Cherry Bombs

November 4, 2023

Lochlan had wandered town for a long time, checking various roads for the address on the business card she got from Cole. It's not until early in the morning that she finds the road.

She stands outside of a brick building with CGI lettering on top of the building, in front of her is a revolving door that leads to a very plush looking lobby with a receptionist looking bored and wrapping their fingers on the desk. Lochlan straightens her jacket some before walking up to the door. She pauses near the opening and looks it up and down for a moment. She then tries to push and walk through. The door rotates freely, the receptionist perks up and looks over at Lochlan.

Lochlan walks to the desk and speaks. She attempts to sound professional but it comes across as a bit more nervous, "Hello. I was hoping to speak to someone here about the janitorial work. Someone I knew that works here left something in one of the rooms."

The receptionist nods and grabs some papers, "Right and can I have your name?"

Lochlan responds, "Harper Sonnet."

The receptionist looks through the papers then they sigh, "We don't have that name written down on the approved persons list, if you could tell me the name of the person I could send one of our staff members to fetch it." They set the papers down as they turn their attention to a laptop sitting next to them.

"No, that's fine. It's not that important. Wouldn't want to cause a big hassle over nothing." Lochlan gives a polite smile, "However, could you point me to the nearest restroom?"

They point to a gender neutral bathroom that's across from their desk.

Lochlan nods, "Thank you, have a blessed day." She heads towards the bathrooms.

It's a bathroom, it has a sink, urinal and toilet. Lochlan glances at the room and sighs. She pauses at seeing her reflection in the mirror as she thinks. She groans to herself, "Why am I doing this..." She attempts to pry the mirror off the wall.

The mirror doesn't seem to budge. Lochlan steps back and aims a strong kick at the mirror. The mirror cracks.

Lochlan sticks her tongue out at the mirror. She grabs some cherry bombs from her jacket and drops them in the toilet without lighting them. She flushes the toilet before briskly leaving the bathroom. As she walks by the receptionist she gives a polite nod and heads outside the building. The receptionist watches her leave and then resumes looking bored.

A small yellow moth follows behind Lochlan as she turns to face the building. She lifts a hand from her side and snaps her fingers quietly. The handful of cherry bombs goes off in the pipes.

The receptionist jolts and looks incredibly concerned as they jog into the bathroom. Lochlan sprints to the doors, trying to get in swiftly and bolt for the nearest door. Lochlan sprints through the doors and bolts into a dark storage closet, it smells like cleaning supplies.

Lochlan looks annoyed as she reaches for a light switch. She finds a pull string as the light clicks on, it's a cleaning supply closet with a couple of unmarked bottles with skulls on with yellow text under them that reads "DANGER, DANGER."

Lochlan grins. She quickly snatches an unmarked bottle and tries to peek out the next door. The door creaks open, it just seems to be a hall that has 4 staff only doors and 2 of them seem to be elevators that require some kind of badge.

She peeks up at the ceiling for any noticeable cameras. There's one between the two elevators.

Lochlan feels around the collar of her own jacket and grumbles to herself, "Had to pick the one jacket with no hood. Darn it." She looks for a simple mop.

There is a mop inside the closet, it's got a wooden handle and looks cheap. Lochlan grabs the mop by the handle. She slowly opens the door and moves the mop towards the camera.

The camera slowly moves to looking at the handle of the mop. She pushes the end of the mop to the camera. She takes off an arm and props it up so that the mop stays covering the lens. She quickly hits any buttons on the outsides of the elevators before opening one office door but entering the other and closing the door behind herself.

Lochlan is now in a concrete stairwell with a large blue "1" painted on the wall in front of her. Lochlan bolts up the stairs. Lochlan goes up the stairs and is met with a door and behind her is a large blue "2" painted on the wall.

She tries to peek through the door. It opens to a room that seems to be full of cubicles, a few people pass by the door but don't seem to notice Lochlan. She closes the door a bit as they pass but peeks out again. She steps into the room and begins walking in the direction of the people that passed by.

Lochlan passes by a water cooler that has a plastic tiny golden pickaxe on it. She slows to a stop as she sees it. She stabs the top of it with a second pocket knife and quickly attempts to dump the contents of the bottle she had gotten into the water.

