Chapter Text
“Oh God, we’re dead, haha—oh my God, oh my Jesus Christ, we’re dead. We are dead!”
“Technically—” Sollux corrects him, leaning out from behind the pillar “—I’m dead and you’re deactivated, but, semantics.” His tongue catches his teeth on the last consonant and he sucks a breath in past the noise, caught between a laugh and a wince at his own tone-deaf joke. There isn’t much to see anyway; the Underground hasn’t been used since public transport was privatized—and upgraded—by CrockerCorp. Also, it’s just dark as hell, and the air’s heavy with growth and rot. (Ironic, that, maybe. This world doesn’t have a lot of growing or a lot of rotting.)
Karkat doesn’t find his joke any funnier. Even in the dim light of the abandoned railway station, Sollux can just barely make out the backlight of his red irises and the way his pupils contract and expand incrementally, with edges that aren’t as smooth as eyes should be. It reminds him of the lens of a camera struggling to adjust, of a shutter; the fact he looks almost human in most other ways doesn’t help much. The scowl that those eyes are attached to wishes it could be half as unnerving. “It’s a goddamn shame you already gave up your day job, Captor.”
Sollux rolls his own eyes for nobody’s benefit.
“I need to scope out that shitty coolant system of yours before you manage to cook your processor alive,” he adds absently as he glances back around the rounded edge. That’s another thing—the rattling from Karkat’s chest only kicks up another half degree when Sollux calls attention to it, and if his face could color he has a feeling that it might.
“Your shitty coolant system,” Karkat corrects, accusing tone contoured by embarrassment. The edge is nearly swallowed by the disjointed humming of the fan. “It isn’t on me that I sound like someone’s trying to mine cryptocurrency on an A/C unit.”
Sollux waves him off. “I think I saw something.”
“Saw what?”
“A light.”
“Do you mean like a dron—” It’s a testament to how scared shitless the pair of them are: when Sollux holds a finger up, they both actually go silent. Aside, of course, from the sharp complaint emanating from Karkat’s ribs.
To answer his question, though, no. It isn’t quite like a drone. Not like the one that had chased them down there, anyway. That had been standard issue: something built for tracking, small and faceless and with fingers of cyan blue light streaked down either side. They’d lost sight of it about a quarter mile back.
This is different. Sollux’s eyes are having an even harder time adjusting than Karkat’s, but he can see the way those lights flicker in half-second intervals across the ground, outlining the bottom half of a humanoid silhouette. Whoever—whatever—it is, they’re sweeping down the station systematically. Unhurried. They wind through the station pillars, and the figure flits in and out of view. The floor—opaque layers of glass stacked atop each other with patterns that look like marble with more depth—takes the light and scatters it, casting it against piles of trash (coffee cups, station maps, old flyers advertising a change in regime) and the walls.
Distantly, he can hear the figure dragging something across the floor. It sounds metallic.
Sollux swears softly.
(The scraping is a deep, steady baseline, playing off the staccato of accompanying footfall and the godawful harmonization of that fan. The rotting air doesn’t absorb an inch. Sollux’s fingers play against the straps of his own backpack nervously.)
“Alright, KK, time to haul ass.” His lips hardly move with the effort of speaking. Then he reaches backwards to try and grasp at Karkat’s shoulder—Karkat’s hand meets his instead, fingers interlocking, and he nearly rends Sollux’s shoulder from its socket as he breaks for the other side of the station.
*First: the footsteps behind them pick up.
*Second: they stop.
*Third: Sollux notes on some edge of his awareness that Karkat has gone quiet, too.
*Fourth: Karkat hasn’t slowed and Sollux is reasonably sure he isn’t being pulled along by his own shadow but he can’t hear the hum of the fan and he can’t hear his own steps and he can’t even hear his heart hammering in his ears anymore it’s almost like everything’s—
*Fifth:
*Sixth:
*Seventh: Son of a bitch, that hurt.
Something hit them and it hit them hard and it hit them loud. A wave of noise—blunt force between his shoulder blades send him scrambling forward, but he isn’t quite able to balance himself before his knees and palms hit glass ground. Swearing again, Karkat grabs him by the back of the shirt, pulling him into a subway car.
“Jesus!”
That’s Karkat, but his voice sounds several layers of drywall removed; the sound is clotting and congealing in Sollux’s ears like blood. Sollux tries to force the doors closed—fingers finding little purchase on the metal, but white-knuckle gripping the edge of one until something yields—and gets them most of the way there before he gives up, scrambling backwards. “Fuck,” he says, then repeats, emphatically: “Fuck.”
Karkat is steadying himself on the back of a seat, fingers sinking into the padded plastic. The whirring has resumed in earnest, and for all of his joking, Sollux is half-afraid he really is going to overheat.
“That’s one of CrockerCorp’s dollar store shitheels.” Karkat manages to choke out, voice clipped as if it’s physically stuck between the blades of the fan.
“Really? And here I’d thought we’d accidentally skipped out on a tab.”
Sollux can hear the footsteps outside again, somewhere under the sound of his own voice. They’re as quiet and as unhurried as before (maybe because whoever’s attached to them knows they can’t exactly get far like this)—methodical might be the word, systematic. Professional? Professional could work; CrockerCorp has always taken pride in that.
Well, CrockerCorp, as far as he’s concerned, can get a ripe taste of its own ass, and he deposits his bag on a nearby subway chair.
“What are you doing?”
“Seeing if they still want their shit back.”
“Captor—” It’s a warning. Concerned, but not prohibitive. The footsteps are just outside the train door as Sollux pulls a cord from the bag. He feeds it down the back of his shirt and it clicks magnetically into the ports down the length of his artificial spine, starting with the base of his neck and working its way down. The electric nodes on the other end fit perfectly over the pads of his fingers, and he plays one hand in the air, making sure it syncs up to his nervous system—gratifyingly, it sparks, blue and red, as it should. He rolls his shoulders and feels the energy sing beneath his skin.
A double-pronged piece of metal—it’s near shaped like a sword, maybe, but with no middle or tip—is thrust between the subway doors, and its owner tries to use the leverage to pry them back open.
Sollux can’t quite get a clear look (a red sleeve, a flash of dark plastic) but he doesn’t need one. He raises a hand, palm forward (a sharp whistle in the air, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end) and sparks dance in his vision as the metal shrieks for just a moment, doors giving way easily.
That bags a yelp, a stretch of silence, and a groan, in that exact order. Sollux pokes his head out to see the figure laid flat underneath the newly freed sliding doors. The decaying air is alive again with the heavy scent of ozone.
A single sneakered foot pokes out from underneath the metal.
“Did you kill them?” Karkat asks, nudging Sollux aside—with the strategic application of his elbow—just enough to get a look at what’s going on.
“Uh,” Sollux says.
“What?”
“Um.”
“...You’ve gone and done it, that harness has finally finished serving up your paltry grey matter like reheated finger food.”
“Hm.”
Sollux steps off the subway and approaches. Not quite into spitting distance, though—he uses the psion energy from the harness he’s plugged into to move a door. Just enough to get a good look at who they’ve bagged.
He sees a sword-sized tuning fork (or something like it—Crocker tech, certainly). He also sees a man in a red velvet suit, a full visor helmet, and light up sketchers. It is, without a doubt, the absolute dumbest outfit he’s ever seen on a fully grown man.
“Holy shit, Dave.”