First midnight update of Part 6! 'Cus I'm going away for the weekend and I don't know if I'll have time to do all the formatting and stuff tomorrow.
EDIT: I was two minutes early. Sorry.
Time to delve into Rupture Farms' past; what happened to Kix's best friend? And will Somi get found out? This is one of my favourite chapters for a long time. And it's also stolen the record for the longest yet, just reaching its seventh page on MS Word! You've been warned
Chapter 34
“Hey Dean, what happened to the plan?” Javi asked, walking casually into the cafeteria. From over the counter, Dean shot him a lethal glare and then with a gesture of his eyes directed his gaze to Kix, who was huddled up at the table closest to the kitchen “Oh…”
Dean came out of the kitchen with an enormous cup of tea in each hand and gave one to Kix, who took it gratefully, before sitting down at the table with her. Javi walked over and sat down. “So what’s going on?” Dean shushed him and looked expectantly at Kix.
She gave a sort of nervous, unhappy laugh. She was still crying and tears were dripping onto the table from her chin, “It was about a month before you all got here,” She said stuffily, “No, a little less than that I think. Anyway, you must have noticed I don’t have a lot of friends. I just… have a hard time speaking to people. I wouldn’t have gotten to know you guys if Anni hadn’t made friends with me first.” She trailed off.
“Yeah, Anni could make friends with anything, provided they’re not a vykker,” Dean said.
“Or most sligs,” Javi said, grinning, but got another glare from Dean. He rolled his eyes.
Kix ignored the interruption and went on, “So Bud was my only real friend here. He didn’t speak much, but you know, that was ok with me.” She smiled weakly over her tea, “And every so often he’d get these big ideas, huge, and he could talk for hours, just trying to explain what was in his head, these huge pictures he imagined, and he’d go on and on and I always felt that even with all he said I was only getting a fraction of what he could see. And, you know, he was my only friend, and no one else really listened to him.
“And Reg was just a horrible, horrible slig. Even back then he’d pick on me all day, every chance he got, cus he picked me out as an easy victim, you know? But when Bud was around he’d leave me alone. I think Bud scared him a little bit.”
Javi and Dean were silent. After a few moments she went on.
“It was always great when Bud and me got to work together. I mean most of the time we were assigned separate jobs at opposite ends of the place and then every so often the rota would fall so we’d be working together somewhere, and we could just enjoy each others’ company.” She smiled again, but it sank quickly. “Then this time we were working out in the stockyards, rota’d in you know, cus this was before you came along, Javi. We were getting on with it, and Reg had come by, but he’d seen Bud and hurried off again…
“It was just one of those horrible accidents. Some how a scrab had gotten loose, or maybe it was one of the ones that hide in the abandoned part of the factory and it had come looking for easy food. It howled at us and we ran, but of course you can’t outrun a scrab. Reg was still nearby and he saw it. Then Bud fell behind; he stumbled, and it got him…” She fell silent. Dean rested a hand on her back. She took a big gulp of her scalding drink before continuing, “It, you know, it didn’t kill him right off, but it knocked him down and tore open his chest and I was running back, cus I had to do something, you know? And Reg came past me and shot it. He ran past me. The scrab was dead in like two seconds, and it fell on top of Bud, and I ran over and pushed it off of him, and his blood was everywhere. I tried to carry him, but he was too heavy for me, so I turned to Reg.” She gulped for breath, “At first he looked like he was moving to help, but then he stopped. He… grinned at me like he always does, as if he’s the funniest thing on Oddworld,” She clenched her fists, furious through her tears, “And he walked away. Left Bud to die. He could have helped, he could have sounded the alarm or something, but he left me to try and get him up to the factory alone, and by then he was…” She trailed off again and hid her face in her hands.
Javi looked over her to Dean and his expression was grim, “I think we’d better keep an eye on Anni for a while,” He suggested.
* * *
Anni’s patience with Reg had long since worn out, and so had her patience with her work. She was becoming increasingly bored with all of the jobs that she was supposed to do, and that meant she began to slack off more and more. Reg was still tailing her and was spending more and more time yelling at her to work harder. Anyone could see that Reg’s frustration with the girl was building, and his frustration with Arnie’s ‘no beating’ rule.
“If this keeps up, we might have trouble soon,” Javi pointed out to Dean one evening.
