Sun rose slowly over the skyscrapers, lighting up the dead city.
Morning came and Aiyra once again went dormant. The neon light shut down, the signs went blank while the speakers turned silent again. There were no living dead in sight, hidden somewhere none of them knew. It looked normal.
But the team now knew more. Understood more.
This was as far from normal as it could be. The warden was waiting for them. Their path ahead was blocked now. By something they didn't exactly understood.
The team gathered around in a circle, the exhaustion from yesterday's scare still visible on all their faces. Mira clutched her slate tightly, while Korr kept his head low, as if afraid to attract attention. Eira and Taren didn't look any better, both silent in deep thought.
Lume had the worst of them all, still covered in Eira's white coat. Crossing his arms tightly, as if trying to fend a chill that kept him awake. His eyes were lost and palms tightly clenched, hiding the symbol that marked him.
"It's waiting," Eira was the one to break the silence. "We can't pass through here until we deal with it."
"What if we force our way through?" Taren asked.
Kshaya had been observing all of them, pausing on Lume a little bit before he turned to answer, "Forcing our way through will not work. It carries greater risk. The Warden is being passive right now. It needs Lume."
Everyone's focus was on the young researcher when he said that.
Aware of the attention, he whispered lightly. "It wants to bond with me. Which is why its not harming us yet."
"So if we try to force our way through, you're saying there is a change that it goes crazy? Or is-"
Kshaya cut in, "The Warden is already crazy, in a sense. I can feel that. If we force it, things will get ugly real fast."
Lume nodded his head in confirmation. The subtle connection he had made with the entity told him it was the truth.
"If there is no other way, then we finish whatever the Thing started. We finish it and get the hell out of here as fast as we can." The sixth member decided and so the group accepted. Her words were final and none of them could offer anything better.
Kshaya looked at Taren, "Weapons might come in handy. This thing, the Warden is a strange being. I am not sure, I can't remember, but something tells me its not natural."
The soldier for once looked happy. He nodded and turned away, to prepare and equip all the members with weapons. That was his job.
Everyone else dispersed, to gather their belongings. The decision was made. They would finish whatever it was waiting for them. End whatever that held this city in a twisted dream.
"Lume, you will have to guide us to the Warden, where the connection feels the strongest." Kshaya paused beside him, whispering so that only the he could hear him.
The young researcher clenched his fists before slowly breathing out.
"I know where it is." His fingers pointed towards the city, deeper into the maze of the skyscrapers. "Let's make sure we put it to sleep permanently"
His voice was better now. And his eyes were determined.
---
The van came to a halt besides the pillar from yesterday.
The city center was abandoned, with a single pillar rising in the center.
In yesterday's hurry they hadn't had the time to clearly make out the appearance of the city center and the pillar in its center.
The whole place was weird.
The pillar was made of a strange metal that showed no signs of erosion. It was like a weird cylinder jutting out from the ground, with no carvings or any designs on its surface. Completely smooth and black. No hints or clues pointing to where the Warden could be.
"So, this pillar, are we supposed to activate it somehow?" The team stood around the metal cylinder, no idea what to do next.
Taren, with a revolver in each hand started pacing, while the others turned towards Lume.
He took a shaky breath, stepping closer to the pillar. "It's here… somewhere. I can't tell exactly."
"How do you know?" Mira asked.
Lume tapped his temple lightly. "Because it's… quiet now. And it's never quiet. Not like this. That means we're close. Really close."
Silence settled again.
Kshaya instructed them to search around the city center, for any trapdoors or opening down. Lume's words made him realize that this entire space, with just a pillar in the center felt so empty. And if nothing was visible above, than it must be below.
While the team tried to find whatever that would lead them underground, he stood by Lume, making sure nothing happened to him.
Very soon, Mira returned with a new discovery.
"The pillar is the entrance, my slate shows the strongest readings just by its vicinity. I think, maybe the pillar isn't a pillar, perhaps it's like a button? Can you maybe push it down into the ground?"
