Chapter Text
Sore, beaten down, and confused, the gang had made their slow descent back from the rebel camp, or, what Todd had called "Old Kidedelphia," if one were to be exact. Montrose had been quiet the entire trek back, mask unreadable and expression unyielding to any questions or quips. Beef had tried to breach the subject in a “So…we should probably talk about… all that, huh?” sort of way, which didn’t quite go over well, setting off Emerich in a verbal labyrinth of anxieties that lasted at least an hour, and making Montrose declare that he would be walking 15 feet behind the other two at all times for the rest of the hike.
“…I can’t believe I…accidentally put Carmine Denton on—“ his voice was a nervous whisper. “—eternal life support…”
Beef just shook his head.
“I’m sure he doesn’t mind. Plus, how do you even know that’s really him? Seems pretty….out there.”
“I cloned a man at my last job and now the governing class wants my head on a skewer.” His shoulders slump and his heavy leather bag slaps the back of his thighs as he walks, making a dull thudding noise as they trudge along.
“Yeesh…” Beef sucked in a sharp breath, grimacing awkwardly under his bandana. “You really gotta start working for some better employers, dude.”
“Oh, right! ‘Cause there are so many to choose from in Steeplechase!”
“Yeah! You’ve got Dentonic Citizen Satisfaction, Dentonic Layer Revenue, Dentonic Business Administration…” He trailed off. It had been so long since he could even name another corporation or brand other than Dentonic that operated legally within the layers. Emerich glances at him as they trudge back through the sandy terrain.
“Well, I work for you now, don’t I, boss?” he grinned half heartedly and elbowed the large man in the ribs weakly. Beef didn’t know why he was blushing.
“Yeah…guess so.”
It was quiet save for the wind and grains of sand in their ears, shifting about like sand in an hourglass. Or maybe it was quiet because the particle buildup was blocking their eardrums. Whichever.
“Montrose, about what he said…d’ya wanna…maybe…”
“Absolutely not. No, thank you,” he raised his voice over the elements curtly.
“But, but… with an employee number in the 200’s… you must have worked in Product Design! That’s not too far—“
“Product? That’s where Gravel used to work. Is that how—“
“That’s quite enough,” Montrose snapped, fists balled up at his sides and shoulders tensed up by his ears. Beef and Emerich almost tripped over each other trying to look back at him in surprise, stunned into silence. They walked a little further.
Thonk. Thump. Thunk. Thwock.
The satchel Emerich carried was knocking into his knobby legs with every step, the hardlight spheres inside clinking together like wine glasses. Emerich sure did look exhausted from carrying it, slouching something fierce. The noise of it grated on Montrose’s eardrums, step by step, clink by clink, and he finally snapped.
“Fuck’s sake- give me your purse, poindexter. You look like you’re going to snap in half.” Montrose frowned and held his arms out, waiting to intercept the bag. Emerich faltered.
“Oh, you…you really would? It’s awfully heavy just for being papers and trinkets…” He ducked out of the strap and handed it over graciously. He groaned comically loudly then, cracking his back as they walked. Beef made a disgusted noise.
“That really helps, thank you Montrose, really.”
They continued.
Emerich, though bursting with questions, knew better than to push his luck with this one, so he gnawed on the insides of his cheeks and bit his chapped lips to keep from blabbering. They kept pushing forward in the oppressive heat. Montrose had hung back from the other two by a substantial margin, as promised, and the engineer and fighter gave him space, allowing them to all stew and spiral in their own perturbed silences. They crossed the river, took the winding backroads of Ustaben all the way up the edge of Gutter City's Eastern Business District, then man-holed their way back into familiar tunnels with aching legs. It was only at this junction, when the manhole cover was not slid back into place as normal after the first two criminals descended the ladder, that Beef noticed something was majorly wrong. Montrose, who was supposed to be bringing up the rear, was not closing the secret entrance; nor was he climbing down the ladder to join them.
After a quick peek left and right out of the passageway like a human periscope, Beef confirmed, for certain, that their teammate had not followed them to the twisting alleys at all. He was nowhere to be seen. How could they not have noticed his departure? Sure, Gutter City is always dark and may seem impossible to navigate for folks from out of town, but their friend wasn’t dumb; he’d been around the block. All this to say…he didn’t disappear by accident.
