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Breakout

By Psion

An Adipose City Story

All Rights Reserved

Immediately after events in "You Can Never Go Home Again"...

The remainder of the trip to Iceland was about as peaceful as it could be once Erik got into the routine of things again. After his fight in the pit with McQueen's asshole sister, the wolf bitch mercifully found other things to occupy her time. The Icelandic man had a sinking suspicion this spat with her was far from over. But for the moment, he was just glad for the short reprieve. It gave him time to think and try to figure out if there really was a way off of Iceland short of stealing a suit of dive armor and escaping out an airlock before the North American coast got too far away.

The PhysEd Consortium required all members to spend their waking hours either working, exercising, or training. A balance between the three was not required but it was preferred with the word "preferred" being stressed with neon-colored air quotes and italics. Which wasn't bad, it ensured things never got boring. But it also meant interacting with others, which again wouldn't have been too bad if it weren't for one thing.

Before the Peak Oil crisis brought about the current paradigm... PEC was masterful at how it selectively censored data to cultivate the image it wanted but that was the benefit of having over a dozen corporate and political entities at each other's throat, everyone was happy to keep copies of documents their rivals would rather see burnt. So perhaps it should have been no surprise to the PEC executives on Iceland that their portly rivals had archived news records of the very fractured health and fitness industry from before the petroleum crash for propaganda and psych-warfare research. Celebrity trainers promoting bogus or dangerously incorrect fitness information, other fitness gurus raising their fists and voices in protest, back and forth battles between those proud of the classic "lunkhead" stereotype and those that tried to stamp out such juvenile vanity. Unfortunately this was not the culture Erik was born into, things might be halfway bearable if it were. Instead his world was one where the lunks had managed to take control of everything. Lunks that wasted time admiring themselves in the mirror to bask in shallow vanity, spend most of their waking hours hyped up on dangerous supplements, and participating in ultra-violent sports like Battleball. More, more, bigger, bigger, Erik realized they were just like the fatties in the end. Perhaps even worse depending on how one ranked the sin of infantile narcissism next to the sin of gluttonous excess.

But philosophical meditations about the people he shared a locker room with were pointless, there were more important things to think about right now and besides, most of his peers weren't much for thinking anyway. So as he stood in a shower stall, washing off the sheen of sweat left over from a marathon session of running track with the rest of his shift, he turned his mind towards other things. At first he thought about the problem of trying to escape from Iceland but he soon became frustrated with the idea. If it wasn't one problem it was another. Going out guns-a-blazing would likely get them all mowed down; stealth was a case of fighting to keep over a dozen plates spinning in the air at once. Fabricating plausible excuses for having everyone disappear at once, whether it was better to try forging the approvals for taking a vehicle out into the volcanic plains or just simply steal one on the sly. Gods above and below, why did he put himself through these mental gymnastics when it would be easier to just wait it out until he was shipped off the island again? What motivated him to think this was even worth doing?

And like that, she appeared in the back of his mind. A tantalizing figment, the first page to a memory he read every time he was feeling low. That whisper in his ear, her hand on his shoulder, his hand running down her luscious side before finally setting on...

"Hey Erik! Did you hear the news? We're less only a day away from Iceland and McQueen challenged you to a Battleball game!" A voice called from outside the blond man's shower... Was it Jackson or Samuel giving him the bad news?

Dripping wet, male reproductive organs fully erect, and his heart still beating at a fevered pace as he was forcefully dragged back into the real world, Erik thought he had imagined that last bit. "McQueen challenged me to what?" Oh that was the last straw if he wasn't imagining things.

"Battleball dude! Don't you remember McQueen's the captain of the Aussie Avengers? She just issued a challenge to your team, the Iceland Defenders." Samuel repeated, Erik's perceptions becoming clearer as the other male stepped into the shower stall next to his.

"Battleball... I'd rather be trapped in an orgy with Bazooka Betty and her team of Burger Butts." He replied while banging his head against the wall, ambiguous phrasing was another skill he had mastered under PEC's Orwellian surveillance. "Fuck all kind of fat whores, going after me is one thing. Going after the rest of the team is just... I hope someone breaks her jaw during the match." Erik snarled as he shut off the shower and got dressed, about the only good thing about this news was how fast it killed the mood he was in just a few minutes ago.

"With any luck that might just happen, statistics say it will be a good one." Sam commented with an audible smile as he continued getting washed up.

