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rallamajoopMonday was a public holiday, which was awesome apart from the bit where it meant one extra day without even limited Internet access during work hours. *twitches slightly* I shall have to try to get the rest of chapter 29 done by Friday to catch up a bit - it's mostly edited already, so it should be doable. (...and now I notice that I'm not even seriously hoping we'll have our net connection woes sorted out by then anymore. The delays just go on and on. ><)
Other parts: The original ficlets, Plot notes, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18, Part 19, Part 20, Part 21, Part 22, Part 23, Part 24, Part 25, Part 26, Part 27, Side Story 1
Twice on the way to the Complex they stopped to rest and feed the birds and to stretch their own legs between the long hours of flying. Their supplies had not included bird-food, but feeding these creatures turned out to be a matter of finding a herd of deadland beasts from the air and then landing somewhere where Doumeki could pick one off with a rifle, then leaving the birds to tear it apart with ruthless efficiency. Flying this long was hard work for them, Yuzuriha explained to the others, but nothing the birds couldn’t rise to as long as they were kept well fuelled.
Most of the effort of flying seemed to be in the take-off and landing; once aloft the birds could glide long distances with scarcely a wing-beat. The ride was therefore only a little less smooth than what Doumeki was used to from years of driving ground vehicles over rough terrain. The view from the sky was a different matter, like nothing life on the plains had ever given Kurogane’s camp the chance to see before. Straight-forward and suspicious as he always was, Doumeki did not find much reason to relish the experience.
Fye and Kurogane seemed to be dealing similarly well with the idea of flying, though Syaoran stumbled off his bird at their first stop and looked nauseous. Considering the theme of the rest of the thoughts he must have had looping through his mind continuously all through that day, even motion sickness might have counted as a welcome distraction.
There were two seats to each saddle, but Yuzuriha had directed them to spread out their weight as much as possible by seating only one rider on each bird, with Syaoran and herself the ones to share the last one. There was no bridle or other means to steer on any harness except Yuzuriha's, but they weren't needed as the other three birds were trained to follow hers without prompting. She'd been given a compass and a map for navigation, which became an interesting exercise working from their vantage height. The Complex would be in view long before they arrived.
By the second stop it was no longer possible to avoid the subject of what was ahead. Yuzuriha spread out the map and called them all over to show off how far they'd come, and even allowing that the landscape had little to offer the in the way of landmarks by which they could accurately judge their position, they all agreed there couldn’t be more than a few hours travel left to go. She was quite proud of their progress, and considering that she'd taken them as far in a matter of hours as they'd once travelled over a number of weeks, it wasn't unjustified. With the Complex looming so close, her curiosity was rising too.
"So, we haven't rushed all this way just to stand around outside again and wait for your friends to show up, right?” she asked. "You are going inside this time, aren’t you?"
"That's the plan," Doumeki replied, though the reality was that the closer they got, the more aware he was that they didn't have one. There'd been no opportunity to discuss anything since the journey started, and back a the camp in the direct aftermath of the raid the question of whether they’d be able to get here at all had been so overwhelming that planning past that hurdle made no sense. Without scarcely even a word needed aloud the remaining members of Kurogane's camp had found themselves of one mind regarding what had to be done, or at least attempted. It hadn’t mattered how. It didn't matter whether anything like this had ever been done before, or how difficult it might be or whether it was even possible at all. Without the four prisoners there was no camp to continue.
The only thing that may have differed were their reasons. Syaoran would go to the ends of the earth for Sakura because he didn't know who he was without her. That much was given - the only choice the others had was whether to make a useless attempt to dissuade him, to help him or to let him go alone. Fye for himself might have been able to go on without Chi, but he would have been a lesser being without her. She represented so much of his life’s work and so much of what he could offer the camp, and even if he may have been only half serious when he’d declared that the others would never make it there and back without him, he was terribly glad to have a clear cut excuse to go too. There was probably more to Kurogane's reason, but if there hadn't been, supporting the others might well have been enough. There’d been enough times in the past when the burdens of leadership had meant he’d had to sacrifice one camp member for the good of the others, but this was something he had to do. Doumeki found little reason to examine his own motives so closely. He might have gone just for Sakura and Syaoran's sake if the rest of the camp had remained intact; and he might not have gone for Watanuki's alone if no-one else had gone, but it would have been a lie to say he needed any more reason than the look he'd seen on Watanuki's face before he left.
