Chapter XV: Obsession

AN:

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Another double-update today. This is one of two.

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The sewers were gross. There wasn't much other way to put it. The stench was awful, and whatever stagnant water had drained down here the last time Portland flooded had been sitting a while. "I thought you said these tunnels weren't part of the sewers?"

"We aren't in the tunnels yet, Chloe. We've got to go through the sewers to get there."

"Oh. Shit."

Dana looked at the stream flowing below them. "Literally."

Juliet just elbowed her - though both of them had the same little grin. Chloe snorted at the truly awful joke. Her sense of humour always had been a little all over the place.

Max, meanwhile, was a little ways ahead, peering intently at a wall like an eccentric archaeologist. She kept up a constantly muttering litany, wondering and questioning and probing at everything around her. She'd lead them down two lefts and a right, and they were on a long, slightly curving tunnel with the occasional turns out to the right, like spokes on a wheel.

Chloe had tried to pay attention to Max for the first turn or two, but the 'marks' just looked indistinguishable from the background scratches on the stonework to her. So she left it to Max. Instead, she spent most of her time 'sneakily' glancing at Rachel.

She was panicking, she knew that. For all Chloe had flunked school, she wasn't stupid. It was just that sometimes her emotions shut off her brain. She'd fallen in so easily with Max again, but she was still being all… her. And Rachel and Max had spent so long together, what if-

"Hey Chloe." Rachel spoke from her side. Chloe jumped. She hadn't even seen the girl move. But Rachel gave her that look. She'd seen what was going on in Chloe's head. Of course she'd seen. "I can practically hear you thinking back here."

"What?"

"Oh yes, the little gasps of the poor dying hamster running on the wheel in your brain, they were so loud to an animal lover like me, and-"

"Oh shut up, dude." She shook her head as Rachel smiled at her. "It's just a lot. I needed a minute."

"You know it doesn't change anything, right?"

"What?" Chloe said again.

Rachel almost sighed. "You're my best friend, Chloe. Sister from another mister, all that. I won't lie to you, I like Max. And I see why you liked her for so long. She's so painfully shy, but we're still down here following her plan. Even David is impressed with her."

"David, seriously?"

"Yeah, can't you see it? He's been deferring to her since she came up with this plan. And I'm pretty sure that man only knows respect in a military obedience sort of way."

"That does make sense."

"Doesn't it? But yes, I like her. And I can like her while still liking you. We had that talk, right?"

"Yeah, yeah. Not everyone just latches onto one person like me, I remember."

"I know you do. And on top of that, I get why you're angry at her. And why you're worried about how easy it was to fall back into that old way of being with her. You two were laughing like old times with one conversation."

"And that's… okay?" Chloe asked, hesitant and small.

"Totes."

Chloe groaned, as Rachel's face blossomed into an impish grin. "You know I fuckin' hate that word."

"And you know I fuckin' hate seeing you all mopey. So, I just had to come back and cheer you up. Turn that cute little frown upside down." She smirked, then went serious. "You okay?"

"Yeah. I… thanks, Rach." She trailed off into the comfortable silence. "So, should we be worried about sewer gators down here? After you told me about 'em, I never quite knew if that was just an LA thing or-"

Rachel just laughed.

"Chloe, Rachel!" Max called. "You need to keep up - we'll never find each other again if you fall behind!"

Chloe laughed, leaned in to murmur to Rachel. "Never thought she'd be able to say anythin' remotely commanding like that."

"She did have her wallflower moments. But I think she's had to change more than you think, Chloe." Rachel replied, looping her arm into Chloe's and dragging them along after the group. Chloe let her do so. Hell, they were still together. That was fine by her.

—

"Here." Max said suddenly. She peered down at something on the floor of the tunnel they'd just passed into, then skittered rapidly over to one of the walls and tapped it a couple of times. Then she frowned, face clearly regretting her action, and wiped her hand on her trousers.

"What?" Chloe asked, then shook her head. "Right, the door. How do we find it?"

"There should be a- there!" Max scurried again, this time to a stack of boxes. "Can you help me with-"

David pulled the boxes out of the way with a groan of exertion - behind was a row of lockers. Max looked again, something guiding her to the second one from the right. It was locked, a single combination padlock. "Shoot."

Chloe and Rachel shared a grin. Aww.

"I don't remember the combination. Can somebody shoot this off?"

David butted in. "A gunshot in here will deafen us all - and lead anything in earshot right to us. Nobody is shooting the thing."

Max nodded. "Fair point. Um. Oh! Dana, could you hit this with your pole?"

"Happy to help, Maxie." Dana answered with a teasing smile.

Max groaned. "Not you too. Just- Please?"