“I’ve spoken to Anni,” He replied wearily, “And so has Kix; she’s just bored. I don’t know what we can do with her.”
“Keep an eye on her,” Javi suggested, “Make sure he keeps off of her?”
“Not likely. He’s just waiting for an excuse to hit her, and if he starts I’m not sure he’d make himself stop. You remember Dill?”
“Yes, I remember,” Javi replied grimly. Dill had worked in the lab, and he’d always been a bit slow, and was an easy target for the more bullying sligs, sligs like Reg. One day, a couple of years back, long before Anni had come into their lives, a pair of them had decided to push him around and things had escalated and he’d been killed. It hadn’t been pretty to see a mudokon who’d been beaten to death, and with his body sprawled out in the cafeteria one morning it was hard to not see him. Emlech had been furious at the sligs, but it hadn’t brought him back.
Reg seemed to be holding his temper well however, and when a couple more weeks passed without anyone getting hurt Dean began to relax a little, though Kix was still uncomfortable. Reg still looked close to boiling over but the guys began to think that he was able to control himself. Sure he might not save a dying mudokon, but on the other hand a lot of sligs wouldn’t if they weren’t pushed. That didn’t mean he’d go around killing them.
But despite Reg’s endurance, Kix’s suspicions wouldn’t go away, and she did all she could to make sure Anni was safe.
So she was watching on the day Reg was pushed too far.
It had been a big night for some of the sligs (namely Reg, Bela and Bunny) who had kept the rest of the workers in the factory up until the not-so-early hours, moving drunkenly around the factory until Seven had gone and yelled at them for a good long time. Pounding headaches accompanied Reg and Bunny as they stumbled around the factory the next morning, unaware that Kix was following them from a safe distance. She was supposed to be cleaning but seeing Reg in such an irritable mood made her think him worth watching. Anni on the other hand was alone in the warehouse when the sligs went in. She was sat on a crate, gazing into space. This proved to be unfortunate.
“What do you think you’re doing, mud? You aren’t paid to sit around.” Reg grumbled as he stalked through the door.
She rolled her eyes at him, unintentionally patronising, “The train’s not coming for like another half an hour, so there’s no point sending the boxes over to the station now, is there?”
Reg glared. Kix slipped through the door and ducked into a shadow to watch, and then, unexpectedly, Bunny came and leant against the wall beside her, unaware of her and looking grouchy.
“Don’t you talk to me like that, mud!”
Anni’s patience was also running thin after all of these weeks so she asked grumpily, “How would you like me to talk to you?”
“I said SHUT UP!”
“Ouch, watch it, Reg!” Bunny snapped, delicately nursing his hangover.
“Watch it yourself,” He snapped back.
“Yeah, Reg, watch what you’re doing or you’ll get in trouble,” Anni said cheekily. It was the last straw.
“I said get to work!”
“Ugh,” Anni said with an impatient toss of the head, “Silly boy.”
With a roar, Reg spun round and smacked her in the side of the head with his gun. The force lifted her off of the crate she was sitting on and threw her to the ground. From her hiding place, Kix screamed in rage and fear and leapt up, faster than Bunny could even think to react and crashed into Reg. He yelled as he was thrown to the floor and a moment later Kix was sitting on his legs, punching every part of him within reach. Too dazed to react properly, he feebly tried to ward her off until she suddenly froze.
Bunny had his gun pressed against the back of her neck, “Stand up slowly,” He hissed viciously.
Reg however took advantage of her moment of distraction and threw a punch up and struck her on the side of the head. She cried out as she was thrown aside and a moment later he was on top of her, hitting her in the face with the butt of his gun, over and over. Bunny tried to grab him, “Reg, you’re gonna get yourself shot!” But the other slig ignored him, until there was an enormous bang over by the door.
Kix’s behaviour had not bee exactly normal over the last few weeks, and it hadn’t escaped the attention of those who bothered to look. Expert had noticed her sneaking away from her work every so often, which was strange for the mudokon girl, who was usually a very diligent worker. So when he noticed that she had left her post that day he had decided to see what it was all about and try and find her. He had passed by the warehouse a few moments ago, seeing only Reg, Bunny and Anni in there, but when he heard Kix’s scream he had come running back.
