Season 02 - Episode 07

‘the ceiling well’

Ga has not left her chair since The Collapse and has barely slept. Her stubble has thickened towards an actual beard and the catheter in her penis is becoming increasingly uncomfortable.

The pills she has taken to stop up her bowels are fighting against the steady stream of caffeine she is consuming, producing evermore crippling stomach pains. At some point soon she is going to have to take a break but for now, she works. Staring, thinking and typing, hour after hour.

The first priority was to get as many cameras back up as possible. Many had fallen but many more were still in place, with only their connections severed by the catastrophe. Ga sent out swarms of her homemade crawler drones to monitor the GovCo repair effort, immediately rehacking the cameras they reconnected while also fixing or installing more of her own.

After those first few, manic hours, she got back to observing The Levels. The initial chaos saw hordes of people rushing around with armfuls of belongings. Some had been directly affected by The Collapse, their homes ruined followed by eviction by the EnFo's.

Many more however, simply lived near The Collapse and were fleeing in terror of further disaster. Ga watched as the EnFo's raced to secure their homes too. She also saw the cults springing into action, seizing and fortifying whole, abandoned neighbourhoods.

Then came the war.

She knew it was coming, she could see the EnFo deployments changing, lining up ready. Several cults were wiped out clean in the opening skirmishes, the rest then dug in for the fight ahead.

Right now, things have settled back down enough for Ga to be relatively relaxed, despite her physical discomfort. She is flicking through the endless images, taking stock of the situation. The Collapse has punched a hole through her plans just as much as it has The Levels but she's calm about it and is working out how to turn the crisis into an opportunity.

She has already found a replacement for her key player and is tracking them carefully on one monitor while working on another. Meanwhile, the rest of the screens are automatically cycling through the endless different views of The Levels and her eyes flick across them habitually.

The news has been playing a particular security camera video on a loop and it has caught Ga's attention. She started by checking her own archive for the footage but couldn't find it. Then, she looked through her network for the camera that must have had captured the footage but couldn't find that either.

All of this has piqued her curiosity and she's now working on patiently hacking the relevant GovCo server to try and acquire the footage directly. As she works, she watches various isolated battles between black clad EnFo's and variously attired cultists.

Ga can already see the GovCo strategy being played out. They are leaving some cults alone so as to mass against others, wiping them out and taking their territory. In this way they are gradually isolating and surrounding the larger cults. A GovCo victory seems assured already, though it will be a long fought and costly one.

She attempts to return her attention fully to the hack but a notification from one of her crawler drones snags her. It's one of the swarm she sent down the walls of The Collapse to ascertain how deep it goes.

Flicking to the drone's camera, Ga sees an image from above of a figure laying crumpled on a small outcrop, the end of a broken corridor jutting out over the abyss. As the drone scurries closer, the figure crawls about then finally stands on wobbly legs. The night vision camera image is fuzzy but Ga recognises the man's face and can't quite believe it.

“You are joking!” she whispers to herself, shaking her head. “Some people have all the luck.”

The drone follows the man into the corridor, trailing him along the ceiling.

“Well, well, well. Ak Williamston,” says Ga, leaning back in her chair and taking a drink as she thinks. “When I sent that guy to blackmail you into doing some real exploring for me, this was not what I had in mind but ok. Let's see what we can find down here...”

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