5.
"It's simple," Electra explains. It's dimly lit in here, with the light coming from dull yellowish bulbs every floor or so. Some of them have blown, leaving long stretches of darkness. Metallic noise echoes up and down the hollow space, as the megablock adjusts and moves in the winds outside. She's casually swinging down the lift shaft while you're having to maneuver your clumsy body into motion. Sick nauseated anger churns and boils in your stomach at the contrast between the two of you, and you're not entirely sure why. "We blow this joint, and then they'll be busy having to deal with all the dead people and the fires and the radiation and everything like that!"
You don't know how you feel about Electra. No, wait. You know you're scared of her. She hasn't been anything less than nice to you, but… she scares you. She deeply, truly scares you. You can't predict what she's about to do, and that terrifies you. Maybe it's just because you don't remember anything that you find her erratic and unpredictable.
No. You have a gut feeling that normal people don't act like she does. Normal people aren't cheerful like her when talking about bad things. Normal people don't plan to kill lots of people. There's something sick in her head.
You don't know who to trust, though. The drone you crushed was scary and it had a gun. Electra is scary - and now she has a gun. And she's probably faster than you. If you're going to run away from her, you can't do it when she's nearby. But at the moment, that… that fucking Mau thing is crawling down the shaft with you, its red-hot claws sinking into the metal of the walls like a knife into butter. You're sure that thing scares you, because it's fucking terrifying. When you're near it, your heartbeat speeds up and you want it gone! But it's with you now. And from the scarring that already exists on the walls, you can only conclude that it's done this before.
Or that there are more things like it out there. Well, isn't that a cheerful thought? In fact, it's such a cheerful thought that you concentrate on climbing specifically so you don't have any more cheerful thoughts like it.
Your arms aren't hurting at all by the time Electra stops, and that's something which doesn't feel quite right. There's no door here, but she has to be stopping for a reason, right?
"Mau," she says.
Shortly afterwards, there's a door. Well, a hole in a wall leading to a corridor, which is sort of the definition of a door. Or at least a doorway.
Electra squeezes in through the hole rimmed with molten metal, and then helps you through. She pauses by the door ahead of you, and grins up at you innocently. "The main security office where they control the security bots is just up ahead. Heh, want to see something sweet?" She doesn't wait for a response. "Sure you do! Watch this!"
The pit drops out of your stomach, and you suddenly can taste an oppressive air of greasy, electric tension in the air. There's a glow coming from within Electra's body, a yellow glow from under her skin accompanied by fat blue strands of electricity rolling over her skin and arcing between her head and her torso. The pressure builds and builds, and you feel all your hair stand on end.
And then she pulses and all the lights go out. The pitch blackness would be total, if it wasn't for the red glow from Mau and the afterglow which dances purple in front of your eyes. The air stinks of ozone, and you have a deep ache in your muscles which wasn't there before. Red emergency lighting flickers on, though even that's not working close to where Elecra had done her flash-thing.
"Help me with the door," she says, striding up to the door getting her fingers into the half-open gap and pulling. You join her and between the two of you, you manage to slide the powered-down mechanisms along their tracks.
You're swept along in her wake. What can you do? You can't run. Mau'd get you. It's trailing behind, like… like it expects you to run. Electra would get you. And...
"Hey! You! Stop right there! Who are you?"
It's a man, wearing a ballistic vest marked SECURITY and a helmet and carrying an assault rifle. His limbs look plastic-y - you think he's a cyborg.
"I'm a dangerous maniac," Electra says agreeably. "I got lost. I surrender."
The man blinks, his hands wobbling. "Stay where you are!"
"I understand," she says, nodding. "But you know." She shrugs. "You got sent out on your own to confront me. Doesn't that sound a bit unfair to you? Probably makes you angry when you think about. Really, really angry."
His hands are shaking a lot now. That worries you quite a bit because you're at the nominal dangerous end of his gun.
"You should probably go fix that!" Electra says happily, who doesn't seem to be concerned at all.
With a hiss of rage, the guard spins on his heel, his teeth bared and the corners of his lips turned up. You don't think he's smiling, though. Not one bit.
"Come on!" Electra tells you happily. "He'll open the door to the security office for us!" She breaks into a run to catch up with him, and you follow behind, stumbling. You don't know what's happening, but you're sure it's something bad.
