The Journey Ch. 07

Rabbit ran, cursing the weight of the girl the entire time. He had to find his way down to the core, and that meant passing the hydroponics facility. The place gave him the creeps, even worse than the floor where the geezer ran the show. Prometheus (or Johnny, Rabbit reminded himself, not willing to credit the bastard with his choice of title) had woken up the hospital wing, the terminal patients, and had them working their final days in slave labour, in order to feed his cronies. Many of them were drugged and drooling, reminiscent of old zombie movies in their movements. It was the blank stares, and the idiotic repetition of the 'patients' that bothered Rabbit. That and the fact that Michael had been chosen as a host specifically to keep Rabbit in check, and working this exact position, drooling with the rest of them.

He slowed, and set his burden down. He looked up at the catwalks, watching the guards wandering above, bored but still vigilant, and listened to their footsteps as they walked away. He had to hide another hour or so, at least, until the whistle blew for shift change. He hoped none of these poor bastards dropped during the shift, or he'd risk being spotted by the cleanup crew, also armed. He turned to Angel, and slapped her. No response. Another slap, and she moaned, her eyes fluttering. He was about to slap her again, but she reached up her hand to block and turned her head to avoid it. "I'm up." She muttered thickly. Her tongue was swollen, as she'd bitten it while the electricity flowed through her. "Where are we now?"

"Shhhhhh…" said Rabbit. "This isn't a place to be caught, that's all you need to know. Keep your head down, and your voice low." He peeked around the corner, and up to the catwalk, hoping to track the movements of the two previously visible guards. One was still visible, but Rabbit wasn't too worried yet about the other. He was likely on the far side by now. He took the risk of straightening, needing to know where the workers were. The closest 'zombie' was three rows down, flipping the switch to moisten the compost heap upon which the crop grew. Mushrooms, large ones. They were the staple food down in the facility, a renewable resource that kept at the very least those that held guns fed. The workers were fed minimally, as they were considered expendable. Most were terminal, and if any of the buggers dropped, they just added to the compost heap, and fed the new crop of mushrooms. They were expendable.

Rabbit grabbed a handful of the smaller mushrooms, and wrapped them in a fold of his shirt. The dying bastards were not his problem unless they croaked, and even then he would be more concerned with not being spotted than helping any one of them escape this slavery. They were terminal. They worked for the privilege of a few hours in which they could dream of being healthy. It was the way the system worked, nothing more. Unfortunately, for Angela, it was more than a bit disturbing. Rabbit turned to see her standing, fists clenched, jaw working but no sound coming out. She looked about to shout, and he couldn't have that. He grabbed her arm, squeezed hard to get her attention and made a motion as if his mouth had a zipper. He drew her attention up, towards the guard, armed with a Ronin light assault rifle. He drew his thumb across his throat to indicate the danger they were in. "We gotta move out." He whispered. "Down another floor, and we'll be in the prison cryobank. Down there, we can find an unused wing, and get some shut eye. As long as you don't get your panties in a bunch and blow it right here."

"But...these people. They need help. You can't let this continue...can you? My god, they're all sick, dying. They should be spending their last days in the comfort of their beds, with medical care standing by." Stammered Angela. "Can't we do something? Anything?"

Rabbit's eyes narrowed. Whiny bleeding heart. What did she want to do? Kill the guard and liberate these walking corpses? And how many would drop of a heart attack when they were told to run for the exits? How far would they shuffle before men with guns reached them and mowed them and their would-be liberators down? "You tell me what can be done, and if you can show me why you think it's possible, I'll think about it. You've got thirty seconds."

Try as she might, she couldn't think of anything that could be done with the guards up above watching. Tears welled, and she fought them back. This would have been Michael's fate. Rabbit had no reason to lie about that, and it was obvious from the spasmodic movements and the slack jawed appearance of some of some of the workers (slaves! her mind forced her to accept the reality of the situation) that mental incapacity only meant that the tasks given were less complex. It did not mean they were exempt from the work. She reluctantly nodded. "Let's go..." she whispered hoarsely, her throat closing at the thought of abandoning these poor souls. "If we stay any longer, I'm going to scream."

