Chương 55: Chapter 17: Survivor's Guilt

I closed my eyes for a few minutes after exiting the dark hallway, taking a few deep breaths as I tried to compose myself once more. I should have expected to see him inside, but everything about being on lifeboat seven felt unreal to me. It didn't feel like anything I remembered from my past, the thing it became seemed completely disconnected to what it had become. As I opened my eyes, I saw the ball of purple lights leading away from the building and up toward the area Flint had pointed me to.

I tilted my head, moving up over the building as I followed the line of purple lights, strangely leading me to where I was already planning on going. Just like on lifeboat eight, the entrance to Artemis's processor was located on the central ring, but unlike on lifeboat eight, there was a massive opening leading me to where I needed to go, the floor of the ring looked like it had been blown out in an explosion underneath.

I approached slowly, feeling a slight sense of deja vu as I saw a familiar looking room from an angle I'd never seen before. I couldn't help but get an eerie feeling about the place, being so similar to what I'd seen on eight, it felt like what I was looking at could be a sign of the future for any of the other lifeboats.

The sphere structure sat at the center of the massive room but it had a massive tear going down its side, looking like the interior had exploded like a kernel of popcorn, blowing out its insides with a scattered shot out into the rest of the room. Large pipes, braces and softball sized spheres dotted the walls across from the explosion, lodged deep into the metal walls across from it, making it hard to imagine just how big of a boom it made. The spheres were what I was after.

I reached behind my back, grabbing into the small bag Nori gave me and pulled out a small screwdriver-like tool with a three pronged clamp at the end. As I approached the erupted core of Artemis's brain, I felt like I was going somewhere I wasn't supposed to go, like I was defaming the corpse of lifeboat seven. Although it was a computer, I felt like I was desecrating the remains of the deceased. I shook my head, trying not to think about it as I slowly made my way into the sphere.

The purple lights made their way inside, like they were asking me to follow them. The insides were a dense matrix of pipes and wires surrounding large clumps of the spheres I'd been looking for. Nori told me they were used for processing and short term memory storage, but whatever was on them at the time of the accident should be long gone. After taking a moment, I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and reached into one of the clumps, plucking out one of the spheres and pulling it out so I could see it.

As expected, it was colder than ice cold, it was nearly hard to touch, but I held it with only my claws touching and brought the little tool up to it, plugging the tool into the bottom. A moment later the light on the tool lit up red, telling me it was a dead core, as I'd expected. To be sure, I pulled a few other spheres out from the mess of cables and found all of them to be dead as well. It wasn't a surprise since they were so close to the explosion, there had to have been a lot of shock and a lot of heat.

I looked down the stem, finding that the very center was empty, allowing me to pass through, the purple lights had already made their way inside, guiding me through the opening. My flashlight turned on automatically as I started climbing my way through while I tried to ignore the fear I had for randomly coming across a dead body. I figured there shouldn't have been anyone inside at the time everything happened but the unknown blackness ahead of me didn't help how I felt.

It didn't take long to reach a small opening where the interior opened out to a small control room, designed exactly the same as the one I was in with Nori back on lifeboat eight. Just to test, I reached into the wall, squeezing my hand through the mess of wires to find another processing core. A quick test later told me it was also dead. I had a feeling I had to go deeper. I took a moment to look around at the little room, noticing the same style of screen with the two hand pads next to it.

None of the lights were on, but out of curiosity I moved over to one of the hand pads and pressed my palm to it. Unsurprisingly, it didn't do anything, but I figured I had to at least try it. I couldn't help but wonder what it was supposed to do. If there was some sort of password to gain full access to Artemis, why didn't anyone have it? Did it mean he was working entirely autonomously? If Nori's plan had worked, wouldn't they still need a second person with the password to get into the system?

I looked down the pit below the platform and started making my way lower into the structure. Although the opening in the middle narrowed, I was still able to squeeze through it. Soon after leaving the platform area I arrived at a three way fork, one leading down, the other two branching off to the side. The purple lights led me into one of the side branches and continued moving down along the tunnel.

