Chapter 9: The room (Patreon)

It was cold.

["Warning, blood pressure lowering from cold environment...Manually increasing the amount of oxygen in the brain by the use of nanites."]

Her coverings were getting ripped here and there thanks to the crystal forming on the walls, and her upper appendages were getting wounded all over the place leaving behind red liquid behind.

["Warning, closing wounds, using bio-mass to recover and increase skin density."]

She was wasting energy by increasing the oxygen in her brain, she was wasting energy by mending the flesh that was torn apart by the crystal grows in the tunnel, and she was wasting energy and biomass by fixing the upper appendages endings as they turned purple.

And most importantly.

["Warning, body temperature decreasing further...Continued exposure in current model could lead to the critical failure of functions."]

[Main Core] had deemed that her current location was overly hostile to her current form, her previous measures of the place seemed to indicate that while dangerous it should be survivable to a specimen with her rough estimates of her body.

This body while smaller and more squishable was more complex than her previous Crab one, so she assumed that it would be in turn more resilient. It wasn't.

Her eyes were leaking a weird compound of water, electrolytes, proteins, and fats. Her nose was expelling the overflown liquid that couldn't be expelled by her eyes too, mixed with some of the mucus that was there already.

Her feet while more dextrous than her previous legs...Were weak. Her hands while more nimble were weaker even.

She had stopped fully healing them and was just patching the more serious wounds, her covering was already full of rips and tears further exposing her skin to the environment, and some parts of her were turning purple from the dead cells in her body.

She would probably burn most if not all the stockpile she had planned to use to make her escape more easy.

So instead she was only left with few options of what to do.

[Query: How far have we traveled within this tunnel?]

[Answer: "You have traveled around 15 meters."]

That...Wasn't as much as she thought it would be, looking behind her she indeed noticed that the turns, ups, and downs she had gone for didn't allow for a good depth perception, so maybe that was it?

She felt like she had walked quite a long distance... But then again...Looking down...Her legs were quite small.

[Order: Check surroundings beyond the tunnel walls, and find an exit point.]

["Acknowledged"]

Immediately afterwards she felt her perception of the world expand as her body produced tendrils that expanded into the walls and bored deep within them. Most used small micro fractures already present within the material, while others made their own. But most of them showed that the walls within this tunnel were too dense, only the ones below her were flimsy enough to be broken through without further deficit in her energy reserves.

["Notice, found a similar design to the one used to access this tunnel 3,14 meters ahead. Exit point seems to be within a small den-type location with a single entry point. No box-shaped organism nor human around."]

And at the idea of leaving this place she made the effort to continue walking forward, instead of trying to move with precision she instead moved slowly and methodically, not trying to decrease the amount of movement needed to dodge the crystal grows but trying to take the least amount of time to get to her destination.

This meant that she ended up taking more wounds true. But since she had given up on that front if it allowed her to escape this place faster, even if that meant losing more blood and biomass, at least the low blood pressure she currently had meant that it would be less blood lost.

So small victories? It didn't feel like a small victory. If anything it felt like she had given up and had thrown a tantrum to get away faster from trouble, either way she found her target and got to work at one, once she created once again the design that allowed her to deal with the small metal things used to attach fake walls to this metallic tunnel she exited it into another den.

This one was dark, like one of the settings they did when the box-shaped organisms and the humans wanted to test if she was good enough to work in low-light environments, "Activate low illumination settings." She intoned to [Main Core], her voice sounded....high pitched for some reason.

Was that the setting this body had by default? She wasn't sure how it should sound, so she would leave it like that for now. Instead, she focused on looking over the new den she found...After closing the entryway into the metallic tunnel, she had arrived at this room quite high and didn't want to tip her hand quite yet.

Her exit into this den had arrived near a box-shaped entity stuck into one of this den's walls, unlike the box-shaped organisms this one didn't seem to have the same texture on its front, so it shouldn't be a live one.

Either way, she quickly secured the entry into the metallic tunnel and got down from the box-shaped thing she arrived at, after landing on the floor without making a sound (Being this small and light had its advantages). She analyzed the den she found herself in.

It held several box-shaped constructs and some square-shaped things stuck in the middle, sustaining itself with a single unique leg stuck to the floor. Interesting.

The walls didn't seem to be of the same material as her den, and one of them even held a variant of the entryway the maintenance crew used to access her den!

The only difference was that this one wasn't hidden, but denoted by a translucent material that seemed to reflect what was in front of it to some degree, standing near the thing allowed her to see herself for the first time.

Her current body was small, barely high enough to stand near one of the box-shaped beings in this room, not a single one had deemed her enough to speak or say something to her yet, but she was wary nonetheless, her main body held four appendages like most humans, each pair a reflection of the other. Two below her torso and two almost at the top of her torso, with a single body part that housed most (If not all) of her sensory organs, a head as the body had filed on its blueprint.

