"So we are unable to communicate with Wade at all?" Yori asked warily.
"The signal jamming is pretty solid actually," Kim said. "I've actually never run into anything that could jam Wade's signal like this before."
"Hmmm..." Darnia glanced at Kim. "Do you have a larger model of that watch?" she asked suddenly.
"Yeah. Why?" Kim asked her.
"Can I have a look at it?" she asked, holding out her hand expectantly. Yori reached into her pocket and handed it Darnia, who blinked in surprise. "You have one of these?"
"No. Possible-san lent this to me a few days ago," she explained.
"Oh..." Darnia took the PDA from her and started to turn it around as she carefully examined the device. "Yup...I thought he did attach one to this thing," she grinned and flipped it around, opening a port to reveal a plug.
"Is that a telephone cable port?" Kim asked incredulously.
"Apparently you could surf the internet on this thing old-school," Darnia said with a grin. "C'mon, we're going to borrow a phone-line," she said as she trotted into the precinct.
PB
There was quite a stir going on inside the precinct as they entered. People were going around in a panic and from what Kim could observe, there was a near total breakdown in communications as radio and wireless communications connection had been jammed. Interestingly enough, the phones were all still ringing, and they were ringing constantly, with officers trying to answer them as best as they could.
Yori had split from the group, almost as soon as she had entered. "I will look for Stoppable-san and see if I can get him out," she said, hurrying away from them once Kim told her where to go.
They went to the officer who was in charge of Kim earlier, a harried looking woman in her late-thirties, who was swamped with calls at the moment and wasn't really paying any attention to them. She cleared her throat and the woman gave her a sharp glare of irritation.
"Sorry. Busy right now," she mouthed at Kim, who nodded back and glanced at Darnia, who was scanning the area. She pointed at an unattended phone which was ringing and the two of them rushed over there.
"Ooh...is this where I get to say 'Cover me'?" Darnia cooed in excitement as Kim stood in front of her, blocking her from the general view of others. She rolled her eyes and gestured at her to do her stuff. "Oh...right...gotcha," she said and pulled out the phone line and plugged it into the Kimmunicator.
Luckily for them, the Kimmunicator was completely silent during the connection period and after a minute of tense waiting, there was a scratching sound on the Kimmunicator, followed by Wade's voice: "Can you hear me?"
Kim let out a sigh of relief. "Wade...good to hear you. Do you know what's jamming communications in Go City?" she asked, not turning around so that she can keep an eye on what's going on.
After a five second pause, Wade said, "I'm guessing that it's the QBFG activation that's causing it and no, I have no idea why no one is dead yet. Theoretically, that's what that is supposed to happen but maybe something was changed in the building or even the activation process." Must be the lag, Kim thought.
"Antropy said he was using Mystical Monkey Powers to power the device. You think that maybe that might have something to do with it?"
"I can't really say until the tests are actually done. All this magic stuff is just too weird for me. Give me science any time of the day."
"Okay...so if the QBFG's function was changed, what's going on right now?" Kim asked.
"Oh, actually it's working perfectly. Instead of wiping out all living beings, the device created some sort of energy barrier around Go City and is preventing things from leaving and entering the city, including radio wave transmission."
"So how come we're still talking to you? Not to mention all of the landlines are still functioning."
Five seconds passed and Kim could imagine Wade shrugging. "It's a sketchy thought but maybe, just maybe, the barrier doesn't interfere with anything that's already there when it was set up and this allows the signal to use the cables to travel out of the city. That make any sense to you?"
She shrugged. "Maybe. So you think you could send us the data that you were suppose to earlier?"
"Ever tried downloading two gigabytes of stuff on a 14.4 kbps modem?"
"Normal talk, Wade."
"He means don't bother trying. We'll be dead before it gets through," Darnia crinkled her brow. "Does this PDA have a fiber-optic cable connector?" she asked.
"Yeah. Why?"
"Dark fiber," she replied with a grin. "Catch you later, Wade," she said before she pulled the plug. "Okay. We're finding ninja girl and your boyfriend and then we can get the data that we need from Wade," she said, grabbing an unattended flashlight that was lying on the desk.
"Wait...where are we going?" Kim demanded.
