Seeking Strays - Chapter 88 - Rust and Diligence (Patreon)

AN: Holy cow did this chapter kick my rear. It was the most I’ve struggle for a SS chapter so far. I fully wrote out four different chapters before I found something I actually liked.

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I followed the Manager through the eerie factory. Lights flickered on and off, casting deep shadows across the fog-laden place. Machinery and rusted pipes cast long shadows across the fog, creating a chaotic mess of workstations being worked on by various creatures in porcelain masks. 

I tracked one of the humming pipes as it curved upward. It just kept going and going endlessly upward. There was no roof to the factory—or at least not one I could see. The pipework just stretched up as if trying to reach Heaven. At a certain point, it was lost behind a thick veil of glowing fog.

Despite the grungy, decaying look of the factory, almost everything seemed to be working. Workers worked at rusty machines that seemed like they should’ve croaked decades ago without any issues. Conveyor belts screeched and ran every which way, carrying items and products from one place to the next.

“The other new hires should already be working toward their quotas, but I’m sure a diligent worker like you won’t fall behind.” The Manager mentioned as we stepped to the side to let a forklift by. The forklift looked some kind of twisted insect merely pretending to be a vehicle. 

“What is the quota?” I asked.

”For you new hires, it’s Ironwood Scraps, Althid Hearts, and Nether Cores, I believe.” The Manager nodded his head back toward where we came from. “The Owner is still processing your precious items. Once you complete your quota, they’ll naturally be returned with a performance bonus, depending on how you do.”

… so the owner had the Wisp’s Lantern? That was the item Vesper originally sent me here to fetch. I felt it somewhere around me with Seek, but the direction kept shifting like there was some kind of spatial anomaly warping around. If the worst case scenario happened, I could maybe force my way into the Owner’s office and take it back? 

My ears twitched, and I roughly ran my hands across the black fur. Although they were faint enough that they were mostly drowned out by the machinery working around me, distant incomprehensible whispers pulled at the back of my mind. 

The Manager and I fell into silence as we walked through the factory. It was only broken up by Vigil’s voice echoing in my ears. “Operator, this unit does not understand. Harbor records indicated Overlaps were a rare phenomena. Was that not true?”

“They are,” I whispered back to the plushie, though said no more when the Manager looked back at me. 

Overlaps were supposed to be rare enough that someone could go their whole life without running into a single one of them. Most civilians didn’t even know they existed. They had a naturally higher chance of occurring out in the Mire, ‘course, but that didn’t explain anything considering this was my second once since returning. 

“Something is wrong, then.” Vigil spoke freely without having to worry about being overheard. “It may be linked to the Blackwater Anomalous Biosystems. I will investigate.”

If it really was linked to the Biosystems, then did that mean the rest of my life would be full of Overlaps pulling me into them one after another. These things were downright exhausting to go through, not to mention incredibly dangerous. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to survive that.

”Here we are.” The Manager drew me from my thoughts as we approached a relatively cleared out section of the factory floor. Piles of damp saw dust covered the place, with Workers scattered about at workstations. There were about 56 of them, with most wearily eying each other.

This… are these all humans from Silverport? I worked at my lip as my eyes darted between all of them. Unlike the other Workers, none of these guys were in jumpsuits. They all had on clothes that I’d expect back home.

If we were all gathered together like this, then the Woodsman’s Factory definitely knew all of us were Interlopers, right? As far as I could tell, there wasn’t a single one of the factory’s employees mixed in. What was the point of pretending they didn’t know who we were, and upholding our identities as new hires then?

Or maybe I was looking at this wrong. Maybe the employees running the show didn’t know we were all Interlopers? That didn’t seem very likely. Was this really all just an elaborate game of make believe while they tried to get us to violate the rules?

All of the people had hand tools of various kinds, and stood around with sweat streaking down their limbs. Some were still panting for breath like they couldn’t breathe through their masks while others leaned back and tried to relax. I couldn’t see any major injuries, at least.

I tried to meet the eyes of a few of them, but they looked away as if scared I’d suck out their souls with my eyes. Do they think I’m a monster? I guess it’s not a totally invalid standpoint… but this’ll make it harder to approach any of them.

“Break’s over!” The Manager shouted with a touch of irritation as soon as he saw the lot. Yellow warning lights flashed, and the conveyor belt running through the area rumbled to life. Slowly but surely, iron-like logs of wood flowed down the conveyor from somewhere in the sky beyond the fog. “Back to work!”

”Is this… it?” I asked hesitantly. Most of the people struggled to move the heavy-looking logs off the conveyor belt and get to work. Those who hung back and just watched without attempting to do anything, however, drew my eye more.

“Indeed. Do your best to hit quota. I believe you, Worker 777452, have a quota of 237 Ironwood scraps.” The Manager turned back toward me with a broad grin. It waved a hand—its limb covered in chitin like some kind of insect—toward the workstations off to the side. “Feel free to use whatever tool you want, Worker.”

”Thank you.” I took the dismissal for what it was and tried to merge into the crowd. They kept a distance from me. Hmm… until I could get the chance to generate some trust and have a better idea what was going on, it was probably best if I just played along.

