The ninth instalment. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

-.-.-.-

Codes of Conduct

-.-.-.-

Allen had not signed up for this. He had not signed up for this, yet here he was. He was still wearing the coat; Tyki had insisted.

Really though, this situation was not what he had imagined it all.

"It's not even that cold," he muttered, while still pulling the coat closer to himself.

A couple of hours ago, he had woken up, gotten dressed, had breakfast and all that, and now he was standing outside the old parsonage, hoping to escape some of the turmoil within. It hardly helped though, because the outside was much like the inside; it felt like he was walking through a haze, assaulted by echoes of the past.

'Why did I come here?' he asked himself internally, despite knowing the answer already. He had come here hoping for a reprieve from that place, only to realise that while this place was better, it was also a lot worse. It was better because the memories assaulting him were definitely his own, but it was also worse, because they weren't very pleasant ones.

Still, the outside was better than the inside. Outside, Allen felt like he could breathe, which was weird, considering that he had experienced far more traumatic things outside rather than within. Perhaps it had more to do with time though; she, who Cross and Barba called 'Mother', had died very recently, and if Allen had known about all this just a couple of months – even weeks, days – earlier, then−

A car horn blasted.

Allen hardly had the time to startle before Tyki had pulled him behind him, putting himself in-between Allen and the perceived threat. The situation should've been funny, yet somehow it wasn't.

"Hey!" the culprit called out from the car. "Sorry to interrupt your whatever-it-is, but the others have arrived now. Are you coming?"

Hearing Junior's tone, Allen felt sorely tempted to not cooperate. He felt sorely tempted yet discarded the thought, because the sooner they dealt with all of this, then the sooner Allen could put it all behind him.

-.-.-.-

Lavi's supposed 'Tech Guy' turned out to be a mousy-looking young man in glasses; Johnny. His glasses were so round and thick that they rivalled the ones Tyki had been wearing at the start of it all. Coming to think of it−

"Don't you need glasses?" Allen asked quietly as the introductions went on.

"Not really," Tyki answered, looking only vaguely interested in the proceedings.

That was a pretty weird answer, considering how said glasses obviously had a prescription; Allen had tried them out briefly. He didn't pry however, because Tyki's reason for using or not using glasses was his own damned business.

"And this here is Allen, Allen Walker," Lavi said. "He's the beneficiary."

Johnny the Tech Guy sent a curious but also wary look Tyki's way, as if hoping but also dreading the man would introduce himself.

Instead, Bookman was the one to speak up. "Tyki Mikk, I presume?"

"Yep," Tyki said. "I'm an interested party."

Bookman Senior got a certain look in his eyes at that. "Indeed. Nevertheless−" He turned towards Allen. "−I believe you have questions."

Questions? Of course.

Complaints? Definitely.

Nevertheless− "I'd like to have a word with you. Alone."

The man had the gall to look past him. "Certainly, but I would advise that you allow Mr. Mikk to remain, because this matter concerns him as well."

Allen turned to look at Tyki, and he wasn't the only one. The man himself didn't look particularly concerned though; he just kind of glanced at Bookman and then stepped closer to Allen, smiling in response to the questioning look this got him.

Naturally, there were protests, mostly from Lavi. The Tech Guy meanwhile appeared uncertain, though going by his somewhat intimidated look, then he would rather leave the room to get some work done than remain there with Tyki and Allen and Bookman Senior and what amounted to rising tension.

He left, but he didn't leave alone; Lavi also left, but only after having been given a very pointed look by Bookman Senior.

Allen still made sure to wait though, waiting until he was certain that the lot was out of earshot before turning back to Bookman Senior.

"What the Hell's going on?" he hissed, foregoing any pretence of politeness. Because these people; they had exhausted his patience since a long time ago. It had only been days yet it felt like it had been weeks.

"I would advise that you take a seat first, Mr. Walker."

Allen would rather not, but if that got this over with any sooner? Fine.

Tyki pulled away one of the dusty sheets covering a nearby sofa and Allen dropped down upon it, legs crossed and arms folded across his chest, staring challengingly at the man.

