Chapter Ten
Elsewhere
Quistis had just extracted the data from the computer core (Carraway's tech guys had engineered a device which could tap into the server and then dump all of the data straight onto a backup memory device Quistis held without any sort of delay, she couldn't figure out quite how it was physically possible yet) when the lights went out. This was both good and bad, as she had rescued the data before the power failed yet something had made the power fail. She didn't panic when one of the computer panels sparked open behind her, and she didn't panic when the door wouldn't open to let her out of the small computer core room.
The blood curdling shriek echoing down the corridors of the facility made her blood freeze, but not panic. That would happen in a few minutes time.
She wrenched the door open and on an emergency release it slid open to allow her into the secondary chamber for accessing the computer room. The corridor had a door that led to a small passage leading to another door, which then let a person access the computer core. Quistis was now in this smaller security passage.
But, she hadn't expected it to be flooded when she opened the door. She slid through the opening before she could stop herself, and then it closed again behind her, leaving Quistis up to her waist in an inky looking fluid.
A loosened power cable sparked in the blackness next to her, and she tensed on reflex, preparing to feel several thousand volts sweeping through her body as the cable dipped into the fluid seeping around her.
Such a feeling was not forthcoming.
Quistis scanned her memory to try and identify this fluid, and was successful after approximately thirty seconds. She remembered Wells talking about a stealth generator concealing the entrance – the Galbadians didn't have the ability to create such technology, and must have stolen it from Esthar.
Her eyes darted back and forth in the flickering darkness, as if reading an article concerning her current situation. Esthar stealth generators, which she had learned about during her stay there, generated so much heat that the scientists had had to create a new cooling liquid, called Xerophene, that kept the generators at an operational temperature because existing ones had been ignited due to the massive electrical field generated by the enormous structures, and didn't conduct electricity because of its chemical structure.
"Think, Quistis, think," she muttered to herself. Within two minutes she would be dead. She was safe as long as it was only Xerophene in the chamber with her, but the clear looking liquid seeping from another gap in the wall on the far side of the corridor, if not water, was probably flammable. Xerophene didn't conduct electricity, but water did – she had as much time as it took for the water to diffuse through the Xerophene until she was cooked alive by the electrical current.
No matter how hard she tried, a solution to her problem was not forthcoming, and panic started to grip her chest.
Squall ran forward and into the storage room as soon as the lights darkened, and he somehow sensed Seifer moving with him. What made him run is the shriek that had emanated just further down the corridor. Squall slowly glanced around the corner of the door and saw a massive shape thump into the corridor after finishing off whoever it had encountered. An electric cable sparked and Squall vaguely made out its features – man shaped, but with four arms that ended in wickedly sharp edges, either blades or part of its natural geography. Maybe this was what the Galbadians had been researching.
He darted back around into the storage room as it grunted and turned towards where Squall and Seifer lay hidden. Squall heard it move slowly up the corridor towards them. He moved to the other side of the room where he had spotted an air duct before the lights had died.
Suddenly a light snapped on behind him. Seifer, inexplicably dressed back in his customary white coat, held an emergency flashlight in one hand and the Hyperion in the other.
"It'll tear you apart," hissed Squall, to which Seifer scoffed.
"I killed a GF, I think I can manage one measly research specimen," he said loftily. With that, he walked out into the corridor with Squall watching half in horror and half in grudging respect. He heard one of the two become crushed into the wall separating the storage room and the corridor, and he didn't especially want to find out which of the two had survived – the four-armed thing because it had made easy work of Seifer, or Seifer because he would never hear the end of it. He clambered up the air vent.
The first thing to get out of the way was to try the door on the other side, but Quistis found it was impossible to wedge open. With time rapidly running out she looked to the ceiling at to her salvation – whatever had forced the pipes to burst had also wedged the air duct above the corridor open. Frantically she climbed up onto a pile of debris and hauled herself into the open air vent above. In her haste, she ripped her contamination suit in several places but her haste was well deserved – a few seconds after her escape she heard the almost mute hum of electricity fill the air. Out of breath, she clambered further down the vent and to figure out what the hell was going on in this strange place.
