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CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Despite Eden covering her ears, his shots echoed loudly, wherever he was shooting at. Then, he stopped, out of ammunition. A sinister laugh was heard, echoing and seemingly coming from everywhere around them.
“Sorry, but you are wasting your bullets, young man.”
While Dante was searching the elevator’s floor and through his men’s pockets for another weapon, Eden grabbed his shoulder to try and glance over. The voice was telling the truth; the room behind him seemed to be completely empty. She could tell from the echo of each sound. Using the elevator’s handrail to pull herself up onto one leg, Eden painfully got up, observing the area they had arrived at. Contrary to her expectations, the seventy-fifth floor was nothing like the previous ones.
It looked like a gigantic laboratory. It was all white, with tiles on the floor, the furniture made of a material that seemed to be clear glass, and strange, large columns filled with enigmatic liquids. Before even stepping out of the elevator, Eden got an ominous feeling about this place. It felt... off, and somewhat unreal. She even checked the floor before stepping on it, making sure that this wasn’t some sort of illusion, but she could feel something was different. This place felt like one of those cold hospital rooms she had been in once or twice. Cold, sterile, and with no scent but chemicals. Whatever was in there was unnatural, artificial. She took a deep breath and balanced on her leg to get closer, ignoring the pain.
“Come on, child, don’t be shy,” said the voice coming from invisible speakers around them. “After all, this is part of your legacy as well...”
Eden didn’t like that at all. What legacy was he talking about? She felt her heartbeat accelerate, her nervousness on the rise. She hated that the Governor’s voice was hovering over them, like some deity controlling the place. She wished she could have asked Greed to disable whatever mic that man was using... Sadly, there was still no news from anyone else. She could hear a faint sizzle, perhaps her SIN trying to reboot itself, or whatever was left of it finally giving up. They were completely on their own for now.
Just as she was struggling to stay up, all her weight on one leg, Dante appeared by her side, grabbing her around the waist and supporting her. Eden leaned on him, but she felt sorry for doing so. She knew he would have even carried her if he wasn’t in such a bad state himself... Things were much worse than one gunshot injury now. Eden had only been preoccupied with having him wake up before, but now that they were both standing, she glanced over at her partner. She could see that he had another hole in his left shoulder, his ear on the same side was partially missing, and his pants were covered in blood... He had even lost a shoe. If he had been able to feel pain, she wondered if he would have stood perfectly calm like this, a gun in hand and helping her walk.
“Dante...” she muttered, worried.
“I’m alright.”
He clearly wasn’t, but to him, it probably made little to no difference. Eden was worried, but at the very least, he wasn’t in pain, whether that was a curse or a blessing... He helped her get out of the elevator, and together, they stepped inside the very strange, wide all-white room.
Eden realized what it was that felt really odd about this room to her: it was quiet, but not void of life. One of the columns closest to them had a large, square, glass window, which allowed them to see something floating in it. Eden tried to approach, recognizing some large reptile-like creature, apparently asleep, floating around in some liquid that was too thick and too green to be water. She had no idea what that thing was, if it was an unknown species or another Chimera that the Core had created. There was a little console attached to that strange aquarium, with vitals confirming that thing was alive. Eden felt a chill down her spine. What was this place? She glanced around and, against the walls on her left and right, finally saw the large central units, although they were white, unlike the previous ones. It wasn’t the most interesting thing, though. Right ahead of them, on the other end of the room, was the largest computer she had ever seen. Even Loir’s installations were only a third of that. There was a large screen and dozens of keyboards, buttons, handles, and measuring instruments she didn’t even know the use for. It seemed to be displaying several surveillance cameras at once, mostly the ongoing fights. Eden’s heart sank as she recognized Tanya, Michael, and their group still fighting valiantly against the soldier bots, all of them visibly injured and tired. Thao’s men were regrouping, and she could recognize the Rat’s silhouette from afar, shouting orders and pointing at her men.
The rest of the screens were showing the Suburbs, but it took Eden a minute to recognize the places. Not because the screens were a few steps away, or the fact that she hadn’t been to those places often, but because those neighborhoods looked nothing like she had remembered anymore. Each looked like a battlefield or a war zone. A devastated land, with large piles of crumbled buildings, ruined streets, and thick clouds of dust covering everything. Eden’s breathing was getting erratic, she was too shocked to calm down. They were really wiping out the Suburbs with their bombs. The last buildings that had stood tall were now miserable clusters of concrete, some pieces even burning. It was utter chaos out there, and as she started to recognize the many different places, she began to panic. How much had really been wiped out already? She couldn’t hear the bombs anymore, but it was as if she could feel them through the screen. Fury and despair dropped from the sky on the places she’d always known. Eden felt Dante’s embrace around her tighten a bit, either to comfort her or share her anger, she couldn’t tell.
