The cramped cargo elevator groaned upward, carrying Louise and Elena away from the hellscape of Sector 7. Inside the suffocating iron box, a heavy, awkward silence lingered.
Elena sat in the corner in her original posture, clutching her wounded shoulder. Her gaze darted toward Louise every so often, her expression still betraying bewilderment at the events that had transpired mere minutes ago.
What in the world is actually happening to Louise? Elena wondered silently. Is she purely hallucinating out of trauma, or is this the neural degradation effect of that transhuman fluid?
Across from her, Louise began sinking back into her own thoughts.
The purple luminescence radiating from her skin illuminated her pale face. She was still questioning whether everything she had done so far was truly the right thing.
The current situation felt like a brutal battlefield where her sanity clashed with the ideology she had clung to all this time.
Are the effects I'm feeling right now nothing but a mere illusion? Louise thought, pondering the hallucinogenic synergy that had just tormented her. Is this condition normal, or am I truly no longer fully human?
A few moments passed. Louise decided to gather her courage and initiate a conversation to break the tension. However, before she could even open her mouth, the rhythm of the elevator's engine began to decelerate.
A giant iron plate above them slowly hissed open. Instead of the darkness of an empty void greeting them, a blinding beam of bright light poured in, forcing them to squint.
The elevator had apparently come to a perfect halt at the surface level of Sector 6.
Louise and Elena stepped out cautiously. There was no barrage of gunfire, no blaring alarms. They simply stood in silence. Then, communicating solely through gestures and body language, they immediately moved, guided by their respective instincts.
Before them stretched a vast room with a floor made of a specialized material resembling pristine white marble. The walls were covered in unique carvings that looked like ancient reliefs.
"Louise, what kind of place is this?" Elena asked, her voice echoing in the cavernous space, her pistol still held at the ready.
"I don't know either. Isn't this area supposed to be a dead transit room for exiles?" Louise replied, scanning her surroundings. "Why is there such a bizarre facility here?"
"Oh, wait, I just remembered something. Weren't you the one who built The Rooted faction down in Sector 7? You should know much more about this place than I do. But strangely, why are you clueless about this, Elena?" Louise probed, her eyes narrowing with a veil of intense curiosity.
"This elevator system is usually hardwired to grant access only to odd-numbered floors, like seven, five, three, and one," Elena answered before Louise could fire off another string of questions. "The very fact that we made it to Sector 6 is a baffling variable."
"And I have a theory about that. May I share it?" Elena continued, her expression dead serious.
"Go ahead. I don't mind," Louise replied.
"The reactor explosion and the shockwave of the Singularity Implosion down there must have forcibly propelled this elevator shaft. That triggered a mechanical error, knocking it off its original track. We arrived here purely due to an anomaly or a system glitch," Elena explained.
Louise nodded slowly. "That makes perfect sense. The elevator's security mechanism might have been accidentally overridden by the destruction itself, or..."
Suddenly, a burst of static broke the silence from their communication devices.
"Signal is stable again," Ray's voice crackled through, carrying a tone of immense relief.
"Thank god you're both safe. I tracked your coordinates. That white room is an ancient data vault, a full-scale Faraday Cage. Fortunately, that marble lining is alloyed with frequency-absorbing titanium. So, as long as you stay inside, ACVA won't be able to track the 'God's Blood' luminescence radiating from Louise's body."
Elena let out a long sigh, the muscles in her face appearing to relax for the first time. She looked Louise up and down, then flashed a sarcastic smile.
"That's great news, Ray. Because if ACVA fails to track us from afar, they just need to look out a window. Obviously, Louise will be glowing like a broken disco ball. And those termite mutants would find us first anyway," Elena quipped casually.
Louise let out a soft chuckle, the first dry laugh to pierce their tension. "Sorry, I haven't found the switch to turn off this night-light mode yet. My skin still feels like it's burning."
"Listen to me, check the corners of the room. There has to be a medical emergency kit. Grab it and pry it open, Elena," Ray instructed.
