System Overclocked 3 -ch 12-

Chapter 12

The stairs winded downwards for at least five floors.

Cutting back and forth twice for each set.

Or so he guessed.

For all he knew the steps were far different than he expected and he was actually twenty floors down. Realistically, there was no way to truly know.

All he did know, was they were a significant distance further down than they had been previously and he was starting to wonder how large this area would be.

His minds eye had been going over all the possible types of HVAC units he’d dealt with up to this point, but he was starting to wonder if what he was in for was beyond his personal scope.

Then they stairs stopped and Wrench found himself and the tech on a landing that led to a glass door. As far as Wrench could see or hear, there was nothing beyond the door that would trouble him.

He couldn’t hear anyone breathing, talking, or moving about.

All he could hear was the Tech’s breathing, which sounded much smoother and unbothered than previously. As if they were feeling more assured for one reason or another.

Is it because anyone down here wouldn’t be swinging a weapon around?

If I was in her position would I feel better or worse if I was going into an area without guards in it.

I’m not really sure.

“Are we sure there’s no one in there? I’d hate to have to shoot you just because I couldn’t keep an eye on you,” Wrench growled as the Tech reached the door and turned the handle.

“No one is ever down here. Ever. It’s safe,” said the Tech with a nod of her head. “And since there’s no electricity, you can’t really turn anything in here into a bomb. That means you can just tie me up and go on your own from here. I brought those ziptie cuffs so you could do that.

“There’s even a map on the wall for the complex that lists out where all the ducts and pipes are. You could easily use that to navigate to where-ever you wanted to go.”

Huh.

I mean, she’s not wrong.

Normally I wouldn’t be able to do much without power.

I’ve been betting on the fact that the electrical area would have back-up generators that just didn’t kick on. Some sort of safety disconnect that didn’t let them power on.

The guard seemed confused it hadn’t turned on after all.

Following the tech Wrench found himself in a large and open area.

One that he immediately understood.

All the signage scattered about, the color coding, even the various bits of “tools not put away” all called out to him.

This was very much something akin to a Ducts and he felt as if he could do what he needed here.

There was even what looked to be a toolset that’d been squirreled away between two steel beams as if someone didn’t want to carry it down here by hand.

Lazy but… I’m appreciative of their laziness.

“I don’t know… where to go here,” said the Tech. “Can I turn on the flashlight again? I just want to find a spot to sit down in and stay out of your way till you decide what to do.”

Wrench thought on that.

“That’s fine. The spot ahead of you and slightly to the left would work. It’s a flat wall with nothing on it. Looks like there should be ladders there given the hooks but it’s all empty,” Wrench allowed.

Fingering the mechanical latch that apparently put the weapon in a safe mode, Wrench then moved it behind himself while on it’s sling. Letting it hand partially behind himself.

Moving over to the toolset Wrench pulled it out.

He gave it a quick onceover after opening it.

It was lacking what he’d like, but he could do what he wanted with everything that was here he imagined.

Looking at the large industrial components about him, he saw what was clearly the HVAC system.

It was massive.

There was also a bright orange door to one side with an electrical bolt on it.

Grinning, Wrench was quite happy.

This was what he wanted.

There was a quiet latch of what sounded like a ziptie that caused Wrench to look to the tech.

She’d put her ankles in a ziptie cuff set and had tightened it.

She was in the process of putting her hands behind her back now and pulling the ziptie cuffs shut on herself.

Raising his eyebrows he watched without a word as she managed it, then slowly slumped to one side, then wriggled around onto her back.

Huh.

Well.

That works.

With a shake of his head, Wrench moved to the electrical door with the toolbox in hand.

He had no idea what was the problem, but his first course of action was to find out if the power coming in was live.

If it was, then it was a question of finding which breaker or fuse blew out.

Settling in for some fun, Wrench glanced back at the tech.

She was still laid out on the ground, staring up at the ceiling in the darkness.

Opening the door he propped it open, then looked to what he had to deal with.

