MARKI5578 Part 11

On my way to work in the morning I noticed that I had messages from C6372N. They were asking if we could catch up after our work was done. Another message was trying to reassure me that I was not to blame for the previous night. I had not approached them. It was they who got me involved in everything. It was the day before the next meeting when I responded.

That day at work, I noticed the load we had was composed of more delicate materials. The gatherers that were working that day must have decided to dig straight down instead of peeling off the surface. There were a lot of organic materials and something white. It was a large bowl with a hole in it. It had been cracked when they threw it inside the building where things were sorted. It seemed familiar to me.

There were also broken parts to walls that were laying in a kind of stack in the middle of the room. I recognized the patterns that they were covered in and noticed the large amount of broken glass. I didn't know if it was by coincidence or not, but what I was seeing had been the ruins I fell in when the religious mechanicals had chased me into the scrap field. I saw the large tub and strange seat broken up among the rest of the scrap. I continued cataloging. There had been material similar to this in the past, but I didn't know what it looked like untouched until the moment of recognition.

Everything that I saw that night was filtered through the room and written down by my coworker and me. Then another amount from the scrap field was delivered. I imagined that the new stuff must have been below those rooms. There were more walls and strange objects. I recognized the thin rectangular objects as frames that used to hold images. They were empty now. The idea that the exact place I had fallen into was being focused on was an unsettling one.

Near the end of the work day, I noticed something that was more bizarre than the familiar walls. There was something tangled into itself, but broken apart. At first I mistook it for sticks of the organic fibrous material, but it was definitely something else.

I examined it more and wondered if this was a mechanical that had not woken up like I had. There were parts of destroyed mechanicals that I noticed in the past, but there had never been a complete body like mine. The idea went out of my head when I used a crane to pull it up. The material it was made out of snapped and I could see that there was a hardened organic glue that was holding it together.

I laid it back down and tried to ignore it. I saved the recording of what I had seen to examine later and marked it in my list as an unknown organic. A lot of things were being placed in that category that day.

When I had escaped my work and walked toward my chamber, I replied to the giant. I knew they could stop their duties at any time and was happy to have a little time to myself before their reply. I stopped by the canvas tent in the white section of the city that was hiding the damage from the terrorist attack. I could see my chamber, but did not consider visiting it. I wondered why the damage had been left untouched. There was no reasoning behind it that made sense to me. Tower must have put more energy into their search and didn't want to focus on reconstruction.

I saw two of the quadrupeds watching me and started walking again. They walked to the spot I was standing and laid on the ground. I thought it was strange that they were not constantly guarding those areas. I did manage to get a better look at them before I walked out of view.

Their legs were thin and looked like they would be capable of very high speeds. Their bodies were basically a cylinder with three blocks protruding from them. Their 'head' and 'tail' were both black dome cameras. They had dome cameras on each side as well. I couldn't figure out what the strange blocks on their backs were for. Possibly extra batteries.

Most of those mechanicals were a plain white color, but one of the two that sat in my previous spot was a blackish blue color. They had a white spot glowing on their sides and were a different model than the rest I had seen.

C6372N met me on the same blue roof where we met before. They repeated the hand gesture I was forced to participate in as a greeting.

When they let my hand go I said, “I have interesting news.”

“What is it?”

I explained how my job had gone that day and the things that were dug up.

“Hm,” they processed the information I had given them. “That is very specific.”

“I know. The place we fell was on the other end of the field than I thought we were sorting.”

“If anybody noticed that hole, I'm sure Tower has done everything they can to destroy what was down there.”

I had been looking down to the ground, but turned to look at them. “Because there is evidence of the past civilization?” I asked.

“Of course.”

“I saw something else that was weird,” I said. Then I sent them all of the images I had saved of the strange organic mechanical. They didn't seem very happy about it. “What do you think it is?”

“I don't know. We must show YT119U tomorrow. I will do my own research until then.”

We stared at the city below us without saying anything. I realized at some point that they were examining the images I gave them. Eventually we parted and I went back to my chamber, noticing that the quadrupeds had not moved from their spot.

The next evening I went directly to my chamber after work and waited until it was time for the meeting. I left a little early like I had for the first meeting. If anything, the leader seemed to like the initiative.

I met B34I9 at the edge of the blacked out zone and we walked to the room together. They informed me that they had taken the liberty of charging already and it wouldn't effect my time like it had before. We didn't talk again until we had the door closed behind us.

Our leader came up to me put their hands on my shoulders. They were looking at my discolored patch. “I am very glad we got to you in time,” they said, raising their head to look at my face.

“What?” I asked, confused.

“We have been looking at the images you shared from the recycling factory. Do you know what it is that you helped us find? Our friends took plenty of pictures from the night they captured you down there, beneath the scrap field, but what you found... It's the best evidence we've ever had. Thank you for being diligent.”

They said things as if they were excited, but I could sense a kind of fear coming from them. The other two looked at us, having no proper reaction the leader's actions regarding me. The giant seemed more pleased than upset, but the small blue mechanical was not liking the attention I was receiving.

I was about to ask what I was being thanked for, but there came a sound from outside the door. We all froze and turned off all of the lights. We dared not move. I knew it had only been a few minutes since we heard the sound, but the anticipation warped my sense of time into being ten times as long.

The sound repeated itself, only louder. Then we heard a thud. I could not tell if it was a door being slammed shut or being thrown off it's hinges. The blackness made thinking impossible. Then the sound of something walking passed in front of the door. There was a small amount of light coming from the crack beneath it. I stopped as many processes as I could. I had no idea if it made a difference, but my full attention was on the thing in the hallway. Every now and then there was the sound of scraping, until everything faded away.

The leader turned on a small light. Dim, but enough to see each other. They messaged all of us and told us to keep quiet and follow them. They opened the door without a sound and crept up the stairs to the exit. There was no evidence of our presence left in the room. B34I9 carried the lantern but kept it turned off.

We made it to the door successfully and ran to the next building, hiding behind it. We watched YT119U for more instructions. They seemed lost and led us between buildings. We were all incredibly silent as we went farther into that dead part of the city. Eventually we entered one of the buildings.

We stopped in another room. This one was not empty and had furniture. Our leader and their hand sat on a cloth covered piece of metal. It was elevated off of the ground by legs. It reminded me of the large object I saw beneath the scrap field, only less deteriorated.

“Who was followed?” Their tone was accusatory. The two of us that still charged in the city waved our hands. We hadn't noticed being followed. “Either one of you were followed or Tower figured out our hiding place another way.”

“What do you want us to do?” C6372N asked.

“We have to keep an eye on them while they look for us,” they answered.

“That won't be difficult,” came a new voice. The door behind us shuttered under the pressure that was being applied to it. The handle fell off with ease and a quadruped appeared as they pushed the door out of their way.