Everyone was going because everyone else was going. The reasoning went little further than that. Unfortunately, neither did their idea of how this was going to be achieved.
Doumeki raised his eyes questioningly to the others. For all his determination, in these matters he was out of his depth. It wasn't his job to plan.
"I would hazard," said Fye in his roundabout way, "that getting inside will be the least of our problems. It's after that we'll have to find out where they've been taken, whether they'll be imprisoned or taken straight to the laboratories, how well they're guarded… As for navigating something like a Complex, they aren’t small, and from the way they’re organised you could be forgiven for wondering how everything on the inside was made to fit at all."
"We'll have to improvise once we're inside?" Doumeki guessed.
"Stealth is probably our best hope, as long as we can manage it," said Fye. "How long that will be, well, it's amazing what you can hide in a place like that."
There was silence for a bit before Kurogane said, "We can narrow it down a bit. They won’t be outside the administration area. That cuts out most of the Complex before we start."
"True, true, there are a few things we can take as a given," Fye agreed. Sounding more serious, he added, "She'll be waiting for us there, won't she?"
Again, there was a silence that went slightly too long before Kurogane's reply. "No doubt. There's no-one one else who would have dared given an order like that."
Fye nodded absently. “What do you think our odds are of getting through all this while avoiding her notice?” There was silence from Kurogane. “Ah. That good, hm? I suppose we can but try.”
For the second time, Doumeki was aware something was being discussed that was beyond the knowledge of anyone else present. "Is this something we should know about?"
"We did mention it before in passing,” said Fye, “It won’t be any ordinary Complex our friends have been taken to. This particular installation happens to be the very first that was ever built. It’s the residence of certain persons who originated the whole project, and still have a central role in administrating everything to this day. People there… how can I explain this? They take commands directly from the highest authority in the chain, rather than muddling their way along according to rules and guidelines the way the other Complexes do. It means things function a bit differently there. As for how that helps us plan," he snuck a look at Kurogane, "well, not very much, I'm afraid."
"This isn't the sort of mission we can plan for," said Kurogane. "The first step is still to get there and get inside. We won't know our options until then."
It may have been truer to say you couldn't plan something this crazy.
***
In the final hour of the flight Watanuki remembered Kohane and instantly had another reason to feel terrible for being so selfish as to omit her from his thoughts so long. What had he been doing letting himself mope and feel sorry for himself when he was the only person she had to count on? She had the most reason to fear the Complexes of all of them. After all she’d experienced at the hands of people like these before she had to be terrified of going back – and Sakura was bound to be just as scared. Chi too, although Watanuki had scarcely had much chance to interact with her the whole time he’d been in the camp any blind fool could have told she was much more than a simple machine, and he hadn’t the faintest clue what might be done with her after they arrived. It was his job to be the strong one here, to take care of all of them.
But hardly had Watanuki finished the thought when despair set in anew, for even if they weren’t all separated on landing, what could he do? How could he possibly tell Kohane it would all be alright when she knew more about the Complexes than he could even imagine? How could he expect her to trust him at all when every implicit promise he’d ever made that she’d be safe in their camp had become a lie? He’d never been able to so much as take care of himself, let alone those he cared about – Himawari or anyone else.
His first view of the Complex when they landed at last was masked by obscuring mist. In his dazed state he was unable to make any sense of it – fog so thick that it became impenetrable beyond a few metres away. It didn’t seem to impede the armoured men who were now bustling them out of their transports, barking at their captives with the occasional instruction, most of which Watanuki found himself moving to follow without quite registering the words. He saw Chi being lead down the gangplank with a little more care, and stop to incline her head upwards, staring into what looked to Watanuki like no more than a grey blur. He saw Sakura and Kohane being lead out of the other machine a short distance away and huddle close together under the eye of the guards, the girls both squinting around themselves until they found Watanuki’s silhouette in the gloom.
