223 Limited Options

Once the resulting mess from Baiken and Saigo's destructive combination attack had settled down, Markus got his answer as to why he had not seen this attack used before. Baiken had suffered from some sort of backlash from her strike, and the arm she had used for the attack was now hanging limp at her side. Markus could only wince at the sight, seeing that her arm was clearly dislocated or broken, but Baiken appeared not to even feel the pain as she bound her arm with a rudimentary sling using an efficient series of movements.

As warriors accustomed to battle and injuries inevitably sustained during it, Saigo, Azai, and Baiken shared a tacit understanding amongst themselves, and only spared their injured companion a quick glance to make sure she was still on her feet before returning to the task at hand. Markus found this warrior mentality a little jarring, as he expected them to take some time to treat their comrade instead of just continuing on.

{I wonder what has the General so worked up that he suddenly decided to use such drastic measures to finish the fight early…} He thought to himself as he watched Baiken's movements with concern. He soon got his answer.

"We need to hurry," said the General as he waved them forward past the oily mess they had caused in the hallway. "The machines have found where the clan was hiding, so we need to finish this quickly and get back to them before they get overrun."

His words caused alarmed glances to flash between the other three, and the sense of urgency they felt grew more pronounced as they quickly followed their leader back to the room where the androids had first attacked. They took a few moments to clear out the remaining machines that had not been caught by the previous attack, and Markus was stunned to see Baiken still wielding her wrench with one hand as she smashed more androids into scrap metal. Reduced to one working arm and still continuing on… That woman was a force of nature with more grit than Markus had ever seen before in a woman! His recent exposure to Zoey and now Baiken was affecting his worldview…

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Markus shook away his distracting thoughts as the last android was decommissioned and the team made their way over to their objective, the door back lit by the orange glow at the far end of the room. Whatever they had to deactivate was behind that door, they just had to figure out a way to open it. But just as Saigo drew near to the door, all of their Eves except for Markus's suddenly began to blink urgently at them! The team stopped in place, and all of them quickly accepted the incoming call.

"Saigo! Don't touch that door!" Zoey's urgent voice came through all their Eves as soon as the connections were completed.

"I haven't touched it," he quickly replied. "What seems to be the problem?" he asked worriedly as he motioned the team back away from the orange light. If it had Zoey this worked up, it was bound to be dangerous.

"I'm not sure yet, still scanning it. Don't move until I say," she ordered before turning her attention back to her interface and the scan's progress.

Saigo and the others could only wait while she worked, looking cautiously at the now ominous door that awaited them. Zoey had not called them without reason of course. She had been about to open the door on her side as well when her Interface had lit up with a barrage of warnings and alerts that completely flooded her vision. Now she had to figure out what had triggered the alerts and what they meant.

{Come on interface… what is all this? Praesidio, can you decipher any of this? My system is not able to read it correctly, and my scans can't penetrate all that interference,} Zoey thought as she studied the garbled mess of text and symbols flickering in the air before her. It was clear that her interface had detected some sort of danger on the other side of that door, but it was not clear what exactly the danger was. {Hopefully Praesidio can can read this mess...} She thought.

"You called?" came the smooth artificial tone of Praesidio as Zoey sensed the cool presence of the Dark Star Shard inside her mind once again. "Oh? What's all this?"

"I was hoping you could tell me… It just happened when I approached this door," Zoey replied quietly, her emerald eyes rapidly moving as she watched the data. {If I had some time, I could understand most of this. I already recognize most of these symbols, but without more data…}

There was a moment of quiet as the two of them watched the symbols, then Zoey sensed Praesidio change something within the system, and suddenly the mess on her display separated themselves into several cleaner data streams. Zoey still couldn't read it, but at least she her eyes stopped hurting from the sight.

Finally, Praesidio spoke again. "It appears that there is an extremely high concentration of superactive energy inside that room. The closest comparison I can find in your existing database is gamma radiation from one source, or anti-magical matter decay from the other source, although these comparisons do not fully encompass the danger of this energy. This energy will trigger complete cellular disentanglement should any organic matter come into contact with it. Verdict, fatal for humans."

Zoey's face turned grim when she heard this. She understood what gamma radiation was very well, and understood the dangers. And though she was not familiar with the term anti-magical matter decay, it didn't take a genius to figure out it was dangerous.

{What the hell do we do now?} Zoey wondered in exasperation as her mind raced over the possibilities. {I can't shut it down remotely, can't get into contact with it… Would the Null Rune work I wonder?}

"Say, why don't we try a machine? Zoey can probably make one that can get in there, right? She's made other things that are amazing before," Baiken's voice said through Zoey's interface. In fact, Zoey had just thought of the same thing. In her focused state, she had almost forgotten she was still in a call with Saigo's team, and Baiken speaking up had reminded her that they had been listening to her and Praesidio's conversation. They probably didn't understand most of it, but "fatal to humans" required no explanation.

They were running short on time, and at this point Zoey's best chance was to try to use a machine to get in there to shut the system down.