Another bank of wires revealed itself as the tube turned so I reached inside, feeling around a bit until I found another sphere. All of its wires were still attached, but I was able to pull it out enough to press the tool to it.

"Dead" I said quietly to myself. The various pathways and interchanges felt endless. I couldn't tell how deep into the ship I'd gone, but I figured I'd find a working core eventually. I stopped every few feet, moving down along the wires and cables to find whatever cores were there, but every one I tried was dead. After about an hour of searching, I saw something different ahead of me. It was a small opening on the side of the tunnel with the area just passed it blocked by something.

I started to move toward it, letting me see more of the opening ahead, but only seeing pure blackness on the other side. It looked as though it was some sort of access panel that had been opened, just a few feet past it along the tunnel was a toolbox that looked like it was wedged into place, partially open. Once I reached the opening my flashlight was finally able to see some detail in the room beyond the access panel. The floors and walls were made of large metal panels and along the floors…

I froze up as I recognized the forms of several dead mechara. Looking up, I took another look at the toolbox, wondering if there was a way past it. As I got closer to it, I could see a melodian hand holding one of the handles. It was frozen, but the hair was all burnt off. I pushed back a bit, a chill running through me at the unexpected sight. It's okay, it's okay I said to myself as I closed my eyes, doing my best to relax and not panic. The purple lights led out of the opening and into the hallway ahead of me.

I didn't want to get distracted with detours, I wanted to keep looking for the spheres, but if Artemis was controlling the lights, it was possible he was bringing me to a place where I could find a working core. He led me to the main chamber after all, it was possible he knew where I could find a working one. I kept my eyes closed, taking a series of long breaths as I prepared to move forward.

Just follow the lights, don't focus on them I said to myself as I slowly opened my eyes and made my way through the narrow opening. The silence inside the hallway became ever more apparent as I felt like every breath I took, every beat of my heart was disturbing the residents of the dead lifeboat. I felt like I was invading their place of rest. I couldn't help but see them from the corner of my vision.

The mechara were all laying across the bottom of the hallway, their chests burst open with their yellow blood covering the floor underneath them. As the melodian had said, their bodies had boiled, their insides painting the walls of the gruesome interior of the hallway. The purple lights led me down the hallway, patiently waiting in place as I made my way through, guiding me around several turns that brought me to a junction.

On one side was a hallway that looked as though it went into the first section of the ship. In the distance there were some living areas that looked like mechara homes, but the thing that caught my eye was at the entrance of it. A melodian family. Their bodies were intact, leaving me to guess their bodies didn't go through the same violent decompression the mechara did.

I wanted to keep following the purple lights, which had been leading me out along the central ring, but as I looked at the family I couldn't help myself from wondering who they were, how they got there and who they would have been if the accident hadn't happened. This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there. Ever so slowly, I moved closer to them.

Their eyes were closed, their bodies frozen to the floor, but I could make out there was a man, a woman and two children and between them all was a large metal oxygen tank. I felt a shiver go through my whole body but I couldn't help myself as I moved closer, wondering who they were, what stories they could tell. I was close enough to almost be able to touch them when something else caught my eye. My face got caught in the reflection of the convex shape of the top of the oxygen tank.

Slowly, I reached up to my visor, pulling the glass back to reveal my face in the reflection. It was an unsettling feeling, seeing my face amongst the family. I felt like I didn't have any right to be alive more than they did, yet for some reason I had been saved and they weren't. It was an uncomfortable thought, but I felt like I didn't deserve to be saved, at least, no more than the children in front of me. They were likely the same age I was when it all happened, I could have just as easily been one of them.

The way they were huddled around the oxygen tank told me they could very well have been some of the last survivors of lifeboat seven. I couldn't help but play the scenario in my head. As my dad was putting me in the escape pod, sending me away, this family and countless others were unable to do anything aside from waiting for their inevitable death.

