Enoria is preparing for war with Irithara, and the team sans Kaleth are doing the best they can to put a stop to it before it progresses even further.
Their plan? Find Mereria, get her help with killing Relioth, and save Kaleth in the process. They...
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"Hey, have you thought about what we'll do if we actually find a computer?" Alor asked as he followed Nef through what felt like the hundredth corridor. The Umbra who'd shown them around had told them about a door that was supposed to have an X on it that they should never try to enter. So naturally, that was the first place he and Alor wanted to check out. The problem was that they couldn't find it.
"Uh, yeah, we'll dig up some dirt," Nef replied with annoyance, rolling his eyes. He'd already said that, hadn't he? This endless maze of corridors and doors with no markings on them was really starting to anger him, and his brother wasn't helping.
"No, I get that. But the Umbra don't use Global."
Nef stopped dead in his tracks. How the hell had he forgotten about that little fact? He'd been so eager to figure out what this organization was hiding that he'd completely overlooked the fact that he couldn't read anything that they would have in their databases. Well, maybe he could read it with the app he'd been working on, but he wouldn't be able to understand it.
Then he realized something else, as well. "Well, maybe they do now. I mean, Mom's working for them, and she sure as hell can't speak that weird-ass language Eternals use."
"You don't know that," Alor argued. "But we should definitely check it out."
It was nice having a supportive older brother. Not that Nef would ever tell Alor this.
It felt like an eternity had passed by as they aimlessly strolled from one corner of the main building to the other, feeling more and more creeped out by the fact that the building was devoid of life, but then, finally, they found the door.
The X on it really made the door stand out because, for the most part, the other doors were all exactly the same. Now they just needed to figure out how they were going to open it.
"Any ideas besides brute force?" Alor asked, and Nef scanned the door with his eyes. Unlike most of the other doors, this one didn't have a knob, or a lock, or anything like that. Instead, next to it was a small yellow circle with a red light in the middle. Probably a chip scanner.
"Yeah, actually. Do you have something we could use to get rid of the yellow part of this thing?" Nef pointed at the scanner, and Alor nodded, pulling a knife out of his back pocket. Nef hadn't even known he had one on him.
"Are you sure it won't trigger some alarm?" Alor asked, already pushing the knife into the tiny space between the scanner and the wall.
"No."
Alor sighed but started prying the cover away, anyway. It clearly took some effort on Alor's part as Nef watched him push on the knife with everything he had with gritted teeth, but after a minute or two, the yellow cover finally broke away and fell to the ground.
When Nef saw the assortment of wires inside the scanner, he thought he'd get a decent challenge, but he soon figured out all he had to do was connect the wire that sends the signal from the chip into the door opening mechanism.