She hadn't gone over the whole thing yet to see the names since she only needed it to be functional, but this material was useful, it allowed her to analyze in detail her current body, her current sight sensors (Eyes) were blue, was this a defect like the one the [Human] she fought before had?

The grows on her head had the same color as that [Human] after all, so perhaps this meant she could pass up as a member of his caste? That would be useful, he seemed to have some degree of authority over the box-shaped organisms.

But for now, she would focus on investigating the things around her, the box-shaped things were made of dead bio-organic material that seemed to focus on filtering nutrients by the use of internal roots to distribute the nutrients and water along them. It was interesting to know that they had used dead organisms to create these, and it meant that the box-shaped organisms were more war-like than she had expected.

None of the ones here seemed to be alive, not even the central one that had a single leg stuck into the floor, so she was still safe, most box-shaped organisms seemed to be neutral at best so far, not like the [Humans]. So maybe she could find live box-shaped organisms to negotiate with. She wouldn't mind taking one of them with her in her escape plan (So long it didn't put her at risk).

With some luck then this could mean that the hierarchy was more stratified than she estimated, perhaps something closer to that P-series subject that fought with a hive strategy?

Either way, she found several sub-compartmentations in the box-shaped dead bodies of those organisms, it seemed that they used them as storage units. Interesting, it was a good way to recyclate materials if nothing else.

This also brought her a chance, so she searched within the multiple box-shaped storage units until she found one that seemed to not have been perturbed in a long time, it held some square white fiber material with some squiggle-looking lines on them, tons of them.

She took a sample of one and found the black material was some kind of dye and not inherent of the white fiber thing, after filing it for later use she moved the boxes to re-organize them better and give herself some space on it.

Then making sure she would fit within she settled in her small new nest hiding spot and placed some boxes atop herself, using some thin tendrils to get everything into place, and for the finishing touch, she dislocated several of her internal bones (Who even uses those on the inside? They are better on the outside protecting the squishy bits!) and cut the pain receptors to fold her body to get more space.

["Warning, prolonged state in current configuration can lead to atrophy of muscle mass. Current time limit of this configuration without movement, 30 hours 16 mins."]

She wasn't planning on staying that long here, just long enough for at least to see how the [Humans] acted and what they did in a nonhostile setting, would it be necessary to stop her heart from beating?

["Warning, current configuration Brain is required for the prolonged function of main consciousness stream, time before the brain cells cease to function without oxygen: 3 mins"]

That's a no then, the brain and lungs must keep working. And so she inflated part of her thorax to allow her lungs to expand and moved her heart so that it would be comfortable enough while pumping blood, that meant that she needed to reconfigure her body to allow the blood to travel well enough within her.

So after moving here and there she was finally ready!

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["Hostile bio signature detected, wake up protocol initiated"]

SHE WAS AWAKE!

Main core had taken a habit of jolting her awake by stimulating her nerve endings, the thing was useful yes. But also it seemed to relish in torturing her for some reason, was it angry at her for making a copy of it to be rained up with the [Gun] type weaponry?

"YOU GOT SUBJECT P4 KILLED?!?" Yikes, sonic attack.

She almost got into battle configuration, only to flop her limbs aimlessly as nothing was connected between muscle and bones right now, at least nothing made a sound to compromise her position.

"Sir, P4 started to plan an escape so the protocol indicat..." It seems they were fighting over her assumed death.

"SHOW ME THESE ESCAPE PLANS THEN!" And one was having trouble modulating her [Voice] it seems.

"The core dump..." While the other had this undertone in its voice that she found annoying.

["Undertone cataloged as Smugness"]

Yeah, the second voice seemed confident in its success already, and since it was defending her death...It was the [Human] that had commanded the [Gun] type weaponry to attack her huh.

"...You ordered P4 death over these?" The second voice had got itself more calm. "These obviously tampered logs?"

Oh, so the second voice tampered with her logs? Good thing she was filtering those then.

*slap*

"Sir?" The first voice sounded no longer smug, but...

["Undertone cataloged, Pained"]

"Get out before I send you as the replacement for P4....No wait." The second voice said, "Get into the den and fish out P4's core."

That got a reaction from multiple voices, if she was mapping it right the place was full of [Humans], most hushed tones as they gossiped among themselves.

"Sir...The procedure..." The first voice stated saying, unsure about something.

"The procedure states that no [Employee] must interact with a subject directly unless is a test? Yes?" The second voice stated.

"Yes sir. I'm afraid..." The first one started saying, regaining confidence.