Reg looked up at the irate big-bro framed in the doorway, the next step in the Rupture Farms food chain, and a rabbit-in-headlights expression appeared on his face. Expert’s chest was heaving; he was shaking with rage, his gun gripped so tightly in his hands Reg was half convinced that he would leave dents in the metal. Expert pointed out of the doorway and heaved three words, “You… Out… Now.”
Reg ran for it. Bunny followed.
Expert ignored Anni completely, though he had noticed her lying there, and ran to Kix’s side. She looked at him, trembling, blood trickling from the side of her mouth, “Kix, can you hear me?”
She pushed herself up shakily and looked up at him, “I think I might be in trouble,” She whispered.
* * *
Expert had promised to stop Reg from hurting her, “If he comes near you again, I’ll beat his brains against a wall,” And stormed off to tell him so. Kix sat on a crate, slowly recovering herself as a huge bruise flourished under her right eye. When her pulse had stopped racing, she pushed herself to her feet and looked around, vaguely surprised to see that the warehouse was no different to how it had been a few moments ago. She felt like the world was collapsing; she’d attacked a slig! She could hardly believe she was still alive! She expected Seven to burst in at any moment and escort her away, and of all the sligs, Reg, the one most likely to do all he could to see her killed! She had to catch her breath again. Anni was already working, pushing and pulling crates into the chute that would carry them to the train station. “Anni?”
Anni ignored her.
She paused, steeled herself and pushed herself straight up. She walked to the door but glanced back at the other girl, “I’m going now.”
Anni shrugged a shoulder, as if to brush her off.
“Are you ok? Did he hurt you?”
“No.”
Her shortness made Kix uneasy; what could be wrong? “I’m sorry I didn’t make sure you were ok sooner; I should have done.”
Again that shrug, as if to push her away. This time Anni spoke though, “You shouldn’t have hit him.”
A pained expression crossed Kix’s face, “I know. But Expert thinks it’ll be ok, because he hit you first, and-”
“Ugh, is that all you care about?” Anni yelled, “Just what happens to you? You shouldn’t have hit him! Just because he hit me first does that mean it’s ok to hurt people?!”
Kix stared in amazement, “You think I should have sat there and let him beat you up?” She asked incredulously, “Anni, that’s crazy!”
“Oh, you think I’m crazy!” Anni cried scornfully.
“No! I-”
“What were you doing in here anyway, spying on me?”
“Anni, I wanted to make sure you were-”
“Ugh, I’m sick of you Kix!” Anni shrieked and ran away into the warehouse, leaving Kix standing in the doorway speechlessly frozen in place.
* * *
Kix tried to talk to Anni again later, but the girl yelled at her and ran away. She couldn’t understand why Anni was acting like this! She tried speaking to Javi and Dean about it but they wouldn’t talk about Anni with her, looking as if they wanted to explain but couldn’t let themselves. Though they tried to stay friendly with Kix, she still felt pushed away by them, and was soon as lonely as she had been before they had come, after Bud had died.
It was made worse by Anni; Reg had stopped following her everywhere, which meant she was able to go and see her pet almost every evening and she way almost buoyant with happiness now, back to her old self, except every time Kix tried to approach her, when she would be treated to a glare so hateful that it was almost frightening on the young girl’s face. Kix was crying herself to sleep again.
And it was made so much worse by Reg, because she hardly ever saw him. This ought to have been an improvement, an effect of Expert’s protection, but it was more frightening. It was like he disappeared for most of the time, and she caught herself wondering what he was plotting. Paranoia was driving her crazy! But she knew he was the sort of person to hold a grudge, and Odd, he had a huge reason to hold one against her now!
Expert, also, seemed to be avoiding her now. Perhaps she was just expecting to see more of him, but it seemed to her that he came and stood by her while she worked hardly ever now. Maybe he was trying to protect his reputation with the other sligs, or perhaps he felt that now he’d promised to help her he didn’t owe her anything anymore. And every time she passed Bunny in a corridor or in the cafeteria he shot her an evil glare.
