The Secret Room
"This place gives me the creeps a little..."
"I concur."
The corridors here had a completely different feel from the ones on the factory's first floor. If the passage above had screamed cargo transport, the corridor on the third basement level was nothing more than a hallway linking a long line of research laboratories together.
In other words: walls of glass-like transparent material stretching on and on, and beyond them, laboratories absolutely steeped in signs of human activity.
Since this facility was, at its heart, a factory, the laboratories came equipped with mechanical arms meant to substitute for human hands, which lent them the strong impression of workshops.
"It's like walking into a laboratory from a horror movie."
I kept an eye out for shards of broken glass and the like as our disc glided along beneath them. Very few of the private laboratories were still intact — apparently, the position of temporary administrator hadn't been enough to open them, so someone had forcibly smashed their way through the walls instead.
Anyone important enough to have their own lab here obviously wasn't an ordinary worker.
The West had always been sensitive about privacy, so I supposed not just anyone could walk into a laboratory. Making the outer walls transparent, though — that was pretty funny. Some minimal form of mutual surveillance, perhaps?
Noah piloted the disc around the corridor, examining each laboratory with meticulous care, until at last she frowned.
"Dear me. It's larger than the upper floors, but not so large that we need to inspect each room one by one."
"Anything from the data you got during that hack earlier?"
"Unfortunately, this area was maintained on an independent server. With servers of this kind, we would need to locate a separate server room or—"
"Huh? That thing — it's a laptop!"
Whooong!
"Ako!"
The moment I spotted the familiar shape of a machine and shouted, Noah hastily brought the disc to a halt. The sudden, unexpected stop sent Lena lurching forward into Noah's hard body.
Her mana was still restricted, so her reflexes must have dulled a bit.
Anyway, I climbed down from the disc, entered the laboratory I'd marked, and retrieved the boxy machine. It was remarkably light.
"Is this actually a laptop?"
"Hmm... it is. Since it was developed after I was deactivated, the performance is astonishing."
Just as before, Noah extended the wire from her pinky finger and connected it to the laptop. She closed her eyes with the expression of someone savoring something, and soon began pouring out information.
"Fortunately, I was able to use the laptop to connect to this area's server."
"Any good news?"
"Yes. There is a laboratory remaining with materials and facilities in relatively good condition. It appears to be a kind of secret laboratory — one the previous visitors never found."
Noah's mouth curled upward at the corners more than usual. A chance to repair her body — possibly even upgrade it — must have put her in a good mood.
We boarded the disc again and headed for the secret laboratory.
The concealed laboratory was hidden in a thoroughly unexpected place.
Not underground. Not along a side wall. It had taken up residence in the ceiling — which is to say, it sat on what you might call floor B2.5.
Noah manipulated the laptop, and a staircase rose up out of the floor, stretching all the way to the ceiling.
"The workshop is up here. I hear it was a place where the more skilled researchers and engineers gathered to work on joint projects."
"Ah, so it wasn't exactly top secret."
"For anyone without access to the information, though, it would have been quite the space to find."
Thud. Thud. Thud...
We climbed the firmly anchored stairs. But even after my head had risen close enough to brush the ceiling, the ceiling just sat there, minding its own business.
Isn't it supposed to open?
"Hm, that's strange. There should be a door here."
"This ceiling's a different color from the others, though? Let's see..."
Fsss...!
"Ugh."
The moment Lena casually reached out and touched the ceiling, a section of it crumbled into powder and collapsed!
Had this part been made of some other material? In any case, a large hole now gaped open above us. We covered our noses and mouths with our hands and climbed through.
Kholk, kholk!
Unfortunately, the first thing to greet us was a truly foul stench. A concentrated, putrid reek that no sewer could hope to compete with had claimed the secret laboratory as its own — and the culprits were none other than skeletal remains that could no longer even hold a proper shape.
"Ugh, the smell!"
"The ventilation system was shut off. I will restart it."
Whirr...