"I'm sorry" I said quietly to them. I took a deep breath and pulled away from them, turning around to see the purple lights were leading down another hallway. Thankfully, my own orange lights were still following behind me so I could find my way back when it was time to go. With a gentle push, I moved away from the family of melodians and followed along the path of the purple lights. Eventually I arrived at a doorway with a familiar lock in place.

With a press of my hand, the door opened about an inch but got stuck. The ball of purple lights were hovering just outside the door, clearly wanting to go inside. I sighed, moving over to the opening and placing my feet against the wall, gripping the door with my fingers through the cracks as I forced it open. It took a moment, but as soon as it started moving it quickly opened. I screamed as I was met with a mechara's hand flying up from the door's opening, hitting me in the face.

I pulled on the doorframe, accidentally throwing myself into the enclosed hallway as a mechara arm flew up from the door, hitting me on my side. Everywhere I looked there were dead mechara, mixed in with a few melodians. Yellow blood covered the walls, the floors, the ceilings. In my panicked state I couldn't remember how to stop myself as I continued down along the hallway, unable to control my breathing as the sheer amount of death surrounding me stopped me from thinking.

Every time I turned my head I'd see another face, another frozen corpse, I couldn't breathe, I couldn't think, I wanted to clear my mind, try to think of anything else. After what felt like an eternity, I crashed into a wall, high above the bodies underneath me. There had been a lot of people trying to get out the door I'd just come through but for some reason it had been stuck, trapping everyone inside. I closed my eyes, trying to get a handle over the situation, trying to get my breathing under control.

I had to calm down, just follow the lights. As I opened my eyes I saw the ball of purple lights continuing down along the hallway I'd just barreled through and turned down another path when they all suddenly stopped in front of a big white door. I took a deep breath, focusing on the purple lights as I tried to ignore the bodies underneath me. As I got to the white door the purple lights all dispersed, going back the way they'd arrived, leaving me alone in the hallway with the dead.

The door didn't look like anything special. There was a sign on the side of it with a cautionary looking symbol next to it, but I couldn't read what it said. After everything I'd seen, I could only imagine what awaited me on the other side of the door. But I knew I couldn't go back after seeing everything I'd just gone through. Whatever Artemis was trying to show me, it had to be important.

I touched the pad next to the door, squinting my eyes as I tried to mentally prepare myself for whatever horrors I might find on the other side. To my surprise, the door opened to reveal a brightly lit room, all the overhead lights were on, unlike everything else I'd seen in the ship. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust, but after a moment I could see something unexpected. In front of me was a laboratory, with all kinds of equipment sitting on large workbenches, all frozen in place by a familiar film of ice.

To my surprise, there were no bodies. Nobody was inside the lab at the time of the disaster, but all the equipment was laid out as if everyone had left in a hurry. Papers were laid out in a way that made it look like people were reading them just before the accident. It felt as though everyone had gone out to lunch and the lab was just waiting for everyone to return. I looked around, hoping to see whatever Artemis had wanted me to find.

Several of the walls had anatomical drawings on large printouts, each focusing on different body parts, all of which were melodian, there weren't any drawings of mechara. A series of windows lined one of the walls which led to something that felt extremely out of place. It was a living area, with a bed, a desk, a carpeted floor and a small table with some plates and a cup on it. Everything in the lab area was sized for mechara, but the small room was fit for a melodian to live in.

"Tess?" I heard Flint's voice call out from the hallway. A shiver went through me, suddenly bringing me back to where I was.

"Uh, yeah I'm in here" I said just loud enough for him to hear. I still didn't want to speak too loudly, it felt disrespectful to the dead. He came out from around the corner, looking just as confused as I was about the fully lit room.

"What… What is this place?" He asked.

"I was wondering that myself" I said as I turned my attention back to the small room. It looked like there were a few rooms past the windows with more living areas, shelves lining the walls with clothing and random items filling their spaces. It looked like a fairly normal living quarter aside from the giant laboratory that was attached to it. Behind me I heard Flint started to go through some of the papers that were laid out on the desk.

