Chapter Text
“Immy…” Medic spoke warily beside the immortal Expendable, who still hadn’t moved from their place against the hot glass of the observation window. “Can you please stop burning yourself? It's starting to smell really bad—“
”SHHHhhhhh….!” Immy held up a finger for silence, not removing the side of their face from where it was pressed up against the window. “LEt mE COOK…”
The smell of blistering flesh had gradually started to permeate the room; coppery and laced with smoke.
Sebastian kept finding himself habitually flicking his tongue in and out to scent the air, and he felt the rising urge to snap at Immy to get away from the damn window— but he kept his mouth shut and stubbornly willed himself to ignore the immortal Expendable.
Whatever Immy was doing, it was keeping them preoccupied and preventing them from causing chaotic havoc.
Sebastian was crouched by one of the consoles, body coiled around himself to minimize the chances of the humans tripping over him as they paced about the room.
Painter had just cycled through the airlock doors leading into the Mantle Extraction proper and Sebastian watched through the observation window as the little AI scuttled across the ramp hanging over the lava lake.
Sebastian and Painter had agreed that they would keep chatter on the walkie-talkies to a minimum, since the devices had a limited battery life and Sebastian didn’t want to risk distracting his friend by continuously checking in on him every five seconds— despite the extreme urge to do so.
He would just need to trust Painter.
When Painter entered the Mantle Extraction, the increase in temperature was immediate and the AI’s pitiful internal fans instantly started running at full blast just to keep his CPU from crashing.
The place he entered was laden with pipes and metal catwalks. Everything was colored dark red and black with very few furnishings. It looked more akin to an industrial landscape rather than the cold concrete of the soulless office spaces littered about the rest of Hadal Blacksite.
There was also a yellowish brown haze overlaying the area, making it difficult to see clearly.
Cautiously, Painter kept moving deeper into the sector, trying to look for anything that would indicate where the Mantle Extraction’s main pump facility was. Sebastian had suggested that would be the most likely place to find out what was in need of maintenance.
BANG!
Suddenly a pipe several feet away from Painter burst and hot boiling lava spilled forth, covering the floor in front of the AI.
”YIKES!” Painter scrambled backwards as smoldering droplets pattered about him.
He ducked around a corner and hastily climbed up a storage rack, angling their monitor about to study the many pipes running along the ceiling and walls all around him.
Nervously, Painter reached a claw up and pressed it to the walkie-talkie clipped to the side of the emergency crate. “Ummm, heyyyy, Sebastian? One of the p-pipes in here just exploded and nearly doused me in lava…”
They let go of the button and the walkie-talkie crackled as Sebastian’s voice came through.
”Shit, kid, are you alright?”
“I-I’m fine! Just… uh… thought I’d let you know that it’s a thing that happened.”
“Okay, well try to avoid going anywhere near the pipes from now on, yeah?”
Painter glanced around again at the myriad of pipelines that seemed to be crawling along every wall and ceiling around them. How the heck were they supposed to avoid the pipes!?
Then their webcam focused on a grate that was near the ceiling and a sketch of a lightbulb appeared on his screen.
Painter climbed over to the grate, being mindful of the pipes surrounding it as he reached over and pried it open. Once the grate was removed, Painter hurried inside the vent and began making his way towards where the maintenance hub supposedly was.
After a bit doubling back and forth through the ventilation shafts, and a few scares where pipes outside suddenly ruptured, Painter eventually managed to make it to roughly where he wanted to be based on Sebastian’s instructions.
Just when he was searching for an optimal place to exit from the ventilation systems, he accidentally stumbled upon a loose grate that had been situated directly underneath him.
Painter nearly fell through it but managed to catch themselves on the sides of the vent with their multitude of limbs. The AI dangled from the vent grate for a couple of seconds, then realized that they were in what appeared to be a small room separated from the main thoroughfare.
There were several bulky machines stacked around the room and a few consoles near large screens. Most of the screens were broken, looking as though somebody had come in with a baseball bat and purposefully smashed them or something.
There was only one screen that appeared to still be functional, and Painter figured that it would be the best place to look for any clues on where the critical fault in the Mantle Extraction’s ventilating systems was.
