Eventually, everyone reconvened back with Rusa in the control room. “Okay, I’ll try to hack in now,” she’d specifically waited for everyone to be there before attempting to bypass the main computers security. Unlike the mediocre attempt at defense like the rest of the facility, she’d stated clearly that this computer was top of the line with some of the best firewalls she’d ever seen.
Rusa plugged in her own phone into the port and began typing and clicking away on the mouse like a madman. Window after window flicked past on the screen, Rusa’s infiltration clearly successful as she started digging into the files. Jaid understood the basics of hacking and how it didn’t normally look as dramatic in real life as it did in the movies, but this looked straight out of a film with how fast it was going. She had no idea what she was looking at as the various images and text flashed by, but boy was there a lot of cheese.
Suddenly, Rusa stopped entirely when a security alert popped up in the corner of the screen. It looked super inconsequential, but her eyes went wide. She then picked up the computer mouse she’d been holding and examined it thoroughly. “Well, that’s new,” she muttered with a grimace on her face. “There’s a biometric sensor on the mouse. Never seen one there before.”
“Guessing that’s bad?” Xard inquired, a hint of urgency in his voice.
“Inscrutably.” No alarm came since it had already been disconnected, but the screen began flashing with a dire warning. 『Self Destruction Imminent』 and just below was a counter 『999, 998, 997』 It was an oddly generous amount of time. Even if this facility was fully manned, that would be plenty of time to get the news around and evacuate everyone to safety.
“Can you stop it?” Xard’s voice was far more urgent while Rusa resumed their flurry of clicks.
She pulled up a 3D map of the facility and nine lights were flashing around it; four above, four below, one in the middle. Suddenly, the top and bottom lights darted away, zooming away from the facility. “What a brilliant meanie,” Rusa couldn’t help but praise the system as her frustration grew. “The center light is this console. The other eight lights are drones: four in the sky, four in the water.”
“Each drone has a button on it that needs to be pressed. If each button isn’t pressed before the time limit, this place is going to blow up. From what I found, it seems the owner of this place has a tracking beacon that summons the drones to them, so they could shut it down if this ever happened while they were here. Seems they’re adamant about burying any evidence even at the cost of this facility instead of getting caught.”
“Okay, I’ll take the water and Xard can take the sky,” Kada melted through the floor and vanished without any further questions.
Xard at least hesitated a moment and asked, “Do you think it’s worth the trouble? Would suck to lose this place, but not worth the risk if you’re not a hundred-percent sure we can do it. Don’t think I didn’t notice you didn’t mention how to stop the ninth light. We’d need to evacuate before Kada gets too far away with The Tourist, otherwise you two could die or get stuck out at sea.”
“We can manage it,” Rusa reassured him. “I’ll just need Jaid’s help. So, I suggest you stop wasting time.” Xard rushed off completely while Jaid mulled over how she could possibly be of assistance.
Rusa ran her fingers over the console a moment longer, inputting a few more keystrokes, and then a panel beneath the keyboard slid away. There was now a keyhole, but unlike any other Jaid had ever seen. Instead of just the usual vertical line, there was a circle in the middle with seven other lines protruding from it.
“You can make clones of very small sizes, right?” Rusa asked as she bent down and peered into the keyhole.
Jaid felt like this was something that she definitely should have confirmed before being so confident and sending off their means of escape, but answered nonetheless. “Yes, any size, but they would be extremely uncooperative.”
“Well, hopefully we can get them to cooperate,” Rusa didn’t seem worried in the slightest. “I’ll walk you through it, but we’re going to use your clones to pick this lock. Normally, I could do it myself if it were a standard lock, but as you can see, only a single very specialized, very stupid key would fit this. I just don’t have enough hands to be able to pick it.”
“If we try to force open the door or damage the console in any way, this facility will blow up immediately. Now, if you please.”
Jaid felt like she was being swept along into this plan but complied nonetheless. She poked her finger against the keyhole and a clone was born. Immediately, Jaid felt the reluctance of the clone, and it tried to unsummon itself, but Jaid wouldn’t let it. While it was certainly something she wanted to avoid, Jaid was going to have to assume direct control.
Hole, dark, scared, trapped. Jaid blinked her eyes open to the new world around her. She immediately felt the effects of this clone's distorted body. Her thinking capacity was severely reduced, and she was terrified. No wonder, since she was barely bigger than a speck of dust, and this keyhole was the only world she knew.
It was overbearingly dark since Jaid’s finger was blocking the main core of the keyhole. There was still a bit of light, however, poking through the remaining lines. Still, it didn’t do much to dissuade the feeling of being completely encapsulated and trapped in a cold, dark, metal tunnel.
Jaid couldn’t move very far, still attached to the main body’s finger, so she summoned another clone that matched her exact specifications. An immediate sense of reassurance washed over her once the new clone appeared. Now she wasn’t alone. Now she had someone to help her. Together. Can do this.
Jaid continued this, summoning clones until there was a full line of them reaching the depths of the keyhole. The first clone that had been summoned took the plunge and responsibility of being the one at the end, in the darkest, scariest part. She was still in control, and still in command of all those who were trailing behind her, so she needed to stay brave.
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The small clone transferred her thoughts to the main body. “Okay, they’re ready. Now what?”
“First, I need you to tell me how many pins are in each chamber,” Rusa gave the first instruction. The tiny clone was surprised at how normal she sounded. In media, small creatures were often depicted as hearing distorted, slow sounds from giants due to the size difference. Maybe it sounded fine because the main body’s ears were still there to interpret it.
