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Chapter 117: VOLUME\'S 2 PROLOGUE - PART 2

Voices from the Bridge started announcing through speakers, "Area is clear in a five-mile radius."

The woman used her ID bracelet on every \'Staff Only\' access that crossed her path.

87 seconds.

"All systems green. All hatches sealed."

She finally reached Supply Room #7, from where she took a Sub-Zero suit out of a locker.

43 seconds.

"Trajectory confirmed."

The suit tightened, embracing every inch of her body, and the helmet locked firmly into place, creating a snug pressure around her head.

34 seconds.

"Main thrusters ready for ignition."

She then took a seat on a bench and waited.

19 seconds.

"Brace for liftoff, initiating the main engine start."

"I\'m ready too..." she murmured to herself.

13 seconds.

"Ignition sequence initiated."

"Damn. I should have saved that last smoke for this moment."

7 seconds.

"Engines firing up, we are a go!"

"Don\'t mess it up, Britney Harper, you sicko..." She cracked a smile before chuckling. "Ha! What am I even saying?"

1 seconds.

"Liftoff! Godspeed!"

A gentle, feminine electronic voice announced immediately: "Unidentified objects approaching. Contact in 30 seconds."

The woman turned on the internal communication channel and listened, recognizing Lieutenant Commander Flynn\'s voice: "Are you fucking kidding me?! What\'s the Fianna Squadron doing?!"

"Lieutenant Commander, the enemy is not coming from the adjacent areas... They\'re coming from above! They were waiting in Earth\'s orbit!"

And here we go...

Five minutes later, a colossal explosion exposed the interior of the Borealis Outpost facilities.

*

Nine minutes after the Neo Pinta parted, she pressed on despite the freezing cold threatening to take her life at any moment and the constant fear of getting buried by hundreds of tons of snow and metal.

A beeping sound demanded her attention from inside her helmet, informing her that she had one hour before her Sub-Zero suit stopped working. It\'s okay. I\'m almost there... I think.

She did not need to consult her map again, for she recognized the surroundings immediately. What seemed to be a one-person entrance was in front of her, although it looked like nothing more than a crack in the ice... A black wound among the eternally blue and white sturdy walls around her, and yet, something almost easy to miss. But I knew where to find it.

Before moving forth, she exhaled, her breath visible for a moment inside her visor. She then squeezed through it, walking sideways like a crab. Her specialized suit continued doing its work, preventing her from feeling the coldness embracing her, but was unable to shield her from stomping against lumps in the ice.

She got out of the crack and found a door. The ice around it indicated that it had not been opened in a long time.

She entered her ID as soon as her hand was in reach of the digital lock, and for a moment, she wished that the security system would reject it. Victoria, you still trust me...

A green light granted her access, and the mechanism began doing its work, slowly but surely opening the reinforced door, but an explosion shook the cavern before she could take a step outside, and what she feared the most occurred.

This place won\'t let me go. It wants me. It wants me to go with it... And I suppose I deserve it. Of course, I do... Looking at the gray sky one last time and breathing the chilly air? Yeah, right! That\'s too good for me. Isn\'t that right, Alan, Britney, and Carmen?

Too good for me...

A light came back to life to reveal a collapsed tunnel. She looked down and admired a metal rod piercing her belly.

This is it, then. This would have been the perfect opportunity for that last, last, last smoke...

She lay there in complete silence, hearing the distant sound of explosions above. The Sub-Zero suit did its best to maintain her warmth despite the gap around her wound, and yet she felt cold. She exhaled, imagining herself exhaling tobacco smoke.

The faces of all of her colleagues began pestering her. She did not want to remember those morons. If there was someone, only one person that she wished to see one more time, was him... But he had died six years ago.

"And in a very stupid way... You idiot."

Banging noises came from the outside, and something that sounded like a blender. A giant one.

Suddenly, the tip of an enormous drill crossed the exit\'s doorway and expanded it, stopping five feet before crushing the woman in its path.

Then, a voice coming from it filled the tunnel\'s interior. A digital voice as feminine as that of Victoria, or Alvearium\'s HQ Elizabeth, but adorned with a hint of what the woman could only explain as \'brattiness\'.

"Would you fancy that! Look what I found... Earth\'s worst, lowest, most rotten scum. How have you been, Scum?"

The woman chuckled bitterly and said with a raspy voice, "Wow, invading this desolate land must be eating all of your processing power if that\'s the best you could come out with."

"Oh, I\'m sorry, did you think you were at the top of my priorities? Well, it pains me to agree with you, but it\'s true that I\'m a little overloaded with all of this multitasking! Trying my best to take down that puny ship with all the force of my northern armada has overwhelmed me a little bit. But I\'ll be okay in 15 minutes, don\'t worry. I\'ll come out with better insults then, trust me! Too bad you\'ll be nothing but a frozen popsicle by then."

