98: Large-Scale Deactivation

Conrad, Celeste, Albion, Titus, Ryker, and Electra ended up standing around Nyssa in a loose circle for a couple minutes, catching their breaths and chatting a little. Ryker and Electra, in particular, tried to drag the conversation out for longer, knowing the moment they went to deactivate the reinforcement making these walls near-indestructible, they’d have to come face to face with Angelica.

“We should get going though,” Titus stretched his arms upward with a yawn, “Let’s not dilly-dally any longer.”

“Well... you know... we could just chat a little longer...” Electra murmured, shifting from one foot to another while Ryker nodded in agreement.

Celeste, though, crouched down and began scooping Nyssa into her arms. With a couple gentle movements, she turned around and hoisted Nyssa up into a pack-strap carry before clambering up to her feet.

Her actions placed a punctuation point on their conversation, pushing Ryker and Electra to relent as they turned back towards the entrance of the gymnasium room. She carried Nyssa along, shaking her head as Titus offered a hand. “I got it, thank you for offering though.”

They wandered back out into the sterile hallway, making some light conversation as Ryker and Electra chatted with Angelica over the radio. Their vitality seemed to seep out of their eyes and mouths by the second, draining them like a hungry vampire.

“Ah, we’re totally going to get roasted for this as well,” Albion commented as he overheard the contents of Electra and Ryker’s conversation, “A little less than them, but it's absolutely over for us.”

“... Yeah,” Celeste felt a bead of sweat run down her temple as Conrad and Titus turned to look at each other. “It was nice knowing you all.”

“It really was, I’ll remember you all in the afterlife,” Titus sighed as they began walking down the hall. He fell quiet as everyone else carried out a very mild amount of small talk in the meantime to distract themselves.

Once at the end of the hallway, they found an iron door bolted shut from the other side, but without much effort, Albion transformed it into ice before having Ryker blast through it with a small explosion.

A control room greeted them, everything though, had a layer of dust coating it like frosting. To the right side, video camera feeds showed the now-empty, and now-wrecked rooms. A mystery panel of knobs and switches sat in front of a long-dead central console. To the left displayed details about all the automatons used in the trap rooms.

[Destroyed, total physical critical failure.]

[Destroyed, electrical failure.]

[Destroyed, physical failure.]

[Destroyed, complete disassembly, failure from all aspects.]

[Destroyed, heat failure... destro-]

These messages looped along the screen, flashing across them like background effects as the group split up. Celeste stood off to the side, still carrying Nyssa, but the other five scoured the room while calling out to each other.

“What if we just unplug it?”

“That could set off another auxiliary alarm or trap. We literally just got scolded for not being careful enough, what if you cause this entire room to blow up?”

“You’re right, you’re right, I was thinking straight.”

“Is it this? Maybe... There’s a complicated multi-switch for a shielding system here, but it also could be for electrically isolating this room in case of an attack.”

“It probably wouldn’t hurt to try that later, but let’s keep investigating for now.”

“Agree, definitely.”

“You got it boss.”

After a brief stroke of genius, where they consulted the original manual Angelica had provided, they figured out the three step process. Electra, from the other side of the room, powered on the system by letting some electricity flow back into the emergency generated tucked away under a shelf. Then, Ryker used the central console to navigate into advanced controls where he switched everything off, and Conrad applied the emergency override feature to put everything into immediate effect, skipping the hours-long cooling down process.

WHOOOOM.

The entire room shook as the sound of gargantuan machines buried deep into the rocks surrounding the complex powered down. Like unwinding coils, they tapered down, not before lifting an invisible weight off of everyone’s shoulders.

“Huh...” Celeste murmured to herself as she blinked her eyes and looked around. Flexing her hand a few times, she turned her head a touch to look at Nyssa. Nyssa, over the course of a couple seconds, relaxed her eyebrows and snuggled up a little closer to Celeste’s neck.

I didn’t even notice the invisible irritation. It suddenly feels like the world is a lot lighter. It's like someone went through my head and cleared all the background noise.

Similar scenes played out with the others as Electra experimented a little with her powers. Albion patted his cheeks. Conrad went through a few martial arts forms, nodding in satisfaction as his body flowed like water.

“You’re really looking a lot more Angelica by the day with the way you move,” Celeste complimented as they reconvened. “You’ll be like a better version of her one day.”

“Maybe... I still have a long way to go,” Conrad shook his head. “Although I have more raw power than her, she moves with perfection, some level I don’t think is possible to reach. I’ll try to get as close as I can though.”

“Mn, interesting,” Celeste nodded, unsure as to the exact allowables given by Conrad’s power. “Well, we’re all cheering for you.”

“... Now what though,” Electra spoke up to the entire group as they stood in a loose circle. “Angelica’s coming, or do we meet up with her? Or... like... I mean.”

“Did she mention anything over the radio?” Celeste asked as one of her hands wandered upward to pat Nyssa’s head resting next to her neck. “We can ask...?”

Before they could even reach down to their radios though, the muffled sound of an explosion answered their questions. They all looked at each other for a second. One sigh later, they jogged out back into the hallway and into the room where they had rescued Nyssa.

Debris fell through the chute where Nyssa had entered from.

Having punched through the wall on the surface after the protections had been disabled, Angelica leapt through the hole, and landed on the ground with a solid crushing sound.

After denting the floor beneath her, she stood back up and dusted herself off. Tilting her head left and right and cracking her neck, she grumbled “I’m so rusty” to herself before shaking out her legs. “That shouldn’t have hurt.”

Celeste, arriving last after walking through the hall instead of running, poked her head in, and slid forward to stand beside Titus and Albion. The others, a little shocked at Angelica’s aggressive entrance, stood at an awkward distance, the two parties facing each other like coworkers who met at the grocery store.

“What’s wrong? Don’t be afraid,” Angelica smiled, shifting her weight to one foot and waving them forward.