The laboratory building has become a living hell.
The entire ceiling lighting system has been corrupted. Lamp tubes have burst apart, their warped metal frames drooping downward like sprouting tentacles, swaying slowly through the air, their tips pulsing with a deep crimson glow.
Shattered glass and broken door frames litter the floor. Sharp shrieks echo intermittently through the gloom.
The three press themselves tight against the walls and push forward quickly. Rounding a corner, they spot the door to the M.I.N.D. Research Institute at the same time.
The seal light is still green! We're not too late!
She rushes forward and presses her finger to the biometric panel. The light flickers once, and the lock springs open.
All three of them charge inside at once.
The [Crown] is hovering silently on its magnetic cradle. True to its name, it is a precision-built structure shaped like a laurel wreath, its outer shell a pale gold, its surface etched with patterns the Council has yet to understand.
Oh, thank goodness...
She dashes over and eases the prototype off its cradle with both hands, clutching it to her chest. The chill of the metal shell bleeds through her gloves. It hasn't been corrupted; it's still in perfect condition.
In the next instant, as though something has set it off, the corridor fills with sound.
The clang of metal and the snap of electrical arcs merge into a single din, as if every wall along the passageway has suddenly stirred to life.
They're coming!
Hiss... Raawr!!
With a deafening bang, the door is rammed open by two Corrupted.
Adelyde snatches up the nearest metal rack and charges to meet them. Her first strike crushes the lead Corrupted's skull. The second shatters the other's forelimb. Both enemies crumple on impact, and the path ahead clears, for a brief, fleeting moment.
Move! Now!
The moment the door opens, an iron spike suspended from the ceiling shrieks down. Adelyde jerks aside, but the sharp metal still rakes across her exoskeleton frame—
The hydraulic line along her right knee is torn open. A spray of milky white fluid bursts out. Adelyde's body lurches violently to one side. She drops to one knee, jaw clenched, bracing herself with her arms.
Ophelia hauls Joanne forward, charging over the mangled remains of Corrupted and battling her way into the corridor. Behind them, Adelyde drags her right leg, its hydraulics gone, using the metal rack as a makeshift cane and hobbling after them.
They're everywhere! Where... Where do we go?!
The corrupted tendrils dangling from the ceiling grow denser by the second. The walls on both sides warp and contort, metal conduits slithering out from the cracks and coiling across the floor like spreading roots.
The corridor is closing in like a constricting throat. There is nowhere left to flee.
Ugh, no way around! Then my lab! Up ahead!
At the end of the corridor, a metal door marked "Nano Laboratory" still appears intact. Ophelia presses her palm to the access panel. The light turns green.
All three of them stumble inside.
RAAAARGH!!
The moment Ophelia turns to slam the door shut, a Corrupted's claw shoots through the gap. She throws her shoulder against the door, trapping it, but the tip still slices across her right leg.
Arrgh!
She grunts through the pain, shoving the door shut with all her strength. The lock snaps back into place, shearing the claw clean off. It drops to the floor, still twitching.
Ophelia!!
Ophelia slumps against the door and looks down at her right leg. A long gash slices across her outer thigh, its edges peeled back to reveal pale flesh beneath. The wound runs deep, deep enough to expose the glistening fascia.
...I'm fine.
Fine?! Your leg—
I said I'm fine!
Thud. Outside the door, the Corrupted have begun their assault—one impact, then another, growing faster, more frenzied. The entire door shudders in its frame.
Adelyde drags her ruined right leg to the door and begins hauling everything within reach. Workbenches, equipment racks, material cabinets. She shoves them one by one against the entrance. But everyone knows it won't hold for long.
How is this happening...
Joanne stands in the center of the lab, clutching the [Crown] to her chest. Tears slide silently down her face.
Ophelia sweeps her gaze across the lab, the place she spent three years building. She can name every piece of equipment by heart, down to the model number.
Her gaze locks with Adelyde's. No words pass between them. They simply turn, together, toward the small door on the western wall.
The emergency exit.
......
Ophelia lowers her head and stares at the wound on her leg.
Heh...
She spins around abruptly, seizing Joanne by the back of her collar. Fighting through searing pain, she hauls Joanne toward the emergency passage.
