[TheRaisin]

Lyra

We crept out of the supply closet, fully clad in camo-covered high-impact armor, with strands of silksteel woven amongst the synthmetal fabric. We looked ready for anything: guns hung from sashes and belts, ammo clips were shoved tightly into their compartments, various tools and pieces lashed to our belts clinked and clanked together. I had the wrist computer strapped to my wrist, and, of course, our backpacks carried everything else we would need for an escape and a long hike.
Ian's ESP guided us around sensor fields and cameras. We slinked as silently as possible through the halls for about ten minutes before finally coming to the one exit we had found leading to the outside world: the door to the exercise yard.
I started toward it, but Ian grabbed my shoulder.
"Wait."
His eyes glazed as he actively tuned his extra senses. I felt a surge in the ambient energy in the room, and the hair on the back of my neck stood up slightly. These abilities he had were certainly powerful and useful, but they were far from covert. After a moment he returned to normal.
"No good. It's got a solid lock and a sensor field around it. We need to find a different exit."
"Figures," I said.
"We can't keep looking around on this level," Ian said. "If they're not looking for us by now, they will be soon."
We backtracked to the elevator we had made for the second day.
Yesterday, I reminded myself. That was yesterday. I had begun to lose track of time in this place.
Ian scanned the elevator, found it safe, and telekinetically broke the lock. The doors slid open, and we stepped inside. The button numbers started with 5 and went in descending order all the way to Sub-Level 30. If the elevator went straight down, that would mean the structure descended more than 300 feet into the ground.
Ian pressed the button for Sub-Level 1, and we began to move. I set my pack down, and leaned back against the smooth metal wall.
"How did you do that... thing, back there?" I asked, examining my arm again.
Ian glanced at my arm as well, and said, "It was basically those 'ghost' things again. I was just thinking that you really needed some medical supplies, and they took over. I didn't tell them to do anything, exactly."
"I guess they just have a lot of initiative," I said. "Look at this: it completely regrew in a matter of seconds. There's not even any scar tissue. They stimulated the cells, and they reproduced at a couple thousand times their normal rate. It's incredible."
Ian didn't seem too sure. "I just hope they don't try too much without my telling them to. I don't want anything controlling me, not matter how benevolent or helpful they are."
I felt the elevator change direction several times, occasionally moving horizontally, before it began to slow down. I stood up, put my pack back on, and made sure my hand was tight on my gun. I hated using it, but at least so far it had only been robots I had had to use it on. I hoped we didn't run into any people.
The doors slid open. I stood to one side of the opening and peered out. It opened directly into a cavern that looked like a scene from a modern-day Hieronymus Bosch's worst nightmare. The space was basically a giant inverted cone, possibly several kilometers in diameter at the top. The far side was barely visible in the darkness-- only certain points were lit by large lights, the kind you might see in a football stadium, while the rest of the area was hidden in deep shadow. It descended in rings, each floor just enough smaller than the one above it to fit perfectly within it. Tracks criss-crossed the ceiling and hung over the void, carrying small transport cars and bulky cargo lifts. Catwalks completed the spider-web design, spanning the chasm's diameter in a spoke design, with each consecutive level stretched between two points along the outer ring different from those of the spoke above it. Bisecting each spoke was a central hub. Here, the catwalk split into two paths to form a ring around a massive column of conduits, cords, and tubes, before rejoining on the other side. Every once in a while, a few wires or tubes would shoot off along a catwalk for some purpose on one of the concentric galleries, but the vast majority continued to plunge down towards the relatively narrow bottom of the cone. Taking a shaky breath, I stepped out of the elevator, quickly ducking out of the brightly lit area around it to avoid being seen by one of the hundreds of robot drones working in the cavern, or one of the few humans overseeing the labor. I walked to the edge of the wide gallery, boots clanking on the thick metal grill, and carefully leaned over to see what was at the bottom. There, hundreds of feet below, at the base of the hive-like structure, was a large cubical glass enclosure, with several large lights trained on it. The height did not affect me in the least, but what was happening in that glass clean-room made me feel more ill than anything I had seen so far.
There were rows upon rows of glass tanks, each filled to the top with murky green liquid. In each one floated a human being, head shaved bald, covered in electrical sensors and robotic leeches, a breathing apparatus hooked to their face. As I watched, one woke from their unnatural slumber. I couldn't make out any details, but I could imagine the look of horror on their face. The figure began to spasm and thrash around, nearly snapping some of the sensors. A multiple-armed robot drone was drawn to the tank. It did something with the computer set into the base of the tank, and the person's movements slowed then stopped, and they returned to their forced state of sleep.
Next to the rows of tanks was a large area full of metal operation tables. There were people on several of them, robots flocking around them. I couldn't tell what was happening to most of them, but I recognized one robot's activity: the patient was face down, and the robot's multiple tools were trained on one spot at the base of the skull, grafting the control chip on, no doubt.
