Chapter 1: Midtown After Curfew
Chapter Text
NECO CORPORATION: HELP WANTED. Now offering 168 hours/week.
Clementine was leaning back against one grimy wall of the narrow alleyway, awaiting Doc’s arrival. Holding her electronic pipe in one hand, she killed time by smoking and reading through the many discarded flyers lying on the pavement beneath their chosen meeting spot.
DISMANTELING OF BARRIERS NOW COMES WITH AN 875-YEAR PRISON SENTENCE. TRAVEL BETWEEN SECTORS NO LONGER PERMITTED.
All tops and jackets at Ozi’s Clothing Store 20% OFF, now until the end of XX27
WHEN IS REBOOTING THE BEST THING FOR A REPEAT OFFENDER?
NIGHTLY CURFEW BEGINNING AT 14:40 pm TAKES EFFECT 9/36
Syuba Complex Degreaser: It Burns — But It Works.
The companion took another drag from her pipe, taking in the uncharacteristic quiet of the street. It must be about 15:65 by now. The tiny circles of light at the top of the giant civilization’s seal had long since disappeared, as they were set to do past a certain hour. Their absence turned the artificial sky above into an eerie abyss with no ceiling.
Eventually, Clementine grew antsy. It was getting dangerously close to that golden period when the day’s Peacemakers return to their quarters for the night and those who have spent the day recharging come to take their place, leaving a whole 10 minutes during which the Outsiders’ chosen strip of Midtown streets lie under minimal supervision. She shifted, removing her weight from the wall now, cautiously poking her head out beyond the entrance of the alley to survey the main street.
Nothing of note except the constant buzzing of bright signs above, coming in all shades of orange, blue, green, and yellow.
She barely had time to finish her next drag of white lithium grease before she finally heard the light clank, clank, clank of another companion approaching. Focusing her sights a little further down the street, she saw Doc making his way there slowly, doing all he could to make himself as inconspicuous as possible, despite the area being completely vacant. His tread was light, and he walked along the walls of the surrounding businesses and apartment buildings, rather than through the center of the street. His screen displayed a neutral expression, despite the occasional peek over his shoulder. He seemed to be expecting an entire fleet of Sentinels to come zipping in from their depot like crazed hornets for the deplorable crime of stepping foot outside a mere hour and 25 minutes past curfew.
Were it physically possible or necessary, the scientist would have breathed a sigh of relief as he joined Clementine beyond the light of the main street, coming to stand in front of her. Instead, he just straightened his lightly stained white lab coat and stood a little taller than he did out there, apparently under the impression that ducking slightly might save him upon getting spotted.
“You’re later than you said you’d be.” Clementine told him, her tone flat.
“It’s not my fault this time,” Doc said, taking the light orange pipe from her and taking a long, drawn-out hit. “Ozi fried his CPU again, yelling at a customer. It took me all day to source another one for him, and a little bit longer to get him working at full capacity.”
“I take it that book you gave him on anger management continues to sit on a shelf somewhere, collecting dust.”
Momentary silence between them.
Then,
“You still want to do this?” Clementine asked, taking in the sight of him. Doc had grease smudged across one side of his screen. His googles were in desperate need of an alcohol wipe, and his lab coat was wrinkled all in one spot, like he’d been in one position almost all day. “I understand if you're anxious to get home, recharge, see Seamus.”
“Seamus is staying overnight with Simon and his friends,” he gave Clementine the pipe back so she could stow it away in the worn leather bag hanging low across her hip. “And besides, you know I recharge better at night after we perform our civic duties. I’m not sure I could keep calling myself an Outsider if I started slacking and taking nights off.”
“We’d better get a move on, then.” She remarked before walking a bit deeper into the dim backstreet. Doc watched as she yanked a black tarp down and off their only hope of performing the night’s activities in time for the changing of the Peacemakers – a stolen NECO Corp buggy.
