The Telling of One Billion Ghost Stories (draft) - Part 29
Okay, so, I just need to make it clear before going any further that jaseroque claims full responsibility for certain plot developments that come into play below. Quite rightly, too.
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, Part 28, Side Story 1
The stairs led down into a long, dark tunnel a couple of metres in width, with smooth walls carved from the earth without embellishment. Every few paces, artificial lights had been set in the corners where the wall met the ceiling, illuminating the tunnel in patches of a sickly glow that was never quite enough to completely banish the gloom between them. Few resources were being wasted on an escape tunnel that would rarely be used.
The far end brought them to a set of double doors, these ones opening with no more than a simple latch. Once inside, further high security had been made redundant. The door opened on to a similar though wider corridor, much better lit and with walls that were metallic white. There was the faintest hum that suggested machinery in use somewhere in the middle distance, but not one person in sight. A glowing sign over the door labelled the passageway as an emergency exit in dull red light. To the left, a glass-windowed door led to a locker room filled with what at first looked like an army of guards, but on a second look proved to be hanging rows of empty suits of armour, with helmets stacked on a nearby shelf.
"Could we use these as disguises?" Doumeki wondered aloud.
"No good," replied Kurogane, hardly looking around. "They aren't worn inside. They’ll only attract more attention."
"I wonder how long it's going to take anyone to notice us," said Fye. He hadn't stopped looking nervous since they'd gotten past the security panel outside. "Use of those exits should be monitored, even if we did get the password right. They don't exactly let their residents wander in an out through them as they please. There was a security protocol for dealing with exiles who did roughly what we're doing, isn't there?"
"There's one for everything," said Kurogane.
"And that unusual code you got us in with, will that make us stand out more or less, do you think?" Fye asked pointedly.
"It depends on whether they were watching for it," said Kurogane.
"And are they likely to be? That was a personal code, wasn't it? How many people were meant to know it? Excluding the administrator."
There was an uncomfortable pause. "Two," said Kurogane. "Only one of whom is still alive."
"Oh dear," said Fye. "That does make it a bit too easy for them." He looked apprehensively down the empty corridors, expecting to see guards appearing any moment.
"We can make it a lot harder if we keep moving," said Kurogane. He indicated the way to their right and started walking without waiting for the others. "The labs will be this way. Come on."
"I think this may be about the time when we could have used that plan," said Fye, hurrying a few steps to catch up.
"If we meet anyone, don't make eye contact, don't try to hide or run," Kurogane recited, louder to be sure everyone would hear. "If we don't make ourselves look suspicious, most people will assume we're allowed to be here - just residents they don't recognise."
"That's assuming they don't recognise any of us," said Fye dryly.
"Not everyone has your memory."
"What will happen if we do get caught?" asked Doumeki.
"Assuming we're not killed in the process, the worst punishment they have here is exile," said Fye. "So we'll be thrown back out again, probably with a bit more force. You know, I might even be able to talk my way out of that. My sentence was up years ago. It wouldn't be at all hard to give them a reason why I might have only decided to come back now." He rubbed the back of his neck again. "It would be a bit harder to explain some of the company I'm keeping."
"They knew about Chi," said Kurogane bluntly. "They knew who you were before they got to the camp. It won't be hard for them to figure out why you're really here."
"I think you underestimate my imagination, Kuro-dear," said Fye, but he left it at that.
They turned a corner, leading them into another corridor little different to the first, and just as empty of occupants. Halfway down, they passed a room filled with desks, each topped with a computer; all visible from the corridor through the windows set in the walls and doors. For a moment, Doumeki thought they'd found their first Complex residents, but when he looked again, he realised that the two women he'd thought he'd seen had the long artificial ears for data input that marked them as humanoid units like Chi. Both had their eyes closed, inactive, and the rest of the room was silent and empty with not so much as a single flicker from a computer screen as a sign of life.
Kurogane frowned. "We should still be in work hours at this time of day."
"And if we weren't, there should always be at least one work-a-holic tech who's putting in extra time or who's left his station switched on," said Fye, sharing his confusion. Doumeki and Syaoran stared into an unfamiliar room full of unfamiliar equipment which they were now told was also in an unaccountable state and wondered what they were supposed to make of it.