Rabbit nodded, unconcerned with the discomfort of the girl. He was more concerned with the continued absence of the second guard. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the fellow walking down the catwalk on the far side. He was wiping his hands. He had likely hit the john on his way around the chamber. Johnny didn't keep anyone around for their brains, so this wasn't likely to be a subterfuge. He pointed his chin twice, towards one of the aisles that appeared to be empty for the moment, and guided her through the maze, careful to avoid contact with any of the zombified drones. They had to double back several times, and duck under the hydroponic beds to avoid the eyes of the guards, and those of the less than observant slave workers, who would nonetheless draw attention to them if they were careless.

These stacked beds were only a part of this floor. The huge chamber had been yet another array of cryochambers, but had malfunctioned long ago. It so happened that this chamber was on the outer edge of the facility and so was embedded into the natural rock outside, enough so that concrete had been deemed unnecessary. This layout had proved useful, as the cryotanks had failed in this section, and the dead bodies of the previous residents had decomposed, giving rise to the first generation of these edible fungi. By drilling and chipping away at the granite walls, dirt had been created to mix with the decomposing flesh to form a rudimentary soil. The process had been refined over the years, bones of deceased former residents ground up and added to the mix. High in nitrates, supposedly.

Rabbit admired the cold logic of it, but certainly did not want to be one of the poor souls trapped down here, forced to do the dirty work of disposing of their fellows. Johnny's name was a joke. He thought of himself as ensuring the survival of his pitiful band, and his choice of moniker was reflective of that. Prometheus, the thief who gave fire to man, and allowed them to raise themselves above their fellow man. But down here, man was defined as those who were physically whole, and mentally broken enough by braindance to believe what he told them. He had claimed the power of a god, and his ability to move through the electronic systems and the dreams of the residents made him as near to one as was possible. Rabbit, and by extension Michael, were free of this form of control, but only by escaping the facility altogether would he ever be free of all his influence.

Hunting for Rabbit was Prometheus' sport. Rabbit had been chased through the system for decades, and caught several dozen times over. This jaunt was the longest he'd been free, at least in physical, real-world time, and ironically it had been a cruel joke by Prometheus that had allowed it to happen. Rabbit smirked at the memory. Rabbit's favourite trick had been to use the minds of the various inmates to hide behind, because unlike electronic code, the human mind was not fully mapped. Though the barriers to communication between the two had been breached by synaptic relays, and sensory stimuli as well as other information could be fed (or bombarded) into the human mind, the deeper recesses of each mind attached to the system could not always be monitored. Hence Rabbit had managed to elude Prometheus within his own precious system for a period of many months...which, in the more rapid transit of information on the network translated into almost a decades worth of searching for the frustrated Prometheus. So Prometheus had decided to use Rabbit's own method's against him, and had allowed Rabbit to think he had slipped the noose again, but had in fact chased and herded him to his choice of vessel. Michael was chosen because of his mental damage, of his supposed incurability. But Prometheus hadn't scouted the territory fully, it seemed, loathe to lock himself within one body for any length of time, when he had a system to run. The process of herding Rabbit and denying him escape paths had taken alot of system ressources, and this had taken it's toll on Prometheus' carefully constructed system. So once Rabbit had been locked away into this less than perfect mind, Prometheus had returned to perform damage control, satisfied to gloat privately over his victory, having cut Rabbit off from his usual source of power and influence. Only one entity controlled the network now, only one entity ran it's highways and byways. Prometheus thought he had won, having delegated Michael (with Rabbit locked away) to the disturbing task of growing mushrooms, grinding dead bodies for plant and fungal fertilizer in these very chambers.

