#continue testing

“Don’t worry, I promise there won’t be any lasers at the bottom of this one,” it intoned in the dark, over the rush of wind and Little’s squeals of panic. “But I’ve decided it’s time to put the Cooperative Testing Initiative to some practical use.”

Blue could just glimpse their surroundings by the flickering light of their optics. The shaft they were falling down was a fairly narrow tube, just wide enough for both of them, with grubby cement sides and the occasional ledge that would definitely break her fingers if she tried to grab it at this speed. Once or twice she noticed yellowed writing that might have been large, blocky numbers, but she couldn’t focus long enough to make them out. Her eyes watered despite her glasses, and in the dim blue-green-yellow glow emitted by their third eyes, everything passed back into shadow too quickly.

“You know, I did something like this once, The Long Fall.” The Voice paused then, as if remembering or considering, then continued. “You’ve still got your boots on, haven’t you? You might not be going quite as far, but it would be such a waste if you shattered at the bottom.”

Below her, Blue could see Little tumbling down slightly faster- not a surprise if the small android indeed weighed more. She was in the process of considering whether she should try to tuck in her limbs and catch up, when she realized that Little was becoming easier and easier to see. Around them the shaft was filling with a faint and fuzzy lamp light, the amber glow tainting the rock in shades of brown and rust.

Just as quickly as it became visible, the narrow shaft was gone, opening into a wide chamber with a fast approaching floor. She saw Little hit it first with a crash, a yelp, and a cloud of gold dust, so Blue braced herself to follow suit. Just like they’d been warned, her boots took most of the fall, but even they didn’t stop the ache that jarred her from heel to knee.

“Ahh, owww-wow,” came Little's voice from behind her, and she turned. As the dust and shock of their landing started to clear, Blue realized Little hadn’t landed on her feet, nor had she managed to stand up yet. Stepping over to her companion and crouching down, she waved her hand through the mote-filled air and took only small breaths; every inhale felt like she was filling her lungs with very fine, very ancient sand.

“Little?” “Ow, sorry, ah—long fall, bad landing. Couldn’t fly, too dark, too narrow for wings and feathers...” Her yellow optic whirled and blinked, and when offered an arm, the smaller android pulled herself up on it.

“Is it broken?” When her pale-eyed friend only looked at her in confusion, Blue elaborated. “Your foot, your ankle? Can you walk?” “Walk, yes; walk the walk and talk the talk. The only thing about me.”

Little hopped in place, then held out her right foot, and Blue could see a dark crack running through her boot, a fissure in the white sheen that stretched all the way from heel to ankle. The design of her long fall boots was very different- much more contemporary- a delicate sort of fashion shoe rather than the spring-loaded sci-fi pieces on Blue's own feet. But fashion wasn’t often practical, and Little’s boots evidently hadn’t been made to survive what they’d just been through. But she could put weight on it and walk and didn’t seem to be in pain- although hadn’t she said ow?-, and a crack was certainly not the end of the world.

All things considered, they’d gotten off relatively unscathed from such a long distance free fall, and the Voice had been right. No lasers this time, but gratefulness seemed like a joke.

“Blue, Orange, please make your way to the doorway. I’m going to let you through into the Hydraulic Automation Piston Pressurising Sphere.”

 As promised, to their right a heavy round blast door groaned, dragging itself open with the reluctance of age and rust and disuse. Something hissed in the poorly lit space beyond, and Blue wrinkled her nose automatically in distaste, even as they moved together towards the gateway. Unfortunately, there was nowhere else to go, despite neither of them being entirely keen on compliance.

“Mind your step.”

They needed to.

Not only did the doorway open into a dark, damp, and foul-smelling room of unknown size and landscape, it also opened onto a narrow ledge only marginally wider than Blue’s footprint. Despite herself she cursed quietly, her injured arm darting out automatically in front of Little’s chest to stop the clumsier, hastier android from toppling straight over.

Squeaking, perhaps in fright or gratitude, the smaller girl wobbled unsteadily on her feet for a moment, before taking a few steps in the direction Blue had pointed her. Left, along the ledge.

