protocol_02.06: convergence
It's dark when Elsa's voice wakes Anna up. "Come on. Time to go."
It's also quiet. She never quite realized how much she's used to the basic noise of the city until it's not there. The silence seems louder than the humming street lights, rumbling cars, and just the basic sounds of people at all hours of the day. But out here, up in the mountains, there's none of that. It makes her jumpy, twitchy.
Or that could just be nerves. They're really doing this.
She meets Kristoff and Sven in the darkened front room with her gear. "Er, should we tell your brother we're leaving?"
He shakes his head and holds up a set of keys. "No need. Kocoum prepped the truck. You ready?"
She grins. "Born ready."
His lips quirk up a little. "Right then."
They're pulling out in the utility vehicle within minutes. "I hope you know where we're going," Anna says as they pass the tree line. The ride is bumpy and rough; Kocoum wasn't kidding when he said that Kristoff's car would get stuck.
"I've got you," Elsa says softly.
And she does. Through winding trails and up the mountain, they make their way. Sometimes, when the trees open up, Anna can see the stars shining clearly in the inky blue-black of the night sky. There's no cloud cover. Maybe bad luck there: they won't need chemsticks to see, but neither will any guards, if there are any.
Kristoff's brow is furrowed, he's concentrating hard enough on the path. Since they're at least trying to be sneaky, he has the headlights dimmed, and although the starlight helps, it's still driving at night nearly blind. If only the thing had an autonomous feature; then Elsa could just drive them there.
Not much of a thrilling heroic rescue, if she could rescue herself.
Anna checks her gear again. It's a nervous habit, but it's better than those stupid thoughts. Ugh, she needs to be focusing on what needs to be done, not on what she wishes she had. There's a lot of stuff on that list.
Focus, Anna.
"How are you feeling?" She nearly jumps at the question, looking wildly at Kristoff. He spares her a quick glance before focusing again on the broken trail in front of them.
"Fine. Good. Totally fine," she rambles, trying to keep the high-pitched edge out of her voice. "You?"
"Well, we're about to rescue your sister from a secret black-ops group in the mountains far from civilization, by ourselves with no back-up." His tone is dry. "Honestly? I'm freaking terrified."
She breathes out a puff of air. Okay, well, if he's admitting it, there's no use pretending. "Yeah," she whispers, slumping in the seat. "So am I."
"Hey. Hey," he prods, glancing back at her for a second, "none of that. I mean, I haven't known you very long, but I'm pretty sure you're supposed to be the optimistic one."
"Well, you've got her measure," Elsa breaks in.
Despite herself, Anna snorts. "The worst," she sing-songs.
"You wound me, Arc. Wound."
Yeah, okay, maybe joking around at a time like this is not the best idea. Or maybe it is. She can feel her muscles and nerves relaxing, still wired, but looser now. Ready to move. She remembers one of the first lessons the Contessa taught her, when she first found herself before the woman with only Elsa's voice in her ear and T's recommendation at her back. That it's okay to be scared. Being scared means you're alive, and it means you're thinking. Fear is a tool. Fear for your life, for your crew, for the job, that's the sort of fear that can keep you alive.
Only the overconfident and the idiots are really the ones who say they're unafraid.
But the trick is, for all of that? It's not to let the fear rule you. It's okay to be afraid, but it's not okay to be consumed by it. And that being brave is cutting through all of that and doing what needs to be done anyway. To use that fear, set your nerves alight and your muscles and brain on high-alert, and make yourself sharp enough to live. To get the job done.
Anna breathes in deep, and lets that fear settle, let's it prick at her fingertips and coil down her spine.
It's time.
Kristoff stops and kills the engine. She stretches to get the blood flowing again once she jumps out the door, leaves crunching under her boots. The plan is to make their way up to the service entrance under the helipad on foot, since the two of them are less likely to be seen than a truck crashing through the forest, even if the lights were off. Except doing that also means leaving Sven; a secret base like that is just not going to work with a dog.
