I do not own Virus Buster Serge. Sunny and Macus Yu are mine.
Chapter 5- Return
"There has been a Kowloon Hotel on that site for almost 200 years! After the war, they built the current building on the site of the old one. It says here that they have two indoor pools, and a 24-hour all-you-can-eat buffet!" Sunny gushed as she scanned over the hotel guide . Her eyes tracked through space as she read the hotel biography through her implant.
Mirei kept her eyes on the shuttle's readouts as she began descending into New Hong Kong. It was 2:30 in the afternoon, but it looked much later, as the grey overcast was robbing the sun of much of its brightness. The drab, oppressive weather was a perfect commentary on the city itself. New Hong Kong was 2890 kilometers from Tokyo, but really, it was a world away. The hustle and bustle of Tokyo, the clean and prosperous look of its architecture and citizenry was conspicuously absent in New Hong Kong. Instead, New Hong Kong looked like a city that had been half abandoned and forgotten- which was true- a monument to a failed society. While Tokyo had suffered tremendous devastation in the quake that struck it in 2051, many historical buildings had been saved. The city had bounced back, and a real commitment had been made to replace what was lost by livable, vibrant architecture. On the other hand, when Old Hong Kong had been all but razed in the War of the Kingdoms in 2058, the rebuilding had been done with great haste, and no real plan had been imposed on the redevelopment. While the Harbor district and central city had been lavished with much money and state of the art buildings, the surrounding neighborhoods had been cheaply and shoddily built, with the result being that the whole city rotted in on itself. Now even the central city looked grimy and worn as the poverty and social issues of the outlying areas had spilled in. When LL Corporation had built its mammoth world headquarters in the heart of the city, it had been a showplace for the entire world to admire. As the shuttle swooped into the traffic patterns around the ponderous inverted pyramid, Mirei noticed the cracked and broken windows in the façade, and the general poor condition of the building. Mirei landed the shuttle on the parking deck off of the 50th floor of the LL Building. Being around the building brought fragments of memories to the top of Mirei's mind. Images of faces and battles and equipment swirled in her head.
"This is where it all began for me." Mirei thought.
If anything could bring back memories of her time in STAND, this was it. The smooth, black exterior glass was pitted and cracked in places, and a film of dust coated it, but the building was still imposing. Just the sheer size of the structure communicated strength and mastery. Mirei and Sunny entered the building through the large east lobby. The huge 20 story waterfall that dominated the atrium space was dry, and only about half of the recessed lighting was turned on. The abundance of black granite coupled with the complete absence of human activity gave the place a funeral air. Mirei walked up to the large reception desk, every step echoing through the cavernous space. In the past, the curved black granite counter would have been staffed by as many as 20 receptionists. Now, it was empty except for a lone holoprojection screen. Mirei stood in front of the sensor below the screen, and the floating Atlas logo was replaced by the face of a blond, bespectacled man of about 30.
"May I help you?" The man asked.
"Yes. I'm Mirei McCann, Team Leader of Project Sonata . I need to look at some archive data."
"Project Sonata, eh? You must be from HQ in Tokyo. You're a pretty big shot to send rooting around in the archives." The man responded wryly.
"I'm here at the request of Division Chief Harata." Mirei coolly responded. "I'm working on a tight schedule."
"Yeah, OK." The man said as he shrugged. "Usually when HQ sends someone over to personally retrieve stuff from the archive, they send a data request form over before the person gets here so that we can be ready to fulfill the request. I'm not used to team leaders just showing up to look around, that's all. Please interface with the system so I can verify your clearance."
Mirei placed her interface device on her head, and plugged into the base of the holoprojector. "Welcome, Team Leader McCann," the man responded after a second. "I am Head Archivist Yu. Please make your way to the elevator bank, and come up to the third floor. That's where my office is, and I think it will be easier for me to help you find what you are looking for from there."
Mirei and Sunny walked over to the row of seven elevators. The doors of the middle elevator slid open, and they stepped in.
"This is kind of creepy." Sunny said. "It's like some sort of haunted mausoleum."
"Yeah." Mirei responded. "There was a time when this place was hopping with activity. I guess when they made this Atlas' archive center, they didn't feel like they needed to bother with a large staff."
"That's an understatement. Having the head archivist in charge of reception? That just seems odd."
The doors of the elevator slid open, and Sunny and Mirei stepped out into the hall. A sign on the wall indicated that the head archivist's office was on the other side of the large workspace in front of them. Four desks floated in a space that had been designed for fifty. The head archivist's door was open, but he was nowhere to be seen. Mirei and Sunny stepped into the office and looked around.
"Well, it doesn't seem as if the head archivist suffers from a neatness compulsion." Sunny said as she looked at the stacks of viewscreen precariously perched all over the room. A table along one wall was covered with little robotic toys and figurines. A mobile featuring toy Variable Gears hung over the desk.
"No. Neatness was never my hangup." A voice rang out from the doorway.
Startled, Mirei whirled around to face the voice. Standing in the doorway was a short man with messy blond hair and twinkling green eyes behind dark-rimmed glasses. He wore a wrinkled white lab coat over a blue striped t-shirt and baggy tan shorts. On his feet were beat up looking combat boots of ancient design.
"Head Archivist Yu, I presume?" Mirei sad as she took stock of the man standing in front of her.
"You presume correctly, Team Leader McCann. Sorry to sneak up on you like that. I was down the hall working on my little side project when you called in. Call me Macus. As you can tell, we don't stand on ceremony much around here. There are only five of us, and we'll often go days on end without actually seeing each other."