"So," he said. "What the Hell is this all about?"

Bookman, who had laid claim to an armchair opposite the sofa, glanced up at Tyki. Noting the man showed no inclination to sit down however, he simply sighed. Allen looked up at Tyki hovering above; he was standing behind the sofa like some creep. It didn't feel too creepy though, which was weird, because Allen had never really been comfortable with anyone standing that close to his back.

"Did you solve it?" Bookman asked at last. "The cryptex."

And there he went, saying a bunch of cryptic shit again. "Who knows. How about you answer my question first?"

The old man let out a heavy sigh.

"It is a complicated matter," Bookman said at last. "It is a complicated matter, and the information I have been made privy to is, unfortunately, rather limited. However, combining your DNA results with what I do know, I am able to make fairly educated guesses…"

He reached into his inner coat pocket and withdrew a folded paper, holding it out.

Allen quickly retrieved and unfolded it. The test results didn't really tell him a lot, but the single word scribbled underneath it kind of did, but only kind of. "Chimaera?"

"That'd be correct," Bookman said, steepling his fingers. "You have two sets of DNA."

O-kay. "Why?"

Again, Bookman was quiet for some time. When he finally spoke up, his voice and expression became somewhat distant.

"It means that at some point in-between your conception and now, someone messed around with your genetic code. Although, to be completely honest, 'implanted' or 'modified' would be a bit more accurate," he said.

Riiiiiight. "Right, and next thing, you tell me I'm actually a clone?"

Bookman Senior made a face at that. It was not reassuring in the least.

Allen turned his head around, looking up at Tyki. "Do you believe this guy, Tyki?"

Tyki just let out a slight hum at that, as if he hadn't actually been listening.

"Mr. Mikk is likely in a similar situation," Bookman said. "Similar but also different."

Allen turned back around, frowning now. "Different?"

Again, Bookman Senior was quiet for some time. Then finally, he said: "I am not a geneticist," he said at last. "Nor am I a scientist, but knowing what I do know and looking at the results and what I see before me, I can, as I said before, make educated guesses…"

"Get to the damned point then," Allen said.

The man sighed. For several moments, he remained silent. Then, finally, he spoke.

"Years ago, in connection to the Great Wars, an idea was born," he said. "Well, to be specific, a small group of people came together to work on a project of sorts."

Project? Allen frowned and looked up at Tyki. Predictably, Tyki only had a shrug to offer. "What type of project?" Allen asked at last.

Again, Bookman took a deep breath before he continued speaking.

"The Ark Project," he said. "It gathered some of the finest minds of the generation at the time, uniting them under a common idea: to genetically alter humanity in order to ensure that such events would never again occur…"

Allen just stared at him. He just stared, because how could he not? Because this, this wasn't an explanation; this was the plot to some weird sci-fi movie, and not a good one either. Nevertheless− "Did they succeed?"

"To an extent, I suppose," Bookman said, shooting another glance at Tyki before going back to watching Allen. "But not until the project had been discontinued officially. It kept running of course, spearheaded by one Cyrus D. Campbell."

Those damned Campbells again.

"Campbell?" Tyki uttered quietly.

Looking up, Allen saw him looking pensive. Well, no matter. "So, this 'Ark Project' had something to do with stopping wars. Now what the Hell does that have to do with gene manipulation or cloning or whatever?"

"At first, it was about finding a way to program an inherent loyalty into the test subjects, a loyalty that would be passed on to their offspring, ensuring that none of them could ever betray the Empire," Bookman said. "Then, as the project went underground, it became increasingly more difficult to find viable test subjects, and so they began looking inwards, to their own families…"

Oh boy. Using family members as test subjects? Lovely.

"Following that, the researchers had another goal: Achieving longevity."

Bookman Senior didn't answer right away. "No," he said at last. "And with the increasing instability of the test subjects, an alternate plan was proposed."

Allen had a bad feeling about this.

