Spectrophobia
Chapter 6
"GET OFF ME!"
Chief Haro was in the floor of his office, trying to grab the anti-Bagu Bagu patch that had jumped off of his desk and latched onto his mask. It was incredibly fast, however, and it kept slipping between his fingers. It was now skittering down his helmet toward his neck.
Getting an idea, the chief pulled his collar down and grabbed at an empty spot right in the patch's path. Sure enough, the thing crawled right into his hand, and he pulled it off of him just as he felt its tiny needle-like legs poking his bare flesh.
He carefully got to his feet as he held the offending patch at arm's length, and then leaned against the nearest filing cabinet while catching his breath. Just a minute ago, he had been formulating scouting missions into the new dimension when a sudden rustling noise had distracted him. He had looked up to see something moving underneath a pile of papers. When he had moved those papers thinking that another Elmouse had gotten into his office, he found the patch instead - which then lunged at him. Even now, its needles were wildly wiggling and it was trying to squirm out of his hand.
What was wrong with this thing? Was it supposed to do that? Did it have some sort of auto-attach feature? Whatever it was doing, Haro had a lot of questions for Captain Zephyranthes once he got back - particularly if all technology from his dimension was designed to scare the living daylights out of its users.
He looked around the office for something to put it in. There was a heavy glass pitcher of water with a metal lid on his desk. If he emptied it out, maybe he could stick the patch inside it. He removed the lid, poured the pitcher's contents into a potted plant by the door, and set the pitcher back on his desk. He then picked up the lid with his free hand, and tried to throw the patch into the jar with the other.
Unfortunately, as soon as Haro loosened his grip, the patch grabbed onto his glove. Before he could even react, it had already crawled up the back of his hand and down his sleeve. All of its needles dug into his forearm at once, causing him to let out a yelp.
Cursing under his breath, the chief immediately dropped the lid, reached up his sleeve, and tried to pry the patch off his forearm. Not only did it refuse to budge, but a shooting pain would cause him to lose his grip.
Suddenly, he began to feel lightheaded. Lightheadedness quickly became dizziness. As he steadied himself against a wall, he felt a great weariness wash over him. His knees buckled, and he slowly slid down the wall to the floor. His helmet felt unbearably heavy, but he was too tired to take it off. Meanwhile, the forearm that the patch had latched onto had gone completely numb.
He had no idea why the patch was sedating him, but one thing was for certain - it needed to come off now. The exhausted Chief Haro gritted his teeth and gathered all of his remaining energy to reach back up his sleeve again. Just as he got his fingers around it, however, pressure suddenly began to build up in his head.
Do not resist.
"Huh...?" Haro sluggishly lifted his head and looked around the room with bleary eyes. No one was there.
Do not resist. You are only harming yourself.
"...Whoizit?" the chief slurred. The disembodied voice was soft and droning...and very familiar sounding.
You are now being connected to the network, it explained. The less resistance given, the less painful the procedure will be.
Haro's ears began to ring, and the pressure in his head built up into a splitting headache. With his fingers still firmly around the patch, he took a deep breath and pulled as hard as his tired body could muster. As luck would have it, the patch became dislodged. His tinnitus subsided, and his migraine became a dull ache. Strength and energy returned to his body, allowing him to fully pull it out of his arm and slam it against the floor. Some of the legs became bent, but the glass did not shatter. It limped around on the carpet, trying to make its way back to him. The chief put it out of its misery by standing up and stomping on it several times. There was a snapping noise as the rest of it needles broke, and it stopped moving altogether. Just to be on the safe side, Haro grabbed the pitcher, turned it upside-down, and put it over the malevolent piece of technology.
He leaned against the edge of his desk for support as he removed his spherical helmet with one hand. He took a deep breath of fresh air as he placed it next to him, its peaked cap sliding off to the side. He then pulled back his sleeve to get a good look at the area where the patch had latched itself onto. There was a small square of tiny holes in his reddened forearm, all of which oozed a small trickle of blood that stained his jacket and white glove. Feeling was coming back to that arm, and it was already starting to burn. There were no bandages in his office, so Haro had to make do with a bunch of napkins.
As he covered the wound and placed pressure on it, he looked down at the patch under the pitcher. Thankfully, it remained still. Obviously, that thing was built for reasons other than protecting organic creatures from Bagu Bagu stings. Captain Zephryranthes would have to be questioned as soon as he got back from Lab C.
