Chapter Twenty: Escape From The Lab

"What?" Julie queried as she peered over Gloria's shoulder. "All I see is a mixed-up sequence of numbers and words."

"It's some sort of foreign command line." She replied without taking her eyes off the glowing screen. Gloria then said something that sounded like "Yipe!!" and backed off from the computer screen in terror. "Hey Amanda, check this out!! It's in Line 307a. You'll never believe this!!"

"Whazzup here, huh?" Amanda replied, coming back to the console. "WHAT THE #$?!?!?!" She wailed, eyes agape in horror. "It's a &$ % virus!! And it's set the computers to activate the self-destruct mechanism in exactly 2 and 1/2 hours and counting!!!!!!"

"Oh geez…! I know! I'll see if I can disable it! In the meanwhile, evacuate everyone!! Go to Lab 2 first and just work your way down!!" Gloria commanded, fingers tapping the keys rapidly in an attempt to disengage the virus.

Amanda gave a playful salute. "Yes, o' fearless leader!!" She took off down the right-hand hallway yelling-no screaming, "Evacuate, now!!! Self-destruct activated!!!!"

"Did I just hear something about self-destruct??" Michael questioned worriedly.

Gloria continued to type, franticly trying to disarm the computer. "Don't worry. If I can disable this #$% virus, it won't go off…if it hasn't already contaminated the manual overrides and overridden the main processors..."

"Can't you just turn it off?" Michael asked, peering over Gloria's shoulder.

"NO! That would do no good! It'd just activate the lab's self-destruct!" Gloria responded.

"I don't know much about computer viruses," Joshua said, "but are they really capable of doing something like that?"

"Joshua, you have no idea what hackers will do to cause a little damage. With a well-coded virus a hacker can control computers, and I'm talking total liberation!" Gloria continued, still focused on the screen. "OH NO!!!!" She jumped back from the screen.

"Dare I ask what went wrong?" Julie asked worriedly.

"I can't disarm it!" Gloria said fearfully, "Not without it shortening the timer…oh, blast it all!! It already did!!!" She stamped her foot in a sudden spurt of frustrated anger. "Now we only have 15 minutes to get outta' here!!!! And now it put the security system in total mayhem; it'll no longer use the registry…"

"Oh crap." Said Michael as he looked about. "Well, at least it can't get worse..."

Meanwhile…

"Hey in there!!" Amanda bashed the steel door with her hip, breaking it open. Inside was an old man. His hair was thin and snow-white. He was wearing a suit, which was a larger twin of Amanda's, complete with gloves. He had a Pokéball in his hand.

"What is it, Amanda? You look and sound troubled." Said the man as he pocketed the ball.

"Curtis! The self-destruct has been set off!"

"WHAT?!?!?!?!" Curtis yelped. "I designed the safeguards myself!! Nothing-and I mean NOTHING could've set them off without alerting everyone!!!!" He threw the Pokéball against the wall in his frustration.

"A virus set them off!! Get outta' here!!! Alert everyone; I have to get back to Gloria!!!"

"Gloria?!?! I thought-"

"Curtis! There's no time for this!! Just go, GET OUT!!!!" With that, Amanda raced out the door, Curtis scrambling out a second later after he scooped the ball up. Curtis raced further into the lab; Amanda hurried back to the computer terminal.

Back at the halls…

"Okay, everyone got the mirrors up??" Gloria asked quickly. Everyone nodded. "Grab your Pokémon unless you think they're ready for a running spree, cause we're gonna' have to move fast! Follow me!!" She dashed down the hall to her right, Bulbasaur in close pursuit. The others followed Gloria's lead. At the intersection she turned left, then right, then left again and finally straight ahead when…

"Ouch!!" Gloria said as she fell on her rear upon collision with a nine-foot tall pile of treads, wires, cannons, and merciless pursuit.

She had run straight into a 'bot! It turned toward her and the others, its treads swiveling a full 90o right. It raised its robotic "arms", welded on them instead of hands were two large laser cannons. It raised the cannons aiming directly at our heroes.

"Quick, block it!!!" Gloria commanded as she raised her arms in defense. The laser just bounced off the mirrors on Michael's raised arms, missing the robot very narrowly and hitting the wall behind it.

"Nice one, Mike!" Gloria scuttled to her feet and jammed her hands in the gloves dangling at her side while the 'bot's cannons recharged. "Ladies and gentlemen," She announced, "you're about to see the power of the Laser Glove 2000!" She straightened her arms and hands out completely, forming a perfect straight line from shoulder to finger. Ten tiny lasers, one from each finger, sprouted from them, each striking and searing a hole completely through the towering hunk of scrap metal as Gloria moved her arms and, going straight through it and into the wall beyond. The 'bot made an ear-piercing squeal of metal on metal then stopped, cannon-arms still aimed.

"Whoa!! How did you do that?!?!" Michael asked.

"Laser Gloves." Gloria replied taking her hands out. "If you have your arm and hand out like I did," she demonstrated the position without the gloves on, "you can fire a laser. If you straighten one finger, the laser on that finger fires. I'll give you the juicy details later; we gotta' move!!" With that she scooted around the disabled 'bot and raced down the hall, the rest of the party in pursuit.

At the end of the hall, a huge indoor lake was situated as if in a metal canyon. In the "lake", Gloria could see electric sparks leaping from it, threatening to zap anyone/anything that entered. Gloria suspected something like Lanturns were in there.

