Mysty packed all of their stuffs, ensuring nothing is left behind. Albur is still in bad shape, but is still capable of continuing. Havoc put himself back into the third slot of the rifle, but Albur showed fear and would even raise his guard to the max, as if Havoc would kill him whenever he let his guard down.
Mysty sighed, she had already lost count of how many times she sighed. She looked at the poor traumatized man,
"Come on, let's go. We can't stay here any longer."
Mysty held onto both of her laser pistols, Albur regain his wits after a long while when he realized Mysty is staring at him. He blinked twice before slowly taking out the energy detector.
"Right.....the next core is at.....B7....."
Then, silence.
Mysty raised her eyebrow, Havoc stared at him. Albur murmured something in his mouth, seemingly building his sentence.
"I...think our best bet is to like, f-find a drain? Like it leads the water away so...it might lead to lower floors."
"The pipes might lead to B6, sounds a bit disgusting but that's our only way of going down safely right?"
"Fast, simple, safer." Havoc added up. Albur looked at the rifle that he strapped onto his back.
"Can you stop talking?"
"Fine."
Albur held the energy detector tightly, then slowly stepped forwards. Mysty looked at Albur from the back, still worried of him, and thought if she should lead instead. Nonetheless, she still followed him.
________________________________________________________________________________
As they leave, from behind them, in the dark, a figure stood there. His purple eyes flickered in the dark. He tilted his head to the right, his left eye narrowed slightly, and he made a silent smirk.
________________________________________________________________________________
Albur held the energy detector with shaking hands. Listening to its beeping noise and looking at where the core is. Though he should be looking for a drain, not the core. Mysty even had to remind him of this.
B5 has a lot of drainage systems. If they managed to find a drain that has a pipe that leads downwards, they could climb down the pipe and exit halfway to the bottom. This allows them to reach B6, B7 is still unsafe to approach since the virus liquid may all gather at the most bottom floor. Looking for a drain is also much easier and less time consuming compared to looking for holes that lead to B6.
Albur walked and looked around with Mysty following behind. They found that there are no signs of any virus lifeforms, which seems very strange. They found multiple drains easily as they spread across the whole B5.
"Still kinda strange why B5 has an absurd amount of drainage system." Mysty said.
Albur did not respond.
They stopped by one of the drains. Mysty removed the grate of the drain and shone her flashlight into the grate. A horrible odor came out from the drain as soon as the two looked inside the drain. The drain leads to a place that seems like to be a sewer.
"Oh my freaking god, it smells lovely."
"Well, it's our best option."
Albur moved his head from left to right and vice versa repeatedly. But it only made his already blurry mind even more tangled. He pushed his leg forward, about to jump in, but Mysty stopped him.
"Let me go down first. If you fall at least I can catch you. I don't want you to complain about the horrible smell on you when you fall."
Albur took a few steps back, Mysty shone her flashlight around the sewer opening, then leaped in.
"Sploosh!"
Mysty landed in the sewer floor, the purple, sticky liquid beneath her feet splashed outwards in different directions. The horrible odor is already making her sick, it would be bad if she tripped and had the virus liquid all over her.
She moved a little bit away from the drain opening, Albur leaped into the sewers.
"Splash!"
The liquid beneath Albur's feet splashed outwards in different directions. He lost his balance again, he swung his arm, struggling to remain balance. Mysty reached out to help him, but before she grabbed him, Albur steadied his body.
He regained his balance, he managed to pull his body forward using only the strength of his upper torso. Mysty froze in position, Albur froze as well.
"Did you just..."
"...."
Albur did not speak, he simply stared at his left arm with a face of disbelief, for a brief second. Then, he simply headed forwards, Mysty turned to look at him, and followed him, without saying anything.
The sewer floor is in between B5 and B6, it is like any other sewers in the city, with one wide water lane in between 2 dry roads. The water lane is filled with the AC-23 virus liquid, and even some corpse of virus lifeforms. They walked along the dry road and soon came to a T-junction which has a massive vertical pipe like structure in the center. With purple steam coming out of the screws from time to time.
Albur approached the pipe, he slowly reached out to touch the wall of the pipe, but soon discovered that it is boiling hot. He quickly retracted his hand afterwards. Mysty walked circles around the pipe, then noticed there is a control console like structure next to the pipe. She signaled Albur to come, he saw her, then walked to her.
"Look at this."
Albur stared at the control console, its screen was covered with purple fibrous virus substances. He placed the energy detector near his feet and took his rifle. He activated slot 3 and aimed at the virus substances.
"POW!"
Albur pulled the trigger, without yelling out the move name. The rifle fired a Virus Corruption, it exploded upon contact with the virus substance. Damson purple energy began corrupting the pinkish purple virus substance, until every single piece of virus substance on the console was gone.
The buttons on the console began to glow as soon as the virus substances dried out. A screen projected above the buttons shortly after. The two realized this is the control console of the giant pipe.
There are multiple choices on the control module. Like control waste water drainage, structure status report, waste cleaning protocol and many more.
Albur clicked on the structure status report. The screen switched to a layout map of the pipe. It seems that this sewage system handles all of the drain water of the entire car park. The other floors above B5 all had pipes that would lead to the sewer below B5, but the structure layout shows that all pipes were stuck. By things like rocks, flesh and bones, which explains why the virus liquid flood the floors and only leak through holes.
The massive pipe leads to the waste water treatment that is very far away from Xectar City. There are also other small pipes that would lead to B6, which became what Albur and Mysty had to pursue at the point. The massive pipe is completely filled with virus liquid, it detected it has foreign substances in it so it activated heating process to try and melt the foreign substances.
Albur pressed the waste water flow button, which would gush out all of the liquid to the waste water treatment. However, when he pressed it, a warning screen popped out.
