Chapter 15 : Global Corp.
"Alright now just head back when you done."
Cid lowered the ramp on the Highwind letting the group off.
"Will do Cid." Tifa waved at the pilot and then ran to meet Reno and the rest of the Turk's. After a brief walk following the directions Cloud and Yuffie gave them the group found themsleves stood infront of the Global Corp. Building.
"You think the stuffs all there?"
Reno tried the front door finding it wasn't locked. "Won't know until we get inside." He pushed the door open and stepped in, Tifa and the rest of the Turks soon followed.
The place had been striped down, all the reception area had gone. Tifa figured it was most likely thugs and thieves, nobody else came here. After Tysall 'disappeared' the company closed down and no one took responsibility for the property.
While the Turks gathered round to figure out the best way to search the place, Vincent walked straight on ahead and down the first hall.
"He still hasn't changed." Tifa smiled.
Reno looked over and saw what she meant. "He's like that all the time, can't really complain tho, he gets the job done."
Vincent carried along down the hall, across the walls were various spray painted graffiti. All the offices on this floor had been broken into and ransacked, he hoped silently that the information they were searching for hadn't been stolen too.
After passing by a few more broken doors he reached the lift. The problem been was when he pushed the call button nothing happened, it seemed that the lifts had been shut down.
"Hey wait up."
Vincent turned to see Reno and Tifa running down the corridor.
"Where's Rude and Elena?"
The two stopped just in front of him, slightly out of breath. "I sent them to search around the town, this place has been cleared out so I want them to find out who did it."
"Just incase the data we want is missing." Vincent finished.
"Yeah, so find anything here?"
"All this floor has been cleared out." He turned to the lift again and tried the button once more. "And the elevators don't appear to be working."
"The power must have been turned off. And I haven't seen any stairs around here either." Tifa sighed crossing her arms.
"What about that door?" Reno pointed to the end of the corridor.
The three walked up to it trying to figure out where it went. It was a sturdy looking metal door with no handles or key lock. The only way to get through seemed to be the number keypad to the side of the door.
Tifa stepped in front of the electronic device and tried punching in some random codes. After every fourth digit she received an error message along with an annoying buzz to tell her she got it wrong.
"This could take a while to crack."
Reno laughed and stood next to her. "A bit of advice I learned from been a Turk." He pulled out his rod and switched it on to a low setting. "There's always an easier way." He taped the rod against the keypad, a few sparks shot out as the system over loaded and soon enough the electrics began to smoke.
Above the door a red light flickered and changed to green, from inside the door they could hear a thick lock been undone.
"My hero." Tifa said in a high sarcastic breath while hugging the red head.
"Yeah yeah, now lets see what's behind door number one."
Vincent ignored the twos shenanigans and stepped up to the door. Automatically it slid open granting him access to its contents. The lights flickered on and off before switching fully on, inside it turned out that the room was actually another elevator.
"Well that was lucky." Reno grinned.
"It looks like a executive model, perhaps it has a sepearate power supply to the rest of the builidng" Explained Tifa.
"That wouldn't supprise me, Tysall, Jevova probably has a backup supple to all the important areas just incase."
They stepped in side and examined the choices of floors. There were the typical choices of floors along with some special gold ones at the bottom.
"Laboratory, Service road and Storage." Tifa read the list.
"Looks like they wanted to limit access to those floors."
Reno grinned and pushed the button for the laboratory. "Well, then that's a good reason to start with them."
The lift started up and began to descend down towards the laboratory.
"So Tif, how about after this mission we head back to me place for a little fun." He winked at the brunette.
Tifa stared blankly for a few moments before bursting out in laughter. "That's you big chat up line?!"
Reno straightened up and crossed his arms. "What?"
The brunette shook her head while wipeing a tear from her eye. "Don't let the skirt fool you, your gonna have to do a lot better than that."
"Oh yeah? Well don't worry, no girls ever been able to resist my charm."
"What about that time with Aeris? She managed to resist."
Reno's face dropped again. "That was," He sighed in frustration. "I told you, I was drunk, it had been a long day, let it go." He continued to mutter under his breath. "I could have got her if I wanted, I just didn't want to..."
Tifa leaned over trying to hear what the red head was mumbling about, her smiled grew as she noticed the first ever smirk to appear on Vincent's face, even though he was trying very hard to hide it.
