Chapter 2
The elevator took a lot longer than a normal elevator in a normal building would, especially since they were seemingly skipping Floor B1, but not an especially uncomfortable amount of time, at least for Toriko and Sorawo, anyways, who were quite used to spending long amounts of time in elevators. Akari and Natsumi, on the other hand, started chatting nervously after a few moments of waiting. Alina took out a sheet of paper and, very carefully, started writing stuff on it.
"Hey," Sorawo asked. "You said we should try to avoid Kolibri. What is that?"
"Oh, Kolibri are a Replika type. They're pretty short, you can identify them by the three red marks on their forehead." Noticing Toriko's slack-jawed expression, she continued "Uh, in case you need it a Replika is like, a person with robotic augments, mass-manufactured by the Nation to work as labourers, soldiers, and administrators. The political line is that they're machines that resemble Gestalts;" Toriko noticed she was lowering her voice for this next part "please don't go around telling people I'm saying this, but I really think that if you make the effort to know them, they're actually just people. My best friend in the whole world is Elster, a technician Replika."
Eventually, the elevator shuddered to a halt, and through the mesh of the elevator door they could see a large room, which they entered as the vertical doors opened. The floor consisted of square concrete blocks, and the walls and ceiling were made from a dark grey metal. They saw a few people, also in dark grey uniforms, walking through the room. On their left was a control console for the elevator shaft. Toriko could see Alina glance nervously around the room. Then walked past the console, and turned to face the receptionist's desk.
She produced the sheet of paper and passed it through the window. The receptionist lady picked it up and peered at it.
"Says you all were meant to be back down here two hours ago. Don't slack off." She passed it back to them.
They walked away. Alina breathed out heavily, like she had just done something that took immense concentration. Toriko could guess that the paper she had presented was probably a forged or stolen permission. At Alina's lead, they removed their heavy jackets.
"You know" Alina said, "it's supper time, I kind of want to go get something to eat. I could share some of my ration with you" she offered selflessly.
Toriko quickly shut down Sorawo's attempt to point out how unnecessary this was. "It's okay, we brought some sandwiches"
They walked through a series of hallways and rooms. Most of the people were wearing the same clothes as them, but Toriko and Sorawo noticed some other people in odd black clothing wearing something that kind of looked like blocky white armour. Sorawo pointed this out to Alina, who explained that they were "Eules", another Replika type. She also noticed a few groups of people similar to them, but unlike the Eules they were all extremely short. Sorawo pointed out to her that they had three red triangle tattoos on their face, making them the "Kolibris" Alina had been described, which she assented to. Toriko tried not to look at them too much, but her curiosity got the better of her. She noticed they were extremely close together, exhibiting a weird sort of behaviour where they walked in lockstep despite not looking like they were making a serious effort to maintain any kind of formation.
Toriko also noticed something strange, nearly all of the humans they saw, as well as all of the Replikas, were women.
They soon found themselves in a room. It took a bit for Toriko to realise that it was Alina's living quarters. Or rather, Alina's living quarters were in the room. It looked like several other people had beds here, although they were alone. Sorawo and Toriko sat down on a corner of Alina's bed. Toriko withdrew their four sandwiches from their bag, and was about to eat one when Sorawo grabbed her arm. She looked up in confusion and saw Sorawo frantically trying to direct her attention, without exactly pointing, to the other three occupants of the room, who were gazing at them with the same expressions as might be worn by a family of Pennsylvanian wheat farmers whose house has been expropriated by Robert E. Lee. Toriko could notice that Alina in particular had a brown rectangle that gave off a mild impression of edibility clasped in her hands, stopped uneaten halfway to her mouth, currently being rinsed with drool.
Toriko slowly set the sandwich down and allowed Sorawo to take it and break two of their sandwiches into halves, distributing the four resulting pieces between them, Akari, and Natsumi. Then she handed the remaining two to Alina, who started eating them as slowly as humanly possible.
"Where do you think we should be looking?" Natsumi asked. "For "gates", I mean"
Sorawo thought about this for a moment. "I think it always seems to be something that reminds of us of home, somehow. Whenever a gate is created in the Other Side, it corresponds to the object that exists at the gate's location in our world. Or at least a version of it."
"That could be difficult" Toriko pointed out. "I think usually it works because in the Other Side we're exploring places that are obviously not, uh, man-made."
"But this place looks very man-made." Akari completed.
"Exactly" Toriko said. "It's tricky to know what to look for".