She looks up from tying her shoes to see him holding Sven's head in his hands. "Watch Kocuom's truck for us, okay boy? You know how he gets about scratches."
Sven whines a little, then licks Kristoff's face. "Yeah, yeah. You too." He says, patting Sven's head one more time. She has to look away for a moment, so she looks up. There are breaks in the tree cover in this little clearing. The stars and moon are crystal-clear, and Anna thinks she can pick out the North Star. Maybe? It's the one in the handle of one of the Dippers, right? Her sister was better at this, pointing out the few stars they could see at night from her old bedroom window, or just in books. Anna, though? Well, she'll admit to herself that she was generally too wired to listen. Who had time to listen to all that anyway? It wasn't like she was going to end up needing to navigate herself out of the wilderness or something.
Fate, as it turns out, has a nasty sense of humor, she thinks.
"Sky's awake," she murmers.
"Don't think you're actually playing right now," Elsa says softly.
"Nope." She sighs and shuffles a little.
That might have caught Kristoff's attention because he steps away from the truck and towards her, dropping his hands to grip the butt of his rifle and its strap. "Shall we?" he says to her, eyebrow slightly raised.
"Yeah. Let's go."
The forest is no more easy to travel in the dark on foot than it was from a vehicle. Neither of them dare to crack a chemstick, not now. So they're a little slow, picking their way up the trail. They talk in basic blacksider hand signs, just repurposed so they can warn for a tree branch or a rock or a dip in the path. It's not perfect, but they're starting to be able to read each other, and the little hesitations and quick movements Kristoff has are about as good as an open book for her. Easier to read in the dark, too.
So they make their way up the mountain. It's a cold winter night. No snow yet, so there's some luck. Anna's glad she's wearing gloves; her fingers would be blue by now. The soft leather doesn't even creak when she holds up a hand and makes a fist, signaling to stop.
The tree cover ends in a couple of feet. They're almost right up next to the rock face, and just where Elsa said it'd be is a heavy-looking metal door. She ghosts up to it, Kristoff right behind her watching her back. It's just a keypad lock. She could ask Elsa to do it, but, the less she messes with Eden's network right now, the longer they're probably going to have to get her out. So. Anna has to do this herself. Not that she can't, Rime's just faster at it.
She frowns, then realizes some of the numbers are worn away. Okay, this got a lot simpler, her frown morphing into a grin. Just like all the old tests the Contessa made her do. She puts her hand over the keypad, fingers on the numbers and notes the patterns: how are they rubbed off? How would she have to move her hand? All the little signs she was taught to look for, and she figures it out.
The light on the lock switches to green, and the door slides open with barely a hiss. She turns around to give Kristoff a thumbs-up, smirk pulling at her lips.
It's, well, it's definitely a service entrance. Kristoff shuts the door behind him, so they're left with only the sound of their own breathing and the hum of the lights. The corridor is dimly lit, shadows cast by the overhead lights playing over the stone walls. It's cool in here, buried however deep under the mountain itself. At least it's dry.
"Keep to the left. There'll be a door in a couple of meters."
The door is another metal one, only lighter and unlocked this time. Anna cracks it open slowly, checks that it's clear, and scoots out. The entire hallway is still dim and deserted, except this time it looks like someone's been down here in the last six months. Instead of stone, it's reinforced concrete.
They follow Elsa's quiet directions through the maze of corridors. At intersections, she can see where the space might open up into larger, open aired areas. She spots cars and carts, and at one point a helicopter sitting underground. Ah. That would be the lift to the landing pad. Yeah, staying away is a good plan.
A right turn down another corridor, and it's suddenly very clear they're in another part of this base. It feels, well, like an older part, and it makes her wonder how long Eden's been around. Some part of her thought that they weren't much older than, well, thirteen years. But now that she thinks about it, they'd have had to have started long ago, if they could pull off something like this. To say nothing of kidnapping and faking the death of an Upper City child.