The two Outsiders clambered into the front of the tiny vehicle. Clementine hopped into the driver’s seat as she usually did on these missions. In theory, the rusted and repurposed getaway ride was a two-seater. In practice, Doc sat squashed against Clementine as she tried to navigate, often snaking his arm around her midsection or grabbing hold of her knee to keep himself from being flung against the door when they hit a sharp turn, or against the dashboard when she had to brake unexpectedly.
Doc shut his door as Clementine jammed the keys into the ignition and the engine turned over. It ran with a loud rattle that occupied their entire corner of Midtown. Clementine winced as it continued, droning out the buzzing of the neon signs, the wind from Outside scraping up against the hermetic roof taking the place of a genuine night sky, and the faraway sound of an empty oil bottle dropping off a balcony.
“I thought you said you were gonna switch out the bearings,” Clementine remarked, screen barely a foot away from Doc’s in the cramped cab of the buggy. The scientist’s goggles were pressed against the ceiling, and he had to crane his neck down to keep them from obtaining more damage than they already had. “We might as well be driving through town, shouting our plan out through a megaphone!”
“I’ve been having a lot of trouble sourcing parts lately,” Doc offered up his second excuse of the night. Clementine looked like she was about to suggest a rain check once more, but he stayed committed to their operation. “It’ll be fine for tonight. Let’s just be quicker than usual. So what if we don’t hit the ones near the Bar this time?”
She considered protesting, saying that it just wasn’t meant to be tonight, and that they should skip to the part where they hid away in her apartment, had a jug of oil or two, then listened to music and recharged for the rest of their night. But instead, she turned away from him, put the buggy in drive, and started towards their first target.
The noise got better as they drove a little. Doc kept his arm around her as they slipped through narrow streets, hit bumps as they ran over a lip or two in the road below, which had seen little maintenance over the past few decades, and got close to crashing, head-on, into a dumpster that wasn’t in their usual path the week before.
“Which one are we hitting first, anyway?” He asked.
“I was thinking we’d start with the new one right next to the Nightclub,” Clementine explained as she rounded a corner, swift, smooth, but still putting Doc in danger of shifting and making their heads clank together. They were nearing the center of town already. “Then work our way through the shopping district, and end with the one by the Subway Station.”
She slowed down as they closed in on their first stop. Then stopped the buggy completely, turning the engine off and pulling the keys from the ignition to keep its faulty bearings from outing them. Both companions exited. Clementine peered around the corner and into the police station across the center of town. One lone officer inside, feet propped up, reading the day’s paper. Doc stretched while looking up the side of the nightclub building.
The harsh, artificial light of the billboard made him glow blue, made his white coat look like it was dyed that way. The words ‘SUPPORT OUR SENTINELS: Now offering up to one year’s worth of Syuba oil for tips on potential troublemakers, radicals, and criminals’ reflected off his screen.
He made his way around to the pint-sized trailer of the NECO Corp buggy, whose pull-down door was already a quarter of the way open from the ride. He opened it all the way, reveling in the assortment of tools he had collected over the last few months for their endeavors; a couple of crowbars, spray paint, a stolen roll of Sentinel tape, three road barriers, a screw driver, boltcutters, a hammer, a stolen taser – and of course, anything and everything Doc required to hack, short-circuit, or completely obliterate any technological system of his choosing, gathered from his lab and packed neatly into his toolbox.
His first tool of choice was one of the crowbars. He picked it up and, with Clementine acting as his lookout, dug the claw underneath the side panel of the billboard. Within seconds, the structure’s inner wiring was exposed. Doc had to catch 20 or so pounds of metal before it could fall to the ground with a clatter.
The rogue scientist turned then to his toolbox, withdrawing from it his wire cutters and soldering gun.
“This hasn’t gotten any more difficult,” Doc remarked as he began severing wires here and there, keeping his volume low so it wouldn’t echo through the empty street. “I thought after the first handful, they would have at least upped the security around this time. Or maybe made these things harder to break into.”
