"I can't breathe in here!" Nei said between bouts of coughing and gagging.

The air in the basement of the Biosystems Laboratories was more than just musty. Chemicals were spilled everywhere, adding poisonous, noxious vapors that burned the lungs and stung the eyes of Rolf's group. Nei might have been complaining, but the weakest among the group of explorers, Amy, was barely conscious. Thankfully Rolf's group had reached the main computer terminal in Biosystems, which was the reason for their trek through the biomonster-infested building in the first place.

"I'm sorry, Nei," Rolf said as he looked over every part of the massive central computer system, searching desperately for the removable data recorder that had collected and stored all information concerning Biosystems. He grunted as he looked through drives and slots. "This computer is an outdated system I'm not familiar with, and I can't seem to locate-"

He stopped as he caught sight of Amy out of the corner of his eye. Her eyes had rolled back and she was fainting. Before Rolf could call out for someone closer to grab her, Rudo and Nei caught Amy under the arms to keep her upright. Nei used her res technique to revive Amy, which seemed to stabilize her for the time being, but the entire group was running out of stamina, not to mention technique power as well.

Nei looked distraught. "I don't think I can use res again; I'm drained," she told Rolf. Through a slurred and dizzy voice Amy also confirmed she had reached the end of her technique usage.

Rolf ran shaky hands through his hair. He had to get his group out of Biosystems. Where was that damned recording device, anyway? The only light in the basement shone an obnoxious red, the air labored his breathing, there were biomonsters everywhere, and his team was holding on by a thread. The pressure Rolf faced getting his team out of the building had reached its boiling point.

"That recorder can appear any time now!" He slammed a fist into the machine. Rudo put a hand on Rolf's shoulder and shook his head.

"I don't think pounding on it will help. Do you want me to look? I'll try my best, though this is a far cry from the system the military uses." Rudo leaned into the giant terminal and began reading labels. "Hm, none of this looks familiar."

"I know," said Rolf, throwing up his hands. "It's entirely different from Central Command's as well. I can't make heads or tails of this ancient monstrosity."

Amy stepped forward while rubbing her head. "Wait a minute," she said, observing the main processing unit. "This is almost like the one the hospital uses in its archives!" Her hands moved quickly over the computer's tall exterior. She paused at one of the ports along the side of the processing unit. She fiddled with a latch, and after a few seconds a small, flat plastic card popped out of the slot. She smiled and gently pulled out the card. She held it up to the the rest of her teammates.

Rolf was shocked. "That's it? That thing? It's no bigger than a keycard! What is the rest of this tower of circuits even for?"

Amy handed Rolf the card, and he found a secure place for it in his utility belt. She tucked her hair behind her ears and shrugged her shoulders. "I honestly don't get why half the computers on Motavia are as big as they are. It has something to do with Mother Brain, but other than that I-"

A deep bellow echoed throughout the room. More biomonsters. The tiny hairs on the back of Rolf's neck stood up. He gestured for everyone to prepare themselves for his hinas technique, which would allow them to exit the labs immediately. The group gathered around him, and he concentrated his technique core. Nothing happened.

"Oh, no! I'm depleted!" He frantically searched through his supplies for an escapipe, but was dismayed to find he had only packed a telepipe, which was useless indoors. He knew the others had only packed medicine, and suddenly he felt like he had let his team down. He looked at the rest of his group apologetically. Another long howl filled the basement. Rolf's heart raced as the overwhelming sense of being trapped set in.

Suddenly, Nei pushed ahead, extracted her claws and looked around. Her ears twitched. "Follow me!" she said as she moved swiftly away from the computer. Rolf wasn't sure where exactly she was leading them, but he knew Nei's fine-tuned instincts would lead them away from the biomonsters.

The group followed Nei through the basement, but it wasn't long before she stopped, stood up straight and gasped.

"Did you hear that?" She retracted her claws and turned to Rolf.

He could only shake his head. "Hear what?"

"Singing!" Nei glanced quickly in several directions. The rest of the group remained quiet, but their silence was broken when Amy let out a painful moan and hopped on one foot. Rudo took her by the arm to balance her.

Amy tried to calm her breathing and gulped heavily. "Something's stung my foot. It feels like it's on fire!" She looked at the bottom of her shoe. "Oh, no! It's not a sting; it's the chemicals. They've eaten through my shoe!"

Sure enough, Amy's foot had a chemical burn on it. She quickly applied dimate to the burned area and wrapped medical tape around her shoe to cover the hole. The doctor was on the verge of tears as she relayed to Rolf that she was out of dimate. A quick inventory check concluded that collectively the group had two dimates left. Some of the basement's corridors were too narrow to avoid walking through the caustic substances, and it was only a matter of time before someone else went through a similar shoe-dissolving experience.

Nei let out an angry grunt. "I'm going to get us out of here, and now!" She took off down one of the corridors. Rolf, Rudo and Amy followed behind her, mimicking her long strides as best they could to reduce the number of times their feet hit the hazardous chemicals. After several minutes, Nei happened upon a chute leading to the main level. Believing that the only ways out of the basement were either by teleportation or up the shaft of the broken cargo lift in the center of the building, Rolf was stunned by the discovery.

"There's no way!" Rolf exclaimed, putting a hand on the elevator door.

Rudo scratched his head. "This isn't on the map we downloaded from Command's database."

Rolf chuckled. "Just when I thought we ran out of luck, too," he said as he swiped his agent badge along the chute's security pad, unlocking and opening the doors. "Let's get out of here."

Inside the elevator, Amy pulled Nei in for a tight hug and wept on her shoulder. "Thank you so much. I don't know what we'd do without you."