Beef hauls the round disk of heavy steel back into place and the tunnels are shrouded in darkness. He looks at his dark-skinned companion in alarm. Wide green eyes stare back and Beef, even after their months spent together, still always expects Emerich’s eyes to be reflective in the dark like a cat’s.
“Uh, Beef?” He chuckles nervously. “Aren’t we, uh, missing…something?”
Beef frowns. His eyes start to adjust to the low light. Emerich looks a wreck; covered in sweat and rusty red sand. He knows he probably looks even worse. Beef lets out a big sigh, still gripping the metal ladder he had just descended. He leans his forehead heavily on the bars in dramatic fashion and closes his eyes briefly. He takes a moment to readjust his attitude before he absolutely blows his fucking lid from all of the batshit crazy things that have happened this morning, before righting himself and looking at his partner.
“He left. He ran away, I guess, or something—I don’t know.”
“He…ran?” The old man looks appalled. “Into the city where we are absolutely not welcomed at all?”
“Yes, that exactly.”
“Shit,” he says distractedly, biting at his bottom lip in worry. A look of sheer panic washes over him and he grips his friend’s big, burly arms tightly, out of nowhere, which almost makes Beef jump.
“Shit! And he has my bag!”
“Oh, you mean the bag of stuff that totally incriminates you?”
The thin man tugs at his hair with his hands, eyes wild, pacing in a little circle and humming.
“Shit shit shit shit shit…” He closes his eyes aggressively and groans. “Ohhh no. I know what he’s going to do. We have to go now.”
He tries to spin the large man around so that he’s facing the ladder. He makes a little gesture, instructing him to turn around and start climbing.
“Back up! Back up! Go, go, go! We have a train to catch!”
They stumble across uneven pavement in the dark, tripping over themselves all the way to the terminal. With some trepidation, the scientist retraces the steps, backwards, that he had taken with Montrose all that time ago to get back to the tunnel where they had completely disregarded the safety of their lives by jumping into a train's undercarriage cradle.
Beef Punchely: The Mountain of Meat, The Slammin’ Slab, and America’s Ham, is one unhappy camper, there in the sled. In a harsh whispered yell, he rasps:
“What the fuck ! What the… fffuck ! Why… Why the fuck did we just do that? Are you out of your goddamn gourd, old man??”
“Ok, ok, ok! Yes , I get it, I’m a nutcase! But to be fair, I learned this one from Montrose.”
Beef looks even more scandalized.
“Okay? And this whole day has been a lesson on reasons why we probably shouldn’t keep trusting Montrose!”
Emerich frowns.
“Ah- Just keep it down, okay? We have a couple of miles to go.”
The Mountain of Meat looks Murderous. Emerich tries to relax as much as he can, trying to find any comfort in the churning and scraping of the bi-rail on its way through the layers.
On the other side of the tracks, a desperate scene unfolds. Montrose Pretty frantically scans the blueprints he had nabbed from his colleague’s pouch in the desert. They’re almost like jibberish to him, but the diagrams help. He holds Pa’s powered-down body close, inspecting a hatch between where shoulder blades would’ve sat, had he been a man of bones. The hybrid dire-dog wags its heavy, half-fur-covered tail and releases a bright iridescent, glasslike orb from its maw into its caretaker’s hand.
“Good boy, Girth,” the man mutters, fixated on his work. The dog plods away with that mechanical limp of his. The panel in Pa’s back was filled with wires and all sorts of things he didn’t understand, yet, he knows that if he can’t get these things running on newer software, they’ll just continue to decline in function until they’re nothing but heaps of lifeless metal. If he can just get them to walk freely, that would be enough. For now.
He consults the hardlight core, the diagram, then the wires, and grits his teeth. He’ll figure it out. He has to.
Here goes nothing.
He follows the instructions as best as he knows how, disconnecting this color from that, carefully stripping and twisting wires, and finally, shoving the ball into the newly made slot. He gasps as it unravels, stretching out inside the cavity and encasing the wiring in a hard shell. It pulses with light like a heartbeat. He puts the lid back in and pats it. The mechanical man’s legs twitch.
“M-Montrose, son, is that you?”
The 6-foot animatronic clunkily shuffles to his hands and knees, stopping periodically to gaze at his own body, which has not worked in this capacity in so long, if ever.
“Hah! I am m-moving on my own with no program! Son, I am so proud of you!”
Montrose looks up at the fatherly contraption, eyes stinging. He gulps.
