Turning Point (21)
"This is the Plan C I told you about. A so-called Cling Gun. It's a gun that fires an adhesive substance."
Nadia said this as she swapped out a cylindrical metal canister. She had instantly subdued the bucking door, and when we asked for an explanation, she handed over the equipment without disassembling it.
"Take a look. You're going to keep carrying it around anyway."
I examined the equipment, which had several cylindrical metal canisters equipped. The frame was singular, the base model compatible with the parts-pack Nadia always carried.
With her back to us, Nadia swung away her tail, unveiling the parts-pack that had been hidden. It was connected to the support arms at her waist, allowing Multipurpose Unit 1 and 2 to freely retrieve parts.
"This is pretty cool. It feels like an all-purpose tool."
"I've had the blueprint in my head for a long time, but I gave up since it would take too long to do alone and I couldn't respond immediately."
Since she began using bio-circuits, Nadia found she could finally realize ideas that had only existed in her head. She lightly tapped Multipurpose Unit 1 and 2, which had become her new hands.
"These guys handle most of the assembly for me, so now I can just check their condition or use them as they are."
Nadia's basic frame design now allowed her to create new equipment each time by adding extra components. To be honest, this kind of gear had existed before. Modular types were a prime example.
'Given our situation, this is incredibly versatile.'
Especially this adhesive launcher, or whatever she called it. The firing sound wasn't impressive, but its results were outstanding. It hardened quickly, and its durability was much higher than it appeared.
So C didn't stand for cannon after all. I felt a little sorry—I probably misunderstood, thinking Nadia was obsessed with explosions. Truly, Nadia was without a doubt a control specialist.
"So, it wasn't explosive after all."
"Huh? That can explode too, you know?"
Nadia tilted her head, as if asking what I was talking about.
"... Explode? That too?"
"Yep! If I send it the right signal, it goes pop. Its firepower is actually pretty strong. I used a bit earlier to open that door."
"I see...."
So it wasn't so different from a cannon after all. Realizing my misunderstanding, I no longer felt guilty. Licorice let out a sigh and handed the adhesive launcher back.
"We can't get in there now, so let's keep moving. Looks like we'll have to take a slight detour."
"What if the turned path is Level 4 as well?"
"What else? We break through. We were going to do that anyway if we didn't have this launcher."
That was true, so I nodded in agreement. Having settled our response, we bypassed the security door leading to the Level 4 Stasis Storage and headed for another door.
'I wonder what was inside.'
There really wasn't anything noteworthy at this Level 1 area. Most of what was here were seeds commonly seen in Heaven's hydroponic towers at the mining base.
Even Nadia, who'd blocked the agitated security door with the adhesive launcher, seemed curious about what lay beyond and brought it up as a topic. As the distance grew, curiosity began to overshadow her wariness. Even so, she didn't neglect watching her surroundings.
"I'm only a half animalian, but my senses aren't dull, you know? And I'm not that dumb either."
"And?"
"What I'm saying is I've never heard a sound like that before. Now I know what it's like to be momentarily mesmerized. For the first—no, the second time in my life."
Nadia spoke in a serious tone, then glanced at me and changed her phrasing.
"You felt it too, Hyun-woo, right?"
"Well, not as strongly, but I did."
"What? This won't do. Let's go back now and kill it, then."
I just tried to share information honestly, but suddenly Nadia switched from curiosity to murder intent. In sync, Multipurpose Unit 1 and 2 began rummaging through the parts-pack as if agreeing with her.
'Muttering, How dare... how dare it lay hands on Hyun-woo...!'
Nadia looked ready to cause real trouble, so I quickly calmed her down with a tail-pet maneuver.
While I held onto Nadia, Licorice spoke in a calm tone.
"... That was probably a monster—well, it was a monster, but not a mutant."
"You sound pretty certain. Do you know something?"
Both Nadia and I looked puzzled. Nadia stopped struggling almost at the same time.
Now subdued, Nadia looked questioningly at Licorice, who gazed up at the ceiling, as if recalling something—an instinctive gesture when people are remembering.
"I remember it. You both know how I suffered from nightmares. I heard that humming then, almost in passing."
"So what's in there showed up in that nightmare?"
'That can't be, can it?' That's what I thought. After all, Licorice's nightmares were relived memories of Lobelia.
Given how impossible it was to estimate that woman's lifespan, those memories could be from hundreds or thousands of years ago.
"Was it a recent memory, by any chance? Like, say... 60 or 70 years ago?"
I asked, sure it wouldn't be. The Martian Immortality Experiment happened about 75 years back, after which Titan Archive was built.
Titan Archive couldn't have been full from the start, so the memories Licorice saw from Lobelia would have to be recent for this to make sense.
"I don't know exactly, but it wasn't recent. The setting wasn't Titan, either. There was something piled up under that mesmerizing humming."
"Hmm..."
"There are a lot of things that don't add up, but it does make some sense. Or at least, it could. Remember the phrase we saw before entering Stasis Storage?"