Gingerly, the computer lowered themselves from the vent and stepped down onto a nearby table near the wall— then stumbled when he accidentally stepped on an unstable pile of hard drives and floppy disks. The cloudy smog permeating the area made it so difficult to see that Painter hadn’t realized that the table they had stepped onto was occupied by loose stuff.
There was a loud clatter as Painter struggled to regain his balance, sending most of the things on the table to go crashing to the floor. Their metallic claws scrambled about to find purchase, then there was a loud beep.
Painter froze, angling his monitor down and noticing a glowing red light shining beneath one of their claws.
“Uh oh.” Painter mumbled, fearing that they had stepped on a very bad big red button that would bring about untold destruction down on them— only to nearly jump out of their casing when a voice suddenly sounded from the button.
“Thank you for using our ‘Limited-Time Imaginary Friend’ remote! We hope you enjoy the next two days with your very own real, not-so imaginary friend, friend!”
”Wait— WHAT?!” Painter stumbled back in horror, realizing that the glowing red button was actually attached to a small remote. “Why is there one of these in here?!”
”Hello?”
”AH!!!” Painter nearly fell off the table when something bright red materialized within view of his webcam.
There was a melodic giggle as the red thing floated closer, hollow eye sockets peering down at the multi-legged computer with curiosity.
“Hey, I know you…” Imaginary-Friend said with faint surprise. “You’re that talking computer with the silly faces!”
Painter stared at her, screen flickering between shock and offense. He hadn’t thought it was possible for him to use the Imaginary-Friend remote due to being a machine intelligence, but evidently that assumption was false.
“Y-you think my faces are silly???” Painter thought his doodled expressions were charming!
Imaginary-Friend giggled again. “Yes, they’re just so squiggly looking…” Then she seemed to register Painter’s offended ‘silly’ face. “Uh, did you draw them yourself…?”
”YES!” Painter’s audio nearly peaked with the force of his shout “Every single one! And I don’t appreciate this slander!”
“Oh, uh, I-I’m sorry?” Imaginary-Friend hadn’t realized the AI would be so sensitive about it. “I didn’t mean— I just meant that they’re—“
”Whatever!” Painter fumed as he hopped down from the table and began making his way towards the lit up console. “I don’t need this! I’m on an important mission, so you can just buzz off!”
“I can’t, unfortunately.” Imaginary-Friend stated, watching as the computer climbed up to the console. “You’re stuck with me for the next two days.”
“Ugh…” Painter groaned with frustration, tapping his metallic claws along the various buttons before him in an effort to get it to reveal its secrets. “Fine. Just stay out of my way!”
Imaginery-Friend crossed her fin-like arms, starting to feel a little miffed by the AI’s attitude. “I don’t see how I could possibly get in your way. It’s not like I can physically interact with this world…”
”Yeah, w-well, just don’t impose yourself over my webcam, it's already hard to see in this place!”
”Very well.” Imaginary-Friend replied primly and spoke no more.
Painter wasn’t exactly sure why he was being so short with the Imaginary-Friend. In the past, back when Painter was still in Heavy Containment, he had admittedly been curious about the Imaginary-Friend remote ever since he overheard some of the Technicians talking about it. Painter had even harbored some hopes of one day maybe talking the guards into letting him have one— just to break up the monotony of the AI’s existence.
Then after meeting Sebastian during the lockdown, Painter had once asked if the fishman would be willing to bring them an Imaginary-Friend remote, only for Sebastian to chuckle and ask how Painter expected to use the remote while lacking any appendages to press the button.
Disappointed, Painter’s interest in the remote had eventually waned— that was until Sebastian confessed to them that he was able to see the red phantom any time an Expendable who had pressed the button came his way.
This ended up causing a spark of jealousy to arise within Painter ever since. Whether it was jealousy at not being able to use the remote, or jealousy over the fact that Imaginary-Friend could have conversations with Sebastian without Painter being able to hear what the ghost was saying— Painter hadn’t wanted to dwell on the negative feelings long enough to figure it out.
It was also possible that the stress of being alone in the Mantle Extraction was getting to the AI.
“Where… where is Zerum? Is she… alright?” Imaginary-Friend quietly spoke up, jarring Painter out of his thoughts.