"By infusing the DNA of the previous generation of Noah into new test subjects, they were allegedly able to create chimaera, people with two different sets of DNA," Bookman said. "However, in most cases, the Noah genes remained dormant. Further testing revealed that subjecting the subjects to instances of trauma could awaken the genes from their dormant state. However, while the operation was successful, the new generation of Noah was very unstable, up until they were introduced to Adam."

"Adam?"

"Adam E. Campbell," Bookman clarified, putting an old, somewhat faded photograph down onto the table that Allen immediately snatched up. "Stepson of Duke Campbell and a carrier of dormant Noah genes, the first person to successfully awaken as an 'Earl'."

Behind Allen, Tyki made an aborted movement. In the next moment, Tyki had leaned over, snatching the photograph from Allen in turn. Allen was somewhat annoyed by that, but the obviously puzzled look on Tyki's face stopped him from interfering.

"I know this guy," Tyki said. "Sheril's got his portrait hanging over the fireplace."

Quietly freaking out, Allen snuck a glance over at Bookman Senior. Bookman Senior looked from Tyki to Allen and then back again.

"Mr. Mikk, does this Sheril by any means keep an acquaintance by the name of 'Campbell', 'Duke' or 'Earl'?" he asked.

"Just one sec," Tyki said. He pulled out his phone and spent a couple of minutes scrolling through something under immense concentration, sometimes looking in-between the screen and the photo still in his hand. "I don't think I erased it," he then muttered under his breath, still scrolling.

This went on for quite some time. Then− "This is the guy, right?"

Tyki presented his phone. There was a man's face on screen, and Allen needed just a glimpse of it before he began to feel faint, the world spinning around him.

Then there were voices, shouts, hands and the unmistakeable sensation of falling. Looking up, he caught a final glimpse of Tyki's face swimming above him before everything went completely dark.

-.-.-.-

"I'm getting really sick and tired of this," Allen muttered, waking up in that bed for the nth time.

"I imagine," Tyki said. "Kind of sucks, doesn't it?"

Allen slowly sat up, allowing Tyki to assist him.

"So," he said, clutching his aching head. "Did the 'Other Allen' drop by to deliver some useful exposition or did I just black out? And where are the others? Did they find a secret cloning facility down in the basement or whatever?"

Tyki tilted his head mildly to one side. "No, dunno, maybe. I figure they've probably found something, but I'm not too interested in any of that."

"Not interested?" Coming from an urbex explorer, that sounded rather suspicious.

"Well, I am interested," Tyki finally admitted, leaning forward slightly. "But right now, I'm far more interested in this."

He held out the cryptex; Allen wasn't sure when the guy had swiped it. Still− "Why do you have that?"

"The old guy asked about it, so it's bound to be important somehow," Tyki said, turning the thing over in his hands. "Besides, I did kind of pry it from someone's cold dead hands."

Yeah… and Allen had almost managed to forget all about that. Almost. However, since he had now been reminded of that whole affair, he did feel somewhat tempted to ask Tyki if Bookman Senior had said something about the mummified body buried beneath the remnants of the old tree. He didn't though, at least not for now, because first, there was another far more urgent issue at hand.

"The man in the photo," Allen said at last, his voice sounding somewhat strange, at least to his own ears. "When did your brother meet him?"

Tyki looked somewhat puzzled at first, then somewhat uncomfortable.

"Sheril met him back at a playground when we were both young," he said at last. "I wasn't there that day, because I was at home, sick. It's one of the few memories I still have from that time – well, the memories of that memory, at any rate. After that day, he wasn't the same. I mean, he was, but there was also something weird about him. If I had to describe it, it was like he'd found God or something. He just wouldn't stop talking about the guy, gushing about him, and got awfully defensive when I asked if he'd told our parents he'd been talking to strangers and all that."

"You're acting kind of strange too, you know?" Allen said, pointing out the elephant in the room. "If you didn't try to mother me so much, I'd say you're like a little duckling, imprinting on the first living thing you laid eyes upon."

