#file five

Coming here turned out to be the worst of Ed's impulsive ideas, to date. Picking the lock on Flynn's arcade to go exploring? Bad impulsive decision number one. Sure, that was technically trespassing, but he was just looking around, no harm there, and that part of town had long since been abandoned, it wasn't like he was going to get caught.

In hindsight, getting caught there might have been the better outcome. Then he wouldn't have found the hidden basement, or The Computer. (And oh, wasn't that creepy. He still remembered his father's disembodied voice coming out of it. He'd had nightmares of it clear through middle school, he did not need that again.) He should have turned around and gone home, or to a bar or somewhere a reasonable person would go after a long day at the office, but no. Bad impulse decision number two: hacking into Flynn's computer. Again, technically illegal, but. Maybe he cold solve the mystery of where Flynn had disappeared to?

...And that had led directly to bad impulse decision number three: shooting himself with a high powered laser.

To his credit, Ed knew what the laser was. His father had ranted and raved about it in what seemed like fits of madness when Ed was young. But. Yeah, could have gone way worse.

Naturally, Ed's first instinct on finding himself in a strange new world was to go explore. He was used to being cautious, aware of his surroundings when he was out, and quickly realized someone was following him. He tried to lose them in the not-so-dark alleys of the glowing city, taking turns at random until--

--he'd turned a corner and came face to face with five others, all wearing masks, and realized he'd walked right into their trap. The last thing he remembered before he passed out was one of the programs throwing something small and round at him, and the thick white smoke it emitted.

...

He awoke in a cell, some time later. At first, he tried to just... sit and observe, figure out where he was, and who had captured him, and why.

Except, there wasn't much beyond the two guards posted at the end of the connecting hallway, and it didn't take long before his claustrophobia made him feel anxious.

"Hey!" he screamed at the guards. "Let me out!!!"

The guard made a gesture that Ed couldn't quite see, but could safely assume was rude.

Ed continued to scream at the guards, because there wasn't much else he could do. He may have been trapped, but they also stuck with him.

Except it turned out, the guards could do something about that, and one of them marched over opened the cell, and--

--Oh. They had staves.

Ed lay in his cell, some time later, out of breath and everything aching. He was certain he had a cracked rib, if not more. And a broken nose from the way it was bleeding.

And broken glasses.

It was some time later that Ed heard footsteps approaching his cell. Everything still hurt, but he hauled himself to his feet anyway. "Come back for round two, asshole?" he asked.

In response, the guard disabled the force field that enabled his cell, and shoved someone else inside.

Then they reactivated the force field, and walked away.

Ed sighed, and sank back down in his corner heavily. He eyed the blur of his fellow prisoner warily.

Rinzler hit the ground hard, barely managing to cover his helmet with his arms to avoid it getting even more damaged. One of the guards had decided to use Rinzler’s helmet as an emotional outlet after he had gotten a nasty hit in on one of them. Any assistive programming in their helmet was completely offline and the glass had multiple cracks with a few bits missing from the back as well.

Usually, Rinzler would have turned and grabbed the guard’s ankle before they could leave. Would have tackled the program and forced them to guide him to the exit or derezzed them with his claws if the guard refused. But it wasn’t just a shattered helmet and pounding head that was keeping Rinzler down. His captors had latched a bizarre mechanism over his disc and dock that made his whole body ache and every move just seemed to make the mechanism dig in even more. It was frustrating and humiliating beyond belief to be thrown into this cell like a helpless beta, they were supposed to be better than this. Not to fall for some poor young program that had been forced to act as bait. They should have seen through it. Rinzler swore to themself that they would derezz every single one of those who had done this.

When the blurry room finally stopped spinning Rinzler was just able to focus enough to hear the sound of ragged breathing above his own broken clicking purr. He wasn’t alone. The Enforcer looked up towards the sound, spying the blurry figure. They couldn’t see any bit of light on the figure that could indicate their alliance, in fact they couldn’t see any circuitry at all.

“Identify, program.” Rinzler shakily pushed himself up into a sitting position, keeping his gaze on the figure in case this was just another trap.