"Good as in it will be one sided or good as in half of the players will have to be taken off the field in stretchers?" Erik countered pessimistically.

Samuel declined to answer; the sport was legendary if only for its brutality. Even the fatties had heard of it and adopted their own less violent variation of the sport, one that Erik would have loved if it became the official version. Two teams of three players apiece, one big red ball that could be electrified to stun opposing teams, and a rule system that somehow managed to successfully take dodgeball from demeaning to outright dangerous. The Consortium version was one where "reckless play" was only penalized when it carried a strong danger of getting someone killed. Something Erik wasn't going to miss one bit if he figured out how to get out of this corporation...

A few hours later...

Rigger Blackmill was spending a rare moment sitting down in her cell. Perhaps it shouldn't have been a big surprise that even on a submarine where space was limited, the Consortium managed to find room for a "fat farm" where she was dragged to and chained to an exercise bike for most of the day before being thrown back into her cell to contemplate her sore legs for eight hours before getting woken up to do it all over again. At least they fed her even if it was trashy health food, granola that was as hard as a rock or lean cuts of meat with no flavor to them. How PEC kept its agents from defecting she will never know, the menu alone should be enough to drive people away in droves.

The pine squirrel animan with a still-plush hourglass watched as one of the guards handed her an aluminum tray with a cold steak. The lights started to flicker then die, casting her server in shadow as he addressed her.

"Prisoner!" That was new; most of the guards just called her a number of different names relating to lard or fat, usually leading to her wiggling her round rump back at them in defiance. Mr. Officious either hadn't gotten the memo or wanted to make sure he had her undivided attention. "We are almost to Iceland. To celebrate, the kitchen is letting you have some proper protein. Be sure to eat up, you'll need your strength." The unidentifiable guard explained then walked away, seemingly taking care to push the tray towards her. Could it be?

Biting into the steak and letting it dangle from her mouth... yep, someone was clearly taking his espionage lessons from bad spy movies. Hidden beneath the food was her omni-driver and the key to her cell wrapped around a note reading "hide in the HVAC system until we make port, surveillance is light there." While it wasn't much of an opportunity, it was still an opportunity...

Three hours before their arrival at the capital of Iceland, the crew finally realized that SALAD infiltrator extraordinaire Rigger Blackmill was not where she was supposed to be. By that time the ship had started docking procedures including handing over the ship's navigation to harbor control, stopping them now would generate a backlog of harbor traffic that could take hours to sort out. Meanwhile, Erik's first inkling that something was wrong was when he was woken up by a general alarm with all the gentleness of a tornado in a hurricane. Climbing out of bed, he threw on some clothes and carefully hid his PDA back in his duffle bag. As he stepped out of his room, a general notification was sent out. Crew and company employees were ordered to search the ship for the missing rodent woman.

After going back in to give his room a quick once-over, he locked the door behind him and marked that the location had been searched before joining a search party consisting of his fellow co-conspirators. All of them briefly looked at one another but none of them seemed to know who was secretly responsible for letting the squirrel girl get loose. Room by room the ship was swept but the fat fugitive did not materialize. There was plenty of evidence she had been busy though. Her gear was missing from the armory, the fat farm and exercise room had been sabotaged, and then there was what happened in the pantry... good thing the ship was due to be resupplied in a couple hours. Still, the cast iron stomach that woman must have had to have eaten half of those things raw. Finally someone thought of the HVAC system, sending small drones and the more slender Consortium agents to search the vents from top to bottom; still no sign of the blasted bushy-tailed rat. After an hour, the muscleheads begrudgingly gave up and went back to bed. Reluctantly a message was sent ahead of the Lunar Atlas, notifying that a security lockdown was required.

Erik sighed as he stepped back into his locked stateroom without turning on the lights, shutting and locking the door behind him before getting undressed again. Lying down in his bed, he went back to sleep, obviously to the fact that Rigger had snuck into his room through the ventilation system and was currently hiding under the bed as he slumbered fitfully. The squirrel Grabboid had squeezed her plump body in between the floor and the bed frame, her eyes going wide when she finally cracked the password on Erik's PDA. Currently she was quietly going through his password locked photo album, unable to believe whom his Australian pen pal was or the secret he was keeping. Still... if some Queensland agent could find the muscle lunk appealing then perhaps she was on the wrong side of the bed. Turning the PDA off and quietly putting it back where she found it, Blackmill returned to her hiding place and tried to get some sleep. Tomorrow was going to be a difficult day...