The armour the guards were wearing masked almost all emotive signs, but several of those not immediately occupied were showing signs of unease, shivering and glancing around uncomfortably, the body language of people who couldn’t make up their minds what was disturbing them. Two were speaking not more than a few paces away, but over the voices in Watanuki’s ears he could hardly make out a word.
The fog was a storm-cloud of more ghosts than Watanuki had ever seen in one place before. It was no wonder he hadn’t recognised that sooner in his state, he’d never imagined anything like this before, not even after a lifetime of never quite seeing the horizon behind a haze of transparent bodies. The only time he’d ever seen anything like this many there hadn’t even been the room for anything on this kind of scale – he’d been indoors, kneeling on the floor in the small building that had never entirely stopped appearing in his nightmares, on the day the members of his last gang had gone too far…
Watanuki’s head snapped up so sharply that the guard behind him jumped and brought his gun up with a yelp.
That couldn’t be, that… it didn’t build up this slowly and it was never this big – his life wasn’t even in danger! The guards may not have been gentle but they’d made it as clear as possible that they meant no harm to any of their captives. As many times as Watanuki had ever been kidnapped at gunpoint and as many people who’d died, that much had always been heartbreakingly constant. He was in no danger of losing his life now, he knew that, and so this couldn’t be what was happening, it didn’t make any sense!
But did he really know that was how it worked? The men who’d triggered the disaster at Kohane’s first Complex had probably had no real intent to harm her, but they’d scared her so badly the ghosts had run a rampage that had overrun the whole installation. After such an experience, who was to say that being returned to such a place wouldn’t be enough to scare her just as badly? And it wasn’t just Kohane, all three of them were here at once, all three of them more petrified by everything that had happened and what was yet to come or what might happen to the friends they’d left behind than they’d ever had cause to be in their lives. This wasn’t like any of the gangs that had taken Watanuki before – all groups of vicious thugs whom even he had barely been able to miss. He’d never been taken by anyone like these people, nor had he ever had so much to lose.
If this was real, if it happened here – now… oh god. There had to be a way to stop this, some way to make themselves calm down before it was too late, he thought hysterically. But what? How could they make these people understand the danger? Did they know what happened at the other Complex? They must have had at least the beginning of an understanding if they’d gone so far to get hold of these specific prisoners, but Watanuki couldn’t imagine they would have knowingly brought three people with the capacity to have hundreds of people killed to another Complex. There wasn’t going to be any way Watanuki could explain the danger that wouldn’t sound like a desperate attempt to intimidate their captors into freeing them. It would sound like madness.
Watanuki was in such a state he eventually had to be carried a lot of the way between the helipad and the holding facility. He didn’t resist much and his captors didn’t waste time; their instructions on what was to be done the minute the facility was sealed had been very clear.
***
From the air, the Complex appeared as a familiar chain of miniature bubbles, not so different to how Doumeki remembered them from his first visit, though the angle was different and the scale even smaller. From the Complex below their approach must have looked like nothing more interesting than the flight of a flock of deadland birds – something that would be of no remote interest to anyone asked with lookout. They'd managed this quite well, seen from that side.
At Kurogane's direction Yuzuriha brought them down behind a low hill on the east side, where she remained, loudly bemoaning the hard duty of staying to mind the birds while the others had all the fun. All but the top of the tall white wall beneath the upper dome was hidden from their view, and they could have hidden there out of sight for as long as they needed, but now that they were this close Doumeki found himself finally beginning to question Fye's assertion that getting inside that stronghold would be the least of the challenges ahead. Syaoran, seeing the massive Complex for the first time, stared at it in awe.
"How are we going to get into that?" he gasped. "Is there a door somewhere? Won't it be guarded? Can we..."
"Yes, and very much yes," replied Fye. "No matter to us. We're taking what you might call the back way in."
Born in an era when the concept of backdoors had become largely obsolete, Syaoran frowned in incomprehension. "Back way...?"
"He's talking about an escape tunnel," said Kurogane, who was trudging heavily around the bottom of the nearest hill with his eyes on the ground.
"That would be the official term," agreed Fye, finding the chance to slip back into his storyteller mode. "The Complex you see is really no more than the tip of the iceberg, impressive a tip as it is. A lot of the infrastructure is dug underground - reasons of insulation and such. If the Complex ever came under attack or if there was a fire, there could be all sorts of reasons why it might not be safe for people to get to the main doors, so around every Complex..."