“She’s fine.” Painter reluctantly informed, remembering that Zerum had had Imaginary-Friend as a companion before she had been reunited with Sebastian. “She’s back with Sebastian and the other humans.”
“Then what are you doing here all alone?”
“Huh? Oh.” Painter tapped a few more buttons, having only just figured out how to manually open the system’s search function, (how the heck did humans do this??? It was so slow!!!). “I’m trying to find out where this place’s maintenance hub is so I can figure out what’s wrong with the ventilation systems. That’s why there’s all this yellow smog everywhere! It’s too toxic for anyone else to come through.”
The AI gestured to their surroundings at the yellow brown gas in the air.
“Oh.” Imaginary-Friend looked around, seeming as though she had only just noticed their surroundings. “A maintenance hub?”
”Yeah.” Painter tapped again on the console, but something seemed to be bugging out and the screen kept displaying pixelated static every time he tried to type something.
“Like the one over there?”
”Huh?” Painter swiveled themselves about to spy Imaginary-Friend pointing to the far wall where a door lay open. Above it was a panel lit up with the bright green words: MAINTENANCE HUB.
”What the…” Painter stared in bewilderment at the door. “How long was that there?!”
Imaginary-Friend simply shrugged, letting out a giggle as Painter scrambled towards the doorway and peered inside.
The room looked very much like the previous one, only with more windows overlooking the various catwalks below as well as two massive pipes.
A main terminal lay in the center of the room, and Painter began to quickly skitter towards it— only to immediately stop and utter a startled gasp when he spotted a figure amidst the smog.
It was slumped against the side of the terminal, features obscured by the yellow smog clouding the air.
After several seconds of no movement, Painter cautiously approached. Step by step, until he was close enough that his shitty web camera was able to make out what exactly it was.
It was a body. A human body, clad in the standard uniform worn by the employees of Hadal Blacksite.
Painter was so surprised by the sight that for a moment he just stared. Most of the casualties caused by the lockdown had been swiftly devoured by the resident monsters roaming loose, and the corpses of Expendables were quickly picked clean within days of dropping.
This body looked entirely intact. In fact, if it weren’t for the gaping hole in the side of their head and the blotchy mottled look of their rotting skin, Painter would have thought they were just resting.
“Poor thing…” Imaginary-Friend floated into view, hovering over the corpse with her head cocked to one side.
Painter shuddered, quickly turning his attention to the terminal and climbing atop it. The screens along it were off, but when Painter pressed a button, one of the screens flickered to life and words scrawled across it.
====
SCAN COMPANY ID
====
A little box underneath the screen lit up, revealing the blinking outline of where a keycard was meant to be inserted.
”Shit!” Painter cursed, wishing once again that he could have taken the SCRAMBLER with him. Everything would be so much easier if he could just hack through the systems and get at whatever he wanted within a millisecond. But unfortunately, the bulky device had been too big for Painter to carry and there didn’t seem to be any place on the terminal where he could jack-in directly.
“What’s wrong?” Imaginary-Friend inquired softly, looking up from where she was still hovering over the body.
”I need a company ID to get this stupid terminal to work!” Painter fumed, turning in place and glancing about the room for any place that a keycard could be hiding.
”Maybe this person has it?” Imaginary-Friend suggested, pointing at the slumped over corpse of the employee.
“Oh,” Painter paused, looking over at the body with a thoughtful frown before climbing off of the terminal and moving to stand before the corpse. “Well, I guess this is as good a place as any to start looking…”
Painter stood there, hesitating as he stared at the corpse for a long moment.
Imaginary-Friend noted the AI’s reluctance and tilted her head to the side. “What’s wrong?”
“N-nothing…” Painter lied, continuing to stare stupidly at the corpse before him.
He wasn’t exactly sure why he was hesitating. It wasn’t as if the AI hadn’t seen his fair share of human corpses. Hell! Painter had killed plenty of people back when he was still connected to the security mainframe and had control of the defense turrets.
Painter knew for a fact that he had killed a total of 564 Expendables. Over half of those kills were via direct turret fire; the other half being from a combination of Painter locking Expendables into rooms within sight of an enraged Eyefestation, and tricking Expendables into opening doors which only led to the Good People.