I began to feel dizzy. I stepped back from the rail and moved back into the elevator.
"What did you see? What's wrong?" Ian asked the second I stepped into the elevator.
I sat down on my pack. Sweat was trickling down my face and neck. My knees felt weak.
"Look," I said.
Ian slipped cautiously out the door. When he came back a minute later, he looked almost as bad as I felt.
"Give me the wrist computer," he said.
I handed it to him, and he stepped out into the cavern again. He came back after another minute, and gave it back to me.
"I took pictures. Now we can prove this place exists."
"It won't for long," I said.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"We're destroying this place. We're not going to let this happen to anyone else." I wasn't thinking about it as I said it. It just suddenly came into my mind: this place had to be destroyed.
I got up and picked up my pack again.
"C'mon. We'll find an exit, stow our stuff nearby, then figure out how to shut this place down."
"You can't be serious," Ian said. "What about all those people down there?"
"They're as good as dead. Their lives ended as soon as these bastards set their sights on them."
"Some of them might survive the experiment," he said.
"The ones that do won't have a life anyway. They'll be soldiers for this new world government these people are trying to make. We'll be doing them a favor."
I put my pack on, tightened the clamps and straps on my armor, and my sure the safety was off on the gun at my hip.
"Let's go."
"All right, but I should still lead," he said.
"There won't be any sensors here," I said. "We're deep enough now that they don't think there's any need."
Ian went into a trance, scanning the area. He was in this state for several minutes as he scanned the huge area.
"Looks like you're right," he said, snapping back to consciousness.
We left the elevator and began walking clockwise around the huge outer track, hugging the outside wall and trying to stay in the deep shadows that seemed to thrive in this subterranean vault.
-------------------------------------
Ian

Our boots were unnervingly loud in the silence around this section of the chasm. Elsewhere in the chamber, robots toiled under the supervision of human scientists, the distant sounds of heavy machinery and metal feet on metal floor drifting across the vast empty space. But here, the only sound was made by the heavy combat boots we had donned in preparation for our escape. I kept expecting some metal monstrosity, attracted by the noise, to leap over the rail and attack us. But the silence remained, and we walked on.
After a few minutes, Lyra noticed a small door in the wall. She crouched down to inspect it.
"Looks like some kind of service hatch," she said. "Think you can get it open?"
I tried to focus my mind, but I was too nervous. I had to be in a completely calm state to use the powers without the help of the ghosts.
"I can't do it," I said. "I have those tools, though..."
"That's okay, I have a set." She laid the case open, chose a tool, and began to work at the door.
I walked as close to the rail as I dared while staying within the envelope of shadow. I searched through my pack, found the pair of binoculars I had packed, and took to spying on the activities of the workers.
I focused them on a human scientist, standing atop a small electric cart, pointing and shouting orders to the robotic workers.
Boring.
I was about to move on, when the scientist stopped. He held a hand to an earpiece he was wearing, nodding to himself. What orders was he receiving?
When the transmission ended, he punched some buttons on a computer pad he was holding. A door in the wall behind him opened, and ten robots filed out-- five bulky guards, and five of the sleeker, deadly hunter-killers.
"Oh, crap."
Lyra turned from her work. "What is it?" she asked.
I handed the binocs to her. "See for yourself."
She took a long look at what was happening on the opposite side of the gallery, before lowering the binoculars.
"Damn. They know. Somebody must have found the wreckage."
"We're lucky it took them as long as it did," I pointed out. "It's been a couple hours."
Lyra turned back to give the door a critical look, hands on her hips. "I think I've done all I can with the hatch. Let's pull it off."
We grabbed two corners of the metal sheet and pulled as hard as we could. The metal bent slightly, and the hinges screeched metallicaly, but the door held.
Panting, I said, "I wish we still had that crowbar."
"The crowbar!" she said. "Idiot..." She dug through her pack, and pulled it out. "Glad I kept this. Stand back!"
I moved out of the way. Lyra slammed the flat tip of the heavy bar into the crack between the door and the frame, and pushed hard. The door bent and creaked, and finally fell open, slamming against the metal floor.
"Go!"
I scrambled inside. Lyra crouched down inside the opening and used the curved side of the crowbar to pull the hatch back into place, throwing the small space into complete darkness.
"Too dark in here," she muttered.
"Hold on..." I felt around in my pack, and grabbed what I was looking for. I put the helmet on, fumbled around trying to find the switch I was looking for, and finally hit it. A bright beam of light lanced out from the small flashlight peripheral attached to the HUD that was hooked onto the helmet, illuminating Lyra and the end of the crawlspace. She held her hands in front of her face, squinting in the sudden bright light.
I twisted the tiny fiber-optic light to the side and dimmed it. "Heh... sorry."
I waited as she found her helmet and put it on. She also dug out two crystal memory disks and handed one to me.
"Put it in your HUD and make sure you record everything. The HUDs and the wrist computer use the same memory disks."