There as a dull clunking noise made by something solid hitting metal. "Here," called Kurogane, scraping loose soil off something buried beneath with one hand.
Fye gave an exaggerated sigh. "Not bad dramatic timing, but couldn't you have given me another minute? I was just getting to the part about the exits being concealed from the outside to keep outsiders like us from trying what we're about to do."
"Now you're done with that part, you can help me get it open," said Kurogane, unmoved.
What Kurogane had uncovered did not look like any kind of trapdoor so much as a small electronic panel lined with buttons set under a digital screen, all set in a flat metal surface that vanished away under the soil on all sides; obviously just one part of something much larger which remained concealed. At the press of a button the screen came to life, showing a blinking cursor.
"How does it work?" asked Syaoran.
"It's the locking mechanism," said Kurogane. "We'll need the password. How many tries do you think we'll get before it alerts the security system?" The last was directed at Fye.
"Four or five was the usual limit," Fye replied. "If everything's still connected up. Of course, the doors were designed to open automatically if the power was cut in an emergency, but they'd also have been set up to guard against a hostile gang stumbling on to them and trying to force them open, so anything we do from out here to cut the power will definitely set off an alarm somewhere."
"The password to this kind of system could be anything, couldn't it?" said Doumeki. He didn’t have the head for this kind of puzzle, but there were a lot of buttons to choose from.
"If it were passwords for the northern Complex in use about five years ago, I could recite you the definite list," said Fye. "Whether they'll work here and now, that we're about to find out."
He knelt down by the panel and punched in a sequence which translated into a series of letters on the screen above. When finished, the panel beeped angrily at him and the letters vanished. The plate below did not budge. Two more attempts with different combinations produced the same result. With each failure, Doumeki found himself tensing a little more.
"I suppose it was a bit much to hope for that they'd leave the most obvious options active," Fye said. "We can probably risk one more try here, then I suppose we'll have to give it a couple of hours for the security protocol to reset or try to find ourselves another exit point. Assuming they haven't tightened security." He rubbed the back of his neck, still smiling, but the gesture was unmistakably and uncharacteristically nervous. "Would anyone else like to do the honours of making the last guess?"
Doumeki's memory threw up a recollection of Fye calling Sakura his lucky charm. Superstition would get the better of anyone at a moment like this.
"Try 'Amaterasu'," said Kurogane. All eyes turned on him, Fye's from beneath raised eyebrows.
"Really, if you knew an entry code from the start, you could have saved me..." Fye began.
"It's no more likely to have been kept active than any of yours are," said Kurogane before he could go further. "It's not much newer either. It isn't a code many people would ever have been given, so if it's still active there's a chance someone inside will be keeping an eye out for anyone who's using it. We’re taking a risk either way."
Wordlessly, Fye keyed in the appropriate nine letters. There was a beep from the mechanism of a much friendlier tone, followed by a hissing noise as the two doors swung slowly downwards, dislodging a shallow layer of soil to rain down into the depths below and forcing Fye to step quickly backwards. From the far side of the trapdoor a staircase lead downwards underground.
"Seems," said Fye, "that the old users of that code of yours might not be so unwelcome after all."
Other parts: The original ficlets, Plot notes, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18, Part 19, Part 20, Part 21, Part 22, Part 23, Part 24, Part 25, Part 26, Part 27, Side Story 1
Twice on the way to the Complex they stopped to rest and feed the birds and to stretch their own legs between the long hours of flying. Their supplies had not included bird-food, but feeding these creatures turned out to be a matter of finding a herd of deadland beasts from the air and then landing somewhere where Doumeki could pick one off with a rifle, then leaving the birds to tear it apart with ruthless efficiency. Flying this long was hard work for them, Yuzuriha explained to the others, but nothing the birds couldn’t rise to as long as they were kept well fuelled.
Most of the effort of flying seemed to be in the take-off and landing; once aloft the birds could glide long distances with scarcely a wing-beat. The ride was therefore only a little less smooth than what Doumeki was used to from years of driving ground vehicles over rough terrain. The view from the sky was a different matter, like nothing life on the plains had ever given Kurogane’s camp the chance to see before. Straight-forward and suspicious as he always was, Doumeki did not find much reason to relish the experience.
