“So, you mind telling me just what happened there?” Charlie asked Troy, the two busy with putting all sorts of items inside a bag. After the whole shaking debacle, the two had gotten right off their slow horses and had begun to it all much more seriously. The older of the two had agreed to help, to follow along to wherever they went, under the condition that he got to bring one other person as well.

Dr Hale had never prepared Troy for anything close to what he was allowed to promise the man in exchange for coming with them. This allowed him to feel the sensation of complete indecision, as he had been unable to truly say if that was allowed or not. But, since Charlie had been the needed piece for a lot of things in the future, the younger one had just complied and had promised that it would be fine.

Much to his surprise and fortune, the one that would be brought along wasn't anybody who he did not know. And, as an even better bonus to it all, they wouldn't need to actually spend extra time getting the person, as they were expected to be in the same location as where the two of them would be going soon.

First off, however, there was a need to gather all the items that had been requested. There were not many of them, yes, but most were heavy, unwieldy, and located in a very long series of unkempt lockers. Charlie, for all his kindness, was apparently a terrible person, when it came to managing where things were. Granted, most of the items needed had never been given a glance for several years, but Troy had expected the man to at least have a more descriptive list of everything. Yet, the one that had been shown to him was only a list that had the names for a few of the more public machinations.

This did of course culminate into the two wasting time emptying Charlie’s inventories, trying to find just what was needed. Or, it was more the man himself doing most of the emptying. Troy did not trust himself to not destroy some of the more fragile things and had therefore been left with bag-duty, making sure nothing would be destroyed in their chosen moving container.

While only a few minutes had been spent on this activity, most of it had been spent in silence. Charlie was concentrating on trying to remember where everything was, and Troy had been doing his best to give him the needed space for such a task. That he would be asked anything out of the blue had been anything but just a little surprising, making it possible for him to be caught in a momentary stupor.

“What do you mean?” Troy asked the man. While the youngest was looking at the other, no eyes were being met. Charlie was still focused on his task, even if there was some talking going on. Had he managed to automate it with his implants perhaps? That would certainly let up some mental space for the act of talking.

The young man wasn't really sure what the oldest was going on about. Charlie himself had said that he did not need to know all the details immediately, showing off just how much he really did trust him. This was not that great, as it would allow for some false truths to still be believed, but Troy had been forced to take it as it was. Wasting time explaining when on a very limited number of minutes was not a preferable expenditure.

And now, there was a desire to get an explanation. It was understandable that he wanted to know, but he could have asked before, right? Why was he asked about it now? Had something popped up in his mind, that just needed to be answered immediately? Did he perhaps finally realise how grave a sin Troy had committed, and would be doing his best to make sure that pain was felt inside?

…

No he was too negative about it all again. He really did need to stop it with that. Piling it all up as a world of cruelty and betrayal was not a good thing for anybody mentally, much less for him, one that had been subject to both sides multiple times. Trying to find the bad sides of a man that he treasured above nearly all others was an action that would assert itself as more than just self-destructive, if not stopped soon. And stop it he would.

“The earthquake… or whatever it was. You knew it would happen, right?” Charlie asked, to which Troy slightly faltered. While the man did not look over at him to see it happen, there was still a chuckle to it. Eyes on his neck perhaps? “I’ll take that as a yes. It was surprising, to say the least, having everything suddenly began to vibrate violently. This place is meant to secure itself from any outside interference like that. But, this one did not come from outside. It came from the inside. And, if I had to guess, I would say that a certain somebody knew who did it.”

Charlie was spot on with his deductions. Troy could do nothing but sigh at it all. Yes, he knew exactly who had done it, though not exactly for what purpose. Through the vague wordings, he knew that certain power lines had been destroyed, along with much of the information network. Most if not all of the people had been put inside their rooms and had been ordered to stay inside also. There had also been some mutters about setting up a safe field, but there were still some insecurities on how that exactly worked.

“Dr Hale activated it, at least. Though, I am thinking that I helped set some part of it up during my previous lunch-hours,” Troy answered, not feeling like there was any reason to hide it. Doing it once had been enough to destroy his arms, constantly walking around with all the expendable fuses, as they were set up in a weird manner on the wall-corners. To think that she had set up so many of them herself… How long had it taken her? Days? Years? A good part of the preparation might just have been about that part in particular. “However, I still don't understand how she even got them in the first place. I cant I say that I can imagine my superior giving them to her willingly.”

