Chapter 37: Dragon's Den

"This place… this must be the lab I was looking for!" Pascal exclaimed excitedly.

"You sure?" Alex inquired. Though despite his words, he was actually quite excited himself. Exploring a place no one had set foot in for centuries, as well as a brand-new species of animal? How incredibly exciting!

"Yes, the co-ordinates match," Pascal claimed. "This place was sealed off by the rockslides, but it also must have opened up that cave, and also damaged the base's structural integrity, hence how there is all this bio-matter growing everywhere."

"I bet there are other places that have become exposed to the elements as well," Blue suggested. "Though to see some of its electrical grid still functioning is impressive."

"Might have been using a proto-type maso particle reactor," Pascal mused. "I've seen such generators used in other human facilities where the power was still active."

"Well, let's look around, and see what we can find," Alexander said, and walked over to a wall where a heavily corroded metal sign was attached to the wall. He brushed away some rust and mold, revealing words on the surface.

"Hmm, The same words are repeated in Swiss, French, German, Italian and English," Pascal noted, scanning the words. "It says that the cafeteria is to our left, while the right leads to something called 'Central Processing.' It sounds like it had something to do with data and information."

"Well, if we head towards Central Processing, that will take us towards the sealed off entrance," Alex pointed out.

"Let's head there, then," Blue said. "If nothing else, we might find some data on who was using this place, and what it was for."

Walking down the hallway, the trio encountered more living creatures, almost all of which were reptilian in nature. There were pink and green gecko-like lizards with frills, fins, and horns crawling all over the walls, while larger things that resembled snakes with two legs – and nothing else – scampered and hid among the dense patches of plant and fungi growing on the floors. The only none reptiles they encountered were cave crickets, moths, and some sort of beetle with a luminescent shell that none of them recognized.

Eight thousand years had resulted in a truly unique ecosystem down in the ruins of the lab, but some of the lizards were clearly unnatural, and the result of some kind of experimentation.

The path to Central Processing led them past a number of rooms, most of which were full of all sorts of plants and fungi. The flapping of wings from the miniature dragons echoed all around them, bouncing off the walls, and several more of the creatures could be seen fleeing from the intruders by going further into the lab.

Eventually, they reached an area that looked like it'd been an antechamber with three other paths branching out towards different sections of the base. However, at some point in the past the floor had caved in, leaving a great big hole in the center. There was water at the bottom, and lots of scum and plant life floating on the surface of the pond.

"It seems that there's a second level to this place, although it looks flooded," Blue noted, peering down, her eyes shining like a pair of flashlights as she observed the hole and its sodden contents.

"Looks like it," Alex agreed. "Think it was important? Or just storage?"

"Knowing our luck? Probably something important was left down there," Blue joked, causing the human to snort in amusement.

"Central Processing is just ahead," Pascal stated, and her thrusters activated, carrying her over to the other side. Blue and Alex used their magic to follow shortly afterwards.

Yet using their magic seemed to cause a stir among the denizens of the pit, and a loud croaking rose up, as well as screeches and burbling. Several mini-dragons flew down from their hiding spots on the ceiling, shrieking at Blue and Alex, forcing the two to hurry across.

The attacks stopped as soon as they stopped using magic, and the animals settled down, though one dragon – a forest green scaled one – hissed at Blue warningly before flying away down another corridor.

"Ah! That's that dragon that attacked me at the cave's entrance!" Blue exclaimed.

"Huh. Looks like you made a friend," Alex teased. Blue huffed with Pascal chortled in amusement.

A minute later, the group found themselves in the room marked Central Processing, and they'd been right; it was full of computer banks, servers, and terminals. Sadly, time and the environment had ruined it. Vines grew through USB ports and computer screens, fungi junked up the internals, and animals had made nests in the rusted-out shells of machinery.

"Damn, the collapse hit this place hard," Alex murmured, feeling a bit sorrowful that it'd all collapsed.