“Yeah, Pop, I’m finally getting you all fixed up.” He pulls another core from the satchel- the only other one Emerich brought on their trip.
“I only have one more, uh…” he bites his cheek. “-cure. For now.” He approaches Timmy and Stephanie, who are slouched over the dinner table, deactivated. Mama is propped up on her post in the corner, just as he left her. The thief mutters an apology before rucking up the back of the robo-girl’s blouse, accessing her switchboard, and re-addressing the blueprints again. The metal man hovers behind him, as if he is watching worriedly.
“Is everything alright, champ?”
“Yeah. It’s just…we all have to leave here okay? And go somewhere safer. Does that make sense?”
He feels a small shock and curses, shaking out his hand. Yellow wire was NOT supposed to go to red wire, apparently.
“I understand, son. Thank…you for taking care of us.”
A familiar noise from across the room jolts him out of his work. The TV, the device that he watched so closely for so long, has flipped on, as it does during emergencies. His heart hammers in his chest and he fumbles to keep working while trying to crane his head to catch a glimpse of the screen.
“The following is an announcement from the Department of Citizen Education,” the benign, prerecorded voice rattles.
Then, the voice of the one-of-a-kind Krystal with a K. She beams at the camera.
“Good evening, Steeplewatch! Breaking News: Dentonic Defector Emerich Dreadway has been pinged at a location in Southeastern Ephemera, near the river. Citizen Satisfaction Servers picked up a signal from his previously-patented technology, (All rights now reserved by the Dentonic Corporation) registered to R&D lab #50, being used without authorization. If you see this man, please inform your nearest Citizen Satisfaction Team member or send a tip through the completely anonymous Dentonic helpline.”
Montrose nearly chokes.
“Fuck. Beans. Ohhhhhh, major fucking beans…”
He shoves the last few pieces where they need to be within Stephanie’s back and hastily inserts the orb, slamming the hatch shut again and wrenching the girl out of her chair. She comes to life in her human brother’s arms, blinking slow and standing up straight, looking confused.
“Bubby?”
Pa smiles in that uncanny way of his and approaches the two with open arms.
“Isn’t this m-magical?” He exclaims. “Never know when to stop—“
Montrose puts his arms out in front of himself, feeling trapped, feeling like a ticking time bomb is about to go off and he’s powerless to stop it. He stops the robotic family man by putting a hand on his shoulder, then turns to the little girl machine, looking stern.
“Listen. Are you listening?” Two nods.
“Yes!”
“I am listening.”
He’s sweating profusely under the mask. He wipes some away and readjusts.
“There isn’t much time. Pa, I need you to take Timmy, and Steph, I need you to get the dog. I need you to hide in the compactor outside. Can you do that?” He glances back at the TV. “Some bad people are going to come here very soon, and if you don’t hide, they will take you. And me. Got it?”
Stephanie whispers.
“You know I’m afraid of the compactor…”
He looks at her empathetically, more so than he does with most humans in dire times, and places a hand atop her head.
“I know. But it won’t hurt you. I’ll let you know when you can come out. It’s like hide and seek, okay? Now, go, both of you. And be quiet.”
Pa nods and scoops up his rusting son, creaking with each step- it’s clear his body is not used to having the capability of walking, let alone lifting, traversing, or maneuvering. In an awkward fireman’s carry, he walks toward the door and disappears outside. The tin girl in the blue dress gathers the scrappy dog, shepherding him outside.
Montrose is slipping the bag back over his head, stuffing the papers he used back into its pockets, and heading toward Mama, as the door bursts open again. Montrose dives behind the kitchen table into the shadows.
Huffing and wheezing, one very large ginger man and one very twiglike black man stumble through the door.
“Hello? Montrose?”
Relieved, but appalled, Montrose springs back up, catching them off guard. Emerich yelps and puts his hands up, and Beef takes on a threatening stance, puffing out his chest. When he realizes it’s his pal, his stance buckles, and he rushes over.
“What were you thinking? Are you insane?” He hisses.
Emerich smiles nervously. “We ran into your, uh, relatives…on the way in. They seemed in quite the hurry.” He looks a tad bit hurt. “Your father barely had time to speak to me…”
Montrose grimaces and grabs Mama.