— — —

“Haah!” I slammed a rusty axe down into an Ironwood log. The axe barely bit into the dense wood even with my entire strength thrown into it. All around me, several other people likewise struggled. Even a man with giant chrome arms off to the side barely managed to hack into the wood.

I planted my foot onto the log, and ripped my axe out only to do it again. After a dozen strikes, I managed to cut off a tiny sliver of the Ironwood log. They didn’t call it Ironwood for no reason. This kind of thing… if it was back in Silverport, I could think of dozens of uses for such a sturdy material. 

“How long has it been?” I tossed the rusted axe to rest on my shoulder, and rubbed the top of my head off on my sleeve. My black jacket, which I’d put on to blend in better while I infiltrated, was already covered in a layer of rust and wood dust.

The mask felt stifling on my face as I struggled to breathe past it. The factory was incredibly muggy. The fog, layer of liquid covering the ground, and constant hisses of steam through patchwork pipes leading all over the place made it an almost torturous work environment. 

“One and a half hours,” Vigil said from his spot safely tucked away in my pocket. He got a cozy seat to watch while I had to do all the hard labor. 

“Damn.” It felt like so much longer than that. My muscles burned with exertion from constant chops on the log.

In the time I’d been here, no one had spoken to me. Every time I tried to start a conversation to ask what they knew, I was stone walled. It didn’t take a genius to figure out why. I showed up extremely late. The same thought was probably going through their heads that went through mine when I first got here—is that person a Worker or human?

That isn’t to say it’d been entirely silent, though. A few arguments had broken out here and there. For the most part, though, everyone kept their heads and worked. Even now, that was what most people were doing. It seemed they had the same mindset as me to try and hit quota.

As I looked around, my eyes snagged on a group that had a malicious look to their eyes. Three guys stood around with axes slung over their shoulders much like I was. Whereas I had sweat pouring off of me from the hard labor, though, they looked totally refreshed. 

They were part of the crowd that’d been sitting off to the side not doing anything. While the rest of us had been draining our stamina slaving away to chip the logs, they hadn’t even lifted a finger. Lazy bastards… I shook my head, and watched them carefully. What were they playing at?

They closed in on a man that’d finished working about ten minutes ago. He sat on a log, staring at his bloodied hands from where the axe had worn his skin through. A pair of round spectacles sat perched on his nose. “Hand over your scraps if you know what’s good for you.”

“I… I can’t do that.” The man’s confusion melted into a grim understanding as his bloody hands dropped to the haft of his axe. “These are my scraps. If you want to hit quota, do the work yourself.”

”We are doing the work. We’re allowing our lessers to do the labor for us.” The ganger with scythes down his arms sounded like an absolute douche. “Why aren’t you thanking us?”

The already tired-looking man spat off to the side. “Now why would I do something like—“

Wham!

A heavy fist landed on his stomach before he could react, knocking the man off the log with a ragged yelp. He splashed in the water and instinctively curled into a ball to protect his stomach as he struggled to breathe. His spectacles bounced across the puddle of water.

“Hey!” I shouted, and took a step forward. Before any of the stooges could get close to the man, I stepped between them. “Back off.”

They were probably planning this from the start, weren’t they? Wait around while everyone exhausted themselves actually working, and then strike while everyone was too tired to do anything about it. My teeth ground together as I barely suppressed a growl of aggravation.

”Or what? You going to make us regret it?” The leader of the trio looked down on me as his two buddies laughed. His chrome arms crossed in front of his chest in a way that was probably supposed to look intimidating. “Revenant doesn’t take no for an answer.”

Upon hearing they were from Revenant, the onlooking crowd splintered into two camps. About half of the people seemed to be emboldened hearing that they were gang members. The rest seemed to droop into despair, and looked away in fear. Still, they didn’t go back to work and just kept watching like this was some kind of show.

Not everyone was scared off. A man in what looked like a garbage collector jumpsuit moved beside me. “What do you think you’re doing? You working for the factory or something? Tryin’ to drive a wedge between us so none of us escape?”

The mood of the crowd around us shifted once more. The initial fear that’d originally risen gave way to suspicion. Even the other Revenant gangers stepped back to watch the trio carefully. Most of these people had probably never even heard of an Overlap before this, so they were right to be wary about anything and everything.

Sensing the shifting mood, the leader took an aggressive step forward to try to get his momentum back. “What? Are just the two of you s’posed to—“

”Woof!” Right before I could grab his hand and pin him to the ground, a bark cut across the clearing. The trio of gangers instantly backed away like nothing was happening. In fact, all the people around me went back to what they were doing as if they were the most diligent workers in the world.

”Why—?” I looked around in confusion. The man who’d backed me up just sharply shook his head in answer and lifted his finger to his lips.

“Thanks,” a whisper came from my side. The man that’d been knocked to the ground scrambled up to his feet and picked up his glasses. Before I say anything else, he returned to his pile of Ironwood scraps with his head lowered. The saw he picked up, though, trembled with his shaking hands.

I hesitantly returned to my own pile of Ironwood scrap with my ears pointed up alertly. I wasn’t totally sure what was approaching, but I could practically smell the sharp scent of fear radiating off of the people around me. This Overlap had been pretty simple so far. I had a sneaking suspicion our trouble was just about to begin.