14-3: Daz

‘So did you two get together in the end?’

Daz tried to stifle their sniggers, not very hard. It was an innocently asked question (was Rob capable of any other kind?), but they could picture the looks. Looks of, “How did even Rob work this out?” Bless Kat’s cotton yet oblivious socks.

‘…no,’ said she, from behind them.

‘Sort of,’ said Caitlyn at the same time.

‘Huh?’ said Rob.

‘Sorry Rob,’ said Sapphire, walking beside Daz. ‘You missed out on the massive orgy we all had.’

Daz lost it. Part of it was the stress from the killer robots and the woman with the electric baton. Part of it was Rob being back, and feeling like they were allowed to be pleased about Rob being back without betraying the group. Part of it was that it was Sapphire cracking the joke. Whatever it was, Sapphire had to drag Daz towards the doors at the end of the eighth floor hallway, as their chest broke with the hilarity of it.

‘So it’s the one on the left?’ she said.

‘…yes,’ said Charlie, who sounded unsure. ‘Alex is it… they say yes.’

Daz slowly pulled themself upright and surveyed their next task. The door was small, inconspicuous, and heavily locked: manual locks, a keypad, a slot for an access pass, and what looked like a retinal scan.

‘Can you soften just the locks on this door?’ said Sapphire.

‘Yeah, sure,’ said Rob, ‘but I don’t think it’ll work. Stuff I’ve softened keeps its, what’s the word, tensile strength. So you couldn’t pull it apart.’

Daz interlaced their fingers and tried not to look too smug, not very hard. Their lockpicks, hidden in a foil-lined pocket in their gilet, would make short work of the manual locks. The keypad and access pass, surely Hayley could hack into those. But it was the retinal scan where their forethought would truly come into play. Daz had found pictures of Ash Brytic already, and they’d spent Tuesday evening creating coloured contacts in just the right shades for his eyes, for just this sort of situation. Oh yes, it would be another point in the…

‘And pull!’

Daz came out of their reverie to see Kat and Caitlyn tugging on the door, softened on the hinge side by Rob; the softened hinge freezing over, courtesy of Charlie; the softening being removed with the hinge frozen in place; and then the ear-splitting noise of Sapphire smashing the frozen stretched hinge with the heel of her boot.

Daz opened their mouth, shut it again, opened it again, shut it again, and finally said ‘…what if there had been alarms?’

Sapphire rolled her eyes. ‘There were no body or bag scanners the entire way here. Oli Godpraise set the robots on us, but the route down to the lab is an Ash Brytic special. It’s a work of ego. He thinks he’s untouchable.’

‘You really do think of everything, huh.’

Sapphire’s mouth twitched. It wasn’t quite a smile, but it still made Daz want to punch her in the stomach.

On the other side of the now fractured door was a lift. It soon became clear that it was a very small lift, with room for maybe three people if they were happy to get closer than Daz had with any of their partners.

‘We don’t have time,’ said Sapphire. ‘Thirty-five minutes. Hayley, with me and Daz. The rest of you, next lift down. Don’t kiss in front of the children, you two.’

‘Oh no, whatever will we do, not being able to make out in front of the Brytech CCTV,’ said Kat.

‘And I thought I was a puppy not a child,’ said Rob.

Daz wanted so much to go over and pinch his little cheeks and tweak his ponytail and generally older sibling him because despite being a filthy traitor and possible World Government patsy he was so adorable – but already Sapphire was dragging them towards the lift, stuffing them in, and pressing the down button.

It was every bit as cramped as it looked, especially with two very nervous people crammed into it in Daz and Hayley. In fact, Daz was close enough to Sapphire’s face to see that she too was capable of sweating. It didn’t move as fast as the lift up to the eighth either, meaning Daz had plenty of time to get familiar with the curve of Hayley’s butt pressed up against them. There were worse feelings, but still.

‘…I’m sorry.’

Daz snapped out of their butt-fuelled reverie. ‘Huh?’

‘I’m sorry I accused you of stealing the Wordstone,’ said Sapphire.

‘…are you actually sorry, or are you trying to just make everything good between us before we get murdered by Ash Brytic?’

Sapphire would have shrugged, had there been room. ‘Bit of both. I was never going to kill you, for what little it’s worth. But I did believe Charles over you, and for that, I’m sorry.’

‘Okay, this is making me feel uncomfortable, you coming out with apologies. I accept, we’re good, now don’t do it any more.’

‘I’m enjoying the enemies-to-lovers vibes in here,’ said Hayley. ‘Could we make it two pairings in one November?’

‘You need to read less fanfic Hales.’

‘Okay, but what if instead I read more?’

Fortunately at that moment the lift reached its destination. The three bundled out, the lift vanishing upwards behind them.

It was… less green and black than they’d been expecting, Daz realised. Somehow they’d had that colour scheme in mind, green bubbles blooping in black tanks of green liquid. White and blue like a toothpaste advert, scrubbed to a sheen, wasn’t that. Otherwise: lots of robots, computers, conveyor belts, and… they hadn’t expected the gym gear in the middle either, but that was Ash Brytic to a fucking tee, so sure why not.

‘You think he’ll come at us?’ said Hayley.

‘No,’ said Sapphire. ‘He’ll want a chance to monologue. He’ll wait until we’re all down here, and then he’ll let us come to him.’