Rabbit was not to be repressed, however. He knew he'd burned a few bridges by fleeing into this vessel, but he'd also burned a few bridges for Prometheus too. He'd cut several pathways, awakening folk like Geezer, who, now operating independently were as much a thorn in Johnny's side as Rabbit had ever been. And Michael's former skills were becoming more and more accessible. He supposed that Prometheus' choice of vessel had been partly made because of the low impedance jack that Michael connected to the network with. It had made Rabbit optimistic about his direction of flight, and had given Johnny the chance to tighten the noose. But how Johnny had managed to miss Michael's former profession was a mystery to him. Michael had been a netrunner of prodigal skill before his hospitalization. The official reason for his decline had been a seizure of grand mal proportions while driving a vehicle. The accident had caused head trauma, supposedly aggravating the pre-existing condition. The result was a form of autism, with periods of prolonged catatonia. Or so the doctors thought. The case had baffled them too, but they had essentially labelled Michael as a lost cause, and his sister, angry at this decision, hearing the phrase "with currently available treatments" over and over, had decided that if "currently available" was not good enough, then future treatments would have to do, and so had booked her brother into the consumer side of the Green Mile Center. It was these skills, and the hardware installed in Michael's head that had allowed Rabbit some measure of control in this vessel, and that allowed him now to make occasional forays into the system to nudge folk awake that were not necessarily intended by Johnny to be awakened. And now, though he was on the run and hunted more vigorously than before, he'd managed a few victories. Rabbit's hatred of Johnny was such that anything that upset the bastard was a victory. Even if Angela was a liability, and could potentially slow Rabbit down enough to be caught, every hour that they remained free caused Prometheus/Johnny grief, and gave Rabbit a certain bit of cold satisfaction. If it ensured Michael's cooperation, then it was all the more worth it. The only part that concerned Rabbit was the insistence with which Michael had resisted his efforts, and had in so doing risked the both of them, in order to force Rabbit to aid in rescuing his sister. He'd thought Michael completely pliable before that, almost incapable of independent thought. This would bear watching. As would the current situation. They were almost through the maze of hydroponic beds and into the cryogenic prison. Out of the frying pan and into the fire, as they said.

He ducked behind the last row of beds and eased a loose grate off a vent. He'd taken this route before, largely because of it's state of disrepair. If you unscrewed random vents, and left them hanging about, sometimes guards got wise to it. If the vent had blackened stains, and looked as if it had been at some point blown loose, they tended to disregard it. Rabbit was fairly sure that the going consensus was "if I don't see it, I don't have to fix it." That suited Rabbit just fine.

Angela followed silently, her face pursed as if sucking on a lemon. So long as she followed, and kept quiet, Rabbit didn't much care how much distaste for the situation she expressed. If she'd spent any time in one of Johnny's more depraved simulations, she'd have seen much worse. That story he'd told about the macramé crazed cyberpsycho had in fact happened. Fortunately for Angela and Michael/Rabbit, the fellow had proved a little too indiscriminate in his artistic endeavours, and had not been willing to limit himself to those people Prometheus sent his way as punishment/entertainment. Prometheus had sent Spider, Thor and several other resident psychos to deal with him, and had in fact hung him up in his own art. Rabbit wasn't sure, but he betted the crazed bastard had probably thought it a fitting end. The fellow was dead, and unable to cause any more trouble, but a simulation of him was sometimes used within the network with recalcitrant inmates. His type of depravity, while problematic to Johnny's everyday plans, was still very much useful in a virtual format, and this was but one of the many criminally insane minds that the big bad had to draw from. Angela had escaped notice thus far, but it would only have been a matter of time till her turn to amuse the masses would have come. She would have been passed around virtually to all of his cronies, used till she either broke completely, and was no longer any fun, or till she proved to have a homicidal instinct strong enough to be found useful to Prometheus. Either way, she'd have been largely unrecognizable to her dear brother, and quite possibly just as mentally challenged.

He picked his way through the vents, pausing several times to listen for pursuit, or guards ahead. They passed corridor after corridor; warehouse –sized chambers were left behind them. More people could be seen down here, many moving as furtively as Rabbit. Ironically, many of these timid people owed their freedom to Rabbit and Michael. But Rabbit didn't blame them in the slightest for their resentful looks or fearful scuttling. After all, if you had not yet been visited by Prometheus, the computer generated simulations were generally fairly pleasant. Being awakened to this maze of horror was not exactly the promise the facility had given to it's customers. Even the prisoners had been told they could expect better than this. Rabbit didn't give two hoots about them. The 'rats' had simply been released to keep Johnny busy, and to distract him somewhat in the eventuality that Rabbit ever did escape to the physical world. A marvellous bit of foresight on his part. The 'rats' were all scurrying and hiding because every time Rabbit came down to these lower floors, he brought the hunters with him, intentionally or not. They were therefore all more happy to see him leave. Which is why he was very surprised when one of the timid bastards stepped in front of him.

