MEGAMAN X: THE SERIES SEASON ONE: Poles Apart EPISODE ELEVEN: "Old As You Fear" Author's Note: Back in the saddle after a hectic week at school. This also probably didn't make it Sunday, but I've got other obligations, so you guys are just gonna have to put up with me until the Summer arrives. Anyway, this one is quite a bit more powerful then the last plot vehicle. Have fun! ________________________________________________________________________________________ "If there are self-made purgatories, then we all must live in them." - Mr. Spock from Star Trek: TOS. It was the dim shimmer in the sunlight that caught Zero's attention. After running a trace angle calculation, he determined that someone on the third floor of the medical clinic across the street was watching the entire party coming from the Red Dragon restaurant. He was now inside the Sydney Main Clinic climbing the cement stairwell. The whole situation was beginning to really get to him. "First we have to put up with that attack at the excavation site. Then the authorities refuse to do anything and the military locks all access to their files from us and may even have deleted them. Now we're being watched?...," Zero hissed under his breath. 'Well if I run into this surveyor, he's gonna have a real reason for being in the clinic.' Zero opened the red metal door and walked out onto the third floor of the clinic. Using the trajectory analysis, he cross-referenced the hallways with the outside and determined that it was near the end of the left hall past the secretary's desk. He walked on, noting that it didn't feel like a cold blue hospital like he had expected. Instead, the carpet was brown, and the walls were panelled with a dark wood. Zero passed a number of people sitting and waiting to see the doctors. He could feel a smile coming to his lips, realizing just how easy some humans get hurt. Coming up to the room he had calculated, he was fairly sure no one would be there, since Zero could have been easily seen crossing the street below. His "surveyor" probably would have got scared and bolted. Still, there's got to be some evidence of his presence. That's why Zero was so suprised to find someone standing next to the window when he opened the door. The sun was directly on the window, and Zero was starting to get worried. He couldn't see the dark shadowed figure clearly, but he did see a white heart necklace glittering in the direct sunlight. He began to realize two things: 1) Tracking someone with direct sunlight on oneself is the worst way to do it. 2) So maybe this person was waiting for him instead. "Alright, you got me here," stated Zero, "So what the hell do you want?" The blinds came down over the glass and Zero immediately recognized what he already suspected. The person from the cemetary stood there in the heavy catholic-like clothing. He couldn't make out if this person was a man or a woman, but his scans confirmed that this person was definitely a Reploid. Unfortunately, the long black clothing interfered heavily with his tactical analysis too much to confirm anything. Zero began to feel an unfamiliar emotion. He didn't know why and he couldn't really figure out what it was. He wanted to keep up his side of the interrogation, but somehow couldn't. "Is this yours?" asked the effeminate quiet voice, affirming that she was definitely a woman. She held up the white heart necklace and then put it back in her black trenchcoat pocket. Zero knew where she got it. "...No. I, um,...who?" asked Zero. His body began to tremble, so he leaned against the wall for support. He couldn't figure out what he was feeling. 'Is this what it's like to feel fear? But...I don't understand why I--' "Is it mine?" asked the woman quietly again. Zero was confused by her questions, or maybe he was avoiding what he believed, but didn't want to know. Zero straightened up against the wall, he knew what he was feeling now. It was the same he felt when...Iris-- 'I couldn't do anything for her...But shouldn't I be feeling something else too? Okay...Zero get a grip on yourself. You're always better than this...maybe I should run some diagnostics on my system--' The woman began walking forward and Zero couldn't move, but he also didn't want to either. She leaned forward and was a mere inch from Zero's face. Zero couldn't focus anymore and he began to wonder why Dr. Caine ever gave him the ability to cry. X concluded it was a good secondary emotional release just by observing humans. Well, X never had to do this either. . . . The door opened quickly. "Excuse me, you'll have to clear this room for our client," came a voice from the door. Zero opened his eyes, wondering when he had actually closed them. The nurse had her head peeking out looking at Zero. "Are you okay?" asked the nurse, concerned. "Uh...yeah. Thank you," replied Zero, trying to piece together what just happened. The nurse closed the door and Zero saw that the window was open, the blinds up. Maybe reploids were just as easy to hurt as humans. *** "Right this way Roll!" said Anyi with enthuse. She loved every opportunity she got to show her lab to someone. Her colleagues didn't think too much of it, but they were probably envious that they didn't have their own research lab, even though it really wasn't much that Anyi got. Her parents thought it was cool, so she couldn't argue with that reasoning. Roll followed up from behind, her hair tied back in a ponytail with a band she borrowed from Anyi's purse. Anyi forced