To The Endless Hallway
Halcen, Mal, Jin, Kazuki, and Shira all continued down the hall they were in. They were walking quickly. They were nervous. There not being a soul in sight the last couple rooms really had them worrying. They had seen or heard from no one, and Shira had yet to pick up any smells that had her alert them either. And Halcen still could not sense anything. There was something wrong.
They continued down the hall until Shira stopped and began growling faintly at the door they were enclosing on.
Everyone stopped to look at her.
"What is it, girl?" Jin asked.
She cautiously moved forward slightly while still growling. She moved very slowly toward the door.
"What's in there?" Halcen asked, knowing she couldn't answer. Finally, some action.
"Something bad, is my guess," Kazuki said.
"Yeah, that would be my guess too," Halcen stated. "I guess we're going to have to go in there and find out. Everyone be ready. Shira, quiet." Halcen pulled his pistol.
Kazuki also pulled his own pistol.
Jin and Mal stood back from the other three. They weren't fighters. They needed to let the others handle this.
Halcen grabbed the door handle and slowly turned it. He pushed the door inwards until there was a large enough crack for him to look through. He pushed his head inside and took a look around.
It was another laboratory. This time there were glass cages all over the place. Stacked upon each other against the walls. Inside the cages were various animals, all over the place like a pound. Small animals mostly; like mice, squirrels, badgers, owls, ravens, bluebirds, turtles, lizards, even a fox. There were dozens of them. Maybe even up to a hundred. It was hard to tell exactly how many there were.
There were a couple tables and a desk scattered about the room with papers everywhere.
Halcen sighed. "There's nobody in here." He walked inside the room. "Just… animals." Once again, nothing.
They all followed him inside to look for themselves. Shira wandered around looking inside the cages.
"That's weird," Kazuki said.
"Not really," Jin said. "I mean, if these guys are running an experiment that they want to kill living beings, they would be using animal test subjects."
"So why are these all alive?" Halcen asked.
"They're not," Kazuki said. "Just look. Sure, most of them are still alive, but all of these ones down here, this whole cluster," he said pointing at a square of about ten boxes. "These ones are all dead."
"So, they wrapped up their experiment early?" Halcen asked.
"Seems like they got the job done faster than they anticipated. I mean, all of these creatures, what a waste."
"Should we let them out?" Mal asked.
"No," Jin said. "We don't want them running around and messing up the scene. They'll just get in our way, especially on the way back. And besides, they won't be able to return to the surface anyway. Even if we did let them out, they wouldn't be able to navigate their way to the elevator. They'd just be stuck in this room."
"Better than in these tiny cages," Mal said. "It's inhumane."
"They're not human," Jin stated. "I know it's hard to deal with, but we can't do anything for them."
Mal sighed. As a doctor, she wanted to help everyone in need, even animals.
Shira whined and stared licking one of the cages.
"No Shira, these aren't food. Even if they aren't the dead ones, we still don't know if they've been contaminated. We can't risk it."
Shira whined and walked away, pouting.
"We should get moving," Halcen said. "We can't just sit around here, staring at dead animals."
"But doesn't it bother you?" Mal asked.
"No, I can't say that it does," Halcen said, without hesitation.
"But they're living beings."
"Okay, sure. But that doesn't make their lives priorities," Halcen stated. "Our job here is to stop the plague that is killing your island. That's what you want, right?"
"Yes, but-"
"Then we don't have the time or energy to worry about small animals. These creatures' lives are so small scale compared to what we are trying to accomplish here. If we don't stop this plague, everyone dies. If we leave these creatures to their fates, only they die. Sure, it sucks for them, but it's not something we can afford to think about."
"How very logical," Mal said.
"That's how we survive. We have to make the hard choices. If we stop to help every little thing that needs help, it will stop us from achieving real victory here. That's just how the world works. And we need to deal with it, no matter the cost."
"Then maybe the world is wrong."
"It is, but we can't do anything about that. We just have to survive it."
Mal knew Halcen was right. As rough as he was about the whole thing, he was still right. It was the logical thought process. She didn't want to leave them to die, but she knew she had no choice. "Alright, let's go."
They all left the room. Mal looked back, but still closed the door behind her.
They were in another hallway, again. They continued down the next hall until they reached the next door.
Halcen looked down at Shira. "Anything in there?"
Shira lifted her nose and began sniffing the air. She looked back to Halcen and slightly shook her head.
"Guess not. Well, then let's go in."
They opened it and went inside.
There was a whole nother lab set up in this room as well. Beakers, bottles, glassware; chemicals, computers, papers. All over tables and tables.
