Chapter 10: Firewall down
"Having bad dreams?" Larxene asked gleefully.
Roxas nodded and walked up to his computer.
"Wanna' share?"
Roxas looked at her with disgust.
Being the only woman of the team, one would think she'd be the caring one. Instead she was more or less addicted to the misery of others and enjoyed watching someone other than herself make mistakes or get hurt.
If it hadn't been for her skills with the machines and her technical genius when it came to building new useful inventions (like the first version of their VR-unit), she'd probably been kicked out of the organization a long time ago.
Even Marluxia and Vexen were nice and thoughtful compared to her.
Roxas shook his head in answer to her plea and turned his back to her as the screen lit up.
It had been a week since he woke up from whatever comatose state he'd been in, and the old routine had already started to settle again. Roxas' memory was getting restored by and by, but there still were a number of things missing.
Not the coding part though.
He'd only had to sit down by his old computer to feel attuned and as he'd started up the programs one by one, he'd felt thrilled to be doing it again.
The only set-back these past days, had been his inability to sleep through the entirety of the night.
The reason was a returning dream of people he hadn't met, a dream always ending with himself being devoured by en evil liquid darkness as he saw the world around him disappear.
He always woke up with the feeling of not being able to breathe.
Another thing that had been bothering him was Axel's absence. The redhead had been off on missions outside of the Oblivion Mansion the past week and Roxas hated to admit it, but he missed him.
As the screen started to shimmer in blue and green, Roxas focused his attention on the data given him in the form of scrambled codes made up by numbers, letters and various symbols. His job was to unscramble and interpret those codes and then pass them on to either Vexen for further analysis, or to Marluxia for counter developing.
Roxas didn't quite remember for how long he'd been doing this, but it had been a not so insignificant number of years since he'd first heard of the organization. At least it felt like he'd spent the major part of his young life working for them. In reality it couldn't have been much more than five years or so. He'd been about thirteen when he'd gotten the offer to try out for the job.
What he did know, though, was that he'd never gone through the trouble of finding out anything about his precursors on the position, or anything about the organization's history, for that matter. All he'd cared about was that he'd gotten a job that he'd dreamed of having ever since first setting his eyes upon a computer.
He'd simply never felt the need to know about those details.
Until now.
There was something odd about Sora's story, a couple of things that just didn't seem to fit. One of those things included Riku and the way he was supposed to have killed his best friend, as if he hadn't cared at all about him.
Another thing was Ansem and why he was so obsessed with getting into the Kingdom Hearts that he'd sacrifice others' lives to do so.
A thin line formed on Roxas' forehead as he deciphered a string of code. It had become common knowledge that the only way for anyone to as much as start trying to take on the armour surrounding the Heart, was to use a VR-link in order to "see" the "environment" and at the same time be able to operate the keys in the actual reality.
Sora had obviously known how to do that, as had Ansem. Only, Ansem had managed to play puppeteer with someone else working as his eyes, shield and weapons.
None knew how he'd done it though.
Somehow Diz had managed to half-way copy what Ansem had done to Riku. The difference laid in how Diz had managed to codify Roxas' mind, store it in a digital chamber and dress it up in Sora's remaining memories, aided by a program that was supposed to have been delted. He'd even done it so efficiently that it had taken the best code-crackers in the known world about two years to find him.
There just seemed to be too many odd ends that didn't add up, but the main trouble was to make sense of Riku's supposed cold hearted betrayal.
"Someone's up early."
Roxas blinked and turned around to see who'd talked.
The pink shoulder length hair glowed oddly in the light from the computer screens at work.
Marluxia, vice president of the organization and head of the mission planning and code generating, slowly stalked across the room to stand by Roxas' chair.
"So, are you developing an identity of a workaholic, or could it be you're not sleeping well?" he asked in a silky smooth voice, something oily creeping into the pronunciation of the words.
"Oh, he's got bad dreams, the poor baby," Larxene commented from where she was lying on her back beneath the main operation table, tools and wires in her hands.
Marluxia grinned widely, the striking image of a demon smelling blood, and patted Roxas on the head in a jesting fashion.
"Aawww, someone seems to be missing his teddy bear, am I right?" he said with a voice dripping of sadistic pleasure and acted sympathy. "You know, if you ever feel the need of company, I'm more than willing to help," he added, eyes suddenly lit up with something looking very much like hunger.
Roxas roughly shoved away the gloved hand and at the same time pushed his toes to the floor, making his chair slid away a couple of meters while he looked at the amused VP with both disgust and slight confusion.
"What the hell do you mean by that?" Roxas spat out as calmly as he could manage.
Marluxia laughed. The sound was more like a hushed giggle, reminiscent of the sound of fragile glass being slowly crushed in a hand.
