System Overclocked 2 -ch 3- (Patreon)

Wrench didn’t know how to feel.

Joy had been grateful to him. To the point that it made him feel incredibly awkward. She held him in a regard that made him feel extremely guilty.

He hadn’t been there to save her.

If he’d known it was happening, he couldn’t even say for certain that he’d have rushed off to help her. Especially if he believed Seventh and Stripe were in an unknown situation.

In the end, Stripe had escorted Joy back to her room, then came back. The young woman hadn’t wanted to leave but ultimately had been convinced to do so.

Mostly because an Admini had dropped by and let Wrench know he had a meeting with the leading Fixer. The Admini had also dropped by to make sure that Joy was well and that she was alright.

Though the Admini had looked to Wrench several times while speaking to Joy. As if making sure he saw that they were taking care of Joy. That she was getting what she’d previously asked for, which had been originally declined, was now approved.

Shaking his head, Wrench had to really consider what the hell was going on here.

The Admini didn’t seem like they were entirely sure of how much power they had. If he didn’t miss the signs based on how they were acting so far, they were either hostage to the Lower Parts inhabitants, or under the control of the Fixers.

One or the other was putting pressure on the Admini and Wrench needed to figure out who it was. Depending on who actually held power,

Until he was gone from this hell-hole, Wrench was going to protect himself and his Pen. If that ended up being taking Stripe and Seventh into the Ducts, he’d do that. There was little anyone could do to stop him once he got a hold of the systems.

Shifting his tool bag on his shoulder, Wrench was wondering how long it would take before someone came to open the Ducts for him. Whoever he was supposed to meet was already late.

Looking around, he saw a number of people nearby, but no one within earshot of him. In fact, he could tell that quite a few people were watching him.

Most especially the Schools.

“Whatever,” he growled, put his tools down and looked to the Ducts entrance.

There was no camera here, nor did there seem to be a great deal of security. If anything, this had the look of a Duct that didn’t have proper maintenance. Nor was it installed correctly.

“Someone really frickin’ lazy did this,” he growled, looking at the Duct door. The gap at the latch point was rather wide. When he leaned in he could actually see the latch and where the bolt should be. The gap, even with the molding of the frame trying to protect it, was far too large.

So much so that through the gap he could see the bolt wasn’t thrown.

It left him feeling stupefied.

He could even see faint light beyond it from the interior Duct lights.

Pushing a fingertip up against the metal frame, he found that it felt very solid. Extremely so. There was nothing wrong with the frame and it seemed fine.

Moving his hand to the side he lightly tapped at the wall around the frame. It sounded quite solid and heavy.

“The building is fine. It’s the right material and constructions,” he mused, then looked back to the heavy wooden door. There was a color mismatch between the door and the frame. As if a different paint at a different time was used.

“Door isn’t the original. Was hung fine but it’s not the right size to fit perfectly. That or someone sanded it down for some reason and screwed it all up,” Wrench complained. This was extremely sloppy work on something that protected the Fixers from the outside world. “Sloppy and arrogant. And since they’re not coming to let me in, I’ll let myself in. Maybe the Admini will have a few more corpses to deal with, too.

“Oh, I could tear out one of their implants and use it as an access point. That’d work. Well, they can just make me an mechanical access badge if they don’t want me tearing out an implant.”

Wrench mentioned the last part while touching the card reader bolted onto the frame. It felt quite solid and didn’t shift at him pulling at it.

Reaching into his tool bag he pulled out several small slips of met-ape and a pair of metal cutting snips. It never hurt to have blank met-ape on hand for various needs.

In this case, he’d use it to shim the latch. He quickly cut it into a small card shape rather than the full size page. He put the remainder back into his bag as well as his snips.

Holding the card he stuffed it into the locking mechanism. Wiggling it around and pushing it up into the latch he felt it inching away.

Grabbing the handle, he pushed against it, then pulled. Moving the door around in it’s loose-state.

The latch popped open and the door swung inward. Leaving Wrench with an easy route into the Ducts that no one was expecting.

