Eden was absolutely stunned by the view this time. This felt like they had traveled through time and space. Everything around them was... exactly like they were standing in the middle of an amazing Japanese garden. The grass was perfectly cut, the little pebbles were forming gorgeous rivers of stones, and the river water was crystal clear. Eden even spotted a big white and red fish swimming by. She looked up. The sky was blue, the sun setting slowly. There wasn’t this thin, muddy gray mist of pollution she usually witnessed above Chicago. This didn’t feel like Chicago at all. As far as her eyes could see, Eden was somewhere in faraway, traditional Japan. She looked back at the area they had come from, but it was just a big, bamboo fence, with none of the tops of buildings that should have been visible behind it. An engineered illusion.
“Alright, ladies, I know it’s gorgeous, but let’s get going! Chop chop!”
The girls all began walking one after another, and Eden noticed the Japanese bodyguard from before was following them, bringing up the rear of the group. She made sure to look ahead and not look suspicious, but it wasn’t hard.
She was fascinated by the place. As far as she could see, it was stunningly beautiful. This place was larger than she had thought based on the Map. There were pavilions here and there, scattered around the area, and she wondered if they were all real or some other digital illusion to make the place seem bigger. She noticed several pagoda pillars too, which could have been a good hideout for several security devices... Despite trying to watch out for threats and analyze the place, Eden was constantly getting absorbed in the beauty of it. The girls were walking on a little bridge over a large river, and she saw more of those fish from earlier, with amazingly bright colors. The moss on the side of the river was just as perfectly kept as the little sand-filled spaces, with symbols written in them. There were also trees and bushes of various sizes, but all perfectly fit the area. The most striking ones had blood-red leaves, their branches hanging so low that the tips of their leaves touched the water. Eden could hear water fountains, the sounds of steps on wood, and the gentle whistling of invisible birds. No honking, no sounds of cars or city life whatsoever. The only sound she couldn’t recognize was an instrument, being played from the large, red structure they were headed to.
It was a gigantic three-story pagoda with red roofs, like on the Map. Eden realized this was the only thing about this place she had ever actually seen with her own eyes. This was the only tall building in the place, the only one that could be seen from outside their gigantic bamboo fence... Perhaps also the only real thing. Eden knew all too well she couldn’t rely on her senses to trust anything in this place. Like in the Dark Reality, everything here could be generated by projections, games of lighting, and other tricks. Even the round leaf and flower floating in the river beneath them were perhaps completely fake...
Trying to keep the reality of this beauty in mind, Eden kept following everyone. If the car had stopped right at the entrance, it was still a pretty long way from the large gate to the main residence... If Dante’s men walked in without the security system taken over by Loir, this garden could turn out to be much, much more dangerous. Even now, all the women and Jacquie were walking in a line, following Ayame closely. Eden realized that this was for a very specific reason, and that Ayame was taking a precise path like she was supposed to. Who knew what would happen if someone tried to run and stepped where they shouldn’t... This was truly impossible to beat from the outside. If one couldn’t trust what their eyes saw, it would be just the same as being completely blind. Even in the Dark Reality, Eden knew there were some rules, and even if she didn’t, Loir would be able to see what shape or form the code around her was taking. Here, it was another kind of arena. They couldn’t rely on their SINs or hacking partners–her SIN! Eden realized she had forgotten to turn it on. With a faint movement, she quickly turned it back on in stealth mode, with the most minimal functions, which would give Loir the information he wanted, but make her invisible to any kind of scope in there. Once again, this was the kind of thing that would have been impossible if she wasn’t a Dive Hacker.
“Alright, we’re almost there!” sang Ayame, visibly joyful. “I hope you’re in good shape; the gentlemen are probably dying to meet you! Oh... Shall we greet this big baby first!”
Just as she had said that, she stopped in the middle of the new bridge they were crossing, and turned to the side, toward the river. Eden suddenly felt something, like a hint of fear pushed by an instinct. She glanced down at the river, wondering what they were waiting for. Jacquie put his hands on her shoulders.
“Hun, what do you think is–”
Before he could finish his sentence, they all heard it. A loud movement, like a wave, from the pond a bit further. For a full second, a scaled body made an arch above the water and disappeared again. Eden felt her heartbeat accelerate a bit and tried to calm down, remembering Loir was monitoring it. Still, knowing what was about to show up wasn’t helping, especially as a much, much bigger shape than she had expected began moving in the water, steps away from the bridge they were on. The river suddenly expanded itself out of the blue, growing several inches wider in a very strange way. Eden gasped, and the scaled body appeared again. It was strangely hard to follow, despite the clear water, but the trick was in the color of its body; it was blue, almost the same color as the water itself. At times, it felt like catching a glimmer under the surface, and then, she could clearly see the scales moving.
“What is...?”
The shape moved quickly underneath, and Ayame suddenly grabbed the first girl behind her by her nape. The girl screamed, panicked and confused, but before she could react, she was violently thrown over the bridge’s balustrade. Everybody froze in utter terror. Her body brutally hit the water, although it felt like it was just a couple of inches below them. She seemed to float until she began struggling and paddling in a panicked manner, screaming. It was obvious she didn’t know how to swim and was struggling to stay afloat with her heavy outfit.
