Edan slowly drifted back into consciousness. He didn't know what had hit him... All he remembered was Kaida kicking him, and then ... nothing.
Everything was dark. Well, duh, he thought, as he opened his eyes.
Except that they were already open.
He frowned, then lifted his claw to his face. All he could make out was a dim, red blur.
"Great," he said, then stopped - surprised to hear his voice echo down two directions. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could make out his immediate surroundings. He was in a dark tunnel of some sort. He looked up, thinking he had detected light.
Something had moved, and as he stared, a massive rock smacked him in the face, knocking him out again.
--------------------
"But why can't I just go through it?" Jet asked
Flame spun around in his chair as Jet's voice came through. Kaida was sitting in the chair next to him, also staring at the screens. When the crying had worn out, Flame had seen a new kind of strength in her, hidden under all those layers of insecurity. He smiled to himself, then turned his attention back to Jet.
"It's too dangerous," Flame said. "It won't do you any good if you enter it, and we lose all contact. That won't help Edan one bit."
"Okay," Jet said. "So now what?"
"Can you get me a visual?" he asked.
"Sure. Just a sec."
Three seconds later, a high-resolution image of the runes appeared on the primary display. Both Flame and Kaida looked at it.
"Interesting," Flame said. "RED, extrapolate the markings."
"Working,"
The brown rock disappeared, as the runes floated free, outlined in white. RED continued to clear up the image, until they were left with only the runes. Then the runes sharpened, the fuzzy outlines vanished, and they were left with a crystal clear image.
"What are they?" Kaida asked.
"Ancient writing, of some sort," Flame said. "Probably from some previous Digimon culture. RED, please run those runes against the database."
The circle fragmented, and each individual rune was seperated, one at a time. RED ran through the mega-terabit drives in seconds, locating all known matches for each rune. When the search for the rune was done, it was placed back in the circle, and the next rune was popped out.
About a minute later, RED returned the results.
"Search complete. Partial matches found."
About half of the runes lit up in green, as their meanings appeared on screens all around the main display. It was a wealth of information, and Flame quickly studied over it.
Kaida looked at them, too. She could also read the descriptions if she wanted to, but somehow, those runes looked very familiar...
"Okay, it's starting to make sense," Flame said. The communication channel to Jet was open, and he could hear everything.
"The circle is divided into three sections, based on the runes in each section. One third of the circle contains symbols relating to direction, or co-ordinates. Another section contains descriptive runes - describing the destination, I think - and the last section involves an incantation of some sort. Probably the field that drives the portal."
"So basically," Jet said, "It's a door with a name, that leads somewhere, and has the energy to get you there."
"Yeah," Flame said. "Though where that is is anyone's guess. RED, any additional information?"
The AI came to life.
"The directional runes seem to indicate a subsurface destination, while the descriptive runes mostly involve a tubular enclosure of some sort. My best estimation is that it's pointing to a subterranean tunnel."
"Good," Flame said. "Does the portal have a range?"
"It would appear so. Given Edan's mass signature, I have computed a maximum possible range of six thousand miles. However, the unknown runes might add more distance to that number."
"Okay," Flame said, feeling close to an answer. "Given that distance, where would the tunnel be?"
"I compute over sixty thousand possible locations within the Digital World alone."
His face fell. "Sixty thousand?"
"Yes," the AI said.
"Uh, hate to break it to you," Jet said, "but RED said 'alone'."
"Yes," RED said again. "If I take the Real World into account, the number of possible locations jumps to over fourty-five million, not counting subsea tunnels. Adding those could well push the amount past one hundred million."
"Thank you, RED," Flame said. All he needed to hear now were some more drastically large numbers, each one reducing the chances of them finding Edan.
"Wait," Kaida said, holding up a claw. "We're missing something."
Flame looked at her. "What are you thinking?"
She just stared at the runes. Then she started speaking.
"RED, please number the runes."
The numbers 1 to 24 jumped out of nowhere, each sitting next to a rune. Numbers 1 to 8 were the description, 9 to 16 were the location, and 17 to 24 were the engine.
