Ah, the long awaited update! It's been almost a year -- Sorry, those of you waiting…but I had to finish The Summoned Land before I could devote enough time to come back to this fic. For those of you who've already read the first three chapters…I highly suggest going back and reading them again. I changed some of the content, so things are slightly different…just a head's up. Those of you new to this fic (as in the end of August 2008), you're already caught up :)
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Chapter Four
Click. Click. Click. Click. Tock. Click. Click. Click. Click. Tock.
The sound of the mechanicals coming to life and the gears catching in rhythmic concert had become a comfort to Girl as the weeks drew on. Everything had its own synchrony, its own heartbeat, and the more she grew accustomed to this strange environment, the more morbidly fascinated with it she became. The mechanicals were like living beings with metal parts, all making their unique sounds, and performing different functions—some with quirks and others with lightning efficiency.
The Doctor had prevented her from peeking at the more complicated mechanisms, but she had spent the last few months greasing parts and tightening bolts, and figured that sooner or later she'd figure it out for herself, just what he was hiding.
In the meantime, it was her means to escape that worried her the most. It had been a while—a month or two perhaps?—since she and the doctor had struck their bargain. So far neither had succeeded in their respective tasks, and until she recovered a few vital parts of her memory, she wasn't going anywhere. The longer her memory escaped her, the longer the Doctor had her doing abysmally dismal tasks, and until then, he would pursue nothing that would aid in her escape. They were at another impasse, and Girl was endlessly frustrated that it was her memory stalling the entire process.
She was working on one of his smaller machines, fixing a broken joint, and he was hovering again. Always a step or two behind—dogged, grating. His presence made Girl's back twitch, knowing that his eyes were boring through her with their shrewd intensity. Of the time she'd spent with him so far, she wished for once that he was still ignoring her existence.
Why had he brought up the confusing notion of ninjas, leaving the quandary of her origins at her feet to figure out? She hadn't made heads or tails of it, what being a ninja meant, what skills she was meant to have, or how she was to deal with it.
She stole a glance in his direction, catching a glimpse of his wild hair writhing around his head, and his glasses enlarging the size of his eyes to enormous saucers. His gaze met hers. There was silence, and she slowly eeked her attention to the clutter she'd previously been attending, hoping he wouldn't bring it up…that he'd leave the matter be…but her hopes were squashed. He took a deep breath, as if meaning to speak, and she scowled.
"Have you figured it out yet?" He inquired.
"No," she said simply.
"Is it difficult, carrying a blade? All I need are a few samples."
"I don't see you inventing a genius teleportation device, either," she pointed out.
"Because you're not fulfilling your end of the bargain."
"I can't help it that my memory's faulty!" she shot back, feeling heat rise to her face.
"Then I can't help you," he replied.
Girl spun on her heels. "Now hold on a minute. We set no time-frame on this bargain! I can't be expected to re-learn a craft within a few weeks!"
He adjusted his spectacles haughtily. "You said yourself that sooner would be better. I'm busy and you're the freeloader, so in that case, I think you should be the one making good on your agreement first."
"What am I supposed to do, hit my head against a wall until something just comes to me?"
The Doctor folded his hands in front of him with his fingers steepled, looking innocently up at the ceiling. "If you think it would help…"
"No!" Girl snapped. Throwing a wrench down onto the tile, where something cracked and sizzled. Within instants that section of the room and some portions beyond went completely black.
"What have you done! Stupid girl!" he shrieked into the dark.
"You should know better than to live in a house made of glass!" she retorted, taken aback by the instant response her outburst had caused.
"We'll have to re-route power again," the Doctor complained. "You're a power snatcher, that's what you are! Ruin my experiments on the day you arrive, and when you claim to be helping me, you're still doing the same thing!"
"How are we supposed to re-route power?" she asked, looking around futilely for anything that glowed or was attached to a switch. He walked past her, shaking his head, powder white hair looking like a giant spider in silhouette.
"There's a switch a few levels down, outside of the lab. You could probably turn that switch on. It will be dark, though…"
"Are there any monsters that way?"
