Truce Ch. 09

"Hey, thanks for accompanying me earlier; so nice to have someone I want to be around, instead of everyone at this boring meeting. Nearly everyone's here, so if you want to take your own little tour around, there wouldn't be many to stop you."

Resisting a chuckle of confirmation that it was intentional after all, I moved out of the room we were confined in. With the exact same layout as Epsilon, it was rather easy to sneak around the hallways, catch one of the armed guards off-guard, and stick him in a closet while I took his uniform to blend in, helmet and all. Walking through the facility like I belonged there, I could lightly feel Maelstrom in her Hierguild meeting, with a lot of security and scientists staff present. From her perception, Mountain, Toxic, and Driver were present too; she stood against the wall, arms folded, looking uninterested and perturbed, putting off anyone wanting to address her. They seemed to be going over details of the shipment of Hierarchs Epsilon didn't intercept when we were ambushed.

She was right as the halls were pretty much empty, making it easy to get to the security hub, using the knocked-out guard's ID, bypassing a magazine-reading guard "watching" all the monitors. I made myself some coffee, pretending that was all I'd come in for, hand slipping by access cards meant for science offices. It was nearly infuriating how similar Epsilon and Hierguild seemed, like one group could take out the other just by knowing the layout alone. Looking for an exit around a science office didn't make complete sense, but that's where I ended up, getting to what had to be their head scientist's desk there. Bringing up his computer screen, something reached inside the memory parts of my brain, and I was using access codes I didn't know I had in me to get in. Instead of looking for exits, curiosity got the better of me, and looked for more information about Maelstrom while I was already in their system.

Most information there was passcoded, which seemed to be no deterrence with codes that weirdly came from my light espionage at Epsilon. Everything luckily opening without issue, pages and pages of data became accessible to me. In terms of information everyone was looking for regarding Megarchs, I'd hit the motherlode; dates, formulas, notes, subjects, testing sites, everything was comprehensively, conveniently there to read. My mind felt like it was on overload, trying to take commit everything I was reading to memory, especially locations listed by latitude and longitude, but it didn't stop until it parsed what seemed like the biggest finds. Before I could look around for some kind of flash drive to download, I came upon images and videos of what it took to make a Megarch, and it nearly made me sick to my stomach.

Graphic surgeries that look like horror movie scenes than medical documentation flashed before my eyes. Picture after picture, video after video, it suddenly made so much sense why Megarchs might not survive being what they were designed to be for long. More worrying than the images of Maelstrom being created and maintained were the dates showing how often she was worked on; nearly a dozen surgeries within a short span of months. I felt anger, bordering on seething for what I was seeing; I had to suppress that feeling before Maelstrom tried to reach out and see for herself why I felt the way I did, before she might make the place literally explode in anger like I might.

One photo in particular made my stomach turn, a pic of her suspended, and the skin of her back open, and showing how scarred her back already was. A forgotten memory I'd only realized was hidden from me surfaced, cognizant of why I was never cognizant when it came to her back; seeing it, feeling it, my senses purposefully glossed over when it came to her sorest spot, where they did most of the work to make her the only living, operational Megarch.

I was wondering why I was suddenly hearing Dr. Kasdien's voice in my head, as if remembering something related to her surgeries. But as I paid more attention to it, I found that it was his voice speaking to the meeting at Hierguild. Full-body shock halted me from doing anything at that moment; Epsilon's resident doctor didn't look fatigued, threatened, under stress of any kind; he was calmly giving a briefing like he would at Epsilon. The son of a bitch was playing both sides, and I was filled with a sudden urge to face down all their forces, head to their conference room and rip his off.

The click of a weapon cocked behind me shook me back to reality, and I deftly turned, grabbing the pistol before a shot could be fired. The guard, whoever he was, was quick enough to get around me and hold me from behind, trying to choke hold me to unconsciousness. Hier-half wasn't there to help put a stop to it, but I had enough strength and motivated anger to break out of it. Turning to land a solid punch to his face, he easily anticipated that, catching my arm and using my momentum and weight to launch me against the nearest wall. He quickly followed up with a strike to the throat and a few hits to the solar plexus, the combination making me double over in pain. Rage got me on my feet to grab and pin him against the wall; I punched hard enough that his helmet almost flew off, but not before he headbutted and kneed me in the balls.

Struggling to breathe on one knee, he continued to show no mercy, kicking me to the floor and putting his knee right where it made breathing totally unlikely. Fighting to get him off or force Hier-half back wasn't working; Hierguild had much better guards, whoever they were hiring, I assumed. I could only force him up a bit, only to get a good look at his face; as if I hadn't had enough shock for one day, I looked up at Radio's face, firm, stoic, and no longer struggling to make his legs work.

"Rad-io...Jav...ier..." I struggled, none of the words registering to him. He pressed his knee tighter against me, and I blacked out after, wondering why my world was spiraling down the drain.