Some of it gets on the plastic of the water jug as it starts smoking and melting the plastic, the second it touches the water the whole container of water starts boiling. Lochlan's ears perk up as she drops the bottle and pockets the knife. She briskly walks to the nearest empty cubicle to sit down and attempt to be inconspicuous. The plastic is still smoking and melting, though the rest of it seems to be normally melting due to the water boiling and everyone in the cubicles doesn't seem to notice yet.

She glances around at the desk. There's various papers scattered on the desk and the computer is logged in, there seems to be a nameplate tucked away behind the computer. She pulls out the nameplate to look at it. The nameplate looks pretty standard and reads "Mark Garcia" the desk seems like it was suddenly abandoned. Lochlan puts the nameplate back and looks at the computer. There's several text documents on the desktop that read "The Flying Dutchman", "Records of safety regulations being ignored", "Employee payment information", "Safety measures to implement" There's a search bar in the corner.

She searches for "Max and Andrew." But nothing pops up, excluding the bing search. She changes it to just "Max."

A file pops up that says "Maximum power output Death Engine generator." She makes a face before clicking on it. It has a bunch of numbers relating to rotation speed and electrical power output. Lochlan goes randomly in the center and types in a few words before going back to the search bar. She then searches for "Andrew."

Nothing pops up, the clacking of keyboards goes quiet in the room as loud metal thuds start emitting from the staircase.

Her hair raises as she bolts away from the keyboard and away from the direction of the sound. Her eyes instantly darting for any exit. Lochlan notices that the other water coolers in the room don't have the plastic pickaxe on them and there's a door with a label above it that reads, "Private conference room."

Lochlan dashes into the room. It's a medium sized room that has office chairs around a oval table with a TV mounted to the wall. The steps are getting closer. Lochlan looks up and attempts to stand on the table to climb up into the ceiling through the ceiling tiles. It's a very small space but Lochlan can squeeze into the ceiling, it's mostly taken up by various wires and pipes, some of the pipes that are labeled "HOT", "COLD", "pressurized air" one of the pipes has the same skull marking as the container that Lochlan picked up. Lochlan starts to slowly shuffle towards the pipe with the skull but it's taking a long time with how quiet she's trying to be.

The footsteps stop as there's quiet talking and muttering, Lochlan can make out a couple words, "Good... is that... 001... be quiet."

Lochlan stays still. There's quiet shuffling and more whispering as the footsteps resume getting closer. She stays quiet and slowly puts a hand on the pipe. The pipe is scorching hot and the footsteps are still getting closer. Lochlan makes the face and motions of screaming as she takes her hand off but makes no noise.

The doors to the conference room sound like they are slammed against the walls, Lochlan can hear muffled heavy breathing.

Lochlan flinches slightly. The whole area is silent excluding the heavy muffled breathing and the shifting of metal.

Lochlan stays still. The footsteps start walking away from where Lochlan is, at a somewhat fast pace. She stays still. Eventually Lochlan can't hear the footsteps anymore and the clacking of keyboards has resumed. Lochlan takes a deep breath and exhales as she relaxes for a moment. Instead of hoping down, she looks ahead to see if she can crawl to an adjacent room. Lochlan now notices that it's extremely dark in either direction and can't tell. She starts army crawling in the direction that the skull pipe goes.

It's a long time before she hits a wall that the skull pipe continues through and seems to go directly down. Lochlan carefully moves the ceiling tile before looking down.

She's right above the stairwell door. She drops down and stretches from being cramped, "Geezums my legs..." she tries to go up another floor.

She goes up the stairs and is met with another door with a large blue "3" on the wall behind her. She attempts to peek through the door again. It's a hallway that has a couple offices, no one seems to be in the hallway but she can hear the faint clicking of keyboards. Lochlan closes the door and heads up one more floor. Lochlan heads up the stairs and is met with another door that has the lock on this side of the door. There's a large red "4" painted on the wall behind her.

Lochlan looks annoyed as she looks at what type of lock it is. It's a manual lock, it has a large thumb latch. Lochlan attempts to open the door.

The door opens to a white hallway with another door at the end with another thumb latch on Lochlan's side of the doors with black writing above it that says, "UNIT-001 CONTAINMENT."