“Like father, like son,” he retorts, but when the motherly contraption is far too heavy for him, he lurches forward with it toward the ground. Beef catches her, looking put off when he realizes that half of a robot woman on a stick is in his arms. He looks down at his business partner as if he’s grown two heads.
“Okay…this is even weirder than I thought. Emerich? Can I uh, speak to you, over here?” He backs away from Montrose and Co., Mama still in hand.
Montrose lets out a groan of frustration and tries to wrestle the metal woman out of his colleague's hands, weakly.
“We don’t have time, I swear I’ll explain once we’re out of here, okay? But we’ve-“
“We’ve gotta go!” Emerich finishes. “They’ve got my number, fellas, I’m on the airwaves! We have to go, now!” He has one foot out the door.
Beef lets go of Mama and she clangs to the floor. Montrose cries out in protest, crouching to pick her up. Beef retreats out of the building, beckoning him.
“We only have minutes before cars arrive, Montrose, now!”
He hesitates, looking at the mechanical woman on the floor, then at the door. He tightens his mask and secures Emerich’s bag around his chest, then bolts for the door as well. The three men run, weaving through the Junkyard. Outside in the dry heat, they can hear the towers, spewing breaking news across the layer. There is a siren, not so far away in the distance. The defectors frantically search for a place to hide. Montrose doesn’t see any sign of his family- meaning they made it safely to the compactor. He breathes a minuscule sigh of relief. That’s at least something. He looks around for anything else that might house them, but everywhere he looks is just pointy, inhospitable metal scraps.
“There!” Emerich points. He’s guiding them toward a commercial-grade dumpster, knocked upside down. One side is curved up more than the other, meaning there is a gap at the bottom, just a few inches.
“Beef, can you lift it?” The sirens are getting louder. Beef’s expression is incredulous.
“Can I lift it? Does the Stealswell diamond shine?”
Emerich reaches the dumpster, looking it over, then peering into the distance.
“Ok smartass, I don’t know! Can you pick it up and let us underneath so that it’s upside down overtop of us?”
Beef sizes it up, squinting.
“I guess there’s only one way to find out. Been real nice knowing you, boys.”
He inspects the metal container for good handholds and gives it a test tug. It wobbles a little bit. He takes a deep breath, and squats deep down, lifting from the knees like a smart man who values his back. He lifts the metal container a few feet, then a few feet more.
“Get under there, and duck real low.” He instructs.
“Don’t want this coming down on your head.”
Beef, with some effort, maneuvers the garbage receptacle so that he’s holding it in a new place, slowly lowering it over their heads with a strained grunt. He crouches, then holds his breath. He hunkers down quickly and lets go, letting the metal fall down over them with a thud. It’s hot and muffled in the garbage can, and all three men breathe heavily, just glad not to have been smushed by a ton of corrugated metal just then.
The yard is flooded by CST members within minutes. They sit, huddled in the hot dumpster, sweating bullets for at least 25 excruciating minutes, straining to hear the orders the team lead gives out through all the muted chaos. It takes a long time before someone comes close enough to hear somewhat clearly.
“The dumpster, sir?”
The three fugitives look at each other with wide eyes, barely breathing. A flashlight clicks on, shining under the open sliver where the metal arches off the ground. Nobody dares move as the dusty white beam scans the inside of the box. It disappears.
Gloved fingers curl under the gap and pull, but the dumpster stays put.
“Let’s move on. No way he coulda gotten under there.”
“It’s the last place we haven’t checked, sir. He’s not here. If he is, he’s damn good at hiding.”
“Well, then our work here is done. Torch the place. We’ll search for remains in the morning. Let’s get this wrapped up so we can go home- Can’t miss another episode of Passion’s Cove.”
“You’re lucky, my kids only watch Shroog.”
The banter fades as the office-drone-turned-soldiers walk away. Montrose and Emerich look at each other in equal alarm. Beef holds up a hand.
“No, we have to stay in here until the coast is clear.”
“And be cooked alive like a TV dinner?! Man cuisine?!” Montrose hisses. Emerich looks queasy.
“They’ll get the job done quick, they just want to go home. The fire won’t spread through the scrapyard, it’ll stay contained to the building.”
“You’re insane.”
“God, I hope you’re right…”
The engineer bites at his already raw, nubby fingernails. He then shuffles awkwardly around the other two in the cramped space and puts his face down by the crack that had been supplying them sweet, sweet air during their hellish hideout. No boots on the ground. He strains to see farther, but there’s only so much leeway granted by a mail slot width’s opening. They’re confident that CST is gone by the time they can feel the blaze, the hot tin can becoming even hotter.
