Clusterfrag

Tyros flexes his muscles, trying to rip a limb free of its constraints. Through his muffled hood, "Get this damn good off me and we'll see whose puppet this little fragged is!". After a moment's hesitation, he adds, "How do we know this reality is real and not a clever fake?..."

The burly troll heaves against the manacles, but the reinforced carbon-steel holds fast.

The monk flashes an empty smile at Max.

"Humor in the face of certain demise, how typically elven."

He turns to the hooded Tyros.

"I shouldn't think it would matter at this juncture."

A syringe spits a tiny spout of something as the monk primes a hypodermic needle.

Doc cocks his head to the side as if listening to someone.

He opens the comm to Rawhide.

< Rawhide, your manacles are about to open. When they do, run over to Tyros, and pull that damn mask off him. After that, well, you know what do to. >

Max grunts affirmatively,

"Just wait til' I get out of these restraints and get my hands on you, pal. I'll show you what else is so typically elven."

Max Continues on in sing-song fashion,

"These hands are made for chokin', and that's just what they'll do. One of these I'll choke the fraggin' life right outta' you."

The monk approaches Max and pinches one of the elf's veins.

"I think I'll start with you."

There's a virtually imperceptible *click* as the manacles securing Rawhide to his gurney unfasten. The Dwarf somewhat unsteadily slides out of the contraption and creeps towards the man about to administer something imaginably lethal to his teammate.
Rawhide sneaks undetected directly behind the monk and swings both arms at the back of the monk's head.
The dwarf's bone lacing adds a much needed heft to his blow, which snaps the monk's neck like a twig.

Doc tries to pump his fist in the air, but the manacles jerk his hand back down.

"Get us out of these things!" He says to Rawhide.

Max grins at Rawhide,

"Next time, buddy.. you get to attract the attention of the lethal injection wielding weirdo while I slip up behind him and knock his block off!"

Rawhide grins. "Deal!"

After a moment of search, he locates a button on the side of the gurney and releases manacles, one by one.

Max nimbly climbs down from the gurney and swiftly kicks the dead monk in the ribs before setting to the task of searching for their gear.

Doc stumbles off the gurney, and the room briefly spins.
He stumbles over to the table, and locates the needle cap for the syringe, before turning to the dead monk.

"I'll be taking that," He says to the corpse, picking up the syringe, and capping it.

Opening a comm channel, Doc says

< Milly, you there? >

Max asks generally to the team,

"So, any theories on where we are or who arranged this?"

Doc thinks,

"The simulations seemed to have a hard-on for Bell. Renraku too, now that I think about it."

Max shakes his head as he continues to search,

"Eh, the simulation knew things about us that nobody outside would necessarily know. Seems to me like the delusions were initiated by whatever that monk was doing to us, but the scenarios were filled in by our own brains."

Doc scratches his head.

< Did we return the fifth canister? My memories are a bit jumbled right now. >

Max comms back,

<Milly! Thank frag, indeed! Where are we? Did you get the canister??>

<You don't remember? When you guys returned the fifth canister, it caused a reaction when in proximity with the other four. There was this sort of pulse--like an EMP field. It must have been some sort of beacon for the order too, because they came and retrieved the canisters... and you. Lo's men only managed to spirit us away during the fight, there was no chance of getting to you. From what we can tell, the order has reconstituted Deus and you're being held in some kind of facility. When the EMP hit me, it must have been carrying some type of frequency because I was immediately able to lock on to Deus' signature. I don't know where you're being held, but I can talk to the system--for now. It's the most advanced network I've ever seen. I've had to use every trick I know just to get this far.>

Milly takes a deep breath, clearly exhausted.

<I don't know how much time I have. If you find a sub-matrix base station, you may be able to hack an outside line and I'd have exponentially more access to help you. I have an inkling where your gear might be stashed. It's a catch 22--if you choose to get your gear first, I won't be able to tell you what you're up against. However, if you want to access the base station, you'll need to do so without gear. Better make a decision fast.>

Doc frowns.

"Fffffrag... Well, we now know who the monk was talking to. I said we should have thought twice about actually returning the fifth canister." Doc says, with a hint of self-righteousness.

< Okay, this is probably a bad idea, and famous last words to boot, but what if we split up? Max and I head to the base station, and Tyros and Rawhide grab everyone's gear? >

Max scratches his head, flailing slightly as he drops his hand back to his side and releases and exasperated,

"Well drek."