Fye shook himself and quirked an eyebrow at Kurogane. "Now if only there was some way we could check what was going on."
Kurogane barely restrained himself from rolling his eyes. "Fine. But be careful. Security has gotten a lot tighter since you were last anywhere like this."
The others filed into the room and crowded around as Fye selected himself a desk, Syaoran moving to the back to keep watch by little more than habit. Barely had Fye activated the screen when a message in eye-catching colours had flashed up, taking over the entire screen. Fye's eyes widened, his fingers hovering an inch above the keyboard.
"It's an evacuation order!" he gasped. "Everyone was ordered to the emergency bunkers." As the others crowded around to see he stared up at Kurogane, face lined with surprise and worry.
"Is it something to do with us?" asked Doumeki. It didn't seem likely that anyone would bother evacuating so many people simply because of a small group of intruders, but he couldn’t claim to know nearly enough about the way people thought here to be sure.
"I don't see how, this was issued hours ago," Fye replied.
"Are we in any danger?" asked Kurogane. "It's not just a drill, is it?"
"It's the real thing," said Fye. "As for the reason, there's nothing specified, no parts of the building warned as impassable, just something about a precaution during ‘diagnostic testing’. Of course, that could just as well be a lie to keep people from panicking." His eyes flickered back over the screen again. "Though if that is the case, they’ve done a lot of it lately. They've labelled this 'Evacuation #17'. Perhaps," he added thoughtfully, "this is some kind of response to what happened at the other Complex. Some way of checking their own systems in a controlled environment." He didn't sound very certain, but it seemed even less likely anyone was going to come up with a better guess.
"What does that mean for us?" asked Doumeki.
"If there are no guards around it could work in our favour," said Kurogane. "But if our people have been taken down to the bunkers with everyone else, it could be impossible to get them out."
"Is this the part where we sneak into the prison section, steal disguises and hide in a closet until everyone comes back and the right moment arrives?" said Fye, with what sounded more like sarcasm than he usual teasing humour.
Kurogane let out a short breath that would have been a sigh from anyone else. He hadn't stopped frowning either. "We still need to find out where they're being kept. The laboratories are still the best guess we've got. They aren't far ahead, we should get moving while we have the chance."
He made a motion towards the door, and Fye got back to his feet again. It was at that moment that they realised that Syaoran, who'd been unusually quiet since they'd entered the tunnel, was missing from the room.
They found him outside, standing in the corridor staring around the next corner. When he heard the others running up behind him he seemed to come out of a trance.
“I,” said Syaoran haltingly. “I… know these corridors. I’ve been here before.”
Doumeki could not help but notice that neither Fye nor Kurogane looked nearly as surprised as they should have done.
“We need to keep moving,” said Kurogane reaching out an arm, but Syaoran pulled away.
“And you do too, don’t you? You’ve known the way all along. You’re from this Complex too - you have been all along!”
The accusation hung in the air between them until Kurogane broke the silence with the words, “If I am, does it matter?”
“No,” said Syaoran, looking away. “Only rescuing Sakura matters.”
Doumeki was starting to feel less sure. Syaoran had voiced something he was finding it increasingly hard to avoid voicing himself. It had been all very well to make a rule that the past didn't matter when they'd been safely back home, but Kurogane's knowledge of the Complex was becoming blatant enough that labelling it no-one else's business was more than he could keep justifying. He was still deciding whether to press the subject when Syaoran stiffened once again and stared down the corridor ahead with a completely different variety of surprise. There are the next junction had appeared the first person not of their group who they'd seen since they entered this place.
It was Sakura.
For a moment Doumeki almost didn't recognise her. She was wearing a white frilly dress with coloured trim which looked like nothing he'd ever seen her in before, but her face was Sakura's - or it should have been, because Sakura meeting Syaoran here should not have looked at him that way. Her expression was of a solemn sadness, and she paused in the junction to look at them all only for one long moment before she moved on around the next corner out of sight. If Doumeki had been more suspiciously inclined or hadn't picked up as much as he had on the subject, he might have thought he'd seen Sakura's ghost.