"Indeed," Pascal said, running a hand over a server. A few sparks flew from her hands onto it, and it whirred to life for a brief moment, lights flickering across its surface, but it died with a sputtering gasp of sparks and smoke.

"Did you get anything?" Blue wondered, but the older Machine shook her head.

"I am afraid the data has all been lost or heavily corrupted," Pascal lamented. "Such a shame. I would have loved to learn how this all came to be."

"Maybe not all hope is lost," Alex spoke up, and the two Machines looked over at him, curious. He held up a sheet of moldering, crinkled plastic for them.

"A map?" Blue uttered.

"One made for the facility," Alex said. "And look here! There's a place somewhere in the base called an 'Archive Room.'"

"Physical copies of the documents and data may have been stored there!" Pascal exclaimed, hope returning to her, and Alex nodded with a smile.

"I had the same thought. And look! It's pretty close! We just have to take the left path when we get to that hole, and it's one of the rooms down there!"

"Well, what are we waiting for?" Blue asked, and they hurried out of Central Processing and towards the lab's archive.

The group carefully walked around the hole, avoiding the use of magic to cross by sticking to the wall and scooting slowly along what was left of the floor.

The Archive Room wasn't far, and though several file cabinets had been destroyed by one thing or another over the years, most of them were still standing, and some clever scientists had laminated several of the critical documents while vacuum sealing a bunch of hard drives.

"What a treasure trove of knowledge!" Pascal gushed.

"Most of the papers that survived are written in German," Blue noted. "Though I see a couple of French ones."

"I found one in English!" Alex said excitedly, pulling out several laminated files from a desk.

"What on Earth is this?" the human wondered as he scanned the preserved paper document he'd found. "What the heck was 'Project Melusine?'"

"I do not know, but it appears to be the main source of whatever they were experimenting with down here," Pascal noted, finding the same name written down on most of the files.

"It's talking about resources… and something about preserving specimen samples," Alex informed his companions as he read some more.

"Could this have been one of the famous Cloning Labs?" Blue asked. "I heard that was one of the things androids did to try and revive mankind."

"This is far older than the androids," Alexander mused. "I see dates here… Some of the oldest are dated as far back as 2003 AD!"

"That's over eight thousand years ago!" Blue gasped.

"It's right when humanity was being afflicted by White Chlorination Syndrome," Alex replied grimly, eyes narrowing in thought. "I think this lab was built to try and study it."

"I think you may be correct," Pascal said. "I found some documents that state they have a sample the scientists dubbed 'the origin' of the outbreak."

"Do they say where it is now?" Alex asked curiously, and Pascal shook her head.

"No. But, we still have that map. Do you think you can find out where the lab is in this place?"

Alex nodded and pulled out the crumbling map, and quickly found the location of the most likely place the so-called 'Origin' would have been stashed; a research lab, further inside the base.

The group crept forward slowly, forced to go at a sedate pace due to large numbers of mini-dragons and mutated creatures appearing as they progressed. They did not act violent or vicious unless magic was used, and even then, they seemed more afraid of it than anything else.

After some time, the trio came to a door that was sealed shut. Opening it revealed a chamber that was surprisingly clean, and full of scientific apparatus, including rows of beakers and vials, chemicals in jars, a few unbroken computer monitors, and some electron microscopes.

But the real eye-catcher was the glass tank set up in the far side of the room, a corroded and worn brass placard labeled 'Origin' attached to the front of it.

"This… this is the source of White Chlorination Syndrome?" Alex whispered in disbelief. "This thing is what killed off humanity?"

Floating in the tank and suspended in some kind of opaque, amber liquid, and somehow showing no signs of rot despite the countless years it'd spent in the lab, was a large scaled limb, easily as long as Alex was tall.

Or at least, that was what it seemed to be at first. On closer inspection, the object was not flesh and blood, but rather some kind of petrified, chalk-like substance in the shape of a reptilian leg.