It was a fairly large system of electrical components. None of which he wanted to touch or get near if he didn’t have to. There was no telling what was live or not and he wasn’t familiar with the system.

What he wanted, was just an electrical panel that should control the system.

Thankfully, he spotted it on the wall. It even had a padlock on it.

“Jane, huh?” Wrench asked as he set the toolbox down and pulled out a two wrenches from it.

“Hm? Oh, uh… yeah. Jane. How… about you?” she asked, clearly flustered by the question.

“Wrench,” Wrench said.

“Wrench?” she parroted back.

“Wrench. That’s my name,” Wrench said, sticking the two wrenches into the shackle of the padlock. He stuck one in flat against the top of it and the other at a ninety-degree angle to it pointing upward. Wrench grabbed both wrenches in his hands and pull them toward each other.

There was a clang as the internals sheered off due to the extreme forces being exerted on it.

Exactly as he expected it to do and as it had done in the past.

“That’s a weird name,” Jane said bluntly.

“I mean, to you it is. From where I’m from, it’s pretty normal,” he confessed and put the two wrenches back in the toolbox.

“It sounds like a pet name.”

“Doesn’t it though?” Wrench asked with a grin as he flicked the padlock’s broken remains away and popped open the panel.

He began flipping the breakers one by one from on to off, then back to on.

“I have a cat named Spooky. He hides a lot.”

Wrench blinked at that and then laughed.

“My girlfriend is named Stripe. Close your eyes,” Wrench admitted as he finished with all the normal breakers.

He singled out only the breakers he wanted on, which had all been conveniently labeled Then he grabbed the large handle that was the industrial main and pulled it.

At the same time he dialed down his ability to see in the dark. All the way down to a normal level.

With a bang, followed by several pings, the power returned to the area he was in.

And nowhere else in the facility.

“Now… let’s go disable all the safety features on the compressor for that big-ass air conditioner, disable the emergency valves, and the shut-offs,” Wrench said and closed the electrical panel door. “Just set it up to run indefiniately until it creates a mechanical explosion. All it needs after that is a single spark. Which we can manufacture in spades.”

Wrench picked up the toolbox and left the electrical room.

Jane was staring at him wide eyed as he walked by. Blinking in a strange way as he went.

“Shame you tied yourself up, Jane. How are you going to escape?” he asked her critically as he went over to the massive air conditioning unit.

“Uhm,” she said, then blew out a long sigh. Her words took on a plaintive whimper. “Wrench… help me? I probably should’ve waited for you to tell me what to do.”

“Probably,” Wrench agreed and put the toolbox down and started to look over the AC unit. “I’l think about it. Really, I’m not sure of what to do with you even if I did get you out.”

Wrench got to work.

It took Wrench an entire hour to sabotage the air-conditioner unit.

He had systematically eliminated the safety features by physically bypassing them on the circuit boards. Causing the compressor to run constantly, without a shut-off, and all of it’s valves sealed shut.

The massive compressor was filled with refrigerants that according to the warning labels all over the unit was flammable and harmful to breathe.

Which was exactly what Wrench wanted.

All that was left, was setting up something to set off the spark.

Taking one of the wires he’d removed from a safety feature he quickly stripped it on both ends.

Holding it by the center he walked back over to the electrical panel.

With a grimace he stuck the wire into one of the few live breakers. Affixing it into the hot side where the power was coming in.

“Best I can do, I guess,” Wrench mumbled. He was fairly certain it would be enough to cause the whole area to go up spectacularly.

“Uhm, what about me?” Jane asked from behind him. Still laid out on the ground where she put herself.

Wrench really didn’t even have to think about it.

Before she’d even spoken up he’d already decided on freeing her. Using the wire strippers he quickly broke away the side of each zip tie cuff.

Then dropped the tool right there.

It’d been faint, but he had heard someone.

Someone’s boots hitting the steps in rapid fire, one after another as they came down.