Huh? What—
Let's go.
Adelyde pushes in from the other side at the same moment. The two of them bracket Joanne between them and drive her toward the passage entrance, half-carrying, half-dragging her every step of the way.
Wait... wait! What are you doing—?!
Ophelia yanks open the emergency exit door. The corridor is narrow, barely wide enough for one person. Stairs descend into the dim glow below, the lights weak but still holding on.
Then Adelyde shoves Joanne forward.
Joanne stumbles into the passage, her shoulder slamming against the tight wall. The [Crown] nearly slips from her grasp. She catches herself and whips around—
Ophelia is standing at the entrance, her hand already on the door handle.
Joanne, it's okay if you're slow.
Just don't stop running.
Adelyde looks at Ophelia and gives a single nod.
CLANG. The door slams shut.
From the other side, Joanne hears it all: the sound of something heavy being shoved against the door, the screech of metal scraping across the floor. They're barricading the exit too.
Ophelia!! Adelyde!!
Open the door!! OPEN IT!!
OPEN THE DOOR!!!
Her cries cannot break through the thick iron door. No one answers.
...!
Her fist slams into the wall. The skin on her knuckles splits open. Blood and tears smear together across the rough concrete.
AAAH—AAAAHHH!!!
Then she turns, pulling the [Crown] tight against her chest.
And she runs. With tears in her eyes, she runs with all the strength she has left.
Ophelia scans the lab one last time. The machines she spent three years building. The data she compiled. The nanomaterial synthesis unit she tuned and retuned until every parameter was flawless.
...What a waste. All of these materials, and I barely got to use them.
Mm...
With a piercing screech, the iron door gives way. The Corrupted pry it open and stream through the fissure, one after another.
ROAR!!!
Adelyde moves to meet them, still gripping that iron rod. Two years as an instructor at F.O.S., drilling students on how to stay alive with whatever they could find. Now those lessons are hers to use.
She sidesteps the first Corrupted's charge, the rod sweeping through its forelimb with a crack. A kick to its torso follows, and a bolt of agony shoots through her right knee.
A second blow lands. A third Corrupted attacks from the side. She takes the hit head-on, her shoulder splitting open. Blood streams freely down her arm.
—!
At that moment, Ophelia hauls a nitrogen canister from behind the lab bench and hurls it toward the horde of Corrupted pouring through the doorway.
Move!
Adelyde sidesteps clear. Ophelia snatches up an electric probe and hurls it at the canister—
The nitrogen canister erupts at the doorway. Cryogenic gas billows outward in an instant, flash-freezing the front line of Corrupted. Frost blossoms across their joints. Their movements slow to a sluggish crawl.
But only seconds later, more Corrupted surge through from behind, trampling over the frozen, shattered husks of their own. They keep coming.
This is it.
...
Ophelia slumps against the lab bench, chest heaving. Her shoulders and arms are streaked with wounds. She scans the room and sees the nanomaterial synthesis device sitting just three meters behind her, its control panel still glowing a steady green.
High-density nano-silver filament. Three years of her life poured into it. The moment the magnetic containment is released, it will expand outward in every direction at twelve hundred meters per second. Like a bomb.
...Adelyde.
Yeah.
Remember our first holographic drill?
Adelyde smashes down a Corrupted clawing its way onto the lab bench, then retreats two steps, her back nearly flush against Ophelia's.
You charged me like a lunatic, pulled the pin, and took us both out.
...It was the most efficient call.
I know.
Her voice suddenly catches in her throat.
Back then, I said I'd get you back for that next time...
But I never did.
...
Another wave of Corrupted floods through. Adelyde sends a metal table crashing into them, driving two back, but a third slips in low from beneath. Claws rip across her calf. Her right knee, already ruined, buckles at last. She drops to one knee.
—!
Ophelia lunges forward, seizing Adelyde's arm, and drags her back with clenched teeth. She tips a table over and staggers backward until they reach the nano-synthesis device.
Drained of nearly all their strength, the two of them collapse back-to-back, slumped against each other.
Just like that evening years ago on the training grounds, when they'd finished hundreds of push-ups and sagged shoulder-to-shoulder against the wall at dusk.
—!!!