The next morning, Erik got up oblivious that his target had spent the night in his room underneath his bed. Taking a shower and getting dressed, he got ready for the day and opened the door out into the hallway just as an extremely imposing security trooper was about to knock on the door. The heavily armored brute was a primate animan, a literal gorilla staring back at him.

"Can I help you?" Erik asked politely.

The Homeguard trooper merely shoved him aside, gave the room a thorough look for any space large enough to hide a plump squirrel girl before leaving with as much conversation as he entered. The blond man resisted the urge to sigh as he quickly packed up his things and tried to see about getting something to eat, assuming of course their unruly guest hadn't eaten everything edible out of spite that was. At least the security lockdown meant he stood a chance to get out of playing Battleball....

A couple hours later, the ship's worst fears were realized; Rigger Blackmill had somehow managed to evade security, escape the Lunar Atlas, and evade dockside surveillance long enough to slip into the city proper. The squirrel could now officially add the most brazen successful infiltration of Iceland if not the first outright to her list of accomplishments. No one was sure who helped her escape either; a power spike caused a malfunction in the lighting and the surveillance system around feeding time. Convenient, but whoever engineered the incident left no discernable trace. With no point in keeping the passenger submarine under watch, the quarantine was lifted and the Consortium heroes of Adipose City were allowed to see Reykjavík for the first time in months...

The fatties could say a lot about the Consortium, but one thing they couldn't say was that PEC didn't know a thing about urban planning. Clean, organized streets devoid of traffic jams even in the middle of the day, glistening buildings containing everything from workshops and offices to spas and gymnasiums, it was a beautiful utopian city. Beautiful except for the propaganda posters on every street corner, lovely except for the nearly omniscient eye of security cameras and listening devices blanketing the city. Yes, the Consortium clearly brought Iceland back from the brink of recession... and assumed complete control over the island nation in the process. Erik wasn't sure which he would rather have but then it wasn't his choice, it never was...

One upshot of having a mysterious infiltrator on the loose was that the Battleball match that McQueen arranged was postponed until further notice, a development Erik couldn't help but be happy about. He wouldn't be much use to the rest of the defectors if he were stuck with crutches or a wheelchair. Of course they still had to figure out how to escape the island but at least one problem appeared to be solved, Rigger breaking free would likely persuade Frosthearth from suggesting anything stupid like assaulting the reeducation compound.

After getting cleared through customs, Erik was given his home duty assignment and allowed to return to his dormitory in the capitol. Even at home he wasn't given much of a vacation, the company liked its employees to remain active and in a near constant state of motion. At least his allotted task afforded him some time to slack off though, inspect and perform routine maintenance on the underground bunker complexes inland.

Agents that were not given permanent assignment and residence on Iceland were assigned to the Dormitories, sprawling apartment buildings honeycombed with small domiciles barely big enough for a bed, a desk, and some personal storage. The largest floor space allowances were given over to communal spaces like cafeterias and exercise rooms. An efficient, maximized usage of space perfect for getting the most out of a limited amount of land suitable for building and a limited amount of processor power for computerized surveillance networks. Not to mention that forcing everyone together for most of the day made it easy for more low-tech observations by brainwashed loyalists and apple-polishers looking to climb up the corporate ladder. Accusing coworkers of corporate treason wasn't a surefire way of promotion but it certainly helped to smear rivals... Ultra-violent extreme sports and a culture that encouraged political backstabbing, some days it was a wonder that the Consortium functioned at all.

A company agent of some repute, due in no small part to the incidents at Hamburg, Erik had a dorm in the upper levels of the building with a window looking out on the orderly tree-lined streets below. A nice view of his neat, orderly cage, he contemplated for a few minutes before finishing getting settled, good thing he wouldn't have to be reminded for very long before his next assignment was to start. He just had to deal with the oppressive reminder of how he and so many others had been fooled for a few more hours before he was sent further inland.

