Chapter 6: Sector 3
"...So get to the Data Room in this sector. It's guarded by a level two hatch though. You'll need to find another security room. As you know, I c.-"
"Can't tell us where it is, and there's dangerous critters in this sector, and be on your guard, and since it's a tropical sector, we can assume we'll find some superheated rooms. Have we missed anything?" The AI's only response is to emit what sounds suspiciously like a huff of annoyance and disconnect.
"Well, you seem to have annoyed it." Samus says.
"It was taking too long with all the extra detail."
"So, where's the data room, Ms. Security Expert?"
"We're not a bloody female," we answer in a slightly mock whiney voice, "And to answer your question," we open the map on our Ki, "It's probably somewhere down one of these two side corridors," we point at a pair of halls directly below us.
"Why do you say that?" Samus asks.
"Not sure, call it intuition." We knew we should have done more research before coming here.
We leave the Recharge room and into a large hub room. We dart along and explore much of it, though some seems too far to jump, and we don't want to go somewhere Samus can't.
"Yeh Composite," Samus asks from the bottom of the room, "There's only one door here, didn't you say there were two?"
"Fake floor probably," We're currently stuck to a wall, glancing around a corner to ensure there aren't any X creatures wandering around. Strangely, there aren't any in the entire hub room. Samus shoots at the floor a few times, revealing a gap with another door below it. We join her on the fake floor and shoot open the door above the floor. A wave of heat blasts out, causing Samus to flinch and our data shell to visibly ripple. Both of us dive down the hole, getting below the heat and dropping the temperature from scalding to mildly uncomfortable.
"Ow..." Samus complains, wiping the condensation off her visor.
"Yeah," we confirm, briefly swirling into our True Form before reforming, regaining our physical integrity, "Hopefully the security room isn't in that." A green-white barrier flickers around us and we float upward into the stream, "This helps, but we probably can't share it."
"Well, let's make a note to avoid that room in the future, eh?"
"Sure, now, what about this room…" We step into the lower corridor, which isn't especially hot.
The map reports it's a long room, but we can only find a small drops a bomb at the foot of the wall, and it explodes, revealing the by-now familiar Speed Booster icon.
"So, we have to get up some speed," we note, "Or maybe…" We step so that our back is to the door. Samus, not sure what we're about to do, quietly rolls to the side. We pull our hands to our chest, glowing with energy, and push forward, sending it blasting forward at supersonic speed. A chunk of wall dissolves under the assault, but quickly reforms. "Okay, Plan B, assuming you aren't too keen on riding the wave in."
Samus's only response is a how-stupid-do-you-think-I-am look before she leaves back to the hub. She shoots one of the chunks of raised floor and it dissolves, revealing a non-raised floor underneath. She runs to the far end of the hub room before blazing back in on a wave of thrusters fast enough to leave afterimages. Her shoulder slams into the wall and she spears through. We boost after her on a wave of telekinesis, feet not touching the ground. We both land slightly lower than the chamber we just left. A few bumps with ramps rise from the floor, and the hatch on the far side is locked, but aside from that, it's just longer. A bit of ceiling lowers well before the hatch. We walk up to it and reach our hand up, feeling microscopic cracks in the lowered ceiling.
"Hey Samus, this ceiling's damaged, we report.
Samus simply responds "Get clear!" We dive to the side just in time to dodge her high-speed jump, smashing cleanly through the ceiling and into the security chamber. We hear a click and the hatch unlocks. We hear the sound of X forming into host copies and whirl around, already arming our weapons. With a screech, a giant parrot-like creature attempts to dive-bomb us, but bounces off the ceiling. Taking nothing for granted and expecting it to take that into account next time, we dart out from under the overhang and into the open, giving us more area to jump. This turns out to be a mistake as two more notice us from the other side of the room and give chase. We grab out Disk and throw it, cleanly slicing one in half. Samus, emerging from the security room, shoots two Missiles, eliminating both of the survivors.
"So, hatches are open, let's go find us a data room." She rushes through the wall back into the hub and we follow, outpacing her. We surge into the room across the hub and pull up short, stopping less than an inch from a shutter gate. We glance around and note the fact that there's no switch on this side. Samus jumps up the wall behind us before yelping and diving back down just in time to dodge a fireball. She tries again, this time going into morph ball mid jump and cleanly dodges the shot. We hop up and peek over the platform she's on, seeing some sort of green crocodile-like creature embedded in the wall. It sees us at the same time and spits out a third fireball, which goes well over our head. The shot doesn't make us drop to the floor with a thump, but the gate suddenly opening does.
"Surprised?" Samus asks. She points up at the ceiling of the platform we just fell from, "It collapsed under me when I got to the wall, and I saw the switch. Didn't expect you to be up there though." She races through the door, boosting through some sort of sidehopper and using missiles on a duo of parrots.
The floor collapses under Samus's high-speed dash. We join her. Or try to anyway, we don't step out far enough and a lower bit of floor collapses, sending us crashing down into a lower chamber. We open the door at the far side and with a high economy of motion dodge Samus's attempted tackle.
