be best if we could set up ‘round the payload.”[/color][/b] Turkish moved over to the foreman’s desk, as though cursorily interested in the sheafs of paper and which ones needed signatures or stamps. The foreman couldn’t even pretend to work—just sat and watched, wondering.

[b][color=lawngreen] “[i]He[/i] told me that the blueprints were the target,”[/color] [/b]Turkish made a face alongside the vague pronoun. [i]Perplexion? Respect? A knowing hesitation.[/i] [color=lawngreen][b] “You get the blueprints to a few sections a’ APEX prefabs and you know all sorts of secrets about the fuckin’ diameter a’ their screws or something.”[/b][/color]

Turkish’s inspection of the foreman’s administrative space grew more in depth, [i]intense[/i]. Before long he had looked over a nearby table, opened up a cabinet by the fluorescent water cooler, and glanced inside some drawers. Inside was one of those new [b][color=green]𝔾ℝ𝔼𝔼ℕ[/color][/b] High Density Brain Bars. They were all over the holograph NET ads these days. Turkish unwrapped and chomped it. That look in his eyes hadn’t changed since Lott had seen him. Massive pupils. [color=lawngreen][i]Artificial Lawn Green[/i][/color]. The color you’d see only fake yards meant to mimic some trad primitivist fad in The Bay’s upper tiers. 

[b][color=lawngreen] “Whatever they’re after, they may already be slinkin’ ‘round the halls. Seen any?”[/color][/b] he asked the foreman before continuing. [b][color=lawngreen] “We figure they’re got someone out there rilin’ up the crowd. Have ‘em charge the doors and eat up all the C4. while they dash their sneaky lads to the security room.”[/color][/b] The [b][color=green]𝔾ℝ𝔼𝔼ℕ[/color][/b] bar was gone in an instant, and Turkish kept glancing back towards the desks in the foreman’s “office”. 

[b][color=lawngreen] “We should have that covered now, though. Should be easy to deal with the targets. Maybe the Reclaim folk’ll get in by some fluke.”[/color][/b] He tapped a finger to his cranium, then gestured to the shaped charge now mounted on the wall. It’s technician stepped back and the charge spit out laser sensor, which soon faded beyond the spectrum of visible light. [b][color=lawngreen] “Clean their mess up for us. Maybe we scrap a bit with whoever makes it past. Clean fun.”[/color][/b]

[b][color=lightgray]“I wouldn’t mind seeing that,”[/color][/b] said Lott, hungry for the violence, in what she had intended to be an internal thought. She’d been lingering next to Turkish as he ran his scans, shifted through papers, and ate someone else’s depressing excuse for a lunch. The way he scoped out the room wasn’t too distant to how she used to run her audits inside of APEX Clinics, although those days the only thing potentially exploding were the nervous, red-faced employees frightened by her very being. Lott moved to take a drink upon realization that she had actually spoken out loud to buy time to think of some excuse for what she had said, hitting the empty glass hard against her teeth as the lights burned her eyes. 

Lott blinked. She had a full glass before; where had it gone? She noticed the drink in Turkish’s hand, felt betrayal, knew that now there was no point in asking him to get drinks if he already had one, and then realized she had been the one to give it to him. Lott rolled her neck and felt her mind sink into her stomach as a cool sweat formed on the back of her neck. Had she missed a dosage? She checked her watch and the tiny pin needles pricked her skin just in case. She didn’t level out, but she felt like she had leveled up. Realized she didn’t need an excuse. It was the truth. She wanted to watch them grease a few lowlifes.

[b][color=lightgray]“In case there is an incident tomorrow. We need to make certain that your team's methods are media approved. Don’t worry,”[/color][/b] said the meds, using Lott as their mouthpiece and lifting her hand to pause Turkish. [b][color=lightgray]“I’m not asking you to shift tactics, or to curb your curses, or to kibosh the cute accent. It’s just to alert the board so they can sell their shares now and repurchase them back once the price dips.”

“Anyway, you mentioned tomorrow,”[/color][/b] continued the diazepam, failing to recall that Lott had actually mentioned it. [b][color=lightgray]“I am concerned about our contract with Knight Enterprise. They failed to protect the personal property of the Mayor’s Right Hand the other day.”[/color][/b] She felt the phantom vibrations of her phone, a text reminder about the explosion that had also happened failing to come through. [b][color=lightgray] If they can’t even do that, how can they hope to protect the Mayor’s actual right hand?”[/color][/b] 

Lott sniffed, looked through Turkish, and corrected herself, [b][color=lightgray]“My right hand side’s right hand.”[/color][/b] She felt something was wrong and leaned against a cabinet to steady herself. [b][color=lightgray]“What I’m saying is we need a hand. Will you be there to oversee security? How much do you trust the Knights?”[/color][/b]

Turkish left the [b][color=green]𝔾ℝ𝔼𝔼ℕ[/color][/b] bar wrapper on the “office” floor. The condensed nutritional supplement had visibly energized him even more, in a strange sort of wired way that had him walking robotic and far too present in physical space. When the first tremor came, it barely shook him. It emanated through the resonant maze of corridors from a source that could only be determined via the amplified vibrations coming from the front of the complex.[hr]

The guard out front and his partner had both been civilians not too far back. Corporate guns, corporate greed—they had a way of changing people. That machine sought their sort and showered them with gifts of what had been missing, their conditions manufactured by the machine itself through crushing competition. None of it really mattered anymore. Now, he was an APEX Bastion, but their feeble barrier was set to break, and after the ‘support’ that had arrived casually strolled inside, he knew it was meant to be that way. He knew he couldn’t go back.

