Leru was led with the others into a large service elevator, standing shoulder to shoulder with their armored escorts.She watched the soldier in front of her press a button on the panel and stand, resting his forearm on the butt of his rifle as they descended.
She fidgeted with her cuffs, fingering the loose wire Aurora had severed and reattached with conductive gel -- the cuffs were designed to dynamically increase their electromagnetic force as they were pulled apart, and that wire was what fed the system its extra energy. She pursed her lips, pulled the gel free from the inside of her left cuff, and pressed it firmly to the back of the soldier in front of her.
He looked over his shoulder as her palm pressed against his armor, too crowded to fully turn as she yanked her right fist down to her hip, bumping into the armored front of the soldier behind her. She gritted her teeth as the cuffs fought to rejoin each other; they hummed, internal power supplies draining in increasing volume as the distance between the cuffs remained unchanged.
The soldier in front of her arched backwards, and the one behind barely had time to react as bright blue arches of electricity darted between them, attracted to the carbon in their armor. Leru's palm burned where it touched the back plate, and her shoulders burned with the force of keeping her cuffs apart, but she kept her stance locked as she waited for the cuffs to drain. The soldiers shouted, staccato sounds of startled pain, but they were silenced by the energies running through them. The whole process was eerily silent overall, save for the crackle of electricity jumping between the suits of armor and light fixtures on the walls.
By the time her cuffs ceased fighting to rejoin each other, the room was dark, and any skin that had made contact with the cuffs or the guards' armor tingled and burned. The air smelled of ozone and burnt hair as the armored bodies collapsed against her, and the elevator's lights had ceased to glow.
"Grab their weapons and armor," she commanded as she knelt with the guard's corpse to inspect the clasps and belts on his armor. Once her hands had given her a passable idea of what she was working with, interface outlining whatever she touched in blue. She found the clasps where she'd expected, and began reapplying the plates to herself. "Are anyone's cuffs still functioning?"
"No -- at least mine aren't." Behr's voice sounded through the darkness as she heard the others rummaging around. "What just happened?" thin beams of light drifted upward through the crack between the doors over and over again as the elevator continued to descend.
Her eyes adjusted enough for her interface to outline most of the objects in the room as she finished donning the chest plate, and she moved to help the others.
"Why's this gun got so many damn levers?" Derbish grumbled, "oh, and here's a button."
Leru grabbed his chest plate near the collarbone, pulling his gun into the thin line of light that shone periodically through the doors. "Everybody pay attention. This is a semi-automatic rifle, it's a bit more complicated than the clockwork designs you're used to but it functions fairly similarly." She waited for the light to shine on her hands, then slid the action back and chambered a round. "Pulling this puts the bullet in front of the firing pin. After that, bullets will load one after another automatically. When there are no more bullets, this button by your thumb will eject the magazine." She rotated Derbish's gun to put the button in the light and pushed it, catching the magazine as it fell. "Let it fall, we don't need the empties. Your spares are on your left side, in your belt." She slid the discarded mag into an empty slot on her own belt and pulled a spare from Derbish's "Slide it in where the old one fell out, chamber a fresh bullet-" she pulled the slide again, catching the already chambered bullet as it flew and deftly loading it back into the magazine on her hip. "And resume shooting. Finally, make sure the safety is off." She flicked a switch near the trigger, revealing a small red dot. "You shouldn't need to know anything else for this exercise, so don't touch anything else." she added, noting Derbish's gun was already set to semi-auto and not full-auto.
The elevator jolted weakly, and the light through the door held steady twenty centimeters above the floor. She tapped the two most muscular silhouettes on their chest plates. "Pull the interior doors apart, and wait for my signal to do the same with the exterior doors." She continued organizing the others into the corners behind her as the two larger shapes moved to comply, and finished by kneeling in the middle of the now open space between the cab of the elevator and the exterior doors. The gap between the elevator floor and the base of the exterior doors hardly counted as cover, but at least it would put her lower than anyone waiting outside might expect her to be. She took a deep breath. "Alright, go."
Derbish and Ignus pried the exterior doors apart, Leru's interface fighting to ease her pupils into the relatively harsh light. It didn't take long; the halls beyond were dim and tan, a sepia tinge on the grey metal above. Leru's footsteps sounded strangely flat on the hard floors, without a hint of echo or reverberation.
Leru continued into the hall, aiming at the intersection maybe ten meters down the hall as the others filed out of the elevator behind her. She passed sliding metal doors, counting them as she went to construct a map in her interface as they approached the T-shaped bend. She looked over her shoulder and found Derbish watching her expectantly. She felt his trust without even needing to reach out, his wide, staring eyes locked to the back of her head.
She locked her face in a professional scowl as she met his gaze, pointed two fingers at her eyes, then pointed to the right side of the T-shaped intersection.
His eyes narrowed and he nodded, mouth pressing up under his ridiculous mustache as he readied his rifle and moved where she commanded. The orange prison jumpsuit they'd all been fitted with wadded up under the pauldrons of his armor, tightening around his thick arms. The armor on his shins tapped against the bottom of his chestplate as he walked, but he did his best to silence his steps, walking heel-to-toe.
Leru smirked as she joined him at the opposite corner, covering it again as she turned to meet Derbish's gaze. They nodded to each other, then rounded their corners -- Leru found another sepia-grey hallway, longer than the first and intersected several times.
"Nothin' on this side," Derbish muttered behind her.
She glanced his way to see more of the same, then waved for the others to follow her. She led them to the first intersection and turned left once again, interface map updating as she went. She continued down that hall to the next intersection and turned left, Derbish checking the opposite corner. She checked her map as she neared the next intersection -- they'd taken three ninety-degree left turns so far, which should place them back at the first hall they entered into.
Her map agreed, except it showed them intersecting the elevator shaft, the image in her eye flickering as it fought to render both the hall and the elevator in the same place. She closed and reopened the map, heart beginning to beat harder as it displayed the same illogical image. She turned left again.
"Wait, aren't we going in circles?" Behr called from the back.
Leru continued forward, faster than their initial pace, "We're about to find out." She couldn't think of a worse place to have an interface malfunction -- these things were degenerative, if she didn't get it taken care of soon she could be permanently damaged. She turned left one final time, slowing to a stop halfway between intersections. "What…"
"Okay, why are we back here now?" Like their footsteps, Behr's voice had no reverb, despite his raised volume.
Derbish placed a hand on her shoulder. "Is everything alright? You know, all things considered."
Leru's interface map drew a perfect square, placing them right where they'd been when they left the elevator.
"Guys," Jenni walked up to the wall next to Leru and placed her palm against it. "Where'd the -lift- go?"