There were very few things that Roy Mustang minded being woken up for in the middle of the night. His telephone ringing was not one of them. It took just a few seconds for the message to travel from his ears to his sleep bogged brain and on to his muscles, but in that few seconds, the message seemed to go on a roller coaster ride through said sleep bogged brain.
Confusion at first, as the fish he'd just caught in his dream opened its mouth and started ringing at him while still dangling from the hook. Alarm, as he was abruptly pulled from the land of dreams to reality. Panic, as his days in Ishbal screamed at him to get up, move! You're under fire! Confusion again, as he found himself back in his bedroom in East City, in the dark of night. And irritation when he finally realized what that annoying noise coming from the front hall was.
Grumpily, he dragged himself out of bed and made his way through his dark apartment in his nightshirt to answer the bloody thing. This had better be good.
He answered and listened drowsily, a frown appearing as the information came through and failed to make sense. A silence stretched from both ends of the line as his brain finally arrived at full attention and he did a mental double take.
"He did what?"
Six Months Earlier
It was obvious to both of them, even if they didn't want to voice their disappointment, that whatever had happened in this dim, damp lab had happened a very long time ago. Al brushed a layer of dusty grime off the top of a wooden box, lifted the lid and peered inside. He couldn't be sure, but he thought he could make out small bones at the bottom, some sort of animal.
The eerie silence was shattered as Ed aimed a violent kick at a large glass bottle, sending it crashing against the glittering, quartz studded walls of the man-made cavern. "Damn it!" he snarled, venting his frustration.
Alphonse frowned inwardly. He understood his brother's feelings but smashing the place wouldn't help anything. This was yet another dead end in a long string of recent dead ends and even his optimism was being dampened, both literally and figuratively, by this latest disappointment.
Then again, thought the younger boy wryly as he scanned the glass littered worktables, the lab was already such a ruined mess that one more broken bottle would make very little difference. There was nothing here they could use. The books were so degraded by the wet atmosphere that the pages had long passed the stage of mildew and simply crumbled at the lightest touch. The few beakers left intact had a grungy film layer at the bottom which was all that was left of the previous contents.
"What a waste of time," muttered Ed moodily casting an unimpressed gaze around the room. The people who had abandoned the place had been thorough in making sure there was nothing of any value left behind. Judging by the stuff and the amount of rust and dust and grime coating everything, no one had been here in about a hundred years. And that, unfortunately, fit in with the rumour they were chasing. A hint of a rumour, really, that there had been alchemical experimentations being done on humans in the area about eighty years ago.
But like with all rumours, especially really old ones like this one, the facts were difficult to pin down. The story was passed by word of mouth and crossed generations so that every local had a different version. They had to focus on the basic facts that came up consistent again and again. Crazy alchemist. Missing people. Secret underground lab.
"Well," said Al tentatively, "we haven't looked at everything yet, maybe there's more." He was trying to keep his own hopes up, more than his brother's but Edward gave an irritated huff, as if he wanted to complain some more but resisted. Instead his eyes drifted up to the ceiling of the rough lab to a series of electric lights connected by a maze of wires.
He pointed above his head. "Pretty sophisticated for being almost a hundred years old," he remarked. But the lights did look very old and he didn't directly recognize the design that was the standard for electric lighting in Amestris.
Alphonse, who towered closer to the ceiling and so had a better view of the lights nodded in agreement. "This alchemist was said to be a genius, maybe he invented his own lighting system independently." His eyes followed the run of wires to the far end of the lab room where they disappeared through a hole cut into the stone wall above a rough metal door. Edward also followed the wires with his eyes nearly at the same exact time and the brothers didn't have to say anything to each other to agree on where to explore next.
The door wouldn't budge. Whether it was locked or rusted shut didn't matter much to Edward as he made quick work of it using alchemy. Beyond the door was a tunnel, which the boys followed using their lanterns to light the way until they came into a slightly larger space with a low ceiling. On the right, the dim lantern illuminated a series of rusted metal bars interspersed with stone.
"Guess that's where he kept his prisoners…" Al trailed off in a whisper as he eyed the rusted locks still attached.
But Ed's attention was drawn elsewhere. A slight frown of concentration appeared on his face as he cocked his head slightly, listening attentively. "Do you hear that?" he asked quietly.
Al listened too. There was the constant rush of air that they'd been hearing since coming deep into the old mine. Al guessed that there was another opening somewhere beyond the maze of square cut tunnels that allowed a current of air to pass through. As it snaked around the tight spaces, the air made a low rushing sound similar to the sound of air passing through a sea shell. It was that effect that made some people believe they could hear the ocean when they listened.
This was different. It was a similar rush, but deeper, with a rumbling quality to it.
"Like water," suggested the younger alchemist, who could feel the vibration through the armour.
The cables led them closer to the source of the noise and the rumble grew louder until it reached a thunderous roar. The cavern they came to was much larger and seemed more natural in shape than the square cut tunnels of the old mine they had been following. The ceiling was concealed in the darkness above their heads, further than the light of the lantern could reach.
And there, pouring out of a side tunnel high above them on the left, water plunged into a long and narrow pool. Where the water exited was also concealed by darkness but judging by the flow of the current, Al guessed it was somewhere further along the long and narrow cave.