“We have company. You will be silent, you will be still. Do you understand?” Wrench demanded and went over to the light switch. He flicked it and plunged the room into darkness.

Then he snapped switch off at the base, breaking it so low that it was almost flush with the switch plate.

It’d be fairly hard for someone to get the lights on even if they knew where the switch was.

“Yeah, yeah, not a problem. I’ll just—” Jane paused, got to her hands and knees, and crawled over to the corner of the room. She hadn’t turned on her flash light and had gotten there by keeping herself near the wall.

Good enough.

Wrench overclocked his ability to see in the dark, then went and crouched down in the electrical room doorway. Once situated he brought the rifle around, and thumbed the safety. Lifting up the sight he stared down it.

Faster than he expected, a squad of people came into view.

They weren’t wearing the same armor that everyone else had been wearing so far, but some type of fatigues. A strange grey and black coloring that looked like it was trying to blend in with concrete and shadows.

Wrench felt it didn’t really work and honestly looked somewhat stupid to him.

Noting that there were eight of them, all of them armed, he realized he couldn’t afford to not take at least one prisoner. He had to be brutal right up to a single person only.

Because there was no telling how many more were in the stairs above and he couldn’t afford to give any leeway down here.

He was more or less cornered.

Picking the person who had a rather important looking briefcase looking object as the one to spare, Wrench dialed up his system to it’s peak.

Sighting the weapon on the furthest two he took a burst fire shot as they lined up next to one another. He allowed the weapon to climb up fractionally as two shots splattered the first person’s head and the third struck the person behind them dead center of their chest.

Both of them went down in a heap.

The flash of of the muzzle had been blindingly bright, forcing his eyes and system to correct for it.

The six others all struggled to bring weapons around while also striking the light switch to turn on the lights.

Surprisingly, two of their number looked the wrong way.

Wrench ignored those two as he worked his weapon around, putting several rounds into each person’s head. Sending them to the ground with a splatter of bone and gray matter that liberally painted the walls around them.

By the time he had gotten down to the two that finally were looking the right way and the one he wanted to keep, he had begun shifting his postion.

Standing up he kept his back to the machinery and moved to the enemies right even as they brought weapons to bare on where he had been a second before.

One started to fire as Wrench eased the trigger down again.

Seven more shots sprang out and dropped the last two even as the one he had picked to live drew their pistol around and swung it on Wrench.

Despite being a great deal more Hume than any Hume, he didn’t think he was fast enough to dodge a bullet.

He was more than fast enough to outpace the muscles in the enemy’s hand, however.

Ducking down low, Wrench then stutter stepped to the left, and shot forward and to the right.

He did it with such speed that the pistol fired at where he had been, striking some part of the air-conditioning unit, and then the concrete where he had juked to.

By the time they were aware they’d missed he smashed the pistol out of their hand, grabbed that wrist, and spun them around. He brought their arm up behind their back and nearly lifted them right off the ground.

“Are there more up the stairs?” Wrench demanded. “Lie to me and you die, answer me and you live. Very simple.”

“No,” hissed the man. His voice sounding drenched in pain and surprise. “Everyone is in their defensive positions.”

“Great. What were you doing here?” he demanded of the man.

“Setting up the fallback gate so the base can empty,” they said.

“What’s a fallback gate?” Wrench demanded.

“A one way portal to leave the area,” Jane answered for him. “It’s used to retreat from an exposed area. I-I think they found your handiwork, on top of the other attacks, and are attempting to reroute people to other locations.”

“That’s right,” hissed the man as Wrench held his arm easily, despite him flexing against him. “Everyone is evacuating to reinforce elsewhere!”

“Great, set up the portal and you get to live. Don’t and you die here. That simple. Explain the mechanics of me as you set up the machine,” Wrench demanded and then let go of the man.

Moving to a spot on the opposite side of the room, Wrench detatched the box on the bottom of the rifle, glanced inside and saw a few rounds in it, then tossed it aside.

He put in a fresh box and dropped the sight on the soldier.