Beef half stands in the angled space, bracing the weight on his shoulders and pushing up until the dumpster topples over, flash-banging them with sudden natural light briefly. The patrol cars had already peeled off, leaving just the burning building in their wake. Montrose takes off immediately toward the engulfed structure. Or at least he tries to, getting caught by the back of his shirt by Beef and gasping as he’s wrestled back.
“Beef, let me go! Mama’s in there!” His hardlight eyes shine with a wild, deeply pained expression that Beef had never seen Montrose wear before. It’s devastating and he wants to look away, but holds tight to his partner, pulling him to his sweaty chest as he struggles, trying to escape toward the calamity.
“Beef, please-“
Emerich approaches now, placing a hand on the shorter man’s arm in a way he hopes is grounding.
“Montrose. They used chemical accelerant. You’ll die if you try to go in there.”
“But what if she’s fireproof? Old Dentonic stuff is built differently, right, Emerich? Sturdier? Right?”
“Montrose…”
“Right? She could still be fine. We can wait until it all falls down and dig her out-“
“Montrose.”
Beef spins him around by the shoulders so that they’re facing each other, eye to eye. He’s stopped fighting, and instead, trembles. Emerich whispers something to the strongman that makes him double back, looking at the man incredulously.
“The pole…woman…?”
More frantic hushed whispering.
“Fucking hell…”
Beef focuses back on the masked man, shaking his head.
“We have to focus on the others, okay? Can you do that?” He receives a slight nod.
“The compactor,” Montrose chokes out, breaking free of his friend's hold and pointing left, over yonder.
Beef did not have unburying a family of robots from a garbage compactor on his bingo card for today. But if that, almost slow roasting alive, jumping into train tracks, finding out the rebellion is a gaggle of children, and meeting the ghost of Steeplechase’s founding father were all lined up in a row, he’d have a bingo!
The boys first unbury a little girlbot, who climbs uncannily out of the bailer, still unsure of how to use her newfound power of free movement. Pa helps her out, and aids in unburying himself from the scrap they loaded on top of their metal bodies as cover, handing out Timmy’s lifeless form before crawling out himself and shutting the hatch behind him.
The staff of Poppy’s place find themselves face to face with 3 bedraggled animatronics, one asleep, and the two others watching the fire silently.
Beef puts his head in his hands momentarily, sighing.
“We can’t stay here long, they’ll be back in the morning, and it’s already nightfall.” He’s right, of course, they've been at it all day. The sky is black, illuminated by orange and yellow light and choked by blackish-grey smoke.
“But first someone needs to explain to me, uh, what the fuck is going on.”
The little girl looks at Beef, aghast, synthetic skin stretched in manufactured surprise. He grimaces, backing away a step from her.
Pa covers her ears, then looks expectantly at the humans.
“Yes, M-montrose, what is happening? Why is our beautiful family home on fire?”
Montrose watches the fire, still not turning around fully to face everyone. Beef growls in frustration.
“Was this your plan? To steal from us so you could come back here, fix up your little family, and live happily ever after? Cause that’s sure how it’s feeling.”
Montrose’s head snaps to his large colleague in rage.
“No! How insensitive! I-“
He breaks down, sighing, and putting his head in his hands. He crouched down, wrapping his arms around his legs.
“Yeah. That was the plan. For a long time. Until we went to the desert this morning,” he mutters.
Nobody, human or robot, speaks, so he continues.
“I was going to use Emerich’s research to fix my family and…fuck off.” He scratched at his head awkwardly. “But after we met Carmine…and the things he said about needing a new body…”
Emerich inches forward, eyes wide.
“You don’t mean…”
“Oh my God…?”
Montrose clears his throat, standing up again and brushing himself off, looking embarrassed. He addresses the harrowingly tall animatronic man.
“Pop?”
“Hello, son! Where is my wife?”
The shorter man gulps, blinking hard. He takes Pa by the shoulder, turning him away from the flames and forcing a tense grin.
“Nevermind that. How would you like to become the vessel for a vengeful spirit and the face of rebellion?”
Pa cracks a rubbery smile.
“Oh! A job offer?” He sticks his hand out for Montrose to shake.
“I wholeheartedly accept!”