Before she could have time to tease him about it she felt something wet on her feet. All three noticed it and looked down, a small layer of water now drowned their ankles.
"What the?" Reno started.
Before Tifa could ask any other question she noticed that the water was rising as quickly as the elevator was descending. "It's getting higher!"
Reno was about to suggest finding a way out but the water filled the compartment in seconds.
Vincent took a deep breath before been submerged, as soon as his eyes adjusted to the water he began to look for a way out. Tifa panicked as the water covered her head, once she was able to see again she headed towards Vincent who was trying to open a panel on the roof.
Reno swum over towards Vincent and helped him pull the panel off. As soon as it was out the way they quickly swam through..
Tifa saw the two escape through the hatch and followed, her panic level grew even further as she began to run out of air. The small opening in the roof seemed to be getting more difficult to reach, even when it was right above her it seemed a million miles away. A salty taste entered her mouth as she swallowed some of the water.
Within a few moments she felt herself going light headed and was on the verge of blacking out when something grabbed the back of her t-shirt and pulled her up. Once through the small opening Tifa spun round to see Vincent pulling her up towards the surface.
A few seconds later the water dropped below her head and she was able to take a well needed breath of air. Reno swam over towards Tifa and helped keeping her above the water.
"You ok?"
She coughed trying to rid herself of the water she swallow. "Y-yeah I, I just couldn't see, it all went black." She put her arms around Reno afraid to go back under.
Vincent grabbed onto the side of the shaft and watched the elevator descended further into the water. "Cloud said there was an underwater service tunnel that lead to the station, perhaps once the station took off it flooded the lower levels with sea water."
Reno looked down into the water. "Well one way or another we ain't getting down there." He looked round the shaft and found a service ladder that ran up along the wall.
"Where do you think it leads?" Tifa noticed the same ladder and pushed back off of Reno.
"Any where's better than here."
___________________________
Vincent dug his claw into the metal and pulled back the lift door. After climbing the ladder for a while the three decided it would be best to check out Tysall's office, it seemed the only other place useful apart from the lab.
Reno stepped out into the corridor and stretched his arms, his clothes still soaking wet. "Well that was fun."
Tifa stood next to him and began to drain her hair from all the water it soaked in. "Uhhg do you know which one is the right one?"
"Not a clue. Spike just told me it was on the top floor." He began walking down the hall opening each door that he passed. "Wow."
"What?" Tifa and Vincent both asked at the same time.
"These offices make mine look like a dump."
Tifa sighed and shook her head. "That's because it is a dump, when was the last time you clean that place?"
Reno turned to her with a confused look.
"My point exactly."
After a little longer searching they found the office with the gold plaque. Reno was prepared for another keypad trick when Tifa just pushed the door open.
"Think they were expecting us?"
"Who's they? Everyone's gone."
Reno scratched his head and step inside. "Good point. So where should we start?"
"You can try those books on the shelf's, Cloud already told me where to look."
"Huh?" He watched Tifa walk over to Tysall's desk and sit down in his chair, after getting comfy she began to tap various keys on the keyboard on the desk. "Yeah sure, you get the easy job."
Tifa looked up at him while raising her eyebrow. "Do you always complain about everything?"
Reno walked over to the bookshelf and picked a book at random. "Not really, I just try that bit harder for you."
Vincent turned away from the two, knowing the incoming argument that was about to start. He walked over to a small cabinet and opened it finding a few printouts and a book. The book looked unlike any other he'd seen before, the paper looked and felt crudely made. On the cover was some unknown title written in a language he didn't recognize, below it written in pen was the word '(Cetra)'.
Flipping through the first few pages he saw a pattern. An unknown language was written on the pages and just below each line was what he guessed was the translation written in pen. He figured it was a recent translation as the foreign language was faded in most areas while the pen looked fairly fresh.
While Tifa and Reno were busy yelling at each other Vincent continued to flip through the pages. After a while he realized it must have been a medical book for the Ancients based on the various formulas and spells found on each page. Closing the book and turning to the few loose pages he saw a similarity between the two. On the pages was a formula for some sort of chemical, the complex calculations for the substance were too much for him to understand though something at the bottom of the page caught his eye. 'Reference - CSGO/7859.' He turned toward Tifa who was busy on the computer and shouting at Reno at the same time.