“I think the Sentinels just have bigger things to worry about than a few mangled billboards every other week,” Clementine replied, glancing back at him. He cut another wire, and the electronic billboard, which had already begun to glitch with his work, went pitch black. “Just this morning, they sent a whole fleet of bots after someone who tried climbing up on fan boxes and pipes to get over a blockade.”
Doc was using the soldering gun now, reattaching the halves of each wire he’d just cut so they were mismatched. Black met red, blue met yellow, green met orange…
“People want out, Doc.”
His goggles were off the top of his head and over where his eyes appeared to be on his screen. They probably didn’t protect him from a lot, but they at least made him look a bit more professional, especially during his house calls.
“Tell that to my patient who lives near here. He talks like he could comfortably pass another thousand years in this place. Accepts every bit of propaganda put out by the Sentinels without a second thought.”
“Raf doesn’t count. Everything he owns has been paid for in full by the Sentinels,” Clementine told him, looking back out onto the street. “He’d submit a tip against his own mother for a bit of money, if he got the chance.”
Doc’s work was done. The billboard was even more of an eyesore than it was when they got there. Not a word of its intended message could be discerned. It was a gruesome mosaic of neon colors that stuttered, glitched, and strobed relentlessly, never settling on a single pattern. The thing emitted a low hum as if it were suffering just by being powered on.
Doc put his goggles back up and stowed his tools away, closing the trailer of the buggy. They piled back into its cab. Clem dug the keys into the ignition and started on her way to their next target without missing a beat. Doc was left scrambling for something to hang on to as she accelerated toward the battery store.
The same routine occurred. The buggy was turned off as fast as robotically possible, and Doc gave the digital billboard a thorough examination to help develop his plan of action.
/!\WANTED FOR QUESTIONING/!\
“DOC” BELLIGERENT/INSUBORDINATE/DISREPUTABLE
/!\FINAL WARNING. NONCOMPLIANCE WILL RESULT IN ARREST./!\
A photo of Doc sat below the message, the same one that was on his ID, in which he donned his trademark goggles and lab coat, and had a couple of stickers visible on his chest. The camera used for the photo seemed to have caught him mid-blink. A bright, green line occupied the upper half of his screen, while his mouth was straight.
“You just had to replace those Sentinels’ taser bolts with defogging fluid.”
“They paid me to fix them. I fixed them.” Doc said as he added a small screwdriver and a red flash drive in with the soldering gun and wire cutters now kept, on deck for destruction, in his lab coat pockets. “And I added a little something extra so they could change up their methods of law enforcement. Now they know defogging fluid is inefficient at stopping ‘criminals’.”
“They’re only this mad at you because your stunt let that girl get away after she tripped a Peacemaker and made him break his lens.”
“It was funny,” Doc reasoned, settling internally on what he had to do to deface his own poster. “And it kept a mild offender from spending the next 300 years locked away. Give me a boost?”
Anticipating his next move, Clementine crouched beneath a fan box that looked just big enough to support Doc’s full weight. Doc set his right foot in her clasped hands, his left knee on her shoulder, and she lifted him to where he could hit a good foothold on the box to pull himself up with.
“I watched it.” She said once he steadied himself on his vantage point. “I had to sit on the ground because I thought I’d reboot from laughing and break my screen again.”
“Then it was well worth risking my RAM and freedom for.”
He unscrewed a panel on the side of the electronic wanted poster, setting it aside on the fan box once it came free. After pulling a handful of wires out of the way and letting them dangle out from the electronic poster, he drew the flash drive out from his lab coat pocket and inserted it into the port now exposed to his view.
The flash drive blinked red upon being engaged and, for a moment, nothing happened. Doc had just enough time to clamber down from his spot before the billboard sparked loudly, emitted a dark smoke, then promptly died.
