Lyla was, as expected, the one to receive information regarding their next stop the following morning. She called the others - at least, those she could reach, hoping that Reeve would help her when she could not and have Cait Sith inform Vincent. This lab was closer than the last, directly east of Midgar, built into the cliff-face that looked out over the ocean there. Rather than meet and go together, she simply requested that those attending meet at the lab itself. She was the first one there, also as expected, and found herself distracted by the dark, choppy water that lapped at the shoreline several yards away. It had probably been blue once, before Midgar had been built, she reasoned. Now it was much closer to black.
She glanced back at the building, its metal facing long tarnished by the salt air. Foreboding and somehow fitting, she thought.
Despite his apparent habit for extreme punctuality, it was not Vincent that arrived second. -Hopefully Cait Sith was still with him, in order to send the message through.
Instead, it was the strange, tattooed man. Who had not been anywhere in sight across the near barren expanse upon her last look, but somehow managed to step up beside her, anyway.
"What are we watching?" He asked, following her gaze through dark, reflective lenses.
Lyla jumped slightly at the sound of another person's voice, immediately wishing she had not. She wasn't usually the type who scared easily, why was she wound so damn tight all of a sudden? She wasn't sure. Neither did she know exactly when it was that she became so serious about work and decided that nothing else mattered or was worth her time and attention. Arms crossed, she gave the strange man a small smile as she looked his way. "Trying to imagine what this place looked like before all the pollution," she said plainly.
Kaiun looked up at the sun, pouring down over the cliff-face and washing onto the dock. Lost somewhere in the dirty kiss of the water.
"Clear," he said after a moment. "Probably not very blue- least not this close to shore. White sand. The pokey shells that hurt like a mother fucker if you step on 'em."
"Those I don't think I'd miss so much," she mused aloud, looking back out over the water. The sun didn't touch the pitch of the water, only caused tiny glints of white where it crested as the wind refused to let it rest. "I didn't imagine you'd be joining us today."
He spread his hands. "Tough to get rid of, sometimes."
"I'm not sure there will be much more to see here to answer your questions. More of the same," she told him. "Monsters in tubes."
He cocked his head, watching the churn of the ocean at a slant that almost suggested wariness. "Seems to be a lot of that around here," the lanky man agreed, flashing her his teeth in a wry grin. "Don't think we're looking for the same kind of answers, though. I might get lucky, yet."
"If it's Jenova you're looking for, there will be more traces of her inside," she said with a grimace. "She's everywhere."
"That's the part that kind of creeps me out." He agreed. "Yeah."
"Seems a hopeless case sometimes. I think it would be impossible to hunt down every last trace of her."
"You'd be surprised." Kaiun muttered, more in absence than to be heard.
She turned to give him a curious look, puzzling over the proper response when the steady purr of an engine began to draw near. She looked over her shoulder, spotting Reno's car approaching. "Here's three more," she murmured.
Kaiun stepped away from the dock rather than to one side, cocking his head as he watched the Turks and their President pile out of the vehicle.
"So," He said after a moment, "Where's the robot and his feline friend?"
Lyla looked back to the alien apparent after watching Reno assemble the president's chair for him, holding it steady while Rufus made a point of displaying how very capable he was of getting into it himself and with some manner of grace. "I'm not sure," she admitted. "Mr. Valentine doesn't appear to have a phone number on record. I had to leave it to Reeve to deliver the message for me. ... via the cat."
"Sounds reliable." Kaiun said in a very reasonable tone.
"Perhaps I should ask the professor to issue him a company pager," Lyla responded flatly, "If he'll be working with us much longer."
The smile on Rufus' lips was calm and professional as Reno wheeled him towards the pair near the entrance, Rude flanking them. "Good morning, Ms. Caraway. I did not realize we had contracted another body for this job," he said, looking Kaiun over with interest.
"Hey," Reno interjected, "It's the spaceman."
The shirtless man flashed him a finger sign that might have been his one handed impression of what a bull looked like, using it thereafter to push his glasses up. "How's it hangin', Captain Self-preservation-sucks?"
"Little to the left," Reno replied without missing a beat. "Where's Dracula and the cat?"
"Haven't seen either, yet."
Rude glanced at Reno over their boss's chairback.
Reno shrugged his response to Rude. "But he was out in the daytime yesterday and didn't catch on fire. He can pull a repeat performance, can't he?"
Lyla frowned, averting her gaze and turning her attention to the entrance of the lab. "If they're not here in five, we'll just go in. The three of us can handle whatever might come at us." She paused, glancing to Kaiun. "Four?"
A soft click sounded as Rufus turned the safety on his shotgun off. "Five, Ms. Caraway," he corrected.
Kaiun flipped her a casual salute. "Sure, Captain. Sign me up, I guess."