Irvine had been poking around the head researcher's desk when the lights had died. This, he could guess, was not necessarily a good thing, and he knew for certain when the screaming had started that it was a bad thing. He drew his gun and walked to the door of the office. Tactically it was bad to become trapped in a small confined space, so he went with his instincts, which told him to find the way back outside.
Unfortunately, Irvine didn't have the best sense of direction and with no illumination to guide the way, soon became hopelessly lost in the maze of corridors the facility consisted of.
He had begun to give up all hope when he became convinced there was a light ahead of him. Ignoring the part of his brain that told him it was just a hallucination, he headed towards this source of illumination and hoped for the best.
Rounding the corner where the faint source of light could be found he stopped in his tracks.
"Wow," he whispered.
The light was coming from a device in the centre of what must have been the focus of study at the research facility. A metal cradle held a softly glowing orb which pulsated gently, casting faint shadows of the furniture and other apparatus onto the walls of the large (relative to the rest of the facility) chamber he now stood in.
He paced up to the device and studied it closely, and whether or not the device's nature would have eluded Squall or Quistis he couldn't say, although he suspected his less than epic imagination limited him somewhat in drawing conclusions. Suffice to say, Irvine had no idea what the sphere did, and so he backed away from it in order to study the readouts on one of the screens, which evidently had a separate power source from the rest of the facility.
Anomaly power output at 80 of norm, it read.
Irvine tapped at the keyboard set in front of the monitor, but after it didn't respond to his repeated attempts realised its output cable had been cut. He held up the offending piece of cable in contention and then dropped it. Irvine suddenly remembered that he most likely wasn't alone in the facility, and just as he turned to check his surroundings one hand clamped onto his left shoulder, another across his mouth. He tried to shout in surprise but the sound was muffled, and he started to struggle against his attacker.
He stopped when he saw Quistis, who raised a finger to his lips. He twisted around to see Squall, looking slightly irritated. Irvine freed himself from Squall's now loose grasp.
"You could have given a signal, or something!" he hissed.
"Like what, an owl hooting?" retorted Squall.
Irvine let this comment pass, and turned instead to Quistis. "What's going on?"
Quistis raised her eyebrow when she saw the computer monitor but answered Irvine's question. "We don't know. Squall was attacked by some kind of lab specimen, and I was nearly killed on the way out of the computer core."
"Well I found this thing," said Irvine, the soft tones of his voices echoing off the metal walls around them. "Although I've got no idea what it does."
They observed the sphere for a moment, before Squall finally spoke again.
"Looks like some kind of…" But he trailed off, at a loss for words.
Quistis had found the keyboard and started to tap at the keys before she reached the same conclusion as Irvine had.
"It doesn't work," provided Irvine helpfully as Quistis studied the severed output cable.
"What an astute observation."
"It's been cut," said Squall.
"So?" asked Irvine.
"So, someone in here has wilfully committed sabotage."
"Caraway said he'd 'arranged' for this chemical spill, there's probably someone working on the inside, and sabotaged the lab equipment so any salvage operation wouldn't be able to retrieve the research here," supplied Quistis.
Irvine persisted: "What about the monitor? Wouldn't they have blown that, too?"
"Maybe they assumed it would fail with the power cut. Or, maybe it's just unimportant. All it's displaying is a power readout, it doesn't even tell us what this 'anomaly' is."
"Alright, I guess so. Hey, can anyone remember the way out?"
Suddenly the readout blinked, and a beep emitted from inside the unit. A high pitched whine increased in intensity until Squall, Irvine and Quistis were covering their ears in pain. It continued increasing until the noise passed out of their range of hearing, and Quistis glanced at the readout:
Anomaly power output at 9000 of norm, and it was increasing rapidly.
The sphere started to pulsate and grow slightly, but it was constricted by the device surrounding it. It began to glow with a ferocious intensity.
Anomaly power output at 15000 of norm.
A low growl echoed from the darkness behind them, from deeper inside the facility. Irvine glanced fearfully into the blackness.