“Shit,” Clementine murmured as she watched the thing continue to smoke from its grave. “I think we’ve got 3 minutes, max , before they start rolling out Sentinels to check on the noise.”
“We’ll make this next one our last. And our fastest.” Doc promised as he boarded the NECO buggy.
Pedal to the metal, wheels scraping the walls of buildings, and Doc’s head clashing with Clementine’s shoulder after a particularly rough turn, they rushed to the last billboard. It sat adjacent to the gate for the abandoned and decrepit subway station.
Their final kill stood, glowing red, black, white, yellow, and blue. Its message was simple.
HK PRISON
WE SERVE WITH PRIDE
They exited the buggy with more urgency now. Clementine stared down the street from where they had just come while Doc attended to the prison sign, racing to get its side panel off with his crowbar.
Just as the billboard’s inner wiring was exposed to the open air, both Outsiders’ heads perked up, auditory systems picking up the echo of beeping and whirring. They looked at each other, faces blank despite their bodies having seized up, making them look like two deer startled from a rustle in the brush. The sounds were being emitted from four streets away at most.
Sentinels.
Doc dropped what he was doing and ran back into the buggy, neglecting to even set the side panel of the billboard down as panic set in. He was about to slam the door to the passenger side shut before he noticed Clementine’s attention still being trained on the glowing prison advertisement to one side of their getaway vehicle.
A hesitation.
“Clementine, we have to go. Now.” The beeping, flying turrets were closing in on them. A stressed expression came up on Doc’s screen, complete with digital beads of sweat animated on the sides of his forehead. “They’ll dismember us for this for sure!”
She looked at him, then back at the billboard.
Then, she picked up an old pipe that lay discarded near the subway gate and sent it straight at its screen. Glass shards flew everywhere. What wasn’t now a dull, pitch black glowed technicolor and stuttered, glitching horribly. The only intelligible word left on the billboard was “HK”.
Performing each with rapid succession, Clementine scrambled into her side of the buggy, powered it on, and sped through the cool, black Midtown night. She floored it through the shopping area, past the battery store, and down a side street she knew let out only a few yards shy of her apartment complex. A glimpse at her side mirror upon entering the street showed six or seven Sentinel bots zooming down the main street to where they’d been seconds prior.
They hit the outlet of the side street. Just a few more seconds and they would be protected from view by the lobby of the apartment complex.
A Peacemaker, on patrol in the center of town, reared their security camera head toward them. They hollered something, and immediately, a small pack of Sentinels were sent barreling past the hologram projector and to the residential district.
The Outsiders had no time to rubberneck and stare their impending doom in the lens. The wheels of the NECO buggy squealed as Clementine slammed on the brakes, narrowly avoiding a broken-down vending machine as she parked. She concealed it once more with a wrinkled, black tarp lying nearby, then started after Doc, who’d already bolted up the stairs.
By the time Clementine got her key into the door, the Sentinels were right behind them, area scanners gleaming yellow from picking up the sound of the saboteurs' footsteps against the hard cement floor. Both companions threw themselves inside and Clementine shut the door, triggering its deadbolt on the way.
They watched through the small gap provided by the dwelling’s slightly open window as the Sentinels made their rounds through the third floor. Their scanners changed from orange, back to yellow, and finally to blue as their suspicion died away.
Eventually, the balcony was vacant again, and the blissful quiet of the night returned.
The only sound in earshot was the ticking of a wall clock from the kitchen. Doc looked down.
The jagged, steel panel from their last target was still in his hand.
Chapter 2: The Self-Indulgent Resolution
Chapter Text
Candles, artificially glowing crystals, and lava lamps remedied the fact that, as of yet, there was no moon in the sky shining light through the windows. A record spun on the turntable, something salvaged from the many, many heaps of trash that lie around and outside Midtown, emitting a low, pleasant melody despite its undoubtedly rough past.
