...And Into The Fire

                            By:

                         Fox Cutter

    Chapter 8

I slowly creeped through the corridors of the Hall, keeping
close to the walls, trying not to be seen. I had spent the
past few hours working my way down into the center of the of
the, heading towards it's largest room.

The basic idea of my plan was simple, intercept there
communications. They had to be using the Hall's core
communication lines, as the make up of the walls, and the
size of the Hall made any other type of communication
useless.

There for, with all the secondary lines in the utility rooms
down (which was the only way to shut down the internal lines
like they had, even if it was the longest), all there
communications had to be routed through one hub. There was
only one place left for that to be done at, the Hall's data
center.

The first, and rather hard part, was getting there. Even
using the Matrix, I really wasn't safe. There still where
guards wondering around, and I had watched them collect a
few other people who had been wondering around the Hall. Now
I didn't know where they were being taken to (my guess was
the main auditorium, it was big enough for a couple
hundred-thousand people), but my guess was, it was to
heavily guarded to get out of.

I still didn't understand why they were rounding everyone
up. I doubted it was just to find me. Implied that they may
be looking for someone else, or it was part of there cover
story.

I though all this over as I slowly moved down the hallway.
Thus I was totally off guard when I felt an arm wrap around
my neck, and what felt like a gun pressed against my left
temple. "Don't move." I female voice whispered in my ear.

"Why would I do something like that?" I whispered back,
talking in my normal voice, and not trying to fake a male
voice to match my disguised.

"What are you doing here? You're not one of the guards that
have been patrolling around here." The person holding me
said, her voice sounding a bit perplexed.

"Glad you noticed."

She let go of me. "Turn around."

I turned, keeping my hands to my sides. Behind me stood a
female otter-morph. She was maybe five foot five, and was
dressed in a dark silk shirt, and shorts, her thick tail
hovering behind her. In her left paw, pointed at me, was a
gun.

"Who are you?" She asked.

I put my paws behind my back. "I should ask you the same
thing." I said, slowly pulling a pen out of my back pocket.

She narrowed her eyes at me. "Maybe, but I have the gun."

I nodded, then with a quick flick of my wrist threw the pen
down the hallway, where it landed against a door, ringing
out.

The otter turned her head for a second to see what it was,
then in a quick move I brought my paw up, and wrenched the
gun from her paw.

"Now, are you finished with this bullshit?" I asked,
inspecting the gun. It wasn't any of the high-tech guns,
just a good, reliable projectile gun.

She grinned a bit. "Nice move."

I smirked a bit, putting the gun in the waist of my pants.
"Thanks. Who are you?"

She shrugged. "No reason not to tell you. My name is Kalie."

"I'm Page." I said.

She chuckled a bit, "Page, is that a bit feminine?"

"Yes. Now come on, before someone finds us." I stared back
down the hallway.

Behind me, I heard her pause for a second, the start to
follow me. "Where are you going anyways? You know a way
out?" she whispered.

I looked back over my shoulder at her. "This is definitely
not a way out."

She wrinkled her forehead a bit. "Then why the hell should I
go with you?"

"Because from your reaction." I said, turning a corner. "You
want to be caught as much as I do."

"True..." she said, keeping up with me.

We walked down the corridor a bit, until I found the door I
wanted. The door wasn't marked, and didn't have a complex
lock. The only real clue that is was special was that it was
the only door on that side of the hallway for a long time.

Gently I typed in a code on the keypad that I had retrieved
months ago from the computer system. There was a low pop,
and the door unlocked.

Slowly I pushed the door open, and steeped into the room.
Kalie followed after me. She took about three steps into the
room, and muttered "Holy shit."

I turned from locking the door, and stood next to her, and
had about the same reaction.

The Marble Hall's data center was vastly huge, much bigger
then I originally though. We stood on the floor, and could
see cables and conducts all over the place. The room was at
least a thousand feet long, the same wide, and 5 floors
tall.

There where things scattered all over the place, at least
ten of the e-class main frame computer where sitting around.
Each one monolithic in size, being 4 stories tall, fifty
feet wide and long. There was also banks and banks of pure
memory storage. I had to guess I could see at least fifty of
the two-hundred terabyte storage systems.

And all over the place, above us, on the walls, and under
are feet, where miles and miles of Data-Wave cabling, along
with the video-phone system cables. In the very center of
the room, was one of the huge air ducts, the side I could
see (all 200 feet of it) was totally unobstructed. As this
was in the center of the Hall I guessed it had to be the
center duct.

"What is this place?" Kalie asked in awe.