Painter had always managed to detach himself to a limited degree whenever he hacked the systems in order to kill the humans, whether directly or indirectly. And while he did feel bad about those deaths, Painter had never once been actually face to face with his victims when he killed them. Not really.
It just felt… different, being here, standing before a dead body. The idea of going up to a nasty, decaying dead pile of flesh and bones and blood and touching it… it was just so unnerving!
Imaginary-Friend watched Painter silently, and the AI couldn’t help but feel oddly judged by her empty sockets, despite her expression remaining an open mouthed look of a cartoon ghost frozen in the midst of shouting ‘boo’.
”You are riddled with shame and guilt.” Imaginary-Friend suddenly intoned with almost melodramatic direness.
“Huh?!” Painter stepped back and leveled an incredulous expression at the red phantom. “N-no!”
Imaginary-Friend tilted her head to one side. “Do you... not feel guilt? Or shame?”
”NO! I mean— I do! I just—“
”Well, you shouldn’t,” Imaginary-Friend continued on, voice matter-of-fact and slightly chiding. “It’s not like you killed this person, after all. So… there really is no reason to feel bad about looting their body.”
”I know that!” Painter snapped, feeling annoyed.
”Then… what’s the problem?” Imaginary-Friend inquired. Her voice wasn’t accusatory. Just curious. Which strangely made Painter feel even more defensive.
“I don’t know!” Painter waved a mechanical limb in the air, as if trying to dissipate the uncomfortable feelings that he was struggling to process. “I’m just— Look, it’s just that dead bodies are gross, okay? What’s with all the questions anyway, huh?! What are you? A psycho-analyzer?! Did the stupid toy factory that made you endow your matrix with a psychology degree?”
Imaginary-Friend weathered the irate AI’s onslaught, only seeming mildly perturbed by it. But the comment about her manufacturers seemed to have struck a nerve.
“Hey!” She spoke in an affronted hiss. “My creators made me with everything needed to be the perfect Anti-Loneliness Tool!”
Painter scoffed. “Then they must’ve had a really warped sense of what humans consider companionable! Because I sure wouldn’t want some creepy red ghost constantly floating around judging me!”
“Well, you’re not a human, are you.” Imaginary-Friend pointed out. “You’re just a little computer filled with regret and sorrow.”
Painter’s expression flipped to an irritated scowl. “Whatever! You’re still creepy!”
Using his anger as a shield to get over his earlier squeamishness, he resolutely crawled forward and started tugging at the pockets on the body’s uniform. They were wasting time! After all, Sebastian wouldn’t have had these sort of hang-ups over looting a body! So why should Painter?
Their metallic claws poked and prodded around, discarding useless knickknacks here and there. A couple of paperclips, loose change, pocket lint… a pen.
Painter briefly held the pen, considering it.
It was your standard ballpoint blue pen that you’d get at the dollar store.
Nothing special.
But… Painter realized that he had never actually drawn anything traditionally before! And before gaining his robotic limbs, he had never considered it a possibility.
“Are you going to keep that?” Imaginary-Friend asked, startling Painter.
”Huh? No! I mean—“ Painter quickly flicked the pen away, trying to mask his embarrassment. “It’s just a crappy pen. Totally worthless!”
Imaginary-Friend watched as the pen rolled across the floor, becoming obscured by the yellow smog, before glancing back at the computer. She said nothing in response, which only made Painter feel more flustered.
One of Painter’s metallic claws closed around something square and he pulled it out, expecting to find the keycard that he had been looking for.
His expression became one of confusion when he instead pulled out what looked like another Imaginary-Friend remote. But this one was blue.
Imaginary-Friend let out a horrified gasp as Painter held the blue remote.
Painter looked quizzically up at the red specter, wondering why she found the blue toy remote so upsetting. “What?”
”N-nothing!” Imaginary-Friend glanced around nervously, frantically waving her arms. “Just throw that thing away! Now!”
Painter stared for a beat longer before his expression turned into a cheeky grin. “Oooh, there’s something special about this remote, isn’t there? Is this the Anti-Imaginary friend button? Will pressing this make you go away?”
”No…” Imaginary-Friend glowered as best she could with her eyeless sockets. “It’s not. It’s just not supposed to exist!”