There was evidence that this place had been used both for mining and for the alchemist's dirty experiments. Old mining equipment had been left to rust including a mining car that still sat on rusted rails, even though the rails led to and disappeared below the surface of the rushing water.
"Looks like it was flooded after the mine was shut down," remarked Edward, almost shouting over the thunder of the falls. The evidence that the water's tunnel had been made using alchemy was obvious to the both of them. "Probably a diverted channel from the Little East River."
The boys were familiar with the rough geography of the area. The river ran south from its source in the hills north-east of East City before swinging west through the Resembool Valley where it was prone to flooding during the spring storms. From there, it headed far to the south west, eventually dumping into the ocean somewhere in Aerugo.
Ed pointed a little higher, about halfway up the falling water to a rusted contraption that looked like a water wheel. The wire and lighting of the labs suddenly made sense. "Hydroelectricity!" he shouted with a touch of excitement.
"Yeah," answered Al, distracted and not nearly as fascinated by the wheels and turbines as his brother, "but what is that?"
The armoured boy pointed to another mechanical contraption sitting on a somewhat dilapidated table. It had broken glass vials and tubes and melted wires coming out of it in a chaotic mess with more bits and pieces along with old, crisp papers strewn around it on the worktable.
Edward approached the table and blew on the dust lifting it in a choking cloud that he had to back away from. Al, unaffected by the dust, lifted the papers. They were carefully drawn diagrams indicating, in miniscule looping script, the dimensions and specifics of, whatever that thing was. Most of papers were illegibly ruined by age and some, by fire. The ones that could still be read were mostly mechanical and of little interest but some of the markings caught the young alchemist's eye.
"Brother!"
Ed reappeared by the table with watering eyes and Al laid the papers down, holding them flat with one enormous gauntlet. "This is alchemy!"
Alchemy that neither of them had ever seen. "I can't even tell what these arrays are supposed to do," said Ed as he scrutinized the tiny writing by the light of their lantern.
"There," said Al, pointing at a symbol that was familiar to him, "isn't that one for lightning?"
"Yeah, or," he said, with a backward glance at the rushing water, "electricity. But what are all of these?" asked the older Elric, sweeping a finger over a series of symbols for elements he had never heard of. And he knew his elements. Another paper, which was half singed, showed the same elements in more detail but the missing part of the paper made the information nearly useless. Edward frowned as he tried to decipher the information. "This doesn't make sense. If I'm reading this right, this stuff would be highly unstable," he said, bringing the paper right up to his face in a useless attempt to see it better.
"Looks like this alchemist was experimenting with making his own elements or something."
Al shook his head. "But that wouldn't work, you can't just create elements."
"I know but," Ed laid the papers back down and gestured in a beats me manner. "Look, the guy was crazy, alright? Just because he wrote this stuff down, doesn't mean he actually created it. I mean, look at this thing." The older brother, prodded at the sad looking device. "Clearly, he didn't get anywhere with it."
Al was uncertain. He looked at the array and looked at the device pensively. What was the use of alchemy that was so unstable? Ed tapped the array with one metal finger. "Whoever wrote this either knew absolutely nothing on alchemy or he was trying to blow himself into vapour," he added with a scoff.
Al's pensive mood sobered as a dark thought crossed his mind. Sensing the change somehow, Ed looked at his brother with an unspoken request to share his thoughts.
"Maybe that's what it's supposed to do," said the younger boy as he stared at the device. The alchemy was so unbalanced it seemed almost purposely so. And the elements in question would degrade with devastating power. "Something like this could take out a whole city," remarked the younger alchemist somberly.
Ed's eyebrows rose and he looked at the device in a new light. "What, you think it's some kind of bomb?"
"You said so yourself, Brother. The man was crazy." Al picked up the papers, trying to decipher them again. All he could make out was something about unbalanced elements and electricity.
Ed cast another distasteful look at the device and crossed his arms, regaining his usual composure. "Well, then I guess we're lucky he never finished it," he said lightly. "But we shouldn't leave this stuff lying around," he added thoughtfully.
"You think we should hand it over to the Colonel?"
A look of disgust crossed the older boy's face. "So the military can develop it into a weapon to kill more innocent people? Not a chance! Let's just destroy the papers so no one gets any bright ideas and get the hell out of here. This place is a dead end anyway."
They carefully burned all the papers they could find and dumped the device, along with the table and everything on it, into the water. The pool proved to be deep and the water clear enough that they could watch the items sink into the watery depths for a surprisingly long time by the light of their meager lantern. When all trace of the potentially devastating invention was gone, the brothers found their way back out through the mining tunnels the way they came in.
Al argued briefly for following the tunnels the other way to try and find the other entrance but Ed was grumpy, cold and hungry. And when Ed's stomach entered the argument, it usually always won.
A/N: Yay, a new chapter!
1. This chapter was mostly flashback, but important nonetheless.
2. I know it's been a while since the last chapter, but this time has not been spent idle. I've been working on fleshing out the ending of the story and this has proved challenging for a number of reasons, so I ask that you be patient. Updates may not come as quickly as before but that doesn't mean I'm not working on this story, whether that be physically writing or just thinking through various scenarios.
3. Enjoy!