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“They probably parked all their soldier bots above to keep us from going any farther,” she muttered. “...What do we do?”
“We can’t bomb the place,” said Circé before Dante even opened his mouth. “That’s a no. If we damage those units on the sixtieth floor, we won’t be able to use them, and we don’t know where the next floor with all their information units will be.”
“We can’t send a decoy,” retorted Eden. “We don’t have anything that could go up there and buy us time... We can’t hack those damn soldier bots either.”
“How about using the elevators? With a charge in them?”
“Dante, we just said we can’t blow it up. We might have a few more floors to climb if we do–”
“Uh, excuse me...” suddenly muttered Nebty.
“What?”
“I have a bad feeling about this conversation you’re having right now, and one Overcraft has literally just turned around. I mean, that thing was in the sky in the Suburbs, and it just... turned around like that. Two Overcrafts just began to follow it as if they are chasing–wait, shit, they are firing at it!”
The two women and Dante exchanged a look. They all ran to the closest floor and straight toward the windows to see what was happening. Indeed, from afar, they saw the three flying vehicles, one of them busy doing some very strange dance in the sky, while two others were chasing and firing at it. It was like witnessing a space fight, except that the chased vehicle seemed to have gone completely crazy, making impossible flight movements and not even bothering to fight back against its pursuers.
“What the–”
That’s when Loir’s singing came into their ears. Eden and Circé went white at the same moment.
“...Loir, please tell me you’re not the one controlling that thing,” muttered Eden.
“Come and fly away with me, come and fly away with me-e-e-e-e~”
“Warlock, stop it! You’re going to kill us all, you crazy piece of shit!”
“We’re rising, we’re falling, we’ll make it through~”
He was not listening. Either he had put the volume of his music too high on purpose or he was simply ignoring them, there was no way to tell. They saw the flying vehicle come right toward the building, looking like it was going to crash into them.
Everyone on their floor turned around and ran at the same time. They ran, as fast and far as they could, completely overtaken by the idea that Loir’s madness was going to kill them.
The shock was violent and brutal. The whole building trembled. Eden felt a terrible pain in her ears, and her whole body vibrated under the shock, even as Dante’s body was covering her. It felt like it lasted for a long, long while.
“Eden, Eden, open your eyes.”
She did, surprised to even be alive. There were thick curtains of dark smoke covering the windows outside, a loud alarm ringing, and red lights blinking everywhere.
“...What happened?”
“The Overcrafts’ wing brutally hit a good portion of the hundredth floor,” replied A., “far above you, and it crashed much farther away, luckily. Only several floors above you guys were touched. You should be fine, including the ten or so floors above you. Hoping it doesn’t collapse... I don’t think so, though. We’re quickly checking the predictions of the structure, the building itself doesn’t appear to be in danger. The chances of it collapsing are below five percent. But he still did a lot of damage. The whole building went into security mode.”
Eden turned around. Indeed, all of the doors were thrown wide open, and the elevators were all disabled. It was a common emergency program for any building with basic security, but it was only triggered when the building could detect a large danger. Not something like a few exchanges of fire, but a fire itself, or an aerial attack, could definitely set it off... and it meant all the robots were going to get the message of an emergency situation. Some would reset themselves, turn off, or try to attach themselves to the System, where their hackers would be able to override them.
“It’s amazing!” exclaimed Malieka. “Now we can try to take complete control of the building!”
“Warlock, you insane, fucking nutjob!” shouted Circé, her hair in a complete mess around her. “We were inside!”
“Hehehe~” he chuckled, visibly very proud of himself. “Now, we get to play fair!”
As she could hear his voice coming from different speakers around them, not just her own ear, Eden guessed he was already making his way into the System. The whole Arcadia Tower had joined the System to try and protect itself, as the defense systems would have it, but it was putting the whole building at Loir’s mercy, and he was already deep inside.
“Oh,” said the Governor’s voice suddenly. “A familiar presence. If it’s not dear Warlock coming back from the dead. Of course you have to be a massive annoyance. Again.”
“How are you, you dirty, smelly, old bag of shit?!” chuckled Loir. “I hope you missed me?”
“Not one bit.”
