Factory Reset

Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Language Barrier

The first thing that Mason noticed when he stepped outside the vehicle that Catalyst had bought was that he was incredibly high up. The second thing was that the air was very, very thin up there. So much so that he could barely breathe at all.

B-64 stepped outside next and glanced around. There was a time that he felt really, really scared about being so high up. He didn't care now, but just by the looks of terror that his group had on their faces, they were experiencing that mind-numbing fear.

After easing his breathing considerably and stopping breathing hard, Mason noticed where they were. It was a lot like a helicopter pad, with a gigantic X mark in the middle of a small protrusion from the main building.

The building itself was very spherical, with little bulbs of strong and flexible glass sticking out of. Mason attempted to not look down, and through the glass he was standing on, but failed miserably.

Catalyst quickly called the car away when everyone was out, and marched on towards a little glass opening. He slid a claw against the seam inside, and when he noticed that a hologram appeared against the glass, audibly groaned.

"Locked. I'm gonna throttle that worthless..." Catalyst mumbled to himself, his thin needle like bristles that covered his body vibrating as he grew more annoyed. He turned to look at the group with a sigh.

"Give me a moment." He told B-64, flashing a fake smile before quickly running to the vehicle that brought them there. He disappeared inside, and B-64 knew by the way he was acting that he was looking for the keys.

Mason held onto his little sisters hand tightly, more so for his own benefit since Hannah was in her usual oblivious self. She did look down, but tilted her head in more fascination than being afraid.

Marissa was actually the only one of the group that wasn't that afraid of being up that high. Just like Hannah, she looked down through the glass with mild interest, like someone looking at a mildly good-looking pair of shoes.

Right before Axel was going to voice his reservations about the structural integrity of the little blip they were standing on, Catalyst got out of the vehicle and made his way towards them, a large slender object in his hand.

B-64 recognized it: It was an access key, and not just any normal one, it was an administrator key, meaning it could access every single door and lock in that building, save for the master suite.

Without saying another word, Catalyst slid the administrator key into the thin line between the glass, and gently opened the door. The door was also pretty strange, as it melted into the other glass door without any noise.

Catalyst threw his head back and beckoned them to follow him, and although weary, the group followed.

The inside of the building was vastly superior to the outside. The floor was not see-through and was actually rather sturdy and metallic. There were numerous potted-plants that resembled nothing like the ones on Earth, and many chairs and tables scattered around on that floor were circular.

The only main issue they faced was the smell. Due to the combination of it being a Boson-Enriched building meant that some of the materials that normally don't blend together did blend together, resulting in a rather unpleasant smell. One so weird that the Protogens smell receivers weren't designed to detect.

But Mason and his friends could. It smelled similar to acrid garbage mixed with spoiled milk and too sweet smelling Febreze. Nothing pleasant.

Despite this minor challenge, the group managed to follow Catalyst through the many floors of the building without puking once. Of course, Hannah made a face the entire way down, but only coughed a few hundred times.