They were rubbing at their arm and looking around in the dark.

“Do you need light?” Wrench asked. “If so, just grab one of the flashlights or the one on your belt. Just don’t touch a weapon.”

The man realized that there was something more to this at Wrench’s words and seemed to think everything over. Then he slowly reached for the flashlight as his belt. He clicked it on and then looked around the ground.

He found the briefcase and opened it.

“It isn’t a machine, single direction magic with a battery,” the man said. “It won’t take me long to set up at all.”

“Great. Just realize that once you set it up, I need you to move away from it. I don’t want you trying to jump through it or do something stupid,” Wrench ordered. “I’d rather not shoot you in the head but I assure you, I can kill you before you even move. I’m not human.”

“He really can do that,” Jane stated, her voice sounding like a plea. “He’s already killed a lot of people.”

Pulling something free of the case the man shook it out, revealing it to be an oddly shaped piece of stiff paper. Inspecting it, he then set it on the ground.

A second item came out of the briefcase that looked a lot like a glowing purple rock.

The man set it down in the middle of the paper and went back into the case once more.

He pulled out a small clear bottle. It held an odd liquid in it that seemed to shimmer.

It even cast a faint light over the area within a foot of the man.

Popping the top off the bottle the man dumped it over the top of the rock and then tossed the bottle to the side. Turning, he moved away from the paper and looked to the side as well.

Covering his eyes with one hand.

Wrench got the unspoken hint and reinforced his eyes to what was likely to be a sudden flash of light and dialed his ability to see in the dark down significantly.

Keeping the sight trained on the man Wrench waited.

“It’ll activate shortly,” the man stated, his voice tense.

As Wrench had thought, there was a sudden flash of light as whatever was supposed to happen, happened. It was quite bright.

Bright to the point that it made Wrench’s eyes hurt as they adjusted instantly and shifted to give him a clear sight of the situation.

The man was rushing him with a knife.

Wrench put two rounds into his forehead and the man fell forward, hit the ground, and slid momentarily. Coming to a stop and blood pouring out of the wounds in his head.

“Alright, Jane. It’s time for us to leave here if that really does make a portal.

“Are you ready? Also, where do you think this is going? Somewhere I’ll need to come out firing?” he asked.

“I… I… ah… you… why’d you…?” her voice fell away as the strange light formed into an oval.

“Came at me with a knife. Now. Where are we going? Is it somewhere I need to come out shooting?” he prompted

“Probably. If it’s a fall back point it’d be defended,” she stated. “I can go first if you want. Tell them that there’s more coming. My-my armor would make them hesitate.”

Wrench wasn’t sure about that.

Jane wasn’t a companion and realistically couldn’t be trusted.

He had no reason to do so in the least.

There was a chime from Jane that made Wrench hesitate. A strange musical note.

“It’s… my phone. My boyfriend just texted me,” Jane explained, lifting her hands up partially as if to show she didn’t have anything in her hands as she sat in the corner. “His-his name’s Ed. I call him Eddy. His mom calls him Edmund. We’ve known each other for—”

Frowning, Wrench tuned out her babbling. His eyebrows bunching up on his forehead.

Edmund.

Hm.

That’s rather strange.

Then again, the fact that the toolbox was here was strange.

That it was just a breaker, too.

I didn’t even have to really do anything.

This whole damn thing is just a series of con incidences. One after another.

One… once is an accident. Twice is a conicidence. Thrice is a pattern.

This is a pattern.

I have no idea what the pattern is, or how to predict it, but it’s a pattern.

“Go first Jane. Tell them more are coming. Then get somewhere safe. With any luck, you won’t even see me after this.”

“Okay. Yeah. Yes. I’ll-I’ll do that,” Jane said and then got up. She hesitated a moment then went through the portal.

“Alright… well… here we go, I guess,” Wrench muttered. Feeling so deeply out of place.

Yet somehow, he didn’t feel like he was moving along a dead end.

Just a strange state of affairs and location.