Chief Haro froze as something crossed his mind. Zephryranthes was going to pass those out to other human SDG members...
He grabbed his helmet, struggling to get it back on with a sore, partially-numb arm. He was interrupted by a sudden ringing noise behind him. He turned around to find a holographic phone spinning in place above his laptop, with a green accept and a red decline icon underneath. Haro popped the helmet into place and pressed accept. The phone was then replaced by a video screen. In the center of the screen was the face of a square-jawed, middle aged man who was sweating profusely. It was the head officer of Blanc Base security, Lieutenant Korbel. Behind him, human and GM security guards were rushing back and forth. The segmented wall behind them implied that they were in a hallway.
"Hello, Chief?" Korbel said blandly, trying to keep up a facade of calmness. "We have a situation here at the control room."
"What seems to be the trouble?" Haro asked. Whatever was happening, he had a feeling he already knew what the cause was.
"Head communications operator Juli stole a plasma rifle from the labs downstairs," the lieutenant explained. "She opened fire at a few officers who tried to detain her, but there were no injuries. She's currently locked herself in the control room, and she's erased everyone else's facial recognition data for the door."
The chief steeled himself as he tried not to shudder. "I'm on my way," he told Korbel.
He pressed the End Call icon, and discarded the bloody napkins. He placed his cap back on his helmet and ran out the door, trying not to think about what that patch would have made him do had it been successful.
He made it past the elevators when he saw three people running toward him while waving. They were Juli's subordinates, Alicia, Nastashia, and Tyrone. The chief skidded to a stop as he let them catch up.
"Chief, Chief!" Tyrone shouted. "Have you heard the-" He stopped himself when he noticed the red spots on Haro's sleeve and glove. "Sir, are you okay?!" he asked, pointing at the stains.
"I'm fine. It was just a flesh wound," Haro said as he put his hands behind his back. "And yes, Lieutenant Korbel told me about what happened to Juli. Now I have a question for all of you: did any of you make contact with Juli before she locked herself in the control room?"
Nastasha immediately raised her hand. "Ooh, yes!" she answered. "I just got off of lunch break, and I was walking down the hall. I saw her carrying the gun into the room!"
"That's great," the chief replied. "Now...do you remember seeing any purple objects on her?"
Nastasha's eyes shifted as she tried to remember. "I think...I saw something on her forehead," she said, "but I was too far away to tell what color it was."
"That's good enough," Haro nodded. "All of you get to a safe place. I'm going to see if I can't talk some sense into her."
The operators replied with a "Yes, sir." Alicia added "Be careful, chief!" as they headed for the elevator. Meanwhile, Haro ran down the hall toward the control room.
After rounding a few corners, he found a hallway full of security guards, both GM and human. They had the control room surrounded. Assistant balls holding up beam shields were clustered in front of the crowd. Another ball had a plasma torch and had burned a long vertical furrow halfway down the doors. A few of the guards spotted the chief and moved out of his way. One of them alerted Korbel, who pushed through the crowd to meet him. Haro made sure to put his hands behind his back again to avoid any unnecessary questions about his injury.
"Chief?" he said, saluting.
"What's the status?" Haro asked him.
"Juli is unresponsive to all of our communications so far," he replied. "We have tried to use the override codes the lock, but somehow, all of our attempts failed. We think she may have disabled them as well. She's closed the shutter over the window, so we can't approach her from the outside. We're currently attempting to open the doors manually."
"Thanks, lieutenant," Haro nodded. "Meanwhile, I have reason to believe that Juli's disturbing behavior may be the result of a mind control device."
"Mind control?" Korbel's eyes went wide. "How?"
"I'll explain everything later. Let's just say I've found one of these devices myself." He walked around the lieutenant and into the crowd. "I'm going in."
"Be careful, chief!" Korbel called after him. "She still has that rifle!"
"I've been shot at by worse weapons," he said, mostly to himself.
The guards parted out of his way as he strode toward the control room. The shield-wielding assistant balls wheeled away to one side to let him through, immediately returning to their posts after he walked by. The torch-using ball had just finished carving its trench in the door all the way down to the floor.
