Sierra

Chapter 6

She was right, she wasn't any use to him unconscious, but she wasn't any use conscious either if she was as lost as he was. Cole released the woman's arm and she slumped against the floor. After the surge, his display flickered and shorted out again. His vision went black. It came back online and then flashed in his face-

Low Battery Warning: 59:05:54 of Charge Remaining

59:05:53

59:05:52

59 hours? He should have at least 4 days of charge remaining. Except, the surges, two stuns and the lights in the maintenance tunnel, would have drained his battery. Cole reached up and ripped the helmet off his head. The unreasonable part of him wanted to smash it into the floor, but the logic processor kicked in, reminding him of the many reasons that would be a bad idea. Instead, he tucked it under his good arm.

If last time was any indicator, he had at least 5 minutes of peace before she was going to wake up again. He leaned down and grabbed her upper arm, dragging her backward towards the wall before dropping her down again and sitting on the floor beside her. He leaned back and put the helmet in his lap. Turning it over, the damage was revealed.

It had a crack traveling up the back, spidering out to expose the circuitry inside. When he hit the elevator, that is the only impact that could have been hard enough to crack it. The internal memory had been corrupted, all he had was local memory, which didn't store the automatically generated top-down map of his movements. His local memory only maintained short term storage when he was wearing his helmet. Now that it was removed, it would store long term, but it was too late for all those turns they had made. And he was too far underground to have access to the database signal.

It didn't pull up her rights information and he fabricated the excuse to not tell her, though he knew it was along the same idea. He couldn't access the facial recognition database to find out who she was. He also couldn't access the data for the pulse recognizaion, as he was sure she was lying about not knowing the way, but he had no way to know for sure.

He brought the helmet up and dropped his forehead into its visor, shutting his eyes as he pressed it against his skin. He thought hard, trying to remember the way they had come, as if trying harder to would make his computer work better, remember something it hadn't before. But computers didn't work that way. He either had the information or he didn't.

He glanced over to her again but she was still out cold. He set the helmet down next to her and grabbed his left arm. It wasn't ruined, but it was in safety mode. All functioning turned off, so it wasn't damaged anymore. She probably severed a wire that it needed to cycle. He could potentially fix it, if he could open the protective casing enough to reattach the severed wires.

That was low priority though. He didn't need both arms to get out of here, what he needed was a map.

He stood up again and moved around the chamber. Above one of the doorways was a marking. An upside down U with an X inside, inside of a circle. It had been scratched into the concrete. That had to mean other humans had been through here. It had to mean either an exit or a dead end.

Cole looked up and scanned all of the tunnels. Any of them could be an exit or a dead end. If he was making it out of here he had to start mapping them. No use in taking the helmet, he didn't want to risk external memory being lost again. Instead, he scoped out the chamber and eventually found a rock, a chunk of concrete blown out when he shot the floor. He grabbed it and walked to the tunnel they had come from and marked its wall with an X.

He looked back at the girl, who was still silent. No point in taking her along with him either. He tucked the rock into his pocket and took out the second pair of cuffs. He connected one around the center of the chain between her hands and then scoped the around for something to attach it to.