All around them, the shrieks of the Corrupted and the blaze of crimson light press inward like a cage slowly closing.
All those postings you took... the frontlines... couldn't have been a picnic.
It was manageable. I didn't really get hurt...
You want to know what pissed me off most about you?
The Corrupted crash through the barricade. They are within ten meters now.
...Tell me.
You never told us anything. Not how badly you were hurt, not how dangerous your postings were, not a single word about your knee killing you... Every time, we had to guess, piece it together ourselves, lying awake at night wondering if you were even still alive.
You'll throw yourself in front of anyone, but you never let us protect you.
...I don't want to make you worry.
There. Right there. You're doing it again.
She smiles wearily.
If we ever get another chance...
......
Stop carrying everything by yourself, okay?
Adelyde doesn't answer. But she presses her back harder against Ophelia's. Through the blood-soaked fabric between them, Ophelia feels her trembling.
...Ophelia.
Yeah.
I have learned a great deal from all of you over the years. You, [player name], Lucia, Joanne...
Thank you.
......
Idiot, I don't want your thanks.
The Corrupted shriek, overturning the last barricade. Five meters now.
This thing's blast radius covers the whole floor. The nano-wires will tear through everything.
Us included.
......
Adelyde says nothing. Her hand reaches out, resting over Ophelia's on the switch.
Haha... My biggest regret is picking a fight with you on day one at the academy.
I don't regret it.
—RAAARGH!!!
Three...
Two...
One.
The next instant, nano-wires erupt from the core of the synthesis device.
Countless silver filaments, threads too fine for the naked eye to perceive, bloom outward in all directions at supersonic speed, like an iron flower blossoming in the span of milliseconds.
They shred through the Corrupted's armor, carve through steel lab tables, rip through concrete ceilings and pipelines. The silver wires surge in a roaring tidal wave, reverberating across the entire floor, screaming as they tear the space apart.
Then, in the silence that follows, cracks spiderweb across every surface. The entire floor shudders and collapses.
Behind her, Joanne feels the tremors. The walls of the emergency passage shake. Dust sifts down around her in thin, whispering streams.
......
She clutches the [Crown] tight against her chest, teeth clenched, running hard. Her tears streak behind her, spattering against the corridor floor.
The emergency passage stretches on endlessly. The lights flicker on and off. Her footsteps echo through the narrow space, a frantic heartbeat in the dark.
Time loses shape. Then the distant point of light swells wide, flooding across her face with a brilliance so sharp she has to shut her eyes.
She stands now in Prism Square, the open heart of the F.O.S. College district. For seven years, she walked through here every day, gazing toward the distant Bifrost, brushing shoulders with cadets and colleagues, faces passing like currents in a river.
And now, it lies in ruins.
The entire world is on fire. Smoke chokes the skyline where Bifrost once stood. Against the horizon, titanic Corrupted drift slowly over F.O.S., their bodies fused from the steel frames of whole buildings, moving like cathedral-sized beasts through the burning air.
How... how is this even possible...?
Joanne holds the [Crown] tight against her and stares, frozen, at the fog-wreathed square. All around her lies human wreckage—blood and corpses, youthful faces drowned in red. A few she recognizes. Most she has never seen before.
Grraagh...
One by one, crimson eyes rotate through the fog, trembling with hunger. They hone in on Joanne in unison, a pack of wolves catching the scent of blood.
No...
Joanne claps a hand over her mouth and stumbles backward; her shoulders crash against the wall behind her.
ROAR!!!
The horde lets out a low, guttural shriek and charges toward her like a volley of bullets—
Then a familiar silhouette cuts in front of Joanne, blocking their charge.
Back off!!
Her right arm sweeps out. Metal plates snap open in layered succession, extending into a blade almost two meters long. It slices clean through an oncoming Corrupted.
She pushes forward another step. Flames pour from the metal joints, the blade heating to a searing white as it sweeps through the air, bisecting the Corrupted on both sides.
Crimson veins crawl across her metal arm, only to fade in an instant. These monsters cannot infect her.
Ms. Cassandra?!
...Joanne, listen... Take the Crown and—
Cough!