Doc’s lab coat sat neatly folded atop one pile of throw pillows off to the side, as did his safety goggles and Clementine’s postboy cap, scarf, and leather satchel. The anxiety from the night’s events had worn off, giving way to a heady exhaustion. The companions were happy to forgo a nightcap of oil and had instead climbed the wooden ladder to the loft, coming down to roost under one of the tents pitched up there.
“I think it’s safe to say we’ll be skipping our next week of vandalism. Maybe even the one after that,” The scientist droned sleepily, optics fixed on the slanted orange roof of the tent. He lay on his back, in Clem’s bed, with a cushion under his head and about twenty more scattered around him. “We should let the heat from tonight die down. On the plus side, it’ll give us plenty of time to replace and upgrade our equipment.”
“I think it’s time we upgrade our operation instead,” Clementine told him from where she lay against him, her head on his shoulder, one arm draped over his stomach, a threadbare cotton blanket pulled high up, shielding them from the chill of the early autumn morning. “We’ve been hitting billboards and wanted posters for 5 months now. It’s been a nuisance for the Sentinels to deal with, but we’re not making any real progress. And it sure as Hell isn’t getting us much closer to the Outside.”
“Hmm,” Doc took longer to process her words than usual, fatigue at its peak. Ten hours with Ozi and a near miss with a horde of death bots wore down heavily on his processor. He traced the bright, orange lines of a tattoo on Clem’s arm to try and keep himself busy, from falling asleep mid-conversation. His gentle touch made her shiver as he moved down, thumb grazing over the words ‘KISS ME’ on the back of her right hand.
“Got anything else in mind, then?”
The rebel botanist and poetry-lover thought for a minute.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about that subway train. About getting it back up and running. Whatever sits at the end of those tracks could be the missing piece we need to get out of this dark prison.”
“Mmm,” Doc’s other hand came up toward the back of her head and he toyed with a wire leading to a spot below her screen, careful not to tug. “Would take a lot of power to get that thing back to its former glory.”
“I know. And that’s what I’m stuck on,” she admitted. “I don’t know of anything we could get our hands on that would be small enough to fit in the subway’s energy port while also harnessing enough energy to keep it running.”
“We’ll need to do some scoping around, then…sounds like a task to plan out when the false stars are back in the sky.”
“I’ve already got a list of potential sources,” Clementine began, ignoring the light suggestion. “We’ll obviously need to rule in facilities that use up a lot of electricity in their day-to-day functions. We won’t get anywhere fast by rummaging through little places like the Hat Store or the Bar. Now, that narrows us down to the Police Station and its neighboring blockades, the Hologram Projector in the center of town, and the NECO Factory…”
“Mhmmm…”
She flipped onto her back as she really got on a roll with the mock-up of her plan, still flush up against the scientist in bed but fighting the urge to jump from the loft, burst into the other room, and set the whole thing up on her stringboard.
“I think a stab at whatever’s powering those blockades is risky, with them being located in plain view of the Sentinels and subject to round-the-clock supervision, but doable, if there’s no other option. But sneaking around is inadvisable. A huge diversion would be the way to go.”
Doc was unresponsive at this point. Clem carried on.
“Then again, I also know someone working for NECO right now. With the right compensation, he could get us a quick answer as to whether the factory has the goods we’re after. It may also be the smart thing to do. It'd put distance between us and the authorities, and we’d be able to work more thoroughly without having to make an immediate escape.”
The abyss-like morning was dead silent. Then the song from the record began to play again after a momentary pause, starting over on its own.
“Are you even listening to me?”
She sat up abruptly to look at him.
Doc startled awake, feeling her weight shift on the bed, not knowing what the Hell was happening or where he even was for a second. The peaceful, sleeping expression on his face was replaced promptly with shock, then his default [._.] expression.
“Y’know Doc, there was a time when you were able to discuss these kinds of plans with me all night, gather the supplies in the morning, and still have enough energy left over to act on them that evening. What happened?”
