Chapter 15: Infiltration

It had taken me a while to remove myself from the previous situation, mentally.

I mean, who does that asswipe think he is?! Hiroto had it coming to him, kidnapping Dave and all way back when. The fact that Dave happened to be a sentient, smiling, conniving octopus keen on hurting penguins was literally just a coincidence. As if someone sane would look at Dave and go, "Oh look, purple roadkill, might just cook that up and serve it to idiot Americans."

That was on him, not me, Dave, or anyone else. Yet, having a seafood chef go insane after seeing Dave was now just another thing to add to the list of things I was dealing with.

The sound of the chopper propelling us through the sky did nothing to calm me, but paced my cascading thoughts of chaos. In between those reflective moments, I cursed how big the world was, and how long it took to move from point A to point B.

The agonizing wait. The perpetual void. It just left me to my thoughts. The lack of action and progress got to me.

I thought about my mom's delicious Thanksgiving dinner, and how I might miss that same tasty meal for Christmas. I've NEVER missed a holiday in my life, not even the one holiday when our oven conveniently went out and she attempted to cook the turkey and dressing on the stove. A huge sloppy mess turned out to be memorable because it was a story she could tell constantly, how despite all odds she was still able to make a holiday dinner without an oven.

I grumbled to myself. Maybe that's how it'll be… a sloppy mess, but one we were able to work through. Somehow.

But the reality was, thinking and hoping was just that: hope. It wasn't reality or even a possibility. I was a green ugly bird lady thing! It was going to take the jaws of life to get the image out of my head that my family, those dinners… my future was gone.

"We're almost there," Classified said, helping the two henchmen piloting the chopper navigate. "It will look like a similar landing to our old base; discreetly hidden in the landscape."

The strange eons of seeping in my mind ended once I realized we were far away again, out in the middle of nowhere, somewhere in the snowy north.

Before us and below us, a vastness of water and icebergs was all to be seen… for the exception of one last series of landmasses, high rocks, and the edge of a sturdy, massive cliffside made of dark gray stone.

Indeed, the base managed to hide itself well into the landscape. However, the base entrance became clear to me when a large frame opened, revealing a docking port. Once Classified guided Dave's chopper convoy to the mouth of this docking port, we landed safely, before the chopper's blades completely stopped. The doors swung open as Classified threw himself out and landed sturdily on the metal floors.

Dave (who was now out of his Abraham Lincoln disguise) and I stepped down from the helicopter. Mort tried to follow behind, but something about that made me nervous. I turned to him, shook my head, and said, "Sit down and wait here by the choppers."

Mort looked at me with his big gold eyes, cute as ever. "But I—"

"You sit the fuck down!" I reiterated, pointing at him like a stern mother that was about to flip tables.

Now that we were finally here at the new North Wind base, I was on edge. The agonizing waiting was now coming to another head. I had no idea where this would lead us, and even how long it would take to make an antidote for the Medusa Serum, but I had to try and tell myself firmly that we were making progress.

We walked a long way down the landing bay before we arrived at a large set of circular doors, clamped shut. In the top right and left corner of this door, two dormant turrets slept.

The top center of the door was emblazoned with a red icon. As it lit, a female voice spoke.

"Please state your name," the voice called out.

Dave hissed through his teeth. "You said the base wasn't occupied," he complained.

"It's not," Classified said, "at least, not by North Wind agents. This is our new security AI interface. She is the base's High Intelligence, Library, Defender, and Access protocol, but we call her Hilda for short."

"I bet you don't even pay her," I muttered.

Dave and I watched as Classified stepped forward and called out a long identification number of his, and his rank. After this, the red icon, an eye of some kind for the AI, beamed a red ray over Classified, scanning him, and then paused.

"Negative, agent not detected," Hilda responded.

"No, I am a North Wind agent!" Classified fussed.

"Access denied, intruder detected."

Before any of us were able to say another word, the two turrets at the door activated and opened fire. I grabbed Dave and dived under a set of large metal crates. Classified dived behind the crates quickly afterwards.

Through the sound of the turrets firing and hitting the crate, Classified stared at his paws, horrified. "I don't believe it… the Medusa Serum has changed my genetic code so much that the system doesn't even recognize me anymore!"

"Well, what do you suppose we do now?" Dave asked.

"How am I supposed to know!?" Classified snapped, his pupils dilating as he shifted his gaze from his large green paws and to us, baring his teeth. "You did this to me!"