Syaoran yelled her name and ran forward. Kurogane swore and jumped after him, about to yell to him to wait, but he didn't need to. Syaoran ground to a halt again after barely a handful of steps.
"That's... not Sakura," he breathed, as if he hardly understood what he was saying himself. He looked back at the others over his shoulder, confusion written over his every feature, but before any of them could respond his resolve hardened again and he leapt back down the corridor where she'd disappeared.
There was nothing to do but run after him, Kurogane complaining audibly about 'that damn kid', yelling again to Syaoran to wait, even though it was obvious there'd be no chance of making him stop now without catching up and physically dragging him down. Syaoran may have had the shortest stride amongst them, but he sprinted away like a panicked animal. Far from catching him, even keeping up was an effort.
“That Sakura - was that really…?” Fye gasped.
“Another. No time,” Kurogane yelled back. “This is the wrong way. He’s being led--”
By the time the others rounded the corner Syaoran was most of the way down the corridor ahead. He looked around only briefly at the next junction before running off again, so quickly they could only guess that he must have seen something down there to keep him going.
At the next junction they found themselves looking down one final passageway ending in another set of double doors, larger and grander than the last, one of them standing open. Syaoran was standing frozen to the spot not two paces from the person who stood in the doorway, holding it open from inside. Syaoran had nearly run head first into himself.
The others couldn’t see his expression from behind, but his stiff posture combined with what was standing in front of him could have told them all they needed to know. The other Syaoran stared at him with a mild curiousity that suggested he’d encountered something interesting, but ultimately unremarkable. After a moment, he glanced back over his shoulder as if looking for instructions, then stepped aside to clear the doorway.
“Please do come in,” called a soft, feminine voice from inside. It carried down the hallway more easily than it should have; the bare walls making it echo in unnatural ways. “I have been waiting for you. All of you.”
Moving like he was in a dream, Syaoran took a shaky step forward through the open doorway.
“What do we…” Fye started to say, turning towards his companions, then stopped as he laid eyes on Kurogane, who was staring down the hallway like he’d seen a ghost, eyes barely focused. Even now his face betrayed little of what he was thinking, but from the stark shock in his expression the ghost might even have been his own.
“I suppose we don’t have a choice, do we?” said Fye softly.
The three of them walked the rest of the way down the hallway.
The room beyond the doorway made little lasting impression on Doumeki. It was larger than any space they’d entered thus far in the Complex and the same metallic white of everything else, but their attention was drawn so quickly to its centre that the details of its extents faded in comparison. There, in a high-backed white chair that was not quite a throne sat a girl with long black hair that spilled down loosely over her shoulders, and soft, loving eyes. She was dressed in a high-necked black dress with thin lines of white ruffles trimming the neck and sleeves, the design simple and elegant in a manner which Doumeki had none of the language he would have needed to interpret. She looked young and impossibly sweet. She looked like someone who could see you for the first time and know everything about you and everything you’d ever done, and forgive you for all of it in the next breath.
To either side of her stood two Sakuras, distinguishable to Doumeki’s eye only by the details of their dresses. The other Syaoran stood by the door with his arms folded, and there was a third one on the other side with a similar expression. Syaoran - their Syaoran - stood a few paces in from the doorway, looking from the two Sakuras to his own copies and back again. There was little doubt which he found the most important.
“What is this?” he breathed. “Where’s… where’s the real Sakura? What…?”
“They are all real,” said the girl. Her voice was still soft, but something in its tone discouraged others from talking over it. “These two are not your Sakura, but please understand, they are every bit as real as she is. The others of yourself are the same.”
“You never said you were planning make more than one.” It took the others a moment to register that it was Kurogane who had spoken, his voice so rough it emerged as little more than a croak.
The girl turned to look at him with an expression of infinite fondness. “That was the plan, however, the final generation produced more than one success. Welcome home, Kurogane. I had hoped it would not take this long.”
Kurogane did not seem to know how to reply.
Syaoran looked from the girl to Kurogane and back again. “Home? What’s going on?” he demanded. “Who are you?”