Tyki offered up a mild shrug at that. "You're a teenager who's been through a lot of shit. Isn't it natural to pay close attention to a person like that?" he asked.

Really. "So, you feel obligated to mother all lone teenagers you come across then?"

"The teens I've come across are seldom alone; they tend to move around in groups," Tyki said. "That's very smart, by the way. Granted, bigger groups are a hassle, but there's still safety in numbers."

"I'm not alone though," Allen said. "This house's getting crowded."

"They'll be gone soon enough," Tyki said with seeming certainty. "I won't."

Huh. "Don't you think that maybe I should be the one to decide that?"

"No."

Something dangerous glimmered in Tyki's eyes, and Allen scarcely had enough time to react before Tyki was upon him. Tyki didn't push him down though. Instead, he dragged him close, locking him into a tight hug.

At first, Allen was far too stunned to do much, and when he regained composure, his struggles couldn't really do much.

Up until now, Allen had regarded himself as quite strong, but now, unable to break out of the hold, he felt astonishingly weak. He still didn't feel like he was in an awful lot of danger though, and was that fucked up or what?

"If you stay, I stay. If you go, I go. Understood?"

Given how, up until this point, Tyki had mostly allowed himself to get ordered around, Allen could not help but wonder what had triggered this type of reaction. Was Tyki really that attached? Did Allen's half-joke of an imprinting theory actually hold water?

In any case− Allen let out a pained sound, and the arms immediately loosened.

"Did I hurt you?" Tyki asked now, his voice unusually quiet.

Well− "No. Mind letting me go though?"

The arms tightened briefly and then let go, allowing Allen to lift his gaze. Tyki was looking at him; the look in his eyes was eerily similar to that of a scolded dog. Allen honestly couldn't bear looking at him.

"If you wanna stick around, then feel free," Allen said at last, averting his eyes. "But first, tell me more about that man."

-.-.-.-

As it turned out, Allen wasn't a murderer after all. Because that man, the 'Duke' that Tyki's brother had fawned over in his youth and continued to fawn over still, that man was most definitely Mana. And that was sickening, to say the very least.

"So, he is alive then?" Allen muttered quietly, mostly to himself. He was huddled in a blanket again, and in Tyki's embrace on top of that. Apparently, it was to keep him from slipping into shock or something, but Allen strongly suspected that wasn't the only reason.

"I could kill him, if that's what you want," Tyki said, just as casual as if he had been discussing the weather. He was definitely serious though; Allen could tell.

Still− "Why would you kill him?" Allen asked.

"Why wouldn't I?" Tyki shot back. "He tried to kill you."

It felt weird. It felt weird, suddenly having someone supposedly willing to kill for him. Even worse, some part of him readily accepted it as fact, as the way things should be. "Really though, where are the others? You better not have killed them or something…"

"And if I did?"

Really. Allen twisted around to glare at him. "Self-defence is self-defence, but I'm not teaming up with a murderer."

Tyki had the gall to smirk.

"It's a good thing that I didn't then," he said. "And as for them, they're still searching for hidden passageways. Or, to be accurate, ways of getting inside them without damaging the building all too much. I have a rough idea where they are right now, so I could take you to them if you'd like."

Judging by the tone, it sounded as though Tyki might be planning on carrying him again. Well, Allen wasn't having any of that. He slid off of Tyki's lap and was about to set his foot down when he felt it touch something that was definitely not the floor. Peering down, he confirmed that yes, it was that godforsaken cryptex again. He bent down to pick it up, turning it over in his hands.

The rows of symbols lining the dials were still not in the correct order, no matter who had attempted to align them. Knowing that Lavi guy, he had probably tried quite a bit, trying out multiple variations while hoping the thing would unlock.

The cryptex had eight dials in total, meaning that the password was eight letters long, likely some name or phrase. But what?

Coming to think of it, what had Bookman Senior blabbered on about earlier? The Ark Project or something?

Well, 'Ark Project' had ten letters, so that one was definitely out, but…

Allen himself might not be overly religious or even interested in religious stories and whatnot, but wasn't there some sort of story in the Bible about some guy building an ark, to save himself, his family and a bunch of animals from a great flood of some sort? What was his name again?

