I woke up in a great deal of pain, and to at least dull the burning agony in my eyes, I reached for the glasses I had thrown away, took them off my face, and hurled them far away. I was in shock. Colors, lights, and countless other things were all jumbled up, making me feel nauseous. Because of the blurry veil that had descended over my eyes, I tried to stand up, but all I managed to do was crash into Rose's body and fall face-first onto the floor.
My simple human body couldn't handle leaving the mind tunnel so abruptly. I was struggling to breathe. My heart was pounding so hard it felt like it would burst from my chest with every beat. I knew that the box on Kohn's back, thanks to the assistant's signal, could cause mutants to come flying at us at any moment. So I reached out my left arm and tried to drag myself. Shaking and sweating like crazy, all I could do on the floor was drag myself a few steps. I glanced at Rose from the corner of my eye. All I could see was a blurry brown shape. Rose was still in the mind tunnel, under the influence of the drug. If that drug could put even a Dermovox to sleep, Rose wouldn't be waking up for a while.
From what I could see, the plan had failed. Half-paralyzed and writhing in agony on the floor, there was nothing I could do. There was only one thing for sure: I was an overconfident idiot! Damn it… I reached out with my left arm again and tried to drag myself. I could sense, despite my blurred vision, that I was just a few steps away from the glasses. But what would happen even if I reached them? I couldn't stand up... Rose and a Dermovox named Epra were busy sleeping under the effects of the drug, and it didn't seem possible to wake either of them without the glasses.
"Ah..." a voice said. "...I don't remember the last time I was this disappointed." Everything was blurry to my eyes, but the man in front of me appeared with perfect clarity. He was approaching me, lying on the floor, with a helmet that had a plus sign on it. He placed the skull-tipped staff in his hand forcefully on top of my hand, and I could feel him pressing my hand into the floor. He pulled his purple overcoat, which fell to his legs, to the side, leaned down to the floor, and said, "...you're a real disappointment."
"John Crowrift! You... You're not real. You can't be here."
"Ah... I really can't be here. I have big things to attend to. I'm busy building an army to fight the Republic, orchestrating conspiracies, and much more." Then he poked my head with his finger and said, "But lo and behold, here I am."
"I knew it was a trick of my mind."
"Is the trick of your mind a real person named John Crowrift or the made-up personality of Mehmet?" He pulled his staff away from my hand and stood up. He took a few steps, picked up the glasses from the floor, and held them.
"Don't you dare do anything to those glasses!" I said angrily, gritting my teeth.
After inspecting the glasses for a while, he opened his hands in a weary manner: "Look at the plan you came up with! The whole thing is tied to these fucking glasses I'm holding, is it?" He held the glasses up and shook them at me. "A fucking pair of glasses! Dammit, Mehmet! Can't you be a little more creative? You're ruining my reputation! You... you're an almost one-to-one clone, and look at the job you're doing!"
"Give me the glasses!"
"Come and get them!" he said, and he threw the glasses to the corner of the room, shattering them.
"No!" I shouted, but my voice came out weakly from a lack of breath. As I lay face down, exhausted, I could feel death approaching.
"Hey! Crybaby!" Rose lifted me with great strength and put my arm over her shoulder. "Why are you screaming on the floor?"
"Rose?" Everything was still blurry, but I was sure the voice I heard was Rose's. "How?" Rose carried me, then bent down, searched the floor for a while with her hand, found the glasses, and picked them up. I could tell how incredibly strong the woman was just by how easily she carried me with one arm.
"How what?"
"You were asleep from the needle!"
"I'm still asleep, you moron! Did you forget? I'm a half-mind-weaver... I can control my body from my subconscious. You don't realize it, but my eyes are still closed! I can't see what I'm doing right now, I'm just guessing. In short, I'm practically blind... If you hadn't been sobbing like an idiot on the floor, if your voice hadn't been grating on my ears, I wouldn't have been able to find you."
"I can't see anything either, Rose!"
"Damn it! Then how are we going to find our way? You idiot! I told you your brain couldn't handle something like this! Was that Dermovox friend of yours in the next room?"
"Yes!"
"We have to go to him right now! If I remember correctly, the door should be this way!"
As we entered the corridor, I could hear the distant sound of metallic footsteps. Rose must have heard them too, as she quickened her pace. We held onto the wall and finally found the door. It was locked. Rose ran her hand along the wall for a while and then turned to me, saying,
"It looks like there's glass here. Sorry, Mehmet!" she said, grabbing me with both hands and throwing me towards the glass. She had used me like a rock to break the glass.