When the last firebomb pressed him back against the brick, he couldn’t do anything to prevent the swelling crowd from pushing the doors. Some came forth with tools to battle the steel doors while others just seemed to be fleeing the terror from within the mass. A crowd that size is more a fluid hive than a rational group. Most of them hardly noticed him. They had their own worries as the fluid mass forced everyone forward, crushing against the brick. He jammed his arm forward, and released the deployable riot shield strapped to his arm which shot out to wedge itself in a corner of two meeting walls. He could feel it pressing down against his chest, but could no longer see the crowd beyond the shield. The job, the guns, the money, it all didn’t matter now. What mattered was nothing at all, or maybe just a hope that the crowd would be focused on the doors, that he would be overlooked as they crunched their way forward, that his shield could stand the weight of the pressing crowd and his ribs wouldn’t be crushed. His job was over, and so he sat waiting.[hr]

The doors had given way to pry bars and IED charges by the time Turkish and Lott got to the security room. There was no one inside. Any overseer had either abandoned their post or didn’t feel the need to show up most days anyways. Bad timing. A bank of camera screens flickered to portray the building’s corridors across all the lower levels. Swathes of people charged down halls with will and intent perhaps only known to them. They followed signs for the factory floor, but there were others.

[color=lawngreen][b] “That’s them.”[/b][/color] Turkish pointed out a series of heat signatures that crossed the path of a jammed camera. [color=lawngreen][b] “Close.”[/b][/color] He turned, found the rather obvious lockbox in the floor of the security office and let a tube extend from his palm. He motioned for Lott to step back, a gentleman’s courtesy before a spray of thermite flames hissed against the lockbox door. Those green pupils didn’t shrink in the slightest against the blinding light. He just smiled, took it all in.

There were voices from beyond. Hard to hear over the sizzling steel, but still carrying down the corridors. A resolute man came upon the adjacent hall, seen through a distorted camera lens picking up static from a jammer. He called to a few comrades beyond view, then stared down the hall with a set of infrared goggles. With a gulp of air, and a final double-take bearing a resemblance to what the non-devoted might call regret, doubt, or apprehension, he dashed towards Turkish’s charge. The following flash of light covered the spray of his blood, but when the puff of smoke dispersed, his leg was missing from the knee down. He called out:

[b] “It’s clear. The run to the exit is clear from here,”[/b] he said, in a choked voice.[b] “But I— I can’t walk. I can’t—”[/b] He struggled for words, because he knew they couldn’t change his fate. His stifled weeping was as resonant against the metallic walls as the coming footsteps. The Man in Rags stopped before his fallen disciple, and dropped a stim syringe to clot the wound. The megaphone from before had been replaced by some spray bottle in his hand, tinged with slight bioluminescence—[i]life beyond the machine. Integral to the [color=green]𝔾𝕒𝕞𝕖[/color].[/i]

[b][color=darkolivegreen] “Thank you for your service,”[/color][/b] he said. [color=darkolivegreen][b] “But APEX’s Bomb Squad’s in the building. Make it out if you can.”[/b][/color] The Man in Rags turned, stared down the corridor at the security room’s door, stared at a watching shill, nameless, and as meaningless to him as the rest of them. As pointless a role in the grander game in his mind as the fallen pawn. Then, he walked on, and an entourage followed. 

Turkish walked out of the office with a black box that looked more like a magic wand than a blueprint, but when he held it up to the light and activated it, a three-dimensional schematic constructed itself, reflecting off of the sulfurous smoke the lingered from within the security office. The pawn made an attempt to crawl towards his salvation, but could hardly stand the pain, and could hardly meet the eyes of Lott and Turkish. 

[b][color=lawngreen] “Squad’s checkin’ in and says most of the folks are inside or runnin’ away. We’re ready to cave to the exits. Tomb ‘em up. Seems like most of ‘em took their pitchforks to yer manufactory and are having the time o’ their lives. Won’t make it out if we can help it. Just keep ‘em until someone official comes to clean Gatch’s problems.”[/color][/b] He clicked the projection off and pocketed it. Then turned his gaze towards the fallen pawn. 

[b][color=lawngreen] “I’ll take this back to Brandon. No orders for a capture mission, so these ones’re all yours.”[/color][/b]