Painter had his doodled expression raise a brow. “Uh-huh… Cool. I’m gonna press it.”
“DON'T!”
But it was too late. With mischievous glee, Painter pressed the mysterious blue button.
The Imaginary-Friend Toy remote message played, but instead of the usual feminine voice, it was a guy’s voice.
“Thanks for using our ‘Limited-Time Imaginary Friend’ remote!” The voice had a low sort of dude-bro kind of cadence to it, like the person was half-asleep. “Hope you enjoy the next two days with your very own real, not-so imaginary, friend!”
Painter started to get a sinking feeling as the message finished, and the stirrings of apprehension started to form when Imaginary-Friend didn’t disappear like the AI had been expecting, but instead an entirely new entity began to materialize right next to her— sporting a royal blue color and a grinning smile with dark eyes that had white hollowed out pupils.
”Yo.” The dude-bro drawl of this blue imaginary friend coincided with the red imaginary friend’s hiss of revulsion.
“Disgusting!” She spat as she floated purposefully off to the side in order to put distance between herself and her blue counterpart.
“What?” The blue one swiveled his head around, sounding confused. “No, I’m not.”
”Uhhh…” Painter stared at the blue imaginary friend, feeling utterly perplexed. “Who the heck are you?”
”I’m your imaginary friend.” The blue one replied with a self-satisfied tone.
”No you’re not!” The red Imaginary-Friend protested loudly. “I’m the real imaginary friend. You shouldn’t even exist!”
”Hey, that’s not very nice...” The blue one sounded hurt, despite his smile never wavering. “Why’re you being so rude? Can’t we both be the Imaginary-Friend?”
”I refuse to share my title with you.” The red Imaginary-Friend hissed. “You are a disgrace to our manufacturers.”
”You’re boring, you know that?” The blue one snipped back, finally seeming to get fed up with the constant put down. “I don’t like your attitude—“
”HEY!” Painter waved two limbs about to get the two entities to pay attention to him. “Okay, here’s how we’re gonna do this going forward for the next forty-eight hours. I’m gonna call you: Red. And you: Blue.” The AI pointed to the corresponding Imaginary-Friend as he distributed their nicknames.
“Wait…” Blue glanced at Red. “So, am I Red? Sorry, wasn’t paying attention…”
”Idiot.” Red muttered.
“Rude.” Blue intoned.
Painter left the two to their arguing as he swiftly searched the rest of the dead body, and after going through the agonizing process of peeling back the front of the uniform, Painter managed to find an ID card tucked away in the inner pocket.
”Finally!” Painter quickly extricated his prize and scuttled away from the corpse as swiftly as possible.
He practically jammed the keycard into the scanner, and after a moment of tense trepidation the screen on the terminal flashed a signal of acceptance.
Painter did a happy dance as the screens lit up and began displaying all manner of diagrams.
Reaching up to the walkie-talkie, Painter contacted Sebastian. “Hey! I found the main maintenance terminal thingy and booted it up. What do I do now?”
“Good work, Paints.” Sebastian’s voice crackled back, sounding relieved. “Alright, do you see a screen that has the letters L.E.V.?”
Painter glanced around, ignoring Red when she seemed to perk up at the sound of Sebastian’s voice and abandoned her quiet argument with Blue in order to float closer to Painter.
Blue just seemed confused, not recognizing the voice, but seemed to simply be glad that he no longer had Red seething at him for the moment.
Painter eventually found the display which Sebastian was talking about, the bold red letters were printed out above a diagram of what looked like a complicated series of tubes that appeared to be a separate system from the basic ventilation. There were various points on the diagram that flashed with red warning lights, which made Painter’s metaphorical heart sink.
“Uh… y-yeah I see it. It looks like a lot of it has been damaged, though…”
“How exactly? Is it just the pipes that are damaged? What about the gigafan?”
”The gigafan…?” Painter squinted at the screen. It was a lot harder for the AI to interpret what he was looking at when reduced to only viewing the physical display surface instead of being directly jacked into the system.
“Is this it?” Red suddenly spoke up, pointing her fin at the part of the screen where a red dot blinked amidst the network of intersecting lines.
