Avium: Red Death

By Nathan Aylestock

Jake, Gary, Derek, and Sarah have joined GAMMA. As the world around them approaches its doom, they struggle to stay united against alien Dark Forces that threaten to end all life while attempting to unravel more mysteries surrounding the former owners of the Four Powers and uncover GAMMA's plans. Chaos abounds and darkness falls upon humanity. GAMMA continues the search for the Master Molecule, seeking to protect humanity with their transcendent technology and their ultimate garrison of heroes and soldiers.

Interplanetary campaigns against Red Death begin, but as tensions stir under their uneasy union, can the Garrison of Heroes effectively defend the Solar System from a supreme deity trillions of years ahead of us as She closes in on this final nine-billion-kilometer frontier of space, time, and everything we can explain with modern physics while also striving to keep the light burning within their hearts?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nathan Aylestock
• Release date: Oct 31, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463945223

Nathan Aylestock

Nathan was born in Canada, raised in Oklahoma and currently lives in Arizona where he has been writing the Avium series for fifteen years, creating digital art, making music, and bodybuilding for ten years!Check out digital artwork in full HD athttps://www.deviantart.com/cytrek1Download Avium Soundtracks for free!https://www.soundcloud.com/dubstalkerdj

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Avium

RED DEATH

N a t h a n A y l e s t o c k

Copyright © 2020

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by reviewers, who may quote brief passages in a review.

This is a work of fiction. All characters, brands, events, places, and incidents depicted are part of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious universe and not to be construed as real. Any similarity or resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events is purely coincidental.

NOTICE: Contains nudity, intense violence, blood & gore, swearing, drug & alcohol-use, theoretical and quantum physics, string theory, the many-worlds interpretation (multiverse theory), and badassery. You’ve been warned.

Images rendered using DAZ Studio 4.9 Pro™, Element 3D V2.2, and Adobe® After Effects CS6 V11.0. Contributing Artists: Sickleyield, Nightshift3D, Stonemason, PerspectX, Zeddicuss, Aako, Val3dart, P3Design, Polish, Anna Benjamin, chungdan, Barbara Brundon, Leo Lee, Zkuro, goldtassel, outoftouch, Sarsa, Fred Winkler Art, AprilYSH, The AntFarm, midnight_stories, Sabby, Demian, Yura, FWDesign, ForbiddenWhispers, Danie, marfomo, DirtyFairy, Mada, and Daz Originals.

Iceland, Digital Dream, Arial, Gypsy Curse, Century Gothic, Bradley Hand ITC, and Nervous Fonts used fairly under commercial license.

Printed and bound in the USA.

Character Voices

Notice: ‘Avium’ switches between the perspectives between the Narrator, and Jake Dominus Fatorum until only one voice remains…

Planck Four: Haven City

Autonomy is an Illusion

SHREDDED BOOKS, maggot-filled meats, and outdated gadgets litter the cracked asphalt. Glitchy light-boards on graffitied brick, smeared with sticky old drinks (or some other nasty shit), still brandish Director Lancer’s profile with yellow words below reading, Haven City. A city of Purity.

I sneer as I pass them, but I can’t help longing for the simpler, brighter days… when I knew nothing of GAMMA and its corruption.

Fuck, I’ll never find it!

So much shit rules my mind in a carousel of noise: tracking down lawbreakers, keeping good posture, and looking tough… that keeping track of my car got pushed to the bottom of my list, along with empathy and etiquette. Can’t have those distracting me anymore. Not down here. Not if I wanna stay on top.

I toggle the Zeus and Jupiter thrusters on my hands and feet.

The magnetorheological liquid layer between me and the wine-red quantanium Class 3 War-Suit stiffens another level to keep me static against the trauma of every lift-off. New pilot-based stats fill my view, most notably my Phalanx shield dropping to sixty percent to relinquish Quantix fuel to Attitude Control and Auxiliary Weapons, like my pin-rocket launcher—a book-sized launcher that fires thousands of pin-sized missiles per second. They fill up a target and then explode in small nonlethal blasts.

While my electromagnetic high impact Phalanx shield gives my helmet a second chance against .50 cals, it’s still the weakest part of my suit. Every advanced helmet you can ever make will only ever be made of ballistic polycarbonate with fiber optics, and veined with a cybernetic nervous system and a Neural Computer Interface, giving the pilot remote access to wireless Gamma OS devices and control over all forty-two of the suit’s systems, but there’s always a trade-off. The better the armor, the less control you’ll have.