He turned to look back at her. "No."
She stomped past him, veering for the doors that led out of the lab and into unknown territory.
"How will I know which switch?"
"When the lights turn back on," he replied. "Good luck," he said again, waving foolishly.
She narrowed her eyes and stepped into the dark corridor beyond the lab rooms. She reached to her belt out of habit and found her knife there where it always was. She didn't like to go anywhere without it, even though she didn't know how to use it. It was only after she'd stepped into the dark corridor, to her great chagrin, that she realized she'd been stuck going on one of the Doctor's errands again. A switch three levels down? Had he said where? She couldn't remember, but glaring back the way she'd come, she was too stubborn to ask him for any more directions.
Her clothing, covered in oil, dust, and grime, was all she had other than the knife, as she ventured into the mazelike unknown. If anything lived down here, it would be able to smell her from a mile away. Now of all times she wished for a new set of clothes.
They were dark, the corridors. She activated the faint floor lights with every section she reached, but it was only enough to illuminate a few feet at a time, the main power somehow cut by her tantrum with the wrench. This place was too fragile for its size. But what was it the Doctor had told her once? That the entire tower had once been lit? It had lain dormant for centuries, nothing but rogue creatures roaming the hallways and staircases. Whatever had powered the tower was now only enough for the barest of uses, and apparently, the slightest disturbance could send things haywire. How, then, had the Doctor come to be here? And who was his superior? In all the time she'd spent with the Doctor in secret, she still hadn't come to discover that answer.
She walked on her toes, something that seemed only natural to hide the sound of her footsteps. There were twists and bends, and a number of staircases, and she mentally kept note of them while she moved. It would be difficult enough finding her way back, if she failed to fix the problem she'd caused.
One level down, and several corridors toward the tower's center, she began to hear noises that weren't made by machines. She halted and craned her neck in the direction of what she heard. She crept forward and noticed that the sounds began to grow louder when she neared a sharp bend in the corridor. It was the sound of rough scraping, like a coarse fabric scuttling across the floor.
Snake.
The memory was there before she'd even thought about it. It was the same with most things of late—small and unsuspecting mental cues that sparked the forgotten realms of her mind.
The knife was again in her hand, sturdy, solid. It felt good in the contours of her palm, but what to do with it—how to move her arm and make full use of the blade's bite…it was lost at her shoulder. The sound grew louder still and then moved past, lessening and slinking away again into darkness.
Girl relaxed her stance and let out a breath.
Two more levels to go and the Doctor had been wrong about the presence of monsters. She peeked past the corner, listening for anything else, and when she deemed it safe, continued walking down the ominously long corridor, keeping her ears tuned to everything around her. There was something eery about this place. There was already one creature loose in the halls. Was there anything else lurking with her in the dark?
She avoided mishap on the next two floors as she traveled downward, but as she searched for the switch, she noticed that something was again out of place. There began to be a steady, sluggish dripping sound from several feet forward, and she slowed her progress to inspect the unusual puddle glistening on the floor. It was too thick to be ordinary water, and it dropped down like slaver.
She was wondering if she should report to the Doctor, when the main lights in the corridor suddenly turned on and the source of the dripping moved into the still dark recesses of the ceiling. Girl's heart began to beat faster as she looked up. She felt something fall on her shoulder and she jumped, trying to see into the darkened rafters where the light didn't reach. There was an amorphous shape creeping there. Girl couldn't figure it out, but a soft gurgling giggle had begun to reverberate off of the metal rafters.
"Who's there?" Girl demanded.
The giggling grew louder, and Girl had to jump back as a steady line of slobber fell from the ceiling. A body followed it, slimy, glistening, and grotesque. It was the body of a worm or a slug and the face of a woman, deformed. She had teeth like spikes and dead eyes that blinked at her hungrily.