Her jaw hurts, and Anna realizes she's been grinding her teeth together. Neither Elsa nor Kirstoff says anything, even though they must have heard it through the subvocal. Nerves, all around.
"This is seriously creepy," Kristoff mutters, into his subvocal. They'd managed to rig up a temporary one for him, at least for this. So at least they can talk now. "Where is everyone?"
"About one floor above you or higher. I've got you going through the basement labs." Elsa sounds, well, tense. There's a brittle edge to her words that Anna's rarely, if ever, heard before. It's not a tone she likes, not now. There's something wrong here, well, a whole lot of stuff wrong. Kristoff's right: this place is creepy. Anna can almost convince herself it's just nerves making Elsa sound like that, with Anna seeing the walls she's been kept in.
Almost.
"Oh that's comforting," he grumbles.
"Better than the security station you'd otherwise be walking right past."
Kristoff blinks. "Yeah, okay, point."
"Arc."
"Yeah?"
"I hope you're paying attention. You guys are going to have to use this same route on the way back." She sounds...almost apologetic.
Anna pulls a face. "Great. Concrete all looks the same, Rime."
"Sorry." She's about to grumble about the apology when Elsa continues. "I thought telling you to bring breadcrumbs was a little noticeable."
Rude. But it cuts the tension as they carefully make their way through the corridors, stepping lightly to reduce the amount their footsteps echo down the hallways. They pass by darkened labs, maybe unused, maybe just storage. She doesn't spend much time trying to figure out what they're doing in them.
"You're coming up on a stairwell. Take it up a flight. There'll be another set of doors on the far side when you come out. Get over there and quickly. I'll only be able to keep the security station distracted for so long."
Anna goes still for half a second. "How are you — ?"
"Don't worry. It's just the security cameras. They won't even know I'm there." She sounds short. Tense. "Not if I only do it for a few seconds."
Well, that's something of a relief. The door is right where Elsa said it would be, across what looks for all the world to be a lobby. And, oh man, there's glass all over the place. Anna just grits her teeth and goes, ghosting along the far wall, outside the line of sight for the two people she can see standing on an upper level, overlooking the large atrium the lobby is nestled against. She's not looking forward to the way out; this part here is going to be problematic if whatever Elsa's planning doesn't work.
But for right now, they make it to the door without trouble, and it's just another stairwell. "Christ, this place is a maze," Kristoff mutters into the subvocal behind her.
"That was the only reasonable place the sections connect. Well, unless you want to try to get past two more well-traveled sections.."
"Yeah, no thanks. What are they doing here anyway?"
"Looks like labs, mostly," Anna says as they continue onwards. "Must do some sort of electronics R&D here. Maybe some other stuff." She's suddenly aware of his stare on the back of her neck and feels her face flush a little. "Oh come on, Rime sends me enough stuff I can notice this sort of thing."
He just shakes his head.
They move on deeper into the complex. The walls start to gain more piping and wires clinging to them on either side, an interwoven network of steam and power. Sometimes they clang and hiss, others there's nothing but the sound of their footsteps against the stone. There's a bit of a dank smell, like damp and cold stone. Somewhere deep, they can hear the groan of gears and pistons. It sounds like the mountain itself is breathing.
Anna trails her hand against a pipe, and feels the hum underneath her gloved fingers. Her heart thuds in her chest, with hummingbird wings thrashing against the cage of her ribs. The hair on the back of her neck is prickling, some nameless thing ghosting breath across her spine and setting her nerves alight. Something draws her forward, an unidentifiable knowing that tells her that she's close.
Down one more staircase, deep into the mountain.
The hall they enter is a shock, considering where they've been. It's brightly-lit, lights humming above them. The chill of the previous hallway is absent. The pipes and conduits are thicker here, almost covering the walls. The breath of the mountain seems louder now, traveling through the walls and floor, settling in her bones.