The rest of my hex-weaved armor is still the best there is: quantanium. Fused under the gravity of a neutron star, quantanium is made from the four strongest metals in the galaxy, thanks to nuclear pasta. Stuff is so dense, it generates its own gravity field via subatomic Regolith™ portals in the metal’s crystalline structure that literally bend and contort bullets before they even reach me, on top of being the hardest element in the known universe!

Heralding my lift-off, neon-blue Indicators over my vitals glow brighter. Hissing pneumatics in every quantanium-coated joint respond nicely with smooth whizzes, and my armored soles abandon the street in blinding plasma and quaking thunders!

I soar, rumbling and juddering like a rocket, but that’ll end with higher altitude.

Something’s so calming about seeing everything shrink away into toy models from up here. It puts stuff in perspective, like how insignificant and small we are… what worries we deal with compared to the inevitable collision of our infinitely grander Milky Way with the Andromeda. What problem compares? Yet, here we toil about our small fractions of time we call ‘lives’, striving to leave behind our DNA, leave our mark on the world. How small we are, yet how great our intergalactic footprint. Are we really meant to conquer the universe? We, who get sick so easily, die from simple stab wounds and gunshots, leading generations of humanity through the stars, spreading our doctrines, our poisons. Can anything satiate our avarice for eternal life and perfectio—

Watch out! Cynthia says.

Shit!

Flew straight into sim clouds hazing the synthetic sun in this domed, fake-ass sky. Even the wind is fake, blown from hidden vents up here.

Welcome to GAMMA…

Can’t help but stare at the pristine, neon-lit white tower on the horizon, the one that connects the center of this circular city to the fake sky, like a space elevator… White hovercraft and surveillance drones slowly circle the titanic structure like little pale bees around a bleached hive.

Garrison of Astrophysics, Machines, Microorganisms, and artificial Ascension… As if the name ain’t goddy enough, we strive to push boundaries no one’s ever thought of. We go beyond global monitoring, collection, and processing of information and data for foreign & alien intelligence and counterintelligence purposes. It wasn’t enough to be charged with the protection of the Right Hand, national communications, and information systems against penetration and network warfare. Aside from GAMMA’s trillions of networks and programs that ‘passively’ collect data, the corporation authorizes itself to invade privacy through clandestine means at a whim.

That wasn’t enough.

Director Lancer needed to be in control of the world’s arms and transit via GAMMA’s multilayered base of operations through kilometers of the Earth’s crust.

Droning white taxis and Haven City buses drop off and pick up graduates and interns with backpacks and briefcases strolling to and from the immaculate GAMMA Tower, the city of endless glass towers spiraling around each other into one big white shaft. Covering every unblemished street leading to it are the brightest and most perfect neon-white Exodus Panels™, invulnerable panels not only designed to stay dry through GAMMA’s artificial light showers on Tuesdays and the heavier rains on Thursdays, but also designed to control the flow of traffic with remote access to every brake and engine at the tap of a button.

Initially, the corporation GUISE patented the Exodus Panels but later sold the project for Isaac Delcomish’s superior Exodus Transit System®, the same that now lies barren all over the world above ground in the wake of the 6K Outbreak.

On the other hand, GAMMA’s perfect properties were designed to sustain us through pandemics, nuclear apocalypses, cosmic Armageddon’s, and every other world-ending disaster. Their underground channels reach deeper and stand more fortified than they appear, as they’re made of white quantanium. And the deeper one goes, the higher clearance one needs.

Headquarters are on Level 1, a kilometer below ground level. It’s the only way in and out of GAMMA. Level 2, another kilometer down, is FBI, a direct liaison to the Right Hand. Level 3 is the entirety of your other three- and four-letter acronymed organizations in the history of the United States, all working in unison. You can’t even blink without catching ninety-two different cameras profiling you, detailing every moment of your life in real-time. Just thinking about the colonized moons and asteroids entirely populated with septillions of processors of endless Video RAM D.E.V.I.N. uses to track every living person that bears a Linkt chip gives me a headache.

Then Level 4, Haven City. Four kilometers below ground, five times the size of Avium, with ten times the population.

The DARPA Warehouse is below us on Level 5. It’s not only for manufacturing artillery, but vehicles too. 5A is guns, 5B is vehicles.

