16.
SYSTEM REBOOT. TIME REMAINING: 10:18:13.
"What?" Peter questioned blankly.
"You bastard! You said no one noticed- I noticed! I've been tracking you for five years, since you did a number on that system for a sub-government contractor! Running spy ware on all of the systems you've damaged, hunting down tattered bits of coding from all over the place- it was you that ran me all over hell and back!" Astrid advanced, looking, for the first time she could remember, in this place, furious.
Olivia stilled her, "Calm down, Astrid. I know that I should be the last one to be saying this, but what we did on the outside doesn't matter, right now. As soon as we get out of here, I don't care if you beat the hell out of him, but right now, we have to focus."
"Only if you hold his arms," Astrid huffed, glaring at Peter.
"Deal."
"Thanks, ladies," Peter grumbled, climbing to his feet, "but I suppose there are worse things than getting the hell beat out of me by two chicks, even if they are cops."
Their comments drew to a close as the elevator slowed to a stop, and the door opened quite suddenly, their breaths catching in their throats as they each froze with fear. Moments of silence passed, without movement, and at last they looked at each other, "Well," Peter said reasonably at last, his eyes flicking from his companion's faces to the darkness that lay beyond the open doorway of the elevator, "I guess this is our floor."
"The lights on the door say that this is the highest floor we can get to," Astrid said, "I guess it's just footwork, from here…" she swallowed uneasily.
"Let's get going," Olivia said, seeming to grow bored of her own suspicions. She stood from her crouched position beside Peter and offered him a hand up.
They stepped out, and the doors shut behind them, leaving them in what they feared was another bout of darkness. But, as their eyes began to adjust to the gloom of the less-than-brilliant lighting, they found themselves in what appeared to be a large warehouse filled with machinery.
"This must be the main maintenance," Astrid said, looking slightly awed at the sprawling constructs of gears and humming ventilation pipes and grates, "for the air conditioning, probably."
"You seem impressed," Olivia said elevating a brow.
"I am," Astrid admitted truthfully, "I mean, just look at this place- it's brilliant. The air is sucked up, re-oxidized, and re-circulated with the use of steam. The air can be re-used literally countless times, and the steam is being produced by the air movement creating the heat itself… it's simple, but… brilliant."
"Someone was a good little steampunk," Peter mused.
"It's also being conditioned to have a lower oxygen content… if the air system has this kind of ingenious configuration, I can't imagine how complex the electronic system configuration is," Astrid said, striding forward to brush a bit of condensation from the glass face of a temperature gauge, "something tells me they were a bit of a cyberpunk, too."
"Hey guys," Olivia called, and Peter and Astrid turned their attention away from the airworks before them. They came to stand behind Olivia, staring in awe as she smiled smugly, pointing to the single square of a room on the map behind the glass case on the wall, marked Systems Control, Main, "…care to find out?"
"If I can get in there and access some of the security systems, we can find Walter, I'm sure of it," Astrid said, "look around and see if you can find anything to write on or with, so we can copy this down-"
There was the deafening crash of glass as Peter drove his elbow into the protective pane covering the posted map. "Peter!" Olivia exclaimed as glass shards spilled across the cement floor at their bare feet.
Peter pulled the map from its place against the wall, rolling it up and handing it to Astrid, "I'm a pretty lazy guy. And vandalism comes easy to me," he added, with a wink to Olivia.
For a moment, she smiled in admiration.
Astrid was studying the map, "Okay, this way…" and she lead them off down a corridor of pipes and fans. Olivia stumbled a bit as her leg twinged with pain, and almost immediately, Peter's arm encircled her waist in support. She glanced at him and warning, and finally conceded to put her arm across his shoulders. Both said nothing.
xXx
"Walter?"
"Let me sleep, Peter."
"Dr. Bishop."
When he opened his eyes, he was almost heartbreakingly certain that it had all been a dream, that he was back in his cell lying on his cot with the distant, cold glow of a lifeless machine. That there had never been any silent conversations, he had never escaped, never seen his son's face, touched his slightly stubbled cheek… that he was just a crazy old man whose delusions were getting the best of him.
But the ceiling was far too high, he could feel it. And the air was too cold… and he was soaking wet. September stood over his sprawled position on the slippery tiles of the laboratory floor, "September," Walter sighed, blinking slowly, "…are you going to shoot me again?" his brain felt hot and strangely numb, as if a large voltage had passed through it while he was unaware. Walter shifted the position of his sore skull against the floor, and felt a hot liquid spill across his forehead and dribble into his eye. It made his dim vision sparkle slightly as he looked back and fourth to the ruins of the equipment, scattered across the wet floor around him.
"The wound in your head has cauterized itself, and with the help of the chip, you should heal rapidly. It was necessary to insert a cerebral bore before activating the recall sequence," September explained shortly. After a few minutes of silent contemplation, he added, "I aborted the recall sequence prematurely."
"Thank you."
September tilted his head slightly in question.
Walter smiled slowly, his face sluggish in emotion, "I'm me, now. I can fix it all. Well, most of it, anyways… too much damage has been done for me to do it alone."
"Do you understand it all?" September asked.
"Most of it. So much of it is so crazy, September, I can't-"
"I deserve to know," September cut in, a touch of cold bitterness in his voice, "we all do, Walter."
"You do. More than I do, probably. You've shown me more mercy than I think I'll ever come to realize. But all of it is so gone, I'm so gone… but I promise, I promise that someday, when I realize it all, I'll tell you, and then…" Walter smiled at September again, the blood escaping the corner of his eye to run to his ear.
"Then."
"Then you can kill me. Have I ever called you Santos? Because you look an awful lot like Mister X. I realized that, just now."
"Do you know where to begin, Dr. Bishop?" September asked, bypassing the fact that his companions' brain was probably still contracting painfully with the lingering voltage of the Machine.
Walter pushed himself to a standing position, and leaned over his knees for a few moments, panting a bit before lifting himself to is feet, swaying a bit as he righted himself, glaring with determination into September's cool features. A few stumbling steps and Walter fell against a tall, burnt processor tower, and he slowly stooped, pulling up a large, steel pipe wrench, "I have a pretty good idea," Walter replied quietly.
xXx
SYSTEM REBOOT. TIME REMAINING:09:54:21