CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Before the depravity lingering in the derelict tanks, Callen was slumped on his knees in trepidation. The flashlight he held illuminated the scientific coffin and Callen's eyes were locked on the eyeless sockets of his own lifeless image suspended in the powerless tank. The faint hiss of the sibling's air tanks was the only noise to cut the silence of the darkness. Callen shivered as the tingle of the reaper's fingers rolled down his spine. In the hollow sockets before him, he saw what wasn't and what was.
"Callen?" Ania asked after a few moments. "We have to go..."
Callen nodded slowly. "Yeah..." He sighed, but he made no attempt to move.
"No, like now." Ania said. "Our air..."
"Air," Callen whispered. He felt like he needed fresh air. He reached up to remove his mask.
Ania grabbed his arm. "What are you doing?" She asked angrily. "Arsine, remember? You in there?"
"I don't know..." Callen said. His eyes remained locked on his half decomposed face.
"I know this's hard, but let's focus. I know you have questions, I do too, but we have to get out of here so we can find the answers..." She said confidently. She stepped forward and rubbed her gloved hand on some of the rust and discoloration on the tank. "Besides, these tanks look like they have been here for a while...so, just staring at them will get us nowhere," Ania said.
"Yeah...but..." Callen looked towards the empty tank. "There are chemical stains on the floor and the tank looks as if it were opened with a crowbar...that's recent."
"Well," Ania shrugged. "Another reason to get out of here."
Callen nodded slowly.
"You alright?" Ania asked.
He shook his head slowly.
"Neither am I." She admitted. "What do you want to do?"
He stared hard at the tanks and clenched his fists. "Destroy it. All of it."
"I agree, but we still have to deal with the goblins outside and save Niknak," Ania said. "We need a plan before you blow this place up and we run out into a horde of goblins."
"Yeah."
"Come on, let's go back in the duct and go the other way that we didn't go through at the T-intersection. Hopefully, that will lead us to the basement and the exit."
He checked the dial on his air tank. "Only six minutes of air left. We don't have enough time to crawl through and we don't know how many secret rooms there are in this place." He looked towards the door that lead upstairs. "And there may be..."
She cut him off. "Whatever is above us might have some clues to who did this." She looked at the tanks.
He nodded. "Exactly what I was about to say. We should only be a few offices down from dad's, so the elevator is close...we can use that to get out."
"But what about..." Ania started to say.
"One step at a time," Callen said. "Let's get back to the basement in one piece first."
They climbed the stairway connected to the catwalk and took the door that led to a ravaged office. Callen turned as they left the lab to find that the door they left wasn't a secret door, unlike in his father's office. The door had been jammed open recently and its key card access panel still had the bypass wires dangling from it. There was a puddle of water on the floor from a leaky sprinkler, which had soaked many of the papers, books, and the office computer.
"Can we take these masks off?" Ania asked.
"No." Callen pointed at a blinking light in the corner of the room. "Concentration is still too high here because of the open door. We need to get further away first. Callen glanced around the room hoping to find some answers or at least a clue.
"Then, we don't have time to search..." Ania reminded Callen.
He nodded, reluctantly.
As they started climbing over the mess to reach the exit, a shattered picture frame partly hanging on the wall caught Callen's eye. There was a partial piece of paper that was stuck in the remnants of the frame. He moved to get a closer look. It looked like a diploma, but he couldn't tell where it was from. Much of the writing had been worn off by a combination of age and water.
He looked down to see the rest of the picture frame and some of the torn diploma. The only part of the name of the recipient could be read among the tears and stains. The letters spelled 'Sim.' "Who the hell is Sim?" Callen growled staring at the paper.
"No idea, but the coast is clear," Ania said. "But, let’s go...only three minutes of air left."
They ran into the hall. He passed the gremlin tank room and rounded the corner towards the elevator. Callen looked down to see the Lego figurine he gave Niknak resting near the door. He picked it up as Ania tapped the button, which luckily hadn't been touched since they came down from the control room. The door opened as a group of goblins came around the corner.
"Up or down?" Ania asked.
"Up," Callen said. "Back to the main control room. I can control everything from there, and we will be safe from goblins and arsine for a while."
They went into the control room and Callen, without delay, accessed the main computer.
"Can we get these suits off?" Ania asked.
He checked the gas monitoring system. "Yeah, it's fine." He said pulling the mask up and closed the oxygen valve. He put his goggles back on.