"Hmm, need to work on that eh?" we ask. Samus stands, spitting out something that sounds obscene and walks out the door, already firing two missiles into the wall-croc thing that rezes on the other side. We follow up the ladders in a long vertical shaft before entering a room with a pretty messed up back wall. We step forward and place our hand into the wall, sending a telekinetic pulse.
"Okay, it looks like we have one tunnel down here," we point at the bottom of the wall, "And one in the middle. Which one?"
"Middle. If I know how it's set up, that bottom one will dump us…" She glances into her visor for a moment, probably checking the map, "Into that room behind the gate. The one you fell through."
We morph into our ball form, bounce up, and release a telekinetic burst before rolling in and collecting an RU expansion in the middle of the tunnel. Samus collects the Missile Expansion next to it. We burst out part of the top and jump up, hearing another sidehopper above us. Samus rolls forward to a weak part of the ceiling of our current tunnel and bombs it out. She jumps up, unmorphing in mid-air and firing a missile towrads the sidehopper. A blue barrier X blocks the shot. The sidehopper can't get through it either.
"Guess it's a good thing we came this way," we comment, noting on the map that we could have come from a different direction that would have us blocked by this barrier, which Samus's missiles can't scratch.
"Guess so," Samus agrees with a nod, before walking through the door opposite the barrier and into another room. The heat is noticeably cooler in here, though it's still pretty oppressive. Not so much that we'd have trouble, but certainly enough to make us be a little more careful. The door to the data room stands closed, perfectly intact. Samus walks in, and comes out a minute later. While she's in, we hear a massive explosion in front of us. Samus is running, arm cannon already open and ready to fire missiles. "What happened?"
"Unknown. Came from that direction," we point in the direction we came from. All the enemies in the last room are gone, which is odd because they usually come back quickly. What there is, however, is a large hole in the floor. Samus jumps down, and we follow her into a bio metric room, then a recharge room. We almost expect to find a navigation room, but instead find a dead end room with a sidehopper on the floor, a sort of sidehopper on the ceiling, and a barrier in the corner. Samus solves this problem with three of her newly upgraded missiles and collects an expansion behind the barrier. We return to the all above these new rooms, and wander towrads the hub to find that the SA-X has destroyed the door.
At the same time we discover this, an awful crashing sound starts coming from the direction of the data room. By unspoken agreement, the two of us stack up at the door leading to the next room, Samus on the left and us on the right. Samus shoots the door and blindly fires a missile towards the Data Room. At the same time, we pop an anti-armor grenade into our weapon and fire it equally blindly fire towards the noise, "Flashbangs," we complain, "Need to get some flashbangs."
"Wouldn't do any good," Samus answers, diving into the room and dodging an enraged security robot. It appears to be a blue ring shape that runs on small stubby feet. We fire another grenade at it, which doesn't even get its attention, let alone damage it. Samus jumps up to a sort of circular ladder on the ceiling and starts to crawl hand-over-hand over top of it. She suddenly aims down, hanging by one arm, fires multiple missiles into the center of it. "It's got a yellow-orange hub in the center. That's its weak point." The robot collapses in on itself, its circumference shrinking noticeably and a gray turret popping out of the top. A bomb shoots out nd it reverts to normal. Samus frantically climbs away from it and we dart away. The bomb explodes, releasing a circle of flame. It shoots up to the ceiling, dips down to knee height after a second, and flares back up after another second. We jump over it when it dies down, and Samus takes the same opportunity to climb over it and fire a few more Missiles into the robot's weak spot. We jump up and give it a few grenades of our own. It makes a loud noise and surges under us, throwing another bomb. We judge that we won't even need to move to dodge and feed it more ammunition. Samus, in the same situation, fires missiles down on it too. After a few more rounds of this, we note that the top is badly damaged, revealing what looks a lot like a weware brain.
A few more missiles and grenades later, the robot, giving a high-pitched screech and grinding sound, staggers out from under the ladders towards the Data Room and leaps up through the ceiling, bringing part of it crashing down. We drop down to the floor, run over, and climb the rubble, popping into another chamber containing a few sidehoppers and parrots. The two of us make short work of them and continue through a few morph tunnels before dropping into the upper part of the hub and making our way back to the navigation room, pausing only to kill a few parrots.
"I see that you encountered a rogue security robot. If you encounter it again, you are authorized to terminate it. Your security is vital Samus. But as to your brief… Security Level 2 Hatches are open, so Sectors 5 and 6 are open. It is likely that the X are already in these sectors. They are much harder to stop than we thought. Sector 5 is sub-zero, you can't go there yet Samus, a side effect of the Metroid Vaccine. HQ are working on Varia Suit data. You'll have to go to sector 6, the nocturnal habitat, to download it. The X have destroyed all the Data Rooms you've already used. I no longer doubt they have intelligence. Go to Sector 6 and await further orders."
We hurry to the elevator and get moving.
Meanwhile, in a navigation room…
The screen goes blue, and a comms window activates.
"Does Samus suspect anything?" an unknown party asks.
"No, I do not think so," answers the ship.
"Good, monitor her closely," the caller responds.
"Affirmative. Out." The call disconnects.