All of a sudden, she was gone. It felt like Eden had just blinked, but the body was suddenly gone, and instead, a lonely, single head was floating on the surface. Jacquie silently squealed in horror behind her, and Eden was just as shocked. There was only... a head left, and a large blood pool.
“Sei-chan!” exclaimed Ayame, smiling happily. “I hope you enjoyed dinner!”
She then turned around and resumed walking. Jacquie had gone from holding her shoulders to holding Eden’s hand, his shaking like a leaf.
“What the heck was that... That thing... ate that girl? Was it supposed to do that?”
No, it wasn’t. There was no point in an animatronic eating anything, it was a machine! Even if it had somehow sliced or crushed that body, it should have left most of the body parts there. Spit it out, somehow. Yet, the head soon disappeared too, clearly... eaten. Eden felt a wave of fear go down her spine, for real this time.
That thing wasn’t animatronic. It was very much alive and able to eat humans. ....A Chimera. A scientifically-engineered, living monster.
Eden had only heard of them, but had never seen one of those things in real life. Chimeras were so rare they had almost become something like an urban legend, where many people knew it was possible, but too few had actually seen one in real life to be sure it was true. Well, she now had the proof before her very own eyes that... it was. And it was scary. How much did it cost to create one of those? Had the Snake ordered one, or had the Yakuza always had such a thing in their garden, like a pet attached to their territory? Either way, it wasn’t just a threat, but also a huge problem for their plan.
Eden had thought things would be very easy once Loir had taken control of the whole place. All it took was for her to find where to plug the device in and let the hacker work his magic. Things should have gone smoothly, and she even heavily counted on the fact that this place was full of electronically-controlled defenses for Dante’s invasion to be done in an easy and almost non-violent way. However, there was no way to electronically control a monster made of actual synthetic flesh!
“Oh, I think I’m going to be sick...” muttered a girl close to them.
Eden felt nauseous too, but for a very different reason. She had promised Dante an easy way in, but it was now clear she had been fooled by the rumors about the Snake. Perhaps his infatuation with technology was real, but so was the gigantic dragon swimming in those waters. This would be a very different problem to settle.
“Anyone else want to take a swim, be my guest!”
Eden raised her eyes to Ayame. The young woman was smiling, and it was a frightening smile from someone who had just fed a human being to that thing. She could kill and be perfectly fine about it, not an ounce of remorse showing on her face. Eden tried to regain her composure, but she was almost the only one. All the other girls in the group were clearly horrified, their eyes on the pool of blood below, or the spot that girl had stood just seconds ago. Rose was white as a sheet and took a very faint step back. There was nowhere else to go on that narrow bridge filled with young women, though. Eden’s eyes went a bit farther and fell on C.
She was the only other person who didn’t look or act scared. Instead, she had a serious expression on, but that was it. Neither her face nor the hand on her hip expressed anything else. It was as if nothing shocking had happened, nothing worth getting a reaction out of her. Either she was expecting this, or she wasn’t scared at all. Or she didn’t care, but Eden was starting to be more and more curious about that woman’s reasons for being here...
“I know Sei-chan is very fascinating, but let’s get going, ladies!”
As if Ayame’s excited voice had suddenly turned into a violent whip, the entire group began moving right away, half of them now scared of her. The girls there probably understood they didn’t risk being fed to Sei-chan as long as they didn’t anger or upset that woman and whoever they were about to serve. Eden, however, was more worried about the dragon. It also meant it probably didn’t hold to the rule that anything coming in from the main door was spared; that thing was most likely trained to attack enemies and defend a certain territory. If Ayame had been the one thrown overboard, would it have attacked right away too? The attack had been really fast... Perhaps she was behaving as if she was safe, but the bleached blonde wasn’t much safer than the rest of them, just acting like it. That thought reassured Eden a little.
The group resumed walking toward the red pagoda. Eden had already seen it as a miniature on the Map, so she knew its scale, but the rest of the group were almost breaking their necks looking up. That building was impressive. It was as if the very traditional infrastructure had decided to become tall and rival all the skyscrapers around. The red roofs were misleading them into thinking there were only three floors, but they were obviously too high and too far apart to be only one floor each. More like five or six... Eden tried to calm her nerves, remembering that Loir was monitoring her heart rate, but this was still quite a challenge waiting for her. This place was huge... It could mean good hiding places, but also a long time before she’d find what she had infiltrated this group for.
They arrived at the doors, and Eden realized they had seen absolutely no one guarding the place until now. Two men were standing on the terrace of the pagoda’s entrance, with heavy weapons in their hands. Like the huge bodyguard following them, those guys were massive, covered in tattoos, and wearing sunglasses. They barely nodded when Ayame waved her fingers at them with a playful look. For a second, Eden even wondered if they weren’t statues or holograms, as they were completely still and silent... Only when she followed the group inside and walked between those mountains did she confirm that they were indeed breathing.
They walked into a sort of entrance hall, with bamboo walls, mats under their feet, and, surprisingly, a row of shoes on the side. There were at least forty pairs lined up in perfect rows. Eden even noticed some had names on them...