She staggers, spitting out a mouthful of vital fluid. Her gown hangs in tatters, slashed open in several places to reveal the mechanical framework beneath. She has clearly been fighting for her life here for some time.
VRRRRM!!!
Before the words are fully out, the towering Corrupted in the distance locks onto them. It stretches its colossal frame and hurls its full weight toward them.
Cassandra throws herself into its path, single-handedly bracing against the sky as it comes crashing down. Her feet gouge deep trenches into the ground, her mechanical joints screaming under the overload.
The beacon... in the square... cough... Dominik said... Project String's "backdoor"... is there!
B-backdoor? I don't... what does that mean?
I haven't the faintest idea... Dominik only said... if the Voyage ever went wrong... make for the beacon in the square!
—!!
Crimson steam howls overhead. The sky itself splits with a deafening shriek.
All of this on your body... that's the latest Construct Tech, isn't it?
Haha... naturally, sweetheart. I was the very first "Voyager" to follow Dominik. All you darling children... you came after me.
Why...?
Because one day... Dominik told me these experiments... these weapons... could carry humanity further than we'd ever dreamed.
So I said, fine, sign me up. Let me be the one to take the first hit for those children. Pain's got nothing on me anymore!!
With a fierce cry, she throws herself forward one step, carving out a passage just wide enough for Joanne to duck through.
Little Joanne...
Cassandra forces a smile and looks one last time at the girl who reminds her so much of Nithart.
Time to run.
...!
I'm sorry... Ms. Cassandra!
Joanne swipes at her tears and surges forward, the [Crown] clutched tight against her chest.
Behind her, Cassandra's roars and the scream of steel fade, quieter and quieter... until the white fog closes over them, and there is nothing but silence.
She doesn't know how long it's been. Cassandra sinks to the ground, her mechanical arms deadweight beside her, crimson veins threading across every surface.
Hah... You really have no manners at all... treating a lady like this...
CLANG. The steel giant reaches down, seizes Cassandra by the hair, and—as easily as snapping the stem of a flower—wrenches her lower body apart before tossing it aside.
Ngh... Aah...!
Red vital fluid cascades down like a veil of rain.
Her left arm, then her right. The giant pulls Cassandra apart piece by piece, like a child dismembering a toy, grinding every fragment between its fingers.
Drifting in and out of consciousness, Cassandra pries her bloodied eyes open and fixes them in a single direction.
Toward the auditorium. That afternoon, four hundred and twenty of them crowded around a battered piano, voices overlapping, weaving together a song they never gave a name.
It's you again...
A breeze stirs through long silver hair. A sharp, striking silhouette stands within the white fog, watching her.
Lucia... or should I say...
Alpha?
......
So you're back at the same starting point again...
Have you made your final choice, then?
There are many people waiting for you in the future. People who matter.
Still standing in the white fog, the figure observes Cassandra in quiet stillness, like someone watching an old, faraway memory that belongs to another. No words come.
Our "Voyage" ends here,
The steel giant unhinges its gaping maw and raises Cassandra's upper body with one hand, lifting what remains of her torn frame to its mouth.
Why did she say that name, a name she doesn't even know?
Perhaps it's some fragments Dominik left behind in her M.I.N.D. by accident during some experiment long ago. Or perhaps it came from somewhere else entirely. She can no longer remember.
Ah, that's it... Dominik. She suddenly recalls that afternoon so many years ago, sunlight pouring over the coastline, Dominik standing by the window. Back then, she had made a prophecy:
I'll bet that one day, you'll die for your ideals. While I will ride my bestial instincts straight into the history books and live on forever in glory.
Cough... Haha... Hahahaha...
She takes in the wreckage around her, recalling the youthful faces, the lecture halls and hallways she raised from the ground, and that song they never got to name.
And the smile of the person inside her pocket watch. And that Chief Technician who could never just tell her things plainly.
If this is the ending everyone gave their lives for... then fate really is a cruel mistress...
Everything we did... was it still not the right answer?
The white fog offers no reply. Her ruined form shudders, tilts, and drifts downward into the deep.
The wind sweeps through, carrying away the last whisper of sound.
In 2160, a virus capable of corrupting logic circuits emerged from the vacuum of the Zero-Point Reactor, descending upon the world without warning.