The seawater light of Blue’s optical flashlight flickered on, and Little followed suit; which answered the question of whether she did or didn’t have that feature.  Together they turned the path an eerie, toxic green where their lights crossed, and something in the pit of Blue’s stomach turned slightly. She was glad, not for the first time, that food no longer seemed to be a part of her life.

Perhaps they’d lingered too long trying to negotiate a safe path along the edge, with Little sending her ping tool into the dark depths of the cavern in an effort to see what was below, but the Voice offered them guidance.

“It’s a good thing that this next test doesn’t have any sort of time limit. Otherwise you’d both have lost all those pretty Science Collaboration points you’d built up earlier. Still, we haven’t got all day. Make your way towards the Control Room.”

Without any real clue as to where the ‘Control Room’ might have been, they set off at a shuffle. It was slow going, one foot in front of the other as the pair made their way in single file along the ledge in the only direction presented to them: forwards.

As they edged through the dark in a slow but steady downwards incline, the rush of noise grew ever louder beneath and ahead of them. Like a huge machine- or several- grating and rolling and grinding amidst the bubbling sound of fluid that made Blue wonder if somewhere below, a pit of acid was waiting for them.  It would explain the stagnant smell and damp, cold touch to the air.

Eventually the path widened, and complicated. A blockage here, no ledge there; the necessity of portals across a jagged gap in order to continue, and drawn out muggy minutes spent shooting sparks into the darkness to try and find a surface that would hold the gateways. Even Little’s advanced eyesight seemed to be failing down here.

Under their feet the ground changed. Sometimes cement, sometimes smooth metal, chipped plaster or familiar open weave mesh grates that made Blue grit her teeth and wonder how they were ever going to reach the top again, now that they’d fallen so deep.

It was on one such flooring that Blue’s boot pushed straight through. A rusted patch, perhaps, that Little must have missed. The taller android’s weight was enough to cause the ancient metal fibres to simply dissolve around her feet, and with a yell of surprise and shock, Blue fell forwards.

The hole immediately consumed the lower half of her body, and her companion running back to her made the ground shake and tremble worryingly. Was the gap around her hips growing? Were flakes of the floor giving in to pressure and age?

Her portal device had been knocked half ajar from her arm in the fall, and pulling her right hand out the rest of the way, she grappled desperately for a hold on the mesh, digging her fingers into the small honeycomb spaces between the grids to stop herself sliding any further.

Blue kicked, scrabbling with her feet for purchase in the empty air, without any clue as to what could be down there. Maybe another level, just a few metres below, and it would be safe to drop? Or, more likely, nothing and nothing and nothing and nothing before another painful crash, and her ankles didn’t feel up to that again.

She made a noise that seemed too loud in the dark; a frustrated, anguished exclamation that tightened in her throat and made her eyes water. Damn it all. A sharp movement through the alarm was Little kneeling in front of her, clearly panicked, chattering in fearful unfocused sentences.

 “Little, you’re too heavy, it isn’t safe. Get back.” If the other android did really weigh more because of all her artificial parts, the entire fragile gangway could cave in underneath them both. To her surprise, the smaller girl actually drew back ever so slightly, but a frown passed over her face as she went.

The portals Blue had placed, glowing aquamarine and violet and casting a pulsating light on the whole scene, still marked the way forwards. Perhaps her friend could carry on without her. Perhaps there was a ledge underneath, perhaps if she just dropped-

She slipped slightly and cried out again, immediately displeased at herself for doing so, and continued to swing her legs in the tangle of her coat. The sharp, wiry edges of the walkway pierced her shirt and scraped her optic, making the deep blue eye shut in panic and pain.

Little crawled towards her again, and the plank creaked and groaned in complaint. Perhaps this was what the Voice had intended after all, to lead them down here into an elaborate death trap. Surely the lasers would have been easier.

“Little, it’s dangerous. You have to get back. You have to keep going.” Even to her own ears it sounded unconvincing, and when she looked up, her companion was still there, even as the broken walkway tilted at an awfully disconcerting angle.

