(name needs improved, but it's basically "Life but Ahato is alone and also a DJ now" as a riff on the other chapter title)
The Octobot King was nearly perfect. Unrestricted propulsion. More ink capacity than two hundred octolings combined. Weapons that could use both inked and inkless versions. A sound system unlike any other seen underground. The most advanced wireless capabilities of any device the domes had ever seen. The Octostomp was hardly a drop of water compared to the tsunami of progress the Octobot King represented.
With DJ Octavio himself piloting, they could overtake the surface in days. No attacks could hit him as he rained hell down from above. Their armies could advance with ease as their glorious leader cleared the path, using the machine she created from nothing.
The overhead light shone down on its nearly-complete blueprints. Construction began tomorrow. Marina had told them she would have everything prepared by then. Things had to move fast now, they were running out of time. Zapfish were vanishing at an unprecedented rate. The dwindling handful that hadn't been taken yet each had two units of soldiers assigned to it. Tensions were rising across the domes as more and more eyes turned to High Command and it's response. Her response, in the form of a weapon.
All that was left was a final revision on the weapons system. There had never been anything like it before; a set of momentum based, pressurized air and ink propelled fists designed to be fired at the ground with enough force to splat anyone caught underneath. A taught cord would pull the fist back, allowing it to be fired again after but a moment to rearm itself. It was a design entirely her own, based on nothing but the demands of their leader himself.
No other engineer understood this machine, not in the way she did. No other person could notice the literal millions of tiny inefficiencies that plagued the design. No one understood the amount work she had to put in to make this a mere possibility. If things progressed as they should from here, no one ever would.
Maybe ya shouldn't be here, Marina.
She broke her gaze off the unfinished blueprints to look back at Cuttlefish's cell. He was inside, laid out on his cot, asleep for the night. The sight of him made her eyes burn. In the days following his attempted escape, he had tried to engage her again, and she rebuffed each of his attempts with silence in turn. He acted like nothing happened, carrying on talking himself into loops with that strange accent of his. Making one sided conversation with her to this day. He hadn't said a word about her. He didn't need too.
The counters on either side of her held countless testaments to her failures. Her eyes slowly scraped over each one, their purpose and subsequent failure flashing through her mind in turn. Autonomous combat drone; couldn't keep the size small enough for viable production. Energizing dirt to promote larger crop yield; inconclusive results, and not enough resources to create a larger study. Double-coil based zapfish battery; promising, but we no longer have a zapfish to spare for testing. On and on she went. Her eyes sweeping over countless failed revolutions. Transport, mechanical efficiency, computational speed, processing power, food preservation, crop growth, cleanliness and hygiene items, none of it was good enough to come from the Head Engineer.
The thought of touching a single thing she's created made her ache down to her soul.
Maybe it shouldn't get done then.
Marina's mind ached as she looked down at the blueprints. Just two more revisions on the fists. It would only take a few more hours. That's all that was left until she was done with this part of the project. A tear slipped down from her eye and landed on the blueprint.
I can't.
In a moment of weakness, Marina pulled Ahato's headphones from the corner of her desk. They were cold to the touch, nothing like the friend she betrayed. A part of her longed to just leave her lab behind. Stake out into the lower domes and find her their owner, and return the headphones. To find her only friend and try to make things right. She couldn't do this anymore.
Slowly, agonizingly slowly, her attention turned towards the corner of her lab. Tucked in between a countertop taller than it, and boxes filled with ideas that didn't even make it to testing, was a small end table, with only a single pair of shades on top of it.
She carefully plucked the shades from where they sat, her touch delicate as to not unseat the fragile wiring that ran along it. Several computer chips were strung to the side, some held in place by the wires, others soldered on directly. This wasn't the first time she faced this problem. This wasn't the first time she couldn't do what she was supposed to.
Marina was a woman of many fields, engineering first and foremost, but she had a strong grip on countless others. It only took two extended encounters with a flickering light for her to discover the connection. Colors had a deterministic effect on the brain; so long as the conditions were set up correctly, the color would always have the same effect. However, as the patterns of lights grew more complicated, so to did the strain it put on the mind. Splitting headaches became her constant companion as she tested, tweaked and experimented with the different series. Vertigo and Dizziness became her constant companions.
After miserable weeks of work, she had made the first semi-viable prototype. A pair of shades that had a very specially built screen, capable of flashing thousands of lights in a second. Complex patterns of color would always generate the same response within the brain, chain enough of those patterns together, and Marina was holding the first pair of behavior correcting shades within the domes. The suppression of all distractions, internal or external, by simply donning the pair of sunglasses.
She created cloaking technology from scratch that day.
Immediately after, she scrapped the project. The sheer amount of pain the glasses had put her head in left her out of commission for almost a month after the fact. She could configure the shades to make her ignore that too. So long as she never took them off, she would never face the consequences.
Silently, Marina regarded the shades in her hand. Put on the shades and return to work. Become an icon to the soldiers below her Finish the Octobot King, and oversee its contraction. Be the reason they could return to the surface. She could wear the shades and truly become the Head Engineer, like she was always meant to be.
All she had to do, was accept that Marina wasn't a person whos needs mattered
That's why they want ya to do it. Why are you doing it?
In her other hand, she clutched Ahato's headphones like her life depended on them.
Marina, ya can't keep doin this to yerself. It ain't right.
Ya've given up Marina! Yer going to let this life kill you before you do a damn thing about it!
Marina, yer going to die if you don't change something!
Ya have to stop.
Craig awoke to the usual angry clanging on the cell wall. He was half tempted to pretend like he couldn't hear it, but last time he hadn't gotten any food for breakfast, so he slowly pulled himself to his feet.
"Yeah, I'm comin'. Ya ever think of bein a little quieter when yer clangin around in here? I ain't the only one trying survive in this room ya know."
For the first time since the first day, the surly guard cracked a smile. "You're wrong old man. She's not here today." He smugly announced while he shoved two granola bard through the much smaller hole in the front of the cell.
Craig hobbled forward enough to grab the bars, before quickly setting himself down on the ground. Without much space to work with, really, anywhere was his chair. He pointedly didn't respond to the guard, instead peeling the wrapped back with hands he shook more than normal to help sell the appearance.
The guard seemed to catch onto the silent treatment pretty fast this time, leaving Craig alone in under four minutes. He was almost immediately back on his feet, looking through the clear hard plastic that was the side of the blast shield. It was a bit hard to make out, but he could see the desk at the front of the workshop, and there were no blueprints anywhere near it.
Fishsticks. I hope my kids can handle that thing. I told em all Ihad.
He about turned away when he noticed something else. Sitting on the desk was a pair of black sunglasses, which, was a bit odd given the lack of sun underground. *Seems like a strange thing to keep layin around. Maybe those are the ones she kept in the corner? Ah, well. Back to my granola. I think I'm startin to see what Quinn likes in these things.