Charlie laughed at that, meanwhile having found one of the last machinations to bring along. Two more and they would be good to go. Troy could hardly wait, the conversation only making him want to hurry it all along even more.

“That might be me you have to thank there,” Charlie answered, only causing Troy to look at him with more than mild confusion on his face. That got another chuckle to come along, it being more than a little well-deserved. “Don't look at me like that. I did not know what she was going to do with them either!”

“You could have made a guess, though, right?” Troy questioned, not wanting to sound accusatory but also wanting to know a little more than that. “If you gave her a whole stack or two of those things, something should have flared as a warning sign in her head.”

“Well, I hardly gave her anything physical,” Charlie countered, pointing his finger at him for the briefest of moments while opening up another locker. The last one had been filled with different machines, but none had been what they had looked for. Troy could only hope that they found the last ones soon, or they would have themselves quite the quandary. “I don't make most of this myself, you know? I might have steady hands, but these things work at close to the atomic level. Nothing human can make that precision, which is why I mostly deal with the blueprints of it all. I make the design, and then pass it over to one of the many creation rooms. When Dr Hale came along, asking for system disruptors for her own project, I had in mind that she would be using it to outfit her room so that she wouldn't be monitored while inside. So, with the help of a few existing principles, the design was made. However, since I had no idea how many she would actually want, I gave her an estimate of how much ground one of them could cover, and where she could have a few of them made. That was all I did. Never heard about it again. Or, until now I guess.”

The creation rooms. Damn, it had been a long time since Troy had been left to think about those. Dr Hale had introduced them to him back during his first day on the job. They had never really come up for anything serious, and they were barely mentioned in casual conversation. Though, there were a few thoughts on why they hadn't.

“They seem pretty handy, those creation rooms. If they could let her make all of them, then they must have been something of a valuable resource. I kinda understand why the public doesn't have them now, actually,” Troy said, as a matter-of-fact thing. He was mostly in his own head at that point.

“They actually aren't, really,” Charlie stated, slowly beginning to unravel that sweet dream of actually helpful technology that Troy had put on his own mind. “The rooms can make the basic tools for day-to-day life easy enough, but it becomes a whole other question when we go into the precise things. It increases the price to a point where specialised equipment for the creation of one item would somehow make it cheaper. An all-around creation room is not something that anybody can just use. I have extremely good privileges to one of the closer ones, to the point where I can use it for my own personal projects. That's something that barely anybody has, and I still have some very serious limitations on what I can do. To make enough charges to make the effects that we are seeing now… it would take centuries for me to print enough of the devices. I don't know what she did to get access, but damn it do I want to know that secret.”

The emergency lighting was still on. Troy barely noticed it now, of course, but the fact remained that the lighting had not come back from what it used to be. Whatever she had done was serious, and Troy doubted anybody had not noticed the damage.

“Do… Do you think she had done anything bad to get them all?” Troy asked Charlie. He was not too happy about asking it, but he just needed to get something about the subject from somebody else. “She has been working on this for so long, gathered things that nobody can figure out, and knows things that she shouldn't. Don't you wonder how that can all work together?”

There was a small sigh as yet another device was added to the bag. One more, and they would be able to leave. Watching the clock allowed him to see that time was beginning to become a little strained what had been allocated to now. They were not too stressed about it just yet, but they needed to move soon.

“There are a lot of things that I want to question right now, Troy, and Mara doesnt have half of them in her direction,” Charlie answered. “When we get ourselves out of this mess, I think we will just be sitting ourselves down with a cup of tea, and then we will discuss everything that came before that moment in great detail. However… that will not happen for a long time. Until then, I will just have faith that everything is going as it should. While that might be hard for you, I can promise that it helps you get past some things, more than you will ever truly realise.”

Troy did not like the sound of it, but he had nothing to fire back with. Having faith that everything works out. That attitude had brought him most of the way to where he was now. It had not failed him yet, if only in an absolute fashion. He had lost some of that faith a while back, and there were still some parts that needed to be recovered, but he understood that he would just have to wait and see. Soon, they would meet up with Dr Hale, she would take over the reins again, and they would be led to the freedom that they wanted so much.

“There!” Charlie said, digging out a very familiar piece of metal. Troy knew it for its fork-bending capabilities, but he knew that wasn't the main ability of it. There were some wonderings about why Dr Hale wanted it with her, but Troy had just decided to not question it. She knew more than him. “Always knew that I still had it.”

While those final words were not the most assuring of all, Troy did not put too much pressure on them. They had somewhere to get to, and somebody to visit.