Driving along the volcanic plains towards his destination, Erik tuned out the monotonous landscape as he resisted the urge to picture the state he would likely find the bunker site in. Building and maintaining bunkers on an island as geologically active as Iceland was in some ways an exercise in futility, between the permafrost and periodic volcanic eruptions construction was harder then it needed to be and tunnel collapses were not unheard of. But the company managed to successfully propagandize the importance of maintaining a final defense measure in case the overstuffed foodie corps managed to get it together and launched a major attack. A long, lengthy lie about the need to preserve Icelandic's cultural heritage in the face of corporate monoculture... nevermind that by Erik's time the Consortium had already successfully stamped out the bits of Icelandic culture they didn't like and erased them from public record.

Regardless of the impracticality, multiple bunker complexes were erected around major cities as a result of this massive public works project. Erik had a nagging suspicion that these were not big enough to hold all of the Consortium's employees but the disgruntled Hammerhead kept these thoughts to himself. Apathy towards his fellows had set in a long time ago, no sense feeling any sympathy for them considering most of them probably would have perpetuated the crimes of Hamburg if given half a chance. But he was getting off track, time to get to work and make sure this bunker was suitable for whoever would eventually hide in it when the fatties arrived on the island like a bunch of gluttonous Vikings.

The entrance to the bunker was of a hardly remarkable size, little more then a camouflaged foothill sticking out of the relatively flat plains like a zit on an otherwise smooth face. Parking his ATV by the concealed entranced in the side of the earth mound, he stepped in and promptly stepped down before descending down the elevator. Was it his imagination or did the lift seem to be creaking unusually? He couldn't see why, the lift was rated for a thousand pounds of equipment and muscleheads. Oh well, something else to inspect once he was safely down and set up.

Walking down into the empty concrete tunnels with a bag of tools slung over his shoulder, Erik reached for the main switch to activate all the lights in the tunnel and flipped it on. Soon the darkness was banished and the sprawling underground shelter was lit in a comforting glow. The human walked along, heavy work boots plodding along the hard floor as he made his way to the main control room. The heart of any PEC bunker on Iceland, the MCR was a nexus of computer terminals recording all manner of data from throughout the bunker. Environmental, structural, and security feeds ran through the entire complex, allowing the entire facility to be monitored from this one room. Built to operate independently of the rest of the corporation communication network in the event the information grid was ever brought down by enemy sabotage, it was also the perfect place to send clandestine messages to the outside world as long as certain steps were carefully taken.

Setting his gear down to the side, Erik took a seat at the main console and activated it. Soon he was looking at diagnostic readouts for everything from life support to power generation, there was a brief spike in power usage but that was to be expected considering he just switched all the lights on and was activating equipment all over the complex for testing purposes. Several security cameras in the residential level below his feet were out but that wasn't out of the ordinary and could wait a few more minutes. Checking the time, he switched on the communications subsystem and sent out a ping to a phone number he had memorized. A smile lit up his face as the connection reported back Her current location. Apparently she has been assigned to Switzerland recently, home to one of Queensland Confectionaries few European assets. That was nice, certainly much closer then Australia. Maybe he actually did stand a chance of seeing her again after he escaped from Iceland...

There was a brief delay before the caller on the other end picked up, for a moment Erik wasn't sure she would be able to pick up, she couldn't trust him with her schedule and he couldn't blame her as he didn't trust himself to keep it safe without having to burn or erase it. The itinerary of even one QC agent was a valuable piece of intel to the Consortium, he had to take a chance and trust that he wasn't calling at a bad time. Besides, it wasn't like she didn't know how to read video mail...

Yet apparently he caught her at break or on a day off because a few seconds later his video screen was lit up with the smiling face of the kangaroo aniwoman Bethany "Swiss" McGirth, one of Queensland Confectionaries resident tech heads and a vision of loveliness that had been haunting Erik's dreams for going on two years now. Diagnostic goggles were rested on her forehead above a pair of pale hazel eyes; long blond hair framed her round face as her smiling visage filled up the entire screen.

"Oi, g'day love. I was hoping to see you by now, what happened in Adipose City?" She asked with a tone of concern in her voice; he couldn't blame her either as the longer they kept playing phone tag with one another, the more likely he was to get caught and "reeducated."

Erik sighed; he had been hatching plans with Swiss and a couple of her coworkers for the past four months now. "Leon screwed up my transfer request to get shipped to Western Australia, scrubbing the plan to have me get 'lost' and wander the Outback until someone from Queensland finds me. After that there just hasn't been enough time since to send you a message let alone come up with a new plan. I won't bore you with the details; short version is we have almost completely abandoned Adipose City and I'm now in Iceland after the company issued a general fallback order. Don't worry though, I'll be with you soon." He smiled, trying to reassure her. Inwardly he was fighting to reassure himself. There was no word yet on whether or not there would any new postings for the foreseeable future but if global headquarters called everyone back then Erik might be looking at being holed up on the island for at least three months. Guess Frosthearth's way might be the only way out of here if he wanted to get out without going any crazier then he already was.