Stepping inside he looked to the inner-side of the door. He didn’t see any magnetic security devices that would notify the system of someone entering.

“So damn sloppy. What the fuck. No security, no awareness, nothing,” Wrench grumbled. He realized in this moment he’d be better off going back and getting Seventh and Stripe. If the security was this bad in the Ducts, he’d need help and he wouldn’t be able to rely on the old-timers.

Slapping a piece of tape on the latch, he went back to his Pen. Seventh and Stripe were eager to join him.

Unfortunately, Joy had caught him in the hall as soon as he’d re-entered. As if she’d been waiting for the outter door to their building to open.

Unable to refuse her, given his past relationship with her, he allowed her to come along. There wasn’t an actual reason to say no given he knew her personality.

Pain had spread herself thin. Let anyone who wanted a go at her to have it, as long as they played her games. Her games and a rather ugly test-scenario to see if they could handle her.

While her mind hadn’t been right, her loyalty outside the bedroom had been unquestionable. The look he saw in her eyes when she asked to join him had a similar determination that he’d seen many times before.

Walking the three women back to the Ducts door he shoved it open. There was no sense in making a show of waiting after he’d already confirmed he could open the door.

Seventh, Stripe, and Joy all filed in.

“This is nowhere near as nice as ours,” Stripe muttered, looking around distastefully at the surroundings. “It even smells worse than the outside.”

“Yeah, they’re not very good Fixers. Might just be better off killing them all and filter dumping them,” Wrench admitted. He put his tool bag down near the door. Snatching off the tape he looked at the frame as well as the door.

There was nothing he could do to fix the fit of it. Realistically speaking it needed to be replaced. Replaced and hung correctly and making sure it was snug.

“Stripe, a few notes if you don’t mind,” he muttered, falling back into how they used to talk about maintenance.

“Ready,” Stripe answered, peering into the long hallway in front of them. Then Seventh took the broken Pipe-Wrench out of her roughly-made belt and it’s loop, then went to the front of their group.

“Door: remake, rehang, longer screws, security sensor,” he listed off.

“Got it,” Stripe confirmed after a moment. She had a memory that was frighteningly accurate compared to him. There was no sense in him writing things down if Stripe just had a better memory than he did.

Throwing the bolt on the door Wrench then dropped the bar in place, too. There was no sense in being stupid about this. He’d need to find any other entrance into the Ducts and make sure it was secured.

“No placards,” Seventh grumbled as she continued to advance down the hall. “Am I allowed to crush heads?”

“Goodie… I don’t know where she got the Hab, but it’s amazing,” Wrench remarked and then picked up his tool bag. He fell in behind Seventh after withdrawing a monkey-wrench from his bag. “I’d prefer we didn’t kill them just yet. They might be helpful. If they do something stupid, try to make it so they stop. Preferably with their body intact and their life still theirs.”

Seventh grunted at that. He didn’t miss the look of disregard to his answer. She didn’t care one way or the other if they lived or died he assumed.

Not that he could blame her.

Unfortunately Hume were truly in a survival of the fittest battle with themselves more often than not. Tongsta could encourage or discourage that, but it didn’t truly eliminate it.

He was glad Seventh had asked though. It was good to get that out of the way now since it was likely they’d be in conflict with the Fixers. They’d already left him standing at the door past their meeting time.

As well as the fact that between the two of them, there wasn’t much that could give them a problem in such an enclosed space.

They reached the end of the hall and found it turned. Along it were a number of doors. The layout made more sense now.

The Ducts likely ran along an outside Hab wall which meant there was no-way to open anything to the left. That put all doors to the right or in a line.

“No placards again,” hissed Seventh walking up to the first door. She tried it with her right hand. She opened it and went inside quickly.

Wrench stood at the entrance and dropped his tool-bag there. He was looking at the other doors and the hall.

“Ah! What’re-how-you-” the words were cut off by deep thud followed by a moan.