Its effect on modern technology was so devastating that, even by the time humanity fell, its official designation had never circulated widely.
In the survivor records that followed, people referred to it as the <color=#ff4e4eff><b>Punishing Virus</b></color>.
When the outbreak first began, the faculty and students who remained at F.O.S. College held the line.
Stripped of every modern weapon, they built their defense from whatever was at hand and fought to contain the unfolding catastrophe with all they had.
Roughly 193 minutes later, the final student seized a bundle of old explosives and ran into the enemy swarm.
All 3,162 faculty and students of F.O.S. College were lost.
Five hours later, power grids worldwide, along with electrical communications and military command networks, went completely silent.
The next day, mass panic swept the globe.
Columns of evacuees on foot stretched for dozens of kilometers along the highways. More than 50 cities with populations exceeding 10 million were virtually obliterated before dawn of the third day.
On the sixth day, the remnants of humanity's military forces mounted a desperate counteroffensive.
Soldiers went into battle wielding weapons two centuries old against enemies they could not begin to understand. Defensive lines were raised, broken, and raised again...
Only then was it discovered that Constructs performed with remarkable effectiveness against the Punishing Virus.
But the World Government's excessive caution meant the Construct technology had never been widely deployed. By the time anyone understood, it was far too late.
On the tenth day, the lunar base fell silent. The 800 personnel stationed there were never heard from again.
On the twelfth day, the Mars outpost transmitted its final message to Earth.
By the fifteenth day, less than seven percent of Earth's surface was still holding out.
Survivors gathered in isolated corners far from any power grid—no electricity, no technological shelter. They relearned how to build fires, dig wells, and navigate by the stars.
In two weeks, civilization was hurled back two centuries. And still the <color=#ff4e4eff><b>Punishing Virus</b></color> spread...
Humanity had climbed to the top of the food chain over thousands of years. It had taken centuries more to learn how to leave their cradle.
Yet what poured from that cradle took only a matter of hours to swallow every trace of that glory.
Day ▇█▇...
She no longer knows what day it is.
Ever since she touched the beacon tower in the square, she has been wandering through this suffocating emptiness.
Time has no meaning here. No sun rises, no moon sets. Nothing exists to measure the passing of days but only an eternal, unchanging white fog.
She drifts through the void, a leaf torn from its branch, tumbling endlessly with no sense of where she is falling. There is no destination. There is no bottom.
She still clutches the [Crown] tightly against her chest.
Its shell is no longer the pale gold she remembers from the lab in her first year. The patterns are fading, the metallic luster dulling. The entire structure seems to be hollowing out from within, eroded by something unseen.
The data stream has been cut. No information floods through its structure now. Disconnected from its source, it is slowly "evaporating" from reality.
No...
She grips it harder. Her fingers catch on the vanishing patterns, nails digging in, as though the sheer force of her own body might anchor it to this world.
Still, the [Crown] fades.
This is... what everyone gave their lives for...
Ophelia, Adelyde, Cassandra...
Three thousand, one hundred and sixty-two students and faculty of F.O.S...
All of human civilization.
Every last ounce of that weight presses down on this fading piece of metal cradled in her arms.
......
What if... I just... use myself...?
She closes her eyes, lifts the [Crown], and sets it upon her head.
Without warning, an excruciating pain explodes through her mind.
AAAH—AAAAHHH!!
It is as if countless needles stab outward from the core of her consciousness, piercing every nerve, puncturing every memory, tearing through everything that makes her who she is. Everything that makes her "Joanne".
Her body curls in on itself, convulsing in the void. Fragments explode across her vision. A torrent of data, too vast for her human mind to hold, floods into her—ramming against the walls of her consciousness, threatening to burst her apart.
Starved of its external data stream, the [Crown] begins to feed on its host. It devours her flesh. Her memories. Everything human about her.
Joanne wants to scream, but her voice is already gone.
Don't... Don't forget them...
Lucia... [player name]...!
She murmurs the two names over and over, a spell to tether what's left of her mind.
The [Crown] is the world's last hope. If she falls, it vanishes with her... and all those sacrifices mean nothing at all.
Get it to them... to the right hands... to Lucia and [player name]...