"Yer not welcome, buddy." The fellow growled. "We're tired of you an' your troublesome friends from above." This was certainly a new development. Rabbit tilted his head, and regarded this dirty creature as one would an interestingly coloured beetle. "I'm just passing through, mate. I'll thank you not to hinder my progress. I have no friends above, or below, if you catch my meaning. I can't help what follows me, and you know it."

"But follow you they do. And it's we that bear the brunt of it." He made a gesture to the walls around him, though Rabbit saw no others. He had no doubt they were there, though. This fellow was entirely too confident.

"You get in my way, you'll get the brunt of it. Think I've stayed alive so long just because of luck and good looks?" growled Rabbit. This was becoming more than an annoyance. "I'm asking you nicely to move, stranger. You don't know shit about what's going on here. If you want damage control, sweep my tracks behind me, and scatter. They'll only kill a few of you."

"That's just it 'friend'. We're handing you over. That way they'll leave us alone. No more killing. Except you."

"You're wrong. You think they want some sewer dwelling rats delivering what they can't catch themselves? They'll kill you to take credit. Then they'll kill more of you just because they no longer have the reason to keep on chasing after me. With me gone, you're the only vermin left in this hell hole. Prometheus will hunt you all down. I'm what keeps the hunters off your backs."

The fellow seemed a little less sure of himself, but straightened. "Alright then...I'll take your argument to the elders, but in return for passage, I need something of value. The girl. She comes with us."

"Over my dead body." said Angela, growling. "I put up with Rabbit because I have to. I've got no reason to put up with you and yours." When things went to hell, why was it that men assumed they had the right to claim whatever they wanted? They always thought themselves higher and mightier in a crisis, just because of a little additional brawn. Angela was a sick and tired of being a floor mat. That included with Rabbit.

Rabbit hunched, wincing, holding his head. "Bloody hell, not now." He muttered. His eyes rolled back in his head, and he dropped to his knees. The spo kesman took a step back and muttered to himself, wondering what new trick was developing. He stepped forward again annoyed at having been shown to be nervous, and was about to strike when Michaels' childlike voice escaped. "Someone's coming...The door is going to open. Soon....soon." He began to rock back and forth, repeating "The door will open...soon soon."

Angela knelt beside him, and brushed his hair back, looking into his eyes, vacant though they were. "Hush, Michael...your sister is here. Won't let anything happen to you..."

"Aren't you going to get the door, Sis? They can't wait out there forever." His eyes were unfocused, however, and it was easy to tell he wasn't looking directly at her. He raised his voice a little, and included the others slipping through the corridors. "The lights tell me they're coming. Big Bad is worried. His kingdom might crumble." He blinked, and shook his head. "Oh, hi Gee-gee...you bring my paints today?

A lump came to Angela's throat. He hadn't called her that in a while. He hadn't directly addressed her more than a few times since the accident. "Not today, Mikey...not today..." She said, running a hand along his cheek. She stood and turned towards the big fellow. "Touch him, I'll kill you." She says, softly, but firmly.

"It's a bit dark down here, Gee-gee. " said Michael. "Where are we going?"

"Central. But first, you come with us. You and Mr. Split here. No harm, I promise." Interjected the outspoken guard. "I need to check with our elders before letting you out of our sights. We need to figure out what's happening here."

"What's happening? You guys are accosting us. That's what's happening." Said Angela, exasperated. She had no desire to go with these fellows, any more than Rabbit had.

"Not that. We're talking about what's happening here." He points up, over Angela's shoulder. A light is flashing amber. "Mr. Split apparently knows something we don't. He's coming with us, and that's that. You? You can come along, or stay here...I'm sure there are plenty of folk willing to entertain you in these halls." He sneered a little at the last comment, and signalled. Four dirty, malnourished men came forward, and pounced on Michael, who flailed uselessly, eyes wide and white in fear. "Gee-Gee! Gee-Gee!" he squealed in panic, not liking to be touched at the best of times. Angela started forward, only to have grubby hands grabbing at her as well.