"What you got there?" Reno turned away from his fight noticing Vincent been even quieter than usual.
"I'm not sure." He shook his head and walked over to Tifa. "Is there a reference code on that."
"Huh?" Tifa looked up at him and the back at the screen. "You mean this?" She pointed to the top left of the screen. "It looks like a quick search tool."
Vincent handed her the paper and pointed to the code at the bottom. Without asking Tifa nodded and typed the code into the search tool and pressed enter, after a few moments a page came up titled CSGO/7859. "This what you want?"
Vincent hopped over the desk and looked at the screen and then back to the pages. "Do you understand what its about."
Tifa read a few lines and shook her head. "It looks like some formula, but I don't understand anymore than that it."
"Let me see." Reno happily dropped the book he was 'reading' and walked over to the desk. He read down the list and then stopped at the image at the end. "Hey this is it."
The other two looked at him curiously. "You understand all this?"
"Of course not." He leaned over Tifa shoulder and pointed to the image of a small container with an odd looking substance inside. "But I've seen that before."
Again the two looked at him blankly.
"(Sigh) This, I saw this on that huge station. That little nerdy twerp Steven's was carrying it when we were captured."
"Then it could be the same one Tysall used on Aeris." Tifa scrolled down the screen a little more but then sighed in annoyance. "But if that's true then what are we going to do about it? The cure could be right in front of us and we wouldn't even be able to read it."
Vincent skimmed the page understanding what the brunette was so frustrated about until he noticed a bunch of symbols towards the end he recognized. He picked up the book again and turned to the cover, the symbol of the computer matched the same on the cover, next to them was what he hoped was a page number.
"Found something again?" Reno leaned over his shoulder trying to see what Vincent was reading.
"Vincent?" Tifa looked up at him.
"This is it."
"Huh?"
He handed Tifa the book and pointed to a point half way down the page. After a few moments of reading a small grin grew on her lips.
__________________________
Ok, not the most action packed chapter I've ever written but I couldnt avoid it. From here I can predict there been two more chapter in this story, yet I'm still unsure with a few details about the ending. If you do read this story then don't forget to leave a review, or anything really, I'm actualy just a bit curious to how many people read this one.
"Alright now just head back when you done."
Cid lowered the ramp on the Highwind letting the group off.
"Will do Cid." Tifa waved at the pilot and then ran to meet Reno and the rest of the Turk's. After a brief walk following the directions Cloud and Yuffie gave them the group found themsleves stood infront of the Global Corp. Building.
"You think the stuffs all there?"
Reno tried the front door finding it wasn't locked. "Won't know until we get inside." He pushed the door open and stepped in, Tifa and the rest of the Turks soon followed.
The place had been striped down, all the reception area had gone. Tifa figured it was most likely thugs and thieves, nobody else came here. After Tysall 'disappeared' the company closed down and no one took responsibility for the property.
While the Turks gathered round to figure out the best way to search the place, Vincent walked straight on ahead and down the first hall.
"He still hasn't changed." Tifa smiled.
Reno looked over and saw what she meant. "He's like that all the time, can't really complain tho, he gets the job done."
Vincent carried along down the hall, across the walls were various spray painted graffiti. All the offices on this floor had been broken into and ransacked, he hoped silently that the information they were searching for hadn't been stolen too.
After passing by a few more broken doors he reached the lift. The problem been was when he pushed the call button nothing happened, it seemed that the lifts had been shut down.
"Hey wait up."
Vincent turned to see Reno and Tifa running down the corridor.
"Where's Rude and Elena?"
The two stopped just in front of him, slightly out of breath. "I sent them to search around the town, this place has been cleared out so I want them to find out who did it."
"Just incase the data we want is missing." Vincent finished.
"Yeah, so find anything here?"
"All this floor has been cleared out." He turned to the lift again and tried the button once more. "And the elevators don't appear to be working."
"The power must have been turned off. And I haven't seen any stairs around here either." Tifa sighed crossing her arms.
"What about that door?" Reno pointed to the end of the corridor.
The three walked up to it trying to figure out where it went. It was a sturdy looking metal door with no handles or key lock. The only way to get through seemed to be the number keypad to the side of the door.
Tifa stepped in front of the electronic device and tried punching in some random codes. After every fourth digit she received an error message along with an annoying buzz to tell her she got it wrong.