“Blue and Little. Togetherness and friends.” Came the surprisingly steady answer.

She tried not to complain or make a noise when Little abruptly grabbed her wounded arm, hard gloved fingers wrapping precisely around the makeshift scarf bandage at her elbow. Fear lessened the pain, at least, and Blue kicked the air again as another dangerous groan came from the creaking, bending metal.

With her hands forming a symmetrical- and surprisingly solid- grip on both of Blue’s elbows, Little drew back on her heels. Low to the floor, her glasses clouded with dust, Blue watched the mesh indent under the pressure of Little’s cracked boot and felt a lick of fear. Then, just as quickly as she'd fallen, she was out.

They staggered and sprawled, crawling and squirming from the edge as it sunk further still, flaking rust falling away into the dark, as Blue made a final desperate kick to safety.

It had been a fairly obvious trap, but there’d been nothing for it, so they’d just forged ahead and walked straight in. The chamber was new, but not unfamiliar: the white posts of several red-topped switches, overhead vents ready to deposit any variety of cubes, and a dizzying array of light blue dots crowded overhead and swirling everywhere.

She almost threw her portal device at the gridded ground in fury and frustration.

But Blue wasn’t one for great displays of anything, so her spine went taut and her dry scream died silent in her throat. Her tense silence spoke volumes anyway.

“Well, well, Blue and Orange. How lovely you’ve decided to join us again.”

Little- startled and shaking- made a move like a frightened child, ducking around and hiding behind her taller friend without an ounce of courage to her name. Blue would have shared her fear, but every part of her was already filled with bitter rage and angry disappointment.

“I hope you two had a fun little adventure. While you were gone, I’ve been busy preparing some new testing courses for you. You know, as you tried to abandon me. And here’s me, thinking only about how best to entertain you.”

Aiming her device without sound or flinch, Blue fired a wisp of bright aquamarine at the wall, not even sparing a glance to the red-eyed camera that fell from the ceiling to the ground a few feet to her left. A tinny, pre-recorded message- Vital Testing Apparatus Destroyed- accompanied the thunk of the camera hitting the floor, but was drowned out by a louder, over-emphasized sigh that came from everywhere and nowhere about the room at once.

“Was that entirely necessary? These things don’t just repair themselves, you know, and I’m still cleaning up the mess from your fall back down here. I had to push twenty-seven entire chambers aside to make room for that shaft.”

Blue opened her portals above and below the camera, ignoring the gadget as it began a high speed fall through repeated space. The sigh came again, slower this time, and- if either of the androids had recognized it- wearing thin on patience.

“If you must behave like a child, Blue, I’ll have no choice but to treat you as one.”

Behind her, Little pushed forward abruptly, and the pair of them stumbled, Blue giving an undignified yelp of surprise. Staggering to regain her balance, she turned to question her small companion, only to find Little poised defensively between her and an open gash in the wall; a wound where several panels had fallen forward and revealed the mechanisms within.

With her portal gun already raised, the short, excitable-come-terrified android fired a volley of multi-coloured blasts from her device at a pair of reaching metal arms that had sprung forth from the opened wall panels. Sparks of red and gold bounced harmlessly off the dark steel and hissing pivot points, and they stretched undeterred towards their quarry, even as Little’s aim became increasingly haphazard in anxiety.

She’d made a fairly valiant attempt, and Blue felt a bubbling feeling of gratitude in her lungs that was entirely distracting, given their situation. There’d be time for sentimentality later, after they’d escaped alive.

Stepping forward in her own turn, the taller of the two androids turned her device on its side and hammered it against the sharp point of the nearest mechanical limb. The crane spun from the force, twisting at an odd angle and backing up a few paces. The next arm, receiving a similar assault, bent sideways and drooped before connecting with the floor and dragging to a whimpering stop.

Without waiting for instruction, Little, who was jumping up and down with squeaks of varying distress and volume, grabbed Blue’s free hand and tugged. The force elicited a hiss of pain from the taller android, as her wounded arm was pulled abruptly straight, even as her legs tumbled to follow.