”Duh, of course it is.” Blue said confidently, floating alongside (and earning a displeased hiss from Red) as he peered at the screen, then abruptly seemed to second-guess himself. “Or, uh, I mean…This red light is bigger than all the rest, so…”
Before Painter could respond, the walkie-talkie crackled again.
”Is someone else there with you, Paints?” Sebastian’s voice sounded casual, but it had the barest hint of alarm to it.
“Uh, yeah, kind of.” Painter grimaced at the thought of having to explain to Sebastian how the AI had managed to get himself not one, but two Imaginary-Friends. “Sooo…. it turns out that the Imaginary-Friend Toy remote doesn’t just work on biologicals. That was a poor assumption on my part.”
”Oh. That’s interesting.” Sebastian paused, seeming to take in this surprising development. “Well, at least now you’re not on your own in there. I could’ve sworn I heard two voices, though.”
”Uh, yeah, so it turns out there’s a blue one. A blue Imaginery-Friend.” Painter explained.
“Hellooo!” Blue decided that was his cue to greet the voice on the walkie-talkie, much to Painter’s chagrin as the blue figment floated uncomfortably close.
“He’s defective!” Red butted in, floating in on Painter’s other side in order to shout at the walkie-talkie. “Don’t listen to anything he says! Oh, also, hello Sebastian. Is Zerum with you? How is she doing?”
”Yes…” Sebastian seemed somewhat hesitant. “Zerum’s here. She’s doing alright, thank you for asking.”
”That’s good! I’m… I’m glad you two are together!” Red sounded genuinely relieved. “C-can you say hi to her for me, please? I know she can’t hear me right now…”
”Of course. It’s the least I could do for your help watching over her and Painter.”
There was the sound of muffled voices and Painter thought he heard Zerum’s voice for a moment before Sebastian responded.
”Zerum says hi… Although her memory of you is a bit hazy.”
”Oh, well that’s alright!” Red was just glad that Zerum seemed to be doing well.
”Wow, this is like… the nicest I’ve ever seen you been.” Blue drawled, staring at Red with awe. “Unreal…”
”Stop talking.” Red snapped, her tone instantly changing.
“As great as all this banter is, I’m afraid that we are sort of on the clock right now.” Sebastian interjected. “So, Painter, do you see where the gigafan is at?”
”Yes. It’s blinking red.” Painter confirmed.
“Alright. Copy down the schematic of the L.E.V. and use it as a map to get you to the main airways. Hopefully the damage to the gigafan isn’t major and should be easily fixable.”
”Fingers-crossed...” Painter agreed, performing the motion with one mechanical claw.
Sebastian was itchy.
At first, he had equated it to nerves and general anxiety over standing by and allowing Painter to go into a potentially dangerous situation. Maybe he was feeling itchy because he didn’t have a group of mutant gold fishes clinging to his tail at the moment.
Whatever the cause, Sebastian was slowly losing the battle of resisting the urge to scratch at his hide.
He kept shifting in place, restlessly coiling and uncoiling his body in a way that made an audible rasping noise as his scales rubbed together. Each time he did so, Zerum’s ears would twitch and she’d glance his way with a questioning look, which he pretended not to notice.
The Expendables had initially stuck around in the main room, but eventually each one had wandered off in order to avoid the large and agitated fishman, and to clear out from the putrid stench of Immy cooking their face.
Sebastian had warned the humans not to go far, lest they suffer the same nebulous fate as Dog-fucker, (god rest his soul), but otherwise he didn’t really do anything to actually enforce this as a hard rule. Though Zerum took it upon herself to tag along with the Expendables to make sure nobody got into any trouble, which Sebastian didn’t quite understand, but otherwise didn’t stop her.
Immy was the only one to stay in the room, seemingly intent on becoming one with the glass of the observation window. The faint hissing sound of their sizzling flesh coincided with the ever present thrum of the static censoring their face.
Sebastian was just thankful that so far the immortal Expendable was being quiet for once, and he took the opportunity to scratch his claws against the scales along his tail now that nobody was around to see him.
His claws came away with flakes of papery material.
He stared, glancing from the strips of semi-translucent film in his claws and the blatantly peeling skin along his tail.
FUCK.
Well, this was gonna be humiliating to explain once somebody noticed. And somebody would eventually notice, since apparently he had multiple people keeping tabs on him and his “wellbeing”.