"Hmm, what sections does this place have?" Toriko asked Alina. She remained silent.
"Hey," Akari said. "Are you okay?"
"I thought Elster would be here" Alina said pensively. She actually seemed quite downcast about this.
"What do you normally do with her?" Akari asked.
"Oh, well, she's not super conversational, so it's mostly me talking. But I know she enjoys it just as much as I do, or she wouldn't hang around me when she gets the chance. That's why it's weird she's not here." she said.
"Maybe she's working" Natsumi said.
"I suppose so." Despite the assent, Alina seemed to be really puzzled by this.
"Maybe we can go look for her and a gate back to our world at the same time" Akari suggested.
"Yeah, that sounds nice" Alina said. She stood up and finished the last piece of sandwich.
They walked out of the accommodation, and Alina led them to some more rooms. On the way, Alina explained the layout of the facility.
Eventually they entered the mensa (eating area), where someone called out to Alina as past were walking.
"Hi, Julia" she responded. Alina took a seat next to this person, who looked nearly done eating something nondescript and previously all by herself. They followed suit. Unlike Alina Seo, who had shoulder-length brown hair in a ponytail and red eyes, Julia had long black hair and brown eyes. She was quite pretty, Toriko noted.
"Who are you with?" Julia asked.
"These are some new friends I made." Alina said. "This is Julia Huang" she said, before introducing her other four friends. Toriko shook her hand, but her three Japanese friends did not extend the same gesture.
"Was that what you were up to instead of hanging out here?" Julia asked, smiling.
"Oh, I hoped Elster would be waiting for me in the accommodation again. But she wasn't there. Have you seen her?"
"Regrettably not" Julia replied. "Actually, I can't at all recall the last time I have seen her" she said. "You know, it's weird. I had a dream last night where you made four friends. But when I looked at them, they weren't..." she stopped mid-sentence.
"Weren't what?" Toriko said.
"...I don't want to talk about it" Julia said. There was an awkward pause.
"Who are you guys anyways?" she said. "Where do you..." she stopped talking. Then she looked at Natsumi, and reached across the table to grasp her hand gently. "Is something bothering you?"
The red-haired car mechanic looked confused, and then looked down at the table. "I... I'm just afraid." she said.
"Of what?"
"Not being able to get home". Her eyes turned slightly watery.
Julia's expression became very dark. "Well, don't act like you're alone. We all have that burden" she whispered. She gripped Natsumi's hand a bit more tightly, and slowly the shadow lifted from her face. Akari suddenly became excited and joined in to hold Natsumi's other hand.
All of a sudden Julia let go and stood up from the table. "Sorry" she said anxiously, grabbed her tray, and left. This sent Alina right back to her state of melancholy. On the other hand, Natsumi and Akari were having a cheerful conversation again, about no subject at hand.
Toriko noticed the amount of people in mensa trickling away.
Eventually, they got up and walked out of the room back the way they had come from.
As they walked into a new hallway Toriko scanned a few Eules in a group, and started to place an uncanny feeling she had about this place. All of their faces looked exactly the same. It was also true of the Kolibris, including...
"Oh my god!" Toriko said quietly.
Standing at the far end of the room beyond a group of Eules, the thing that scared her half to death. A figure that appeared to be a woman, except with monstrous proportions. She was physically larger than the people around her, but most of her height was due to her extremely long legs. She towered over everyone else, the average person merely coming up to her waist. It was extremely unnatural looking and reminded Toriko unpleasantly of Hasshaku-sama. Although even from this distance she seemed human in disposition enough. The massive Replika broadcast an expression of steel-cutting displeasure all the way across the room. Toriko tried not to think about how it seemed like she was looking right at them.
"It-She's a Storch unit" Alina explained in a whisper. "We probably shouldn't get too close."
Toriko tried her absolute hardest to fix her gaze and not act like she was being distracted by the Storch unit. Not at all. Nothing to be seen.
She was so busy not looking at the Storch that while walking forward she accidentally collided with someone else. Toriko expected both of them to fall over, but the thing she collided with felt like a solid metal slab. But when she looked up, all she saw was a Eule unit, looking confused but not necessarily mad, flanked by Toriko's horrified comrades. The Eule was slightly taller than them, but looked quite humanly average. When Alina said "augments", what did she mean? Were their skeletons made of iron?
Someone with loud, sharp, footfalls marched up behind her while she was staring at the Eule. It could only be the Storch. Toriko turned her head slowly to confirm this. The Storch unit looked even more unfriendly than normal. She glared at Toriko for a few moments.