Unlike the official sector status messages, it was a phrase that seemed carved by someone: For the next world.
Frankly, I hadn't thought it odd before, since that was supposedly the Archive's original purpose. But after entering Stasis Storage, that idea started to crack.
Licorice seemed ready to drive a wedge into my doubt.
"You realize now this isn't a typical record archive. Up to the data storage sector, it was a maybe, but take a look at what's scattered around here. Weird, right? And it only gets weirder as we go further in. The lower levels will be even more so."
Before long, we reached another security door. It looked identical to the Level 1 Stasis Storage security door, but beyond it was the Level 2 Stasis Storage.
Unlike the previous sector, where seeds dominated, here it was metal. Although the metals were somewhat familiar, everything felt strangely unfamiliar.
There were chunks of ice with flames burning inside;
Lumps of metal floating in thin air;
Stones engraved with strange letters, whose surfaces trembled with ceaseless ripples.
It was all stuff that made me think, 'I feel like I've seen this somewhere,' but couldn't place. None of the stored items had names or descriptions attached. Despite being a stasis storage, this wasn't a museum, so that was natural.
"These don't look like things you'd find on Titan, do they? Or is it just me?"
The moment Licorice said that, that phrase popped into my mind: All Archives are modeled after Earth's.
"Earth... What if this Archive itself is a copy of something from Earth?"
"Go on."
"We don't know how Archives are created. There isn't a single documented construction material or method."
At that point, Licorice seemed to realize what I was driving at. Actually, she'd probably suspected this all along.
"So, it wasn't built from the bottom up, but moved here already made?"
"All Archives are modeled after Earth's. I don't think that phrase spread for no reason."
I nodded. Nadia curled her tail.
"So it's the idea of a copy, then?"
"That's what I think."
"But that's odd, isn't it? That would mean there were monsters, though not mutants, on Earth?"
"That's..."
Nadia's doubt was one I shared, and I was at a loss for words. This didn't fit my understanding of the world. Earth was humanity's cradle and, for all intents and purposes, a fortress packed with every technology imaginable.
In short, there shouldn't have been room for monsters. If anything like that had existed, it would have been wiped out ages ago, and the existence of monsters only ever figured in stories—most of them pure fiction and the handful that were real, grossly exaggerated.
Licorice responded as if it wasn't even something to contemplate.
"It must've been from a previous world. We figured out the Archive's designers were a suspicious group called Pilgrims back in the data storage sector. Remember what I said before—the Archive feels more like an Ark. So the one we're in right now could be a used-up Ark. If my theory is correct, anyway."
Ark. A giant container built to survive doomsday. For one to exist—as an Archive serving as an Ark—implies a disaster happened or is about to.
In the case of the latter, it makes sense. The human extinction crisis was brought on by the pureblood supremacists.
It was as if someone had foreseen this, preparing the protocol and Titan's Guardian, the Sky Whale, and in fact, both were now active. That was the situation right now.
The Guardian, though, couldn't function as intended considering the power it possessed, but the protocol was even now gathering energy, targeting Titan from above by way of a collapse drive—a technology far too advanced for this era.
'But Pilgrims exist only in records.'
These people who had made such thorough preparations hadn't actually shown themselves, even in the face of disaster. Maybe it was because we happened to be in Titan, or maybe they were somewhere else fighting the pureblood supremacists. I had no way of knowing.
If it was the former, it was difficult to answer. A disaster had occurred—but which disaster was it referring to?
Certainly not Mars. It had been a crisis, but not annihilation. It was a major catastrophe—at least for Mars.
Anything more, and the Protocol would have triggered, not the deployment of countless mercenaries.
I focused on the idea of an Ark that had served its purpose. That meant its valuable contents had left, and the dangerous ones were locked away. When the sealed parts broke, that explained the monstrous presence we'd sensed before.
I thought of the pureblood supremacists. Now that I knew all their talk of a new age of purity, and the holy tree's blessing, was more than just nonsense, every word they'd ever said seemed like a clue.
"The previous world could have been the Age of Purity. And the next world is our present. Is this a bit—no, a lot—of a stretch?"
"Not really. I think so, too."
"There's still something that doesn't fit. No matter what time period we're talking about, it can't have been an ordinary era."
So that would mean the Archive existed from then until now. The more we dug, the deeper the pit grew—no bottom in sight.
Just how long have these technologies existed?
If the previous world was destroyed, how, and by whom? And why?
It had been a while since our common sense was overturned, but with each new layer the story only grew stranger, leaving me at a loss for words.
"Well, there's nothing we can do but keep moving. That's why I'm not saying much now."
Licorice shrugged. Given how much she'd confused us, it felt almost irresponsible. Nadia flicked her tail through the air in irritation.
That didn't last long. Rather, it couldn't—because another security door appeared.
We stopped and looked at it. It wasn't a door that opened with brute force, nor was it one Celestia had warned us about.
It was simply stained black.