I fell onto the floor on my back and writhed in agony! "You fool of a woman! What if the glass was unbreakable!" At that moment, I heard the successive sounds of gunfire. Rose threw herself through the glass and shouted:
"Damn it! I think I've been shot! Stop talking and grab the glasses!" she said, throwing them to me. "Wake that creature up already! An army is coming!"
I took the glasses in my hand. I climbed up the massive Dermovox by holding onto its muscles. I had a lot of trouble putting the glasses on the Dermovox's eyes. Once the glasses went onto the creature's head, it took a while for them to reshape to fit its eyes. As soon as the glasses perfectly fit the creature's head, I could hear a sudden crackle of electricity.
The mutants were very close now. Rose moved away from the glass, touched the Dermovox, and got behind it. I did the same and got behind the Dermovox. I could clearly make out from the blurry colors that the mutants were on the other side of the glass. They had their arm-mounted weapons pointed at us. At that moment, something happened...
The Dermovox straightened its massive body, and the metal chains stretched and tore apart like gum. In fact, as the creature pulled its arms towards itself, the metals on the ceiling bent, and the lighting systems in the room broke.
The Dermovox straightened up and smashed the glasses on its eyes with a slap of its hand. The mutants fired in succession, and the bullets hit the Dermovox's body and fell to the floor like rain.
"Why did you break the glasses, you animal! We needed them!" Rose shouted, but the Dermovox didn't even care.
"Human..." the Dermovox's voice echoed in my mind, "...you really did wake me up!"
"There's a mutant in the next room. It needs to go to Jose's room!" Rose said. "You have to take us to that room."
"You have a tone of command, woman!"
"I apologize for my friend's attitude!" I said, interjecting. "Epra! Could I please ask you to do what Rose said?"
"If you wish to benefit from the great Ogvetna's..." The mutants, realizing they couldn't penetrate the Dermovox's tough body with bullets, jumped through the glass and started to surround the Dermovox. "...great generosity. I, as his envoy on this planet, will carry it out with pleasure. Is that what you were trying to say?"
"Exactly!" Rose and I said at the same time.
"Then I will show you the fury of Fuag's flames! I will show you the power of Ogvetna's mercy!"
Epra flung its arms out and leaped, wrapping its arms tightly around the mutants that came between them and breaking them like glass. As it took down the wall in front of us with its shoulders, we could hear the sound of falling shell casings in the corridor. As this colossal creature committed a massacre in the entire corridor, alarms had started to blare throughout the facility, and I could barely hear my own voice over the sirens.
Rose leaned against the wall and slowly sat on the floor while I knelt down. The sound of the sirens was like melting my already jumbled brain. I guess... I guess I couldn't stand up anymore. I guess I was going to faint.
When I opened my eyes, I was lying in the middle of a white room. I remembered this room. This was the first room I had opened my eyes in when I came to this facility. The table I was lying on was an operating table. When I noticed the mutants standing over me, I instinctively stood up and punched one of them. My punch was so fierce that the mutant flew towards the wall from the punch to its stomach, and after hitting the wall, it broke into pieces. Something strange was happening. I had never been this strong. What had happened after I fainted?
The other mutants backed away in fear, and a caged, talking brain approached me.
"Master Mehmet, you've woken up!"
"What happened to me?"
"Most of the nerves in your body had lost their function. The visual processing part of your brain was severely damaged. I changed all of that."
"With what?"
"With me, master."
"Jose?" I could hear his voice, but I couldn't see where he was. "I'm so glad to hear your voice, my friend. I've missed you so much! Where are you? I want to see you, kiss you, and hug you tight."
"I'm on your back, master."
"So, they were able to mount Kohn's parts onto us."
"Yes, master," Jose said. "They put us back together with biomechanical parts taken from another 210. Taking energy from a human body is such a strange feeling..."
"If you're taking energy from my body, that means..."
"Yes, we've converted a large part of your body into the structure of a mutant. We had to tamper with your genetics, but your body can now produce energy." The talking brain then showed me a bunch of needles. "You have to inject yourself with these green-tubed needles every two hours. Since you're not a full-fledged mutant, this fluid gives your body the necessary source to produce energy... We could say it turns you into a mutant for a while."
I took the green tubes and held them out to my back. Jose's metal hand, extending from my back, took the tubes and placed them in a metal cover on my body. "How long have I been here?"