“We’re okay in here. I just slugged him in the guts,” Seventh called. “Hey, anyone else in the Ducts? Use your hand to show me how many with your fingers. They nearby?”

Wrench had entered by this point and saw the man was bright red in the face. One arm was around his guts and the other was pointing at the wall to the right.

“Three more, next door,” Seventh summarized. She got a nod from the white haired older man at that. “If you’re lying, I’ll come back and kill you. The only Fixer we need is Wrench. Your life is no longer valuable.”

The man nodded his head quickly, his brown eyes wide and shocked.

Seventh left the room, her dress trailing along behind her as she went.

Joy and Stripe had entered the room now.

“Looks like a control room. No cameras though. No security systems at all. This is all just readouts for the system,” Wrench explained, leaning over to look at the bank of monitors the man had been seated at. “Looks like the atmosphere, water, and filter are all alright. Nothing out of the ordinary. I don’t like the surplus numbers given our population count but that’s not completely within our control.”

Wrench reached down and pulled the man who was still trying to catch his breath closer to the monitors. There was a beep as it recognized him and the keyboard flickered to life.

Looking to a screen that had an old-style command prompt system he began putting in requests to see more information. It wouldn’t take him that long to figure out where resources were going, who was requesting it, and what all was being done in regards to maintenance and work.

What he found was that there was no work being done at all.

The number of work orders was in the thousands and a great many of them were dated from months previous. Which made sense since the Admini seemed pleased that he was a Fixer.

Doubly so when they saw me take action.

They’re thinking I’ll just step in, take control, and maybe start moving things around.

Well… some of that will come true. Some of that.

Though almost all of these requests are from Admini or people in the Upper Parts. Not very many from the Lower Parts. Makes me think the Lower Parts don’t submit any, or they actually get them resolved.

Why would that be, I wonder.

“You in charge?” Wrench demanded looking at the man at his feet. He was perhaps in his early sixties with full white hair and a beard to match it. He was wheezing hard.

All he managed to do was nod his head fractionally.

“You are? Great. This makes it all that much easier. You were supposed to meet me at the door as a new Fixer. Looks like you were stalling. I can’t think of a reason other than power dynamics,” Wrench admitted with a shrug of his shoulders. At the same time he was keying in instructions to the system to create a new administrator of the Hab and three moderators. They would all only have physical credentials and passwords, no link to a implant at all. He tasked the computer to create the four accounts as well as produce four code-cards that would allow them access anywhere. He just needed existing approval from the system demonstrator. “Be a good helper and put your password in. If you don’t, well, I’ll just have to wait for a Tongsta to show up to give me admin rights after I dump your corpse on a filter.

“Please don’t think poorly of me, I just don’t care to get involved in whatever games you were playing here. Nor the games you’re playing with the Lower Parts inhabitants or the Admini.”

Grabbing the old man by the collar of his clothes, Wrench hauled him up to a kneeling position in front of the keyboard.

“Go ahead and tap in your password,” Wrench hissed, leaning in close to the man’s head. His monkey-wrench rattled as he shifted it across the desk. “Don’t worry, if you play ball, I’ll let you keep all the perks you were enjoying previously. You might have to work for them though. As a Fixer… it is painfully obvious you weren’t Fixing anything. Those who don’t work, don’t eat.”

The old man began to peck in a password into the prompt. Then hit enter.

Wrench glanced to the screen and saw that the approval had gone through.

Wasting no time, he bent over the keyboard and started removing other administrator and moderator access. Everyone listed in the records were demoted down to “Fixer-Basic Grade” and nothing more.

They wouldn’t be able to access systems outside of basic maintenance and repair. All of the upper level commands and systems wouldn’t respond to them at all.

“Great, there we go,” Wrench murmured. Then he looked to the old man again. “Now… how about we have a chat while I go to the security room. I need to start printing out some new parts and pieces as well as get an idea for what the hell is going on.”

Wrench put a hand under the old man’s elbow and escorted him out of the room.