"... we'll be fine without him," Lyla reasoned, her arms still folded across her chest, fingers lightly drumming against her elbow.
"I have never visited this facility personally," Rufus said a moment later, glancing up at their only female companion. "Have you?"
Lyla paused in her fidgeting and looked down to meet the president's gaze. "No," she admitted. "I didn't even know it existed. There are a lot of Shinra facilities that fall under that category, though. I'm not exactly top brass. Not always in the know."
He smiled, polite, professional, calm, as always. "There is not much top brass left, Ms. Caraway. Someone will need to replace them someday."
The doors slid open with the standard, minimal encouragement. All the rust and wear of the outside belied the working lights and cleanly floorway.
Kaiun paused behind the group of inworlders as they entered, frowning at the entrance. "So... you're... sure this place is abandoned?"
Lyla did her best to conceal her puzzlement as she stepped through the entryway, looking both ways down the corridor they found themselves presented with. "Still operational. ... clean, too. There will be automated sentries, no doubt. Many of them can also handle maintenance."
"Last place sure as hell didn't look like it."
"This one is larger." The calm voice came from behind them, following the metallic slide of the doors.
"Aye! More backups tae replace the broken down with!"
The brunette turned her head back to look at their new arrivals. "Glad you could make it."
Rufus nodded once, indicating for Reno to push him further into the hallway, rifle in hand. "Sentries will not be an issue. I would like to take a look around. Ms. Caraway, if you would be so kind?"
She directed her attention to the floor plan she had brought up. "Of course. Our primary objective appears to be on the lowest level. That's four flights down. Since the place appears to be fully operational, the elevators should be safe," she added. Stairs were not what the president needed to see at the moment. "Was there more you would like to see?"
"Everything," Rufus informed her. "I can handle myself, Reno and Rude can escort me while you extract what it is that you need. Perhaps we could meet on the lowest level when we've finished."
"If you like, of course."
Vincent moved between them quietly, not bothering to spare a glance as Cait Sith hopped from his shoulder to Reno's. "Do you have any other stops planned." He asked Lyla, brushing his cloak away as he turned to peer down the hallway.
She glanced up at the taller man, shaking her head. "I didn't, though I would like to take a look around myself when we're finished below. All of the samples were kept on the lowest level, it looks like. I'll go there first, download the files from the computer system as usual, and then... well. I wasn't expecting this place to be functioning so well. There may be something interesting and worth seeing. Or at least useful."
He nodded, pulling his gun free. "No reason for delay, then."
Kaiun checked over his shoulder, folding his arms. "Mind if I crash your date, or should I give myself a tour?"
"You're welcome to come along if you're interested," Lyla told him plainly, glancing to Rufus and the others. "Be careful, and call if you run across anything of note, please."
"You as well, Ms. Caraway," Rufus told her, then motioned for Reno to go to the right. Reno offered the rest of the group a lazy wave as they went.
"Don't get eaten!" he called back over his shoulder before they disappeared around a bend. Lyla snorted softly, more amused than not as she began in the opposite direction.
"There's an elevator at either end," she explained as they went. "We'll take it directly down, take a left and the room we want should be at the end of the hallway."
Vincent eyed the pristine hall as they walked. Not a light out of place. Not a dent in the walls. Everyplace else had gone to hell, but not this one. What was here? What had Shinra placed so much personal interest in.
He'd seen sleek walls like this before. The particular, off-blue gleam of the metal. It was more than a research and testing facility. It was a bunker in some kind of private war.
The ex-Turk frowned, quietly cocking the Death Penalty with his free hand.
He just wondered if it was meant to keep things out, or in.
Lyla continued to frown the further they went. Even the facility in Edge had sentries, but here there was nothing at all - not so far, anyway. The faint hum of fluorescent lights, the soft whir of machinery behind doors, their own footsteps echoing as they neared the elevator. That was all she heard.
"No guards," she murmured as she stepped onto the lift, waiting for Vincent and Kaiun to join her before pressing the button for the lowest level. "... maybe they're patrolling elsewhere. ... wonder if maybe a few of the people Hojo might have had on retainer still use this place. It's too well-kept."
"The codes weren't updated." Vincent pointed out with a frown. "When was the last date of entry?"
She looked to her organizer, ignoring the hum of the elevator as they descended. "... six months ago."
"For what?" He glanced her way, steadying himself in front of the doors.
"I couldn't say," she admitted, looking up as the ding sounded and the faint hiss of the doors sounded as they began to slide open. "All I have is the date for the last authorized entry."
"And the keyholder's name?" Vincent stepped into the hall deliberately, surveying the wide, well lit space.
"Let's see," she mused, stepping out after him and pausing to tap the screen of her organizer a few more times. "... oh. ... Dr. K. L. Caraway."