"The Hall's data center." I said in a low voice. "Everything
in the Hall's network is stored here, as well as backups for
every company on Prid, and a few off. This also has the
routing to the external data links, and the ship to space
dish, not to mention the primary hub of all the Hall's data
lines. There are five other centers like this on Prid, each
one an near prefect echo of the other."

She let out a low whistle. "What are we doing here then?"
She asked.

I gave myself a slight grin. "To tap into the Hammerhead's
communications. Considering the have all the utility hubs
shut down, it all has to be going through here, and we can
also re-establish the external links out of the Hall as
well."

Kalie looked at me. "Wouldn't this be guarded then?"

I blinked. "Oh dear." I said. That was something I hadn't
considered.

"Actually yes." a voice said behind us. "Now turn around
slowly."

Before I could react, Kalie turn fast, her left side
brushing against me. As her turn ended, she used her
momentum to quickly drop to one knee. Then I heard her gun
go off right next to me, and the sound of a large mass
hitting the ground.

Slowly I looked down at Kalie, who was still in position,
her gun held prone in her paws. I quickly checked my belt,
and found that it was the same gun she had before. She must
have taken it from me when she turned.

A few feet away a large bear was lying on the floor, blood
slowly pooling under his head.

"You killed him!" I said.

She looked at me, standing, putting her gun in a hip holster
that I had missed before. "It was necessary."

I raised an eyebrow. "You let me take the gun away from
you."

She nodded, giving me a very full, and pointed, grin. "Of
course, do you think I would fall for that little trick you
pulled?"

I grumbled. "Well then, search his body, and see if you can
find some kind of radio or something."

She nodded. "Yes sir." she said.

"Not sir, madam." I corrected her.

She raised an eyebrow. "Could have fooled me." she said.

I remember then I still had the Matrix active. Raising the
control to my muzzle, I deactivated it. After the now
familiar blast of light I presented myself to her. "See."

She grinned. "Nice toy that." She said, then headed to the
body.

I turned and looked out over the massive room. This was a
place I could like.

* * *

I stretched my arms out, as I rested against the metal wall
of the air duct at the far end of the tunnel we had spent
the last four hours crawling through. Marn was next to me,
pounding the metal panel that covered it, back into place.

I rubbed my shoulders a bit. "Gods, I've got cramps."

He nodded in the low light of the flashlight he had. "It's
not an easy trip."

I rocked my head back and fourth a bit. "I don't suppose you
have anything to eat on you?"

"Not a bit." he said. "Sorry."

I slowly stood up, feeling my knees pop. "So where do you go
from here?"

"That way." he said motioning down the hall.

"Let's get going then." I said, starting down the duct.

Behind me I heard him scramble to his feet. "Be careful,
this close to the center there are a lot of off-shoots."

I looked over my should at him, I was about to say
something, when my left foot found nothing under it. Before
I could try and catch my balance, I smashed my knee into the
floor, and tumbled face first into the air shaft.

As I plunged into darkness, I felt myself it the side of the
duct, and starts to tumble down it. Apparently it wasn't a
strait shot down, but at a sharp angle. I rolled and tumbled
in the darkness for a few minutes, every now and then
hitting the sides.

After one sever smash, I felt myself crashing side ways
hard. A few seconds later I landed hard in another duct.

I slowly rubbed myself, feeling batter and bruised, though
nothing felt broken. Looking around the duct I had landed
in, I saw that I was in a small duct,  I was back to
crawling again. On the up shot though, ever few feet was a
small one foot wide, by six inches tall shaft, that went
about three feet, then stopping in a grate. Each one had
some light shining in from them.

'At least I have light' I though to myself.

Above me, from the shaft I had falling down, I heard some
loud crashing banging, and a few grunts. My guess was that
Marn was coming down the same way, trying to find me.

I moved back a few feet, to be out of his way when he
landed. After waiting a few seconds, there was a loud clang
as the light he had been caring fell out of duct.

'Fuck!' I though to myself. Some where in the fall, he must
have gone a different direction then I had. Picking up the
light, I stood up, getting my head in the shaft. "Marn?" I
called out.

Echoing around the shaft, I heard his voice call back.
"Rachel, where are you?"

"I'm in a duct that has vents along it."

I heard him grumble a bit. "Can you feel which way the air
is blowing?"

I paused for a second. I could lightly feel the air
streaming past by body, ruffling my fur through the rips in
my clothing. "Yes."

"Good, head in the direction it's blowing from, that will
take you to the center duct." His voice instructed.

I nodded to myself. "I'll meet you there." I called.

"Good, now get going." His voice said, getting weaker.

I got back on my paws and knees, and headed into the moving
air. I was glad that even though I was back crawling, this
tunnel was large enough not to cause me to cramp up.