Lights flickered on across the laboratory as ventilation fans began to turn, and before long the stench faded away. Only then did we have the presence of mind to look around.
"Wow... this facility is incredible. It looks like something straight out of a movie."
"I'm seeing quite a few pieces of equipment I've never seen before myself."
"Did a war break out in here or something? I can't figure out why it's such a mess."
The communal laboratory was roughly the size of a hotel lobby. Mechanical arms far more complex and intricate than the ones we'd seen on the first floor dangled from the ceiling here and there, and beyond them, shelves were packed wall to wall with tools whose purpose I couldn't begin to guess.
If I had to describe it, it looked something like the workshop from that movie about a certain team of X-named mutants.
But barricades cobbled together from desks and chairs, shell casings scattered across the floor, and the bullet marks scored vividly into that floor all muddied the laboratory's futuristic atmosphere. Naturally, the guns and ammunition responsible for those casings remained as well.
"Oh! Guns!"
"Maybe it's because they're relics, but they look pretty different from the guns I know? Though they seem broken..."
"That they are."
Rifles of designs I'd never seen lay scattered around the remains, but every one of them had been wrecked beyond any hope of repair. I searched halfheartedly for a single intact specimen and found nothing but ruined ones.
A shame, really.
"Eugh... I guess these people (?) died here."
Lena seemed far more interested in the skeletons sprawled around the room than in the broken guns. The remains wore only fragments of the clothes they'd had on in life.
Who knew how much time had passed, but the skin and cartilage had rotted away entirely, and even parts of the bone itself had decomposed — not a single one of them retained a complete skeleton.
The laboratory appeared to have served as a makeshift shelter at the very end, and the pile of leftover clothing came to nearly a hundred pieces. Which meant at least a hundred people had been here once.
"Weird clothes... huh? This one's got holes in it... Looks like they were hit by some kind of blade weapon?"
"Let me see... you're right. And by a small blade, too."
Lena lifted up a grimy, hole-riddled white research coat that had been draped over a nearby chair. That one simple gesture was enough to send bone dust and fragments of bone spilling from beneath the fabric.
I had no wish to commit sacrilege, but there was simply no way to properly lay these remains to rest.
Instead, I turned my attention to the holes punched through the back of the coat.
"These marks are artificial... but the blade's width is only about three centimeters? Almost a knife a child would use."
"Who could they have been attacked by? Come to think of it, the floor is broken in many places as well — there are surprisingly many traces of combat here."
"Jun! Lena! Come over here!"
Noah, who had wandered off to scout another corner, called to us from across the room. She must have found something.
Lena and I roughly cleared away the decayed clothing stained with all manner of bodily fluids and moved toward her. It wasn't far, so we arrived in no time — and there, waiting, was a most unexpected presence.
"A golem!"
"We should call it an android. Ah — actually, it isn't even that...?"
"It is a bipedal weapon of simple construction, with no neural brain installed. No doubt something hastily assembled inside this workshop."
Before Noah knelt a massive humanoid figure, bowed low with its head lowered.
I had reflexively corrected Lena's word choice, but on closer inspection, this thing truly was no android. It merely resembled a human in its overall shape.
A four-meter bulk that towered over even Kaya, two additional arms mounted on its back, and a camera embedded in its head that could swivel to see behind itself — calling something like that an android was a stretch. It was nothing more than a simple weapon of war.
"Not exactly in mint condition, is it?"
Looking it over carefully, I found quite a few shallow scratches across the robot's body. Still, they were barely more than scuffs, and they seemed to have no effect whatsoever on its ability to move.
What on earth had it fought?
Ah — not important right now, honestly.
"How does the facility look? Can you get your body repaired?"
"There are a small number of spare parts remaining, so repairs will pose no problem. However... if we could take complete control of this laboratory, I believe we could acquire a great deal more."
"Take control of the place?"
I tilted my head at Noah's puzzling suggestion. Wouldn't a simple repair be plenty? But this was her field of expertise, far more than mine.
"This area runs on an independent system, so even if we seize the facilities by somewhat forceful means, none of the information will reach Catherine."