Kazuki sighed. "Another lab."
"So, it seems," Jin said.
"What's in this one?" Halcen asked aloud.
They began exploring the place. Jin read through the papers laying on the tables. "OOH!"
"What?!" Halcen rushed over to him.
"This is where they produced the cure."
Mal and Kazuki ran over to Jin's table while Shira continued to wander about.
"Were they successful?" Mal asked.
"It seems so."
"So, it's here?" Halcen asked.
"I…" Jin looked about. There was another table against the far wall. There was paperwork galore and a collection of beakers set up on a wooden rack. He walked over there. The beakers all contained various liquids of similar color and viscosity. A sort of greenish blue. Nothing he could make out off the bat. There were fifteen slots for beakers in the racks, and each slot had a tape label with it number marked underneath it. There were only beakers in the one through twelve spots. Twelve total. He went through the paperwork and began reading. "It's not here," he said.
"What? How do you know?"
"Listen to this," he said and began reading. "OVC2-13 seems to have nullified the effects of the Orvast Plague. Significant reduction in Orvast Plague cells in trial thirteen. Pain, inflammation, and inability to move seemingly gone from animal test subjects. We've done it."
"Orvast Plague?" Halcen asked.
"That seems to be what they're calling it," Jin stated.
"Okay, but how does that prove it's not here?" Halcen asked.
"Well count the vials. These are the trial cures. There's no number thirteen."
Halcen walked over there. "Shit, you're right. So where is it?" Halcen asked.
"They probably took further in for mass production. With how many people are here they needed enough to inoculate everyone just in case something actually went wrong."
"Son of a bitch," Halcen said. "Alright, let's go find it."
Grey and his party continued down the hall to the next room down the line. They had just discovered some information about this second experiment. Apparently they were creating living weapons out of non-living matter. They were trying to twist and warp things beyond nature's allowances. This place was full of evil indeed. Grey could feel little by little they were growing closer to whatever it was they first felt when they got to this place. It was a terrible presence and he wanted nothing more than to be rid of it.
As they moved down toward the next door, Fein began caching whiffs. "There's something alive in there."
"I can feel it too," Grey said.
"Do you know what?" Bo asked.
"No… it's… unnatural."
"This must be where their weapon is," Bo said. "They did say it was living. They did say it was here in this building. It's gotta be in here."
"Alright, everybody be on your guard," Grey said. "We're going in."
He opened the door and stepped inside. It was a huge open room with nobody inside. There was technological equipment the like he had never seen before. On both sides of the rooms were lines of giant glass cages pressed against the wall. And rows of computers sitting in front of them.
Grey began looking about. "There's nobody in here," he said.
"Yes there is," Bo said. He nodded to the cages. "There's something inside there."
They all walked over to the right side of the room. They stood staring into the glass cage. There inside was a beast, a creature. It was about ten feet tall, hulking, humanoid. It had a giant twisted scrap of metal where its head was supposed to be. No features of significance; no eyes, nose, ears, mouth; nothing. Its body looked almost like a gorilla. Fat stomach, muscular arms and legs, black hair everywhere. It had slits of metal striping all over its body as well, cutting across the hairy skin. It stood completely still.
"What the hell is it?" Bo asked.
"It's disgusting, is what it is," Jory said.
Fein looked at the computer terminal in front of the cage. He turned it on and began reading. "It's one of their failed experiments. They tried to bind metal to human DNA. This is what happened."
"Why would they do that?" Jory asked.
"It was one of their ideas on how to make a living weapon. They tried taking something non-living and splicing it with living tissue, hoping it would simply enhance the living organism. Clearly this one was unsuccessful."
"How do you know that it didn't work?" Bo asked. "Looks pretty horrifying to me."
"Well, it's right here in the notes. They got it to move, but it couldn't maintain action for more than a few minutes before it began to break down. They had to shut down the experiment before it went berserk."
"So, this is where they put all their failures?" Jory asked, looking around.
"Seems so."
"This place just gets weirder and weirder," Bo said.
"Well, if this isn't where the weapon is," Grey said, "we should move on and find it."
"I agree," Fein said. "We'd just be wasting time here."
"Yeah, this place is creepy as is," Jory said.
They all turned around and began walking towards the door.
"CONTAIMENT BREECH! ACITIVATING OVERRIDE!" A mass robotic woman's voice shouted at them over the PA system. Then suddenly a horn began to blare and the lights overhead got dim and red and started flashing.
"What the hell is that?" Jory asked, looking up.
"Nothing good!" Bo shouted.
"We should go," Grey said.