Fye and Kurogane seemed to be dealing similarly well with the idea of flying, though Syaoran stumbled off his bird at their first stop and looked nauseous. Considering the theme of the rest of the thoughts he must have had looping through his mind continuously all through that day, even motion sickness might have counted as a welcome distraction.
There were two seats to each saddle, but Yuzuriha had directed them to spread out their weight as much as possible by seating only one rider on each bird, with Syaoran and herself the ones to share the last one. There was no bridle or other means to steer on any harness except Yuzuriha's, but they weren't needed as the other three birds were trained to follow hers without prompting. She'd been given a compass and a map for navigation, which became an interesting exercise working from their vantage height. The Complex would be in view long before they arrived.
By the second stop it was no longer possible to avoid the subject of what was ahead. Yuzuriha spread out the map and called them all over to show off how far they'd come, and even allowing that the landscape had little to offer the in the way of landmarks by which they could accurately judge their position, they all agreed there couldn’t be more than a few hours travel left to go. She was quite proud of their progress, and considering that she'd taken them as far in a matter of hours as they'd once travelled over a number of weeks, it wasn't unjustified. With the Complex looming so close, her curiosity was rising too.
"So, we haven't rushed all this way just to stand around outside again and wait for your friends to show up, right?” she asked. "You are going inside this time, aren’t you?"
"That's the plan," Doumeki replied, though the reality was that the closer they got, the more aware he was that they didn't have one. There'd been no opportunity to discuss anything since the journey started, and back a the camp in the direct aftermath of the raid the question of whether they’d be able to get here at all had been so overwhelming that planning past that hurdle made no sense. Without scarcely even a word needed aloud the remaining members of Kurogane's camp had found themselves of one mind regarding what had to be done, or at least attempted. It hadn’t mattered how. It didn't matter whether anything like this had ever been done before, or how difficult it might be or whether it was even possible at all. Without the four prisoners there was no camp to continue.
The only thing that may have differed were their reasons. Syaoran would go to the ends of the earth for Sakura because he didn't know who he was without her. That much was given - the only choice the others had was whether to make a useless attempt to dissuade him, to help him or to let him go alone. Fye for himself might have been able to go on without Chi, but he would have been a lesser being without her. She represented so much of his life’s work and so much of what he could offer the camp, and even if he may have been only half serious when he’d declared that the others would never make it there and back without him, he was terribly glad to have a clear cut excuse to go too. There was probably more to Kurogane's reason, but if there hadn't been, supporting the others might well have been enough. There’d been enough times in the past when the burdens of leadership had meant he’d had to sacrifice one camp member for the good of the others, but this was something he had to do. Doumeki found little reason to examine his own motives so closely. He might have gone just for Sakura and Syaoran's sake if the rest of the camp had remained intact; and he might not have gone for Watanuki's alone if no-one else had gone, but it would have been a lie to say he needed any more reason than the look he'd seen on Watanuki's face before he left.
Everyone was going because everyone else was going. The reasoning went little further than that. Unfortunately, neither did their idea of how this was going to be achieved.
Doumeki raised his eyes questioningly to the others. For all his determination, in these matters he was out of his depth. It wasn't his job to plan.
"I would hazard," said Fye in his roundabout way, "that getting inside will be the least of our problems. It's after that we'll have to find out where they've been taken, whether they'll be imprisoned or taken straight to the laboratories, how well they're guarded… As for navigating something like a Complex, they aren’t small, and from the way they’re organised you could be forgiven for wondering how everything on the inside was made to fit at all."
"We'll have to improvise once we're inside?" Doumeki guessed.
"Stealth is probably our best hope, as long as we can manage it," said Fye. "How long that will be, well, it's amazing what you can hide in a place like that."
There was silence for a bit before Kurogane said, "We can narrow it down a bit. They won’t be outside the administration area. That cuts out most of the Complex before we start."
"True, true, there are a few things we can take as a given," Fye agreed. Sounding more serious, he added, "She'll be waiting for us there, won't she?"