"You've been in this operation for about a day."
"And where are the others?"
"Your friends, Rose and Epra, have been fighting the mutants for hours. Your friend Epra, in particular, has achieved great success in defending this room, you could say. The mutants can't get here because your friend Rose is constantly meeting them in the front rooms with guerrilla tactics and preventing them from coming deeper with traps. In short, they've been fighting for hours."
"Wait a minute..." I said, furrowing my brows. "...why are you helping us?"
"After I learned that you had a plan to kill Vale, and upon the threats of your friend Epra, I wanted to help you. Besides, do you know what a torment it is to be a creature that can think among so many mindless creatures? I'm longing to escape my endless torment here."
"So how are they doing now?"
"Let me check..." The rail systems in the brain's cage moved. The brain approached the pipes on the ceiling and began to listen. "Yes... Their situation doesn't look very promising... Vale is constantly giving orders, and judging by his orders, they have managed to harm your friends."
"This is a very frightening situation! Jose! Please tell me you have a plan!"
"Master... I can't say I have a plan!"
"Damn it! What are we going to do then? Go and fight alongside Rose and Epra? If we do that, do we even have a chance of winning?"
"I don't think we'd make a difference, master."
"Talking brain, since you're a brain and you can talk, you must be a smart one. Do you have any advice?"
"First, I'd like to say this. We are currently on the -32nd floor. In short, we're on the lowest floor. Your friends should be on the -30th floor, as I can tell from the sounds. Normally, there's a procedure to prevent prisoners from escaping; there's a reason why the prisons are on the lowest floor..."
"What's that reason?"
"This facility is a biomechanical facility, and it can be said to be more mindless than other facilities. That's why it was almost impossible to create any security or tracking system. Knowing this, Arthur Vale made an arrangement in the facility. The -31st floor is not a normal floor. There are thousands of pneumatic pistons on that floor. Those pistons are eager to open the air valves. If those air valves were opened, our bodies would have already started to melt with poisonous gases, and we would have turned into fried chicken with a single lit match. Most of those pistons are also waiting on the ceilings. In short, some of the pistons are waiting to poison us, while others are waiting to crush our heads with the ceiling. Normally, the procedure should have gone that way, but it looks like Vale is letting his mutants die."
"What does that mean, talking brain?"
"There must be something he values about you. He wants to capture you, not kill you..."
"Hmm..." I thought for a while, and then the Maria incident came to my mind. As an admirer of John Crowrift, Vale couldn't have let such information escape his grasp so easily. He would probably capture me alive and torture me for his pleasure for a while, taking me on as a parrot mutant he wanted to make talk. This... This might be a situation I could use to my advantage. I might be able to turn this in my favor.
"How long can Epra and Rose last?"
"Master, even a day can be said to be more than enough," Jose said from behind me. "The creature called Dermovox must be very powerful, because under normal circumstances, even a platoon of the Weapon Security Agency's enforcers could only last a few days against an army full of mutants. These creatures were truly creatures worth creating."
"I don't want to talk about Dermovoxes and how valuable they are right now, Jose. How much time do we have left?"
"I'd guess Rose and Epra could fall at any moment, master."
"Very good... Then we need to make a plan. An urgent plan..." I scanned my surroundings for a while. As the mutants backed away in fear, the thought that each of them was born from a woman named Flora sent shivers down my spine. Vale was a terrifying man. Arrogance could be read from his every movement, his every expression. He was nothing but a bag of flesh filled with a terrible purpose. His only goal was to please his creator, John Crowrift. He would do anything for John Crowrift if he could. That's why he had turned this science facility into a biomechanical, organ-based one. "Jose... This was a science facility, wasn't it? An advanced technological science facility founded by Unify... Even if most of this science facility's systems aren't working now, those systems are still in place."
"You want me to hack into this science facility's system?"
"You hacked it back when John was here under the name Vale. You should have the power to hack it, right?"
"But I don't know where to hack from."
"Actually, we do. The place where that fake beach was... If we can get to that place in my memory, we can most likely hack in. Because I was there, and that place is still active and working. Arthur Vale didn't destroy it... Maybe he wants to give John Crowrift a nice vacation when he comes, who knows? But the real question is, how do we get there?"
I turned to the talking brain. Even though it had no eyes, the talking brain could tell that we were looking at it.
"You're waiting for an answer from me. Let me think... Actually, there is a way. It's not very possible for you to get there by fighting the mutants, because it's on the -29th floor. The mutants won't let you climb a few more floors. But maybe you can use the water systems. The water there is drawn from an underground water treatment facility. You can try to climb through the pipes in that underground facility."
