The Same Coin

The Wall

As two of the soldiers stepped aside, the sound of gunfire echoed in the distance like early morning thunder. A siren rang overhead. That would be Mustang's team's doing. Winry swallowed hard, and touched her gun for reassurance. She debated whether she should draw, or rely on Nen. She didn't know how to protect herself against bullets with Nen, or if it could even be done. The third soldier unlocked the door to give them entry, and Winry followed Illumi inside. She heard the soldier securing it behind them.

That had been almost too easy, and it was odd for them to fortify the door if the building itself was empty...But the Fuhrer also likely had expected his soldiers to have time to react and be able to resist if they were approached. Illumi's technique had rendered them incapable of either.

The inside looked as though a bomb had gone off. The walls had thick fractures, and chunks of concrete covered the floor like the inside of a cave. What had happened here? How was the structure even still standing?

"Can I use Nen to protect myself against bullets?" Winry asked as they headed down the corridor, stepping around the rubble as they passed the unmanned check in station. The thick pane of glass that had separated the attendant from visitors was shattered in pieces across the ground. A crack in an exterior wall allowed a fracture of sunlight to slice across the broken floor.

"It is doubtful that you'd be able to," he admitted. "It would require incredible focus, and you would need to anticipate what area of the body you would be shot. If you were caught off-guard your likelihood of success is low. But you can use your Nen to stop bleeding and minimize the damage until you can seek treatment." Illumi glanced down at her. "You seem to have masterful control over that already."

She wondered where Ed and Al were, but she was glad to be off the streets before the chaos started.

Laboratory 5 was eerie and still. They had to go downstairs and, from what she understood, that was where the work was done to make Philosopher's Stones...The sacrifices. How many people had died here?

But, she wondered then, if they were going to experiment on people wasn't it better if they used convicts? The people kept in the prison next door were almost all condemned to death anyway, waiting for their turn at execution. They would have died anyway. If their government was going to do such terrible things, wasn't it better that they turn their attention on the dregs of society instead of continuing their warfaring at the expense of the civilians?

Winry pinched the inside of her upper arm hard to bring herself back to rational thought. It didn't matter if their experimentations had been against criminals — the prisoners had been practice for the Promised Day, when the entire country would be used as fuel. Every civilian, without discrimination. That couldn't be tolerated.

They found the stairwell off the main hallway. Downstairs didn't have the grace of beams of light shining in from outside. With a subtle nod to each other, Winry focused her aura so she could feel if anyone was in the area. Every time she used En, it surprised her how much further she could reach than the time before. She knew Illumi was doing the same, and had no doubt he could sense even further. The stairway felt solid, but small boulders from the ceiling forced them to navigate their way carefully down the dark steps. There was a prolonged moment while she had to let her eyes adjust to the darkness only to see that the lower level was as the soldiers had said — empty.

At the bottom of the stairs was an open hall. It was then that Illumi took his cellphone from his pocket and turned on its light to illuminate the room; Winry momentarily lamented that hers didn't do that. Drawn across the massive spread of floor, was a transmutation circle, covered in rubble. On one wall hung a tapestry with a pattern of triangles surrounding a star. A split down the wall skewed it so it hung at an angle. It was the same design as what was in Central command — three triangles in circles beneath a star, with a sun and a boulder above them in symbolism of Heaven and Earth.