Again, there was a silence that went slightly too long before Kurogane's reply. "No doubt. There's no-one one else who would have dared given an order like that."
Fye nodded absently. “What do you think our odds are of getting through all this while avoiding her notice?” There was silence from Kurogane. “Ah. That good, hm? I suppose we can but try.”
For the second time, Doumeki was aware something was being discussed that was beyond the knowledge of anyone else present. "Is this something we should know about?"
"We did mention it before in passing,” said Fye, “It won’t be any ordinary Complex our friends have been taken to. This particular installation happens to be the very first that was ever built. It’s the residence of certain persons who originated the whole project, and still have a central role in administrating everything to this day. People there… how can I explain this? They take commands directly from the highest authority in the chain, rather than muddling their way along according to rules and guidelines the way the other Complexes do. It means things function a bit differently there. As for how that helps us plan," he snuck a look at Kurogane, "well, not very much, I'm afraid."
"This isn't the sort of mission we can plan for," said Kurogane. "The first step is still to get there and get inside. We won't know our options until then."
It may have been truer to say you couldn't plan something this crazy.
***
In the final hour of the flight Watanuki remembered Kohane and instantly had another reason to feel terrible for being so selfish as to omit her from his thoughts so long. What had he been doing letting himself mope and feel sorry for himself when he was the only person she had to count on? She had the most reason to fear the Complexes of all of them. After all she’d experienced at the hands of people like these before she had to be terrified of going back – and Sakura was bound to be just as scared. Chi too, although Watanuki had scarcely had much chance to interact with her the whole time he’d been in the camp any blind fool could have told she was much more than a simple machine, and he hadn’t the faintest clue what might be done with her after they arrived. It was his job to be the strong one here, to take care of all of them.
But hardly had Watanuki finished the thought when despair set in anew, for even if they weren’t all separated on landing, what could he do? How could he possibly tell Kohane it would all be alright when she knew more about the Complexes than he could even imagine? How could he expect her to trust him at all when every implicit promise he’d ever made that she’d be safe in their camp had become a lie? He’d never been able to so much as take care of himself, let alone those he cared about – Himawari or anyone else.
His first view of the Complex when they landed at last was masked by obscuring mist. In his dazed state he was unable to make any sense of it – fog so thick that it became impenetrable beyond a few metres away. It didn’t seem to impede the armoured men who were now bustling them out of their transports, barking at their captives with the occasional instruction, most of which Watanuki found himself moving to follow without quite registering the words. He saw Chi being lead down the gangplank with a little more care, and stop to incline her head upwards, staring into what looked to Watanuki like no more than a grey blur. He saw Sakura and Kohane being lead out of the other machine a short distance away and huddle close together under the eye of the guards, the girls both squinting around themselves until they found Watanuki’s silhouette in the gloom.
The armour the guards were wearing masked almost all emotive signs, but several of those not immediately occupied were showing signs of unease, shivering and glancing around uncomfortably, the body language of people who couldn’t make up their minds what was disturbing them. Two were speaking not more than a few paces away, but over the voices in Watanuki’s ears he could hardly make out a word.
The fog was a storm-cloud of more ghosts than Watanuki had ever seen in one place before. It was no wonder he hadn’t recognised that sooner in his state, he’d never imagined anything like this before, not even after a lifetime of never quite seeing the horizon behind a haze of transparent bodies. The only time he’d ever seen anything like this many there hadn’t even been the room for anything on this kind of scale – he’d been indoors, kneeling on the floor in the small building that had never entirely stopped appearing in his nightmares, on the day the members of his last gang had gone too far…
Watanuki’s head snapped up so sharply that the guard behind him jumped and brought his gun up with a yelp.
That couldn’t be, that… it didn’t build up this slowly and it was never this big – his life wasn’t even in danger! The guards may not have been gentle but they’d made it as clear as possible that they meant no harm to any of their captives. As many times as Watanuki had ever been kidnapped at gunpoint and as many people who’d died, that much had always been heartbreakingly constant. He was in no danger of losing his life now, he knew that, and so this couldn’t be what was happening, it didn’t make any sense!
