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Two of Miracle’s guys don’t hesitate for a second. As soon as that door
cracks, they’re running right for it. They evidently have no loyalty to
their teams. Elise doesn’t know how long they’ve been training together, but
she’s not finding it so easy to leave them behind. She didn’t even always
want to do this. The only reason she agreed is because of the team.
If they’re going to take that from her, what reason does she have to go on?
She’ll have to think about this first, and ignore that door in the meantime.
Minotaur jumps out of their seat too. They only manage to intercept the
second guy, body-checking him against the wall as the first one slips over
the edge right on the other side of the door and plummets to his death.
Minotaur stands up and catches their breath. They’re not used to an analog
body either. “You’re welcome.”
Miracle stands from her own seat and casually walks towards the lethal exit.
She stands before her former teammate as he’s catching his breath too. She
slaps him hard.
“I’m sorry, boss. You just talked so much about the prize. He and I started
coming up with what it could possibly be. We think it’s unlimited energy
credits. We could go anywhere. We could do anything. You know what, I’m
not sorry,” he goes on as Miracle spins around and places her back to
him. “What did you expect, pulling me out of Bloodbourne like you did?
Running for my survival is what I do best. That’s why you—”
Since she turned around, Miracle has been mocking him with her facial
expressions, and by mimicking mouth movements with her hand. She suddenly
donkey kicks him in the chest, sending him over the edge to fall to his
death too. She takes a deep breath, and half a step forward. “Does anyone in
this room need me to define the word alliance for you, or are you at
least slightly smarter than a panda bear?”
Rage calmly stands now, in just the same way Miracle did before. She
approaches her slowly before suddenly jamming her forearm against Miracle’s
clavicle and pinning her to the monitor, cracking it. “I know what an
alliance is, but I don’t work with killers. You stay out of our way, and
we’ll leave you alone too, but if you ever treat any one of my people like
you did your own friend, you will wish you had jumped out too.
Savvy?”
“Savvy?” Miracle echoes in an accent. “Are ya lost, love? This isn’t
Piratedome.”
“Do. You. Understand me?” Rage reiterates, squeezing her chest even harder.
“Ooo, buy me dinner first, and I’ll understand whatever you say, Mistress.”
Rage angrily lets go and turns away from Miracle. She has spoken about this
with the team before. It is absolutely crucial for her to temper her anger
so her nickname remains firmly ironic, rather than simply not technically
accurate. She centers herself with her eyes closed for a moment. “Zel,
you’re up. Remember, they know what we’ve done. The tricks you used last
time probably won’t work in this place.”
Zelda gets out of her seat and picks the sconce that Elise used to free her
up from the floor. “I need silence,” she announces before she drops it into
the pit. “Fifty meters.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Elise determines. There was something wrong
about the way the sconce sounded compared to the way the men did. Their
shouts actually didn’t sound right from the start, but she initially
shrugged it off because she doesn’t know the acoustics of this room, or the
pit. Now she suspects they’re vastly different than they appear to be. The
void before them might not exist at all.
Elise takes her shirt back off, and uses it as a glove to remove a shard
from the monitor that Rage broke. She sets it on the floor, reflective side
up. She then gently nudges it towards the blackness to get it in the right
place. Once it’s partway into the dark, she pays especially close attention
to the way the light bounces off of it at the threshold. She bends down and
starts to retie her shoes while she speaks. “A few years ago, I took a
course on volumetric emitter placement. These days, an AI will decide where
to place them for optimal image projection, so it’s become a lost art, but
designers, architects, and engineers used to have to plan it carefully.
“Which of you has seen the movie Thunderbolts*?” Elise asks the whole
group.
Colley raises his hand. “It’s a perfect example of combatting historical
superhero fatigue in the early to mid-21st century media by actually
lowering stakes.”
“Remember the elevator scene?” Elise presses.
“You don’t mean...” Colley begins.
“I need you,” Elise encourages. “You’re the only one who doesn’t need me to
say it out loud, which might skew the results for us. Get over here, we’ll
be fine.”
Colley walks over to join Elise. “Up or down?” he asks, sighing.
“Sideways,” Elise answers him. She turns him around then turns around too so
they’re back to back. “Leading foot is one, trailing foot is two.
Ready...one.”
Colley plants his left foot against the wall while Elise plants her right
one.
“Now two.” They both step fully off the ground, holding themselves up by
applying pressure to the walls with their feet, and each other’s backs. They
begin to chimney walk through the darkness. One of them always makes sure
their leading foot has something to press up against before the other tries
their side. They could always end up with a wider hallway, or some sort of
opening that completely destroys their plan, at which point they would have
to go back. They can see nothing in this void.
They don’t end up having to go too terribly far, though. After only a couple
of meters, they are out of the holographic void, and into the hallway on the
other side. A people mover is running at incredible—and incredibly
unsafe—speed below them. That’s what it was. The men who were sent
over the edge merely fell on this, and they cried bloody murder because they
were being suddenly dragged away into the unknown after believing that they
were gonna fall to their deaths. This doesn’t explain the sconce, and it
doesn’t explain why their friends aren’t responding to their shouts now.
“We’re gonna have to go back,” Colley determines when they give up.
He’s right. The belt is moving far too fast for their puny human legs to
carry them the wrong direction to explain it to the others. If they don’t
chimney walk back, their friends will assume that they fell to their deaths
too. They prepare themselves mentally, call upon a second wind, and make the
hard return journey to the chrysalis chamber.
Once they reappear from the void, Jolanda and Minotaur help them get off the
walls safely so Elise and Colley can explain the situation. Rage then
conceives the plan.
Elise should feel tired, but she’s wired, so she volunteers to be on
carrying duty. She and Zelda hold each hunter by the shirt and pants, low to
the ground. They toss them into the void from that position, allowing them
to fall onto the belt with a far lower center of gravity. It isn’t painless,
but those first two guys probably had it much worse.
Finally, only the two of them are left. “How do you wanna do this?” Elise
asks.
“I’m strong enough.” Zelda picks Elise up and drops her onto the belt on her
own.
As Elise is flying down the hallways on her ass, she looks back to see Zelda
surfing on it like a pro. What a total badass. Elise may be falling in love.
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