"But if you are hiding in your not-very-secret clubhouse, how long is soon?" Swiss replied as the signal started to encounter some unexplained interference.

"That's odd... I better go check that out. Don't worry Beth, I will talk to you later. I love you." He signed off and grabbed his sidearm. There were only three real reasons why he would have interference while running "diagnostic tests" on what was supposed to be the only secure line in the Consortium. One was a volcanic eruption, which wasn't the case otherwise he would have felt the room shake before the whole bunker complex collapsed on him. Second was an equipment failure, which was possible but not very likely given that his preliminary diagnostics checked out. The third was that someone was listening in, someone who was likely about to die very shortly unless he wanted to get shipped to reeducation; he certainly said enough to warrant a stay at the Consortium's brainwashing facilities if he was caught. Not something he enjoyed, killing that is, but if forced to make a choice he had reached a point where he preferred it to be one of his coworkers instead of one of the "enemy."

FoJ Fat Eagle in his hands with a flashlight attached to the underside of the barrel, Erik killed the lights to the bunker and stepped out into the dark corridors a half mile below the surface. The small beam of light sliced through the gloom, casting a small pool of light on the far wall as the Consortium Icelander walked along. His pace was measured as he crept along and listened for the sound of someone else down here with him. Mentally he would have kicked himself if he weren't concentrating so intently on avoiding a potential ambush, it probably would have been any easy thing to check if he had looked a little harder. Suspicious shadows on the security feed, missing ration containers or open boxes in a pantry full of preserved "astronaut food" that was supposed to untouched, hell even a simple oxygen reading to see if more then one person was taxing the O2 scrubbers. But no, he had to talk to his lovely "little" Swiss Mix before triple-checking whether it was safe or not to make an international call.

The sound of rubbery something bouncing against the cold concrete caught his attention. Something big, bouncy, and building up speed as it headed in his direction... Erik dived to the side and narrowly avoided getting bowled over as a giant sphere-shaped object sailed past him like a pinball. Behind him the whine of a long-suffering electric motor echoed down the hallway as the lights were turned back on remotely. Scampering to his feet and backing against the comforting firmness of a reinforced metal door with a mechanical latch, the human blinked once to recover his vision and quickly assess his attackers, blinking again when he realized he wasn't dreaming...

Erik frowned as he pointed his handgun towards the two foreigners, keeping both of them in sight. Of course they had to pick this bunker, the one he was scheduled to inspect. He took a second to appreciate the irony, the bunker network was a last defense against foreign invasion; only upper management and PEC troopers born and raised on Iceland really knew about it. To be used in the event of a concentrated invasion, a series of underground fortresses the likes of which have not been seen since the Iraqi conflicts leading up to the Petro-Crash. And here they were, making themselves at home in what was supposed to be the most defensible position on the planet, two enemies of the Consortium.

On one side was a massive tawny-furred mouse with hair dyed a light green, easily the most enormous anthromorph Erik had ever seen, dressed in a black and yellow body suit and suspended atop a motorized couch. On the other side was the giant bouncy ball that nearly knocked him down, a rabbit... deer-like thing. The blond man had heard of chimera animen but to actually see one, particularly one that was literally so fat she was a near-perfect sphere, was something he never expected. Fighting to keep an eye on both of them, he still kept his weapon trained on the incredible bouncing hybrid for the most part as she was arguably the more dangerous of the two from where he stood.

Time seemed to slow down as all three of them stared at one another in a stand off. He had the big gun but who knew what the chimera had up her sleeve and he knew at least one of them could turn the lights back off again. This could get awkward very fast. Finally, the mouse spoke up and broke the silence.

"Where's Rigger?" Was all she said, her voice was soft but defiant.

"Who? Oh, Blackmill. She's likely raising hell somewhere in Reykjavík. Honestly I haven't seen her since she escaped from the Lunar Atlas and haven't really cared to look. I wouldn't be too eager to give her a buzz though, Consortium monitors all data traffic on the island."