"Stand back!" Chief Haro shouted to everyone as he held out his uninjured arm.
The guards obliged him with a step back; even the shield balls scooted a few inches backward. The torch ball gathered up its things and zipped away from the entrance.
The chief stepped up to the doors and prodded the burned trough with his fingers to see if it was still hot and if it was deep enough. When he found that it was not too warm nor too shallow, he shoved his hands inside and began to push the doors open. The wounded arm felt like it was on fire, but he did his best to ignore the pain.
There was a great groaning of metal as the doors slowly began to part, bending and crinkling under Haro's hands. With a roar and a superhuman shove, he managed to pry them completely open.
He immediately jumped to his left as a white-hot beam shot out from inside of the control room. It missed his helmet by inches and burned a hole in the wall behind him. He looked into the darkened room to see Juli aiming that stolen plasma rifle at him. She was blankly staring in his general direction with glazed-over eyes. Behind her was the tree-like map of the Brain World.
On her forehead was a purple, glassy square.
"Your presence is not welcome," she said in a monotone voice. "Please leave."
"Juli, it's me...Chief Haro," he said as he sidestepped into the room. "You remember me, right?"
The operator kept the gun trained on him. "You must leave," she droned.
"Juli, I know that's not you talking," Haro replied. "It's that patch on your forehead. It's making you do this." He took a cautious step forward. "Just let me remove it, and-"
She fired a shot at his foot, forcing him to jump backward.
"This is your final warning," Juli said impassively. "Leave now or you will be terminated."
"Sorry, but I can't do that!"
With that, Haro ducked down and tackled Juli's midsection before she had time to adjust her aim. A beam of plasma sailed over him and shattered a window. He knocked her flat on her back, then immediately sat up and wrenched the rifle out of her grip. Just as he tossed the weapon aside, Juli suddenly sat up and tried to get her hands around his neck. Fortunately, he was able to grab her wrists just inches away from his windpipe. Normally he would easily shove his opponents' hands away, but Juli's arms refused to budge. And thanks to his previous injury, his grip was beginning to fail. Where was she getting all this strength?!
He didn't have to worry for long, however, as Korbel suddenly came up behind her and locked her in a bear hug. He pulled her away from the chief as more security guards poured into the room. One GM guard confiscated the plasma rifle. Another GM got down on the floor and wrapped his arms around Juli's ankles.
"We've got her, chief!" Korbel shouted. "Now go ahead and get whatever's controlling her!"
But before Haro could even make a move, Juli used her newfound strength to reach up and hurl the lieutenant over her head. He crashed into the chief, knocking them both into a nearby control panel. Haro was largely unfazed and easily got back to his feet. Korbel, on the other hand, had hit his head against the console and was now lying in the floor, motionless.
As the chief checked on Korbel, Juli slipped one of her legs out of the GM guard's grasp. She kicked him straight into a group of his teammates, sending them crashing to the floor like bowling pins. A human guard that managed to avoid getting toppled lunged forward and tried to tackle the brainwashed operator. However, Juli reached out and caught the oncoming assailant, wrapping her arms around her neck in a choke hold. She held her hostage in front of her like a shield.
"Leave now, or I will terminate her," Juli droned to everyone in the room.
"Don't do this, Juli!" Chief Haro said, reaching out to her.
Juli responded by tightening her arms around the guard's neck. Meanwhile, the rest of the guards quickly helped their injured comrades out of the room and slowly backed away from the entrance.
"Don't worry about me!" the captured guard called after them. "Just take her out like I know you can!"
As if on cue, a small object whizzed through the doorway and embedded itself in Juli's shoulder. A familiar voice in the hallway cried, "Woo hoo! Got 'er!"
Instantly, the operator's glassy eyes rolled up in her head. Her arms slipped off the guard's neck and she crumpled to the ground, unconscious. Haro rushed to her side and found that the object she had been struck by was in fact a tranquilizer dart.
He turned to the guard who was also looking Juli over. "Go check on the lieutenant and make sure he's alright," he ordered.
As she left to take care of the unconscious Korbel, a new group of guards rushed into the room. They surrounded the two forms in the floor.
"I need two stretchers in here," Haro said to them. "Take Lieutenant Korbel and Juli down to medbay as soon as possible."