There’re levels no one’s supposed to know about. If you’re a Level 4, then Level 5 doesn’t exist for you. Technically, Sarah, Derek, Gary, and I aren’t supposed to know about Level 6a (Medical) and Level 6b (Science), but we’re special I guess. We’ve even heard GAMMA’s last floor is Level 7. Gary’s almost cracked whatever’s down there…

Cynthia, scan for crimes.

Thought you wanted to find your car, she reminds.

Right.

I guess it’s no surprise that GAMMA, a former corporation and one of the Four Powers that’s home to a billion different citizens, relies on us vigilantes to dish out justice where they can’t. But the bigger the nation, the quicker it falls. History always repeats itself.

Jake, no one cares, she says as-a-matter-of-factly.

You’re right. No one cares about vigilantes. We can be beaten, forgotten. And it only gets worse when you factor in HD, given that eighty percent of users go homicidal. But the life of a Vigilante can go several ways. He can simply restore a neighborhood. Or she can build a better future for her family and friends. And while vigilantes sound like heroes, they’re not gonna put their lives on the line. Hell no. But dumbass people either stubbornly slot them together or they hate them, try to cancel them with their bigotry and fascism.

Yeah, Cynthia says. "It’s ‘cuz Vigilantes are on personal vendettas most of the time. You’ve seen the movies. But look on the bright side; aren’t you humans always evolving and changing? Soon enough, everyone’ll get super powers and be equal."

Shake my head. Equality is a pipe dream. We haven’t changed. We’re the same barbarians that rose outta the Stone Age. Nothing’s changed. We’ve only bettered how clever and sneaky we are with our cruelty.

Jake… she interrupts.

No? Well then explain how we’ve become a sufficient and prosperous humanity". Sure, we discovered technology, HD, A.I.s. But doesn’t it all feel artificial? Like it was orchestrated? I flick a pebble off a rooftop and watch it vanish below. Maybe I’m in the minority, but I think our puny rock is destined to fall, whether by our violent nature or not. We haven’t grown in shit. But, as much as I hate who we’ve become, we do evolve when our lives are faced with destruction: Cybernetic augmentations, super drugs for quicker healing and raising our immunity against the deathly conditions of the galaxy. Our strengths and skills have increased, but our generosity’s still down in the muck and mire where it’s always been. It’s like the stuff in movies and videogames and books turned out to be true; we predicted our own future—our reaction to such a future: Lifelessness… Sorry, I’m ranting again… Tends to happen with you around."

It’s not like I can listen to anyone else… She’s trying one of her jokes.

Well, I’ll try not to bore you.

A chuckle.

"But as the years go by, the ingredients that make up society get more enriched in self-ambition, giving ways for anyone above the age of four to associate those they don’t like as being lower than dirt. Hmph. I’m one to talk. I know I deserve judgment… for the ones I murdered… We’ve committed so many crimes… are we even human anymore?"

Wanna trade places? she half-jokes. Half…

She hasn’t been the same since her attempt to dismantle GAMMA’s A.I., D.E.V.I.N. He nearly ended her, stripped her down to her basics in one nanosecond. Did he underestimate her? Did he think she wouldn’t recover with what he left her? Nah. See, he meant to leave her with just enough data so she’d know what it was like to nearly die, to be erased and forgotten. He knew exactly what to take and when to take it. He’s so much more than her. Normally, there ain’t a single thing on this planet that can terrify Artificial Intelligence.

D.E.V.I.N. terrifies her.

Can we?!

If I could, I would.

You’re… serious.

I’d give pretty much anything to live a virtual life so you wouldn’t have to.

But… She looks down.

Until then… Some shit’s going down here in GAMMA. It reeks of conspiracy bigger than anything the guys and I have come across. Our parents were hiding something. Sure, our dads founded GUISE Tower, Falcon Industries, the Right Hand, and GAMMA, but how do my dad, Gary’s dad, and Derek’s dad all get murdered at the same time?

She’s silent, busy analyzing. But she sees it too, the flukes and happenstances of the past five years—all to put GAMMA in the ultimate seat of control over the entire Solar System.

"Someone’s behind all this. And they’re here at GAMMA. If not, they’re gonna die here at GAMMA. Right after I get answers, I tell her, closing in on a towering staple of commerce in this city. You know, I could never understand who in their right mind would give up their business and stocks on a national scale to be controlled by four enterprises, Four Powers, just for easy access and convenience."