She and Kristoff share a look. This is deeply weird. And this is clearly an area of the complex that's been well-traveled before. Anna licks her lips, throat suddenly dry.
"Rime?" he asks, concern evident in his voice.
The answer is slow, an exhaustion Anna's never heard before threading through the words. "...not much farther. You're almost there. Take...take the second left." What is this costing her? Come on, Elsa, just hang on a little bit longer.
The second left leads them to a door. There's a keycard reader and a lock. Other than that, the door is black and unmarked. "Rime?" Anna asks again. Come on, Elsa. Please open the door.
"...hold on."
It's agony to wait for the little light to flash from red to green, but it only takes a few seconds. Anna's hand grasps the handle as soon as the door clicks, and pushes it open. She doesn't know what'll be on the other side, but the only way to go is forward, so that's where she'll go.
It's a large room, but it's kind of hard to tell. The pipes and wires they've been seeing seem to be clustering in the center of the room, weaving in and out of a large metal tube stretching from floor to ceiling, growing like a rock formation in a cave, but man-made and taking up most of the space. There's a hum coming from it, echoing through the rock below them. Wires dangle from the ceiling, stretching like a spider-web or a net from the tower to various points around the room. Most of them seem to go to a massive computer console that takes up an entire wall.
Anna spares it a glance, all the monitors showing lines and numbers that mean nothing to her. She bites her lip hard enough to taste blood. Every part of her is screaming that whatever it is here is deeply, deeply wrong. She hears Kristoff's breath catch in his throat as he takes a step towards the computers, but her eyes instead notice the door on the far side of the room.
"Adze!" she hisses, grabbing his hand. "Come on!"
He shakes himself, then looks at her, eyes wide and face pale. "Arc, what — " But he swallows the words down as she tugs him towards the other side of the room, and he stumbles after her.
Her hand grips the handle, and she takes a deep breath. Come on, Anna. This is what she wants. This is everything she's been waiting for, everything she's been dreaming of, working towards, sweating and bleeding for for the last three years. She'll get her answers, get her sister, and it's all going to be okay. Everything is going to be okay. All she has to do is open the door.
"Arc..." Kristoff's voice is soft with concern, with worry. It's sweet of him. She takes a deep breath and opens the door...
...into a supply closet.
She stares dumbfounded and uncomprehending at the boxes of computer cable and gloves. This is where Elsa led them. Why...there's no other door in the room. Why is this a closet? What is —
She's broken out of her thoughts by Kristoff tugging her away. She lets him.
Her goddamn brain is refusing to work. Nothing here makes sense. There should have been another hallway, another room. Something. Anything. Did they make a wrong turn? Pick the wrong door? That must be it. Dammit, they're wasting time.
"Arc. Arc!" She blinks and is suddenly aware that Kristoff has his hands on her shoulders and is staring at her intently. There's a look in his eyes that she can't, won't, understand.
"Fuck," Elsa says, and the word is like ice down Anna's spine, snapping her brain right back into overdrive. Okay, maybe she won't ever give her sister shit about not swearing, because whenever she does, it is goddamn terrifying.
"Rime!" Kristoff whispers furiously.
"Scratch. It's goddamn Scratch!" she says, voice tight. "I'm going to have to...hold on."
No. No no no, not now. Not when they're so damn close, so close to getting her out. This can't be how it ends. It won't be.
"Arc! Adze!" Elsa barks. "Hide! You'll have fifteen!"
Anna's about to protest, but Adze moves faster. He grabs her, spins around, and falls back into the supply closet, mostly closing the door behind them. It's a tight fit, and with both of them in here, the door can't close all the way. She has to hold the handle to keep it from swinging open, but it means she can still see out the small crack, right at the console.
She's about to say something when she hears it, the soft click-clack of well-polished shoes on concrete. The words catch in her throat, sharp and jagged, and it hurts to swallow them down.