If they have it... maybe there's still a way... to fix this!
This thought becomes her only anchor, a single stake driven deep into the void. She binds herself to it, refusing to let go, even as the white fog and the [Crown] peel her apart, stripping away her body and consciousness layer by agonizing layer.
She no longer knows how long it has been.
Years? Decades? Joanne cannot tell anymore. Her mind is a mirror shattered and glued back together so many times that nothing remains but cracks. It can barely hold a reflection. But it can still hold two names.
Lucia... [player name]...
Everything else... most of it has faded away.
Sometimes she hears things, voices drifting through the white fog, through countless layers of emptiness, from somewhere impossibly far away. Someone crying. Someone calling out. Someone singing a song she thinks she once knew.
Depths of the sea... edge of the sky...
She reaches out to catch them. Her hands close on nothing.
Then the silence returns, stretching on and on without end.
Then, at some unmarked moment, a tremor ripples through the depths of the white prison.
...?
She opens her eyes. There, in the white void, a crack has appeared in the distance.
Something on the other side is tearing at it—clawing, pulling—trying to rip an opening into this sealed space.
Light spills through the crack. Warm sunlight. The kind that belongs only to the real world. She hasn't seen it in so long.
She doesn't know how much strength she has left. Not much, probably. Just enough for one last thing...
She reaches out. Her fingertips brush the edge of the crack—
Looks like Vonnegut was right this time. I really did find a surprise waiting in the "tower"...
The white void seals shut behind her like a closing mouth. She crashes onto something hard, every bone in her body crying out in agony.
The light is blinding. She squints, unable to make out anything, only that there is air here, and warmth, and sound.
It takes a long, long time before the world before her finally comes into focus.
I see... So this is all that's left of your world?
Yes, Aisling.
That [Crown] Sefirah... You mentioned Dominik was studying it. Did it go down with your world too?
Joanne's fingers falter, ever so slightly. She hates lying.
Yes.
Aisling asks nothing more. She appears to take it as truth.
...I have a question.
In this world... is there someone called Lucia?
...Yes.
And... [player name].
Across the chess table, the agent arches a brow at the name, a flicker of delight crossing her face.
Both of them are here. Why do you ask?
I can help you.
What do you mean?
You said there's a place called Babylonia in your world, right? That the "F.O.S." up there was built to train commandants who lead Constructs...
Granger gave me some devices yesterday. As a former researcher, I can tell you, there's a real Sefirah on F.O.S. And you need it, don't you?
Go on.
I want to pull the entire F.O.S. starship into the Fog. To avoid fighting in space. Can you make that happen?
Aisling smiles.
Of course I can. But a lot of people will "vanish."
...
I know.
But if you don't do that, your world, that home you came all this way from... it'll end up just like mine.
It'll just take a little longer.
Aisling studies her, her gaze full of scrutiny and calculation, tempered by a cold flicker of acknowledgment.
You just want to go home, back to before any of this began, don't you?
The humans in this world... they won't accept a monster like me, Aisling. You know I don't have another way.
I thought as much, my devoted "disciple."
I'll pull every string I have. And while I'm at it... I'll draw off some of the
Don't make me regret this, Joanne.
Joanne sits there alone.
The air is cold. She stares at her own gaunt arms for a long time.
She lied. There is no Sefirah in this world's F.O.S. The [Crown] is right inside her.
The [Crown] means nothing without the right hands to hold it. Her own body is coming apart. Months, maybe. Weeks, possibly. She has no time left to earn someone else's trust, to find this world's Lucia and [player name] through proper means.
If F.O.S. still stands in this world, then she chooses to believe that Lucia and [player name] must be tied to it.
There's no time left for her to walk down the right path. So she's taking the fastest.
Drag F.O.S. into the Fog. Sow chaos. Then find them. Maybe they're already at F.O.S. Maybe they're coming to its aid.
......
She lowers her head and presses both hands to her face. White hair slips through her fingers like falling silk.
(I'm sorry.)
She says it silently, to the blameless ones who will soon be caught in the coming storm.
(I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.)
She lowers her hands, dries her eyes, and rises to her feet. Then she walks in the direction Aisling disappeared.
Step by step.
Each one heavier than the last.