"Good, I hate these things. They are so uncomfortable." She pulled off her mask and closed the oxygen valve on the tank. "Callen, are there any recordings on the computer that might show us what happened with whatever was taken from that tank?"
"No, everything that was done here was deleted on this mainframe except for the files that I read earlier. The older stuff wasn't deleted perfectly, but the newer stuff was wiped clean. There is no way of finding out exactly who took the abomination of me out of that tank." He sighed. "Someone went to extremes to make sure that nothing could be traced."
"I wonder how whoever came in here got past the goblins," Ania said.
"Yeah, that would be nice to know," Callen said. "I would have initially guessed that they were just sneaky, but I saw an abandoned digging drill near the hole the goblins use to get in through the eyes of one of the robots. So, either the goblins let them or they had something to hold them back."
"We saw bodies of people from Nextigen downstairs, so I doubt they were friends," Ania stated.
"Assuming Nextigen was the one who opened this place. I don't think we have enough information to reach that conclusion."
"Well, since Matt taught you a lot about computers, don't you think there is a good chance that they would have the know-how to do what they did to the computers here?" Ania asked.
Callen shrugged. "Yeah, but, I don't know. We are just speculating. But, that doesn't mean I don't have a bad feeling about this." He opened the program that controlled maintenance functions and other things, including the facility destruction protocols.
"Yeah, about that and the getting out of here part..." Ania said. "What are we going to do? It has been fifteen minutes since Virette ordered the sorcerer to bring Niknak to her. So, I don't think we have much time to waste. We need a way out fast."
"I'm already on it," Callen said. "According to the maintenance programs, which weren't hit by that system wipe or virus, the cavern outside was an expansion that never got completed, so it has some facility functions."
"So, if we activate the self-destruct, then does that mean we burn up Forgeholm too?" Ania asked.
"Nope, I'm making some modifications to the programming now."
"What functions are out there? Maybe, we can use the facility to help us?"
"Hold on, I'm looking. There's a lot of damage, but..." He flipped through a few more controls and facility schematics. "Well, there is a functional sprinkler system and a power supply for the broken elevators, but the power supplies aren't functioning. There is some plumbing. So, I could open the valves and s
ome water would come out, but that's about it. I think the goblins are using the valves to power their mill...so, the mechanical controls might be manually overridden."
"Could we get the power supplies running and electrify the water underneath it?" Ania asked. "Then collapse their city into it?"
"I think that's too big of a job for what we got." Callen sighed. "I got nothing, but setting off the self-destruct in the facility and hoping that distracts the goblins via the hole they use to get in and then we slip past."
"I know you want to destroy this place, but won't that kill us and Niknak by collapsing everything on us?"
"No, the place is set up so destroying it won't be noticed. The facility sprays chemicals throughout the whole secret research facility that works like napalm and burns hot enough to destroy everything inside. Even the walls start to melt, but the fire system is designed using a pressure system that triggers at a certain point. The water sprays and puts out the fire. Effectively, it turns the whole place into more underground tunnels."
"So, the gremlins will see the fire?" She asked.
"Yup, from the tunnel and they will get wet from the sprinklers...they're designed to trigger immediately after the self-destruct is triggered. But, we should be out of Forgeholm by then."
"Because while they are in chaos dealing with the fire, we will sneak through the city, got it." She said. "But what about Niknak?"
"We will have to wait and ambush them as they start transporting him back to Virette." Callen nodded. "With some luck, it will work."
"Great, more relying on luck," Ania muttered. "And a half-assed plan..."
"Hey, it's gotten us this far hasn't it?" Callen said. "Besides, we're getting good at improvising."
"Yeah, but I really don't want to be here when the luck runs out." She said. "Anyway, I see one problem. This place is like an underground building with tunnels wrapping around it, right?" Callen nodded in response. "So, that means that Forgeholm could be one side and the hole could be on the other. We don't now where they are relative to each other. So, how do you know it will even distract them?"
"I don't." Callen said. "We are just going to have to hope it works and hope they are close enough."
"Callen, stop." She said. "You're not thinking straight. That plan is suicide. First, you tried to pull your mask off when you were looking at the cloned bodies of you, and now you're going to run into a village full of goblins that want to kill us. We have come all this way, gotten you cured, and now you want to die? You have fought all your life to live, and now that you can you are going to toss it away?" Tears began to gather in her eyes.
Callen shook his head. "No, I don't want to die." He said slowly.