The lights flicker off, and the mountain stops breathing, gears and pistons groaning low as they fade into silence. In the distance, she hears the slamming of metal against stone.
Everything is still for a second, then the lights come back on, dimmer than before. "Rime," she breathes, "what did you do?"
There's a buzz coming from the other door. And another. Shit. Scratch, Pike, whoever the hell he is, he must be trying to get in with a keycard. And it's not working.
"Arc. Anna. If you can't get me in seven minutes, you have to run." Her voice is strained, like whatever it is she's doing is hurting her, like it's killing her to do this. Maybe it is, this horrible echo of their argument earlier becoming horrifying reality. Anna nearly swallows her tongue. "You have to go. Please."
The lock on the door turns, and the man walks in, pulling the actual key out of the lock as he does. Scratch, she'll think of him as Scratch for now, has a deep frown on his face as he walks towards the console. He stares at the various monitors and readouts, typing a few things out, the tap of the keys rattling something in her brain. Anna grits her teeth.
"Rime..." she whispers, almost too still for the subvocal to pick up. It's all she can get out. "No. What are you..."
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry..."
Scratch flips open a plexiglass cover. He turns a key.
"I'm sorry. I'm so— "
Elsa cuts out, like a switch or...like a glitch. Anna can't breathe. Where is she? They have to find her. Seven minutes. They can do this. They just need to find her.
Something howls, the screaming of metal as it slams against each other as the mountain roars to life again. The lights flicker once again before coming on brighter than before. A weight drops into her gut and stays there.
Kristoff's arms are wrapped around her, anchoring her, keeping her still. She looks up, wondering if he's panicking as bad as she is. No, he just keeps staring forward, like he's trying to incinerate Scratch where he stands.
The man, for his part, simply stands there, staring at the console, his back to their closet and the metal monstrosity in the middle of the room. He taps his ear. Shit, Elsa couldn't shut down his radio for some reason. Too dangerous? "Racket," he says. "Cocytus broke the firewall again. Fix that."
Cocytus? What in the world? Behind her, Kristoff stiffens, and she can hear his sharp intake of breath through his nose.
There's a pause, and then Scratch sounds annoyed. "Yes, I know it's been years. It did it again." He drums the fingers of his free hand against the console as he waits. "I increased the load, and I've got the generators accepting the extra power, but this can't happen again if we're moving it to the arcology. Get it done."
Anna feels her fingers going numb, she's clenching her fists so tight. They're wasting time here. Every second they're stuck here because of this asshole yakking, the less time they have to get Elsa and get the hell out of here. There's another pause as he waits for a response. "I don't care what you do, just make sure it stops doing that. I've got a meeting with Haskell I need to leave for. It had better be under control when I get back."
He releases the call and stares at the console. "Clever, but not clever enough."
Scatch taps his radio again. "Is my helicopter still accessible?" He waits, then nods. "Good. One thing is going right." He spares the console another look. "No, Racket will have Cocytus under control. Everything remains on schedule."
He walks out of the room without a backwards glance, closing the door again behind him. She can hear his footsteps fading away down the hall into silence.
But then Kristoff is practically shoving her out of the closet, sprinting over to the console. His mouth is a hard line, face pale and eyes wild. There's a frantic desperation to his actions that she notes as she stumbles after him.
"Adze. Adze, we have to go. We have to go get Rime. We need Rime," she's babbling and she doesn't give a fuck right now.
He ignores her, one hand flying over the keyboards as he wrenches that key in the other direction.
"Adze!"
"Arc," he breathes. "Arc, look. What does this look like?"
Something in his voice makes her look, really look, at the console for the first time. She sees the monitors, the information streaming across them, and something dark and horrible clicks in her mind.
"Adze. Is that...is there a person in there?"