"Please, are we going to have a sissy fight about this again?" I asked, sighing irritably. "I'm surprised you haven't had an existential crisis about this yet, but now's not the time to do it."

"What do you suppose we do then?" Classified barked at me. "The fact remains, if that AI does not recognize me as a North Wind agent, nobody is getting through those doors."

"What if the AI wasn't there? Could we get in?"

"In theory, yes, if the AI is deactivated either manually, by its own protocol, or by force, it can lose access to the door locks. Again, how do you suppose we go about doing any of that? As if you can't already tell, it's shooting at us!"

That irritability was setting in. Here I was, at another roadblock. The idea of doing nothing was driving me insane, so for some reason I did another insane thing.

"Kailey, where are you going!?" Dave cried as I got up and bolted into the hallway, back in front of the turrets.

All the feelings I had been holding back exploded out of me as I screamed a high-pitched rebel yell and rushed forward.

Although I passed out when it happened, I imagined myself falling from the North Wind airship after it exploded, and landing on the concrete. The bullets that were hitting me felt like a million tiny points of force—pressure that relentlessly etched at my skin one by one.

Yet I pursued and went back into that strange mode I had often been falling into. Instead of seeing thousands of faces in an audience, their smiling faces, and loud laughs in high definition even from far away, the many bullets lit up, my world moving into something like a combination of slow motion and lightspeed, exposed and obvious to me like a predator stalking and about to pounce on its prey.

Wading through the bullets, I finally made it to the turrets themselves, and found myself jumping to the ceiling, grabbing hold of one on its side, and taking a third person point of view to my actions as I started ripping it apart with my taloned hands.

Once the first turret was out of order, I turned my attention to the other. Again, I seemed to take a step back from myself, as if the real me was in a theater watching a movie eating popcorn and sipping soda with 3D glasses on.

"Kailey!" I heard Dave call out to me, but it had taken me a bit longer to take my anger out of the now completely demolished turrets before I snapped out of it. Once I came to, I took a moment to contemplate what I had done, but not so much on the effect it had on the turrets but what it had done to me.

I first looked down at my hands. For the exception of scratches, they were fine. I even out of caution felt and looked down at my body, which was also somehow intact.

Shocked, I felt for a moment as if I'd throw up. "Good God," I said, shaking and dizzy. "How am I even doing this?"

Dave had rushed up to me at that point, putting his tentacles around me in an embrace, looking up at me with worry. "Dearest, what were you thinking?!"

"I wasn't," I stated firmly as the doors opened. Whatever damage I had done cut the power to this point of the AI, and it lost control of the security.

"Your Medusa Serum is really quite the conundrum, but I don't think you ever created it to make literal monsters that could do damage like that," Classified said, walking up to us.

"No… the Medusa Serum was only to make things look like monsters… not make them do this," Dave said. "I would have been a fool to add this kind of power to the serum, since my goal at the time was to make the penguins simply monstrous to the humans. If I were to make them strong, then it was possible they could have turned on me. So no, this isn't supposed to happen."

"Maybe it's not your Medusa Serum… at least alone," Classified contemplated aloud. "The only thing different on the ship during the explosion was the QCU. Perhaps the combination of the unit and the Medusa Serum enhanced the serum somehow?"

"Y'all really want to philosophize about this now?" I asked. "We got a task to complete, let's get a move on!"

"Kailey, this is important…" Dave replied, frowning. "You are not only exhibiting unreasonably powerful strength and durability, but… you've seemed off as of late."

"What are you talking about?"

"Do you think that your episodes have gone unnoticed?" Classified cut in. "It is like you are not even there. I saw you do it many times, recently at the circus when we had to play along with the Monster Show."

"Okay, what am I doing exactly?!" I asked, raising my voice.

"Kailey, you aren't yourself," Dave said again, his worry growing by the second and the tone of his voice shifting lower with a tone of sadness, guilt even. "We need to find a cure, yes, but we need to do this cautiously. Throwing yourself in front of a line of fire isn't the wisest of decisions. You're putting yourself in unnecessary danger!"

"And what if I didn't? We'd be sitting behind that crate, waiting, and waiting." I clenched my talons into fists. "Truth is Dave, I'm tired of waiting. I'm tired of looking like this! I'm tired of there always being something wrong! If not me, then who?"

"We will work it out together," Dave said, his concern becoming more evident in his expression now. His usually giddy persona was now solemn as he continued to look up at me. "It has to be us, together now."