the door open to the lab with a large push and braced herself for the deafening creaking sound that followed. "Okay, now I know you saw it the first time, but you never got to know what I do here!" said Anyi, "just make yourself comfortable on my bed, nevermind the mess." Roll went over to the gray mattress and sat down as Anyi told her to do. Anyi took in a deep breath to start her small speech about her lab, which she gave everyone who she brought here for the first time. So far only one person, Zero, didn't meet it with the same enthusiasm that she had for the lab. Of course she noted that he's not much of one to be enthused. "Alright, first, I live right there," said Anyi, pointing to where Roll was. "That's my bed, my fridge, and my drawer. I don't have anything else here and left all my other stuff at home. Anyway, this place used to be a storage room for the Physics department, but I managed to convert it into a lab with a bit of help from some of my friends at home. I even have a window!" Anyi walked over to the window, which was set into the wall just below the ceiling and fell too short to really do anything but let a bit of light from the courtyard in. Anyi jumped up to look out and saw that the gardener already came by to patch up the divot that X and Zero made during their tests with the Seamus-7. Then she remembered Roll. "Oh! Here's your capsule! I'm still trying to figure out if it's equipped with an internal schematic so that maybe I can fix these other capsules which haven't been maintained properly over the years," Anyi pointed at the line of capsules against the wall opposite Roll. "Anyway," Anyi continued, "This pile of scrap has some of the slotcards I've been trying to fix. I'm hoping to build a network out of it so that we can get our four lab monitors online to the Internet. There's the grid I've managed to construct so far!" Anyi motioned to the network of wires and chips which lay underneath the window. "I've got all the previous information from Caine Labs before they shut down last week. Fortunately, I've got a colleague there who gave me everything they had on X, Zero, and all the other Reploids they had encountered," Anyi remembered she was talking to Roll, "I haven't added you to their list yet, we'll have to run some tests to add your data onto it." A loud knock came against the door and Anyi winced as she heard the doorknob on the other side of the door fall off again and hit the ground with a large clank. 'Well, that detracts from the power of my speech somewhat,' thought Anyi, and then yelled loudly, "Yes, Dr. Solieu is in. Just a moment!" Anyi ran up to the door and opened it. A man in a brown delivery uniform stood there. "Are you Dr. Solieu?" asked the man holding his clipboard. "Yep, that's me!" said Anyi with a smile. The man gave her a strange look. "You're kinda young, could I see some ID?" asked the man. Anyi's smile fell. This always happened with the department, as if they kept forgetting they had a young staff member. She went over to her desk with the green lamp and grabbed her purse. She returned to the man with her ID and he merely nodded and gave her a pen. "Just sign there," Anyi followed the man's directions, "and there. Print name right at the bottom there." "Alright," said the man, pulling out a key and handing it to Anyi, "present your claim check to the desk upstairs. Your delivery has been put together and arrived an hour ago." Anyi closed the door and her smile returned at Roll's glance. She put the key in her pocket and continued as if the interruption had never happened. "Well, those are my two couches, I figured I'd need somewhere nice to sit in case I got company often. I know X and Zero are fond of lying on those couches when they're thinking about that Seamus-7 incident. Anyway, that space over there next to my fridge is gonna be a storage shelf for the package that just arrived. Any questions?" asked Anyi. Roll shook her head and Anyi shrugged, sitting down on one of the couches. "Okay! So let's get your code completely re-activated and we can go get the package together." "What's in the package?" asked Roll curiously. "Oh, X and Zero's stuff from Caine Labs. I don't know how much of the equipment we got back though." Roll nodded and stood up, walking over to the capsule. "I assume you'll need me in the capsule to complete the activation sequence?" "Yeah, just hop in there!" answered Anyi, "It shouldn't be too difficult to fix this, I don't think any systems have degraded." Anyi pressed the button to open the glass panel to the capsule and Roll stepped in, lying against the wall of the capsule with her arms holding onto the sidebars along the inside. "Okay, I'm not sure what reactivating the rest of your code will do," stated Anyi uneasy for the first time, "Are you sure about this?" Roll nodded, so Anyi closed the capsule and took a keyboard from one of the terminals in the lab and plugged it into the side of the capsule. Anyi entered the code read command and after a few minutes, the capsule had loaded all of Roll's internal memory into the core memory. Anyi scrolled through, beginning with the main script file. She immediately realized the problem. 