"Well, let's get a better plan then!" She tried to hide the sniffle.
"But, I'm pretty much out of ideas."
"Well, since you're all logical, well, usually logical, unlike now, let’s start from the beginning." She looked around the room. "Since we got here, I have had one major question."
"Alright, what's that?" Callen asked.
"The question that I have been wondering is, how exactly was this place built? I mean, very few know about it, so general contractors are out of the question..."
"Yeah, I have wondered that myself." He looked back at the maintenance computer's screen. He began looking for construction details. It was simple to find. Running the facility was the core function of what this computer did. He saw the answer and glanced back at Ania with a grin. "The facility uses construction robots to maintain and build everything."
She nodded. "Well, I think we have our distraction."
"Yeah! I'll reactivate the construction sequence for the incomplete expansion that Forgeholm was built in." He flipped through the specifics of the programming and began editing it. "Alright, the first step is for the robots to remove clutter. Do you think the crap the goblins live in is classified as clutter?"
"I certainly hope so..."
"Good enough for me. So, robots and facility fires...I hope it works like we want it to.."
"How many robots are there?" Ania asked. "And do they have any weapons?"
"They're just maintenance and janitorial bots. No weapons, just mechanical arms with cleaning and construction tools. They float around on a propeller system like helicopters cleaning and fixing stuff." He said. "There are about a two hundred that are operational. I think that will provide enough of a distraction for us to sneak past. I'll set it so the bots start working on one side of the Forgeholm."
"Callen, since we have to move quickly and quietly, can we get the rest of these suits off?" Ania asked. "They aren't exactly the easiest things to move in."
"Yeah, I have to filter the arsine to get this place to allow me to activate the construction robots anyway. We won't need them when we go back into the basement to exit this place. Once the arsine is clear, we are going to have to give the bots some time to do their thing before we open the door. So, the time it will take for us to descend and open the door will be perfect."
Ania nodded. "Alright, are we just guessing when to run out or do you have a plan to open the door at the right time?"
"I'll sync my computer to this terminal to the camera feed from the bots. Once the goblins start attacking, we go." He started making the last preparations. "That will be plenty of time...self-destruct set for ten minutes..."
"Ok, let's do it." She said.
He hit the execute button. The fans buzzed to life. They watched the concentration of arsine decrease in the basement until the toxicity warning blinked off.
The camera feed from one of the robots showed the bots power up and fly out of their storage racks. The walls creaked open and the bots hovered out in systematic order following their programming. Small circular ports built for the robots opened along the top of the wall. The walls were filled with tubes for these bots to travel through. The goblins on the cameras scrambled to deal with the new threat.
"Guess that worked pretty well," Callen said. "Very easily distracted. Let's hurry." As they ran to the elevator, Ania grabbed the gas masks.
"What do you need those for? I cleared the gas." Callen said.
"I just get the feeling we may need them again..."
"Alright, hit it," Callen said.
"Yeah, here goes everything." She said hitting the button for sub-level three.
Callen checked his pistol and slid rounds into the empty spaces in the cylinder. "Alright, the goblins are attacking the maintenance bots." He grinned. "They can't destroy them fast enough! It’s perfect! We open the rune door and run left to the closest cover. They are all frantically fighting to the right."
"Any sight of Niknak?" Ania asked.
"Yeah, they were heading toward the exit with him strapped to a motorized cart. They all ran to attack the bots. If we are quick enough we can get to him, cut him free and run."
"Anything in the basement waiting for us?"
Callen checked his computer. He cursed. "Goblin patrol just entered the room...and they..." He waited for his computer to complete its threat analysis. "And...they have gas...tear gas..."
"And we have masks..." Ania grinned.
"Good call..." Callen grinned and pulled out his cross.
They pressed their backs firm against each side of the elevator for cover if the goblins patrol opened fire when the door opened.
"Put on the mask," Callen ordered.
"What about you?" Ania asked as she slid hers on.
"They are right outside the door. I need the goggles to make the three shots quick enough. If they fire the gas, I'm going to have to hold my breath and hope the seal between my goggles and my skin will give me enough protection."
The elevator door opened, followed immediately by the screams of goblins. A grenade hit the wall and the white gas began h
issing out. The goblin loaded another round into his launcher. "Here comes another." Callen took a deep breath.
Firing, Callen leaped out of the elevator and landed on his stomach. The patrol was dead before the second tear gas round hit the wall. They wasted no time opening the door back into Forgeholm.