Allen slowly began twisting the dials, spelling out N-O-A-H-S-A-R-K. In the end, it all seemed for naught however, because the thing did not click open. Oh well.

Allen moved to discard the thing when Tyki suddenly reached up and guided his fingers to press against the two ends. Shortly thereafter, a very satisfying click was heard.

Allen quickly checked the contents. Then he flipped the thing, and out into his waiting palm fell a single, gilded key.

Unable to properly voice just what he was feeling and thinking right now, Allen looked up at Tyki, who stared right back at him and then at the key.

"Well," Tyki said at last. "If we'd known that before, then we could've just broken the thing open right from the very start."

Yeah. That would definitely have saved some time. Still− Allen turned the opening back towards himself and squinted at it. "I think there's still something inside, but it seems stuck in there."

Wordlessly, Tyki took the thing and peered inside. Then, from somewhere, he pulled out a pair of tweezers and used them to carefully dislodge and retrieve a rolled-up piece of paper.

It turned out to be a slightly damaged photograph.

In it, there were four people pictured; an elderly man, a young woman, and two teenage boys. The woman's belly looked somewhat round though, so it would not be strange to assume that she had another child on the way, that is if the two boys – apparently twins – were even hers to begin with. The half-faded note scribbled neatly on the back clearly seemed to indicate such however.

Because there it was, written in plain English: the Campbells.

Deciding he had seen enough, Allen rolled the photograph back up and stuck it back into the cryptex. He still pocketed the key though, because he figured it would soon be time to use it, and as things were, he knew just where he wanted to start.

-.-.-.-

The grandfather clock at the top of the staircase; that was where he was headed. Knowing that the others had likely already checked potential areas like the office multiple times over, that left one place that really stood out.

"The clock?" Tyki asked, but it wasn't really a question. He had after all also noticed its abnormality; that it kept ticking despite no one being around to wind it up.

Allen pushed the key inside the keyhole, twisted and then pulled.

The door opened with a creaking sound, revealing the weights and along with the still swinging pendulum.

For a moment, Allen just stood there, wondering if he had in fact gone through all that trouble to get a key that could just open up a damned clock. Because despite the clock's abnormality, it looked fairly normal internally, barring the fact that it was still working.

Then Tyki reached past him to tug lightly at one of the weights, at which point something most definitely happened; the clock began chiming loudly, and the chimes echoed throughout the building.

"Oops," Tyki offered up, but he didn't sound particularly sorry about it at all, not even as Allen glared at him. "What's next then?"

Annoyed, Allen reached out and grabbed the pendulum, and the chimes abruptly came to a stop. Then, pushing it to one side, he reached further inside the clock, his fingers making contact with the backside of it.

Right, how to proceed from hereon then?

"There's something to the right," Tyki pointed out, and Allen immediately looked towards the indicated spot, and was that seriously what Allen thought it was?

Filled with a certain amount of apprehension, Allen reached for it.

There was seriously an electronic lock in there, and going by the dim light coming from the display, it was still working.

"That's pretty freaky," Tyki said, illuminating the thing with a small flashlight. "How do we get inside though? It looks too old to be a biometric lock, so it's probably PIN-code? Any ideas?"

Well, if the person who set the passwords to this place was anything like the one who had created the cryptex− "How many tries do I get?"

"Three?" Tyki guessed.

Three. Allen took a deep breath and immediately set to work.

6-6-2-4

No reaction, which meant that the password was likely longer than four digits. Oh well.

Allen kept going.

6-6-2-4-7-2-7-5

Wrong PIN? Well then−

"What are you trying to spell out?" Tyki asked, looking on with keen interest.

"These people seem to be sticking with a certain theme, so I thought I might as well try the same as the one to the cryptex," Allen informed him, frowning as the PIN code was rejected once again. "This code is apparently eight digits long, so I tried spelling out Noah's Ark, but that wasn't the one."