Dana laughed, readied up, and swung. Even the cheap lock could resist that, but it cracked enough of the rust and mildew that she could step forward and slide the pole into the lock. She gestured over to Chloe for help, and the two of them grabbed either end of the pole and twisted. The old lock broke immediately.

Max opened the door, and pulled out an odd looking key. Most only had one blade, this had six, pointing out in different directions to form an odd 3d flower-like shape. She walked over to the middle of the corridor and scraped some gunk off the floor. "Okay, found it. Everyone needs to come stand near me." She plugged the key into the floor and the head unfolded into something oddly like a TNT plunger.

Everyone just looked at it for a moment before coming in close. Max grabbed the handles and twisted.

The corridor turned. The whole corridor actually turned. Well, not the whole corridor, but most of it. The lines that Max had found on the floor that apparently tipped her off were seams where this revolving platform connected to the rest of the system. It shook and screeched like a distressed guinea pig as apparently unused-for-decades machinery ground into use. Max turned it a full 90 degrees, revealing another corridor on one side, leading downward to another grate. The other side now lead to an empty wall.

"I guess we go down there now?" Chloe asked. Everyone else remained speechless at the bizarre piece of engineering.

—

The grate lead them down to a new level, still of the same stone and mildew but somehow older-seeming. This, Chloe concluded, was the original layer that Max had been talking about. Shit, for a couple centuries old, the place was doing okay.

Max plugged the key - Chloe hadn't even noticed she'd moved it - into another hole down here and turned it. There was more grinding from upstairs, and something ahead of them clicked open. Chloe turned to look. It was a laboratory. A crappy one. She'd been in enough of Blackwell's science classes to know what a crappy science lab looked like, and this was it.

Things were cracked and scattered around, beakers and bunsens and other sciency doodads she couldn't begin to remember the names of just thrown about like- something had attacked here. The infected?

"This… shouldn't be here." Max said slowly, from her side. Chloe hadn't even heard her move. "Be careful."

Chloe scoffed. "You worry too much, Maxie. We're always-" Max suddenly reached out and grabbed Chloe's sleeve, just in time to pull her back from the sewer edge she almost walked off. She looked down briefly to the river of effluvia and shuddered. She stepped back, looked at Max. "I'll be careful."

Max smirked knowingly, and Rachel gave a little chuckle.

They poked around the lab, finding more equipment none of us could name, and an improvised containment chamber with several dead creatures inside. Chloe leaned over and elbowed Rachel. "Sewer Gators."

Rachel rolled her eyes and elbowed back.

The only other interesting thing they found was a journal, a bulky leather-bound book packed with extra pages and diagrams and notations. Juliet turned to the last pages. "Wow. This guy was definitely several sheets short of sane. Apparently we're on the right track though - he wanted to be close to the Prescott labs, but not too close. There's some sort of entry-way nearby. They fired him, so he stole his prototypes and tried to perfect them here and thought he needed some of their supplies to make it work." She read through some more. "He keeps talking about himself in the third person." She gently closed the book and returned it to the desk. "If anyone else wants it, it's there, but I'm good."

They continued on, leaving the lab and journal behind. There'd be enough crazy ahead, they didn't need to bring more.

As they left, Chloe voiced a random thought, "I wonder where the dude even was."

"You didn't see the body in the cage?" Max responded.

"Oh. Right."

—

"It's… an underground funicular." Rachel stared at the underground funicular, waiting there silently at the platform, nothing but darkness beyond it. "How rich are these assholes?"

"The Prescott Foundation is the 27th richest corporation on the planet." Rose supplied. Everyone looked at her. "They were one of your father's donors. He… he liked their mission of medical help."

Rachel snorted, but said nothing. Rose flushed.

It said a lot that the group didn't comment on the half-dozen unmoving corpses scattered around the platform.

"So, is this our way out?" Chloe asked, an uncharacteristic twinge of hope in her voice.

Max shrugged. "It seems likely. I think Mom said there's supposed to be an underground monorail down here, so maybe this leads down to it?"

"An underground funicular to the underground monorail? Doesn't that seem a bit, I don't know, extra?"

"Dana, we're in an underground base built by an evil company that let zombies loose on our home state. Extra is pretty much the rule of the goddamn day." Chloe quipped.

Dana snorted. "Okay, fair point. Though again, I'm from Wisconsin."

"That's just cheesy."

Dana poked her.

"So, how does this thing even work?"

"It's a funicular, Chloe. It's a platform that goes up and down, like an angled elevator."

"I know what a fucking funicular is, dude. I mean like is there a key, a card, a big button that says 'Push me to go', shit like that." Chloe scowled at her. "How do we use it?"

"I imagine something on the panel over there."