"You didn't look like a disgruntled PEC employee back in Worchester." The mouse replied, so this was the cheeky little bastard that jammed his radio during the SALAD raid...

"You gave me a reason to hang my pain in the ass supervisor high and dry, how could I not be happy about that? So tell me, how big has Stoutheart made him since then, is the asshole big enough to fill a swimming pool like she's rumored to do with all her prisoners?" Erik asked laughingly, almost forgetting he was supposed to be in a tense standoff... almost. "I suppose the next question is who are you and how did you get here?" He continued, regaining his composure.

Once again it was the big mouse that answered his question, the antler bunny was too busy staring holes into him to comment. Erik strongly suspected that Bouncy was the more professional one out of the two. "We're friends of Rigger, I'm Zea and that's Ricochet." She gestured clumsily to her friend, Erik was surprised she could make the motion at all given she looked like she was nearly half a ton.

"As for how we got here, that's a trade secret. Now who are you lunk?" Ricochet interjected cooly, her voice carrying a thick Texan accent.

"Erik." He replied briskly.

This got the hybrid's attention despite Erik's lack of verbosity. "Erik... Ingolfsson? The man that staged the Hamburg prison riots?"

"Why yes I guess even you would..." Erik began, his eyes narrowing as he suddenly realized what she had just asked. "Now why the hell would you know anything about that when not even the Consortium knows about the conspiracy to sabotage the Hamburg reeducation facility?"

Ricochet cracked a smile, something Erik didn't think she was capable of a few moments before. "Trade secret." She said again. "I think we can trust this one Zea, especially after that nice little chat you caught between him and the Aussie thunder queen."

"So you'll help us find Rigger?" Zea asked happily, giving the human a big smile. Try as he might, the human couldn't help but grit his teeth right now. Really? Really? It was all he could do to keep from rolling his eyes.

"I guess this is supposed the part where I surrender and confess my secret desire to join the wider side of things like a villain in a bad chubby-chaser porno..." Erik began sarcastically, finally putting his pistol away. "Sorry, it's not going to play out quite like that. Don't get me wrong Zea, I love a challenge and you look like an excellent one. But I'm still waiting on a convincing argument for why I should help you. How do you plan on getting off the island and is there room for about a dozen extra people in it?" He asked, smirking as Ricochet raised an eyebrow. "What? Did you really think the Hamburg riots were a one-man operation?"

Finally after both of them looked at him expectantly for about a minute, the Consortium techie sighed. "Look, I'll sign the report to say that everything's fine and pretend I didn't see you. Next inspector is due to come in about a week though so you better grab your friend and be long gone by that time."

"What about you?"

"Don't worry about us, we'll think of something..." Erik replied boldly, secretly still not sure what his group was going to do.

It felt strange, walking away like that. Just leaving Ricochet and Zea to go about their business without trying to capture them or report them to Central so he could get some back up to take them out, strange but not necessarily in a bad way. Anyway, on to more pressing matters. The "valiant" Men of Hamburg still had to figure out a way off of Iceland and he might just have an idea how to pull it off... yet judging by the way his PDA was lighting up with messages about the "engineering problem" he was working on, it appears he wasn't the only one to have thought of it. Well no matter what they did there was a strong chance of the lot of them getting completely obliterated so why not shoot for going out the same way they came in?

A few hours later, as the sun finally began to set on the city of Reykjavik after another busy day, the dissenting "Men of Hamburg" gathered next to a large warehouse in the harbor district. Dozens of ships had made port since the arrival of the Lunar Atlas late in the morning, submarines and surface craft of all shapes and sizes. The plan, largely hashed together on the spur of the moment, was simple in theory. Consortium harbor patrol maintained and operated a handful of corvettes in the off-chance that enemy agents managed to slip past the sea mines, artillery batteries, and genetically modified sharks that were set up to persuade rival corporations to harass PEC elsewhere. Roughly the size of similar vessels from before the Petro Crash and enhanced with the latest electronics and automated systems allowing them to run with a fourth of the crew requirements, they were perfect for what the group had in mind. All Erik and the others had to do was locate one that was lightly guarded and steal it. It should be easy but then again so was the SALAD raid that ended up going sideways...