Girl was spellbound, almost glued to the floor staring at this horror, watching hands of pale gray with clawed fingers reach for her. They were only a few inches from her face when instinct took over. In one fluid motion the blade from Girl's belt was in her hand again and swept outward in an arc that sliced through the creature's hands, severing them at the wrists. The creature screamed in half a dozen octaves at once and Girl gritted her teeth, terrified and dumbstruck by what she'd just done. She ran. Retracing her steps like a being crazed and raced through the corridors, staircases, and finally threw herself through the lab doors, falling to the floor still clutching the dagger in her hand.
Within a moment, the Doctor was there, staring down at her, but more particularly, at the blade's edge and the blue viscous fluid still staining its metal.
"I take it you didn't find the switch," he said insipidly.
Fighting to regain her breath, Girl looked up at him with eyes like ice. "There was no switch, and if there was, it was hidden somewhere only you would know. That's not why you sent me! You turned the power back on from here!" she shouted, furious that he'd tricked her.
She went to wipe off the blade, but the Doctor leapt closer all of a sudden and pulled the dagger out of her hand.
"No, don't clean the blade!" he cried. "This is just the sort of specimen I've been looking for!"
He held the dagger up into the light and studied the monster blood still clinging there like jelly. "Yes, this should do nicely," he murmured to himself, shuffling off to one of his work tables to do goodness knew what.
Girl picked herself up from the floor and followed him, waiting for an explanation.
After several long minutes of talking to himself and his phials, he turned to see her standing behind him. "What creature was it?" he asked.
His lack of surprise was in itself surprising.
"You knew something was there," she fumed. "You told me it was safe."
"How else could I have gotten you to go? Besides, necessity made you wield your weapon. Your foray could not have been more successful."
Whatever elation she might have felt at regaining some of her former skill was masked by anger. "What kind of trickery is this!" she shouted at him. "I could have died!"
"Well, that's one way of escaping the tower," he observed.
Girl rested both hands on her hips and continued to follow him around his workroom.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"I'm going to study this, obviously."
"For what purpose?" she insisted.
"This creature, describe it to me," he barreled on.
"Slimy, like a worm, with the face of a woman," she answered snappishly.
"Excellent. Red or gray?"
"What?"
"Red or gray—the color."
"Gray? I don't know, I was more concerned with not dying!"
"Don't be so dramatic. You did fine, and now it seems we can finally move forward with our bargain," he said, pushing her out of his way.
"But what I did, I did by instinct—I can't go about doing that whenever I want!"
"Is it really so difficult to slash a blade?" he asked.
Girl had half a mind to strike him in the face as he began prattling on about the fluid on the dagger again.
"And this is what you meant by samples—you want me to go after those?!"
"I thought I said they'd be monsters…Oh well. You kill monsters, I build contraptions. Do you want to leave, or don't you? I, for one, don't want you hanging around if visitors come by."
"Killing monsters is one thing if there's some forewarning! Don't you ever send me into another ambush!"
He looked at her over the rims of his glasses. "Maybe you're not a ninja after all. You lack their joy of stealth and surprise."
"I don't know anything about the ninjas! I don't know who I am or what I'm capable of, I already told you! And I said I'd find out in my own time!"
"Now I've given you a head start. Can you hand me that phial of white liquid?"
"If the bargain still stands, then you have to start working tomorrow on something that will help me escape."
"Will you hunt the corridors tomorrow?"
Girl practically shoved the phial into his palm. "I'll 'hunt' as you call it, but I can't guarantee anything."
He smiled at her, displaying his discolored and crooked teeth. "Good. The deal still stands."
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Author's note: The creatures that Girl is sent to hunt by the Doctor aren't necessarily monsters from the game. Some of them are, and some are just ordinary creatures that the Doctor experiments on and essentially turns into nastier versions of the original monsters. This is my explanation of why the monsters are noted to be "suddenly increasing in numbers and ferocity" by the actual game. Girl doesn't know about this yet…
I keep switching between knife and dagger when talking about the weapon that Girl carries. It's really a…let me not butcher this…a "wakazashi" but she doesn't know the name at this point, so I'm alternating.
This chapter was short, but I've been writing bits of it during my classes (bad me), so you'll just have to be patient, I guess :)
Thanks for still reading!