"And how can we get to the water treatment facility?"
"Would you please get up?" I got up from the table and moved to the side. When the table pulled away, the metal grates beneath it opened. We were looking into a sewer full of blood and dirty water. "The dirty water here also goes to the treatment plant. If you go through the pipes, you'll reach the treatment plant."
"How long will that take?"
"It can be said to be about a kilometer away."
"You expect me to swim a kilometer in this tar-like solidified liquid full of poisonous waste and flesh particles and survive?"
"Actually, we can, master..." Jose said from behind me.
"How?"
"Watch!"
Suddenly, I realized I had lost control of my body. My legs started running quickly and threw themselves into the liquid full of meat. As my hands and face were covered in severed flesh pieces and the taste of damn chemicals got into my mouth, Jose took control of my body once again and reined in my panicking body. Since I was weighed down by the metal parts on my body, it didn't take long for me to sink to the bottom. All I could see were flesh pieces, and then I suddenly started running. I was so fast that the flesh pieces were hitting my body and breaking into even smaller pieces. I ran... I ran... We went along the pipes, sometimes on the ceiling, sometimes on the side of the pipe... Finally, when I saw a metal cover, I reached my hand out to the wall, and with a laser beam that shot from the palm of my hand, the cover flew off. As the cover exploded, the dirty sewer liquid drained out, and we shot out from where the cover was and leaped towards a metal platform. The metal platform hit me hard in the chest, and my hands, without my knowledge, managed to grab the railings of the metal platform. After I pulled myself up, I regained control of my body. Gasping for breath, I threw up on the floor, yelling:
"What the hell are you doing, you maniac!"
"We've arrived, master..."
We had really arrived at the place he mentioned. Under our feet was a water treatment facility with thousands of filters, gears that were grinding up flesh pieces, and dozens of mindless mutants working, resembling a stapler. Above our heads, there were rust-colored pipes coming out of the wall and going back into the wall. On many of these pipes, there was a metal platform, and at the head of those metal platforms were mutants turning valves. The helmets on the mutants' heads were connected with cables to the electrical wires that extended from the wall. The mutants, getting electricity from the cable, were turning the valves and directing the liquids.
"We really did arrive, and that's a great thing!" I shouted. "I really feel so strong. I can now give that man named Vale a very hard slap across the face."
"I'm the one controlling your body, but your power doesn't come from me, master. The increase in your physical strength comes from the mutant enhancements in your body. I just controlled you, master..."
"So what do we do now?"
"We'll find the pipe that goes to the -29th floor, master. If we're at -32 now, it needs to be 3 floors up."
With Jose controlling my legs, we climbed up a few floors by jumping two meters at a time and holding onto the pipes. Finally, we found a small metal pipe that went into the wall. My hand could barely fit into this metal pipe.
"We can't fit into this small pipe..."
"Yes... But we're pretty sure this is the pool hose..."
"So?"
"Let's blow this wall up."
"With your laser finger?"
"With the laser weapon, but your energy is about to run out, master." Jose had taken control of my body once again. I could feel a needle from a metal hand extending from my back piercing my throat. As the liquid in the metal needle heated my body, I jumped to another metal platform. Then I pointed my hand at it, and with the laser that shot from my hand, the entire wall where the pipe was flew into the air. Concrete and metal pieces fell down on the heads of the mutants, while the water emptied over the treatment plant. When I entered the hole, we found ourselves in a pitch-black room. But the room was lighting up as I entered. The lights on the ceiling were starting to turn on. Since we had broken the glass in the corner of the room and entered, the beach scene hadn't appeared, but the sun was visible in the upper-left corner of the screen. As the water drained down, we walked on the rocks of the dry artificial sea. We climbed the sand hill and got ourselves out of the sea pit.
"I wonder if Vale knows we're here?" I asked Jose.
"He probably does, master..."
"What are we going to do?"
"We won't let him in here."
Jose jumped off my back and left me on the floor. Jose had returned to a yellow box. Its metal arms waved like octopus arms on the sandy ground. My wet back was covered in sand. I took Jose in my hand and started to brush the sand off with my hand.
"What did you do, you lunatic?" I said.
"Dig the sand and connect me to the energy cables underneath, master. My energy is about to run out..." I quickly dug the sand using my hands like shovels. The cables were visible right in front of my eyes, but I didn't know how to connect them to Jose.