I slid the disk into the small slot in the back of the HUD and set it to record. She did the same.
"You should turn your light off to conserve power." I noticed she was still holding the crowbar. "Aren't you going to stow that?"
She held it closer to herself. "I think I'll just hold onto it."
"Okay. Ready?"
"Let's do it," she said.

We crawled around for what felt like hours. We stopped several times to rest and drink deeply from our canteens. The tunnels were unmercifully hot and stuffy, and moving around on hands and knees was tiring. My mind drifted in the silence and darkness and heat, the conditions much like those in a sensory deprivation tank. After a while, I was so out of it that I missed the exit completely, continuing past the small antechamber.
"Yo, Ian!"
I snapped out of my trance, and noticed the bright rectangle of light marking the door at the end of the antechamber, which jutted off from the main tunnel.
"Oh. Good call."
Lyra scoffed. "I'd have to be blind not to notice it."
"Sorry. Zoned out."
She handed the crowbar up to me, and with some bashing and prying I was able to get the hatch loose.
I checked all my gear and weapons, made sure my HUD was recording, and turned the flashlight off. I took a deep breath.
"Okay."
I pulled my legs up to my chest, then kicked out as hard as I could at the hatch. It swung down and came off, clanging against the floor somewhere below. The tunnel was flooded with bright fluorescent light. I moved up so that my legs were dangling out the hatch. My eyes could not adjust quickly enough to the blinding light, so I slammed down the visor that slid into my helmet.
The service hatch opened halfway up the wall in an impressively large, brightly-lit square room. On the floor some feet below, in rows and clusters, were hundreds of vehicles of dozens of types. There were hovercraft of every size, shape, and model imaginable, including a few with propulsion systems I had never seen. The details of these had probably been downloaded into my brain, but I wasn't thinking about it at the time. There were several dozen aircars, most of them sleek and sporty like any everyday overpriced aircar, but a few had been outfitted with weapons ranging from small conventional projectile weapons that looked as if they had just been soldered on, to laser cannons, and I noticed three that had been outfitted with huge magnetic acceleration cannons, which used electromagnets to create magnetic fields powerful enough to launch a titanium shell the shape of an arrow and roughly the weight of a cannonball straight through a line of tanks. There were ten jet-black rocket fighters, craft that could, with a full payload, decimate cities or, with a full supply of O2 and fuel, reach the moon on a single tank. The absolute giants of the whole collection, though, in both size and power, were the two massive gravships in the center of the room, looking like gigantic beetles. Their black hulls and thick glass windshields gleamed like carapaces in the bright lights, while the four massive circular antigravity pads on each sat dark and unpowered like giant feet.
I tore my eyes away from the amazing machines to look for signs of opposition. Towards the front of the room, where three massive blast doors were set into the wall, a trio of human guards waited at each of the three regular, person-sized doors perpedicular to the big ones. They had not noticed us yet. As I watched, three more groups of three entered the room. They simply hung around, apparently waiting for the others' shift to end so they could start theirs.
"Ian, what's the hold-up? Where are we?" Lyra asked from back in the tunnel.
"It looks like a motor pool or something," I called back. "There are some guards, but they're a long way off. Hold on."
I slid off my perch, psychically catching myself as I fell. I drifted down to the floor, and Lyra moved up to where I had been.
"Whoa..." she said, seeing the huge menagerie of machinery.
"I know."
"Umm... how am I supposed to get down?" she asked.
"I got it covered," I said. "Just jump."
She pushed herself out of the tunnel. I caught her instantly, and she floated down as if in water, her hair suspended over her head.
"Exhilarating," she said as her feet touched the floor, and the energy suspending her dissapated.
"We should probably find a place to stow our stuff. This might be the only place we have time to find. Oh, here's your crowbar."
Her fingers tightened around it, and she spun it skillfully over her head and on either side like a bo before resting it casually on her shoulder.
"Well," she said, "they did one thing right, giving us martial arts when they plugged our brains into a computer. Guns-- how primitive."
We crept around the motor pool, careful to keep the huge gravships between us and the guards at all times. I quickly found a small two-wheeled trailer thing, more like a wheelbarrow than a trailer, with a cover. We stowed our gear, except for a few tools and our weapons, and covered the trailer up again. I noticed something covered by a tarp just next to the trailer. It was too small to be any kind of hovercraft or aircar, and it had an odd shape. Curiosity getting the better of me, I slid the tarp off, and stared at what it had been covering.
Lyra noticed too. "Wow... I didn't anyone still made these relics."
"They don't," I said. "At least not legally."
It was an actual motorcycle, jet black and in perfect condition. The key was even in the ignition.
"Wait a minute... this is perfect! Small, fast, under the radar, undetectable..."
"What are you talking about?" she asked quizzically.
"The motorcycle," I said. "It's the perfect getaway vehicle. Look, the trailer attaches to it so we can carry our stuff."
"One thing at a time," she said.
"Right. We still have work to do."