Chapter 33
"I have to WHAT?!" Snotlout growled as they sat hunched over a table in the corner of the empty Mess hall. The teens ducted a bit lower as several eyes of the staff fell at them.
"Just keep your dad and anyone else busy. Distract them somehow. Anyway you know how." Hiccup said with all seriousness. "I would know more if Astrid explains about the code."
"Right…." Astrid said in the earpiece. "But first, I'm surprised that you and Snotlout aren't more distraught Hiccup. Seeing a dead body, a murder, isn't something someone could walk away from unscathed. At least not mentally. Yet you and the others looked particularly calm in there."
"You forget that we grew up in the wastelands Astrid." Hiccup told her sadly. "Dead is common there. As is murder and all sorts of other things. We're lucky that the Berkian caravan stayed out of most of the conflicts."
"Yo…. Hiccup….. I can't understand what you're girlfriend is saying." Snotlout waved a hand in front of Hiccup's face to get his attention. Hiccup blushed briefly at the girlfriend comment and then looked around and nodded.
"It is starting to get a bit crowded in here, isn't it." he mumbled. "Why don't we find another place?"
That other place happened to be nestled between two large crates in one of the storage areas. The teens found themselves wedged there about ten minutes later after leaving the cafeteria.
"I hope Mildew doesn't find us." Snotlout whispered in the brightly lit and closed room, where he didn't have to whisper at all.
"Mildew is busy with his new sheep Fungus." Hiccup shrugged. "I heard it from the twins last week. Apparently one of the test sheep started stalking him."
"That is just creepy," Snotlout shuddered. "Why would a sheep stalk Mildew?"
"Who knows?" Hiccup shrugged while Astrid said aloud "I do not profess to know the mind of sheep."
"Now as for the code," Astrid started as both men paid more attention. A holographic screen popped up in front of them with the string of numbers. "Normally you would think that it is a code for one of the keypads along the corridors but those can retain a five digit code."
"So even if dad checks those he'll find nothing?" Snotlout asked.
"Correct," Astrid said. "The code is the password to a keypad but one more sophisticated than the ones visible outside. Some laboratories have private areas where more dangerous research or pet projects can be kept. That keypad has no numbers but letters."
Hiccup frowned while Snotlout scratched his head as they looked at a holographic schematic of the keypad Astrid now displayed on the screen. "So the numbers on the paper are letters?" Snotlout frowned. "But they repeat. Pretty stupid password then!"
"I don't think it's that simple," Hiccup frowned as he bit his lip. "Astrid is there something to the number repetition?"
"Yes," Astrid chirped. "I'm assuming you two are unfamiliar with the T9 cipher."
"The what now?!" Snotlout's head was hurting at this point already.
"The T9 cipher was used in the last decade of the 20th century on communications devices. It stands for 'Text on 9 keys' but it became obsolete not long after as technology advanced. Because the communication devices of that era did not have holographic screens or touch screen with entire keyboards, the letters of the alphabet were assigned to a 3 by 4 numeric keypad. 0 and 1 did not correspond to any letter so the alphabet started from number 2 as in accordance with the E161 Telecommunications standardizations." Astrid explained as she now started adding letters to the holographic keypad on the screen.
"To type an A a person would need to press the number 2 pad only once. For B, twice." She continued.
"So the repetition of the same number is just one letter?" Hiccup asked as he was starting to understand it. "4263366688833777" Hiccup mumbled aloud as he looked at the keypad Astrid was still displaying and then back at the code. "No way! No freaking way!" Hiccup exclaimed before he started laughing.
"What?" Snotlout asked as he looked between Hiccup and the screen. "Hiccup why are you laughing like that?"
"Let's just say that Astrid and I have a fairly good idea of who might want Drago dead," He finally revealed as Snotlout blinked at him shocked. "And this was just his last way of telling them 'screw you'. The letters read GAMEOVER."
"Wait… you….. WHAT?!" Snotlout now shouted as he stood up. "You know who did it?!"