Someone impetuous and uber-trusting of consolidation while still making profit without doing all the work, Cynthia says. The American dream.

Yep. I land with a shuddering crunch, cratering the concrete rooftop in a puff of gray dust. Servos and pneumatics rev down to a low hum as my thick, black… ahem… Quantix fuel levels out in my calves and back. People keep talkin’ like oppression and crime are gone, like we don’t have to worry anymore just ‘cuz of augmentations and super drugs, but they’re here to stay like the air we breathe. To put it simple: we’re all self-righteous bastards. Nah, Evolution has taken the back seat as we drive ourselves into extinction, like so many tales of old. The only difference? In this world of chaos, I’ve chosen to be… I let the smile retake my lips. A vigilante.

"Hmph, wise choice," Cynthia says—

Jaaake! growl from behind!

Electric-blue lightning patterns marble his sleeveless gray hoodie. His dirty-blond hair flails in the fake wind.

Analyzing…

Bpm’s at three hundred. And Cynthia’s ID’d him.

Derek?!

Not sure he even heard me through his declining sanity.

Cynthia reddens my Indicators, launching my defenses, having seen Derek’s green irises and dilated pupils.

I eye the glowing option ‘Sonic Pulser’ at the bottom of my HUD; it’s the first on my list, but I also got a Plasma Pistol, a thick-ass buster sword, and a longsword.

The name, Derek growls, is Droid!

God damn HD! He’s takin’ too much!

Sure, HD increases neural activity, opens new pathways, gives access to more memories and stuff untapped yet… for a few hours. It also boosts your heart rate to a range of 170-300 bpm.

HD’s colors naturally change with each strand, portraying the purity of its biochemical properties, from blue 1080p being the purest, to red 2K, to yellow 4K, then green 6K, which is highly diluted, and back to purple 8K, reproducing the purity of 1080p with all its best properties and none of its basest traits.

1080p (170 bpm) lets you move small objects with basic Telekinesis for an hour.

2K (200 bpm) lets you easily lift twice your weight or jump twice your own height, even outrun some vehicles for thirty minutes… along with Telekinesis of course. Viral videos, to this day, pervade Cryo Pilot, showing people using REAL TELEKINESIS and high jumping. But athletes also used it to run, dunk, and tackle harder and faster without the side effects of steroids.

With 4K (240 bpm), aside from Telekinesis, you can move so fast you damn-near teleport! But only for thirty seconds.

The viral video Bulletproof Zombie is the tenth most viewed clip on Cryo Pilot. It’s of a deranged man on 6K (275 bpm) bolting after the augmented police force and gettin’ shot up and still not falling! For a full five hours! But the compound’s so unstable, you’re more likely to get a dose of Pandora (four out of five times), and then every disease you can think of fuckin’ ravages you all at once, and you die in six seconds.

With 8K (300 bpm, 12 - 24 hours), you can mix elements with the serum for special abilities. Easy as it sounds. For manipulating water, add H2O and now you’re Gary, aka Geyser. Want Electrokinesis? Add a charge to the serum and now you’re Derek or Droid. Want Pyrokinesis like me? Light the serum on fire. The longer the exposure to the element, the longer the user can do awesome shit under the influence.

It’s rumored if you cook a regular 8K serum with an Earth 8K tablet, an 8K Fire, an 8K Water, and an 8K Lightning… you get mother-flippin’ 10K! A god serum. They say the serum would be so powerful that it’d constantly be killing and reviving the user simultaneously, his heart no longer beating. All the body’s systems would run solely on brain activity, which obviously puts a strain on the mind and thus, that’s what kills him, but unlocks every Psychokinetic ability he can imagine, permanently…

I mean, imagine that! True godship. We ain’t ready for that.

But with 8K, Derek jumps three times his height and has thrice the strength of the world’s strongest man. His increased electrical activity means he can’t ever stay completely still; every movement is fully amplified, meaning he can dodge bullets, he can shock anything, manipulate ions and electrons to create E.M. fields and ignite them for electrical black-outs or concentrate them for defibrillators… All of that raises his body temp, of course. But, really, it’s his molecular structure vibrating so much that spontaneous combustions dance on the surface of his skin.

If I rub my hands fast enough, I can smell my skin burning, and that’s without HD. Multiply that by a thousand and that’s what Derek’s got right now. Plus, a shit-ton aggression, vice, addiction, and irritability.