At first things went smoothly. The _Barbell_became their vessel of choice after a quick surveillance hack; the skeleton crew left to guard the vessel and perform routine maintenance was dealt with quietly and thrown off the ship. Once they overrode the ship's electronic safeties and started up the engines was were things started going downhill. Security finally noticed their actions and a team was dispatched to apprehend them... no turning back now, a good brainwashing at the reeducation facilities was waiting for them if they weren't killed. Taking control of the ship's computer controlled 20mm guns, Erik drew a bead on the armored van parked at the end of the pier and opened fire. Driving the security team to cover and reducing the vehicle to scrap metal, he communicated quite clearly what he thought of his current life choices. With that, the engines finished warming up and the anchor was retracted. With small arm fire pinging at the hull of the sleek corvette, the _Barbell_pulled out into the bay at full speed.

Ten minutes into their escape, they had reached the mouth of the bay. Security was scrambling, defensive batteries coming online as patrol crews scrambled to get back to their ships. But it was too close for the artillery batteries to fire and the other patrol boats were too far behind. By the time either were ready, the escapees would be out in the open water and have much more room to maneuver in. About the only thing that was currently able to stop them was... the sea mines. At first the Barbell was able to sail past them without tripping their IFFs as to be expected, as this was still a friendly ship as far as electronics were concerned. Then someone on the mainland remotely disabled the ship's IFF tracker and the minefield went live while they were still in the middle of it... then Erik knew it was almost certainly over. The ship's sensors were lit up with hostile targets as the smart mines began to congregate towards the rogue PEC corvette. Desperate, the ship's gunners opened fire on the surf around them, prematurely detonating explosives. It was tense, inaccurate work that the turrets were ill suited for. Explosions rocked the ship and threatened to tear the hull apart, more then once the defecting PEC agents were glad they didn't have the time to take their body armor off before hijacking the ship. Shrapnel stuck out of their helmets and chest plates, causing them to all develop a demonic porcupine-like appearance as jagged pieces of metal and hard polymers were stopped mere micrometers from piercing anything vital, a testament to the Consortium's skill at armor craft. They were starting to take on water, essentially everyone that wasn't driving, shooting, or manning the engines was running around and doing their best to plug the gushing holes. Pumps automatically switched on once the water level rose to their ankles.

They were almost clear of the minefield when someone onshore finally had the bright idea to try and hail the fleeing ship. Needless to say, the fox on the video feed was surprised to find his call was being answered by a mix of men and women in Consortium armor instead of fatty fatigues. His surprise only doubled when he realized who exactly was crewing the wounded vessel. The defecting Champions of Hamburg looked at each other and bounced his signal around before finally falling on Erik, unlucky enough to draw the short straw and respond to the call. Sitting in a ball-gunner's cradle, his armor studded with all manner of shrapnel, Erik took off his helmet and glared back at the harbormaster still struggling to come to grips with the reality that some of the Consortium's greatest heroes were forcibly trying to leave Iceland, heart of PEC's strength.

"Well..." The blond man began, his lips curled into a snarl. "What to say that we haven't said already by stealing the Barbell? What to say that you won't twist into another propaganda pitch for the great and glorious Consortium?" He asked, unaware that from the rear of a small submarine quietly slipping away by hugging the ocean floor, Zea had hacked his communication and fed it into the city's data stream, a diversionary tactic to keep the Consortium from noticing that she disabled the anti-ship missile batteries lining the shore. "My name is Erik Ingolfson and I am a repentant monster. I stood witness to the atrocities of our prisoner camp in Hamburg, Germany. I watched as we performed unspeakable psychological experiments on people who's only sin was that they dared to love something we didn't, dehumanizing our fellow man for the sake of profit and an ideology the world frankly hadn't cared about even before the Peak Crisis. To atone for my own sins, I conspired against a corporation I had been brought up to regard as a savior of my homeland. I helped engineer the prison riots that should have destroyed that infernal place but instead made me a hero in the eyes of people I have come to despise. For five years since then I have grappled with the gravity of what I had done and well... regardless of whatever happens next, I go knowing my conscious is a little cleaner if I say this... tell those nearsighted asswipes manning the defense batteries to give us their best shot!" Erik shouted and closed the comm., the last thing the habormaster saw before the defecting lunkhead signed off was Ingolfson extending his middle finger at the camera.