Pascal wandered over to one of the computers, and to their shock, it turned on, somehow still functional.

"The data here has been erased, and the machine itself has been damaged by time," Pascal revealed. "But that does not mean we can't find some answers."

The Machine removed one of the shrink-wrapped hard drives from the archive room she had taken with her.

"These devices are capable of reading the data stored onto these storage units," Pascal revealed. "We should be able to discover something this way."

Installing the hard drive onto the computer took a bit, as Pascal needed to be very careful with the old and crumbling device which had not weathered the ages well. But it worked after a bit, and the trio crowded around the monitor.

"Origin… Origin… ah, here we go, a file with that name on it," Pascal said, and pulled it up.

"It says that this object, and many others, appeared above Tokyo, Japan, on July 30th at 3 PM local time from a portal of some kind," Blue read aloud. "A gigantic humanoid shaped anomaly emerged, but were destroyed by a red dragonoid shaped anomaly that appeared among them. The dragon was shot down by JSDF – some sort of military group, apparently – and it was the only anomaly recovered, and the humanoid ones disintegrated into… a white powder similar in composition to sodium chloride?"

"So, the dragon wasn't the source of White Chlorination Syndrome?" Alex wondered. "Because it seems to me the giant humanoid was the actual cause."

"There's a lot more technical stuff, some scientific babbling about how the portals and collapse of the giant humanoid was possible, and information about something called 'Red Eyes,' 'Legion,' and how WCS spread, but then the later files start getting into some complex genetic research and experimentation," Pascal said, surfing through the files. "It seems that the dragon was organic, at least at first, but petrified quickly. Its body was seized by the Japanese government, and then divided up amongst several other world governments as soon as the first symptoms and cases of WCS appeared in the Shinjuku Ward of Tokyo."

"Project Melusine… an attempt by humanity to adapt to White Chlorination Syndrome by studying the body of the dragonoid extra-planar lifeform that appeared above the city of Tokyo in the year 2003 AD," Pascal revealed, continuing to read the data files accessed from the remnants of the lab computer. "From what I can tell, very little progress was made in that regard, in the end. It seems even a small portion of the body of the so-called 'dragon' was a carrier of WCS, and the scientists in the laboratory became infected by it and sealed the place off to prevent further spread. However, they continued to conduct experiments, one of which was a cloning program to make more 'dragons' in the hopes they could learn how to cultivate a resistance to WCS."

Pascal clicked through the files. "Hmm, the research into White Chlorination Syndrome began as early as 2003 AD, but the virus didn't become global until 2010 AD. This says here that the UN staged a raid on the Japanese research center containing the dragon's corpse in 2011, and covered it up. Parts of the dragon were given to different UN member states, including the US, Russia, China, and several others. This base was established in 2012, and it was working to find a cure for WCS, but gets sidelined by Project Gestalt."

"So, what were they doing in this lab?" Alex asked. "And what's with all these tiny dragons?"

"The answer to both your questions is the same: Cloning experiments," Pascal replied after reading more data at a speed no human could. "In 2022, the scientists here managed to extract DNA from the dragon's limb. They began to experiment with cloning new dragons. Some even become radicalized and suggest that the only way mankind can survive WCS is to incorporate dragon genetic material into themselves. This apparently did not go overly well with something called the Hamelin Organization, and the scientists sealed themselves inside the base after a few violent altercations. They keep experimenting, and apparently succeed in splicing dragon genes into several different species of lizards, but have no success in putting this stuff into humans. The last update log is in November of 2037 AD. Something about them sealing off the cloning chamber after an 'accident.'"

"Jeez, that's a lot to process," Alex said, rubbing the back of his head.

"I'll say. This fills in a lot of interesting gaps in the historical record, but raises more questions as well," Pascal said, sounding excited at the prospect of more research.