"Down there," she replied, pointing at the ground.
PB
Ron and Yori joined up with them soon enough; apparently GCPD had no desire to keep him any longer now that the city was in an actual crisis. On his part, he was concerned about how Kim was holding up right now.
"Other than the nausea and a constant feeling of bloated-ness? Yeah, just peachy," she said. "At least I'm not throwing up any more."
"We're going to have to get you some mouthwash later," he promised as they followed Darnia out. "Oh, and why are we looking for a manhole again?"
"You guys ever heard of dark fiber?" she asked them. Three heads shook at once. "Short story is that right underneath our feet, there's an entire network of fiber-optic cables that was placed there in the nineties so that the internet could expand and tele-com companies could regulate themselves. The dot-com crashed happened though but not before the fiber-optic cables were laid throughout most of America."
"So you're planning to go down there and tap into the dark fiber so that we can get the data we need from Wade?" Kim asked.
"Bingo," she grinned. "Ooh...looks like we found an entrance," she said, pointing at a manhole cover. She looked at the other three expectantly. "Well? Move it. You three are the heroes here, and in the case of you," she points at Ron, "...a freaking superhero even."
Sighing, Ron got down to his knees and effortlessly pulled the manhole away. "Thank you," Darnia grinned and climbed down the manhole, fishing out the flashlight as she did so. They watched her above as she searched the interior of the manhole for what she was looking for.
"There we go!" she said and pulled a wire from the PDA, connecting it to an unused socket. There was a soft buzz and then Wade's voice could be heard. "Guys? You managed to find a link?"
Kim hopped down into the manhole as soon as she heard Wade's voice and went over to Darnia. "Nice work," she grinned at her room-mate before she glanced at her tech-expert. "This connection fast enough for you?" she asked.
"And then some! No need to worry about bandwidth problems! Alright, just pull out the other port and connect it to your watch, Kim. That will let me transfer it into your newer model."
"Spankin'," Kim grinned and did as he instructed her. Soon the data was uploaded into her watch and she flipped it on to take a look at it. "Wade, what am I looking at?"
"The green line indicates the size of the barrier right now, which right now is as big as the entire city itself and extends up to roughly two miles up in the air. It's not getting any bigger but nothing can go in or out as of right now. Live streams from the edge of the barrier indicates that anyone or anything doesn't have a happy ending at all."
"Sounds serious," she said grimly. "So where's the heart of the barrier?" she asked.
A red light blinked on the Kimmunicator. "Right there in that building over there," Wade said as a label that read 'Myrmidon Tower' popped up.
"You think Antropy's over there with the device?" she asked.
"It's a reasonable assumption although I'd say expect some other sort of trouble too. I'm uploading a blueprint of the tower to you as well as an application to locate the signature and then I'll try to work on bypassing the jamming with Darnia so that we can hopefully give you some support later," he said.
"Good idea," she said, pulling out her watch from the PDA once the upload was completed. Then she went back to the ladder and started to climb out. Ron and Yori were waiting for her, both of them looking a little tensed.
"You guys heard what he said," she said, dusting herself off. "We're going to Myrmidon Tower and we'll going to put a stop to Antropy once and for all."
"Do we have a plan?" Yori asked. Kim shook her head in reply. "No...not really but I'm going to take a guess and say that Antropy has his device on the highest floor of the tower."
"Yeah...they always do that. Maybe they just like the penthouse suite a lot," Ron mused aloud.
She grinned. "But that makes things much easier for us." She pulled up the data that Wade had sent her earlier, and pointed at the topmost floor. "What do you know, it is a penthouse suite. Hmmm...looks like there's an open space over here," she mused and widened the blueprint. Luckily, Wade had thought to include a rough map of the buildings that surrounded the Myrmidon Tower too.
"Possible-san, what about this one?" Yori pointed at a building next to their target.
"Yeah, that looks good," Kim said in agreement as Ron looked between the two girls. "You two have a plan already?" he asked. "And when did I miss out on the no word instantaneous plan thing going on between the two of you?" he complained.
Kim petted his hand reassuringly. "Don't worry, lover boy," she said. "We'll fill you in on everything later. But for now, I hope you've been brushing up on your base jumping," she grinned.