The tall man watched her for a beat, perhaps taking in her change of expression.
She frowned again, a small, thin twitch of the lips, very still for a moment before tucking the device back into her bag. "... that's all it says," she said before moving past him, dark eyebrows knitted together.
He followed, casting a last glance at the man still standing in the elevator on his way out.
Kaiun stepped around the doors as they started to close, wondering what kind of soap opera, exactly, he had signed up to play extra to.
Lyla was forced to stop at the end of the hallway, the door she was presently faced with far larger and heavier than those they had seen at the previous facilities. "Odd," she murmured, leaning over the control panel. As with the front door, the codes were the same as those she had been provided with, though this particular door seemed to require more than the standard one or two authentications. Her frown deepened when she finished inputting the fifth code on her list and the door let out that tell-tale, well-oiled hiss.
Vincent frowned, lifting his head to take in the array of wire and plugs that stretched from the ceiling, the room bathed in the sickly, floodlight green of the light that poured through the rows of sealed pods.
Bodies still in tact, bodies in pieces and those cobbled together. Human and mutation. All with the same basic shape- basic face.
"What... is this?" She was hesitant to enter, but found herself unable to remain in the hallway, taking two slow, meandering steps into the room. At first she could only stare, rows of pods all the same height and shape, all the same color, all with the same wires and plugs running from them like so many black veins. The two leftmost tubes in the first row were empty. No sign of forced entry or exit. Still on and functioning. Just empty. The only ones.
Her eyes moved from one creature to the next, each bearing a different mutation. None quite human, though some tried to be. Disfigured wings and oddly bent claws, tails or the occasional extra limb. No two were identical, and yet they were all the same in a way that suddenly made her feel sick.
"What is this."
Beside her, the paler of the two men wound his way around them. Carefully, suspiciously. The metal enclosing his fingers tapped near silently against the glass as he reached out, laying his hand against the farthest specimen.
At the console in the room's center, Kaiun bent over the screen. His fingers moved deftly, if in sporadic bursts. Experimental taps at the keys to see what blind intuition could pull up. "They're in stasis." He said after a minute, shattering the eerie silence. "But I guess you knew that."
"No." Vincent's voice was low, but deafening in the still. "Not all of them."
The person behind the glass twitched faintly, eyelids lifting slowly, working its lips as though it took great effort. "Kill..." The voice was hushed, muffled by the glass and the fluid inside. Lyla slowly approached Vincent from behind, driven by morbid curiosity, paler than she had been in the hallway.
"Kill." He repeated, turning his head with an almost canine sympathy, dark eyes on her mouth as it moved.
"Looks like we got here at a bad time." Kaiun offered from his place at the station. "They drugs they're pumping in with the air are just about running out."
"Kill me." The words were slow, drawn, labored.
Vincent looked over his shoulder, expression steady again as he waited for Lyla.
"... Kaiun." It took a moment for her to tear herself away from the pod, even as she moved towards the computer she looked back, expression perfectly blank except for her eyes. Wide. Scared. "... move. Let... let me see that." She turned to lean against the console, leaning down to read the words on the screen, going over them twice, three times before they began to make sense the way words ought to.
"... Pandora Project."
Displaced, the third party member stepped around the console, taking his turn to tour the array of unfortunate souls.
For his own part, the ex-Turk moved away from the glass, circling them. Unsure of what to do. Pull the plugs? Shoot them out. What would it take to kill projects of this caliber.
"July 7th, Project Pandora founded," she began to read aloud, her voice oddly distant, dispassionate. "Counterpart to Project Prometheus. Project directed by Gast, Hojo and Caraway. An attempt to recreate the Cetran race for the purpose of study." She paused. "... what?"
She shook her head briefly as though to clear it, scrolling down to the next portion. "December 16th, Pandora prototype removed from facility by persons unknown. Intern convicted and terminated. January 8th, Dr. Kenneth Caraway retires." Another paused, somehow heavier than the last.
"March 5th, prototype still not recovered and declared lost. Work on cloning process begins. April 17th... cloning process is complete."
Vincent stepped away from the ruin beside him, closing the distance to better hear as she read aloud.
Kaiun paused where he stood, eyes sliding closed. Waiting for the whispers, listening for the voice.
Lyla's eyes remained fixed on the screen as she continued to scroll through reports. Oxygen levels, tank temperature. Every last detail of the project seemed to be recorded. She paused when a highlighted date caught her eye. "This is from four years ago," she murmured. "... first clone overpowers caretakers and escapes, killing twelve in the process." She blinked slowly. "It looks like they made the others weaker after the first two. .. easier to control. Also why they are mutated, I... I assume."
"Tampering caused them to destabilize." The ex-Turk frowned, turning a critical eye back on the menagerie of horrors.