"Inside, there's an aerosol canister filled with Dielectric Polymer. Spray that all over Louise's body. The fluid has a thermal resistance that will dampen the heat and conceal the purple radiation."
Elena searched and didn't take long to find the canister. She immediately sprayed the white mist over Louise's entire body.
An overwhelming sensation of cold instantly soothed the agony in Louise's veins. The purple glow dimmed drastically, trapped beneath a synthetic protective layer. Relief immediately flooded Louise's chest; she could finally breathe without feeling like she was being boiled alive from the inside out.
With the atmosphere now vastly calmer, the two of them began to explore the room further.
As they ventured deeper, their attention was quickly drawn to the carvings on the marble walls. The patterns were highly unorthodox, like relics from a bygone era that might have existed long before the Spire tower was ever built.
The engravings acted as maps and murals that felt deeply familiar, yet entirely alien.
On the first wall, there was a relief of a flying object with a fiery tail; it was shaped like an interstellar cruiser, but its size was utterly massive, far surpassing the technology of their current era. The ship hovered above a teal-colored spherical body, set against a backdrop of a vast, starry sky. Judging from its position and placement, it seemed poised to pull away and abandon the teal sphere.
On the second wall, there were carvings of other colossal celestial bodies similar to the previous sphere. This time, however, they varied in size and pattern. There were numerous of them, appearing to orbit a central source of light.
At the edge of this sequence, there was also an engraving of a belt of small rocks drifting freely in the vacuum of space.
On the third wall, the colossal cruiser was depicted making an emergency landing on one of the barren, spherical bodies.
.
.
.
What kind of murals are these? Louise and Elena thought almost simultaneously.
Louise touched the cold marble surface. "Elena, why do I feel like these carvings look so familiar, yet feel so utterly alien at the same time?"
"I feel the same way. Do you have any insight or conclusion about all of this?" Elena asked.
"In my opinion, this is a deliberately erased historical record. And it has everything to do with the hidden truth about the planet we live on," Louise answered, her expression solemn as she analyzed every groove of the relief.
Suddenly, a realization struck Louise.
"Elena, do you realize something?" Louise asked.
"About what?" Elena replied.
"No matter what region we are in on Celux-9, every district has a shield," Louise began connecting the facts. "Humanity's major cities are built beneath massive protective domes.
Inherently, those domes serve the function of dimming extreme light radiation to simulate an artificial day and night cycle."
Louise now pivoted to face Elena. Her breath hitched slightly, fueled by the adrenaline of this new discovery.
"Not only that, Elena. The shields also regulate the manipulation of excess gravitational pressure. If we were truly on humanity's homeworld, we wouldn't need such extreme atmospheric simulations. Could it be that this place we call home... is concealing a lie far more massive and complex than just the God's blood experiment?" Louise questioned firmly.
Elena fell silent, digesting the terrifying implications of that theory. Celux-9 might not be their home at all; rather, it could be an extraterrestrial prison, or the remnants of a stranded colony.
However, before they could draw further conclusions, a dilapidated computer terminal in the center of the room;which by all accounts should have been dead;suddenly flickered to life. A blinking green screen shattered the quiet of the marble cage. Rows of binary code cascaded rapidly, eventually coalescing into a single line of text that made Louise's blood run cold once again.
[LOCAL COGNITIVE SYNCHRONIZATION CONNECTED]
[WELCOME BACK, SUBJECT ZERO.]
To be continued...
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Glossary and Scientific Terms
Dielectric Polymer: A military-grade electrical insulating aerosol compound that creates a temporary synthetic skin layer to suppress mutational radiation.
Thermal Resistance: The ability of a material to withstand extreme temperature changes without damaging the underlying tissue.
Variable: A factor, element, or condition within a mathematical or logical system that is subject to change, often creating anomalies or unpredictable outcomes.
Conclusion: The final verdict or deduction drawn from a process of reasoning, discussion, or data analysis.
Extraterrestrial Prison: A correctional facility or isolation space located in outer space or off-world.
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