"Detention!" she barked suddenly, and grabbed Toriko by the arm, hoisting her up until she was practically dangling. Then, before she had time to react, she was dragged off, away from her companions, out of the room, through the facility.
Toriko was thrown into a small room with a lamp hanging above a single chair. The Storch turned the light on, shining its bright, harsh light directly into Toriko's eyes causing her to involuntarily recoil.
"What's your problem?" the Storch said, somewhat tonelessly. Her facial expression was hard but not overly emotional.
"Uh, it was an accident"
"Show me your ID card."
Toriko was stunned.
"Show me your ID card" the Storch repeated, slightly louder.
"I lost it" Toriko said.
This earned her a slap on the face. It was unbelievably painful and made her feel like someone had smacked her with a shovel. She touched her left temple in reaction.
"I don't have time for games. What is your name?"
"Nishina Toriko"
The Storch considered this for a second, her expression becoming angrier as she thought more. Then she cuffed Toriko to the chair, and stormed out of the room, locking it behind her. Toriko struggled against the restraints, but could do nothing. Soon, the Storch returned, accompanied by a Kolibri. The fact that she was comically short compared to the Storch would have made Toriko laugh in any other situation. As soon as Toriko looked at her she could feel this Replika boring into her mind. She writhed against her cuffs again, to no effect.
Hello, who are you, the Kolibri asked her. The actual physical Kolibri didn't move a muscle, the voice came entirely from within her head. Kolibri started asking her questions, but Toriko didn't get to coherently answer any of them. Whenever she asked her anything, everything she knew about it floated to the surface of her mind involuntarily. What is your name? Nishina Toriko. The Kolibri nodded. Who are your parents? Who are your friends? But the questions she asked her after that were less clear. Toriko had no memory of any ID, or block, or homeworld other than Earth. She felt, not really noticed, the Kolibri's expression change to a frown. As she probed her mind more and more intently, Toriko felt like she was falling away from the physical world she was seeing, descending into a lake of her mindscape. The Kolibri led her on a tour of her own self. It was a weird sensation, but the Kolibri felt different from how mind-influencing Other Side entities usually did. There was no sense of the inhuman malevolence. She seemed to carry a genuine curiosity.
Their first stop was this day's events. Kolibri noted the friends she had gone with, including Alina, and how she had arrived here. She kept replaying the part where she and Sorawo, and Akari and Natsumi, apparated into this plane. Then they visited Japan, moving through Toriko's interactions, both today and days past, with Sorawo, Kozakura, and Satsuki, even that time Toriko slept nude with Sorawo. From her end of the connection, the Kolibiri seemed to be radiating confusion. Then they moved on to the otherside, passing by the wiggle-waggle, Hasshaku-sama, Kankandara, and finally the dark field pierced by a railway track where they had encountered that awful machine, corpses hanging from its underside. Toriko saw the Kolibri standing beside her in her memory, shaking in fear. Suddenly, the place shifted, to somewhere Toriko had never been before, an island with a cove carved into it, unnaturally dark. They were standing at its shores gazing out into the blackness. Toriko watched the Kolibri bend over and pick up a small note from the sand. She started crying.
Then all of a sudden they were hurled back up from the dream scape, and the real world again settled into Toriko's field of view. The Kolibiri had fallen over and was now leaning up against the wall, breathing heavily.
"She's insane" the Kolibri gasped. "And probably an Imperial agent"
"What did you do?!" the Storch yelled at Toriko. She leaned over to cradle the Kolibri in her arms. The Kolibri hugged her in response.
"She has no memory of being stationed here, or of any planet in the Nation." the Kolibri said. "She... she thinks her nightmares are her reality."
A few minutes later, Toriko found herself in another room, standing awkwardly, flanked by the two Replikas, as well as a Eule who had come into the room at the same time they had, in front of a desk, behind which was a male Replika, the first she had seen.
"Administrator" the other Eule addressed. "I was sent here to relay to you that so far today almost 50 gestalt workers were admitted to hospital. But more concerning than that, we've actually had a few Replikas come down with an unidentified disease recently. The staff are worried it might be associated with the current outbreak."
The Administrator seemed concerned by this. "No success in isolating the pathogen yet I gather?"
"None, sir."
"Anything else?"
The Eule shook her head.
"Very well. You are dismissed. Please keep me updated on this. If I am not in my office, issue a note for me." The Eule nodded again and walked out of the room.