"But one of 'em busted out?" Kaiun frowned, lilting back until his eyes found the tile of the ceiling.
"... so it would appear," Lyla said after another pause that felt entirely too long, looking up at the both of them. "... Vincent."
He turned, offering her his complete attention. Face drawn and half hidden, concealing whatever emotions flickered outside of his eyes.
She forced herself to look downward, eyes closed as she braced both hands against the console, leaning. "... pull the plug. Please."
The cloaked man nodded once, slowly. Three steps to the thick, black source chord before looking up again. He followed it's meandering path against the wall, crouching just beside the edge where it met wall.
Kaiun turned to watch him, claws a dull teal in the strange light as he lifted his hand.
Numbly, Lyla stared at the screen embedded in the console, waiting. She would read everything stored then, bury herself in it until she was able to understand, but now was not that time. And once it was hers, she didn't have much interest in letting anyone else have it. She exhaled briefly as the transfer finished, edging back a single step.
The power shuddered, lights flickering violently as Vincent cut into the wires. There was a whirr as the backup systems kicked into gear, frantically trying to preserve the normal flow of power. The blare of alarms sounded- an emergency, rather than a threat. That which illuminated the tubes flashing from white to blue.
He scowled as his fingers curled around the wires, small electric shocks causing the bronze to twitch. One jerk, the metallic shriek of chord and it ripped.
And the sound of score of liquid shrieks as the jolt of life tore through them only to abate again.
And in time with those shrieks, the shattering of glass and tearing of metal as Lyla drove her staff through the the screen of the console, reaching to bodily wrench it from the wall even as the alarms sounded, near deafening. Reno all but tumbled through the door then, caught in the glare of the emergency lights, frozen in place as he attempted to take in the scene that awaited him.
"Holy SHIT."
"Vin!" Cait Sith leapt from his perch as it stumbled, crossing the room in a few quick jumps to grab the dark man's cloak as he rose, grabbing hold of the robot to steady him.
"If there are any sentries left." Vincent's voice was thick and scratched, like the gouges across the glass that lay at his feet, all but eroded away. "They know we're here, now."
Rufus was the next in, frowning as he slowed to a stop, shotgun laid across his lap. "I dispatched of three on the way down here. Any others will be along shortly."
"Let them come." Lyla wrenched her weapon from where it had become embedded in the console, doing so single-handedly before moving towards the door. "Destroy them and get out. Dr. Ingram has a great deal of explaining to do. As does Dr. Caraway."
"Shit. Those are all-" Reno began as he continued to stare at the tubes and their dying inhabitants, cutting himself off. "What the hell is this?"
The alarm howled over the sounds of their voices, masking the sharp hum of any coming wheels or feet.
Vincent shook his head, making a single, quick gesture at the Turk still standing in the doorway.
Rude took hold of the president's chair, turning it to angle back towards the exit, giving the room a long, clinical glance over his shoulder.
Lights popped, showering the remains of the projects and their caretaking technology with bright, hot sparks. In the slowly leaking coolant, one took root. Kaiun leapt back from the fire with a curse.
Lyla looked back as the loud pop of sparks sounded, expression now perfectly blank, cold. "... move out and let them burn," she instructed with an almost unnerving level of calm, following Rude and the president into the hallway, weapon in hand. "Let the whole place burn."
"Shit," Reno growled, scrambling to follow the rest. "Think I hear go-bots!"
Kaiun lingered behind them, laying an open palm against the glass.
The creature inside twisted, laying her withered, mis-numbered hand in echo of his. Her eyes, sewn closed at the edges as if to keep them in, stared out at him dully. Already beginning to drown. Alive long enough to experience a dying breath.
He stepped back, swinging the bo in his hands as though it were a baseball bat. Fueled by an emotion he did not know well enough to name. Something slow and bitter in the back of his throat.
The green liquid washed over the small flames, errupting into an inferno as another tank broke. Another.
Vincent pressed his human hand against the touchpad, ripping his black glove free.
UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY it blinked at him, defensive programming overriding the alarm sirens as he had hoped. Doors slamming shut on the blaze with a loud chink of finality as the locks slid into place.
He turned his back on the room, following the others. Tugging his glove back against scarred fingers.
Rufus fired two shots into a lone sentry as they moved towards the elevator, sending the machine crumbling to the ground effortlessly, Reno running ahead to press the button several times in rapid succession until the doors slid open. He waited to usher the others inside, tapping one foot as though it would make the whole process go faster.
Cat and AVALANCHE member, scientist and Turks. President of the company.
"That's it." Vincent said as he stepped inside.
Reno was the last in, sliding into place just as the doors began to close. "Let's get the hell out of this place," he exhaled, pressing against the wall to allow himself at least a small amount of space.
"Let's hope," Lyla said quietly, "that Ingram has answers."