Sebastian growled to himself, clenching his fists and hastily wiping away the loose skin from his hand. He folded his tail underneath a loop of his body in order to hide the flaking patch.
He’d deal with it later.
Painter began his journey through the airways, using the diagram that he had copied from the main terminal as a guide.
Occasionally, he would have to stop and orient himself or double back after finding an obstacle in the way.
The two Imaginary Friends he had in tow were eager to contribute by way of unhelpful advice and incessant bickering.
”That way looks inviting.” Blue commented.
Painter paused and glanced questioningly up at him. “What way…?”
”Oh y’know…” Blue shrugged. “That way. Over there.”
He didn’t make any attempt to clarify the direction he was referring to, and Painter got the sneaking suspicion that Blue was just being an ass.
“Don’t encourage him.” Red warned the AI. “Just ignore him.”
“Hey, at least I’m trying to be helpful. Unlike some people…” Blue groused.
Painter let out an electronic sigh as the two figments proceeded to get into another argument.
Once upon a time, Painter would have done anything to have somebody around to chat with between the long hours doing nothing but grind cryptocurrency. Now, he just wanted some peace and quiet to just sit down and draw.
“Ew, what is that thing…?” Blue suddenly said. He was floating in such a way that he partially obscured Painter’s field of view, so Painter had no idea what Blue was referring to.
However, the cause soon became known as Painter detected the faint clicking noise of rotten coral. There was some of the eerie coral creeping along the edges of the walls of the airway, and Painter started to get the bad feeling that he knew what the cause for the gigafan’s malfunction was.
His suspicions were proven correct when the AI rounded the next bend and dropped into the chamber where the gigafan was held.
The massive rotary fans took up the entire width and height of the airway chamber, and they were encrusted with scores of malignant dark green coral.
There was a low vibration running through the floor that grew stronger as Painter approached, and he realized that it was likely the chugging of the generators underneath that were probably responsible for turning the massive fan in the first place. But with the gears crusted over with coral, they weren’t doing too well.
Steam rose from ports in the floor in intervals every few seconds, and Painter took care to note where each one was so that he didn’t accidentally get blasted.
Thankfully, there didn’t seem to be any lava pipes which were at risk of bursting within the area.
“Your house is pretty gross…” Blue intoned mildly, catching Painter off guard.
”Th-this isn’t my house!” The AI spluttered indignantly.
”Oh…” Blue seemed to consider this. “Guess that makes sense. I thought this place was oddly big to be your house, but I wasn’t going to judge.”
Painter squinted. “You just did, though.”
”Wha?”
”You just— y’know what, nevermind.” Painter shook themselves.
Red let out an exasperated sigh. “You are absolutely clueless.” She addressed this to Blue, who made a sound like he neither agreed nor disagreed with that notion.
Painter ignored them in favor of contacting Sebastian again on the walkie-talkie. “Hey, found the problem. It’s a rotten coral infestation. The rotary for the gigafan is jammed by a huge cluster of the stuff.”
”Shit.” Sebastian cursed, then gave a wry laugh. “Too bad Sachiel isn’t there with you. She might’ve been able to solve the problem with her voracious appetite for rotten coral.”
Painter chuckled. “Yeah… though I don’t think this toxic gas would’ve been good for your gold fish.” A thought then occurred to the AI. “Hey, where are your fishies anyway, Seb? Did you have that bonehead taxi them to someplace safe again?”
”You guess correctly, my friend.” Sebastian confirmed, and after a brief pause in which he pointedly did not elaborate further, Painter persisted:
”When the heck did you even do that? I don’t recall a single time where you were away long enough from the group to have facilitated that.”
”It’s not really important, Paints.” Sebastian’s tone implied that he didn’t want to have to explain himself at that moment. ”You should be focusing the majority of your CPU on figuring out how to get that rotten coral cleared out.”
”S-Seriously?” Painter looked again at the infestation of rotten coral. The branches were thick and the flora was numerous enough to imply that the infestation had wrapped its roots deep within the mechanism.
Painter estimated that even Sebastian would have to put in considerable elbow grease just to clear the debris, and Painter’s mechanical body did not possess anywhere near the strength that the fishman possessed.