The look in his eyes says everything, and something inside of her breaks. They don't have much time. But...they can't leave, not now. He turns back to the console, and Anna is lost for a moment. All she can do is stare at the monitors, and while she isn't trained like he is, even she can tell that some things here are just wrong. Too fast, too sharp.
No. They can't leave.
Kristoff slams his hand down on the console, she's honestly surprised it doesn't break the keyboard. But he steps back, looking grim, eyes a thousand miles away.
The lights flicker off again, before coming back on dimmer once more. The humming underneath her feet stops as the machines go still. There's a hiss. Anna turns towards the metal monstrosity in the middle of the room. Part of it unlatches, cracking open. Kristoff's already moving.
"Arc," he whispers, voice thick with pain and grief. "Help."
He doesn't really have to ask. She's there, and together they grip the metal cover. The cold seeps through her gloves, chilling her hands to the bone. It's heavy, but the hydraulics scream and they manage to prop it open.
Kristoff looks away.
But Anna can't. All she sees is grey, a roiling mass that shimmers in the light. Nanomachines. These are the nanomachines.
The machines start to thin out, and then recede, slithering up like a tree in reverse. Her breath catches in her throat. The grey-silver goo moves away, slowly revealing what's underneath.
It's a foot. A human foot, pale and barely more than skin and bones, but a foot none the less.
They trapped a person in here.
With aching slowness, which isn't actually all that long, the silver tendrils continue their journey upwards, sinking into areas on the upper legs, on the wrists, and probably the spine of the poor bastard in here. The poor woman in here, she amends as soon as the machines move away from her legs, although the rest of her is in no better shape than her foot.
Anna can barely make out the rise and fall of her chest, unhindered as it now is by the machines. She can see the blue veins stark against pale, nearly paper-thin skin, can count the individual ribs and bones. Can see the shiny, tell-tale burn scars that never quite healed properly snaking up her legs. The woman's hands are covered, shoved into restraints, but Anna doesn't imagine they're hugely effective. Considering her state, it's overkill. Additional restraints span across her chest, hips, and neck. Not tight, but enough to completely restrict movement.
She doesn't look like she's moved in a very long time.
She can't see the woman's face. A mask of sorts covers that, metal with wires and tubes sprouting like demented chains from the sides and back. Seven glowing blue lights line either side of the mask, four on the left, three on the right. It's eerie, well, eerier than anything else she's seen in this entirely fucked up madhouse of a secret base. It's the mask you'd imagine someone would put on a monster, a muzzle.
A crack appears in the mask, right down the center. It opens with a hiss and a cloud of fog.
Anna's fingers feel numb. She can't tell if it's because of the cold or because she's gripping the sides of the metal chamber, the metal coffin, so tightly.
Everything in her is screaming to look away, that unknowable something pricking at the back of her brain, but something greater, something deeper tells her not to look away. That she can't look away.
The mask opens like a flower, the sides and two center triangles folding upwards. The face underneath looks skeletal. Her cheeks are sunken in, making her cheekbones jut out sharp enough to cut. Anna can see the tendons in her neck, her mouth open slightly, slack-jawed. The woman is completely bald, letting what looks like surgery scars stand out sharply against the deathly pale skin on her skull. In fact, it doesn't look like there's a piece of hair on the woman, not even her eyebrows.
Nothing about this is right.
But the eyes are the worst.
Because Anna was wrong. The glowing lights weren't just part of the mask; the woman's eyes are glowing, a cold and harsh blue from her irises, only partially obscured by the half-lidded gaze she has, staring out at nothing.
The overall look is painful. The woman barely looks human. What have these people done?
The blue glow dims slightly as Anna peers at her face.
Anna nearly swallows her tongue as those eyes focus on her face.
Because even without the glow, the eyes are a brilliant shade of blue Anna has only ever seen once in her life.
A voice brushes past her ears, a soft, harsh rasp that's as fragile as a butterfly's wing.
"Hi."
.END{protocol_02}