"So, all these creatures we've seen… most are the descendants of the scientists' experiments, and others are here because of geological shifts, the landslide opening up that cave and damaging the base's ventilation and service ducts," Blue guessed.

"That would make sense. And it would explain why we haven't seen dragons before now. The landslide is recent, probably only a decade or so old, and the dragons are only now beginning to venture out and explore the immediate surroundings, hence why we saw those burn and claw marks in the forest and city nearby," Alex mused.

"Fascinating!" Blue exclaimed. She then turned to Pascal. "Can we capture one of these dragons? I would really love to have one as a pet!"

"I'm not sure that'd be a good idea," Pascal said slowly. "Leaving aside the fact we have no idea if these creatures can even be tamed in the first place, they breathe fire, and the village is inside of a forest."

Blue slumped dejectedly, and Alex patted her shoulder.

"Don't worry, Blue! If you still want a pet when we leave, we can look for a regular lizard or snake for you. Shouldn't be too hard to find!"

"Really?" Blue said hopefully, perking up at Alex's offer.

"Really, really," the human said with a smile.

"Thank you! That sounds wonderful!" Blue exclaimed, jumping up and down in excitement.

"How cute," Pascal murmured from the side, and Alex shot her a look. He nodded in agreement with her comment, and the two laughed as Blue stammered denials about her cuteness.

"So… cloning lab," Alex said, getting back to the original topic. "Where is it, exactly?"

"One level below us," Pascal informed, and the human sighed.

"Of course, in the flooded section," he grumbled, thinking back to the hole they'd come across that'd led to the lower levels.

"Are we going to check it out?" Blue asked, and after a moment they decided to do so.

The trio of explorers went back to the pit, and peered inside. The water was dark and cloudy, and full of who knew how many years of silt and decayed biological matter. Still, they went in, Pascal descending first, with Blue and Alexander following behind.

They had to use magic to do so, and Alexander waterproofed his shoes and pants, not wanting them to get too wet. This of course caused the dragons and other creatures to clamor about, screeching and hissing angrily at the Machine and human.

None of the creatures attacked them, though the green scaled mini-dragon did follow behind, watching them to make sure the intruders didn't do anything to cause the rest of the dragon colony harm.

Splashing down into the flooded corridor, the water only came up to Alex's knees, and he looked around curiously.

"Huh, it's not that deep," Alex muttered, though he did grimace at how slimy it was. A lot of moss and algae had built up, resulting in very slick and gross surroundings.

The trio trudged through the water-logged level, finding that most of the rooms had been destroyed by the water. Nothing was left in them, which was unfortunate. A few broken pipes could be seen here and there, most of them now home to a variety of animals and plants.

'The plants, as well as the moss and lichen, seems to act as purifying filters for the water,' Alex noted as he examined some of the stuff float by on the surface. 'They recycle the water, keeping it clean enough for the animals to consume. A clever bit of co-evolution, since there's no new sources of water down.'

"We're coming up to the cloning lab," Pascal announced a few minutes later.

Part of the wall and ceiling had collapsed in this section, a lot of rubble forming a barrier that took a bit of work to clear. The collapsed section had blocked off some of the water filling the rest of the level, leaving the other side shallower, the liquid only coming up to Alex's ankles this time.

As Blue and Alex levitated chunks of concrete and stone aside, it seemed that the green dragon really didn't want us to go through with their plans, and it kept scratching at Blue's head, to little effect.

"What's go it so wound up?" Alex couldn't help but wonder as they shifted the last of the rocks aside, making a path over the blockage.

"I don't know, but it seems scared," Blue noted as the mini-dragon refused to go any further, watching the group continue on their way with its beady eyes as it perched on the barricade.

Some of the lights still functioned in this hallway, and it was less damaged overall by the flooding. At the end of it was a pair of open sliding doors, the sight of which caused the trio to pause.

Seeing the doors wide open wasn't all that surprising, but the fact that it looked as if something had smashed through them was. The metal was warped and bent, melted in some places, and giant claw marks covered the walls and doorframe.