"Hm... a perfect crime, in other words. All right. Is there anything I can do to help?"
"Yes. This time I will require a fair amount of assistance. First of all..."
Noah began patiently walking us through the tasks ahead, one by one.
In the middle of the spacious laboratory stood a rectangular, computer-like machine — the apparatus that governed the entire facility.
Noah wiped down a patch of floor, then settled herself outright beside the computer and lay down.
This hack was not a job Noah could manage alone.
"Have you committed to memory everything I explained?"
"Roughly."
"Yes!"
"I will be able to keep my mouth open until near the end of the procedure, so there is no cause for concern. Please be careful only at the final step. Then, I will begin."
Noah spoke with the same untroubled air as someone announcing dinner. But what she did next was, frankly, staggering — and that was despite having heard the explanation in advance.
Pshhh...
"Good lord..."
"...Even for me, this is rather awkward to watch. I feel a touch queasy."
The scalp of the prone Noah split cleanly down the middle, baring her insides to us!
Call it a mercy: because Noah was not truly human, what the split revealed was not red blood and a gray-white brain, but her cold neural brain — a hard block of metal inscribed with a long serial number.
"Please pull it out gently. Just a light touch of force is all it needs."
"Never thought I'd end up doing this kind of job... Nnngh..."
I laid my hands on Noah's neural brain as instructed. Contrary to its chilly appearance, it felt faintly warm to the touch.
So this is where Noah lives...
With the delicate care of someone handling a newborn, I eased the neural brain out toward the opening.
...Click!
It snagged slightly partway, but the brain came free without incident. I could see countless wires connected to the inside of her head.
"...Did it work?"
"Perfectly. Next is Lena's turn. Do you see the red wire attached to the very bottom of the neural brain?"
"Yes..."
"That wire connects to the cervical vertebrae. Pull it out and bring it here."
Still lying down, Noah lifted only her hand to indicate the base of the computer beside her.
Lena examined the spot she'd pointed to with great care... and took a deep breath. What Lena was about to do was the kind of act that would be very difficult to perform with a clear head.
The wire was connected to the cervical vertebrae — the bones at the back of the neck. So how exactly did one go about pulling it out?
"I-I'll do it."
Swooosh...
Lena's small hand reached deep into Noah's opened scalp. Because the neural brain controlling her body sat in there, Noah's head was a labyrinth of wires tangled in every direction.
But with Noah managing them, the hundreds — thousands — of wires parted on their own, carving out a clear path for Lena's hand to pass through.
"Ughh... I'm never doing this again, ever..."
"Lena, put your hand in deeper. Touching the wires a little is fine."
"Huh?! There's something squishy in here...!!"
"Ah, don't worry. That is merely a portion of the elastic padding protecting the neural brain."
"Eeeeek..."
Letting out strange, strangled whimpers, Lena pushed her hand in deeper still. Whether it was the tension of performing an act she'd neither seen nor heard of before, beads of sweat began rolling down her forehead.
And yet the girl summoned every ounce of concentration she had. At last, her arm vanished up to the elbow and —
Pop!
With a satisfying sound, Lena's shoulder jolted slightly. She'd gotten it.
Drawing the end of the wire, slick with a light film of lubricant, back out into the open air, Lena shuddered from head to toe.
"This is fine, right? Nothing's going to go wrong?"
"...It'll be fine. Hurry and plug it into the designated spot."
From the moment that wire was pulled, Noah lost all authority over her own body. She simply lay there, still and silent as the dead.
Clack!
The moment Lena pressed the end of the red wire against the computer, the connector's tip reshaped itself with practiced ease and locked into the component whose specs had never quite matched.
There we go. Success.
Only a few tasks remained. Just as Noah had explained beforehand, all we had to do was pull out a handful more wires and make the additional connections — and since none of them were anchored anywhere near as deep as the cervical vertebrae, the rest of the work promised to be comparatively easy.
With a thoroughly sour expression, Lena reached her hand back into Noah's split-open skull.