You hear a man's voice up ahead, and a woman. Different ones from the man you're following.
"You bastard!" a man shouts. Then there's a loud burst of gunfire, and a second one. What just happened? Did… did the man Electra talked to shoot someone? There he is, ahead of you, and he looks furious and now he's turning on you and...
And then Electra is there, and shining metal is extending and the world painted red by the emergency lighting is even more red.
You blink, feeling numb. Her hands didn't leave the pockets of her coat. No, the front of her coat burst open and two… metallic arm-tentacle-things burst out. Each are holding - or maybe tipped by - a razor-edged machete.
She cut him to pieces. Disarmed him. And you suddenly understand far, far too well where some of the stains on her coat come from.
Electra turns back to you. She's humming to herself, in counterpoint to the dripping sound. The dripping sound which comes from her knives. And from the ceiling. And the walls.
"Wasn't he dull!" she says brightly, giving a loud whistle. You hear the clatter of Mau behind you. "Did you see the expression on his face? I bet that was the most fun he ever had in his life!"
You are speechless. Literally. You're too scared to talk. You just s-saw someone die in front of you. You don't think you ever saw that before. And your tongue feels like so much cold meat and everything smells of copper and Electra is standing there, dripping blood, with a look of concern on her face.
"Are you okay?" she asks.
You shake your head. Or maybe you just twitch in fear. You're not entirely sure yourself. But she seems to take it as a shaking head, and she takes your arm with her hand and leads you over the eviscerated body, into the shot-up security office. There's a dead woman here. Her brain is all over the wall. The man is more intact, in that he only took multiple bullets to the chest.
"Just wait here," she tells you. "I'll get this over and done with and we can go! And I'll leave Mau to keep you safe! Everything'll be just peachy!"
"H-h-h-hurt," you stammer. You don't know what you're saying or even why you're saying it. She seems to interpret it as concern, though.
Electra laughs. "That's so nice of you!" she says, giving you a hug that leaves you wet and sticky with cooling blood. "But don't worry about me! I was there when the bombs fell! A little bit of radioactivity from a nuclear power plant won't be a problem at all! I can handle it! A long time ago, someone very important told me that I was here to bring new lights into the world!" She pauses. "You might get a little bit sick, but you're tough! It won't kill you! Not for very long, even if it kills you! So that's okay!"
She glares at Mau. "Girl! Keep her safe, or I'll nail you to four walls at once!" she says with a face like thunder, before smiling at you. Her plastic face flickers between expressions without any intermediary steps, you realise. Cheerily, she heads off, the metal of her killing tendrils scraping along the walls. You swallow. Hard.
Stupid Electra. Stupid body. Stupid… stupid everything. You don't know what's going on and you hate that, because among other things you're sure that something really bad is about to happen.
She's left you alone in this security office, with Mau and… and the bodies of the guards. All of them. The one she killed herself and the ones she made the other person murder. Just by talking to them. The guards are quite heavily auged, too. You can see the exposed implants in the one who… who was cut apart. Did… did she hack his cyberbrain and make him do that? Did she do something like that to you? Is that why you can't remember anything?
You almost throw up, your stomach rebelling from the morbid thoughts and the morbid scene before you, but you manage to hold onto… uh, whatever's in there. Probably not much. You're getting sort of hungry. Or rather, you were getting hungry. The dead bodies have put you off the thought of food.
Mau growls, the rumbling noise reminding you that while you might have been put off the idea of food, it hasn't.
WHAT DO YOU DO?
[ ] Sit there like a good girl and do nothing like a useless lump until Electra comes back. (x0.5)
[ ] Sure, most of the power might be off, but the emergency light is still on. Maybe there's an emergency phone here? And Mau's a stupid machine, so it probably won't suspect what you're doing. (x1.1)
-> [ ] Call the police. 911, right?
-> [ ] Maybe there's someone else in the facility you can warn about her.
-> [ ] Write-in
[ ] The guards had weapons. And the one who didn't get turned into mincemeat had armour. Maybe that might even the odds against Mau. (x1.2)
-> [ ] And then run away
-> [ ] And then try to stop Electra (- x0.3)
[ ] Write-in plan
