"Oof!"

Sigma seemed as surprised to walk into Phi as she was to walk into him. "Whoa! What're you guys doing here?" he exclaimed.

Behind Phi, Tenmyouji and Dio also emerged from the treatment centre; opposite them, Luna and Alice followed Sigma through the door opposite, through which Phi could glimpse an expansive, brightly lit room. The six players gathered inside the cramped hub that joined the two rooms.

Dio, responding to Sigma's question, shrugged. "We oughta be asking you the same thing. How'd you get here?

Alice sighed, then tapped Sigma on the shoulder. "Sigma, hand me the map." When Sigma complied, passing across a folded-up map identical to the one Phi, Tenmyouji and Dio had taken from the treatment centre safe, Alice quickly expanded it and traced her finger across it confidently. She let out a triumphant gasp. "See! We're here," Alice said definitively, laying the map out in front of them and laying her finger down on one of the many small rooms depicted. "You three went through the green door and searched this room, yes?" Alice demonstrated a path on the map that resembled the one that Phi, Tenmyouji and Dio had taken to reach the treatment centre, then showed how the exit led to the hub she had indicated earlier. "It's the only way we could have met up so quickly."

"Which room did you go into, again?" Tenmyouji asked.

"This fan-shaped one." Sigma leaned past Alice and pointed it out. "It's called the 'B. Garden'. It's this big dome with a bunch of plants in it. Look, you can go see it yourself later, alright?"

Luna tilted her head, peering past Phi, Tenmyouji and Dio. "What about you guys?" she asked.

Tenmyouji answered, "Well, after we went through the green door we ended up in the treatment centre."

Alice asked, "So, what's the treatment centre?"

In that moment, Phi saw Tenmyouji's and Alice's eyes connect. She recalled the way Tenmyouji had wanted to tell Clover and Alice about the pods in the treatment centre, and how he had skittishly evaded any attempts to discuss them with anyone else. Was he about to try and inform Alice?

Alice continued, still maintaining eye contact with Tenmyouji, "That sounds… a lot like the infirmary."

"You wanna have a look?" Dio barged in, "We can go back to any room we've already visited, so why not do it now?" Dio banged the flat of his palm against the frame of the treatment centre door, causing the door to once again rise open. "So?"

Tenmyouji, seizing on an opportunity, added to Dio's suggestion. "It's worth a look. Trust me, it's nothing like the infirmary."

Sigma, Luna and Alice agreed that it sounded interesting. Thus, only minutes after they had left, Phi found the players returning to the treatment centre.

Once they arrived, Tenmyouji led Sigma, Luna and Alice into the chamber containing the bay of treatment pods and started explaining their functions, both as healing devices and as cryonic storage. Phi assisted, as much to maintain an excuse to stay near the conversation as anything else. The question was: could Phi extract any information from Alice before Tenmyouji tipped her off and they got their stories straight? Phi decided to make the attempt sooner rather than later.

"According to the records we found here, until about eight hours ago there were three people frozen in these pods," Phi stated boldly.

No sign of recognition from Alice.

"We don't know who," Phi continued, "All we found was what was in the logs for these pods."

Before Phi could carry on, Tenmyouji tried to wrest away control of the conversation. "We've no idea how long they were in there. Most of the logs were erased. All that's left is when the cold sleep function turned off. It records them thawing out, getting up… and that's it."

Alice turned her head away with a concerned expression on her face. "Then they could be anyone…"

"Hmph!" Tenmyouji grunted, so loudly that Alice swung her head back round to face him. Tenmyouji paused significantly, then said, "Well, anyone but you."

What was this? Some sort of opposite code, maybe, where Tenmyouji's strangely stated denial was supposed to clue Alice into the fact that she had actually been frozen? Given the strange secret Alice and Clover appeared to share, Phi wouldn't be surprised if Alice had used such improvised codes before. Or was Phi overthinking this? She had to keep listening, even as her opportunity slipped through her fingers.

Tenmyouji continued, still placing unnatural, stilted stress on every single syllable. "You don't need a device like this to freeze Alice. Am I wrong? Your entire body is made out of something called Ice-9."

Tenmyouji spun a fantastical story about how this so-called 'Ice-9' would freeze at only just below the temperature of the human body. Phi could only guess that the ridiculousness of this story was intended to reinforce the implication that Tenmyouji's first statement was false as well; this was another attempt by Tenmyouji to make Alice realise she had been one of those frozen.

Suddenly, something clicked behind Alice's eyes. Slowly, a deep chuckle built from deep within her throat. "Where… did you hear that?"

"From Clover," was Tenmyouji's response.

