Chapter 45: Deadly Confrontations
This is it, you guys. The beginning to the final confrontation between Carter and Devlin against the project. This shouldn't take too long; just another chapter or two.
And don't worry, the story will continue afterwards. The Warriors still have to deal with XANA, remember?
"I don't believe it," Jeremy leaned back in his chair in the factory. He closed his eyes and took a shaky breath.
"Something wrong, Jeremy?" Aelita asked out of concern. Devlin looked up from his laptop. The three of them had snuck out of school to work on some stuff in the factory. They did that often; that way their friends couldn't harp on them for missing sleep.
"We just got word from our friend from the project." Devlin slowly put his PC on the floor, and then he popped up yelling "WHAT?!" at the top of his voice.
"Hey, I need those eardrums!"
"Sorry, Aelita. What does the message say, J-man?"
Jeremy took a deep breath. "According to the message he sent, Vivian has got two new test subjects."
"So they replaced us." Devlin shook his head. "But since Carter and I took so much work, their obviously going to try to get us back."
"That goes without saying. It also says that Stacey's really dead."
"Oh, no!" Aelita put her head in her hands, her shoulders shaking. "I don't see why you're upset," Devlin said truthfully. Aelita looked up and glared at him. "You two were both test subjects together!"
"That doesn't mean anything." Aelita looked at Devlin's eyes and saw genuine curiosity in them. He honestly had no idea why anyone would feel bad for Stacey. "I know-knew her well enough to say that if it meant getting back on the project, she would have sold you to XANA if that was what the scientists wanted." Aelita just stared at him in shock.
"I kind of agree with him." The two of them looked at Jeremy. "I didn't really know Stacey that well, but from what I know of her, she wasn't a team player. If we had let her on the team, she would have dragged us all down."
"And besides, none of you knew her well enough to feel sorry for her," Devlin went on. "You can't really sympathize with someone you don't know."
"I never knew you could be so heartless." Devlin shrugged off Aelita's harsh words. "I had to be team leader back on the Wastelands," he explained. "I had to make the hard decisions to make sure my team survived, Stacey included, even though I seriously hated her. If you think I'm heartless, so be it. But remember this: everything I do is for my loved ones, no matter what you may think of me."
"Your loved ones?" Aelita didn't know what to say to that.
With a blush coming over his cheeks, Devlin grinned sheepishly. "Well, yeah. The Lyoko Warriors are like the family I never had."
"I know this is kind of out of character for me, but group hug!" Jeremy got out of his chair with his arms outstretched. Devlin and Aelita looked at each other and shrugged. With smiles on their faces, they enveloped each other in a warm hug, all bad feelings forgotten.
After the hug, it was back to business. "The message says something else," Jeremy said gravely. "What?" Aelita asked timidly.
"They found a way to send adults to Lyoko."
"But that's impossible!" I exclaimed when I heard the news. It was the next morning, and we were all on campus after breakfast. The day was nice out for late January, but I wasn't feeling very sunny at the moment.
"It should be, but the white coats found a way," Devlin said solemnly. He looked unusually pale, making the freckles on his face stand out more.
"According to the message, they sent Vivian to the Wastelands a few times over the past few weeks," Jeremy went on. "Her progress has been steady, but due to her age they're trying not to push it."
"But that means that any adult can get onto Lyoko now." Now Ulrich was looking pale.
"Not quite." Everyone looked at Aelita. "The reason why the project used children as guinea pigs was because they can adapt better to the new environment. Very few adults can do that, like Vivian and my father."
"That means that we won't have to worry about any new enemies," Jeremy said semi-hopefully. "We just have to focus on Vivian and the new test subjects."
"Vivian was smart when she picked those kids," I said darkly. "She picked them because they didn't have families that cared about them. If they feel thankful to the white coats, they won't rebel against them anytime soon."
"Wait, can those guys get onto our Lyoko?" Yumi asked a really good question.
"I don't see why not," Jeremy said. "If they can send an attack our way, why not people?"
"Looks like you'll get to attack them before they attack us after all," Odd told me. I took a deep breath; I knew I said that, and I meant it, but I didn't think it would come so quickly. Well, at least we'll get it over with. "When do we go?"
"Well, considering that we're not teleporting from a Replika, we'll have to do it from our Lyoko," Aelita explained. "It'll take a while to set it all up, but it should be ready by tonight."
The gang looked at Devlin and me. "You guys ready?" Yumi asked us.
We looked at each other before turning back to them. "Do we have a choice?"
"What do you want to do once we finally get back to the lab?" I asked Devlin back in the dorms. It was just before dinner, and everyone else was in the library. We had snuck in there to discuss our future plans.
"We have to pull the plug on the project once and for all," Devlin said, slumping against the wall. We were in the hallway outside his room. It wasn't the ideal place to have this discussion, but then again we didn't want to get caught in his room alone together. Neither of us wanted the bad publicity.
"Okay, I got that, but how?"
"We destroy everything: the supercomputer, the scientists, even the test subjects."
"I don't get why we have to destroy the test subjects," I said, slumping down next to Devlin. He looked at me carefully. "Like you said before, they'll be thankful to have another chance at life with the scientists. And even if we do save them, we can't provide for them. Jeremy can already get into a lot of trouble for giving Aelita and me bank accounts with money already in them. We can't give those two a life here." Devlin looked at the floor.
"But we can't leave them there in San Diego with the white coats. They'll know too much," I countered. And then what Devlin was saying finally sunk in, and I felt like vomiting all over the hallway floor.
"We have to kill them, don't we?"