Rudo and Rolf chimed in, patting Nei on the back and praising her. Nei returned Amy's hold and smiled.

There wasn't much of an opportunity for celebration as the elevator came to a stop on the ground floor and the doors slid open. The group pasted themselves to the inner walls of the chute, unsure of what awaited them on the new floor. While Rolf and Rudo carefully checked the area just outside the elevator, Nei was on high alert for signs of life. Her head twisted in Amy's direction, and she beckoned the doctor to follow her.

"It's all right, Doctor," said Nei. "From what I can tell, this seems to be a fairly small room, and I'm not sensing any monsters."

Amy took in a deep breath and peeled herself from the wall. Her first step out of the elevator was met with an unfamiliar sound, however. This time everyone in the group could hear it. Singing.

Rudo glanced at Rolf. "Either I'm hallucinating, or we have company." He grabbed his datapad from his belt and pulled up the map of Biosystems. He shook his head then held the tablet toward the rest of the group. "According to Central Command, this room doesn't exist."

Sure enough, Rolf saw that the dot indicating where Rudo was standing was supposedly just outside the laboratories on the main level.

Rolf frowned. "That figures. Heaven forbid any tools we have to help us with this mission should be reliable for a change." He took the device from Rudo and looked for other signs of life. "So, where's this singing coming from?"

"That won't help you," Rudo answered, pointing at the screen. "It's only programmed to my honing chip. I suggest we simply listen for-"

"I already found it!" Nei exclaimed from a short distance away. She pointed at a cabinet on the other side of a half-wall. Rolf, Rudo and Amy waded through a sea of fallen ceiling tiles, broken equipment and spilled storage containers, all covered in the putrid remains of biomonsters. Rolf wondered how Nei plowed through the mess so swiftly without the group being aware of her movement.

Coming from inside the cabinet was a man's tenor, singing through a cracked and somewhat deranged voice:

"It's a long way to get to Kueri,
It's a long way to go.
It's a long way to get to Kueri
To the sweetest girl I know.
Goodbye, University,
Farewell, Paseo Square!
It's a long, long way to get to Kueri,
But my heart's right there."

The group eyed each other as the refrain ended and the voice started humming instead. Rolf pulled Nei over to his side and mumbled a question into her ear.

"I take it that's not a biomonster, right?"

Nei suppressed a giggle. "Rolf! Don't make me laugh. Of course it's not. Since when can biomonsters sing?"

"Well-"

Nei suddenly scowled back at her adoptive brother. "Don't answer that," she warned him as she opened the cabinet before the rest of the team could protest. The others gasped and yelled complaints at her for not using caution. They all took steps away from the cabinet and drew their weapons. After a few seconds of silence, Nei peered into the dark opening. "Oh, it's just some guy. He looks pretty scared."

Rudo grumbled. "Just 'some guy'? That doesn't explain much." He holstered his shotgun and reached into the cabinet. There was no resistance from the stranger, who emerged, limp and dazed, in Rudo's grasp.

Amy screamed. "Hugh! Hugh Thompson! What in the world are you doing here?" She looked him up and down, her shaking hands clasped over her mouth.

"So this is your missing friend?" Rolf asked. Before he could say anything else, Hugh spoke for the first time.

"You're not Professor Auttenberg!" he exclaimed as he looked over Rudo from his feet to his hair. "You're huge!"

Rudo smirked. "You got that right, kid. I'm Rudolf Steiner, and even at my size and with three other people helping, I nearly died in this supposedly closed-off building. You mind telling us why you're here by yourself?"

Hugh's crazed laughter made everyone squirm. "I'm here to help her!" He pointed at Amy. The doctor looked around at everyone.

"I-I... didn't tell him about our mission! Well, not Biosystems, specifically. I can't believe you'd do something like this, Hugh!" She huffed, stomping her foot. "As a doctor I demand we immediately find an exit and teleport back to Paseo! We all need to get to a hospital, especially Hugh!" She crossed her arms.

Hugh wore a dopey grin. "Wow! She's cute when she's all fired up like that, huh?"

"That's enough," Rolf said, pushing past Hugh. "Look over there; those look like outer doors." He motioned to the giant titanium doors a short distance away. He noticed the control panel to the doors had been fried, but he retrieved a magnetized keypad from his pack and snapped it onto the door frame. He entered a few numbers and then held his badge up to the keypad's censor. The doors opened noisily and revealed Motavia at dusk. Rolf would have breathed a sigh of relief if he hadn't been caught off-guard by his keypad working successfully.

"So let me get this straight: My clearance keypad wouldn't work on Nido, wouldn't work on the main entrance to Biosystems, and wouldn't work on its cargo lift. However, it works on these doors, which don't appear on our maps of the structure. If we had known about this entrance, our trip to get the recorder would have been only about one-quarter the distance we covered in this hellhole." He furrowed his brow and looked over at Rudo. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

Rudo scratched his chin. "Sabotage."

"Exactly."

No one said a word for several moments until Hugh broke the silence with laughter. He darted out of the building like a kid at the last bell of the last school day.

"Rita! I'm free!" he called out in joy, arms opened wide and face to the sky. Nei followed him closely and pounced on him, sending him to the ground. She wrestled him into a headlock and kept him there as the rest of the team quickly made their way out of the building. Rolf thought of all the questions he had for the Commander, for Amy and for Hugh as he removed the telepipe from his bag. His mission was complete, yet having accomplished his task, he somehow had a terrible feeling that his troubles had just begun.


Note: This isn't the end of Hugh's story. I think I can wrap it up in one more chapter, though. Hugh's song can be sung to the tune "It's a Long Way to Tipperary," if anyone's wondering. Cookies to anyone who immediately thought of Crow from MST3K and not World War I. ;)