"This could take a while to crack."
Reno laughed and stood next to her. "A bit of advice I learned from been a Turk." He pulled out his rod and switched it on to a low setting. "There's always an easier way." He taped the rod against the keypad, a few sparks shot out as the system over loaded and soon enough the electrics began to smoke.
Above the door a red light flickered and changed to green, from inside the door they could hear a thick lock been undone.
"My hero." Tifa said in a high sarcastic breath while hugging the red head.
"Yeah yeah, now lets see what's behind door number one."
Vincent ignored the twos shenanigans and stepped up to the door. Automatically it slid open granting him access to its contents. The lights flickered on and off before switching fully on, inside it turned out that the room was actually another elevator.
"Well that was lucky." Reno grinned.
"It looks like a executive model, perhaps it has a sepearate power supply to the rest of the builidng" Explained Tifa.
"That wouldn't supprise me, Tysall, Jevova probably has a backup supple to all the important areas just incase."
They stepped in side and examined the choices of floors. There were the typical choices of floors along with some special gold ones at the bottom.
"Laboratory, Service road and Storage." Tifa read the list.
"Looks like they wanted to limit access to those floors."
Reno grinned and pushed the button for the laboratory. "Well, then that's a good reason to start with them."
The lift started up and began to descend down towards the laboratory.
"So Tif, how about after this mission we head back to me place for a little fun." He winked at the brunette.
Tifa stared blankly for a few moments before bursting out in laughter. "That's you big chat up line?!"
Reno straightened up and crossed his arms. "What?"
The brunette shook her head while wipeing a tear from her eye. "Don't let the skirt fool you, your gonna have to do a lot better than that."
"Oh yeah? Well don't worry, no girls ever been able to resist my charm."
"What about that time with Aeris? She managed to resist."
Reno's face dropped again. "That was," He sighed in frustration. "I told you, I was drunk, it had been a long day, let it go." He continued to mutter under his breath. "I could have got her if I wanted, I just didn't want to..."
Tifa leaned over trying to hear what the red head was mumbling about, her smiled grew as she noticed the first ever smirk to appear on Vincent's face, even though he was trying very hard to hide it.
Before she could have time to tease him about it she felt something wet on her feet. All three noticed it and looked down, a small layer of water now drowned their ankles.
"What the?" Reno started.
Before Tifa could ask any other question she noticed that the water was rising as quickly as the elevator was descending. "It's getting higher!"
Reno was about to suggest finding a way out but the water filled the compartment in seconds.
Vincent took a deep breath before been submerged, as soon as his eyes adjusted to the water he began to look for a way out. Tifa panicked as the water covered her head, once she was able to see again she headed towards Vincent who was trying to open a panel on the roof.
Reno swum over towards Vincent and helped him pull the panel off. As soon as it was out the way they quickly swam through..
Tifa saw the two escape through the hatch and followed, her panic level grew even further as she began to run out of air. The small opening in the roof seemed to be getting more difficult to reach, even when it was right above her it seemed a million miles away. A salty taste entered her mouth as she swallowed some of the water.
Within a few moments she felt herself going light headed and was on the verge of blacking out when something grabbed the back of her t-shirt and pulled her up. Once through the small opening Tifa spun round to see Vincent pulling her up towards the surface.
A few seconds later the water dropped below her head and she was able to take a well needed breath of air. Reno swam over towards Tifa and helped keeping her above the water.
"You ok?"
She coughed trying to rid herself of the water she swallow. "Y-yeah I, I just couldn't see, it all went black." She put her arms around Reno afraid to go back under.
Vincent grabbed onto the side of the shaft and watched the elevator descended further into the water. "Cloud said there was an underwater service tunnel that lead to the station, perhaps once the station took off it flooded the lower levels with sea water."
Reno looked down into the water. "Well one way or another we ain't getting down there." He looked round the shaft and found a service ladder that ran up along the wall.
"Where do you think it leads?" Tifa noticed the same ladder and pushed back off of Reno.
"Any where's better than here."
___________________________
Vincent dug his claw into the metal and pulled back the lift door. After climbing the ladder for a while the three decided it would be best to check out Tysall's office, it seemed the only other place useful apart from the lab.
Reno stepped out into the corridor and stretched his arms, his clothes still soaking wet. "Well that was fun."