“They don’t know what a pin is. I only have a vague idea, so you’ll need to explain it properly in a simple way they can understand.” Jaid passed along their confusion.
“Do they understand the seven different lines?” They did. “Okay, if you look in one of those lines, there should be a bunch of metal cylinders, kind of like pillars. I need you to count how many are in each line.”
“Ten in each,” the large Jaid relayed their findings.
“Hmm, I wasn’t expecting the same count for each one,” Rusa muttered her thoughts aloud. “Maybe it’s not as secure as I believed. That’s better for us. Okay. So that’s seventy in total, so we’ll need to do this seventy times. I know that sounds like a lot, but once you know how to do it, this should go quite quickly.”
A bit of delegation and organization transpired next. There were more than ten Jaids in this line, but that was for the best. In fact, she crammed in a few more to make sure those who were venturing into the lines could maneuver easier. Ten of the Jaids were each given a number so that they could properly know their roles with another non-numbered Jaid between each to hold them all steady.
From there, each line was assigned a body part. There was head, right-arm, left-arm, right-hip, left-hip, right-leg, and left-leg. This is where each new column of Jaids would spawn from, and thus, all seventy pins were designated.
They started with the first pin, left-leg-1. A Jaid spawned at number 1’s left leg and began pushing the pin. Nothing happened, so another Jaid spawned on top of her until she pushed it as far as she could. Repeat, repeat, repeat.
“Stop!” Rusa finally yelled as the sixth Jaid was halfway through pushing it. She had been listening intently, waiting for the ever-so-slight click that happened when the pin had reached the proper point. “Okay, they don’t need to keep holding that pin. In fact, it’s probably better if they don’t, to prevent any unintentional jostling. But, they need to stay there. We’ll need their bodies to turn the core when we’re done.”
Per Rusa’s predictions, things really did speed up after that. The next few pins still took some learning, but once the puny clones got into the groove, they could almost do it entirely without Rusa’s help. The seventy pins flew by in no time, with only one mishap. A clone had pushed a pin too far, causing that entire line to reset. Some clones got nasty bumps on the head that were shared among the group, but they recovered and got back to it.
“Okay, here’s the hard part, but you can do it.” Rusa gave what encouragement she could. “Your main body needs to turn their finger counter-clockwise. While that’s happening, every clone needs to keep their body rigid. If any of the pillars of clones collapse, this may not work.”
Jaid sent a mental countdown to the nearly 400 micro-Jaids attached to her finger. Those inside the keyhole all braced themselves, desperately clinging onto their fellow clones and squeezing them with all their might. Their entire world started to spin around them, their bodies all squished to the side as they were pressed against the metal.
Rusa had to support Jaid’s main body to keep her from falling over, because it had started to twist to the side along with the clones from the transferred pain and pressure. For the clones, it probably felt like they were twisted for lages, but in reality, the core barely spun at all. The lock clicked, and there was mass cheering from inside the keyhole, though it remained barely audible to those outside of it.
Each of the many micro-Jaids vanished in a hurry as the main Jaid pulled away her finger. She then fell flat on her butt, exhausted by the laborious task. She had never made anywhere close to that many clones before. And while they’d been puny, each one had been a fully developed living being. She’d also just gotten rammed in the side by a sheet of metal about 400 times, so she wasn’t feeling the best.
Rusa pried open the panel cover and quickly pressed the ominous red button that waited behind it. Even though that had felt like hours from the perspective of the clones, there was still plenty of time left on the countdown. Plus, Kada still had one more drone she needed to deactivate on her end, which she did shortly after. The timer stopped counting down at 『289』 leaving almost three full minutes out of the original ten left to spare.
“Do you guys think they have any unreleased or experimental cheeses around here?” Kada asked the group once she had Xard had made their way back to the console.
“Doubt it,” Rusa crushed her hopes. “This facility seems to be for broadcasts and broadcasts only.”
“Guess there’s no real reason to stick around then,” Kada didn’t hide her disappointment well.
“Yes, we should leave this to Nathym and Chorus to figure out. It’s their project after all,” Xard agreed.
The group made their way back to The Tourist, stopping by the trapped room of janitor bots to free them so they could resume their duties. Even though Jaid was tired, she still made sure to open the map on her phone and make a note of their exact coordinates. She’d need them when reporting about this place to the CP.
But ultimately, she never did—convincing herself that she could provide better intel if she waited to see what they actually used the facility for first.
“Why is there a robot flying the car now?” Jaid asked from the passenger seat of The Tourist. She’d only just noticed after a few minutes since she’d been staring out the window deep in thought.
“I wanted to see if it could, and it can!” Kada informed her from the back where she was now stuffed in the middle between Rusa and Xard. It was one of the janitor robots that Kada had decided to take for herself.
“Mallea is going to dismantle that thing the moment she finds out about it,” Jaid couldn’t help but joke. Even after being there for just a couple weeks, she knew for certain that Mallea would eliminate any threats to her job security.
“See, I told her that too,” Xard added, happy someone else came to the same conclusion. “That or Nathym will confiscate it for study.”
“No! I won’t let them harm Sir Cleaningsworth!” Kada protested with a whimper.
“Hmm, maybe you could disguise it as an odd art piece.” Rusa tried to help, but Kada wasn’t having it.
“No way. I’ll—” Jaid mostly tuned them out and went back to staring out the window. But for whatever odd reason, she found some comfort in the argument going on behind her.