"Oh…" Flint said quietly as he flipped through the pages "Oh no…"

"What is it?" I asked, turning around to see an extremely upset looking Flint.

"It's… It's not… It shouldn't be possible…" he said. I started moving over to him to see what he was looking at, but before I could reach him he pushed off the table, going over to a small filing cabinet near the wall and started to sift through the folders, scanning over the pages as his expression went from surprise to anger.

"Flint? What is it? Do you know what this place is?" I asked him.

"How did you find this place?" He asked, not looking up from the papers as he sifted through them.

"Uh, there were these lights. The ones we have, but they were moving on their own. I followed them here" I said.

"Moving on their own? But that's not how those work" he said.

"Okay… Well… That's what happened. Could you tell me what this place is?" I asked again. He threw the papers he was looking at off to the side, reaching into the cabinet again to grab another folder as he started to go through them.

"Tess, do you know what cloning is?" he asked. I was caught a little off guard by the question, "I know a little about it. That's where you can make a copy of an animal and they'll basically be like twins, right?"

"That's… Part of it. Yeah. You can make a copy. At least, you can with the life from the mechara's planet. Every cell has all of the genetic information to make another copy of whatever organism you got it from" he said as he grabbed another folder from the drawer.

"From the mechara's planet" I repeated, "but not from ours?" He shook his head.

"We work differently. It's not possible to clone us because when our cells are assigned a job, they throw out all the other genetic code that they don't need. It means we heal a lot faster from wounds but it also means we can't be cloned, which in the mechara's case, helps them a lot if they have a failed organ or something. You can't do that with us."

"Okay. That makes sense, so what is all this?" I asked.

"That's what I'm confused about" he said slowly, flipping through the pages "they seem to be talking about…

'reviving old genetic code' and 'constructing a melodian from a mixture of old and new genetics' for… Something. It's a type of cloning but… I don't know why they'd want to do that…" he said. He grabbed a few more folders from the drawer and put them in his bag.

"I don't think we should stay here any longer than we need to" he said. I nodded "Okay. I do need to get one of those…" I started to say, cut off by Flint as he pulled a sphere from his bag.

"One of these?" he asked.

"Yeah one of those but I haven't found a working one yet" I said as he gently pushed it toward me as I caught it a moment later. I pulled out my tool, expecting it to flash red but to my surprise the light turned green.

"What… How did you find this one?" I asked. He smiled "Well, I was following your trail and saw you'd been taking a bunch of these out along the way. Before the exit, there was a toolbox with… Well, it looked like someone was working in the tube when the explosion happened."

"Yeah I noticed that…" I said. He nodded "I figured, there might be a working one behind the uh… Resident… In the tube. Because he likely blocked a lot of the heat from the explosion. So I went back there and grabbed one. I figured it was worth a shot."

"Oh, wow okay I never thought of that. How did you get back there though?" I asked. He shook his head "There are some questions you really shouldn't ask."

"Ah… Okay, well, thank you for grabbing this at least" I said, trying not to imagine what he had to do to get past the body.

"We really should get going" he said as he started to make his way toward the door.

"Wait" I said, reaching out and grabbing him by his backpack.

"What?" He asked, sounding a little annoyed.

"What else can you tell me about this place? I mean, you sounded angry at first. What, just because they were figuring out how to clone melodians? Didn't you say that was a good thing? Like, for medical stuff?" I asked. He shook his head "That's not why I was angry…"

"What was it then?" I asked. He sighed, his hands clenching a little before he reached out to one of the papers, pulling it over so we could both see it.

"See this header at the top of the page?" he asked, pointing to a line of text at the top of the page that appeared to be the same piece of text that was on all the other pages.

"Yeah" I said, leaning in. His finger ran across the page as he read out loud "Research and Development: Project SLOAN."