"Blinded by greed and panic, people become nothing more than ticking time bombs.
Waiting to explode at the worst possible time."
- Hunter Jack 'Librarian' Willingham (2035)
Time flew by. Doing nothing but sitting while watching the numbers of people going in slowly tickle down until no one else came down into the undercity was both good and bad news. Good news in the sense that we wouldn't be as smashed together as I thought we'd be, but bad news in the sense that everyone that remained up there was either dead, or well on their way to be dead. And that realization brought a chill to my spine.
"I'll go look for Roach. Be right back." I said, it had been around thirty minutes since we made it down here and Bill was already passing out to sleep. He was an old man after all. Looking around, I stole an old blanket from an abandoned stall and put it over the old man to make sure he wouldn't just freeze to death.
Turning towards the waves of people moving all the way around, I slowly made my way through the crowd with no clear destination in mind. Something was tingling at the back of my head, and I had felt that sensation before, the night my parents ran away. It was a dread slowly building up inside my head as I pushed through the crowd, not being able to see Roach anywhere.
"Can't see shit from here...Gotta climb up." My average height and currently feeble body wasn't helping me look any better, so I just headed to the sides of the walking mass of people. The undercity was a series of tunnels, once supposed to be the foundations of Athenea's massive metro system. Shame the corpos stopped pouring money when they found out any further digging would be more costly than they thought.
Finding a service stair, as rusted and old as they would be, wasn't so hard. A few moments of looking and I could easily notice one of them heading halfway into a higher crevice, most likely meant to be an access for maintenance equipment and personnel. Taking a deep breath, I pushed myself a little to climb all the way up, standing at the edge of the crevice and taking a careful look around.
Roach was thin, pale, had prosthetics and looked like a sick kid. That was more than half the people down here. Finding him proved to be pretty damn difficult, but soon enough I found out that his inconspicuous appearance wasn't the reason I couldn't find him down here. He just didn't make it this far on his own.
A message. Sent through an emergency channel. It was a paid feature for SMs, the messaging app all implants came with, and the contents of the message sent another, much more horrible, dread down my spine.
It was a voice recording. Ragged, painful breathing, and a rhythmic tapping of metallic creatures. The sounds of flesh tearing apart and blood being splattered could be heard through, what I could maybe imagine, some sort of thick layer. Maybe a door or the latch on Roach's floor, the one that opened to his little warehouse where he kept most of his important shit.
"....Fuck me...." I fell on my ass. Cold sweat raced down my forehead as I realized what this meant. "Fuck, fuck, fuck..." He was asking for help.
He was asking for help, begging for it with faint, terrified, whispers. The metallic taps grew closer but soon enough rushed away, probably another survivor that had tried to hide was now being chased down.
He was begging for help, and I was stupid, so much so, that my body started moving before I could even process what I was doing.
I raced down the service stairs and into the crowd again, searching for some kind of weapon, anything, and my desperate eyes soon found a guy with a gun stashed on the back of his pants. Typical thug. I didn't care at this point, Roach was...my only friend. And as long as those terrified whispers of help kept resounding inside my head, I could not rest at ease down here in relative safety.
I yanked the gun and ran through the crowd. I knew how to handle a gun, more or less, Bill had ample experience with them, so he taught me a little when he felt like it, so the first thing I did was to turn the safety on in case I accidentally pulled the trigger, and kept on running. The thug tried to race me, but my already nimble legs were rushing with desperation, and I was used to navigating through big crowds, he wasn't.
"I'm fucking stupid...This better be worth it....Just stay alive Roach, please..." I tried to keep myself sane as I headed towards the furthest exit. That one was only two blocks away from Roach's street, so it would be our best route of escape when I get him. As I slowly made the run at walking speed, my breath started to calm down, and with it my mind did so as well.
I checked the gun. It was some kind of simple handgun, I didn't know the exact name, but it used the same mechanism that Bill's gun did. I took out the magazine by pressing one of the buttons on the side of the weapon, it held about...Twelve rounds. If I found any scorn they should take care of one or two, as long as they are part of the lower ranks.
The gates had just opened thirty-something minutes ago, which meant the evacuation alarms were now shutting off and the area was getting barricaded. If I wanted to get to Roach before the monsters did, I didn't have much of a choice than risk the two-block and the apartment complex in a single run. If there was a time when I truly wished for luck to take my side, this would be it. All that I needed was run in there, get Roach and carry him down here. I didn't need to be a hero, just get my friend to safety.
"Alright, alright...Climb, run, climb, run....You got this Raven....You got this..." I hyped myself up, and as lame as it sounds, it actually helped me calm down a little.
I faced the north-west exit of the undercity. The long set of stairs sprawled hundreds of meters towards the surface. I took off the safety of the gun and took the first step.
My head flinched and my implants whined, the colour drained from my eyes again for a few seconds before the pain went away. Some corruption was taking over the minimalistic HUD I had on my Oculus, but I hoped it was just that, corruption created by the hit I got to the head. Seeing things that weren't there was really uncomfortable, but somehow...
It felt right, even if for just a second.