"Pretty good suspicion as to who," Hiccup stated.
"And you didn't tell dad…. Why?"
"Would he have believed me?" Hiccup raised a brow.
"Uh… probably not," Snotlout admitted as he sat back down on a crate with a 'thud'. "So what happens now?"
"Now unfortunately we'll have to wait." Hiccup said. "At least until we get a chance to sneak back into the lab."
And Hiccup got that chance that very evening. Spitelout had left and had locked the Genetics laboratory with his Security code. A code which Astrid knew and could override if she wanted to.
"Snotlout is at the Plaza with Tuffnut. I sent him a holographic screen that we were going now." Astrid told him over the earpiece. Hiccup looked around the corner and saw that no one was guarding the lab. His uncle must have thought that his code would prevent any intrusion. The doors to the lab slid open and Hiccup walked in as the lights came on. Drago's body had been moved earlier that day but the puddle of blood was still there.
"Where to?" Hiccup asked aloud as he looked around. There didn't seem to be a secondary lab in sight.
"Furthest back wall." Astrid told him and as Hiccup approached he noticed a black touchscreen that he didn't notice initially. The screen was the same color as the wall and Hiccup gave it a tap. It lit up and a digital keyboard in a bright green outline appeared. It was just like the keypad Astrid had shown them, no numbers just letters."
Hiccup entered the code 'GAMEOVER' and jumped back as the grey wall next to him opened with a hiss. A section of the grey wall hissed and created a small indent before opening with a whoosh. Hiccup cautiously peered inside the dark room. "Astrid aren't the lights working?"
"The lights are manually operated in these parts of the lab. My camera and sensors also do not seem to operate in there." She stated and Hiccup felt around the inner wall until his hand came upon what felt like a switch. He flipped it down and then gasped at what he saw. There, in the smaller, but not under-equipped, lab was one of the growth tubes filled with Bioplasma and a cloned body of Astrid.
"He actually did it!" Hiccup's eyes widened as he stepped further inside and the door closed behind him. "It actually took him just a week."
Hiccup heard Astrid gasp over the earpiece since she couldn't see into the room. Hiccup stepped closer and noticed that this Astrid's body seemed to be aged further than the one in the secret section of the facility. Another thing Hiccup noticed was that there was something different about this growth tube. It seemed to have more machinery attached to it than the ones in the first lab. There were consoles displaying vital signs and there was a bigger console attached. 'A prototype or an upgrade?' Hiccup thought to himself as he looked around. There was also a medical table not so far away with a weird device attached to it. The device looked to have a separate operating console as well. Nowhere in the room was there a workstation with a system linked to the facility present.
Several notebooks were scattered about on a desk and Hiccup picked one up. They had hand-drawn schematics of the growth tube and the device on the table that Hiccup could recognize and several more that Hiccup had no clue about. There was a name underlined on the page for the device and Hiccup's eyes widened as he read 'Neurotransmitter'.
"Astrid, I think we might just have a way to transfer your consciousness." Hiccup stated. "But this is a bit suspicious don't you think?"
"What do you mean?" She asked.
"I can get Drago making you a clone body but to have a transferring machine ready as well in just a week's time?" Hiccup frowned. The transfer process had been worrying him for a while. "Furthermore it looks like he built this machine from scratch. These notes are old. This was done way before we even came to Arcadia."
"If this was what Drago was trying to hide then it is a reasonable conclusion as to why he looped the video feeds." Astrid said over the earpiece as Hiccup tapped the touch screen on the growth tube.
'Do you wish to implement Final stage?' it read and under it was a button for YES and NO.
"Astrid….. Do you wish to continue?" Hiccup asked since this was her body after all.
"Yes Hiccup." Astrid told him. "We are finishing this."
Hiccup nodded and pressed the YES button. The screen went black for a moment before he read 'Initiating nanotech treatment. Starting nerve animation sequence'.
AN: Congratulations to CobraAcademy and Astrid Camicazi N. Hofferson for decoding the message correctly in the previous chapter. XD