'Wow, that was really fast. It seems that her main loader is missing a number of modules,' thought Anyi quickly, scrolling through the directory tree to figure out where the commands were branching too. "What the heck?" muttered Anyi under her breath, her mood now one of a serious nature. The modules that were missing were actually the make-up of an entire library of commands! Dr. Light must have truly been a fantastic programmer to have an entire library absent from the code and still have it segregated enough to function on it's own. Still, the library was present, so why wasn't the code finding it? Running the compiler, she figured out that nothing was wrong with the rest of the code. She called up the heap and ran through the memory stack. No leaks, not even one. Dr. Light really was a brilliant man if he managed to program a machine without a need for self-correction algorithms. Yet self-correction algorithms were in place, but Anyi couldn't make sense of the ancient language. "Okay, so the problem is more simple than I'm thinking," said Anyi aloud. She always talked to herself when presented with a complicated problem. Two hours had already passed from analyzing the code, and she wasn't much closer to the solution. "Wait a minute...what if the library allocation isn't accidental?" said Anyi, realization beginning to flood. She checked the directory tree again, but this time going through it with a fine tooth comb. "Ah ha! I can't believe I missed that!" said Anyi, her hand smacking her forehead from her stupid mistake. She had merely assumed that no one would have renamed the library directory. But she could see that one of the letters in the directory had been changed to contain one capital letter instead of being all lower-case like the code expected. "Such a simple thing and easy to fix..." whispered Anyi. It was beginning to bug her. Why would such a simple thing be changed, since it could be easily fixed. Did Dr. Light change it in order to ensure Roll wouldn't awake with the library active? But why would he do that? 'Ah, who am I kidding? Anyi, you know you're gonna do it anyway,' she thought to herself, calling up the rename command. She recompiled the loader, realizing that it would take a few minutes. From what she could gather, to compile an android's code would take a couple of days back then. Fortunately, Anyi knew that this procedure would go by a lot faster with her forsight. Back at the excavation site she had found that the processor in the capsule was damaged, but instead of working around it since it was a tera-processor, she replaced the entire board with Dr. Aldayr's board from his personal computer. She had promised that it was only temporary at the time...but then all that-- "I think I need a drink," said Anyi, walking over to her drawer and pulling out her coffee machine in the bottom drawer. For most of the past couple of weeks, the little machine had served her well with an energetic friendship. She remembered building the coffee machine a few years ago for an extra credit project in class, maybe the first useful thing she ever made. She should have enough time to make coffee. Even with a system which outdates the old capsule system by a few decades and a number of Terahertz on both the bus and the processor, she figured she would still have a good ten minutes to herself. The coffee drip slowly came to a stop and Anyi smiled at the roasted smell coming from the fresh pot of coffee. She hadn't got a chance to clean her dishes for a few weeks, but it didn't matter since she was the only one that used them. Now if only she could figure out a way to avoid the laundromat. Suddenly, a shrill scream came from the capsule as the program beeped complete. Roll's fists were banging on the capsule with a fear which sparked Anyi's own terror. The glass on the capsule began to crack quickly, overshadowed by the crack of ceramic against the floor as Anyi's cup of coffee hit the ground. Anyi began to panic and her weak nerves started to wreak havoc on her from the fast situation. She wasn't sure what to do, but that glass wasn't going to hold for more than a few seconds. Anyi rushed over to the system to do something, but she knew it was too late and Roll would be free before the system would be able to undo what Anyi had done. And to make things worse, that was Anyi's only coffee mug. Unfortunately, Anyi had a much bigger pre-occupation, such as what to do now that the glass had shattered. *** Null was so tired. It was so dark in these tunnels with the lights off. He knew that this subway terminal had been shut down for repairs, that's why he got to stay here without anyone kicking him out. He laid, uncomfortable, against the Coca-Cola machine, staying out of the security camera's sight. He hoped this place wouldn't be operational for another week. It wasn't cold down here like it was up in the streets at night. He needed less regeneration to stay down here, which meant less money that he needed for another day. He just curled up and avoided the pain of thinking for a bit longer. Footsteps were caught in echoes, getting closer to Null. He sat up in sudden fright, hoping that the footsteps belonged to a security guard who would simply kick him out. But his feelings clawed their way into his throat and Null couldn't help crying when he saw the man standing over him, wearing a grey business suit. "Well there you are," said the man in a sardonic tone. Null just held onto his legs and tried to think of later when this wouldn't be happening. That was life after all, wasn't it? "Now now, we're all alone, aren't we?" he said with a smile, crouching down to be eye to eye with Null. The strange thunder insignia below his left eye drilled into Null; it was definitely him. "I wouldn't hope