"What happened here?" Pascal wondered aloud.

"Dunno. Keep your guard up, though," Alex suggested, and he pulled out his gun, just in case.

They stepped through into the room on the other side of the doors, and looked around cautiously.

It was filled with rows of glass tanks and tubes, many of which were broken and little more than crumbled glass sitting on rusted bases. The fluid in one of the few intact tubes was a disgusting brown, and a bunch of plants, moss, or algae could be seen growing in the remains of the others. Surgical tables and trollies dotted the spaces in between the tanks and tubes, though they were heavily rusted and damaged. A bank of computer terminals could be seen at the far end, but it was clear even from a distance they'd been smashed up and destroyed long ago.

There was also a section of the lab that was completely dark, the lightbulbs shattered and ruined along with parts of the ceiling.

"Well, we found the cloning lab," Alex said.

"Strange… there aren't any animals in here," Pascal mused.

"The ceiling did collapse a while ago," Blue pointed out.

"Yes, but there were gaps a small enough creature could wiggle through," the leader of the village replied.

A growl rang out, cutting off anything that might have been said, and a splashing noise drew the trio's attention to the shadows of the room. Something lurched towards them, and Alex let out a shout of disgust and horror at what appeared in the flickering lights.

It was utterly grotesque, mishappen and deformed. The body was large, easily twice that of Blue, and covered in mottled red and black scales. It had six legs, but only three seemed to work, and one was little more than a withered foot jutting awkwardly out from its ribs. Four wings, only one of which had an intact membrane, the rest being tattered wrecks, flapped weakly. It had two tails that lashed angrily behind it, and five heads, each one a different shape, size, and species. It snapped at the trio, and some kind of sizzling venom dripped from one of its maws while embers and smoke smoldered within another.

"Um, so, anyone want to bet that this was the 'accident' that shut this place down?" Alex asked weakly, receiving a pair of "No's" from his companions.

The mutated dragon opened one of its mouths and screamed at them in an eerily human-sounding voice, and Alex pointed his gun at the beast and opened fire, shouting "Nope! Nope! Nope!" as he emptied every last bullet he had into its heaving mass.

Unfortunately, not a single shot did anything, as the holes began to close up, new flesh growing and knitting itself together, healing its wounds instantly.

"Impressive regeneration!" Pascal uttered, amazed.

The deformed dragon didn't like being complimented, as it opened its ember-filled maw and unleashed a stream of fire at her. The flames splashed harmlessly against her metal body, however, causing the dragon to pause and tilt one of its heads to the side in surprise.

"Be impressed later!" Alex shouted, bringing his hands together. White energy glowed around them, and the dragon's heads snapped towards him.

"Shining Lance!" Alex called out, and a ray of energy, like the Laser Beam Pod attack, shot forth, spearing into the dragon's side and tearing off a leg and wing.

Flesh sizzled, rippled, and boiled, and new growths erupted out of the damaged section of its body a couple seconds later. Only, there were three of them instead of two, an extra leg thrown in, and all were as malformed as the rest of the hideous creature.

"Ewww! Gross!" Blue complained, though she raised her hands as well, sending a flurry of magical bullets towards the dragon. These did slightly more damage than Alex's regular bullets, but the wounds healed just as fast.

"It's regeneration is quick, but it has to have a limit," Alex griped as he threw up a barrier to block a bunch of acid one of the heads threw up at him.

"It doesn't seem to be able to regrow its limbs properly if too much damage is applied," Pascal noted.

"Yeah, I noticed that," he said.

"We could just shoot the heads," Blue suggested. "I don't think it can regenerate from that!"

"Let's find out, shall we?" Alex said with a grin, and he drew his combat knife from its sheath. He charged at the mutant dragon, and hacked one of its heads off as it tried to bite him.