"Ey, hey, hey, hey! Gloria!" Amanda was calling from the other side, waving her arms. "Can't get over?"

"What do you think?!" Gloria said. She had no time for chitchat. "The lake is electrified and even a Kangaskhan probably couldn't leap over that chasm!"

"You seem kinda ruffled. In more of a hurry?"

"HURRY?!?! The S.D. is gonna' go off in five minutes!!!!"

"Huh?!? I thought it was gonna' go off in another 2 hours!!" Amanda scratched her head. "The default timers can't be-"

"As I tried to deactivate the virus, it shortened the timer and set the whole security system berserk!!" Gloria interrupted.

"Oh-oh! As for the big-hole-in-the-ground problem," Amanda activated her mirrors and pulled out what looked like a harpoon gun with a giant anchor-like hook on it, "I think this'll do." She fried it at the ceiling just three feet short of the ledge where she stood. "I'm just gonna' make like Tarzan and you just grab me!"

"What about the Pokémon?" Joshua asked.

"Hang on to them tight! I'm commin' over!" She leapt off the ledge, swinging and even making a playful Tarzan call, "AWEEEEE-AH-H-H-H-H-EEEEEE-AHHHHHH!!!!"

Gloria giggled a little at Amanda's antics. Even though Amanda was nineteen on the outside, she was still just a kid on the inside. Just then, Amanda came swinging by, too far over. She hovered in that spot for just a second before swinging back over.

"Oops." She quipped as she replanted her feet for another try. "A little too frisky, eh?" Just then she snapped her fingers. "Idea!" She let go of the gun and pushed it over so it swung over to Gloria.

She grabbed it and grinned. "How novel." She commented as she readied herself. "Ready, Bulby Boy?" She said to her green, saurian companion.

"Bulba, bulb!" He said; his vines wrapped around Gloria's neck. He was raring to go.

"Then, here I go!" Gloria pushed of with her feet, swinging over the chasm. Below her, the relentless electric tendrils snaking from the water threatened to ensnare her at any given second. Then, just as she thought she'd freak out, she was above the other side. She let go of the rope, dropping awkwardly onto the platform below and causing Bulbasaur to fall off his perch on Gloria's shoulder and onto the floor.

"Bulb-bulba!!!" He said in complaint, shaking his green head.

"Sorry 'bout that, but I never did that before..."

"Yahoo!!" Julie exclaimed with a graceful leap off the rope.

"Ow! Quit it!" Joshua complained as Farfetch'd kept pecking him on his bottom. Then Joshua noticed his Pokémon had something in her talons: Charmander!

"Char! Char! Char!" He repeated, trying to squirm out of his captor's grip. Farfetch'd let him go and Charmander literally shook his fist at the laughing (Quacking?) bird.

"Hey, good idea! Go fetch Squirtle, Feather Face!" Joshua ordered. "Mind if I get her to grab Eevee too, Michael?"

"Huh? Oh, no not at all." Michael replied as he hopped off the rope. A short while later, Farfetch'd returned with Eevee in one foot, Squirtle, who was hiding in her shell, was in the other.

"Let's get moving!! I don't think the exit's too much further!" Gloria yelled, rocketing down the hallway. After a short ways down the hall, she ran into a door, locked with a keypad. Hang on a sec'." Gloria tapped a few keys into the keypad and the door slid open. There was a car parked there in front of the door.

"Oh, I can't believe it's still here!" Amanda crooned, taking some keys out of her pocket, "My old car!"

"You can drive?" Michael asked.

"Yup. Plant 'yer cabooses here, I'm gonna' give you a ride!" Amanda said as she got into the car. As soon as the others and their Pokémon were in the car, Amanda put the pedal to the metal-literally! "YAHOO!!! Now ain't this a blast!!!" she called out.

"W-h-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-a!" Julie said, her voice getting a bit bouncy as the car sped away, rearing on its hind wheels a little as it gained its initial burst of speed. "Y-o-u d-r-i-v-e l-i-k-e a m-a-n-i-a-c!"

"I don't drive often," Amanda intoned, obviously unaffected by the bouncing car, "but it's better than being fried in the lab!! Ooop, iiiiiiits TURBO TIIIIIIIME!!!!" She pounded a button and the car zoomed even faster away from the lab, which was engulfed in flames now, its yellow-red glow illuminating the dusky sky into dawn once again.

Later…

Gloria solemnly stood atop the rocky, cliff-like overhang as she observed the lab's blaze, its yellow aura stretching further with every passing moment. Tears slowly slid down her cheeks as she gazed at the flames

"Why so glum, chum?" Amanda questioned, trying to peer over Gloria's shoulder.

"……… Lab 4…" Gloria said without looking away form the fire, "the one that was sealed…You may not have known, but I was forced to create genetic experiments three years ago…and now I wish I'd had the time to go back and save all those poor, innocent Pokémon who were to be victims of those experiments from this inferno that now marks their gravesite…………"

Amanda said nothing, but placed her pale, pink hand on Gloria's shoulder as she too stared into the hectic blaze. "Curse that Lab," she thought to herself, clenching her other hand into a fist as rage built up in her, like the flames she now watched, "and curse the Experiments I was forced to accomplish too!! How could I have even been helping that?!?! Curse it all!!! CURSE IT ALL!!!!!" She glared at the ruins, vowing silently that she'd one day have her revenge. She didn't know how, when, or on who, but someone was gonna pay the price. She swore it.