Alice's chuckle exploded into a resounding laugh. "Oh man, you really fell for that one, hook, line and sinker didn't you." Alice had much more control over her voice than Tenmyouji did, but Phi could still perceive an extra layer of communication to that sentence. Phi could only interpret it as, 'Message received.' Alice kept speaking, and the double meanings kept flowing. "Clover was messing with you. That is if she even said anything to you at all? It was a lie, a joke. It's a ridiculous misunderstanding, an urban legend.

"What happened was, quite close to the end of the 19th century, a team of archaeologists found an ancient Egyptian Queen. For some reason, her body had been entirely frozen, so the archaeologists referred to her as 'All-Ice', which eventually shortened to 'Alice'. It's hardly an inappropriate name; after all, she must have been nearly as dignified as I am.

"In any case, her body refused to thaw, even in the scorching Egyptian sun, and that's where the urban legends started. People started to say that she must have been made out of some special sort of ice, Ice-9.

"But then the weirder urban legends say that she did thaw eventually and, hear this, that the mummy began to move. And ever since then, I've had people say that they thought I was her. I mean, really, how could anyone believe something so ridiculous?"

"Why would people make that mistake about you in particular?" Sigma asked. He appeared to have entirely missed the undercurrents.

"It can't just be because your name is 'Alice'," Dio added, "There are tons of Alices."

Luna spoke up, "Is it because of your face, and how you dress?"

"Well, it is true that I am both beautiful and elegant. Can I really be blamed if people think I'm an ancient Egyptian Queen? I don't think that's the only reason, though. Someone who made that mistake said something to me once. They claimed they had seen me before. In fact, I began to feel a little sorry for them. So I told them, 'If you're so convinced, then maybe I am actually All-Ice. But maybe I've lost my memory and can't remember being frozen for thousands of years…'"

That was the final piece of the puzzle. Alice was telling Tenmyouji, as directly as she could manage given the onlookers, that she had no memory of ever being frozen in that pod. Whether it was true or false, Phi didn't know. What was worse, she no longer had any way to find out; Alice now knew enough to concoct whatever story she needed. The opportunity had slipped from Phi's grasp.

Alice concluded, "I'm still not sure why Clover would tell you something like that, though. Even if she was just messing with you, it seems a little out of left field."

So, there was still a chance. Alice didn't appear to have comprehended why Tenmyouji had included Clover in his story; she hadn't realised that Clover also had been frozen. That meant Phi had one last chance to squeeze the story out of someone not in the loop. She had one last chance to interrogate Clover before she was informed by either Alice or Tenmyouji.

Dio said, "Do you really think she put that much thought into it? She was probably just screwing with him, and it was the first thing that came to mind. Maybe she wanted to see if she could get him to believe something ridiculous."

Alice nodded. "Heh… yeah. I could see her doing something like that." There was a drawn out pause as everyone tried to digest what had been said. Then, Alice strode towards the exit door. "Well, I think that's enough idle gossip for now. The cold sleep business is interesting, but I don't think it's terribly useful. We should go and see if the other team has returned to the warehouse yet." Alice turned and left. Phi chased after her. She had to reach Clover first if she was going to get anything out of the situation.

After returning to the hub between the treatment centre and the B. garden, the six players went down a corridor that swung around the area the garden occupied. They arrived in a large warehouse, almost an exact copy of the one on the upper floor except for a few notable differences. Firstly, it lacked the Ambidex Rooms that were such a significant feature of the previous warehouse. Along the wall that the AB Rooms should have occupied were three brightly glowing white doors: they had to be the next set of Chromatic Doors. The warehouse also lacked the Number Nine Door, and though there was a large metal door in the same place, it had almost completely rusted over to the point of being unmovable. Plus, where the Number Nine Door had attached to it a lever meant to open it, this door had no controls at all.

There wasn't anything else the players could learn from this warehouse, and with all three of Tenmyouji, Alice and Phi antsy to return to the upper floor and corner Clover first, the players quickly left the warehouse and took a shortcut indicated by the map that returned them to the base of the elevator shaft. The six players took the elevator up together and from there returned to the first warehouse. There, they saw K, standing alone.

"Oh, thank goodness!" K boomed the moment the six players arrived, "You've finally returned! I was beginning to get anxious."

"Did something happen?" Sigma asked.

"Yes." K moved his gauntleted hand over his chest worrifully. "It's Quark, you see. He…"

Tenmyouji's eyes went wide. "What? What happened to Quark?!"

The moment Tenmyouji was distracted, Dio sauntered towards him. With a quick, viper-like strike, he snatched Tenmyouji's Ambidex Keycard away; in the same motion he swiped it through the lock of the nearest door. "I thought you lot were gonna be too long – you know, 'Blah blah Quark, blah blah emergency,' – so I thought I'd speed this along a bit."

"Dio!" Tenmyouji growled at Dio. Then, he caught himself. "No, there's no time for that. K, tell me what happened to Quark."

K answered, "He collapsed."