After a few weeks she decided she had to try and talk to Dean, to make him help her with Anni, and they had sat in the cafeteria one evening after work and talked, but he still wouldn’t help her with Anni. He was still guarded and closed and eventually he left (perhaps just to go to bed, but she couldn’t stop herself from thinking that he just wanted to get away from her) and went upstairs, leaving her sitting there feeling miserable. Half an hour passed before she got up and walked though the dark corridors towards the main lift shaft. She was approaching it when she heard a buzz of mechanical legs, caught sight of red lights flashing towards her out of the darkness and then something hit her on the side of the head, hard and heavy, and she was thrown back against a wall. Before she could react she was hit in the side of the head again and was knocked to the floor, screaming.
“Shut that up!” Yelled Reg’s voice from above her and he swung at her head again. She pulled herself aside and his gun struck the floor an inch in front of her face. She tried to crawl away but another blow fell and struck her on the shoulder and she fell with a yell; another blow hit the same shoulder and there was a loud
pop and then she really screamed as her left arm fell limp. Something hard and cold, perhaps the gun or perhaps his metal foot, struck her in the side, rolled her onto her back and another blow hit her in the stomach, forcing the breath out of her and shooting coils of numb pain throughout her body. She was struck in the chest and ribs cracked, then again, and again, her face, her chest, and the number of blows ran together as they rained down on her.
And suddenly it stopped, though she could hear laboured breathing, scuffling, grunting, whirring mechanics and she rolled onto her side, tried to curl up but lances of pain went through her chest. She was sticky all over with blood. She heard a voice above her, angry and unfamiliar, “Go and wait outside the Boss’s office RIGHT NOW! Or I’ll tell Expert about this and he can deal with you!” A whir of slig pants, a crackle of a radio, “Bela, Nick, I need you both to come to the bottom of the main lift shaft. I know it’s late, just come now! Tell me you’re not drinking!”
Then the slig bent over her – she could see the eyes of his mask glowing over her in the darkness, and he spoke, and she realised it was Seven; she’d never heard him lose his temper before, “Kix, can you hear me? Kix!”
She wanted to answer, but the shadows were closing in around her.
* * *
Dean and Anni were waiting outside the mudokon bunks when Javi approached, “Will she be ok?” Dean asked instantly.
Javi nodded, “I think so. Nine broken ribs and a dislocated shoulder – I helped Nick pop that back in – and the rest’s not serious. That slig’s good at first aid, whatever else he is. Lucky it’s not worse, or they’d be calling in a vykker to sort her out.” Anni’s jaw clenched.
Nearly an hour ago, Nick had burst into the mudokon bunks and told Javi he needed him. Javi had been reluctant to go, but Nick had been insistent. It turned out he’d wanted his medical skills (from treating animals, but fortunately he’d been able to apply what he knew about setting bones to Kix) and Javi had done all he could to help. It had taken another half an hour for the news to leak to the mudokons that Kix had been beaten up by a slig and Dean and Anni had immediately come out to wait for news.
“Was it Reg?” Dean asked.
Javi shrugged, but nodded, “I don’t know for certain, but it looks like it. I know Reg is in the boss’s office right now,” He grinned savagely.
Dean leant back against the wall, “We’ll see how loyal to his non-violence rule Arnie is then, won’t we?”
“Can we go and see Kix?” Anni asked.
Javi shook his head, “Nick sent me away, and I don’t think he’s going to let anyone else in.” He glanced at Dean, “I think we should go to bed; it’s pretty late.”
It was another hour before Reg emerged from the boss’s office and was met by Bunny, “What happened?”
Reg walked a few feet down the corridor and then punched a wall with his fist. His voice was oddly muffled and ever so slightly hysterical when he answered, “
Brzstrk glukkon fired me! For hitting a mudokon! What the Hell is wrong with this place?! He even called a
grhzzing train to pick me up! He’s not even letting me stay the night!”
Seven emerged from the office then and spotted them, “Reg, we’re gonna go and get your stuff from the bunks. Come on.”
Reg smirked at thin air and followed, leaving Bunny standing there, looking bitter.
It was three hours later that Anni lay silent in her bed, letting Javi and Dean think she was asleep. Then with a skill that only comes with a lifetime of practice she slipped nearly silently out of her bed and out of the room.
Around that time, Reg left the slig bunks with a haversack slung over one shoulder. He stalked alone towards the station where a tiny train had just pulled in to collect him and was passing by the main grinders when an enormous figure strode out of the shadows, blocking his path, “So!” Expert said.
“Expert, leave me alone! I didn’t do anything wrong; any sane glukkon would see that.”