At first the urgency seemed a fool’s errand, because they had nowhere to go with all this stumbling speed.  Blue was about to voice as much, when she realized that her short companion was tugging her fast towards the chamber exit. For no visible reason, the doorway decal had blinked over to a glowing yellow tick- as if rewarding them for completing a puzzle they hadn’t even started- and the round panel yawned wide.

She didn’t like it at all.

Behind them, the pair of arms had recovered from Blue’s attack- although the one on the left squeaked metallically as it stretched- and most worryingly, they were no longer alone. An entire centipede of the mechanical limbs had begun to squirm and roil behind the gap in the wall, scratching and squabbling with each other in order to break out and grab either or both of the androids.

The space beyond the door was dark and hard to see, but even in the half light it seemed vaguely familiar. A murky stairwell, perhaps a distant elevator at the far end, calling them to safety; it would make for an easy escape from the whirring, clunking arms.

It was, without question, a trap.

“Wait, Little-“

Perhaps Little was remembering the armed arms- ha ha- that had attacked them from out of the glass cylinder that one time, long ago. Or perhaps it was some other bad experience sticking in her mind from their time separated from each other, and Blue would never know.

Either way, she struggled like a someone possessed, blind and deaf and straining towards that easy exit. Whatever questions Blue may have had about her small companion’s strength were dashed as Little pulled her effortlessly into the doorway despite the taller android quite literally digging her heels in.

“Little, wait-wait-!”

The small, yellow eye of her optic whirled frantically, spraying golden sparks visible even from behind in the dark. There would be no reasoning with her. Whatever fear had gripped her was undeniable, pre-programmed into the deepest parts of her oldest code.

Little staggered, dragging herself and her partner through the doorway and onto the familiar metal steps without hesitation. If she suspected a trap, she took it eagerly in preference of the room above.

As they clunked downwards, she turned around mid-step, facing her taller companion without letting go. Blue could see the irrational panic in all three of her eyes and knew; Little couldn’t have heeded her warnings even if she’d wanted to.

“Wait, stop. Little. Stop.”

Finally they slowed, Little’s body freezing up at the command, and Blue was able to pull backwards against the shorter girl’s grip. Pain bit into her elbow and jarred her fingers, but they stopped and stood still at last. Or, mostly still in Little’s case, as the fidgety android wrung her palms together and shook from her nose to her knees in fright and confusion.

“Little, it’s okay.” Lifting her portal device and turning it carefully, Blue rubbed the crook of her injured arm with her slightly exposed wrist. It didn’t really help, but she could pretend that it did, and that was close enough. “We need to go back. Maybe we can get through the gap in the wall.“

That would have required going past the attack arms, but she was prepared to work hard on convincing her paranoid companion that it was the only way out.

Blue didn’t even get the chance.

No sooner had she looked down did she realize that they were standing on a large, round floor panel that had never been in the Chamberlock before.  Then, faster than blinking, the whole thing withdrew from beneath their feet like the shutter of a camera. The floor was simply gone, and the lightless musty air of the empty shaft below rushed up to greet them.

With a pounding headache and a stabbing pain in her wounded left elbow, she opened her eyes and squinted. Everything around her was uncomfortably bright; so instead she focused through her third eye, the cybernetic optic opening lethargically with a sliver of brightest blue.

Her vision had never been anywhere near as good through her central optic; and considering how heavily she leaned on her glasses, that was really saying something. Then again, one didn’t normally look out of one’s stomach, and she didn’t want to think about what sort of fabricated sinews and nerves might have been necessary in order to make the whole contraption work.

Through a sheen of pale static, Blue realized the searing brightness was coming from the lasers that criss-crossed a foot or so overhead. The more she focused, the more she became aware of their heat radiating down to where she lay, and she wondered idly how she’d survived passing through them.

Far above she could see the speck of light that was the distant glass ceiling they had both fallen through, Little with a cry of alarm as-

Her eyes snapped open despite the brightness, and Blue rolled onto her side, searching nearby for any sign of her small companion. An arm’s length away she saw some tattered pieces of burnt yellow fabric- frill- and bit down on an irrational panic that shot up from her gut and straight into her throat.