The Administrator seemed distracted in thought for a few moments, but finally inclined his attention to the three people still standing in his office.
"Sir," the Kolibri said. "We have detained this woman who was trying to infiltrate Sierpinski. She could not produce an ID when questioned. Furthermore, she is mentally ill and exhibits nightmarish delusions".
The Administratir stood up. Toriko considered that he was much less physically imposing than the Storch unit. He was actually slightly shorter than Toriko, and did not look particularly strong.
"Who do you work for?" he asked.
"I don't work for anyone"
"No. You are an imperial spy. Why are you here?"
"I'm just trying to get back to my own world" she said.
"No, you were sent here to be a spy. Repeat after me. I am an enemy of the Nation. I am a spy. I am here to hurt the Commander. Why are you here?"
It no longer sounded like a question. But Toriko protested anyways. "Why are you acting like this?"
"Alex, reprimand her" he directed. The Storch delivered a devastating blow to her chest. She was flung across the room and slammed into the floor, lying prostrate, moaning in agony. The Administrator calmly walked over and stood over her, a look of contempt on his face.
"You are useless. You will tell me, why and how were you sent here?"
Toriko cried in anguish. "I don't know who you are or what you want from me... I just want to see Sorawo... please" she said quietly.
This gave the Administrator a moment of pause. "Sorawo?" he said, stumbling over the name a bit. "What is your name?"
"Toriko" she said.
He turned to the Kolibri. "What did you say about her again? Something about delusions?"
"I looked inside her mind" the Kolibri said slowly "and all she remembered were dreams and nightmares. Dreams about a bright city, and nightmares about monsters in a field of grass. There was very little amongst it that could be reality. She... I can only say she seemed to think her visions were the real world. It was horrible. It reminded me of a nightmare I had"
The Administrator seemed perplexed by this, and then a look of horror slowly crossed his face, one with no readily apparent explanation. He slowly looked back at Toriko.
"Sir, is there something wrong?" the Kolibri asked.
The Administrator shook his head again. His facial expression returned to normal.
"There is no problem. Send her to ****." he ordered. Toriko couldn't make out the last word.
Toriko felt her limp, weak body being picked up by the Storch. Her torso and face throbbed in pain, and her attempts to wrench herself free were so pathetic they produced no reaction from the Storch at all. Sorawo felt the Kolibri's mind interfacing with her own again, this time poking actively at her heart rather than her mind,dampening her pain and fear. She could see her captor's face, not paying any attention to her even once as they traveled through the building. Toriko gazed passively at the light fixtures, passing by above her, almost like the future years of her life being left behind. Then, she found herself before another freight elevator, with Kolibri manipulating the terminal, and the Administrator standing back to preside over her banishment to wherever this elevator led. A noise of machinery emanated from the elevator shaft. Fate was on its way.
"Set her down!" screamed Sorawo.
Toriko inclined her head slightly. Indeed, it was Sorawo there, not five metres away, still dressed in the uniform of this place, aiming a rifle at the Storch. The Storch dropped her... wait, didn't drop her. She merely held Toriko with one arm, the other drawing her own gun. Somehow, Toriko almost was unable to care. The warm whisper of the Kolibiri assured her; this could only be a delay, at worst, in what was to come.
But another part of Toriko yet observed Sorawo's right eye, a deeper shade of blue than human genetics could create, glow imperceptibly, and knew what it meant. The Storch holding her suddenly let go, doubled over, and screamed. Her hands rushed to her face, scratching at if, tearing at it. Toriko could see her face begin to shift tumourously. Her skin turned black, and her scream shifted slowly in pitch, from pain, then distorting and contorting, to absence of pain, absence of anything, absence of humanity, the same scream she had heard before from Sorawo's phone.
The elevator arrived. The Replika snatched her once again, and lurched forward, tearing through the doors with superhuman power, setting off flashing red lights and screaming alarms. They descended.
As Sorawo ran towards Toriko, she heard a second scream. It was not the soulless screech of the Replika whom she had destroyed, but came instead from the short Replika who had been working the elevator control panel, the Kolibri, who was now hunched over the torn-open elevator shaft, staring down. As Sorawo skid to a halt, she watched as the Kolibri's head was suddenly torn open from behind. Her lifeless body crumpled forward into the shaft. And vanished. Sorawo whirled around and aimed her weapon at the male Replika standing behind them. There was a gun in his hand, still smoking from the shots he had just fired. On his face he wore not hatred or fear nor even contempt, but apathy.