Lochlan looks a bit concerned as she slowly makes her way down the hall. She attempts to open the door.

The door is unlocked. She is now face to face with a 6 foot 1 being wearing a thickly armored exoskeleton with two holsters that have chainsaws with cables attached to them in the holster,

on either side the whole armor has been painted black with a gray skulls painted on both of the shoulders, it wears a full face helmet with the eyes blocked out by black glass it has tubes running to the back of the armor.

Lochlan slowly looks up. She stares and waits a minute.

It's holding Lock's other arm she had left behind, and it uses it's other free arm to aim a grab at Lock's remaining arm as it speaks. It's voice sounds like it has some kind of liquid in it's mouth, "Intruder spotted."

Lochlan instantly yanks her arm out of reach and scrambles backwards towards the stairs.

It starts chasing behind her and is moving surprisingly fast for how armored it is.

When she reaches the stairs, Lochlan jumps the railing and aims to land on the second floor but proceeds to tumble down the stairs to the first floor a bit painfully, "-Frik."

It wraps one of it's chainsaws to the railing of the stairs and starts descending but half-way through going down it slips off and causes it to smash directly onto the concrete floor as it lets out a loud and gargling, "MOTHERFUCKER."

Lochlan flinches at the fall and scrambles to the door. The door is unlocked, it seems to be stunned for a second. Lochlan bolts out with a hint of a limp towards the revolving door.

it bolts after her with a loud pained roar and slings one of the chainsaws at her legs in an attempt to wrap the cable around her legs and make her trip.

Lochlan is tripped as she tries to get back up, "PLEASE No no no-"

the receptionist ducks under their desk as it walks over to Lochlan and grabs her by the leg. It starts dragging her back to the stairwell.

Lochlan grabs at the ground a moment before trying to pry its grip from her leg. She sounds terrified and despite, "NO PLEASE! LET GO OF ME- PLEASE NO- DONT-"

It continues to drag her into the stairwell as it mutters, "I need an interrogator that can open an elevator, we have a live one."

Lochlan's breathing picks up as she yells at him, "LET GO OF ME- I CAN'T DO THIS AGAIN LET GO-"

They are now sitting in the stairwell as it stares at her, it's heavy breathing still muffled. Lochlan is tearing up as she keeps trying to pry her leg free. Her breathing is getting more sporadic, "P-Please, I messed up, let me try again-"

Its grip is extremely tight as it continues to stare at Lochlan, the sound of high heels is suddenly very audible. A 5 foot 10 woman wearing a tuxedo with black hair and green eyes walks into view. Her face looks more masculine than feminine with black eyeliner and pomegranate lipstick approaching Lochlan with a syringe gun in one hand.

Lochlan looks over as her eyes widen. She starts hyperventilating and tries to move as far from her as she can.

It pulls her closer to the woman as she groans and whispers, "You always get the fucking unruly ones." she tries to grab Lochlan by the neck.

Lochlan tries to bite at her. Unit-001 quickly attempts to clamps her mouth shut as the woman quickly moves her hand away from her mouth. Her mouth is clamped shut and there's nothing but pure fear and terror in her eyes. She's frantically trying to shake free and kicks.

The woman seems fed up and jabs Lochlan in the neck with the syringe gun, "Fuck you, god damn it."

Lochlan yelps but is muffled and continues to fight. The woman uses the syringe gun as a clear fluid is injected into Lochlan, she starts to feel fatigued as her eyes feel heavy.

Lochlan is still weakly fighting as she blinks some. Her eyes close half way and she catches her breath.

Unit-001 clamps her mouth as it starts unwrapping the cable from her legs and puts the chainsaw back in it's holster. The woman removes the syringe gun from her neck.

Lochlan attempts to sit up. The woman pushes on Lochlan's head, "Lay back down, it'll prevent you from getting more brain damage."

Lochlan is pushed back down as she lazily swats at the woman's hand, "I'mmmm...No."

The woman looks over at it and sighs, "Thank you, Unit 001," it nods and speaks, "No problem, Viper."

Lochlan's eyes feel impossibly heavy as Viper stands up and puts the syringe gun in her pocket. Lochlan goes limp as her eyes close.

Unit 001 walks back up the steps as Viper picks Locklan up and carries them to the elevator and down into an integration room.