"Okay," she said, kicking her brain into high gear. "Let's figure this out."
-----------------
"RED, isolate runes 1 through 8."
The screen cleared, leaving only 8 runes behind. Four of them were green - the solved ones.
"Stack the runes vertically, with the first rune at the top."
They shuffled around, and settled in a vertical line. Kaida looked at them some more, and Flame sat back, letting her take over.
Runes 2, 4, 6 and 7 were solved. The rest needed some work.
"RED, what are the potential matches for rune one?"
"Searching..."
"Sixty partial matches found."
"Okay. List one-word summaries for each of the matches on that screen," she said, pointing to a blank monitor. It filled with text, and she quickly scanned over it. Most of the words were obviously wrong - adjectives such as "bright" and "warm (light)".
"RED, order those words, from most relevant, to least relevant, in relation to the solved runes."
"Running conceptual sort."
The words jumped around - and words like "dark", "damp", and "echo" appeared at the top.
"Okay. Assign the first five words as potential matches for the first rune."
"Working."
Rune one turned yellow, as it was assigned several different meanings.
"Okay, RED. Now repeat that process for the rest of the unsolved runes in this set."
"Working..."
RED was silent as it searched through the remaining three runes. Hundreds of words flashed by on all the monitors, and it took almost a minute to solve each one. Eventually, Kaida was left with four yellow runes, as well as the solved green ones.
"RED. Display the perfect match summaries next to the appropriate runes."
Four words appeared, each next to a green rune.
"Now, given those words, and their context, display the most relevant word from each unsolved rune's potential solution array."
Four more words appeared. She looked at them, and frowned.
"Update runes 1, 5 and 8 with the next best matches."
The words changed. There was silence for a moment, and then,
"MyGod," Flame said. "Kaida?"
She smiled. "Jet. We're looking for a dark, dry tunnel about four feet in diameter, carved out of a mountain range. The tunnel has a complex branching structure, and is centered around a massive chamber of some sort. The primary composition of the tunnel walls is an igneous rock/kimberlite compound, so it probably belongs to a currently inactive volcano."
More silence. And then...
"Holy shit," Jet exclaimed. "You can tell all that?"
"Not me," she said. "The runes."
"RED," Flame said. "What does that do to the possibilites?"
"Calculating ..."
"Kaida," he said, looking over at her. "You are a genius."
She grinned.
"Down to twenty thousand possibilities within the Digital World."
"But we're not done yet," Kaida said. "Bring up runes 17 through 24."
----------------------
Kaida watched as the massive AI worked at figuring out the runes. The instructions were mostly the same as last time, so all she really had to do was rell RED to repeat the process. Eventually, the answers flashed up.
"Update rune three with the next likely answer," she said. The word changed.
"Again?"
And again. Until she had run through all the runes. What she was looking at now was a sequence that was logically correct, but that she wasn't able to interpret.
"Flame?"
"Yes," he said. "RED, what is Edan's nett mass?"
"Approximately thirteen point seven kilograms."
"Heavy kid," Kaida remarked.
"Okay," Flame said. "Given Edan's mass, the phase of the portal, the latent energy in the rock substrate, the phase of the Digital World's rotation, the size of the runes, and the approximate total kinetic energy that he had when entering the portal, I compute that Edan could not have gone further than two thousand kilometers."
"RED, narrow down the locations," Kaida said.
"Working..."
"There are three possible locations remaining."
"And in the Real World?" Flame asked, getting excited.
"None. The capacity of the portal does not allow for a Real World entrance."
Flame almost leaped out of his chair with joy. "Excellent!" he said. "Bring up those points on a map, please."
---------------------
"Jet, I want you to travel to the following location," Flame said, pointing at a red dot on the map. RED relayed the information to Jet.
"I'm going here," he said, pointing at another dot.
"Kaida, I want you to start searching here," he said, pointing at the third. She looked at the map, and nodded.
"Got the dot," Jet said. "On my way."
"Let's go," Flame said to Kaida, then locked the terminal as he stood up.
Kaida stood too. They had work to do.
-------------------