Tenmyouji sprang forwards, racing towards the yellow door. He had made the connection as quickly as Phi had: if Quark was in medical danger, the best place that K and Clover knew to take him was the infirmary. That perfectly explained why Clover and Quark were absent, and why K had waited for the rest of the players alone.

Almost guiltily, Phi was relieved that Tenmyouji had been distracted like this. Now that Tenmyouji's focus was on Quark, and with Alice apparently still not clear on what Clover had to do with the treatment pods, this was Phi's best chance to interrogate Clover first. Phi's feet carried her forward after Tenmyouji, still unsure of whether her haste came from concern for Quark, or eagerness to find Clover who had to be watching over him.

Phi arrived in the infirmary to find Tenmyouji standing over the hospital bed that contained Quark, desperately shaking the unconscious boy by his shoulders. "Quark! C'mon, kid! Get ahold of yourself!" Tenmyouji shouted hoarsely.

Clover was, as expected, already there; she struggled to interpose herself between Tenmyouji and Quark. "H-Hey! What are you doing?!" Clover exclaimed as she tugged on Tenmyouji's elbows, "He's sick, and we don't even know what's wrong with him! What if you're making him worse?!"

Tenmyouji's shaking arms gradually wound down till they stopped. He looked Clover in the eye, the beginnings of tears forming in his own. "Then what am I supposed to do? I have to save him."

By then, all the other players had arrived: K led Sigma, Alice, Luna and Dio into the infirmary. The gravity of Quark's situation was immediately clear to all of them.

Except Dio. "'Save? That seems a little extreme. Maybe he just has anaemia or something?"

Tenmyouji glared at Dio furiously. "No, that's not it," Tenmyouji growled, "I know him better than any of you. He doesn't have anaemia. He's never just… collapsed before."

Dio shrugged. "Well then. Call an ambulance and stop freaking out about it."

"You son of a bitch! This is serious!" Tenmyouji clenched his fists at Dio, but didn't do anything.

Phi glanced at a machine that had been attached to the bed that Quark lay in. "The infirmary seems pretty well equipped. There are plenty of diagnostic tools, but…" Phi had no idea how to use them. Simple first aid was, of course, well within her grasp, but to get anything more out of the equipment, they would need a proper expert.

"Well, we've got Luna," Sigma said. As all eyes turned to him, and Luna shrunk backwards modestly, Sigma explained, "Luna has a medical license. She told me that earlier."

Frowning, Phi asked, "Wait, really? Is that true, Luna?"

Luna held her hands up in front of her face bashfully. "Um, well, yes, but…"she stuttered.

Tenmyouji wheeled around and held out his arms pleadingly. "You have to take a look at him, then! Please! Quark needs your help!"

"Okay. I'll see what I can do." Luna gently motioned Tenmyouji aside, then switched on a machine right next to Quark's bed. "I think this machine is a medical scanner. It's called an 'ADAM'. It uses nuclear magnetic resonance imaging…"

Phi interrupted. "I don't want to rush you, but the sooner the better, Luna. Just let us know if you need anything."

"Of course." Luna retrieved a scanning attachment from its storage slot in the ADAM, then waved it precisely and thoroughly over Quark's body. Once she was done diagnosing Quark she stared at the screen, turning deathly pale as she read the results. "I… I know what's wrong with him. I feel so terrible saying this, but… Quark has an infection. A viral infection. Radical-6."

So the newspaper had been telling the truth. There was no way to get around it. Even if the ADAM was also lying, it was too much to believe that Quark had coincidently succumbed to another debilitating disease.

Tenmyouji sunk to his knees beside the bed. "Quark can't be… There must be something we can do! How can we cure him?!"

Luna read the results of the ADAM once more, double-checking everything it said. "The ADAM says that there's an anti-viral serum called Axelavir. It's the only way to counteract Radical-6. If we can inject him with some, he should… he should be okay."

"Where is it?!" Tenmyouji yelled, "Shouldn't it be in the infirmary somewhere?" His face swung quickly between Dio and Luna, the two people still conscious among those that had first explored the infirmary.

Dio shook his head. "We looked around, but we didn't see anything like that."

Tenmyouji cut him off. "I don't trust a damn thing you say! I'm asking Luna!"

"I'm sorry, but…"

Tenmyouji let out a primal yell and scrambled over to the medicine cabinet opposite Quark's bed. He rummaged through it, quickly taking in all the words on the labels. None of them were 'Axelavir'. He turned back to the other players. "Damnit… What about the other rooms? Sigma, what about you? Did you find anything?!"

Sigma shook his head. "No nothing like medicine. I mean, it was just, like, a park. Lot's of vegetation and stuff, but… no medicine."

Then K described the room he, Clover and Quark had explored. "We visited the laboratory. There were a number of chemicals and concoctions there, some of which were medicine, but nothing like what we're searching for, I'm afraid."

