Hyperdrive, a Tails fanfic

...Or Not (Tails)

We managed to make it to Wolf's cell without anything going wrong, surprisingly enough. When Falco said Wolf was in the center, he really meant it. We were standing at one end of a long corridor, with Wolf probably 50 feet away from us at the other. He was gesturing at us, but I couldn't make out exactly what he was trying to say.

Falco was obviously just as confused as I was. "Does he look like he's pointing up to you too?" he asked me.

"Maybe?" I replied, unsure. I looked up at the ceiling. The paneling looked cracked. "Yes," I confirmed. "Yes he is."

I jumped several times in a way rather reminiscent of Mario breaking bricks, trying to punch the cracked paneling (which I suspected to be a hidden access door) open. I was unsuccessful.

Falco just threw another charge at it and vaporized the entire section, somehow knowing that there wasn't anything sensitive behind it.

The... umm... "abrupt removal" of that panel, aside from revealing what I assumed to be the control panel for the previously mentioned gas canisters, had also dropped an additional, and completely opaque, barrier between us and Wolf for a total of three. The explosion must have set it off.

The look on Falco's face told me he noticed it as well. "I should have expected that," he grumbled. "Of course I should have expected that..."

"Maybe it'll go up when we get the gas dealt with, considering that it came down when something blew up next to them," I suggested. "Either way, we still have that to figure out."

A flash of red caught my eye. I looked back up at the ceiling to see a timer counting down. We had five minutes. Typical scenario, character does something stupid that activates a thing that the main group of heroes only has a short amount of time to disarm before it kills all of them...

"Now look what you've done," I said, a bit irritated. "See any red wires?"

"Why red?" he asked.

"Because it's always red. Red is the danger wire, the wire that you don't disconnect without having an alternate path between its two ends up. It's that way because disconnecting the red wire shuts down the security systems, leaving the area open to attack." (As a side note, now you know why they always cut the red wire in movies.)

"The thing is..." Falco started. "I don't see any red ones. And besides, even if I did that wouldn't be the right one. We use a different color to indicate danger out here."

"What color is that?" I needed to know, we only had 4 minutes.

"I don't remember. Either black or yellow."

I flew up, dug around for a few seconds, and cut every trace of yellow wire I could see. The timer shut down.

Falco looked very confused. "How'd you know it was yellow?"

"Because it wouldn't be black," I explained. "Black is ground or negative power 99% of the time, it never controls anything. Yellow is a bright color that would make sense to use for indicating danger, so it's only natural."

"You're the natural here. I know this isn't like anything you've done before."

I probably blushed. "Thanks. Now to get these doors open..."

As I mentioned before, we had three barriers between us and Wolf. Two of them were transparent, probably bulletproof glass, and in between them there was a third made of what looked to be metal. The transparent ones both had keypads on them, but the metal one was essentially just a sold wall.

"What do you think?" I said to Falco.

"I think this is going to be hard. They're automatically cleaned after every use, so no fingerprint reading or anything."

I took another look at the keypad on the first door. It was fully digital, so I couldn't use actual wear marks on the numbers either, and since there are only 10 digits to work with and the code was 10-digit itself, that wouldn't have worked anyway. But upon closer inspection, the surface was made of acrylic plastic, which gave me an idea. I entered the code, 9620357841, and the door opened.

"H... h... how?" Falco couldn't manage any more.

"Simple," I told him. "Acrylic scratches. The way the numbers are all connected with lines told me that this is a sliding keypad, which means you can't take your hand off it or it'll reset. I just looked at the scratch patterns to get the order, which left me with either what I entered or what I entered but in reverse. Then I noticed that the 9 seemed more randomly scratched, which meant it didn't get slid onto. You said this place was maximum security?"

He nodded.

"Bunch of smoke and mirrors if you ask me. Just trying to intimidate people into not trying. Like you said, I've never done this before. I'm not even very good at it."

He just started walking to the second door.

And then proceeded to walk through the second door.

Not "walk through" as in open, I mean he literally walked through it like it was a hologram.

I followed him to the third barrier. "How'd you know it wasn't really there?" I asked him. "I didn't catch it flickering and I've had my eye on it since it came down..."

"Lucky guess."

Now that we only had a transparent barrier between ourselves and Wolf again, the job got easier.

"You said this was another 10-digit code?" I wanted to make sure I tried the right things in case it would automatically go into lockdown after enough failed attempts.

"Yep," he confirmed. "It looks like this one'll be harder to crack, though, none of your fancy sliding stuff applies."

He was right. This keypad was glass, and it looked to be a conventional one.

I heard a tapping on the door in front of me. I looked up to see that it was Wolf. Immediately suspecting the old Morse code trick, I started listening.

I can't tap out the code for you since the door has vibration sensors rigged to lock me in if it picks that up, but I can try to give you some hints. These guys were stupid enough to not bother trying to detect all code instead of just the combination...

I gave him a response. Okay. Go ahead.

Then I heard footsteps behind me. "Shoot, the guards are here..." That was Falco. I relayed the information to Wolf and told him to work fast.

Give me a second. What's the position of the first letter in my name?

I entered 2 followed by 3.

How about his? He pointed to Falco.

6.

Now for something to throw them off. This place is covered in lava. What color is lava?

Orange, I replied.

What's an animal whose name ends with the first letter of that word?

Seeing where he was going, I entered 9. (If you're not following, it was an old mental trick that goes along the lines of, "Pick a single-digit number, multiply it by 9, add the digits together, and subtract 5. Find a country that has a name starting with that letter of the alphabet, an animal starting with the letter that country ends with, and a fruit that starts with the letter the animal ends with." Because of the way people's brains are wired, most of the time they answer "Denmark, kangaroo, orange," since all multiples of 9 add up to 9, and 9 minus 5 is 4. Denmark wasn't relevant, and Wolf had done it in reverse anyway to be extra confusing.)

Okay, something simple now, but it won't make sense to anyone listening if they can't see us, he continued. How many tails do you have? Square that number, then divide the result by 8 and use the entire decimal result. Don't forget any zeroes you may need.

05.

Now let's see if I can manage the last four in a single clue, the thing's timed so that it resets and goes into lockdown if you take too long to enter the code... He tapped out one last word. Elite.

I finished the code with 1337.

The door opened.