The ocean around the ship exploded in towering plumes of spray as artillery crews zeroed in on the fleeing Barbell, the crew getting tossed back and forth as the helmsman struggled to avoid incoming fire. Yet try as he might, the Speed Freak manning the controls was more familiar with land vehicles and while fast, the corvette did not maneuver like a motorcycle. Still, his erratic pattern kept the artillery gunners guessing for a few minutes longer; long enough for one of Erik's tech-savvy coworkers to coax more power out of the engine and cause them to take off like a rocket. Soon out of range of the defensive artillery, the coast of Iceland disappeared behind them. Other then the distant ping of pursuit craft, they were free. In a couple hours they would start seeing the northern coast of Scotland, they really were free...

Then the engine died. Not designed to be pushed so hard for so long and under so much weapons fire, it promptly sputtered and died in a poof of foul-smelling smoke. A few minutes later, the pumps keeping them from sinking likewise gave up under the strain. Getting the lifeboats ready was an episode in organized panic, crowding aboard the little plastic motorboats and quickly loading whatever emergency supplies they could grab before the ship sank. With the _Barbell_a smoldering, sinking wreck behind them, Erik and his friends took stock of their wounds as their boats puttered along in the general direction of land. Their armor was essentially plastic scrap; just as well as keeping it was a surefire way to get attacked by the security forces of other corporations.

The resulting journey was long and fraught with many tense moments watching the skyline for Consortium search and rescue aircraft. Not like they wouldn't stand out in a bright orange escape boat, it would be like trying to find a yellow rubber duck in a bathtub. With not much else to do except watch their surroundings and check their weapons for the hundredth time, the renegades passed the time by talking. Secrets were shared and plans were revealed. Some planned on disappearing into the Canadian wilds or similar locations to set up more moderate communities, others wished to try their luck in Adipose City and elsewhere, and then there were those like Erik and Disella who had done what many PEC thugs thought was unthinkable, they fell in love with the hated blubber balls. Erik was finally able to tell the story about how he met Bethany "Swiss" McGirth when he was posted in northwestern Australia. How a chance encounter on a tech-head message board lead to a blossoming romance between them.

Embolden by his confession, Disella opened up about Oscar Wayles, a Burger World Whaleman she met while setting up a Consortium cell in Miami. Oh gawd did she really need to talk to someone about this story, apparently Oscar didn't even know she was with the Consortium. Looks like she was going to have an interesting conversation with him when they finally met up. Finally, after sailing for almost four days and nearly driving each other insane with nothing to do but talk as they sat crammed in a little floating orange boat, the Consortium defectors came ashore a forgotten beach in northern Scotland.

Reduced to the clothes on their backs and the contents of their pockets, they came to the hardest part of all. After conspiring, fighting, and suffering so much together, the decision to split up and go their separate ways was the hardest of all. Yet it was also the most necessary, the Consortium would be scrambling every foreign asset they had left to try and capture the traitors. The more widely they scattered, the more likely they were to avoid detection. Still, saying good-bye to each other was hardly easy even after plans were made to get in contact with each other once they were safe and the names of favorite hangouts in several different cities were exchanged. Finally though, everyone picked a direction and started walking. Little by little, the groups flaked off into smaller and smaller groups of travelers until they all disappeared to enjoy their hard-won freedom.

Epilogue...

Bethany "Swiss" McGirth nervously played with her long blond hair as she sat in the Queensland genetic augmentation laboratory's waiting room. It had been several weeks after she reunited with Erik in Switzerland. It hadn't been an entirely easy transition hiring him on as an agent of Queensland Confectionaries but it was done. For the first time in a long time, they were together. The nights were wonderfully intimate even though the days were spent getting him acclimated to his new life. Some habits from his old life were going to be impossible to change but that didn't matter, those were some of the reasons why she loved him.

Other then his security clearances to work with Beth and her coworkers, the paper work was one of the easier sides of Erik's application to Queensland. Getting trusted by his new coworkers and learning to stop looking over his shoulder whenever a PEC raid was suspected was a different beast, the latter prompting this final change. Augmenting himself with animal DNA, he decided to become an animan to change his identity and to give himself a few edges in his next fight with his old employers. As Erik was finally decanted and discharged from the laboratory, Bethany looked up to see how the transformation had taken. She knew what species he had chosen but still, when she saw that dingo smiling back at her with a familiar glint in his eyes, she couldn't help but feel a small shiver run all the way down her spine from her neck down to her abundant bottom. "Well my love, care to give this new body a test drive?" Erik smiled coyly at her....