THUD!
They all looked at the entrance they had come from to see a giant metal door had come down over the regular room door. It latched itself.
"SEE! I told you!" Fein shouted.
SMASH!
The glass cage behind them shattered into a million pieces.
They all turned around to see the metal-headed gorilla beast had broken itself out of its containment unit.
"Oh fuck," Fein said.
"Why the hell is it doing that?" Bo shouted. "I thought it was a failed experiment. How is it moving?!"
"Just because it's a failure doesn't mean it can't do anything!"
"I thought it was contained!"
"The alarm must have woken it up or something! There's no time to waste. Let's go!"
The thing began walking towards them.
"Shit!"
Grey began heading towards the next door on the fair side of the room.
SMASH!
Another one of the containment units burst open from the inside. A second experiment had been woken up. It stepped forward. Another giant humanoid. This one with a lanky body with pale grey skin and wood carvings all over him. This one had an actual face and began moaning as it walked towards them.
"RUN!" Grey shouted.
The creature swept its long arm at Grey, but Grey dodged it and began rushing across the room. The others followed suit.
SMASH!
SMASH!
SMASH!
SMASH!
More and more of the experiments began breaking themselves out of their glass prisons.
"Why didn't they spring for metal cages?" Bo asked, running his heart out.
"Because apparently they would make too much sense," Grey said.
"And you say we're dumb," Jory said to Fein.
The creatures began to mass together in a single mob, chasing after the crew.
"We gotta get out of here!"
Grey finally made it to the door in the center of the room. He yanked on it, and it opened. They all filed out of the room and into the next hall.
THUD!
As soon as Fein closed the door behind him, another giant metal door came down from the ceiling and latched to the ground. It happened so fast it gave him a start.
"Oh shit," he said. Then he stopped to catch his breath.
"Well, that was not good," Bo said.
"What happened?" Jory asked.
"I don't know," Grey said. "We didn't touch anything."
"It must have been in the other sector," Fein said. "This place must have an overall containment system, not just per sector."
"So… you're saying something happened on Halcen's side?" Grey asked.
"Most likely."
"Like what?"
"Could be anything," he said. "From a simple lab rat escaping its room to the plague being released throughout the whole place. I don't know how intense their security system is so unless we see for ourselves, there's no telling."
"So… do you think something might have happened to Halcen and the others?" Jory asked.
"It… it's possible," Fein said, trying to be real.
"We need to keep moving," Grey said. "We can't just sit here."
Halcen and the others continued down toward their next room. Hall after hall, room after room. He was becoming annoyed. He knew this was going to take a while, but it was getting to be such a droll task. He just wanted to be done and over with this place.
"I'm bored," Kazuki said.
"Bro, fucking same," Halcen said.
"Let's hurry up and get this done so we can go home," Jin said.
"What's 'home' exactly for you guys?" Mal asked.
"Just a ship. We don't really have an actually base. We used to do a lot of business in Corteano in the East Blue, but now that we're in the Grand Line, we found a new place to do business. Agoros Island. Heard of it?"
"No, I can't say I have," Mal said, shaking her head. "So how big is this ship?"
"Big enough," Halcen said. "We'll make sure you're comfortable."
Jin looked over to Mal and shook his head.
Mal chuckled.
"What?" Halcen asked.
"Nothing. Let's keep moving."
They arrived at the next door.
Shira stopped and began growling lowly again. There was someone in there.
"Is it more animals?" Halcen asked. He pushed the door open, said "Nope," and closed the door again.
"What is it?" Jin asked.
"There's… actual people in there," Halcen said. He looked at the crew he had brought with him, beginning to doubt their ability to handle how many people were in there. "I only got a glimpse, but there are a lot of them."
"What are they doing?" Kazuki asked.
"I don't know. I didn't' get a good look."
"We're gonna have to go in, aren't we?" Jin asked.
"Yeah…" Halcen got his composure and readied himself. "Alright. We're gonna sneak in so we can take a better look, and try to formulate a plan."
He pushed open the door carefully and walked in, while hunched down. He basically crawled to see what was going on.
The room was a large, open auditorium. Its floor dug deeper and deeper down into a stage. There were rows and rows of chairs that went down toward the stage. And long steps that slowly descended to the base. There were at least a hundred seats. Only about a third of them were full though. There was a man down on the stage. A man in a black suit with slim vertical purple pinstripes. He was looking up at the crowd. He didn't seem to notice Halcen and the others.
"What the hell is going on down here?" Kazuki asked.
"I haven't the faintest idea. But I can say with certainty that I don't like it."