“I turned 850 a few years ago. Every bot knows, it’s downhill from here.”
“Big deal. I’ve got two friends serving 875 in HK Prison right now. Get your battery replaced and continue pulling all-nighters with me.”
Doc smiled, chuckled, and brought a hand up to his head.
“No battery on the market could carry me through my day job, Seamus’ antics, and our nighttime ramblings while getting me into bed after all of it,” the scientist looked at her. She was on her side again, looking back at him, head propped up with one elbow against the mattress and her hand braced on the metallic side of her screen. “When all is said and done with the Subway, we can transfer its power source directly to my core. Then we can scheme and sabotage past your wildest imagination.”
“Or, when we manage to open the city, we can screw a solar panel to the top of your head,” the rebel botanist was smiling now, too. “That way, you’ll be able to extend yourself as far as the day is long.”
That quip earned her a belly laugh from the previously comatose scientist. The sound, to Clem, was like a melody, even more so than the chill, relaxed tune coming from the turntable by the ladder.
Doc’s laughter died off. Clem settled back into her spot against him, hooking one leg over both of his, drawing as close to him as she could. She craved the hard press of his metallic casing against her, the faint heat radiating from his core, the sound of his internal cooling system varying in intensity based on what they were up to and how close they were together. She clutched his shoulder with her right hand, then the back of his head, nuzzling his screen, enticing him into a kiss. His arm hung around her, loosely, like he might fall limp and begin recharging at any given moment. This didn’t stop a heart from occupying his screen, triggered by all the personal attention.
“Clementine.”
She acknowledged him with a noise that got muffled against the side of his head. The shorter Outsider had taken hold of one of the many wires poking out of Doc’s head and wound it around her finger.
“Move in with me,” he begged. “I want every night to end like this.”
Clem twirled the thin, red wire in her hand, giving it a gentle pull. It sent a jolt through Doc, making his legs twitch.
“You know it’s safer for us to go back to our separate apartments most nights. And besides,” she murmured, attention turned to a gray wire now, taking it between her thumb and forefinger and dragging her way down it. He twitched again. “Uptown has no space for us to store all our stolen equipment.”
“I’ll move in with you, then.”
“And Seamus will sleep where? The kitchen?”
“He’s a hundred and four now, and already bugging me to let him find a place of his own. Maybe now’s the time to let him gain some independence.”
“Doc…”
“Then again, I’m sure I could find him and myself a home closer to your apartment complex if I tried. Vacancies have been kind of rare here lately, but I’m sure there’s something out there.”
“Doc. You’re rambling,” Clem said to him quietly, turning her attention away from his wires to drop her head on his chest. Her hand ran over his stomach in little circles. “We should shut down for the night. It’s got to be 16:50 by now.”
Doc paused his ad-libbed plan to relocate.
“Yeah…I suppose you’re right.”
The scientist lay there with both arms around her, waiting for the empty, white release of sleep to come to him again…
“I love you.”
The words fell out of his speaker before he could stop them. Doc tensed as soon as they processed in his weary mind. His cooling fans stuttered, then began to speed up.
“I know…” Clem muttered against him, somewhat muffled by the bedding she’d bunched around herself. Unbothered by the impulsive spilling of his metaphorical guts and finally beginning to feel tired, she didn’t even pick her head up when she told him, “…the feeling’s mutual.”
The record ran out, stopping automatically on the turntable. The ticking of the clocks on the wall and the sizzling of a distant candle took its place. Lulled by the sounds of the apartment, and by the soft hum of each other’s internal components, the pair of saboteurs fell into a dreamless sleep.
Pinkperson on Chapter 1 Wed 03 Sep 2025 05:32AM UTC
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moimirpapalescu on Chapter 1 Wed 03 Sep 2025 01:02PM UTC
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Smilingfaces on Chapter 2 Wed 10 Sep 2025 10:42AM UTC
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