The laboratory door slid open abruptly. Ren stepped out, her eyes locking onto mine instantly. She didn't waste a second.
"You finally made it! What the hell happened to you? Actually, forget it, it doesn't matter now. Help us get out of here! And where is Penny?"
Her words reached my ears like static noise. I couldn't process anything other than the fact that Penny was still trapped. I turned to Kai, my voice coming out strained and hollow:
"Kai, cover the boss. I'm going to save Penny."
Ren grabbed me roughly by the collar, her face distorted by urgency.
"WHERE IS PENNY? Dammit, Arata, you had one job and you failed! Go and save her now! Kai and I are taking the main entrance. I have the ID cards," she snapped, flashing the card with a quick gesture.
She shoved me back, and I looked up at the layers of concrete separating me from her. I was about to recreate the chains, but Ted's mangy plush paw gripped my arm.
"Holy shit, kid. I already told you—you're a badass now. Let's do this in a way that's actually cool!"
I didn't argue. My instincts were slaves to that synthetic euphoria. I knelt and slammed my hand against the concrete, feeling the System roar. I decomposed the floor beneath my feet, storing the mass instantly. Simultaneously, I pressed my left hand against the ceiling above me and triggered the command.
The stored mass was recreated between my hand and the ceiling in the form of a solid metal pillar. It expanded in milliseconds, acting like a massive bursting hydraulic piston. The raw force didn't just break the ceiling; it propelled me upward with the violence of a cannon shot.
I tore through the floors like a human bullet, guided only by the heat signature the System identified as Penny. I landed on the target floor amidst a rain of dust and recreated metal that disintegrated into blue mist immediately after impact.
"Yeah!" Ted cackled in my mind. "Fly like a bloody champagne cork!"
The place I reached was a simple room, but the smell of antiseptic and iron revealed its true purpose: it was a torture chamber. In the center, Penny was bolted to a metal chair. She looked like a broken doll. She was unconscious, her body covered in purple bruises and jagged cuts that were still weeping blood. Her torn clothes barely protected her from the cold; every breath she took was a painful, fragile whistle.
Unforgivable.
Ted hopped around the chair, babbling about how her blood matched the scenery, while Gelson the giraffe sobbed in a corner, hiding his long face between his paws in pure disgust and sadness.
My vision blurred. Neon colors began to bleed down the walls like wet paint; the overdose was frying my neural circuits. I could barely feel the ground beneath my feet when I heard the characteristic sound: Vruuummm.
The System acted out of pure reflex. A circular saw, coming from behind toward my neck, was decomposed in mid-air millimeters from my skin. The metal dissolved into code before it could touch me. I turned slowly, watching the torturer stumble back, holding only the empty handle of the tool, his eyes bulging in terror.
It was him. The man who had turned Penny's body into that map of pain.
I was so focused on the System, on that thirst to erase the world, that a question hammered in my mind: Had Platoon E taught me nothing? Or did I just not want to remember my mistakes? In the courtroom of my mind, the verdict was already signed.
I lunged forward like a blue blur. My hand slammed onto his face before he could scream. There was no punch, only the cold contact of my palm.
[Total Organic Decomposition: Authorized]
The skin of his face melted first, turning into bluish digital vapor. Then, the muscle layers were exposed and consumed; I watched his eyes implode as the bone structure of his skull began to crumble like sand under my fingers. He still tried to kick, but there was no mouth left to scream, only a black hole of code devouring his existence. Within seconds, what had been a man became a pile of filthy dust on the floor.
I looked at my hands, still smoking with the static residue of decomposition. I didn't feel the weight of that death; maybe it was the drug, or maybe my consciousness was becoming as artificial as the System itself.
I approached Penny. With a touch, the metal chair disintegrated into blue dust. I took her in my arms with almost hypnotic care, vaguely remembering fairy tales where the prince saved the princess. But I was no prince, and that castle was about to become a graveyard.
Outside, the sound of dozens of marching boots echoed. Penny was weak; a stray bullet would kill her. I couldn't allow variables.
"Ted, what do you think?" I asked the void. "Bring it all down, kid. Clear the map," the bear replied.
Without hesitation, I expanded the Architect's Eye to its limit. I didn't aim at a soldier; I aimed at the support columns, the load-bearing beams, the molecular heart of the building.
[Mass Decomposition Command: Execute]
The world roared. The ceiling above us collapsed in tons of concrete and steel, but nothing touched us. As I walked, every piece of debris that entered my range was instantly decomposed into mist. It was like walking in the eye of a storm of wreckage.
A few minutes later, my feet touched the asphalt of the street.
Behind me, the building was a twisted carcass shrouded in dense gray smoke and blue static. It looked like hell itself. The bodies of soldiers were scattered everywhere—some crushed, others partially disintegrated. The trail of destruction was surgical and absolute.
I walked calmly through the chaos, carrying Penny. The blood of others was splashed across my face, and my blue eye bled incessantly, a viscous stream trickling down my cheek. My expression, however, was one of terrifying peace. I was relaxed.
At the entrance of the street, Ren and Kai were paralyzed. The cigarette fell from Ren's mouth. Kai took a step back, his hand trembling on his gun, uncertain if what was emerging from that smoke was an ally or a monster. I stopped before them, the blue glow of my eye flickering like a bulb about to burn out.
"I told you I was going to save her," I said, my voice sounding monotonous and inhuman. "Can we just leave now?"
Their silence was the answer. They didn't see Arata; they saw a glitch in the system. Suddenly, the blue interface began to fail in my optic nerves.
[ALERT: The host has suffered an uncontrolled evolution.][Biological body has failed to withstand the processing load.][System reboot required. Please remain in a safe location.]
Safe? There was no safe place when your own skeleton begins to vibrate.
The paralysis came first. My muscles locked so hard I heard my joints crack. Penny slipped from my arms—I couldn't hold her anymore. My vision fragmented into black pixels as I fell.
"Hey, dammit! Wake up, shithead!" Ted screamed, now sounding like deafening metallic noise. "I gotta pee! If you make me disappear, I'm gonna piss myself!"
Gelson said nothing; he only sobbed before his image glitched and vanished. And then, the pain arrived.
It wasn't human pain. It was as if my blood had turned into molten lead circulating at a thousand miles per hour. Every nerve ending was stretched to the limit, like violin strings about to snap. The sensation was that of millions of white-hot needles sewing my muscles directly onto my bones. My skin smoked with a pale blue glow; I could feel my DNA being torn apart and forcibly stitched back together.
I tried to scream, but my lungs felt full of crushed glass. The air burned. I looked at Ren one last time, my hand scratching the cold asphalt, leaving marks of blood and code.
"Ren... get us... out of here. In a few seconds... the corrupted humans will arrive... Please... help me..."
The pain reached its peak. My left eye throbbed as if it were about to explode. It was the last thing I felt before total darkness swallowed me, leaving only the sound of my own heart beating like a stalled engine.