I do not own Virus Buster Serge. Sunny, Macus "Big Mac" Yu, and the spiderbots with laser beams are mine
Chapter 6- Exploration
"We'll have to switch to stairs at the ground floor", Macus said as he led Mirei and Sunny back to the elevator bank. "My maintenance 'crew' – all two of them- has yet to find a way to keep the special elevator to the subbasement working. It's tied in to the old security system, which we had to completely take offline."
"Oh, that's fine. It's been a while since I've had a good workout." Mirei replied .
The decent into the subbasement only highlighted the overall state of disrepair the LL Building was in. Old office furniture crowded the landings on the stairwell, and when they finally reached the subbasement, the corridors were lighted by a few flickering panels at random intervals. A musty smell of disuse filled the air.
Macus took on the role of tour guide as they journeyed deeper into the bowls of the building. "I know it's not much to look at now, but this was once a state-of-the-art facility. Down that corridor to the left was the largest AI lab in the world before Atlas built the Kuzumaki facility. And the next corridor, over there, linked to…"
Mirei interrupted… "The STAND complex."
"Oh yeah- I forgot. I'm talking to an insider here. Sorry. Here we are- the entrance to the old LL archives, and home to our ragtag collection of obsolete storage media." Macus fished a card out of his pocket, and swiped it through a reader. "Quaint, isn't it? LL believed old school was the best school when it came to security. They had layer after layer of tech guarding this place. It took forever to deactivate it all and put in a regular double-challenge neuro reader. We didn't even bother trying down here."
"Having redundancy built into a system is smart." Mirei calmly said as she stepped through the doors.
The archive section was even darker than the rest of the subbasement. "Black Hole" seemed to be an appropriate moniker, as the walls were sheathed in some sort of black material that was supposed to be impenetrable to electromagnetic waves. Eight-foot-tall metal storage shelves were lined up in rows that seemed to stretch endlessly down the building's west side.
"Now, we need to head down that aisle…" Macus began.
"What's that?" Sunny blurted.
"What's what?" Macus asked.
"That sound. That clinking sound. Is someone else down here with us?" Sunny questioned Macus as she looked around.
"Nope. None of my people, anyway. Probably rats. We've been having problems with…"
This time, Mirei broke in. "I just heard it too. I don't think it's …"
At that moment, something leaped off of the top of the nearest shelving unit and landed with a metallic clang on the floor about six feet in front of Mirei. In the low light, I t was hard to tell what it was, but it was about three feet tall, and had a red light on the top of it.
"Definitely not rats!" Mirei cried as she sprang to the side and rolled. "Sunny, get down!"
In that instant, all of her training raced back to the front of her mind. Mirei jumped up again, and immediately put the shelving unit between herself and the metallic thing. She heard the sound clearly now- the clink-clink of metal appendages hitting the concrete floor. She had to think, and think fast. Suddenly, she remembered what that sound was, and she knew it wasn't good.
"Macus!" Mirei cried out.
"Yeah, over here. Behind you. What in the Hell…"
Mirei spoke again. "Macus, listen. I think I know what this is. What they are. There are at least three of them. They are a part of the security system. They are automatic sentries. Probably tripped when we came in. When I came in. I'm in the system…" Mirei trailed off.
At that moment, Mirei heard a crash, and another sentry landed in front of her. It looked like a giant metal spider with one red, glowing eye. Suddenly, the eye blinked. Mirei threw herself down, and rolled again. A lance of hot red light shot out of the sentry, hitting the concrete floor where Mirei had been a second earlier. The sentry reoriented to her new position with a ratcheting sound. At that moment, before she could even think, Mirei grabbed a viewscreen off of the shelf above her, and tossed it to the floor behind the sentry. The sound confused it, and it swiveled towards the viewscreen. Mirei then leapt up, and pushed hard on the shelf next to her. It began to sway, and then toppled over, onto the sentry. The sentry was crushed by the weight of all of the storage cases, and its red light winked out.
"Macus! You have to get to the main control panel by the door. Enter the stand down code." Mirei said to the general area behind her as she scanned the room for other sentries. "Sunny, are you all right?"
"Yeah. Fine. I'm…"
Mirei heard more clinking.
"Get down! Another one is coming. Macus, hurry up!" Mirei screamed as she looked around desperately for something to use as a weapon. She spied a leg of the first sentry poking up through the wreckage of the shelf, grabbed it, and twisted hard. The appendage came off in her hand at the exact moment the next sentry landed on the floor. Mirei swung the leg and bashed at the red light of the new sentry. It made a buzzing sound, then the ratcheting sound again. Before it could finish what it was doing, Mirei had jumped into the air, coming down with all of her weight onto the metal leg, driving it squarely into the top of the second sentry. The sentry's "eye" exploded in a cloud of sparks, and the metal legs convulsed twice as it collapsed into a heap on the floor.
A sound behind her caused Mirei to swing around, tensed to spring.
"Whoa, cowgirl! It's me. I just entered the stand down code, though by the look of things," Macus gestured to the wreckage behind her, "there isn't much left to have stand down."
Mirei let out a large breath, and let her shoulders slump. It had been so long since she had been in a spot like that. The adrenaline rush actually felt good. She suddenly looked up, and pushed past Macus.
"Sunny! Sunny! Where are you?" she called as she looked around.
"Here." Sunny said as she shimmied out from the space under a shelving unit.
"Thank goodness!" Mirei said as she helped Sunny dust herself off.
"I'm really sorry..." Macus began as he ran up to Sunny and Mirei. "I don't know what happened. All of the security was supposed to be disabled. I didn't even know we had giant metal spider thingies lurking down here."