"Oh, my, temper, temper," he said in a smile and swept a pink stray strand of hair away from his face. "How silly of me, but you see I had forgotten that you're supposed to not remember anything. I guess that the fact of you being able to work just like before sort of made the whole deal slip my mind. Forgive me." Marluxia's grin told a whole different story.
Larxene poked her blonde head out from underneath the operation table, eyes glimmering, but staying quiet, satisfied by just watching the bully do his thing.
Roxas didn't like Marluxia one bit. The flamboyant VP was nothing more than a guy drunk with power who wanted to place other people under his boots.
"Well, as a matter of fact, I don't remember everything yet," Roxas said, frustration and annoyance clear in his voice as he stared at Marluxia. "And if you think that this is something funny, then tell me what it is I'm supposed to remember or just shut the hell up!"
"Wo- hoo..." Larxene mumbled with growing interest as Marluxia's face turned a bright red with simmering anger when the pink-haired VP took in the insultingly disrespectful reply.
"Look now, punk; just because you're some god blessed code cracker it doesn't mean you can do as you like around here!" he spit out at Roxas, the voice agitated, but his posture intact. "You need to remind yourself who ranks higher than yourself and pay due respect. All I was doing, was asking you a simple question and offering you some comfort, and here you bite back at me as if I'd put a knife to your throat!"
Roxas snorted and bit off the answer coming in mind before he had a chance to utter it. Pissing Marluxia off wasn't a very good thing, so he figured he had to swallow his pride for a moment and play along.
As calmly and emotionless as he could muster, he said;
"Ah, don't mind me. I've been losing too much sleep lately. My mouth has a life of its own sometimes."
Marluxia seemed to have called his bluff, but felt better none the less, since it meant he'd won the fight for the moment.
"Your apology is accepted, but only because I'm feeling kind today," Marluxia said and stepped a bit closer to Roxas. The blonde did all he could in order not to flinch as the VP bent down and put a hand on his shoulder.
"And just to show you how kind I am, I'll let you in on a secret."
The whisper was smooth and just above silence, making Larxene annoyed as she tried her best to overhear the words without any success.
"Xemnas only wants you here because he thinks that you can do what Sora, and Terra before him, managed to do. He wants to hack the Kingdom Heart and you're going to be the key."
Roxas' eyes widened in fear for this absurdness to be true.
"But then again," Marluxia said in a more audible voice, "that's what he believes. I, on the other hand, don't quite agree with those high thoughts about you."
He turned to leave, but stopped and gave Roxas a look over his shoulder.
"Oh, and I almost forgot, your dear redheaded clown isn't coming back here for a while, so stop bothering to wait for his return. My offer still stands though," he said with a smile and winked at him before he left the room.
What did he mean by that? Roxas thought as the message was sinking in.
"Now that was something new," Larxene said. The sound of deep thought in her voice surprised Roxas enough to look her way.
The woman's eyebrows were drawn together and her eyes focused on something out of sight.
"So you haven't heard about it either, then?" Roxas asked, hoping to get at least one more clue to the strange announcement.
Larxene slowly shook her head, for a moment forgetful of being her usual cold and distant self.
"I've noticed that Axel's been a whole lot more absent than usual for an outdoors missions duty, but to say he won't be back..." Larxene mumbled, a shadow of slight confusion on her face.
"That's bad, right?" Roxas dared asking her.
"It insinuates either treason or a case of gone missing..." she answered, her face still troubled and her voice filled with what sounded strangely much like actual concern for Axel.
"But Axel would never..." Roxas started, but stopped himself as he came to think about the full meaning of what Larxene had said.
"Wait a minute, are you telling me Marluxia just said that he plans to..."
Larxene seemed to finally catch up with who she was talking and shook her head violently.
"I'm not saying anything other than that whatever he's up to, it sounds strange", she said defiantly.
"But Axel's in trouble," Roxas concluded.
Larxene didn't answer, but the way she looked at him before she returned to her wires, was sending a chill down Roxas' spine.
Her eyes had told him to be very careful with what he said.
Marluxia may be a bully, but he was a dangerous enemy none the less and to accuse him of treason... Roxas didn't want to think about it, but once the idea had come to him, it was hard to get rid of.
Why would Marluxia do such a thing? Who was he going to conspire against; the entire organization, or just Xemnas?
What purpose did he have to even insinuate such a thing to Roxas?
The questions kept buzzing in his mind as he turned back to sit in front of his screen. For the first time, as far as he could remember, the strings of codes mingling on the screen was incomprehensible to him.
Suddenly he remembered the main messages Marluxia had given him; that Xemnas intended to use him the same way Ansem had used Sora, and that Axel was for some reason "missing"...
Roxas almost heard the click as the pieces of information given him suddenly hooked onto each others' ends.
He gasped from the insight this brought him and in an instant he rushed to his feet and headed for the door.