“My name,” said the girl, “Is Daidouji Tomoyo. That may mean little to those raised so long on the outside, so let me say this also: I am known as the founder. The project which created everything you see here, every Complex in this country, was mine.”
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, Part 28, Side Story 1
The stairs led down into a long, dark tunnel a couple of metres in width, with smooth walls carved from the earth without embellishment. Every few paces, artificial lights had been set in the corners where the wall met the ceiling, illuminating the tunnel in patches of a sickly glow that was never quite enough to completely banish the gloom between them. Few resources were being wasted on an escape tunnel that would rarely be used.
The far end brought them to a set of double doors, these ones opening with no more than a simple latch. Once inside, further high security had been made redundant. The door opened on to a similar though wider corridor, much better lit and with walls that were metallic white. There was the faintest hum that suggested machinery in use somewhere in the middle distance, but not one person in sight. A glowing sign over the door labelled the passageway as an emergency exit in dull red light. To the left, a glass-windowed door led to a locker room filled with what at first looked like an army of guards, but on a second look proved to be hanging rows of empty suits of armour, with helmets stacked on a nearby shelf.
"Could we use these as disguises?" Doumeki wondered aloud.
"No good," replied Kurogane, hardly looking around. "They aren't worn inside. They’ll only attract more attention."
"I wonder how long it's going to take anyone to notice us," said Fye. He hadn't stopped looking nervous since they'd gotten past the security panel outside. "Use of those exits should be monitored, even if we did get the password right. They don't exactly let their residents wander in an out through them as they please. There was a security protocol for dealing with exiles who did roughly what we're doing, isn't there?"
"There's one for everything," said Kurogane.
"And that unusual code you got us in with, will that make us stand out more or less, do you think?" Fye asked pointedly.
"It depends on whether they were watching for it," said Kurogane.
"And are they likely to be? That was a personal code, wasn't it? How many people were meant to know it? Excluding the administrator."
There was an uncomfortable pause. "Two," said Kurogane. "Only one of whom is still alive."
"Oh dear," said Fye. "That does make it a bit too easy for them." He looked apprehensively down the empty corridors, expecting to see guards appearing any moment.
"We can make it a lot harder if we keep moving," said Kurogane. He indicated the way to their right and started walking without waiting for the others. "The labs will be this way. Come on."
"I think this may be about the time when we could have used that plan," said Fye, hurrying a few steps to catch up.
"If we meet anyone, don't make eye contact, don't try to hide or run," Kurogane recited, louder to be sure everyone would hear. "If we don't make ourselves look suspicious, most people will assume we're allowed to be here - just residents they don't recognise."
"That's assuming they don't recognise any of us," said Fye dryly.
"Not everyone has your memory."
"What will happen if we do get caught?" asked Doumeki.
"Assuming we're not killed in the process, the worst punishment they have here is exile," said Fye. "So we'll be thrown back out again, probably with a bit more force. You know, I might even be able to talk my way out of that. My sentence was up years ago. It wouldn't be at all hard to give them a reason why I might have only decided to come back now." He rubbed the back of his neck again. "It would be a bit harder to explain some of the company I'm keeping."
"They knew about Chi," said Kurogane bluntly. "They knew who you were before they got to the camp. It won't be hard for them to figure out why you're really here."
"I think you underestimate my imagination, Kuro-dear," said Fye, but he left it at that.
They turned a corner, leading them into another corridor little different to the first, and just as empty of occupants. Halfway down, they passed a room filled with desks, each topped with a computer; all visible from the corridor through the windows set in the walls and doors. For a moment, Doumeki thought they'd found their first Complex residents, but when he looked again, he realised that the two women he'd thought he'd seen had the long artificial ears for data input that marked them as humanoid units like Chi. Both had their eyes closed, inactive, and the rest of the room was silent and empty with not so much as a single flicker from a computer screen as a sign of life.
Kurogane frowned. "We should still be in work hours at this time of day."
"And if we weren't, there should always be at least one work-a-holic tech who's putting in extra time or who's left his station switched on," said Fye, sharing his confusion. Doumeki and Syaoran stared into an unfamiliar room full of unfamiliar equipment which they were now told was also in an unaccountable state and wondered what they were supposed to make of it.