Devlin shrugged. "I'll think about it some more before the mission. But if we seriously can't help them..."
I was so not prepared for the mission, but what choice did I have?
We were in the Skid by this point, and my stomach felt like rebelling against tonight's dinner. If I wasn't on Lyoko, I would have upchucked my now.
Aelita had just docked to a tower in the ice sector. "You guys ready?" Aelita asked the two of us.
"Ready when you are, Carter," Devlin announced. I took a deep, shaky breath. "Let's do this."
"Teleport," Aelita ordered the ship. I closed my eyes as I left my Nav Skid.
So teleportation felt a lot like getting virtualized onto Lyoko; good to know.
I opened my eyes to see a large, white building that looked blandly normal against the craziness that was San Diego. No one would suspect that a nondescript building like this would be a testing facility.
"Carter, Devlin, are you there?" Jeremy said from the sky. I still couldn't understand how we could hear him all the way from France.
"We're here, Jeremy," Devlin responded. "How much time do we have?" "About thirty minutes, and we're really stretching it. You guys go in, trash the place, and get out."
"Roger that, J-man," Devlin told him. He looked around for an entrance. "I know this place like the back of my hand. Just follow me." I followed Devlin as he led us to a fire exit, its sign broken. "This has been broken for years," he explained. "It's not guarded or anything, but when I was little, I was too afraid to escape."
"I can't blame you," I whispered as Devlin opened the door. The hinges groaned in protest, but it wasn't very loud. "What I can't believe is how the white coats left this alone. Don't they know that someone can sneak in here easily?"
We were inside the building now, and it looked old and decrepit. The walls were crumbling, and there were little potholes in the floor. The lights in the ceiling were fading, making the place look like an old mental asylum in a decent horror flick.
Hmm. Maybe that isn't far from the truth.
Devlin and I ran on tiptoes, since I was wearing heels (damn them!) and we couldn't afford to make noise. We made a left turn after a minute, and the place looked as good as new. The lights were blinding, and everything was a pristine white, just like the last time I was here.
Devlin gestured to me. "This is a shortcut into the pod room," he whispered. He put the flat of his palm against the wall and pushed against it. A part of the wall was pushed back, revealing a large square duct big enough for two skinny kids to fit through.
"How…"
"This place went through a lot of changes since the nineties," Devlin explained. "This used to be a special air duct. They were going to fill it up, but the white coats were on a budget." He stepped into the duct, and I followed after him.
Devlin seemed to know the way to the pod room even with the little light filtering into the space. As we crept along, I could remember long forgotten memories of Devlin and me exploring the nooks and crannies in this building whenever we could get away from testing. I even remembered this little crevice in the wall, though we always headed in the other direction.
"We're here," Devlin announced suddenly. He pushed one hand against the wall again and it slid to the left this time, light flooding into the space in the wall. We clamored out into the pod room, with its high-tech computers and human pod chambers.
There were two people in the pods, an African American boy with a curly black afro and wearing a white t-shirt and jeans, and a brunette with her long hair in a braid with a blue checkered blouse and jean skirt. They looked younger than the two of us.
This was going to be a lot harder than I thought.
"Do we really have to kill them?" I asked Devlin. "Is there really no other way?" He looked at me gravely. But before he could say anything, the pods began to open. We stepped away quickly as the newest test subjects began to awaken.
I knew this routine: after a training session, if they let us into the real world, they would let us talk to each other and relax for a few minutes. That way the white coats could collect more data.
And now we could talk to them. Maybe even convince them to leave the project.
Devlin grabbed my shoulder, and he gestured to my daggers. Without a word, I unsheathed and handed them to him. We looked at the test subjects as they blinked in the light and got out of their pods. The African American made a noise when he saw us, and the girl turned her face in our general direction, revealing milky blind eyes.
Devlin walked up to them. "Subject thirteen, subject fourteen, I'm subject eleven and she's subject twelve. Can you hear us out?"
"Uh, sure," subject fourteen stammered out. He looked at the girl, who shrugged.
"Do you guys really want to stay here?" I suddenly said, interrupting Devlin. The two of them looked startled for a moment, but then they both nodded. "I was stuck in an orphanage where nobody wanted to be around me," thirteen said bitterly. "If they did, they always felt pity for the poor blind girl, like I couldn't do anything. At least here, I have a purpose."
"My dad used to beat me up when he drank," fourteen said sadly. "Mom split years ago, and I have no other family besides this one. I don't want to leave."
Devlin looked at me, and before I could say anything, he flung my daggers at their throats. The blades sliced through their skin, blood spurting everywhere. Their faces registered shock and pain and fear. They hadn't wanted to go out this way; they had only wanted a family that would love them.
My body began to betray me. I shuddered as I heard the subjects dying breaths, and I felt like heaving everything in my stomach onto the metal floor. I closed my eyes as the two of them died. I heard Devlin walk over to the bodies, and I cringed as I heard the sounds of blades exiting meat.
I felt someone touch my shoulders. "We have to go destroy the supercomputer," Devlin said softly, handing me my daggers. Not a speck of blood was on them, thanks to their polymorphic specter nature.
But before I could take them, I asked Devlin softly, "How could you do it?"
Devlin looked ready to cry. "I didn't want to," he said in a voice like a little boy's. "But I didn't want you to do it either."
I slowly stood up, my knees shaking uncontrollably. I took the blades from him and I refused to look at the bodies. "Where's the supercomputer?"
That last scene wasn't how I planned it, but it works for me.
So, what do you think? Reviews would be really nice right now.