"I'm guessing these two things are related somehow," he put forward.
The sphere had begun to spin rapidly, forcing dust to fall from the ceiling where the surrounding device was attached. Footsteps could be heard along with the growls – whatever it was was getting closer.
Anomaly power output at 26000 of norm. A new message started to blink in warning red beneath it: Danger – stabilising device stress levels increasing to critical.
An alarm started to buzz from elsewhere in the room, followed by another, and then three more. More dust was falling from the ceiling.
"Uhm, guys?" asked Irvine. "Do we have a plan here?"
Squall had drawn his gunblade, ready to meet whatever was now crashing down the corridor, and Quistis was frantically leafing through discarded notes in the lab. Irvine noticed another threat to their continued survival – liquid was beginning to seep through the far wall and down onto the floor; already a large pool had started to gather, and it was steadily getting bigger.
Quistis gave a cry just as another alarm started to beep: Anomaly power output at 37000 of norm.
"Quickly!" she shouted, grabbing Irvine and then Squall by the shoulder and dragging them as she ran towards the mysterious anomaly. Irvine just had time to see a spray of chemical burst from the wall and soak the apparatus before Quistis had pulled them forward and into the pulsating sphere –
- And suddenly he was outside, collapsing to the dusty ground, inhaling a lungful of dirt and starting to cough fitfully. It took him a second to realise that wasn't the only reason he was coughing – the fumes must have been building steadily inside the lab and only now, breathing pure oxygen, could his brain register that he had been inhaling contaminated fumes.
He looked up weakly, and saw Quistis was also coughing, but managing a more dignified stance than Irvine, who had collapsed to the ground – on her knees, hands leaning on her thighs for support. Squall was holding his gunblade oddly, staring forwards. Irvine's field of vision expanded as he turned his head to include the crowd of people staring at them, partly with fear, partly with surprise, and partly with hostility.
Irvine reached for his gun, but snapped his head back suddenly when a cascade of fluid appeared out of thin air and drenched him up to his chest. Quistis leaped back to avoid the flow but Squall's legs were likewise covered before the two men scrambled back as a gasp escaped the assembled crowd.
"Quickly -" called Quistis, but before she could finish her sentence Irvine could feel the chemicals burning through his overalls, and he tore them open and kicked them off as quickly as he could manage. A quick glance at Squall saw his overalls cling to his foot, but a frantic kicking motion soon dislodged them. Irvine, glad to have kept his normal clothes on under the overalls – and equally if not more glad that Squall had done the same – found himself in the proverbial spotlight of the assembled crowd of thirty or so people.
They looked a dejected group, all dressed in little more than rags, covered in dirt and with a desperate look in their eyes only poverty could bring. Irvine didn't know whether he'd have to beat them off as they tried to mug them or comfort them as they broke down crying. They stood in the centre of a small clearing, surrounded by what looked like scrap metal, and on one side Irvine thought a hulking mass of rubble could have once been a house, but he wasn't sure. The only familiar thing about the whole thing was the sky, from which the sun shone cheerfully down on the assembled crowd.
"Quickly, over here!" shouted a young voice, and Irvine watched as a child of no more then twelve rounded a mound of scrap and pointed towards them fitfully. He glanced down at his gun, but found it had been hopelessly corroded by the chemical flow.
He wished it had functioned as the biggest cat he had ever seen rounded the heap and glared intensely at the three strangers. Its singular eye burned with a primal strength, only reinforced by the absence of the other, which had doubtlessly been torn out in a vicious fight, judging from the scars covering its body. Irvine was more unnerved by the flaming fur covering the animal, and the bright light burning from the point of its tail – if he hadn't suspected they had travelled to another world then the idea had set firmly in his mind now. He knew nothing of the world he knew could look anything like what he saw now.
The cat padded forward on massive paws, sitting down on its haunches just outside the attack range of Squall's gunblade.
"Fascinating," said Red XIII.
Author's Note: For the holidays, FT will be moving to a once a week schedule. Normal updates will be put back on track when announced.