"Jose, what should I do?"
"Cut the cables and please connect them to the cable sockets behind me."
"With what am I going to cut them..."
Jose's voice, which had run out of energy, was trembling. "Tear them off with your hand..."
"What? This is ridiculous? Are you serious? Holy shit!" I closed my eyes and grabbed the cables, expecting to feel an unending pain. As I tore the cables with great force, I was waiting for a huge and painful electric current to circulate through my body, but there was nothing. The insulation on the cable had probably protected me from being electrocuted. I put both of the cables under Jose and waited. A few seconds later, Jose started and stood up. It walked on its two hands and went to the hole where the cable came out and sat down.
"Oh... That feels great..."
"So what do we do now?"
"From what I can see here, there really is a registered computer. The main computer has been shut down, but it hasn't been removed from the system. Hmm... I guess Arthur Vale didn't trust the mutants much. He registered the computer to the system so he could return to technology in case the project failed, but it doesn't have much energy... This room was a kind of a panic room for Arthur Vale. It's really a miracle that we found such a room. Thank God for your memories!"
"Where did you get that from?"
At that moment, the sand a few meters away started to recede. As the sand receded, a metal cabinet was rising upwards. As the metal, cylindrical cabinet slowly opened, a piece of clothing came out of it. An armor... This armor, with its helmet, its overcoat, and many other things, was an exact replica of the costume that John Crowrift wore. The only difference was that the purple parts were not purple, but were shining with a light green color. Even the plus sign on its helmet was shining in light green. There was one more difference. That was the necklace he wore.
John Crowrift wore a crow necklace. This costume, on the other hand, had a deer's head as a necklace. This was a strange symbol. I used to think that the reason John Crowrift was a crow was because his last name was 'Crow'. So why was Arthur Vale's a deer?
"What's with the deer?" I asked Jose.
"What's with the deer, you ask? Master, every last name has a meaning. The crow necklace that John Crowrift wore meant that he was an eye looking down from the heavens. An arrogant, bird-like eye that knew secrets... The 'rift' in his last name meant that he knew the secrets at the edge of the abyss. 'Crowrift' is a last name that means knowing the secrets while being at the bottom of the abyss, or in other words, in a dangerous place..."
"Huh... Is that so? I really wasn't expecting such a detailed explanation." I said with a sarcastic tone, but Jose continued to explain.
"However, Arthur Vale... His last name is 'Vale', or 'Valley'. A valley is a place that needs protection, is fertile and peaceful. Just like this place..."
"Peaceful? What are you talking about, for God's sake, Jose?"
"This place was pretty peaceful until we came... It's very fertile for producing mutants. It works like a farm and needs protection. While John stands on the precipice at the edge of the valley, looking at it as a threat, Arthur's duty is the valley itself. The strange thing is that the last name Vale was given before John came here. Do you believe that a last name can affect one's destiny, master?
Eh... Where was I... That's why the symbol around Arthur's neck is a deer's head. The deer is the lord of the forest. It's strong but not like a hunter, gentle but not weak. Its antlers are like its crown; it doesn't use them for fighting but to protect its vale and the living beings in the forest. Here, those living beings that need protection are the mutants."
"Jose!"
"In short, the difference between the crow and the deer is this. One watches for danger from the outside, while the other protects the life on the inside. While John Crowrift's crow searches for secrets around the valley, Arthur Vale's deer protects the life within the valley itself. What's with the deer, you ask? The deer is the very soul of the biomechanical vale where we now stand."
"Jose!" I bent down and slapped the yellow head of Jose, who was embedded in the floor, twice. "Jose, are you okay?"
"Master... Master, I'm sorry. The information from the computer was just flowing so fast that my mind got very confused while answering your question and..."
"Jose, please stop explaining already! I'll put on this armor, then what happens?"
"Vale was thinking of this part of the facility as an escape point. That's why this room has connections to most of the other rooms. Even that armor in front of you is here for that reason... We can assume that that armor has at least as many features as Crowrift's armor."
"Very good..."
"So, our plan is as follows, master. The power unit of the computer I'm connected to is very damaged, so it's using the energy stored in its battery. We don't have much time... You must use the shortcuts in this room to get to Vale and stop whatever he's doing. While you do that, I'll control the doors, windows, lights, etc., whatever I can to guide you from afar."
"So in short, we're going to hunt the deer in the vale, is that it?"
"Exactly, master..."
"Fantastic!"