Somewhere in the stinking dark, near the back of the warehouse, New Guy runs into Gigantron's suddenly immovable ass.
"Nothing to see," Gigantron rumbles, in a tone that suggests there very much is. "Turn around. Look somewhere else."
"Gigantron—" Roo huffs, craning to see round the homunculoid's bullet-soaking bulk, and stops. "Right," she says, short and sour, and summarily spins on her heel.
"What?" New Guy says apprehensively.
"The tank and the DPS just decided to turn round," Maz says over her shoulder. "If you've got a better idea, good luck with it."
New Guy finds himself looking into Gigantron's front, as the homunc turns around. He risks a look up into narrowed eyes and shatterproof tusks.
"Turn. Around."
"Listen," New Guy says defensively. "I got us this job, right? There's something in here? If the guy fucked us on the description—"
"Turn around," Gigantron says, in the intonation that nonfree Typhons use for their stock YOU ARE INFRINGING ON CORPORATE PROPERTY bark, and New Guy reflexively backs up several steps, eyes wide, licks his lips, and then tries to peer around Gigantron's bulk.
"Is that a Squat?" he says uncertainly.
The M44 Squat is the homunculoid model of choice for generic lifting and handling; even bigger but less aggro than the Typhon. You mostly see them putting buildings up, or pulling them down. This one is just sitting. It looks—
"Are they sick?" New Guy says.
"Dietary deficiency killswitches," Gigantron says. "Keepalive nutrients in proprietary food," and New Guy's eyes get wider and wider.
"Are they," he says, almost whispering, and looks over this shoulder before hunching forward and hissing, "Jailbroken?"
"Feral biotech," Gigantron says, without decipherable expression, and New Guy shapes the beginnings of several words with his mouth, before serially thinking better of each of them. "Turn around," the Typhon adds.
"What are you gonna—"
"Turn around. Walk away."
"What if I don't?" New Guy says in a strangled sort of way, and Gigantron stands and looks at him for a long time, then finally turns around again to look at the sweat-slicked Squat, breathing shallowly, eyes closed, not reacting to them in any way.
Gigantron reaches into a tactical pouch, bends to put something on the floor, and kicks it gently so it rolls over and nudges into the side of the Squat's leg. New Guy catches a glimpse of a vitamin-pill bottle with the childproof cap overengineered to homunculoid grip strength, to keep humans out. (It doesn't stop people occasionally sawing them open and poisoning themselves over urban legends about the real dank biotech shit.)
And then Gigantron steps up into New Guy's space, quiet and massive, and softly says, "Aided corporate property misappropriation. Terrorism," and New Guy swallows hard, because you hear stories about JCAT and what happens to terrorists, and it might be the catch-all category that covers everything from adblockers to bombings, but terrorism — and on the other hand, JCAT are the boogeyman, and Gigantron is right up in New Guy's face and capable of twisting his head off his neck right now.
"Well," New Guy says in a strangled sort of way, "if someone had rogue corporate property in their building, and they tried to hire some Ops off-book to shoot it instead of filing a proper ticket, that would be illegal, wouldn't it? So y'know clearly there's just a Pyg in here or something."
Peepl's synthetic teacup pigs also have to be fed official Peepl-brand Pygfeed; it's in the EULA. If somebody didn't, they might accidentally live through their preprogrammed one-year-old massive synchronised apoptosis, keep growing past cuteness to the size of a small car, and get fucking mean.
Thankfully they don't seem to breed.
"You know," New Guy says, "just like the big dead Pyg we passed a couple of blocks back on the way here. Man, I bet one of those would make a real convincing mess if somebody stuffed a Demo-Brik up it." He attempts something like an ingratiating smile.
Gigantron looks at him silently.
"C'mon, Maz has a Brik in your van," New Guy mutters. "I'll buy her another one, eat the cost myself out of this job. I'll buy you a—" and his eyes flick past Gigantron, to the slumped Squat and the bottle of dietary supplements— "coffee."
Gigantron seems to think about it. Bends down, menacingly slowly.
"You're helping shift the Pyg," the Typhon growls.