After a few "Yes sirs" and "Rogers," a handful of the guards ran off to go get the stretchers. Haro turned his attention back to Juli and most importantly, the purple patch in the center of her forehead. He grabbed onto it with both hands and slowly pulled it out of her skin. Almost immediately, its needle legs began twitching wildly, and he could feel it squirming in his grasp, wanting to find a new host. A metal box suddenly appeared at his side. Kao Lyn's assistant ball had rolled into the room and was holding it up in its pincers. Haro quickly tossed the patch into the tin, and the ball closed the lid.
"Was...that the thing controlling Juli?" a voice behind them croaked.
Haro turned around to see Korbel had regained consciousness. The female guard was helping him stand up.
"Yes," the chief nodded. "I'll go into detail later. For now, we need to get you both into the medbay."
"Good idea chief," the lieutenant replied with a shaky smile. "I could use something for this headache."
The guards returned with the stretchers. They carefully lifted Juli into one and eased Korbel into the other. They then cleared out of the control room with Haro bringing up the rear. Out in the hallway, the chief found Kao Lyn and his assistant ball waiting for him. Kao Lyn was carrying the tranquilizer gun in one hand.
"Can you believe it? I finally got to use this thing!" he said, gesturing to the gun. "A shame I had to use it on one of our guys."
"You arrived right in the nick of time," Haro replied. "Juli was being mind controlled by one of those anti-Bagu Bagu patches that Captain Zephyranthes was handing out!"
"Oh, is that what they do?" the engineer asked.
Haro rolled down his stained sleeve, exposing the square of puncture marks on his forearm. "Yes. Mine managed to latch onto me. I heard a voice telling me I was being connected up to some sort of network. I managed to get it off before it could fully gain control, thankfully."
The lenses in Kao Lyn's glasses rotated. "I knew it had to be something sinister!" he said. "I got lucky - mine never even touched me. It chased me around the lab, but my esteemed colleague here managed to smash it with a hammer!"
The ponytailed assistant ball took a bow.
"Of course, the important question is, what was the patch forcing Juli to do?" the chief mused. "What was so important that it made Juli respond with lethal force?"
"Let's go find out, shall we?" Kao Lyn said as he bounded over to the control room. He squeezed through the bent doors with Haro and the ball following close behind.
Kao Lyn walked up to the console projecting the Brain World map and started poking away at the holographic screen. The map disappeared and was replaced by a white screen displaying lines of code.
"She had been investigating the attacks on the Brain World before this incident happened," Chief Haro explained. "I'm not sure how much she was able to finish."
The engineer was slowly scrolling through the codes, his lenses twitching. "Hoo, this doesn't sound good," he said. "Looks like she stopped and tried to give someone access!"
"She did?" Haro asked. "Can you tell who it is?"
"Let's see..." Kao Lyn continued scrolling for a few moments, then stopped to squint at the screen. "Well that's odd...it looks like she was giving the Captain System clearance."
"But...why would she do that?" The chief raised an eyebrow underneath his helmet. "The Captain System hasn't been approved for use since a year ago. And Captain doesn't currently have access to his Re-Equip Ring."
"I know!" Kao Lyn replied. "I don't get it either, but this is definitely the Captain System I'm seeing here!" He pointed at a large block of code on the screen, which Haro assumed was part of the system in question. "I'd know it anyw-"
Something on the screen made Kao Lyn stop and lean forward for a closer look. "Wait, no...that's not right..."
The "ears" on the chief's helmet flapped open and shut. "What's wrong?"
"Wait just a sec..." Kao Lyn dropped down a few more lines, reading the codes closely while underlining them with a finger. He typed in a few search queries, all of which failed.
"Oh, my!" he said. "This isn't the Captain System! At least, it's not the one I created!"
"What do you mean by that?" Haro asked.
"I know Captain's programming inside and out," Kao Lyn replied, "and there's a lot of codes in here that I've never seen before! If this is a Captain System, it doesn't belong to Captain Gundam!"
"At least, it doesn't belong to our Captain Gundam," the chief said in a low, grave voice that was almost a growl. "If you'll excuse me..."
He turned and walked back out into the hallway. Kao Lyn ran after him shouting, "Wait, chief! Where are you going?"
"I need to get in contact with Captain and Lab C immediately," Haro explained. "Captain Zephyranthes must be brought into custody at once!"