"It's not your fault, Macus. It's mine. See, a long time ago, I tried to hack into LL's archives. That, ironically, is how I got into STAND. LL had a policy of recording the brainwave signatures of all convicted hackers, and I guess that my entry into this area must have activated the sentries. Thank goodness for us, they didn't seem to be operating at full power. If they had been, we'd have been toast." Mirei said as she shook her head.
Macus looked at Mirei with shining eyes. "You amaze me, Team Leader McCann. You are apologizing to me, after I led you into a room with two giant metal spiders that wanted to cut us in half with laser beam eyes- giant spiders that YOU single-handedly took down, I might add."
"Uh, three giant metal spiders." Sunny corrected, as she pointed up to another sentry, poised on a shelf ahead of them, arrested by the stand down order in mid-crouch.
Macus slapped his thigh. "Hot damn! There's lucky number three, just waiting for us! What a rush!"
"Can we still get to the data?" Mirei interrupted.
"All business. That's what I like about you, Team Leader. Yeah, I think so. We'll just have to go around the other side." Macus replied.
When they reached the area Macus thought the data might be stored in, they all stopped and looked.
"Well, here we are. These four rows here," He pointed at the huge metal shelves in front of them, "All the way down to the end of the wall. The top two shelves are our target, so I'll try to scare up some stepladders."
"I'll check these inventory lists." Sunny said as Macus moved away. She grabbed a viewscreen off of a hook on the nearest shelf, and started to poke at the touch screen. "Ugh. This is a mess. Half of what's on here is listed as 'Unidentified File' with a date."
Macus came back, dragging a couple of wheeled metal stepladders. "Yeah, that's what I was afraid of. We're going to have to physically check the storage cases. I'll try to get that old computer hooked up to the quad drive over there up and running, if you guys want to start looking."
Sunny and Mirei began the tedious job of opening the storage cases, and rooting through the jumble of quads in each one. The small, square plastic quads were often unmarked, making the task even more frustrating. Macus seemed to be having frustrations of his own- Mirei could hear him cursing at the old machine as he tried to get it to boot successfully. After a while, she hopped down from her ladder, and went over to Macus.
"Having problems?" Mirei asked.
"Oh,not really. It's just this stupid external input device." Macus said as he punched at keys with one finger.
Mirei giggled. "We are going to be here forever, at that rate. Here, let me have a crack at it."
Macus gave Mirei a doubtful look as he stood. "Sure thing, boss. But these keyboards are harder than they look. You might want to…"
Mirei sat down, and pulled the keyboard closer. Her fingers flashed across the keys, and the screen on the computer erupted into different displays.
Macus let out a low whistle. "Wow! First you take out the spiders like some sort of extreme fighting superstar, and now this! I seriously think I'm in love. And what you are doing to that keyboard with your hands- I'm getting hot just watching you."
Mirei arched her eyebrow at Macus as she looked at his reflection in the computer screen. "Why don't you help Sunny with the search? I think I can manage here by myself."
Macus smiled, saluted, and turned back to the shelves. Mirei felt a blush burn her cheeks. No one had talked to her in such a teasing, flirtatious way since… since Jouichirou. His feline eyes flashed through her mind again, and her blush deepened. How was it possible for a memory to make her feel…that way?
The hours passed, and Sunny and Macus brought stacks of quads for Mirei to look at. Nothing seemed to be the data Mirei was looking for. Around 9:00 that evening, Macus brought a couple of new quads to Mirei. He looked around, and upon seeing Sunny busily searching a storage container at the end of a row, he leaned into Mirei.
"Here. You might want to take a look at these."
Mirei responded without looking up. "OK. Put them on the pile. Do they look good?"
Macus spoke in a low voice. "If by good you mean interesting, yes. Look at them next, OK?"
Mirei sighed, and grabbed one of the new quads. "Sure. This one's a bust, anyways."
Mirei absently twirled the new quad in her hand as she ejected the old one. There was something different about it. It looked cleaner and newer, and most interestingly, the little sliding piece that revealed the storage medium when the quad was in the drive was made out of G12 polymer, not the usual metal.
"Hmm. That's unusual. These must be newer quads that got mixed up with the old ones somehow. But who would be storing data on quads recently enough for them to be made of G12…" Mirei's thoughts trailed off.Then, the realization hit her. "STAND! STAND used quads to back up data!" Memories swept back over Mirei in a torrent. "I remember using quads thousands of times… putting them in drives, accessing them, handing them to Macus and Serge and Erica, to Jouichirou… and Raven. Raven! How did I forget you, Papa Raven? You gave me a second chance; you gave me my purpose…"
Mirei's hands shook as images of Raven's stern face flashed in her head. She slid the quad into the drive, and the STAND shield flashed on the screen. Mirei swallowed hard as she tried to access the quad. After a few minutes, she realized the combination of her antiquated computer and inability to remember any old STAND passwords was going to make getting into the data impossible at that time. She ejected the quad and slipped it and the other two Macus brought her into the case she had brought with her. She stretched and stood.
"Hey guys." Mirei called. "It's getting late. We'd better call it a night if we want to find anything open for dinner."
Sunny came towards Mirei from one of the rows. "Yeah. I'm starved! We should check out the all night buffet at our hotel!"
Macus approached Mirei from the opposite direction, and gave her a knowing glance. "Yep. It's late. And since I'm betting I'll have another date with you ladies bright and early tomorrow, I better get my beauty sleep."
"Oh, you can count on that date. We'll see you at 7:00 sharp tomorrow." Mirei said.
"Hopefully, we'll have better luck." Sunny lamented.
"I think things are all ready looking up." Macus said as he led them out of the archives.
"We'll see." Mirei said noncommittally as she gripped her case more tightly to her side. "At least I got the workout I've been needing- nothing gets the heart pumping like a good battle with spiderbots." She looked at Macus with a smile in her eyes.
This time, it was Macus' turn to blush.