But did he really know that was how it worked? The men who’d triggered the disaster at Kohane’s first Complex had probably had no real intent to harm her, but they’d scared her so badly the ghosts had run a rampage that had overrun the whole installation. After such an experience, who was to say that being returned to such a place wouldn’t be enough to scare her just as badly? And it wasn’t just Kohane, all three of them were here at once, all three of them more petrified by everything that had happened and what was yet to come or what might happen to the friends they’d left behind than they’d ever had cause to be in their lives. This wasn’t like any of the gangs that had taken Watanuki before – all groups of vicious thugs whom even he had barely been able to miss. He’d never been taken by anyone like these people, nor had he ever had so much to lose.
If this was real, if it happened here – now… oh god. There had to be a way to stop this, some way to make themselves calm down before it was too late, he thought hysterically. But what? How could they make these people understand the danger? Did they know what happened at the other Complex? They must have had at least the beginning of an understanding if they’d gone so far to get hold of these specific prisoners, but Watanuki couldn’t imagine they would have knowingly brought three people with the capacity to have hundreds of people killed to another Complex. There wasn’t going to be any way Watanuki could explain the danger that wouldn’t sound like a desperate attempt to intimidate their captors into freeing them. It would sound like madness.
Watanuki was in such a state he eventually had to be carried a lot of the way between the helipad and the holding facility. He didn’t resist much and his captors didn’t waste time; their instructions on what was to be done the minute the facility was sealed had been very clear.
***
From the air, the Complex appeared as a familiar chain of miniature bubbles, not so different to how Doumeki remembered them from his first visit, though the angle was different and the scale even smaller. From the Complex below their approach must have looked like nothing more interesting than the flight of a flock of deadland birds – something that would be of no remote interest to anyone asked with lookout. They'd managed this quite well, seen from that side.
At Kurogane's direction Yuzuriha brought them down behind a low hill on the east side, where she remained, loudly bemoaning the hard duty of staying to mind the birds while the others had all the fun. All but the top of the tall white wall beneath the upper dome was hidden from their view, and they could have hidden there out of sight for as long as they needed, but now that they were this close Doumeki found himself finally beginning to question Fye's assertion that getting inside that stronghold would be the least of the challenges ahead. Syaoran, seeing the massive Complex for the first time, stared at it in awe.
"How are we going to get into that?" he gasped. "Is there a door somewhere? Won't it be guarded? Can we..."
"Yes, and very much yes," replied Fye. "No matter to us. We're taking what you might call the back way in."
Born in an era when the concept of backdoors had become largely obsolete, Syaoran frowned in incomprehension. "Back way...?"
"He's talking about an escape tunnel," said Kurogane, who was trudging heavily around the bottom of the nearest hill with his eyes on the ground.
"That would be the official term," agreed Fye, finding the chance to slip back into his storyteller mode. "The Complex you see is really no more than the tip of the iceberg, impressive a tip as it is. A lot of the infrastructure is dug underground - reasons of insulation and such. If the Complex ever came under attack or if there was a fire, there could be all sorts of reasons why it might not be safe for people to get to the main doors, so around every Complex..."
There as a dull clunking noise made by something solid hitting metal. "Here," called Kurogane, scraping loose soil off something buried beneath with one hand.
Fye gave an exaggerated sigh. "Not bad dramatic timing, but couldn't you have given me another minute? I was just getting to the part about the exits being concealed from the outside to keep outsiders like us from trying what we're about to do."
"Now you're done with that part, you can help me get it open," said Kurogane, unmoved.
What Kurogane had uncovered did not look like any kind of trapdoor so much as a small electronic panel lined with buttons set under a digital screen, all set in a flat metal surface that vanished away under the soil on all sides; obviously just one part of something much larger which remained concealed. At the press of a button the screen came to life, showing a blinking cursor.
"How does it work?" asked Syaoran.
"It's the locking mechanism," said Kurogane. "We'll need the password. How many tries do you think we'll get before it alerts the security system?" The last was directed at Fye.
"Four or five was the usual limit," Fye replied. "If everything's still connected up. Of course, the doors were designed to open automatically if the power was cut in an emergency, but they'd also have been set up to guard against a hostile gang stumbling on to them and trying to force them open, so anything we do from out here to cut the power will definitely set off an alarm somewhere."