for security to come rushing. The cameras aren't working at the moment," said the man, standing up and looking away from Null. "So, what did you see?" Null was confused, but also had too much fear caught in his throat to speak. The man turned to face Null and immediately leapt down, grabbing Null by the shoulders. Null screamed, hoping that someone would hear him, but no one would. Not now and probably never. "Now come on," hissed the man, "Is that any way to treat an old friend?" "W-what do..." Null just couldn't finish. "Now now...I know where you sit all day. Right in the alley beside the Red Dragon, right?" asked the man, waving his finger in front of Null's face. Null started to shake, knowing that he'd have to regenerate soon. "Always playing the blind man, right?" whispered the man, quickly grabbing the black glasses off of Null's face. The light immediately flooded his eyes, causing Null to wince, but not in the pain of the light, but the pain of his shame. "Gee...I guess that is smart. All dressed like this, right?" asked the man, "Right!" The man stood up taking Null's glasses with him. The man had anger contorting into his face. "I bet people would be upset to know they gave money to a man who wasn't really blind. But I bet they might even kill you...if they found out that you weren't even a man." Null feared that this business man really would do it. Tell the whole world that Null was a bolt...then no one would pity him. Not even one soul would care what ditch he ended up in the next day. Null drew in breath to calm down, but found that he couldn't focus on his secondary systems. His code was too far gone...it was so hard to think these days. "Oh come on!" yelled the man right in Null's face. Null face felt frozen in place. "You think if I told them you're a..." the man spit as he said the word, " 'bolt', they'd care? Heh..." The man began to laugh violently, Null couldn't do anything but shake his head until his body began to move against the wall. "They don't even know your name. They never do, they just give you money so that you'll go away! Forget being the equal of a human being! You'll never be the equal of a dog! They get more respect then any bolt could wish for!" yelled the man, obviously caught in his own world now. Null couldn't stop shaking...he just wanted his glasses back. He was blind. That's right, he always would be and no one will ever know any truth. But at least he could see more than most people...isn't that a good trade? 'I just need money...I've already sold most of my components...I...' thinking was so very hard these days. The business man crouched down again. His purple hair fell over his face and covered his narrowed eyes. "Awww, you need it don't you? You need a regen pack?" mocked the man, but in a quiet tone. Null tried to nod, what the business man said was one of the few things left to care about. Too bad his body didn't agree and kept shaking. The business man just smiled. "Who did you see?" asked the business man again. "There was a man with a blue ponytail, accompanied by a red-haired man with a bad fashion sense..." Null couldn't remember. It was too hard to remember what happened to himself today, how is he supposed to remember for others too? It was never fair, he was just blind and that was it. Day in, day out; same old always. "Are you sad, Null?" asked the man quietly. All the emotion seemed drained out of his voice now. Null tried so hard to remember, if only for that regen pack. Another day would pass...that's all he needed. The man stood up. He seemed troubled by something. Was he crying too? Null only knew what he sounded like when he himself cried. But what could this man care for, if anything? He was always mean...but then why did he bother learning Null's name the first time they met? "...You mean those four?" asked Null, hoping beyond hope for the fear to die down. The business man didn't seem like he was so angry anymore. "So they did manage to get her...excellent." muttered the man. Null didn't know what emotion to feel anymore, so he just sat there limp. His body was too drained to shake at the moment. The business man began to walk away, leaving Null behind. Null tried to protest, but was just glad he was finally gone. Suddenly, the man turned and faced Null again. "Oh. You might want to run when the alarms sound," said the man matter-of-factly. Null's eyes widened as the man swung his arm hard into the Coke machine, completely breaking the top, the walls of the machine shattered like splintered wood. Soda began to spill across the floor as dozens of cans came rolling across the ground. A few went over the edge and hit the tracks, setting off a very loud alarm. Looking up, the man was gone. Still, precious carbonic acid began to stain the floors. Null knew that the liquid was the basis for cheap regen-packs...it could last him a week, if he could carry it. Null reconfigured his systems to auxiliary and gathered up the courage to grab as many cans as he could to stuff in his blanket before running from the sirens. His programmed will probably wouldn't last another week anyway...it was already too hard to think of which way to run. *** Author's Comment: Well, this week's eppy is done. Hopefully everyone will agree it's a step up from the last one. The last scene was rather personal for me...I didn't really know how to write it effectively and probably didn't. Still, that's what Poles Apart is for. I have to learn how to write effectively right?