"How does 6-6-2-4-7-2-7-5 translate to Noah's Ark?" Tyki asked, sounding honestly confused. "Doesn't that spell M-M-A-G-P-A-P-J instead?"

Allen turned around to look at him, like really look.

"Think of it as one of those old-timey cell phones," Tyki said, before realising. "Oh, my bad, maybe you've never had one…"

Allen looked back towards the keypad, frowning. "Give it a shot then," he said, taking over the duty of keeping the pendulum still.

Tyki didn't need to be told twice. He swiftly entered another PIN-code, pressing the buttons at certain intervals.

66− "N."

666− "O"

2− "A"

44− "H"

The keypad let out a click, followed by an influx of static as a grainy robotic voice spoke up from it. "Password accepted. Please proceed to the office entrance. The door will close in three minutes."

What. The. Hell? Allen thought.

"We should go and check it out?" Tyki suggested, but he sounded kind of hesitant, no doubt picking up on Allen's mood.

Well, they had already come all this way so− "Yeah."

-.-.-.-

Naturally, it was not as though all the ruckus they had caused previously had passed by unnoticed. However, given that the rest of them were apparently been exploring something at a lower, perhaps even basement level, it did take the others a bit of time to make it.

In fact, Allen and Tyki had already reached the office by the time Allen caught a glimpse of Junior's red hair at the top of the staircase.

"Should I lock the door?" Tyki asked quietly as he tugged him inside.

"No," Allen murmured, looking towards the bookcase; it had now moved, revealing a secret entrance. "Let's go."

-.-.-.-

Going through the hidden entrance was probably a mistake, but they had already resolved to deal with this, so down the rabbit hole they went. It wasn't very pleasant however, at least not for Allen, because the narrow staircase leading down into the dark did not exactly inspire a whole lot of comfort.

Furthermore, in the light of Tyki's flashlight, Allen caught the traces of dried blood on the floor, consistent with someone dragging something – possibly themselves – up or down the stairs.

It was probably just a hallucination, but Allen could have sworn he felt the presence of someone down there.

"Don't stop. Keep running," a quiet voice rasped, and Allen found himself recollecting mind-numbing fear and the heavy metallic smell of blood. "Don't go out the main entrance. Take the tunnel hidden behind the shelf in the−"

The sound of something slamming shut and the sudden shock of darkness brought him back to the present, and Allen breathed in sharply as though he had finally breached the surface. For a brief moment, he was so stunned by it all that he hardly even noticed that they now had company.

"You guys are the literal worst," Lavi spat out, positively heaving.

The state of the tech guy wasn't any better; it was worse. He looked like he was actually on the verge of throwing up. And that made two of them, really.

"We're clearly better than you guys though," Tyki commented, tugging Allen closer. "Seeing as to how we found the entrance and all."

He got a pretty unfriendly stare for that before Lavi looked towards Allen, his gaze softening somewhat. "Are you okay?" he asked. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

"I think I might actually be a ghost," Allen found himself saying. "Or possessed by one at any rate."

"I'd call in an exorcist for you," Lavi said, looking rather pale himself as he directed his flashlight down to the floor, no doubt taking note of the dried blood. "But in this case, I don't really think it'd help. We could still try to find you a decent therapist though?"

Yeah, no. Sure, it could probably be beneficial and all, but− "I'm not letting anyone else inside my head. It's too damned crowded already."

Well, he said that, but truth to be told, he had yet to hear the voice again after that first time. He had definitely heard it once, back when it had talked about Awakening and whatnot, mentioning Cross, indicating that the man had somehow been involved in all this.

Well, Allen wouldn't really have put it past the man, given that Cross had been there on that fateful night when Mana had−

Allen resolutely shook his head, attempting to dispel the thought. Then he looked down the staircase; the hallucination was gone now, but it seemed as though the darkness down there had thickened, as if it had gained a life of its own.

Even so, Allen began to descend, Tyki following close behind him, lighting the path ahead of them.

"Is that human blood?" Allen heard the tech guy whisper.

-.-.-.-