Fye shook himself and quirked an eyebrow at Kurogane. "Now if only there was some way we could check what was going on."
Kurogane barely restrained himself from rolling his eyes. "Fine. But be careful. Security has gotten a lot tighter since you were last anywhere like this."
The others filed into the room and crowded around as Fye selected himself a desk, Syaoran moving to the back to keep watch by little more than habit. Barely had Fye activated the screen when a message in eye-catching colours had flashed up, taking over the entire screen. Fye's eyes widened, his fingers hovering an inch above the keyboard.
"It's an evacuation order!" he gasped. "Everyone was ordered to the emergency bunkers." As the others crowded around to see he stared up at Kurogane, face lined with surprise and worry.
"Is it something to do with us?" asked Doumeki. It didn't seem likely that anyone would bother evacuating so many people simply because of a small group of intruders, but he couldn’t claim to know nearly enough about the way people thought here to be sure.
"I don't see how, this was issued hours ago," Fye replied.
"Are we in any danger?" asked Kurogane. "It's not just a drill, is it?"
"It's the real thing," said Fye. "As for the reason, there's nothing specified, no parts of the building warned as impassable, just something about a precaution during ‘diagnostic testing’. Of course, that could just as well be a lie to keep people from panicking." His eyes flickered back over the screen again. "Though if that is the case, they’ve done a lot of it lately. They've labelled this 'Evacuation #17'. Perhaps," he added thoughtfully, "this is some kind of response to what happened at the other Complex. Some way of checking their own systems in a controlled environment." He didn't sound very certain, but it seemed even less likely anyone was going to come up with a better guess.
"What does that mean for us?" asked Doumeki.
"If there are no guards around it could work in our favour," said Kurogane. "But if our people have been taken down to the bunkers with everyone else, it could be impossible to get them out."
"Is this the part where we sneak into the prison section, steal disguises and hide in a closet until everyone comes back and the right moment arrives?" said Fye, with what sounded more like sarcasm than he usual teasing humour.
Kurogane let out a short breath that would have been a sigh from anyone else. He hadn't stopped frowning either. "We still need to find out where they're being kept. The laboratories are still the best guess we've got. They aren't far ahead, we should get moving while we have the chance."
He made a motion towards the door, and Fye got back to his feet again. It was at that moment that they realised that Syaoran, who'd been unusually quiet since they'd entered the tunnel, was missing from the room.
They found him outside, standing in the corridor staring around the next corner. When he heard the others running up behind him he seemed to come out of a trance.
“I,” said Syaoran haltingly. “I… know these corridors. I’ve been here before.”
Doumeki could not help but notice that neither Fye nor Kurogane looked nearly as surprised as they should have done.
“We need to keep moving,” said Kurogane reaching out an arm, but Syaoran pulled away.
“And you do too, don’t you? You’ve known the way all along. You’re from this Complex too - you have been all along!”
The accusation hung in the air between them until Kurogane broke the silence with the words, “If I am, does it matter?”
“No,” said Syaoran, looking away. “Only rescuing Sakura matters.”
Doumeki was starting to feel less sure. Syaoran had voiced something he was finding it increasingly hard to avoid voicing himself. It had been all very well to make a rule that the past didn't matter when they'd been safely back home, but Kurogane's knowledge of the Complex was becoming blatant enough that labelling it no-one else's business was more than he could keep justifying. He was still deciding whether to press the subject when Syaoran stiffened once again and stared down the corridor ahead with a completely different variety of surprise. There are the next junction had appeared the first person not of their group who they'd seen since they entered this place.
It was Sakura.
For a moment Doumeki almost didn't recognise her. She was wearing a white frilly dress with coloured trim which looked like nothing he'd ever seen her in before, but her face was Sakura's - or it should have been, because Sakura meeting Syaoran here should not have looked at him that way. Her expression was of a solemn sadness, and she paused in the junction to look at them all only for one long moment before she moved on around the next corner out of sight. If Doumeki had been more suspiciously inclined or hadn't picked up as much as he had on the subject, he might have thought he'd seen Sakura's ghost.
Syaoran yelled her name and ran forward. Kurogane swore and jumped after him, about to yell to him to wait, but he didn't need to. Syaoran ground to a halt again after barely a handful of steps.