Expert stayed silent.
“What are you Expert, a mud-lover?”
Expert gave a dry laugh, “Not me. But you know what they say; what comes around…”
“Don’t even think it you psycho!”
A huge fist, backed by steroids and a lot of natural muscle struck Reg in the side of the head and he was thrown to the ground. The left side of his mask shut down, leaving him half blind as Expert loomed over him, readying himself for another swing, and then another figure was standing over him, protecting him from Expert. He stared in amazement; it was Anni!
“Leave him alone.”
Expert stared and then yelled, “Are all the muds in this place completely insane!? Kid, this guy beat your friend senseless!”
“I don’t care; that doesn’t mean he deserves to have the same done to him!” Anni yelled, and her voice, though high, was steady and authoritative. Expert could practically feel power glowing from her and he suddenly thought that if the natives got their hands on this girl, the industrials would have a huge problem on their hands.
“Hell Reg, you seem to be a real magnet for the girls don’t you.” Reg would have sworn at him, but didn’t have the courage. Expert sloped off into the darkness of the factory.
Anni glanced over her shoulder at him, light catching her eyes and making them appear redder, and she said coldly, “If Kix doesn’t get better I’ll never forgive you.”
The shadows around her suddenly seemed much deeper and somehow all this chilled Reg more than Expert’s attack; he watched edgily as the little girl walked away, almost prowled away, back towards her bunks. His heart was hammering in his chest. It took him several minutes to remember to move, and then he scuttled to his feet, pressing a hand to his blind eye, and ran to the train station.
A few minutes later he was being carried away in a grubby little train. He watched the factory vanish into the darkness as the train sped down the tracks towards Feeco Depot, where he would spend the next two weeks rifling through copies of the Daily Deception, looking for a job. He would never return to the factory, though in a few years when he heard what had happened there, he would laugh and sneer and brag to his friends that he had seen it coming, and that Arnie and all the rest of them had got what they deserved.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Bud belonged to T-Nex (and was her Historic First Character), but I only reread the end of his appearance in the RPG (went from memory, mostly), and I'm not sure how well I depicted him. I wanted to use his section to increase the feel of the dark and gritty Rupture Farms which is really present when Anni and her friends arrive, particularly in Reg.
Three of the paragraphs in this chapter are the most foreshadowy things I've ever written (yes, one of them was the last one; I'm not saying which the others are

)! This is what you get when you let me read Steven King!
I reread this chapter last week (getting into this proof- reading thing!) and made a fair few edits, and was very pleased with the results!This is also the longest chapter of this story, the first to make it into seven pages in Microsoft Word!
I thought when I wrote it that the scene where Anni and Kix first fall out wouldn't really work, that Anni's anger wouldn't seem logical, but rereading it I was shocked by how successful I found it; it actually came out shockingly dark! Poor Kix!
Oh, I so love the way things close in here, getting tighter and tighter as it progresses. The cast has sort of been stripped away; Nick, Bela and Somi all sort of vanish, tightening the view on the others but these too begin to slip away, Bunny, then Anni, Expert, Javi, Dean until we're left with this really tight view of Kix and the lurking Reg in this dark, shadowy night-time factory where the rest of the action plays out over a couple of hours with this suddenly tiny cast of characters. Things begin to broaden out but then draw tight again. The image of the pecking order of the factory, Kix attacked by Reg, then Reg attacked by Expert, then Expert stopped by...
Definately my favourite chapter of Part 6 so far!
I mostly rewrote two of the last paragraphs of this one last week, and I am so pleased with the result, increasing that sense of fear, that uncanny power and authority that suddenly blooms in Anni.
W@RF readers keep spoilers to yourself! And everyone, reply! Tell me if you found this chapter as intense as I thought it was!
Remember how I said that this Part could be devided into three bits? Well this ends the first one, which was sort of based around Reg and Kix. It's also the end of W@RF 2; next chapter will be based on material from W@RF 3!
So reply! Tell me what you thought! Were you on the edge of your seat or yawning away? What did you think of the bit about Bud (T-nex, you are obliged to answer this question)? What did you think of my characterisation of Reg? Did you think Anni's mood in this chapter seemed convincing?
No new chapter 'til T-nex tells me what she thought of my portrayal of Bud!