“Blue!”

Twisting her neck towards the sound, she looked upwards through a red mesh of lasers to see Little perched on a shallow ledge, and wondered if she was hallucinating or concussed from the fall.

“Awake now?”

The panic and doubt fell away in a flurry of desperate emotions when Little smiled eagerly and waved enthusiastically, fidgeting in her crouch but seeming very real, and safe. Relieved beyond belief, Blue slackened against the floor and grinned up at her friend, waving back weakly from the wrist.

“Good!”

Before she could even get out the question that was beginning to burn its way to the forefront of her mind- of how Little managed to get up there at all- the yellow-eyed android aimed a glowing portal device straight at her.

“Little, wait-“

The ground disappeared underneath her, and Blue felt momentarily weightless, watching in resigned alarm as the criss-crossing lasers receded above her. She expected to hit the floor backwards in landing- an imminent and familiar dull thud- but instead there was a commotion, a grabbing touch, a squeak, and a grip that slowed her fall.

In shock, she realized Little had caught her, or tried to. Despite her small size, the miniature android had opened the portal gateway above herself and dutifully made to catch her friend,  very nearly succeeded.

As Blue picked herself up from the floor, untangling from her companion and helping her to her feet, she briefly considered that her sunny-eyed partner might have been stronger than she’d previously given her credit for. Something to do with metal limbs and artificial muscles, no doubt, and not measured at all by her height.

“Blue, you okay? Safe flight?”

Nodding, Blue touched her friend’s fidgeting shoulder to try and calm her before finally looking around. Little had portalled them up to a narrow ledge that skirted the room, a few feet above the grid of deadly lasers. It was clear she had only made the landing- placing her in a position to see the ledge at all- through sheer luck.

“Blue, you wouldn’t get up so- so- let you sleeping, recharge sleep.”

After the glass shattered, they must have both fallen down through the lasers- a few scorch marks burned into their clothes confirmed the thought. Little had a charred and sizeable tear in her skirt - and there didn’t appear to be any quick way back up the shaft they’d toppled down.

“Good?”

Struggling not to let her frustration out lest it affect her friend’s enthusiasm, Blue nodded again.

Their situation was anything but good.

They had been so painfully, achingly close to escape. And then that stupid pane of fragile glass. Little must have- on top of being unexpectedly strong- also weighed more than she’d first guessed, perhaps something to do with the mechanics of an entirely artificial android body. It probably took a lot of gears to keep her going.

They’d been so close, and now they were almost back to square one, starting again, having to make the long, arduous climb up to those cracked panels and twisting vines all over from scratch. Over and over and over. The circumstances were enough to take the gusto out of anyone, and Blue was fighting hard not to let them deflate her altogether.

With a sigh, she turned towards a larger nook across the sea of lasers- solving the equation without any real conscious effort- and made to lead them both through a portal and into a narrow hallway along safer ground.

Little paused, and Blue turned to face her in confusion.

“The...” She rubbed her gloved fingers over the dimpled shell of her recently pristine portal device. “The top—higher, escape, and the floor window. We fell like sheets; birds and glass feathers.”

Blue frowned at the sentences her companion supplied, even more nonsensical than usual, and reached out carefully to shake her by the arm. Little’s vocal processor made a skip, not unlike a hiccup, and then spoke in a different voice; quiet, careful, moderated and clear.

“Thank you.” It was Blue’s voice echoed back to her out of the smaller android’s recording feature, startling at first, sounding sterner than it ever did in her own head. “You left the tests to come here- you left the- you came back. Thank you.“

Blue remembered the phrases; she’d thanked Little for rescuing her during the ambush, when the excitable girl had given up on testing in favour of friendship.

So perhaps Little had noticed, or worse- understood- her brief, anguished moment of internal debate after all, parroting the exact same sentiment that Blue had once done. Even if this time, the words didn't entirely fit..

“Friends,” Blue supplied, a single word explanation, and watched as her partner visibly relaxed before turning back around to face the thin hallway presented to them.