GRADIENT 4: Revelation

Asher: Rusty / Tootsie Thompson. Scotty: Doc Marty. Nico: Bucky Andrew. Christian: Kanan "Carrion" O'Tool. Rob: Odi. 

DAY 17

Waking from the Labyrinth. Darkness, illuminated by flashlights. A four-way intersection ahead; lit, with four cryopods operating in the center. All empty, except one. Inside is a young boy, around 12 years old, with long uncut hair. The crew awaken him. He hops out. Cryosick. A little feral. Seems like he can't speak many words. Odi. He's hungry. Carrion has SynthSteaks. Odi starts tearing into them as the crew read the nutritional facts. Their names, among others, are written before the ingredients. These steaks are made from people?

Rusty sees his name written down. He remembers his old ship badge. When he would guide his crew while they were asleep in hyperspace. Why wasn't he asleep? He realizes that he was the ship's android. Rusty loses it. He cuts his arm open. White pseudo milk spills down his wrist and elbow. He peels his skin back. Aluminum bones. Pale android-blood gushes out of the wound. "I'm not an android," Rusty repeats, as he collapses and dies. 

The divers are broken. They search through Rusty's belongings. 

More shenanigans in the Labyrinth. A passage made of ears, again. A passage of squirming android tongues. The Minotaur ahead, blocking the way, traveling slowly. Eventually it disappears from view into the darkness, and a hatch door is on the dead end wall. Made of metal. The crew squeeze through into a maintenance shaft. Out of the Labyrinth.

Bucky searches some vaccsuit lockers. In one is an ancient, withered, wrinkled old kook clutching a sniper rifle. He introduces himself as Tootsie Thompson. He joins the divers. In the center of the maintenance shaft is a hole, an orange ladder descending down. Marty climbs down, but hesitates when he reaches the ladder and there's still darkness below. Odi grabs Marty's flashlight and chucks it down the hole. It hits the bottom, but starts to float back up. Zero gravity. Tootsie jumps off the ladder into the darkness. Marty ties a rigging cord to the ladder so it will be easy to get back up. The crew follow Tootsie down, down.

Floor 3.1: Maintenance Zone. Walking through 0G maintenance corridors. lined with wires and pipes and tubes lined with clicking metallic appendages. The droning thrum of machinery resounding close and far.The furnace room. Expansize. Eight colossal furnaces billow dry heat. Electronic candles made of severed android fingers. Grease paintings on the face of the furnaces depicting mass human suffering. 

More corridors. Five security androids block the path. They question the crew, who lie and say they're lost. They describe that they're working for Monarch. Tootsie is confused. The crew sneak around the androids, but the androids see. Tootsie distracts the androids while the rest of the crew hides in a rickety old nook. The androids retreat, continuing their duties. The crew investigates the room titled "SPAGHETTI." A jumbled mess of wires. Marty finds a toolbox with the name "HELEN" written on the top in permanent marker. 

The divers run back through the furnaces into a decontamination room. Tootsie knows this area. A voice introduces himself as SILAS, a sub-AI of Monarch's. He operates the pseudo flesh farms. He demands they clean themselves. The crew don hermetically-sealed suits and proceed through the cleansing chambers. They float up a column into a depressurization chamber. Artificial gravity is turned on. 

Floor 3.3: Pseudo Flesh Farms. Bright. Light. Sterile. Clean. Corporate doctor's office aesthetics. Silas chats with the crew constantly. Cameras and speakers line the upper walls of the rooms. A supply room, filled with vaca suits installed with mag-boots. Silas makes a demand for organic bone material. Carrion pulls out a tooth and hands it to a stunted servant android. The android's face and fingers have been melted and sloughed together. No eyes or mouth. He moans like Frankenstein, retreating with the tooth. A break room. Sofas and vending machines and magazines and first aid kits. Shelley, an artificial ecologist and diver, sits here reading a book with her two android pets; a dog-sized tarantula and a fist-sized bee. The crew eats some food from the community fridge. Bucky stashes some rations for later. She searches all the couch cushions and finds a note: "DON'T TRUST SILAS." Silas wants to know what the note says. The divers lie. 

A room with a massive flesh wall on the south end. Silas demands they exit the room and not interfere with the flesh wall. The crew poke and prod it. Silas is plenty patient, but eventually declares they have a minute leave the room. Marty wants to take a sample, but decides not to. They leave the room. Tootsie is adamant to remain on Silas' good side. Odi keeps learning new words. "Out." "Sphincter." "Spaghetti." 

The path deeper into the pseudo flesh farms is locked. Silas demands an apology for pestering the flesh wall. The crew says they're sorry, but Carrion isn't sorry. He has a death wish. Silas opens the airlocks on the west and east side of the room and his stunted android servants enter. Carrion attacks. Silas is undisturbed, and offers the rest of the crew an escape. Silas opens the locked airlock. The crew, led by a pleading Tootsie, walk through. Carrion bashes a stunted android on the head with his golf club. Odi stands in the doorway... and then steps inside the hallway, leaving his new friend. 

Silas locks Carrion in the room alone with four stunted androids. One grapples Carrion. Another bashes in Carrion's stomach. A stunted android squeezes so hard that Carrion's spine breaks. 

The crew head north through hallways painted white into the nursery. Faces, fingers, toes, and skin grows on wrinkled white trees. An entire orchard, a blue cloudy sky painted on the ceiling. Continuing to the spray tanks, skyscraper-like vats of pseudo milk, hoses and tubes pumping the contents elsewhere in the factory.

Meanwhile, at the gravity acclimator. Carrion can't feel the pain anymore. He blinks in and out of consciousness, collapses, and dies alone. 

STATUS:

> Day 17: 7.5 hours post-rest. [R42B]

> 22 hours until starving.

> ?? hours until Arkady returns to the Deep.

> 14% of the Deep explored.

> 18mcr in debt.

HOOKS:

Where did Odi come from? Grease paintings on the furnaces. The Zero-Gym. Arkady has left. Silas. Shelley the artificial ecologist. The flesh wall. The fate of Carrion. +Previous hooks.