All the off-white, soulless colors make Hudson's eyes feel blurry but he sees no immediate threats. More importantly his keen hearing picks up nothing....nothing...nothing. With a start Hudson realizes there is no static noise here, the silence is literally deafening and eerie, almost worse than hearing anything. He tiptoes up to the door with the others.
At Lily's words Viona rolls her eyes. "Save your threats for cretins girl. If I start anything you won't have time to finish it. You should practice your recall, as it's been stated numerous times already there is two ways to shut down the Black Rook, by directly accessing his main frame in the central computation system or by shutting down the Hive generators which will cause him to reboot but only 95% percent of the way, he won't come back online without manual assistance. As for exits, if we can gain control of the Hive we can exit through any of the thousand elevators that go back up to the main floor".
As she finishes Johnson nods. "That's about it". Chuck nods to Johnson and he flips his visor down and hefts his weapon. Everyone pauses for several seconds before they realize only one person can open the door.
Viona smiles satisfactorily and approaches the keypad. "Get used to depending on me this time around. In here brains will take you further than brawn...or at least keep you alive longer". She pulls out a small multi-tool and pries open the keypad face. Underneath are the naked buttons and several wires of different colors along with microchips and other electronic components. As she works, cutting a wire and soldering a microchip she talks. "The Black Rook will know this door is being remotely opened. Once we open it we should move. Think of it as Sauron's eye, if you attract it's attention he will look towards Gondor. If we get out of it's sight range quick enough we may be able to trick it into thinking we were only a glitch, however this is only theory", she finishes as she punches in several 0's into the keypad.
The door slid open. Johnson looked out into the hallway both ways. "Clear", he mutters quitely.
"Move". Viona hisses, "doesn't matter where, just fucking move".
Johnson leaves the hallway, followed by the party as they slink down the hall way as quick as possible to an unknown destination. Here, much like the upper levels is a sickeningly distorting hall way that connects to other identical hall ways which connect to doors which all look the same. It was enough to make one think they had found purgatory.
With Chuck and Johnson in the lead they continued on down the same hallway, which seemed to stretch forever on. They moved quickly for nearly five minutes before the hallway finally ended with one of the classic steel double doors. To each side, more hallways awaited.
"Are we clear or do we keep going"? Johnson asked.
Before he could answer the door behind him opened by itself. Behind it nothing stood but an empty room but a voice emerged from the uncanny silence and it seemed to come from everywhere at once. It was a male voice, a tenor, the voice of a man that was on the brink of insanity.
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all? Why it is I? Oh do tell, mmhmm. Come into my web said the spider to the fly. Come inside or die, Die, DIE! Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha!
Viona paled, which to her looked blanched white. This was followed by trembling. "He...he knows".