The stump frothed with foamy blood, and a new head rapidly grew out, disproving Blue's theory, but it did look sickly and weak compared to the one he had lobbed off.

He had to evade a barrage of fire and acid a moment later, forcing him to dive for cover behind some of the shattered test tubes, and Blue retaliated with a mass of silvery spears. The spikes drove into it, but did very little as once they faded the holes closed up.

It did distract the monster, letting Alex summoning a massive, glowing white hammer.

"Take this!" he shouted, and slammed the magic-formed bludgeon down onto the monster, crushing a large amount of its body beneath. The dragon writhed in pain, its head keening and wailing, but it seemed blunt attacks worked the best as it struggled to recover from the attack as fast as it did from cutting and piercing strikes.

"Blue! Together!" he called out, and she nodded.

The two then created a giant glowing hammer each, bringing them down onto the dragon as it tried to get up and attack them. It seemed to sense its death coming, so at the last second, one head spat sizzling acid at Blue, which splashed against her chest.

The acid burns her, marring the metal and melting through it, leaving a pockmarked mess on her barrel-like torso.

Yet it didn't hurt her mechanical frame, and in sync with Alex, Blue brought her magically conjured hammer down onto it, squishing and crushing it completely and shaking the whole lab in the process.

There was a horrible gurgling noise as the hammers vanished into motes of light, but the water was red with blood, and Alex watched as it tried to regenerate, flesh squirming like it was host to a bunch of maggots, but after a moment it stopped, unable to cope with the huge amount of damage.

Neither were certain that had been enough, though, and to make sure it was dead, Alex and Blue bombarded it with lasers until there was nothing left expect gory blobs of meat and bones.

"Is it dead?" Pascal inquired, peering out from behind one of the tubes they'd hidden behind as the battle had progressed.

"Seems like it, yeah," Alex said, nudging some of it with his shoe. The meat-chunk jiggled, and he yelped, jumped back, and hit it with more lasers.

"Okay, now it's dead," he said a moment later when no other piece moved.

Investigating the cloning lab turned up nothing else of interest. Too much had been ruined by time and the monstrous dragon, although the dragon's nest did have a few plastic keycards for the facility hidden in it. Useless, but interesting, and Pascal had taken them for the sake of cataloging them.

"Well, that was fun. We should probably leave, though," Alex said as they left the lab.

"Yes, it is getting late. I do not think we should spend the night down here. As peaceful as the creatures seem to be, who knows how they will continue to react," Pascal agreed.

As they reached the place they'd left the red dragon, it spotted them coming and hissed in surprise, flying over to Blue and landing atop her head. It sniffed her, and then the wound on her chest. It then let out a happy trill, and flew off, disappearing down the hallway.

"That was weird," Blue hummed.

It took some time, but the trio finally made it to the place where they'd come in from. Levitating out, they left the cave, finding that night had fallen over the area.

Rather than blunder down through the mountainside in the dark, Pascal summoned her vehicle to her side.

But as they prepared to leave the place, a chirping noise alerted them to the green mini-dragon as it flew out of the cave after them.

"Aww! He wants to come with us!" Blue said excitedly as it plopped down onto her head, claiming it as its roost.

"Well, I suppose it can, but only if you put out any fires it makes," Pascal said with a sigh.

"Yes! Yes! Thank you, Pascal!" Blue cheered. Alex smiled at her reaction.

He then frowned as he thought about what A2 would do to him when they returned.

A shiver ran down his spine, and he could already feel his eardrums bursting from her upcoming angry tirade. He sighed, but got into Pascal's transport all the same.

'Time to face the music,' he sighed.
&&&&&

Author's Note: Just a quick update that I will be cross-posting my ongoing works to AO3 in the future under the same name (but without a space inbetween). I'll still be posting here, of course.
Also, I am considering getting Paty-ron or Kofi to try and get a bit of snack money from my work. Any updates to that will be around the start of next year.
Happy Holidays!