"Remove Subject P4 from the testing rooster, unless someone can prove that stupid crab is alive he will no longer stay in the rooster." The second voice said and then a voice spoke.

One she remembered quite well.

"Subject P4 shows no activity within Den. Analyzing...Subject P4's Core isn't active. Subject P4 is longer part of the testing rooster."

The box-shaped organism had scanned her den? And it found nothing? Perfect. Her plan was moving quite well.

"So? What are you waiting for? Unless you want to offer yourself as a replacement for P4?" The second voice spoke, a hidden edge in its voice.

"...I will go for the..." The first voice spoke, it sounded weak...It sounded like...

["A prey."]

"Since the test chamber doesn't have an active test subject no hazmat suit of any level will be loaned, you can however pay for one from your pocket if you wish so." The second voice spoke matter of factly.

["A Predator."]

"Move it." And like that, she heard the sound of something in the back followed by the steps of a human walking, then after a second or so, the same sound again of something hitting a wall.

Then silence.

"Get to work everyone, prepare the scanners, with some luck, P4 is somehow still alive under all the debris and we will get a new P4-series." The second voice said.

"Doctor Williams...Isn't that illegal?" Someone spoke after a few seconds.

The second voice made some weird sound as if wind had gotten stuck in it before saying "Of course not, you all signed the right paperwork that allows me to do this. I will not do this unless someone tries to do this... I swear to god, he only killed P4 because he wanted to make a cat girl...." The second voice, now identified as Doctor Williams said so.

["Logged new identifier, Doctor Williams to the database."]

Silence, so much silence caused by this Doctor Williams. So was this [Human] the one the blonde [Human] spoke to?

No, this one sounded somewhat different, its inflections weren't like that, if anything the inflections the other human transmitted through the box-shaped organisms seemed closer to hers.

"Get to work, also someone get me the last core dump P4 performed." Doctor Williams spoke and then the sounds became more calm.

They seemed to work in silence as small sounds of clicks and clacks sounded, only hushed voices spoke. It seemed that none had come in the direction of her current hiding spot, so she sent one tendril with a primitive light sensor to check.

["No hostiles detected within range."]

And Main core reported as such, so moving more biomass towards that tendril she turned the primitive light sensor into a fully functional [Eye], this would allow her to look around while hiding the organ and not exposing herself.

Everything was a blur of movement, multiple [Human]s moving from one place to the other, all going over giggle lines on white panels embedded within square boxes made of some hard polymer. They seemed to be absorbing the giggles and turning them into information?

"Doctor, the last core dump doesn't show anything out of order. There are some notes from Main Core about the Subject coming close to the checkmark for sapience but no conclusive evidence." One of them said while pointing at his square box.

And then one of those among them walked, he seemed to be somewhat more damaged than the reset, his skin seemed to be more wrinkled, less elastic, his eyes more tired. And they seemed to hold something within, an emotion she hadn't seen.

["New emotion cataloged, Anger."]

"And who designed the sapience check?" He asked, the one that brought his attention gulped and the others seemed to move back, like they didn't want anything to do with this [Human].

Would she be able to log a confrontation between [Human]s?

"That...It was...The.....amm....Chief Scientist...Alexanders....Sir?" He answered as such.

["New identification found, Chief Scientist...Logged under the profile of Hostile Human Alexanders."]

"Yes, he was the one to create the thing, he is also the one who forbids us from tampering with it since 'It wouldn't be fun' so tell me...What does this tell us?" The [Doctor] asked he had moved his mouth in a weird way. The tips seemed to curve upward, as if he was showing part of his teeth.

Was this a hostile warning?

It seemed to be a hostile warning, "That....P4 was gaining sapience?" The other [Human] was drenched in a translucid liquid now, his face was damp, and his textile covering was damp too.

Was he experiencing a malfunction?

"No. It tells us that whatever arbitrary check Alexanders put, P4 was about to achieve it, it may be the reason he sneaked in the last combat Test. But we will never know, since the thing is dead." The [Doctor] said, and then he started making some weird noise.

"HAHAHAHAHA, Suck it Alexanders, you may have toyed with my subject but at least the stupid crab will not achieve whatever you wanted!" The [Doctor] moved back and went to one of the doors, and the others didn't move till the voice of the [Doctor] wasn't heard anymore.

"ARE YOU CRAZY?!?" One of the [Humans] near the drenched one spoke, "Never talk about the big boss near Doctor Hamilton!"

"I DIDN'T KNEW! " The drenched human said, "I just moved in here from Doctor Eversoul's lab!"

They all continued speaking and [Main Core] kept filling in information about what they said, this would be an informative session, she could see it, and they would give her enough information for her next move!

Yes, this had been a good choice indeed. Everything was going according to plan.