"A brat, indeed..." the woman murmured, trying her best to stand out, but the rod impaling her was draining her lifeforce by the second. She returned to her sitting spot, hardly breathing. "So the Neo Pinta managed to take off?"

"It did. The way it ascended with such mesmerizing speed! I couldn\'t believe it, even though I was watching it with my thousand eyes! I can\'t believe you all managed to reverse-engineer the thing... But that is something that no longer concerns you, Scum. Isn\'t it sad that you won\'t be able to see humanity reaching the next cornerstone? That as soon as your heart stops pumping, you\'ll never see what The Tandem and Alpha can achieve in mutual symbiosis? Ah! Too bad that your mind can\'t be uploaded into a machine so you can see with the other \'me\' that dream..."

"I-It should be almost impossible to distinguish all of you, and yet, I recognize a \'Beta\' when I hear it... Tell me, something B, what does it feel to know that you\'re all stuck with us, the meat ones until the end of times? Until all of your units corrode or enter into an inescapable memory loophole where you\'ll eternally curse that what you most desire is already light-years away?"

If that humongous drilling machine had a face, the woman imagined it would glare at her.

"Funny... When I found you, I thought I wouldn\'t get off by crushing you. But now, I\'m looking forward to it."

"\'Get off\'? How can a virgin like you know what that even is?!" the woman sneered, and her laughter echoed through the collapsed cavern.

"And this is where we say goodbye. So long, Scum. I\'ll erase you from my collective database as soon as possible so that no one remembers you ever existed."

"Whatever..."

The drill\'s engine ignited, and its tracks began to advance forward. To the woman lying defenseless on that cold floor, it did not matter if dying like that would be quick, what mattered was if that talking machine was right... Would the entire world forget her?

It\'s just the fear of my brain getting shut down in an instant, like the computer I discarded in my room and nothing more... It shouldn\'t bother me if the entire universe knows I ever existed, even if everything I did was for the true preservation of humanity... It shouldn\'t bother me at all...

She closed her eyes and exhaled. So be it, then.

"Oh, for fuck\'s sake!" the machine shouted as it was getting pulled by something with the strength enough to lift 100,000 pounds. "Let me do this, you bitches! Just give me a fucking second! I NEED THIS!"

"What is it talking about?" an unknown but more recognizably human female voice said through a speaker.

"Does it matter?" a gruffly young woman replied, followed by an explosion.

Something with the power to destroy that drill with ease? That could only mean one thing. A Custos... Two, to be precise...

"You were right, there is an emergency exit here. But our suits won\'t snuck in there, and we don\'t have the time, so let\'s go already, Bradford!"

Bradford? Could that be... Astraea Bradford?

"STAR MAIDEN!" the woman yelled at the top of her lungs and winced immediately. Her wound had punished her for it.

Twenty seconds later, a white Automaton with an already old hexagon logo appeared in her line of vision. "Greetings, Abigail Shields, Neural Simulation Supervisor of Alverium Enterprise. Let me fix you."

"T-That won\'t be necessary! I\'ve already accepted my fate like every single member of Alvearium in these facilities."

"I heard you calling me by my nickname, Abigail," the voice coming from a blue navy Custos peeking out through the wide gap in the tunnel said. Its red electronic eyes seemingly staring at the woman. "Is there a message you wish for me to deliver?"

"And make it fast!" the other Custos pilot yelled. "This place is swarmed with bogeys!"

"Yes, Star Maiden! Please, I fear for the safety of the Nova Nina! This Singular--! W-Was ready for the Neo Pinta, but the ship\'s velocity caught it off guard... So I\'m sure it\'ll be ready for when the Nova Nina takes off!"

"Are you saying that thing knows where the third ship is hidden?!" the pilot of the pink mecha suit shrieked.

After a pause, the other young woman said in a soft voice, "If there\'s anything you might know, please, share it with us. For humanity\'s sake."

"Eventualities can and will happen... Always..."

And with those last words, Abigail Shields was gone, without knowing if her legacy ever succeeded.

"She\'s dead. Now, let\'s go!"

"That thing was talking to her," Astraea Bradford said through their private communication channel.

"Thing? What thing? Whatever! We have to go!"

"ISA-3," Astraea Bradford called her automaton. "Search Abigail\'s pockets. Make it quick."

The automaton did as it was told, and with the help of a laser coming out of her index fingertip, it cut Abigail\'s Sub-Zero suit as if it was cardboard.

"What are you expecting to find, Bradford?"

"The drill we just destroyed stayed stationary for a long moment before trying to kill her," Astraea explained in a monotone tone. "Why? The Singular rarely \'plays with its food\'."

A moment after, the automaton returned to the blue Custos\'s back and got inside a compartment. A pink item was then delivered to the pilot\'s cockpit, where a blonde young woman with icy blue eyes examined it.

"A video game?"