Gimme your phone! Derek jams a button on the black contraption clutching his left forearm.

It’s his high-tech gauntlet, the JailBreaker. That thing can hack almost anything. GAMMA gave it back to him for his missions in the city, but he’s made mods. Now it’s humming with exawatts of pure energy.

Don’t you have enough? I quip. Maybe humor can sway him back to normal?

I need that AI! He trembles, taking a jittery step, like lightning’s coursing through his legs.

I told you: Cynthia’s not remote anymore! She’s part of me now.

Then I’ll take your eye!

I guffaw. Nah, see you later—

A mistake to turn, so close to the infamous Droid, the Vigilante of Avium, but Cynthia whips me around to dodge his ionic punch!

Duck!

Grapple his waist. Pitch him to a silver air duct. It crumples in like paper.

He wipes his lip.

Derek, wake the fuck up!

He jumps to his feet and charges, screaming like a lunatic.

Saw that coming, having planted my feet into the roof. The pneumatics and gears are locked. I won’t be moving from this—

He tackles me!

Fuck!

Slams Olympian punches to my visor, one of which zaps me off the roof!

Indicators detect wind speed, flashing rapidly!

Cynthia triggers thrusters that roar like rockets with blistering blue fire.

I land with a roll and watch the roof; Derek’s peeking over the edge up there.

Don’t do it, Derek!

He disappears back behind the ledge.

Even with 8K, you won’t survive the fall!

But he leaps off the roof anyway.

Goddamn it!

My HUD displays an equation of the fall, predicting where he’ll land.

I sprint and catch him.

Feels like my arms just popped from their damn sockets!

Both his feet hammer my face, distorting my profiler! The force shoots me twirling onto my own damn car, smashing through the matte-black roof, windshield, and hood with my four hundred and thirty-five pounds!

At least I’ve found it, but—

More knuckles, melting my fiberoptics!

Can’t see!

Cynthia! Sonic!

DRUUUU!

Derek drops to his knees, clasping his bleeding ears.

Sonic’s his only weakness in his heightened state. Just had to use the same frequency he’s vibrating at so it wouldn’t hurt Cynthia.

His green irises go blue, and a high-pitched shriek blares from his vocal cords, as if some demonic wraith abandoned his soul.

His HD abuse is getting worse…

I roll off the wreckage and near him, but he coughs, turning from me. You gonna be alright? I wanna get closer, but I can’t take the chance.

Jake, he whimpers, too ashamed to look at me. "You should kill me."

Compelled to help him to his feet, I give him a hand. Why would I kill my best friend?

I did something, he says and finally looks at me, focusing on the fractures he put in my visor. I’ve done horrible things.

We’ll talk about it. I promise, I tell him. But can you take over patrol first? I’m… gonna try to fix this. Remove my visor to see how bad it is.

Damn… His knuckles melted clean through the ballistic polycarbonate to the inside like butter!

Don’t have any spare hardware; they won’t give me an engineer’s permit to do my own repairs, but I can’t go to Edmond with something like this. He’d only report it to Lyle and he’d only demote me or chastise me.

Fuck that. I got an extra.

Put it back on. Giving you a second chance here.

I’m trying… Derek mutters, looking down.

A second chance. Is that really what it was? Would I have forgiven him as easily if he hurt my family? Would I have exacted vengeance and forgone all second chances? What lengths would I go to bring justice to that menace? Would I kill again…?

Hardly remember how I got in behind the glass-specked steering wheel; I’ve been staring at the spiraling white tower on the horizon.

Engine barely chugs, but I spin a smoky donut before heading back to the ever-white, ever-perfect GAMMA.

HALT! The all-white armored android shoves me hard! Didn’t even make it a step inside the entrance.

What?! I demand, making sure to show my opened hands.

CLASS THREE WAR-SUITS ARE PROHIBITED INDOORS! it bellows from its white face.

By now, my War-Suit’s become a second skin. Don’t even realize it’s on anymore. I’ve even slept in it.

But I step onto the silver platform next to the robot, and the hissing begins. Vapor whistles from the base, and the mechanical tentacles sprouting from the sidewalk begin removing my hefty wine-red pieces, pulling them into the ground for storage.

Back in my GAMMA-issued white shirt and shorts, I proceed to the doors, but—

The android squeezes my arm!

Hey! Get your fuckin’ hand off! I stripped down, didn’t I?