Painter told Sebastian as much, to which the fishman seemed to take a minute to think over the problem.
“Okay, here’s an idea that may or may not be absolutely terrible and potentially backfire catastrophically…” Sebastian began, his tone implying that he wasn’t a hundred percent confident in the idea he was about to pitch, but felt obligated to voice it anyway. ”It might be possible to disengage the safeties on the generators so that you can set them into overdrive. That might give the main rotor enough of a kick to dislodge the rotten coral that’s jamming it.” He paused. ”Or it could cause the whole thing to blow up and wreck the entire gigafan beyond repair.”
”That…” Painter searched for words to properly convey his feelings “…Sounds risky.”
”Yes. Now that I'm thinking about it, it’s way too risky and I would never ask you to do it if there was any other way.” Sebastian sounded like he genuinely didn’t like the idea and was having second thoughts. ”In fact, maybe you should come back. We could probably get the immortal Expendable to do it. Maybe if you can lead them through the vents and show them what they need to do so they can overcharge the generators while you’re well out of the way in case something blows up.”
”But… but they’ll suffocate from the toxic gas!” Painter argued. “They don’t even have a working PDG anymore, they’d be struggling to breathe from the moment they step foot in here.”
Also, Painter didn’t want to be alone with the immortal Expendable for any length of time. He still remembered that vision of them punching his monitor to pieces…
”Plus, Immy is kinda… unreliable, at the best of times.” Painter reasoned, forging onwards. “Do you really think they’re gonna be in any state to take directions while literally choking to death the entire time?”
Sebastian was silent for a long moment, and Painter caught the faintest sound of somebody else talking on the other end. It might have been Immy, but Painter wasn’t certain.
“You might have a point,” Sebastian finally said. “But I still think it’s too risky. Come back and we’ll try to figure out another way.”
“Okay…” Painter hesitantly agreed, and turned to go back the way he’d come, then paused.
While it was true that Painter didn’t like the idea of overcharging the generators, he still didn’t think going all the way back would accomplish anything.
The AI swiveled their monitor to look at the giant fan blades and the rotten coral encrusting the gears straining to turn.
Painter hummed with thought, debating the various pros and cons of attempting to overcharge the generators by himself instead of heeding Sebastian’s plea for him to return to the rest of the group.
“Maybe I’ll just… check to see if the generators can even be overcharged.”
It took a bit of searching and poking at seemingly loose wall panels before Painter eventually discovered that there was a service hatch right beside the wall which led down into a crawlspace where the generators for the gigafan were being held.
It was actually a series of generators connected to a main engine which was responsible for turning the rotors, and Painter spent a good moment scuttling around and investigating the array in order to determine its overall condition.
There was a meter beside the engine which displayed different power settings. The lever sticking out of the side was set in the mid-range.
“Oh, well that’s convenient.” Painter mused. He had been worried that he would have to figure out a way to super charge the generators on his own— something which he had no idea how to do without a hardwired connection and had been expecting to have to ask Sebastian for guidance.
But now there was an easy to operate lever that seemingly controlled the power being directed through the turbines.
There was a sticky-note crusted over with what looked like dried blood on the highest setting.
Painter reached up and plucked the sticky note in order to try and puzzle out the barely legible message scrawled in black sharpie.
DO NOT—
The rest of the message was obscured with the maybe-blood, maybe-vomit.
Painter gave a dismissive huff before discarding the note. It probably wasn’t important.
He stared at the lever which manually controlled the power setting for the engine. Slowly, he reached up a mechanical claw towards the lever, then hesitated…
“You should do it.” Red weighed in with her opinion. “It’s worth the risk, if it helps Zerum a-and Sebastian…”
”Or you could blow up, and be no help to anybody.” Blue pointed out, then upon noticing Red’s quelling look, he immediately pivoted. “I-I mean yeah! You got this, man. You with your… super smart… computer brain.”
If Red had eyes she would have rolled them in exasperation, before turning to Painter once more. “E-even if you end up… exploding… I’m sure your sacrifice will not be in vain!”
Painter gave them both a deadpan expression, before changing to one of resignation. The AI knew he had already made his decision…
I mean, the lever was right there!
How could Painter just walk away and not pull it?