I huffed, thinking irrationally. My mind had been all over the place, and it was only getting worse. I was so one-track minded at that moment I felt like pulling myself out of it would simply slow me down. Reconciling with Dave the night prior didn't make me forget how he dragged me along up until this point. And we were so close to finding the tools we needed for a cure, so nothing was going to stop me from getting it.

"If you want to work together, then don't stand in my way," was my response.

"You are a fool if you think you're going to get anywhere with that behavior." It was Classified's turn to chime in. He seemed to puff up as if preparing himself physically as he spoke. "We've gotten this far working together, so Dave is right. I'm not sure what your life with Dave looks like behind closed doors, but you can mend that later once we create a cure. And that isn't going to happen unless you let me help you, because I'm the only one that knows this base like the back of my paw."

My mind was still going haywire, but now it was going haywire with reason being the new voice bouncing around in my head. It was like the angel and the demon on your shoulder, but instead it was emotion and reason that were arguing. Thoughts of my life falling apart and the desperation of getting things done at all costs clashed with an internal dialogue I was having that agreed with Dave and Classified.

I felt like I wanted to start crying. Irritability was melting away into something of regret and fear. I wanted desperately to trust them, but my mind was slipping. Hearing them say that they saw it too just made it worse.

"Do your thing, then," I said, relinquishing my charge-ahead attitude.

Classified walked past me then, as Dave held onto me for a bit longer. I didn't really understand how he could still embrace me after how I had been acting.

. . . . . . . .

Classified had managed to take the helm from that point, tapping away at a computer in order to disable the interface from certain points in the base without being caught. The AI, for the time, would know nothing of our presence, and it would only be a while before we found a chamber housing all of Dave's experiments, including, lo and behold, his old laser gun thing that he had tried to use on the penguins during his first attempt at turning them into monsters, and a computer archive with all his information in it.

"Hm, interesting," Dave commented, looking up at his old laser gun. "Didn't think I'd see the original one ever again."

"I had it confiscated from the penguins after your first attempt at illegal activity," Classified commented as he worked. "I never miss a step."

"Wait, how on earth did the penguins get it?" Dave said, jarred.

"No idea, but it was confiscated safely in our bases since. No need to worry about its integrity."

Classified continued working on his task, and soon, we realized the only problem at that point was navigating the system since the AI housed all the library archives for the North Wind.

"Okay, here's the plan," Classified said. "If I were to try and access the computer right now, it is going to try and genetically scan me again to compare me to North Wind agents in its memory. Unfortunately, that is going to be unsuccessful, since I am…" he gestured to himself," …well, this."

"What is your proposal?" Dave asked.

"There is a security safety protocol in place where the AI system cannot be turned off permanently, only temporarily. It will give me about ten minutes to brush through the archive and take all the data we need on the Medusa Serum before Hilda comes back online and attempts to scan me. What I need you to do is to head to Hilda's main CPU. I can tell you exactly how to get there, and from that point, I need to turn the system offline."

"Easy peasy," Dave commented. "We'll do this and get out of here in no time."

"Be aware that doing this will reset all the deactivations I've done getting to this point. The system will turn back on, and its security measures all over the facility will be reactivated. It is recommended that you try and get to the power bay within ten minutes to completely shut off the facility, keeping the security measures from activating. I'd cut power to begin with, but obviously you can't extract data from a computer without the archive being live."

"Ten minutes, you got it!" Dave smiled as he said this, confident as ever. "Like I said, we'll be out of here in no time!"

Classified told us how to get to Hilda's main CPU, and from that point how to get to the main power bay and turn it off. It all was very time sensitive to the minute, and we had to be quick about it to get the job done in time before the turrets turned back on and we'd be delayed even further.

Dave grabbed hold of my hand and we started quickly down the hallway. "Remember, ten minutes!" Classified called as we turned the corner, his voice echoing and bouncing off the metal walls as we moved deeper into the North Wind base.

Dave had handled memorizing the way there like a champ, so this time I was doing the following. Yes, the obvious was he could remember Classified's instructions, but also because I was struggling with my own shame. Me acting out wasn't particularly out of the norm, but how bad it was this time. Whatever this Medusa Serum QCU was doing to me was obviously worse than I thought, bad enough that Dave had finally had to comment on it.

"Dave… I'm sorry," I apologized. "I was being rash and wasn't thinking straight."