Tenmyouji collapsed against the wall and slid down to the floor. "Then Quark's… he's going to… Oh God no…"

Sigma gestured awkwardly. "Look, just to be sure… Tenmyouji, Dio, Phi, the three of you went to the treatment centre, right? And you're sure it wasn't there?"

Phi sighed. "No, there was nothing even remotely like it. We showed you around, remember? The only things in the treatment centre are those treatment pods."

"That's it!" Sigma yelled, "If we put Quark in one of those pods…!"

Before anyone could comment on Sigma's solution, Luna spoke hesitantly. "Quark?" The boy was standing stiffly beside the bed, a weary and vacant expression marring his once cheerful face.

Tenmyouji recovered instantly from his grief, leaping up from where he had sunk and joyfully crossing the room towards Quark. He shouted, "Quark! Oh, thank God! You're awake!"

That joy didn't last.

"Get away from me!" Before anyone could react, Quark yelled inhumanly. His hands swept up purposefully, and Phi suddenly saw that Quark clenched a scalpel between them, the blade aimed directly towards his own chest. "I'm sorry Grandpa," he muttered, "I have… have to… I have to escape. Like this!"

Quark drove the scalpel in towards himself. Phi didn't react in time; she was frozen by shock. Sigma was not. He leapt across the intervening space and grabbed Quark's hand at the last moment, throwing them both across the bed. Quark struggled, his entire body shaking furiously under Sigma's grasp, but though Sigma was old, he held on tight.

It took the others a moment to realise what exactly had happened, but before long Phi, K and Dio were also restraining Quark, and with the pressure relieved from Sigma he was able to force the scalpel all the way away from Quark, Alice knocking it safely out of his hand. Quark's shouts were getting increasingly shrill and frantic, and it was clear that Quark would not calm down. There were only two possible ways this would end. One was not tolerable. The other…

"Luna! Are there any tranquilisers in here?" Phi asked, "Hit him with some!"

Luna arrived next to her wielding an injection gun. After an intense effort to immobilise Quark's leg, Luna struck, injecting the contents of the gun into the thigh. After a few agonising seconds Quark relaxed; he soon fell mercifully unconscious.

Luna checked the screen of the ADAM once more. "Respiration, blood pressure, brainwaves… Everything's normal. According to these readings, he's in a very deep sleep. He should be alright for now."

"What about the anaesthetic?" Phi asked, "How long will it last?"

"He shouldn't wake up for a few hours," Luna replied.

Dio started pacing about the infirmary, flexing his arms. "Man, he sure was strong for such a little guy."

Luna explained, "I think that might be the virus's fault. It probably attacks the part of the brain that governs reason. Without anything to hold it back, his body was using every ounce of strength he had."

"So when Quark tried to kill himself, was that because of Radical-6 too?" Clover asked.

Luna agreed that it probably was. She asked the others if they had heard anything about Radical-6. One by one, they explained that they knew only that which had been explained by the newspaper article found in the infirmary, until…

Tenmyouji gasped. "U-Uh… What are you doing?"

Phi turned around and saw what Tenmyouji was reacting to. Alice stood right in front of the exit door, which had opened behind her; she stood stiffly and with an empty, hollow expression that was all too reminiscent of Quark's. In her hand was clenched the scalpel she had taken from Quark. Phi was hardly the only one who had noticed; the seven players formed a wary semicircle around Alice, all of them staring at her. None of them could bring themselves to speak first.

"We're going to die…" Alice muttered.

"Huh?" Luna took a step towards Alice, but Alice's right arm twitched, the tip of the scalpel moving ever-so-slightly upwards, and Luna froze.

"We're all dead already…" Alice continued, "Only terrorists would resort to biological warfare like this… But they will… soon."

"Hey, what the hell are you talking about?" Dio asked exasperatedly.

Alice's voice dipped to a soft, breathy whisper. "You don't understand?" Then, her entire face contorted as her mouth gaped opened to its fullest extent. Alice roared, "All of humanity is going to die! The virus will spread! Adults! Children! Everyone! Everyone! There won't be anyone left! I'd… I'd rather die here!"

For a moment, Alice didn't move. It seemed as though her outburst had ended.

Then Alice took a single step back. The door closed in front of her; only the rapid, echoing footsteps gave any indication of Alice's flight.

Alice had gone, taking the scalpel with her.

This fanfic has branching storylines. To keep track of the various storylines, a link to the Flow Diagram is provided in my Author Profile.

It's probably clear from the start of this chapter that I'm not a fan of the whole 'Alice=All-Ice' theory. Alice is more than interesting enough without it, and it basically ruins all her motivation: e.g. her father. It's a nice joke, but when a joke comes at the cost of the story it needs to be quickly excised.