It stares at me with its singular blue strip of neon across the white face plate. SCANNING!

Roll my eyes.

SCANNING!

Any day now…

JAKE. DOMINUS. FATORUM… VERIFIED. YOU MAY PROCEED, CITIZEN.

Fuck you, I mumble.

It twitters suddenly, glitching out for a sec. Now it’s mirroring my rebellious stance. "FUCK YOU," it points its glossy white finger at my face.

Fuckin’ A.I. But if I touch it or otherwise try to dismantle it, six tank-sized Gauss Turrets shift up outta the ground, lock onto me, and vaporize me.

I snort then make my way inside.

Beyond the Tower entrance dwells the classic winding staircase of glass and white metal behind the glossy white front desk, from where two blonde clerks wearing white mini dresses observe visitors.

I remember Sarah started off there as their third but quickly moved on up, or, in the case of this building, down.

The morning seems like any other, as she approaches the blonde pair now, in her black miniskirt and pastel-red low-cut blouse matching her frosted lipstick, but she snootily tilts her head of red hair as she makes a delighted detour past their glossy white prison toward the elevator, pretentiously pulling out her purple and black E-wing badge. Tickled by their open dismay of her new promotion, she overtly touches the badge against the scanner, inevitably holding not just their envious eyes but everyone’s; employees near and far watch her as if she’s holding priceless Quantix Black in her hand.

Ugh, her floor takes precedence over mine.

She giggles as the doors close, and only then does she remove her sunglasses. Her eyeliner is bold and eyeshadow smoky, complimenting her thick, curled eyelashes. And her dark-brown eyebrows have been plucked so evenly, they’re flawless.

Just ignore her.

The first stop is B-wing, and the Regolith sign overhead reads in elegant cursive as such, but the B and the g lights burned out last month, revealing the word Win. The only explanation for its continued disrepair is that the new word makes the bosses on this level feel like winners, but I know better.

After the lower staff depart, looking disappointed in themselves, the elevator heads down.

While a curious lad in the back wearing a velvet business suit finds himself staring at Sarah, she hardly looks at him, but she’s playing the girl’s game, where they see you but just play like they don’t.

The stairway in C-wing winds like the one in the lobby, but white light-banners on the white walls and towering marbled pillars show endless infomercials and products of white crafted from the white-suited engineers and chemists that now depart from the elevator. A bit more room to breathe, now that just a handful of superiors remain.

Down the elevator goes.

I was sure after the biologists and doctors left for D-wing, it’d be just her and me in here. But that curious lad remains, utterly destroying my opportunity.

Isn’t this your floor? she asks him, hand on her hip with the other unconsciously ushering him to leave.

The doors remain open.

The guy straightens just a tad, hands behind him. No. Not anymore, he says, appearing like some famous singer from a boy band, with his black hair long on top, buzzed on the sides, and a perfectly trim shadow covering his young confident face.

And you are…? The curiosity won’t leave her.

The elevator reaches Level Six B with a ‘ding’, and the doors slide open again.

His lips purse. I’m your new boss.

The statement leaves her stunned as he steps past her into the E-wing, making his way to the elevated glass office. The walls in there are indeed black, but every surface exposes a hint of purple, Sarah’s favorite color. Good for her…

Sir? She rushes after him, but a looming black and purple kiosk divides her path. Holograms, Falconet videos, GAMMA ads, and Cryo Pilot profiles are playing on the curved glass panels, in endless Linkt analysis.

Welcome to GAMMA Surveillances, D.E.V.I.N. greets from within.

That model of Artificial Intelligence isn’t the true D.E.V.I.N. Model s-48_E only advises nearby employees of weekly events and where to go. But knowing Sarah, she’ll forgo its information in her preference to learn about E-wing on her own.

The growing distance between her and her new boss makes her rush after him as the doors close.

Good riddance.

The elevator zips back up, non-stop, to Level Five where I’m greeted with buzzing neon-white light in the ceiling and walls of concrete, honking automated forklifts that rumble by, scorching furnaces along the walls that clash against the white with their incandescent orange glow, and the roaring jungle of conveyor belts running thousands of technologies overhead… A buzzing maze of white, black, and gray.

Gary, Derek, and I slave here when we aren’t on missions and shit. I assemble the cars while those two lucky bastards make the guns (Plasma Pistols, Gauss Rifles, Rail Guns, Fusion Cannons, and