"Macus?" Mirei said as she staggered back a little. "Your name is Macus?"
"Yep. It's a variation on 'Marcus'. It's kind of a family name. My mom and her sister were pregnant at the same time, and my aunt read some book with the name in it. They both really liked it, and teased that whoever had her baby first could use the name. I was born two weeks before my cousin, but my aunt still named him Macus anyway. I get called "Big Mac" and my cousin is called "Little Mac" because of our birth order, which is pretty ironic now that we're grown, because 'Little Mac' is about twice my size! Families. Go figure."
"Macus Bogard. Is 'Little Mac' Macus Bogard?" Mirei asked in a shaky voice.
"The one and only- my cousin was the legendary STAND stud. I thank him for making my name famous."
Mirei shook her head. "Do… where is Macus now?" Macus chuckled. "Missing in action since right after End of Incubator. My theory is that he took off to a deserted island and is shacked up there with a bevy of beautiful girl and boy toys. That is something I could see Little Mac doing. He was always serious about his work, but he was a serious party animal, too. Since the mission was accomplished, he probably felt he deserved a little R&R."
Mirei tried to remember everything she could about Macus. He was intense… serious. She remembered the name of his Variable Gear- The Gold Discord. And …Macus had a brother . A brother he was searching for. "I…I don't think so. He was so serious. And his brother…" Mirei said softly, trailing off.
Macus stopped and looked hard at Mirei. "What do you know about his brother? Wait. Mirei Mc… are you the Mirei from STAND?"
"I am." Mirei replied.
Macus looked around, and shut the door behind him. " Mirei. I should have guessed. Little Mac talked about you. I'm sorry about the desert island crack earlier. I know my cousin isn't doing anything like that. I just don't like talking about him with people I don't know. Truth be told, I'm worried about him. I was on the LL development team for the Variable Gears STAND used. After Tai Mo Shan, everything got weird. They shut us down, and STAND disappeared. Little Mac had hinted at some discord in the ranks shortly before the End of Incubator, but I…" he stopped, and then started again. "There isn't much to do for an out-of-work VG engineer in New Hong Kong, but I knew I couldn't leave without knowing what had happened to Little Mac. I took this job because it gives me a lot of free time, and not much oversight. I use the old VG labs to work on my real passion- making specialty VG's for people who want them. I also comb the files for any clues about what happened to Little Mac, and STAND. Anything you could tell me, I'd appreciate."
Mirei looked up at Macus, a sad expression on her face. "I'm sorry, Macus. I really am. I don't know anything- less than you, in fact. I was severely injured at Tai Mo Shan, and my memory has never been the same since."
Macus sighed, and walked over to his desk. "That's OK. I understand. I got a message from Little Mac about two weeks after the incident. He said things had gone terribly wrong, and that he'd be out of touch for a while. I just keep hoping he'll reemerge one day. Maybe when he does, he'll have his little brother Sam with him. Sam disappeared about ten years ago. First, we were told he was a victim of Virus, but things didn't add up. That's why Macus got involved with STAND in the first place."
For a moment, everyone stood in silence. Then, Sunny spoke up. "Um, Team Leader, about the data files…"
Mirei snapped to attention. "Oh yes. The data files. We are looking for the original versions of these files. I suspect the originals will be on old SHDL quads. What's your drive name?"
"YuAtlas5" Macus replied.
Mirei cocked her head to the side, and transferred the data to Macus. Macus put on an interface, and connected it to the holoprojector on his desk. Suddenly, a swirl of numbers and letters materialized over the projector.
"Sheesh. This is really messed up. Someone goofed big-time, and transferred this directly into SHINE." Macus said as he shook his head.
Mirei nodded in agreement. "That's the conclusion I have come to as well. I really need to look at the original quads to make sense of it. I reconstructed the file name and date stamp as best I could. That's really all I have to go on."
Macus narrowed his eyes and began to wave his hands around. The projection changed, and a 3-D image of the LL building overlaid with different codes popped up. "Hmmm. OK. Well, knowing its on a quad narrows things down a bit- we keep all of the quads in the subbasement. No one accesses them too frequently any more. And let's see… We're probably looking at range 213- 245. That's in the northwest corner. Probably on the upper two shelves, those are years 2070-2075. That's just a guess, though. The stuff down there- its pretty helter-skelter. That's actually LL's original archive. We left most of the old stuff in place when we took over. Truth be told, some of it never even got cataloged. That this data ever got transferred- as incorrectly as the job was done notwithstanding- is a bit of a surprise. I'm afraid that's all I can tell you. If you want, I'll go down right now, look around. I can have it sent to you in a couple of days, if it still exists."
Mirei shook her head. "No, that's OK. Sunny and I will go look for it ourselves, if you don't mind."
"Mind? Not at all. I just think you'll find it to be a bit of a task. I'll come along and help, but this could take a while. The row inventories are pretty incomplete- you'll literally be pulling down storage cases and sorting through them. On top of that, we only have two old quad drives left in the building, and they are pretty touchy. So if the quads aren't marked externally, that's going to slow us down even more. But, it's your show, and if you want to be in on the grunt work, that's fine by me. I'd call in my other archivists, but one's out today, and the other is fulfilling other requests. So, I'm afraid it'll just be the three of us."
"Oh, Head Archivist Yu, we wouldn't want to impose- we can just go down ourselves." Sunny piped up.
"Impose? Do I look like a man with too much to do? Besides, I love a challenge!" Macus said, his green eyes shining. "Let's go! Next stop- The Black Hole."
Mirei looked at him. "What?"
"Oh, that's our nickname for the subbasement files."
"Great." Said Mirei.