"That's... not Sakura," he breathed, as if he hardly understood what he was saying himself. He looked back at the others over his shoulder, confusion written over his every feature, but before any of them could respond his resolve hardened again and he leapt back down the corridor where she'd disappeared.
There was nothing to do but run after him, Kurogane complaining audibly about 'that damn kid', yelling again to Syaoran to wait, even though it was obvious there'd be no chance of making him stop now without catching up and physically dragging him down. Syaoran may have had the shortest stride amongst them, but he sprinted away like a panicked animal. Far from catching him, even keeping up was an effort.
“That Sakura - was that really…?” Fye gasped.
“Another. No time,” Kurogane yelled back. “This is the wrong way. He’s being led--”
By the time the others rounded the corner Syaoran was most of the way down the corridor ahead. He looked around only briefly at the next junction before running off again, so quickly they could only guess that he must have seen something down there to keep him going.
At the next junction they found themselves looking down one final passageway ending in another set of double doors, larger and grander than the last, one of them standing open. Syaoran was standing frozen to the spot not two paces from the person who stood in the doorway, holding it open from inside. Syaoran had nearly run head first into himself.
The others couldn’t see his expression from behind, but his stiff posture combined with what was standing in front of him could have told them all they needed to know. The other Syaoran stared at him with a mild curiousity that suggested he’d encountered something interesting, but ultimately unremarkable. After a moment, he glanced back over his shoulder as if looking for instructions, then stepped aside to clear the doorway.
“Please do come in,” called a soft, feminine voice from inside. It carried down the hallway more easily than it should have; the bare walls making it echo in unnatural ways. “I have been waiting for you. All of you.”
Moving like he was in a dream, Syaoran took a shaky step forward through the open doorway.
“What do we…” Fye started to say, turning towards his companions, then stopped as he laid eyes on Kurogane, who was staring down the hallway like he’d seen a ghost, eyes barely focused. Even now his face betrayed little of what he was thinking, but from the stark shock in his expression the ghost might even have been his own.
“I suppose we don’t have a choice, do we?” said Fye softly.
The three of them walked the rest of the way down the hallway.
The room beyond the doorway made little lasting impression on Doumeki. It was larger than any space they’d entered thus far in the Complex and the same metallic white of everything else, but their attention was drawn so quickly to its centre that the details of its extents faded in comparison. There, in a high-backed white chair that was not quite a throne sat a girl with long black hair that spilled down loosely over her shoulders, and soft, loving eyes. She was dressed in a high-necked black dress with thin lines of white ruffles trimming the neck and sleeves, the design simple and elegant in a manner which Doumeki had none of the language he would have needed to interpret. She looked young and impossibly sweet. She looked like someone who could see you for the first time and know everything about you and everything you’d ever done, and forgive you for all of it in the next breath.
To either side of her stood two Sakuras, distinguishable to Doumeki’s eye only by the details of their dresses. The other Syaoran stood by the door with his arms folded, and there was a third one on the other side with a similar expression. Syaoran - their Syaoran - stood a few paces in from the doorway, looking from the two Sakuras to his own copies and back again. There was little doubt which he found the most important.
“What is this?” he breathed. “Where’s… where’s the real Sakura? What…?”
“They are all real,” said the girl. Her voice was still soft, but something in its tone discouraged others from talking over it. “These two are not your Sakura, but please understand, they are every bit as real as she is. The others of yourself are the same.”
“You never said you were planning make more than one.” It took the others a moment to register that it was Kurogane who had spoken, his voice so rough it emerged as little more than a croak.
The girl turned to look at him with an expression of infinite fondness. “That was the plan, however, the final generation produced more than one success. Welcome home, Kurogane. I had hoped it would not take this long.”
Kurogane did not seem to know how to reply.
Syaoran looked from the girl to Kurogane and back again. “Home? What’s going on?” he demanded. “Who are you?”
“My name,” said the girl, “Is Daidouji Tomoyo. That may mean little to those raised so long on the outside, so let me say this also: I am known as the founder. The project which created everything you see here, every Complex in this country, was mine.”