Even though they all had experienced a lot, Korr and Taren still had an incredulous expression on their face, perhaps imagining how Kshaya was supposed to achieve that.
Their guide did not make them wait long, as he leapt up in one swift motion. Standing on top of the metal pillar, he surveyed the surroundings without doing anything else. After a moment he came down.
"Mira is right, the pillar is the switch. But I can't activate it," He turned towards Lume. "You will have to do this."
The others were confused, but Kshaya simply hoisted Lume like an action figure, wrapping him in his chains that carried him on top of the pillar which was wide enough for a human to stand atop stably.
When Lume looked beneath his feet at the top of the pillar, he understood why Kshaya said only he could activate the pillar. There on the top of it was the symbol that had haunted him yesterday. Two circles intertwining, with one darker than the other.
He looked at his palm, reaching out beneath to touch the pillar.
As soon as his skin made contact, the pillar started glowing and descending. In panic, he slipped from the top but thankfully Kshaya and Taren were waiting, catching him safely.
Everyone withdrew some distance away, as the pillar slowly descended in the ground.
The tiled floor started glowing, as the ground started vibrating. Once the pillar completely disappeared into the ground, as if the final piece of a puzzle had been placed, the whole ground started descending and shaking. A section of the ground disappeared, showing stairs that descended underground.
"We have found our secret lab, let's checkout this Warden and put him to rest once and for all." The sixth member took lead this time, acting strangely composed compared to previous times.
Kshaya didn't comment, but his eyes followed her for a fraction longer than necessary.
Some memory tugged at him,,, or maybe instinct. He pushed it aside.
They descended the stairs cautiously.
The deeper they went, the colder the air became. It wasn't the chill of temperature dropping, but the sterile cold of a place long cut off from the world. A silence too loud. Isolated since forever.
The stairs opened into a wide underground chamber.
Mira gasped under her breath.
Taren lowered both revolvers, stunned.
Even Eira, who had seen things none of them had, paused mid-step.
Because the room was alive.
Not alive like them or like the city above them. But somewhere in between.
There were screen and holograms running, lights blinking and programs that none of them understood. Further behind, towards the back there were pods, with their glasses cracked. And right in the middle of the room, just below the pillar which had descended was it.
It was not alive, but also not dead
An amalgam of wires and bio-engineered mass, something that was trying to look like the human brain. And beating like the human heart. But nothing about it was human.
Glowing data cables emerged from it, connecting to everything in the room and the pillar above it seemed to charge it. Everything was connected to it.
The Warden.
Or its core perhaps.
Lume stopped in his place, as he felt a gaze bore deep into him, as if scouring his soul for something. He felt the presence once more, the same presence that had guided him yesterday as he tried running away from the pillar.
"This is…" Eira whispered, stepping forward, "a neural lattice core. A primitive one. A hybrid between early AI and quantum-assisted decision algorithms. This shouldn't even exist. This was a prototype design… abandoned decades before Genesis."
Korr muttered, horrified, "Why would this be under a city? A whole city?"
His words were implying something, something very absurd.
"Because this isn't a simple city. Aiyra was an experiment. Something that was the earliest version of the later seen super cities that became hubs of our world. It was a AI powered, AI governed city that was meant to simulate the perfect utopia."
The answer came from Mira. Her voice was slightly different than usual. But the team did not immediately turn towards her, as the entity in front of them suddenly changed, glowing softly.
She knows, our history.
The sound was a mix of too many voices that it made them clutch their ears. It was a horrible noise. Like hundreds of people talking in varying tones. All of that squeezed through one person's throat.
Kshaya stepped forward, his chains glowing in response as he shielded the team. But-
But so much has been lost, twisted and forgotten. You must remember
A wave of energy engulfed them, as the screens and lights started flickering around them. The Warden's voice shifted, transforming from hundreds of conflicting tones to settle down on one, sounding exactly like their young researcher.
The scene around him twisted, like he was being transported through a portal.
When he landed and regained balance of his body, he was once more standing in entrance to Aiyra. Only this time, it wasn't dead.
This was a scene from more than forty years ago, when Aiyra was still alive.