Jumping on the comm channel, Max suggests,

<Any idea what the base's defenses or personnel are like, Milly? Perhaps Tyros can simply go invisible and access the base station while Rawhide, Doc, and I go get our gear. Failing that, I'd say if we don't choose to split up, it's more important to get to the station first. Tyros will be as potent as ever, and Rawhide and I can both handle ourselves in a fight. That only leaves Doc to stand there looking pretty.>

Doc sniffs indignantly,

"Hey, I'm the only one who can actually access and hack the damn thing. Unless you were planning on choking it into submission?"

Max looks at Doc with some irritation, his eyes flaring wild and unevenly as he nods and says,

"SOUNDS LIKE A PLAN."

Returning to the seriousness of the moment, the elf suggests,

<Alright. We can't all stand around holding our dicks, here. Doc and I will head for the station-- Tyros and Rawhide, think you guys can handle grabbing the gear on your own? We stay in constant contact. If we get cut off from one another, we meet back here in twenty minutes. Sound like a plan?>

Rawhide yanks the mage-mask off Tyros.

"Come on big fella, get that brain 'o yours warmed up. We got cultists to zap."

Max nods,

"Constant communication, guys!"

The elf watches the two of his teammates who are most comically mismatched when seen in silhouette saunter off down the hallway. Turning then to Doc, Max asks,

"Shall we?"

The pair begin to move in the other direction from Rawhide and Tyros when a thought seems to strike Max ominously from some other place: 'Will this be the last time I see those two?' Max shakes the thought from his mind like cobwebs and turns his consideration to other matters: 'Do I still have several tabs of bliss rattling around in my skin pocket?'

<The sub-matrix base station will likely be connected to the rest of the facility with a large bundle of optical cables. Unless this facility was previously outfitted, there should be a pretty obvious string of these. If you follow them, they'll inevitably lead to your destination.>

The teams' eyes are drawn to the large bundle of cable disappearing into a duct in the wall. It appears just large enough to accommodate a person--no doubt how it was run in the first place.

Doc grips the grating over the duct, and pulls it open.

"I've always wanted to do this," he says, crouching down and stepping inside.

Max grins sardonically,

"I had an uncle who was an HVAC man, and he told me enough stories that I've never wanted to go crawling around in places like this. People do some weird drek in the dark, man."

With that said, Max climbs in after Doc.

Glad to still have his cyber and bioware, doc activates his low=light and thermal vision. The fuzziness of the weak thermal signatures creates a ghostly overlay on top of the crisper starlight vision.

Following the cables, he crawls deeper into the bowels of the building.

Crawling along after Doc, Max pipes up,

"Any chance of picking up the pace? I'm not too keen on confined spaces like this-- always makes me think of being buried alive, you know?"

Doc lets out a chuckle.

"You? You're claustrophobic? I had no idea. Max, shadowrunner, killer, and scared of bugs and confined spaces."

In the darkness and out of Doc's line of sight, Max shakes his head anyway,

"No. Claustrophobic is too far. I'm not really afraid here, I just don't much like it. It's like how you can objectively recognize that a man is attractive without being attracted to him yourself. And everybody's afraid of some stuff."

Max feels a minor pang of shame at having his fears and anxiety drawn out in such a manner.

"Fair enough, fair enough," Doc replies.

"You know what gets to me? House flies. I know, right? It was, I want to say, about ten years ago. I was running a little med tent in a forward operating base near the Tir Tairngire disputed zone. Things had been quiet lately, but there had been plenty of smaller skirmishes. Anyway, I'm sitting there pretty much with my thumb up my ass, since we hadn't been getting many casualties coming through, and this soldier comes limping down the road into the base. The kid was stumbling and clutching his stomach, and completely delirious. Seems he caught a bit of shrapnel from a frag mine a few kilometers out.

"Now, the wound itself wasn't too bad, I've treated much worse. Hell, I dug out four monofilament wires from a guy's abdomen once. He was nearly chopped in half.

"But after some back and forth, I finally get this guy to take his hand away from his stomach, and about a thousand maggots come spilling out. The entire wound was a writhing mass of white grubs, almost filling it in. One nurse seemed fascinated by it, while the other ran outside the tent to throw up. But ever since then, after seeing what those little fuckers can do to an open wound, I've hated flies with a passion. Can't stand them."

Max remains quiet for a long while as the pair continues to crawl. After the protracted silence, Max finally responds,

"For a guy who hates flies and maggots, you sure create a lot of bodies."

In the darkness of the duct, Doc's expression goes blank. A pang of regret runs through him.

"Yeah, well, when you're part of a barely trained, rag-tag militia of a tiny nation-state that's being assaulted from all sides, 'do no harm' goes out the window pretty quickly..."