“...What the heck is this place?” she muttered, furious.
“Oh, child,” chuckled the Governor. “You’re standing in the middle of the future. This room was one of those your father worked in the most. In fact, half of what is in here was his life’s work!”
Eden felt disgusted. Whatever this place was, she couldn’t believe it used to be her father’s. There were dozens of columns around them, with living creatures trapped. A lot of them were visibly mutilated or had some of their body parts held open by cables while they were still alive. She could see a monkey’s rib cage, the skin torn off to the sides and held open by a dozen hooks pulling it apart, with its lungs moving and heart pulsating, while the poor creature’s face expressed sheer terror. In another, there was a strange marine creature swimming around frantically, trying to escape some weird little bot that was constantly cutting its limbs. Eden watched in horror as the poor creature would desperately try to swim away before the bot grabbed it, cut off its leg, and let it go. The little creature writhed in pain, but to Eden’s surprise, the cut-off limb regrew right away, and the circle of hunting began again. There were hundreds of its little limbs on the floor of the aquarium... all belonging to that one creature. This wasn’t an experiment; it was torture.
“What... What are you doing here…?” she muttered, disgusted everywhere she looked.
“Science! Tomorrow starts here, child. We create and prepare the future of our civilization in this room. A future where there will be no more pain, no more suffering we humans have been enduring for so long. Our citizens won’t even know pain, diseases, hunger, wars. The absolute, perfect world.”
“Fuck you and your shitty perfection,” groaned Eden. “You’re torturing innocent creatures for this!”
“This is science, child. It comes at a cost, but sacrifices have to be made. While Mother Nature is healing on her own, we shall work hard to heal ourselves too. Those creatures are only a few among millions! They are expendables.”
“...Like the people in the Suburbs?” hissed Eden.
“You’re mistaken! The Suburbs were only meant to be temporary, child. We just couldn’t be ready in time for all our citizens to live in this utopia we’ve been working on. We had to get rid of the bad apples for better seeds to grow! Look at the Core you saw today. Isn’t it close to what they call Paradise? No crimes, no poverty, no suffering. Every citizen gets to live the dream our ancestors had in mind! They don’t need to worry about tomorrow, but only ride this train of everyday bliss!”
“Bullshit,” retorted Eden.
This room was the opposite of Paradise. If anything, it was hell, and she didn’t want to accept that anything good could come out of that. She kept looking around, desperate to find Pan. He had said he was here, so where was he? She couldn’t see any living creatures other than those in strange cages, and she couldn’t bear to look at them any longer. Still, Dante helped her move forward, walking through the aisles full of dead or tortured creatures. The closer they got to that console, the worse it got. There were fewer and fewer living creatures, and more and more bodies floating, or even just body parts she wouldn’t have been able to recognize.
They finally reached the console, and Eden stared at the keyboard, trying to figure out how that thing was used. It had to be the heart of the Core Pan had mentioned, the main part. So how could she operate it? She used her hands to support herself on the console, while Dante grabbed one of the strange glass stools for her to sit on. From the way he was walking, even if he wasn’t feeling any pain, Eden could tell he was having trouble moving normally. His leg seemed to give way, and his body was strangely leaning to the side too as if his injury was keeping him from standing upright... She tried to push her worries about him to the back of her mind and focus. They were so close to the end. If they could turn this thing around and have the Edge take control, it would all be over.
“Dante, go and plug this into one of the central units,” she muttered upon sitting down. “Any of them. Alright?”
He nodded, grabbed it, and turned around. Eden looked at his figure moving away, her heart getting heavier with each step he took. She took a deep breath and turned to the console, quickly trying to turn it on and understand how the hell this thing was supposed to work. It didn’t look like any of the systems she knew, or it was ten times more complicated than a normal computer. There were too many keypads with the strangest commands, and that thing even seemed to resist any attempt she made to control it. She was a decent Back Hacker, but this was harder than anything she had ever tried. There were dozens of protections and protocols keeping her out of the System. She had the machine right under her fingers, but it was stubbornly keeping her out.
“Come on,” she groaned.
“Ah... How nostalgic to see his daughter’s hands on her father’s brightest creation.”