One of the other doors was open and Wrench could hear Seventh questioning people. Her line of inquiry was predominantly in regards to the Lower Parts citizens.

Which given her mentality made sense.

“Security room?” Wrench asked, looking to the old man.

Who shook their head.

“You don’t have a security room,” Wrench asked incredulously to which the man nodded their head.

Clicking his tongue, Wrench realized just how fucked this Ductwork was. There’d be a lot of work just to get it to a point that it’d be efficient, let alone start working on the bag-log of problems that were listed.

“Fab room? You at least have fabricators, right?” he demanded.

The man nodded at that and pointed at a room nearby. He was wheezing and struggling for breath.

Seventh had really knocked the window out of them.

Opening the indicated door, Wrench pushed the older man in first. Just in case there was something stupid going on here.

The man entered and then kept going forwards.

Entering as well, Wrench found it was indeed a fab room. The supplies were stacked up in the corner and piled up haphazardly.

In one of the fab bins were the four code-cards as well as credential cards and lanyards to put them in.

“Great. We’ll start here then. Cameras, wiring, an upgraded system module that can pipe the feeds into the relevant input. Sensors to keep doors and everything else tracked. Another monitor for it to be displayed on,” laid out Wrench under his breath. “Alright. Give me the short answer of what the fuck is going on here. Why does it feel like you’re letting the Lower Parts get what they want as they want it?

“You’ve got a request list a mile long and they’re almost all from the Admini’s and people from up here. What the heck is going on that you have more requests to get work done than I’ve got hairs on my damn head.”

The man shook his head and looked away. He didn’t seem like he wanted to talk. Which made Wrench feel like it was guilt. For what reason he’d feel guilt he had no idea.

“Answer me or I take away even your basic access and you can go ask the Admini for help. I don’t think they’ll be kind with you though given how many requests you’ve ignored on their behalf,” Wrench threatened. He meant it to. He’d rather teach Joy, Stripe, and Seventh every damn task possible than deal with people hiding shit from him.

“It’s bribes,” Seventh declared, stepping into the room. Her right hand was covered in blood. There was also a spray of it that went from her jaw across her face to the opposite side’s eyebrow. “The Lower gives them bribes. Tokens, women, whatever. They take bribes.”

“Ah… I see. Now, I’m not against taking bribes. That’s how the game works,” Wrench said with a quiet growl to his words. It was people like this that’d made Hume life hell. “Bribes are a perfectly valid way to get work done outside of a normal structure. Hell, I’d take bribes myself.

“The problem is when you take bribes in the form of Hume. Bribes that harm Hume. Harm us as a whole. If this was a valid Hab with a Brawler as the Head, that’d just be the way of it. That isn’t the case here. You’re just forcing everyone to recognize a Head that didn’t earn it.

“Well… that answers that. We’ll strip them of all their rights and kick them out. Then we’ll finish up on our security update,” ordered Wrench. “After that… after that we should have a meeting with our Admini counterparts. I’m sure we can get a priority list from them on what their critical needs are.”

“I’m… I’m not a Fixer, Wrench,” Joy weakly objected. She sounded rather sad about it. “I’m just a lonely School Hume. I don’t know-I… I’m sorry.”

Holy shit she was a School? What in the fuck.

I thought she was a Solo.

“It’s fine. I can teach a School Hume to do a lot of tasks. Especially you, Joy. I think you’re severely under-estimating yourself. You’ll be more helpful than any of these fools would be given just some proper training,” promised Wrench. He noticed Joy blink several times and slowly nod her head. She had an amazing mind in his past life. A damaged mind, but an amazing one. He just had to wake it up. “Let’s get started. Shit to do. Fixers gotta fix and you’re all Fixers now.”

“I’ll go get a meeting with the Admini set up,” Stripe said, plucking her code-card and credentials out of the hopper. She put the lanyard and credentials together then hug it around her neck. It laid impressively right atop her cleavage.

Stripe noticed, saw where his gaze had been, then smiled sweetly at him.