Tifa stood next to him and began to drain her hair from all the water it soaked in. "Uhhg do you know which one is the right one?"
"Not a clue. Spike just told me it was on the top floor." He began walking down the hall opening each door that he passed. "Wow."
"What?" Tifa and Vincent both asked at the same time.
"These offices make mine look like a dump."
Tifa sighed and shook her head. "That's because it is a dump, when was the last time you clean that place?"
Reno turned to her with a confused look.
"My point exactly."
After a little longer searching they found the office with the gold plaque. Reno was prepared for another keypad trick when Tifa just pushed the door open.
"Think they were expecting us?"
"Who's they? Everyone's gone."
Reno scratched his head and step inside. "Good point. So where should we start?"
"You can try those books on the shelf's, Cloud already told me where to look."
"Huh?" He watched Tifa walk over to Tysall's desk and sit down in his chair, after getting comfy she began to tap various keys on the keyboard on the desk. "Yeah sure, you get the easy job."
Tifa looked up at him while raising her eyebrow. "Do you always complain about everything?"
Reno walked over to the bookshelf and picked a book at random. "Not really, I just try that bit harder for you."
Vincent turned away from the two, knowing the incoming argument that was about to start. He walked over to a small cabinet and opened it finding a few printouts and a book. The book looked unlike any other he'd seen before, the paper looked and felt crudely made. On the cover was some unknown title written in a language he didn't recognize, below it written in pen was the word '(Cetra)'.
Flipping through the first few pages he saw a pattern. An unknown language was written on the pages and just below each line was what he guessed was the translation written in pen. He figured it was a recent translation as the foreign language was faded in most areas while the pen looked fairly fresh.
While Tifa and Reno were busy yelling at each other Vincent continued to flip through the pages. After a while he realized it must have been a medical book for the Ancients based on the various formulas and spells found on each page. Closing the book and turning to the few loose pages he saw a similarity between the two. On the pages was a formula for some sort of chemical, the complex calculations for the substance were too much for him to understand though something at the bottom of the page caught his eye. 'Reference - CSGO/7859.' He turned toward Tifa who was busy on the computer and shouting at Reno at the same time.
"What you got there?" Reno turned away from his fight noticing Vincent been even quieter than usual.
"I'm not sure." He shook his head and walked over to Tifa. "Is there a reference code on that."
"Huh?" Tifa looked up at him and the back at the screen. "You mean this?" She pointed to the top left of the screen. "It looks like a quick search tool."
Vincent handed her the paper and pointed to the code at the bottom. Without asking Tifa nodded and typed the code into the search tool and pressed enter, after a few moments a page came up titled CSGO/7859. "This what you want?"
Vincent hopped over the desk and looked at the screen and then back to the pages. "Do you understand what its about."
Tifa read a few lines and shook her head. "It looks like some formula, but I don't understand anymore than that it."
"Let me see." Reno happily dropped the book he was 'reading' and walked over to the desk. He read down the list and then stopped at the image at the end. "Hey this is it."
The other two looked at him curiously. "You understand all this?"
"Of course not." He leaned over Tifa shoulder and pointed to the image of a small container with an odd looking substance inside. "But I've seen that before."
Again the two looked at him blankly.
"(Sigh) This, I saw this on that huge station. That little nerdy twerp Steven's was carrying it when we were captured."
"Then it could be the same one Tysall used on Aeris." Tifa scrolled down the screen a little more but then sighed in annoyance. "But if that's true then what are we going to do about it? The cure could be right in front of us and we wouldn't even be able to read it."
Vincent skimmed the page understanding what the brunette was so frustrated about until he noticed a bunch of symbols towards the end he recognized. He picked up the book again and turned to the cover, the symbol of the computer matched the same on the cover, next to them was what he hoped was a page number.
"Found something again?" Reno leaned over his shoulder trying to see what Vincent was reading.
"Vincent?" Tifa looked up at him.
"This is it."
"Huh?"
He handed Tifa the book and pointed to a point half way down the page. After a few moments of reading a small grin grew on her lips.
__________________________
Ok, not the most action packed chapter I've ever written but I couldnt avoid it. From here I can predict there been two more chapter in this story, yet I'm still unsure with a few details about the ending. If you do read this story then don't forget to leave a review, or anything really, I'm actualy just a bit curious to how many people read this one.