"Kailey, it's okay," Dave said, still walking ahead but turned to look at me. "I'm not sure how the QCU may be interacting with the serum, but I know this has been hard for you. I know your personality can be… rather outspoken, but whatever is going on has affected you more deeply than that."

"What about Classified then, why hasn't he gone berserk?"

"He has. When I first found him after the crash, and before I rescued you from the human FBI, he went feral on me." Dave chuckled nervously, but with a bit of humor. "Thought I was a goner, you know."

"Okay, then why has he been able to hold himself together so well?

"Maybe his personality, I don't know."

"Oof," I huffed out loud. Dave hadn't meant to say that at all, but he was right. I was not only outspoken, but I wasn't… let's say, like Classified at all. Classified was a calculating leader, I was a hot-headed mess. I guess it was a personality not everyone could love.

But some could. Dave was still here with me, with that goofy smile on his face.

Part of me wanted to ask him why he loved me. As much as he was the one that kidnapped me and put me through all the idiocy we've gone through in the last year, I've also done my own share of stupid stuff.

Our venture into the base soon came to an end, at least for the moment once we reached Hilda's main CPU. Dave took a deep breath once there and turned to look at me one last time before he spoke. "I'll turn off the CPU. Once this happens, we have ten minutes to reach the power bay."

"Yes, yes, I know," I said, trying to stay calm. I always hated timed tests like this.

I watched as he went ahead to the CPU, put in a series of codes as Classified had told him, and then the system shut off. He skedaddled quickly back in my direction, and we headed out the door, moving through the base.

Going through this hallway, and that door was all so confusing. It reminded me of the first time I had been in Dave's initial submarine when I first met him; trying to figure out where what was took me weeks to figure out. You could literally tell me, "Head to this road called Dirt Road on Jones Street," and I'd be like, "Where?" even though I must've passed the place a handful of times. Thank God for GPS.

We finally came to a crossroads of a sort, in this case a series of hallways that branched off in three different directions, each looking exactly like the other, made of the same metal material as the rest of the facility, with the same brain-zapping fluorescent lights.

"Hmm, now did he say left or right?" Dave hummed to himself. "Or was it the middle?"

"Oh, Dave, don't tell me you forgot."

"I remember he said the last turn was at a series of hallways like this. The door is going to be at the end of that hall, to the left, but before that I don't know which one it was."

I put a taloned hand on my cheek, trying to stay calm. I couldn't tell if it was my palm that was hot or my face. Looking around, there were turrets above each entry to all three halls before us, and one behind us. I hadn't been able to sense time all that well either, so not knowing if we had one second or one minute was killing me.

Suddenly, the building breathed to life. I couldn't believe it, but time was up already, and the turrets were coming online. There was nowhere to go.

I felt myself going back into that odd lightspeed mode again. I realized then and there that this was a form of fight-or-flight, but messed with and skewed due to my reality as a curse from the Medusa Serum. However, there were no crates to hide behind this time, or the time to go berserk like I did before.

There was only me, and there was only Dave.

All I could think of then was to fly on top of Dave. Landing harshly on the floor, the bullets flew, my body now a shield.

Like before, there was no pain of the sort, but I felt the bullets pelting my back and head.

"Do you remember the way back now!?" I huffed, gritting my teeth together as I tried to hold on.

Dave looked up at me as he sat under me, wide-eyed. In his red eyes I could see a mix of emotion passing through them, his mouth agape from a loss of words. I couldn't tell if he was shocked, angry or what, but it wasn't like I was going to explain my action to him in the middle of this situation.

"I… errr…" Dave mumbled, unable to speak, flustered.

His silence made me fuss as my gritted teeth opened once I realized he was taking his time contemplating the situation. "Not very romantic is it when I'm being shot at, you dingus!"

"Sorry, I'm just…" Dave stuttered. "Honestly I'm glad you're so tough right now or—"

"Who cares, pick a hallway and get going!"

"Sorry…it was the hall to the right," Dave stuttered again. As I remained above him, he slithered under me and bolted to the hallway on the right.

With him out of harm's way, I spun upward, and clawed the turrets again. I shredded through two of the four before finally, thank God, the power was cut off.

I thought we'd never get this over with, but with the power out, we could roam the base, collect the physical serum tools we needed, and bring the data Classified collected to Dave's lab back in New York.

Yes, I was a clown for thinking this, but I just hoped there wouldn't be any more delays.