‘Okay, that’s…’

‘Or,’ said Daz, ‘he’ll booby trap something, then come and laugh at us while we struggle. Knockout gas or something.’

‘No, he…. Hm. Maybe.’ Point to Saltmarsh.

‘So we don’t touch anything,’ said Hayley.

‘Yeah but there might be tripwires,’ said Daz.

‘You won’t hear me say this often,’ said Sapphire, ‘but from a tripwire-finding point of view only, I wish we had Will here.’

‘WILL!’

This was yelped from behind them, as the lift doors opened again. It was Rob, because nobody else was going to yelp for Will. As it turned out, nobody else was even going to spot Will, lying just off to the side.

‘Careful!’ said Sapphire, but Rob had already run past. Daz fluttered after the little idiot.

It was Will, and he was dead. Burned-hole-in-the-face dead. On him was a paper note, written in meticulously neat handwriting: “Clean up your own mess Ash.”

Daz felt their stomach do a lurch. Somehow, what with all the preparing for the apocalypse and then the past two weeks, they’d just assumed that they’d seen dead bodies before. They hadn’t, certainly not ones with burned holes where their faces had once been. They staggered to one side. They weren’t alone either: Rob was actively being sick, Kat and Caitlyn were struggling to hold each other up, and Hayley (who’d seen Watson in similar condition) was covering Charlie’s eyes. Only Sapphire seemed entirely unfazed by the corpse.

‘Right, an unintentional booby trap,’ she said. ‘Great. Once you’re all done.’

‘…how many dead bodies have you seen?’ spluttered Daz.

Sapphire smiled sweetly. Daz felt like they’d conceded another point.

It was Hayley, being the group mum again, who’d brought a pack of antibacterial wipes. Faces clean, they pressed on through the middle of the wall-to-wall-to-ceiling assembly lines, drones no bigger than a hand, and Ash Brytic’s own personal gym. Charles went in front, directing them using Alex via handycam; Sapphire beside him to look out for booby traps. Daz and Rob found themselves holding up the rear, behind Caitlyn clutching Kat’s arm as if it was about to run away.

‘You okay?’ said Daz to Rob.

‘Yeah, think so.’ That weak smile. ‘Just… glad to be with you guys again. Are you okay?’

Daz laughed. ‘I haven’t been okay since Sapphire said we were going in here. At this point I am very much not okay.’

They felt a pressure on their hand. They looked down. Another one was holding it.

‘Is that… weird?’ said Rob.

‘Little bit,’ said Daz. ‘But it is making me feel better… Why have we stopped?’

‘Alex doesn’t know which way to go,’ said Charlie from three people ahead of them. ‘They’ve never been any deeper than this. And apparently that was just when daddy dearest was trying to make them take an internship here. Oh. Apparently I wasn’t meant to say that last bit.’

Daz buzzed into the air, stopping to swear at a drone trying to occupy the same airspace. It didn’t help at all, but it made them feel better. The view didn’t improve all that much either, it was still assembly lines in all directions: but at least they weren’t staring at the back of Caitlyn’s head wondering what the fuck she did to get her hair that good, and being jealous even though scalp tattoos were better anyway. Also, they did spot something helpful through the mechanisms.

‘Well shit I don’t know,’ they yelled down, ‘after all there’s no way the serial egotist would be waiting for us behind the door emblazoned with his company’s fucking logo, is there?’

Awkward shuffling from below. Game, set, and match to Saltmarsh.

The Brytech logo, here the size of a person taller than Daz, was a hand with an obvious metallic seam across its palm. In the middle of the hand, a sun shone brightly – brightly for Brytech, get it? The mass media certainly did. It just reminded Daz of the New World Order pyramid, although they were pretty sure Ash Brytic was too up himself to knowingly be a puppet of the NWO. It was the door directly across from the lift, and part of Daz thought it was too obvious a place for Ash to be sequestered.

Below them, there was a whirling of glowing swords.

‘Tripwires,’ said Sapphire. ‘Well predicted Daz. Kat, top me up please.’

That part of them shut up. The game might be won, but it was still more satisfying when the opponent awarded you the points themself.

There were no more traps, just a big fuck-off door. Daz grounded themself, and felt their hand squeezed again. They turned, ready to ruffle the puppy’s ponytail. It was not the puppy.

‘You alright?’ said Kat, eyebrow raised.

Daz squeezed the hand back. ‘Not as good as you.’

‘Don’t give me that. I give you excellent odds on this… thing crashing and burning.’

‘You’ll smash it mate.’

‘Yes, well… whether I do or not, before we go face to face with this shitheel, I want you to know…’

‘I know mate. You think I don’t know already? Best friends forever and all that. You fucking idiot.’

‘Fuck you too, arsehole.’

‘We have twenty minutes to make Ash Brytic give up the location of the Wordstone,’ said Sapphire to the group. ‘If we can’t do that, we kill him, whatever Charles’ headset may say.’

‘My headset says, make it hurt.’

Sapphire shrugged. ‘Any last questions?’

‘Sure, I have one.’

There was the sound of a fingersnap.

Nobody moved, but the doors slid open. Stood in a room lit from underneath in white and blue, holding a stone about the size of a fist and smiling calmly, was a man wearing a dark denim gilet/tight white top/sweatpants combination.

‘What took you so long?’ said Ash Brytic.

Content Warnings: dead body, vomit