"The password to this kind of system could be anything, couldn't it?" said Doumeki. He didn’t have the head for this kind of puzzle, but there were a lot of buttons to choose from.
"If it were passwords for the northern Complex in use about five years ago, I could recite you the definite list," said Fye. "Whether they'll work here and now, that we're about to find out."
He knelt down by the panel and punched in a sequence which translated into a series of letters on the screen above. When finished, the panel beeped angrily at him and the letters vanished. The plate below did not budge. Two more attempts with different combinations produced the same result. With each failure, Doumeki found himself tensing a little more.
"I suppose it was a bit much to hope for that they'd leave the most obvious options active," Fye said. "We can probably risk one more try here, then I suppose we'll have to give it a couple of hours for the security protocol to reset or try to find ourselves another exit point. Assuming they haven't tightened security." He rubbed the back of his neck, still smiling, but the gesture was unmistakably and uncharacteristically nervous. "Would anyone else like to do the honours of making the last guess?"
Doumeki's memory threw up a recollection of Fye calling Sakura his lucky charm. Superstition would get the better of anyone at a moment like this.
"Try 'Amaterasu'," said Kurogane. All eyes turned on him, Fye's from beneath raised eyebrows.
"Really, if you knew an entry code from the start, you could have saved me..." Fye began.
"It's no more likely to have been kept active than any of yours are," said Kurogane before he could go further. "It's not much newer either. It isn't a code many people would ever have been given, so if it's still active there's a chance someone inside will be keeping an eye out for anyone who's using it. We’re taking a risk either way."
Wordlessly, Fye keyed in the appropriate nine letters. There was a beep from the mechanism of a much friendlier tone, followed by a hissing noise as the two doors swung slowly downwards, dislodging a shallow layer of soil to rain down into the depths below and forcing Fye to step quickly backwards. From the far side of the trapdoor a staircase lead downwards underground.
"Seems," said Fye, "that the old users of that code of yours might not be so unwelcome after all."
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-06-03 03:19 am (UTC)So 'she' is Kandappa? Evil!Yuuko? (Evil!Yuuko would be totally scary). And why do I think Tomoyo's going to be turning up and gently upbraiding Kurogane at some point...
I remain very interested in what happens next.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-04 03:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-04 04:35 am (UTC)it didn’t build up this slowly and it was never this big – his life wasn’t even in danger!
Just pondering this some more: maybe this gathering of ghosts has been happening for some time and 'she' wanted to borrow some exterminators, in which case Watanuki and friends might get a cup of tea and an apology for the roughness of the invitation.
Or maybe not. Your lips are sealed...
no subject
Date: 2008-06-03 03:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-04 03:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-03 01:47 pm (UTC)Good job! We is wanting moar!
no subject
Date: 2008-06-04 03:44 am (UTC)Thank you! I will definitely be trying my best to get the next chapter up early.
Even if I do half expect to have to find somewhere to hide after it goes up. >.>no subject
Date: 2008-06-04 03:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-03 11:17 pm (UTC)Pretty much expected Watanuki to be frozen inactive - but am glad he's at least trying to think. Hope for the future and all that.
Poor Chii, I hope they don't break her.
Kuro-pon and Fye and their secret lives. *fufufu*
Dunno who the Ultimate!bad guy is, you've got most of the CLAMP verse - so Yuuko or Tomoyo. Tomoyo would be Kuro's Complex, so Yuuko it is!
o_O
I'm not feeling very warm and fuzzy towards Doumeki at the moment. Nuh-huh.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-04 03:56 am (UTC)They do know how to be careful with delicate equipment.
The part we should be more worried about is whether erasing her memory drives is the first thing they'd do with her.Dunno who the Ultimate!bad guy is, you've got most of the CLAMP verse - so Yuuko or Tomoyo. Tomoyo would be Kuro's Complex, so Yuuko it is!
All I can say is that you will have to wait and see. *g* (though I can guarantee you I'm not about to declare that there's a Complex around that is actually Tomoyo. Or anyone else with a personality. Er, that wasn't what you meant there, was it?)
Aw, what's Doumeki done?