The tank room wasn't an actual room. Not in the sense that it was connected to the manor. It was a large building, hidden in the larger forest that covered the land behind the manor and the nearby mountains. It was a good ten minute walk away from the manor house. They lost one of the Lucys along the way. She didn't want to go into the forest, preferring to lay down on the nicely manicured lawn and stare up at the stars. The other Lucys let her be.
After that, it didn't take them that long before they reached the imposing stone structure. It was almost as tall as the manor, though the trees surrounding it still dwarfed the building. The door was large, thick and made of a heavy wood. Unlike the doors to the manor, this one didn't open on a hinge, it slid from side to side. It took two of them to move it enough so that they could enter. Lucy couldn't fathom how Lord Heartfilia had been able to open the door with only one hand.
The three of them didn't enter right away. They took a moment to look around the room from the doorway, just in case there was something they could see.
The room was dark; the only light was from the moon, even then there wasn't much of it. The little bit of light that did enter was mottled and broken up by the trees outside. Even if it wasn't the place where they'd go to be disposed of, Lucy thought it'd still be creepy. Large empty glass tubes reflected and warped light. The shadows hid cables that Lucy knew went from the tubes to elsewhere. One of them, she knew, was were the blue stuff came from.
They couldn't see much farther past the tubes, the rest of the room was a fathomless black void. For the life of her, Lucy couldn't recall what was beyond what they could see. Every other time she'd been in the room, her entire focus had been on the tubes and the Lucys that had gone into them.
"I have a bad feeling about this," she muttered.
"Shh."
"Keep it down, you big baby." Despite their intentions, Lucy thought the other two somehow managed to be louder than she was.
Lucy bit her lip. She didn't want to enter the tank room, she was just fine with leaving the blue stuff as just a mystery. However, one of the other Lucys, the one that first hushed her, was tugging on her arm, dragging her inside. The other was pushing at her back, leaving her with little choice but to go along with them.
They quickly moved away from the door to let more light in. It didn't help, the room stayed stubbornly dark. If she strained her eyes, Lucy would swear she could see flashes of bright blue and green in the distance. However, she dismissed it as her imagination. It didn't make her feel better about being in the building though.
Licking her lips in nervousness she whispered: "what now?"
"Don't know," the Lucy holding her hand replied. "…It's really dark in here."
"I wish we'd brought a light."
"Why didn't you bring one?" The Lucy behind her hissed.
"This wasn't my idea!"
"Shut up!" the other two hissed at her. Lucy huffed but let them lead her farther inside the tank room.
"I think," the Lucy in front of her started, "we should follow the cables. That's where the ink comes from."
"Is it?" The one behind Lucy challenged.
"Well…It comes from the bottom of the tube right? And that's where the cables attach to."
Lucy could see more flashes of blue and green, she really hoped it was her eyes playing tricks on her in the darkness. "I think I should wait outside with Lucy. The stars did look pretty tonight."
Both the Lucys tightened their grips on her. "Nope." The one holding her shoulders chirped.
"I don't think Lord Heartfilia would dispose of three of us at the same time."
She hadn't even been thinking of Lord Heartfilia's possible punishment. Lucy shivered as she recalled Miss Layla's words from earlier that day. Did he know that the four of them were outside? That three were in the tank room?
Lucy yelped as the Lucy behind her kicked the back of her leg. "Let's go, stop stalling."
The one in front of her turned and frowned at Lucy. "Are you really not at all curious about the ink?"
"I just don't think it's worth finding out about," she muttered. Despite that, she knelt down next to one of the tubes to look at the cables with the other two. "Not if it means loosing someone." Or all of them. That wouldn't be fair to the Lucy that stayed outside stargazing.
The other one huffed. "Well, learning things is all about taking risks. That's what some books say. So this just means we'll learn a lot." Lucy thought there was something wrong with that logic, but before she could point that out, the other one started speaking.
"Feels like there's three cables. Two big ones and a little one." The Lucy who'd kicked her poked her arm. "You can follow the little one. It probably doesn't go anywhere important."
Lucy sighed but took the offer for what it was; if the small cable wasn't important, she might not get into as much trouble as the other two. It was probably the nicest thing that that Lucy had ever done for anyone else. Or perhaps not, since that Lucy decided to follow the one cable that went in a different direction.
Lucy found herself following along with the Lucy who started this whole expedition as they went along the two cables. Because of the lack of light, they had to use their hands to find the cable and crawl along on their knees to keep contact with it.
"Do they all go to the same place?" She murmured, if only to break the silence that settled around the two of them. Her ears were starting to play tricks on her. Lucy would swear she could hear water splashing. "The cables I mean. There's ten tubes." The smaller one had split off from the larger one, however it was too dark and too quiet in the tank room; Lucy didn't want to be alone.
"Most likely. I can't imagine they'd all go to different ones."
It didn't take long for them to run into a wall. Lucy frowned in confusion, the tank room was too big on the outside for them to have reached the end of it already. She put her hand on the wall, it was too cold to be wood and too smooth to be stone. There was a ring of metal circling where the cable met the wall. She could tell by the sound it made when she tapped it. The rest of the wall didn't sound metallic.
"It feels like glass." There was another flash of brilliant blue and green. This time she couldn't say it was in her head; it was too vivid. She gasped, "did you see that?"
"Fascinating." Lucy didn't need light to know that the other Lucy was grinning broadly. "This must be a tank to hold the squid- or whatever it is. It must have some sort of bioluminescence!"
"You're using big words again."
"Its body can light up."
"Okay, does the squid you looked up do that?"
"No, the daydream squid doesn't…Let's get a closer look."
"How?"
"You can hear the water too right? That must mean that there's an opening at the top."
"This sounds like a bad idea."
"Just help me find a ladder or some stairs or something." She bumped into Lucy as she moved along the large glass wall.
Lucy bit her lip and looked back into the tank. The creatures, though bright looked murky. Likely because they weren't close to the glass, however to her they already looked bigger than she was; how large would they be up close?
Before she could say anything about it, the other Lucy found a ladder. "I'm going to take a look!" She called before the sound of her climbing reached Lucy's ears.
Lucy quickly made her way to where the other Lucy was. She could just leave now, neither of the other Lucys were stopping her and the door was at the brightest point in the room. However it didn't feel right. That other Lucy was climbing up to something that could be dangerous, and it didn't feel right for Lucy to leave before making sure that she was safe.
She found the ladder that the other one was still climbing. She could feel the vibrations through the metal. She gripped a rung tightly and looked up to the darkness that the other girl had vanished into. Unbidden, a faint memory of something Number 5 had told her echoed through her head. About family, about taking care of each other.
Lucy took a deep breath and called out, "wait for me!" She started to climb.