"Error: drainage system suffered breach alert. Breach type: computer virus. Draining protocol unable to proceed."
Albur took a step back. Havoc who was glowing faint red crawled out of slot 3, he glanced at the screen.
"Guess it's time I work again."
Just as Havoc wiggled his flash drive body out, Albur tilted the rifle to the right, making him slide back into the rifle slot. He glanced at Albur is confusion. Albur didn't speak, he just closed the hatch of the rifle's third slot. Mysty raised an eyebrow, while having eye contact with Albur.
"What are you doing?"
Albur looked around, he started to examine the console and walked around it.
"There's gotta be another way...." he murmured, the voice is so faint that only himself can hear it.
Mysty crossed her arms while looking at Albur circling the console.
"The drainage system is infected with the AC-23 virus, what do you wanna do with it?"
Albur walked to the back of the control console, and found what seems to be the hardware assembly of the console. The screws of the cover is weakened due to the virus substances corrupting the console, which Albur could easily remove the cover.
He crouched down and looked into the hardware assembly, he saw multiple wires, fuses and processors in the hardware assembly. Most of them were in fine shape, only having thin loose virus substances hanging around. But the central processing unit of the drainage system is visibly damaged, having virus substance growing on it.
'Heh, it will be so easy with Johnson around here.' Albur thought to himself.
Mysty walked to Albur, she crouched down next to him.
"Do you even know what are you doing?" she asked.
"Uh...we have to.....replace the CPU right?"
Mysty lowered her head and looked inside. She saw the CPU being damaged
"Seems like it, I don't think Havoc could help with this as well."
"Good, because I wanna sleep. Go do it yourselves."
Albur finger flicked Havoc. He looked back at the CPU, while thinking in his head. That's when he noticed the other CPUs are the same model as the CPU of the drainage system.
"Hey, Mysty..."
"Yes?"
"Can you help me check the control module?"
Mysty rolled her eyes onto the control console, and slowly stood up.
"Sure?"
Albur looked at the CPUs, he can tell which system's CPU is which one as they are labeled on the CPUs. Mysty opened the console, the screen projected again.
"Help me check, if we disable the water distributing system, would the water drainage system become less effective?"
Mysty checked that system carefully and read every info carefully.
"Yes...it will...."
"Alright, how about the scanning system?"
"Huh? Mmm.....it will, because it would...."
"Alright, what about the waste cleaning protocol?"
"What are you trying to....."
Mysty turned to Albur, he is looking closely at the CPUs of the systems, she thought for a second, then the realization hit her head hard.
"Oh.....oh...ok, I see. Um, yes, the...."
"Alright, what about...."
"Ok, slow down, man."
Mysty checked system to system, and found 2 systems which would not affect any part of the liquid drainage system. Which is the foreign substance melting system, and the water recycling system.
Albur plucked off the CPU of the water recycling system, which is the better removal choice. He subsequently plucked off the damaged CPU of the drainage system and connected the wires to the undamaged CPU.
However Albur quickly realized the electricity supplement to the CPU isn't enough, as the wire does not supply enough electricity due to its cables being corrupted by the virus substance, in addition, the system has not received proper electricity supplement for nearly a week. It barely had any electricity to function the entire control console.
Albur scratched his head in annoyance, Mysty looked at him, she smiled and shook her head. She reached for her taser and handed it to Albur.
"You silly."
Albur stared at the taser, he quietly took it from Mysty's hands.
"Thanks."
"It might only make the system function a minute or two. So we gotta hurry."
Mysty said, as she switched to controlling the drainage system. Albur charged the taser to full voltage and prepared to shock the CPU.
"Hey! Hey! Who told you to shock it! Use the electric components in the taser!"
Albur froze, he lowered the taser and, smirked.
"My bad."
"You stupid....."
Albur took apart the taser. He slowly examined the components of it. He took out the component that supplies electricity. The CPU requires a little more electric current a little voltage.
Now with the voltage problem solved thanks to the electricity generator of the taser, Albur then looked closely at the wires of the systems and noticed it is labeled as having 3 Ampere electricity which is just enough to power the CPU for a short while. He ripped some wires of the melting system and connected them to the CPU, supplying enough electric current.
The warning sign vanished, the system is now back to normal. Mysty swiped through the control panel, she quickly tapped onto the clearing system and activated the liquid drainage protocol.
"Order received. Water drainage protocol proceeding. Water transfer location: waste water treatment center."
Mysty looked up at the massive pipe, steam came out from around it's circumference. Then, they heard rumbling noises. The virus liquid in the water lane began to be sucked away. They were all sucked into small pipes that were connected to the massive pipe.
The pipe expand a little in size, it nearly scared the life out of the two. The pipe is now overly filled with virus liquid. The electricity of the CPU of the system ran out at the same time, causing the system to fail.
"Error: Drainage system computer failure. Please proceed with manual action."
The control console completely shut down. Every system failed. Only the drainage system is able to run. Suddenly, the control console split in half and slide sideways. A cylinder emerged from the center with a valve like structure, it trembled as it rose, seemingly it has been a long time since it was last used.
"Computer failure. Computer failure. If water drainage system shall proceed, please manually twist the valve clockwise to confirm the drainage, otherwise, twist anti-clockwise."
Albur and Mysty looked at the valve, they then looked at each other at the same time. They flinched lightly when they made eye contact. Mysty smiled at Albur, Albur looked down, then smiled. They shared a nod, they placed both of their hands onto the valve and twisted it clockwise.
The massive pipe begun to tremble, then they heard a loud sound of water flushing away, like the sound of flushing a toilet but ten times louder. Steam shot out from the circumference of the pipe, the tremble kept going, until coming to an end several minutes later.