Chương 38: Invisible Guilt

The swarm of metal soldiers parted for their commander, his gaze fixed on the scientist. He looked him over from head to foot, keeping that grim smile all the way through.

"You don't look well, you know." He remarked, pointing at the countless violet incisions filled with dark ichor. The scientist tried to haul himself upright, but for some reason could not find the strength to take a step forward.

"Malcolm Harmenszo… What do you want now?" He snarled, struggling to contain the tremors that ran through his skin down to his fingers. Malcolm surveyed the room with a certain leisure, smiling all the more lugubriously. The deep black of his eyes vibrated with an ancient form of malice.

"Call me Van Jir. Harmenszo died years ago." He raised three fingers, each adorned with a dark, antiquated ring"I came to talk, and to offer you a proposition…" He lowered the first two, leaving only the thumb raised. Grayson fixed him with narrowed eyes"And the third thing?" He asked, keeping a careful distance from the man. Malcolm finally lowered his thumb as well and leered.

"Perceptive… Well, I also came to tell you the truth about this place. But let us proceed in order." He began to walk slowly along the ruined walls of the room. With each step he took, Grayson's limbs were jolted by a lightning shudder.

"You are now like me, though I imagine you had already come to that conclusion." He stopped abruptly, extending his hand toward one of the automata, which immediately marched toward him at an unsettling, disjointed pace.

"I never had any doubt that both you and I were wretched bastards." Grayson replied, placing himself opposite him while keeping some ten metres between them. Malcolm laughed, a spectral laugh suffused with malice.

"True… But I was referring to this." A black blade cleaved the soldier, severing it into two perfect vertical halves. The floor began to crack along the line, and within seconds, even the soldier's remains had become nothing but black dust. Grayson swallowed, losing colour.

"You are like me. A demon or a god, the difference is slight. It all depends on which side of the line you draw yourself." Treading the ashes, he traced a short segment between himself and the scientist. A series of black drops began climbing from his flanks to his shoulders, forming miry columns that pressed upward with increasing force.

"Those like us are called Metas, and I am quite convinced you are capable of understanding how many doors those words are opening for you." Everything in the environment around him began to fracture, like the surface of water struck by a stone. Grayson looked at his own hands, staring at his reflection in the alternating glimmers of light and dark. Malcolm snapped his fingers, and the miasma at his back vanished. He crossed the line, walking toward him.

"You see, you are now something different from a human being. Do you have any idea how many variables you could add to your research?" Malcolm stopped, studying him through half-closed lids.

"I am not sure what repulses me more. You, or the fact that I can still follow your reasoning in this condition…" A faint smile appeared on that exhausted face, accompanied by another of Malcolm's laughs.

"I hope you can go on listening to me a while longer." His voice struck Grayson almost as a hiss. He settled onto one of the columns and began speaking, without deigning to look at him.

"I come from an organisation known as Changeant, a group of mercenaries like myself. We do not hunger for money. We aim for something more abstract." He lowered his eyes, fixing the blurred image of the scientist in his field of vision"Something like world domination, I imagine, or some war. How remarkably original." The tone of the scientist's voice was cracked, followed by the various tremors in each word that escaped his mouth, yet Malcolm simply descended from his seat and stationed himself before him.

"If you could speak to me without trembling, I might have found cause to laugh." He pointed at Grayson's hands, quivering and weak. Even the pupils of his eyes showed no sign of steadying.

"In any case, neither my client nor I have any interest in that." He appeared at his back, resting against his shoulder. Grayson felt a wave of revulsion move through his body: a natural, visceral impulse to flee.

"What if I told you that what we seek is the annihilation of these islands? Would you believe me?" Every function of his body ceased, permitting only his mind to process those words.

"That is madness… What would you gain from it?" He asked, turning slowly toward him, only to hear the man's voice arrive from an entirely different direction.

"Something that matters to both him and me… And you are not so different, are you? You are an intelligent young man. I am certain you understand what will happen if this machine is allowed to operate again." Graysin had not forgotten the unsettling presence of the Demiurge for so much as an instant. Grayson fixed him with wide eyes filled with a strange, sharp intelligence.

"You have given me enough time…" He murmured, vanishing from his sight and reappearing a few metres behind him, above the rubble.

"I will tell you the truth behind this place. After all, these walls were my home." He smiled, clearing his throat. Grayson remained, somehow, rooted to the spot.

"This facility once extended deep into the mountain. A place of pure research where scientists like you amused themselves with people like me. The Taumite here was sufficient to power it for the better part of a century. But the discovery of that shard behind me… Changed everything." Grayson found it difficult to determine which was more unsettling: the man or the black harpoon, partially submerged in the boiling liquid.

"Human experimentation, torture, abuse, relentless killing. This was what was called the Fortschritt Project. The responsibility lay entirely with one scientist, Christopher Ruther." Malcolm alternated between that tired, cold tone and the cruel, malicious one Grayson had grown accustomed to.

"Ruther?" He lost yet more colour and could no longer contain the tremors in his body. The name echoed in his head for a moment before falling silent.

"Did you truly believe there was no Institute before him? He simply changed the name and the morals. During the war, people like you caused as many tears as the firing squads, and yet I do not hate them for it. On the contrary, I would like to thank them." He fixed his gaze on the glass cylinder, concentrating on his own shifting reflection in the mineral. The scientist observed him in silence.

"After all, those screams and prayers were music to me. Every night, listening to those wretched souls cry out, unaware of the end that awaited them. Unfortunately, nothing of that kind came to me." He dropped down and began walking along one of the beams, leaning out toward one of the corridors blocked by the explosion.

"It was here that I encountered the only people in this facility worth noting. Do the names Nyx Monoghan and Lucas Hoppenheimer mean nothing to you?" He asked, rummaging through his pockets before tossing a thin metal plate, painted white. Part of it had been nearly torn away, but it remained legible. Grayson brought it close to his eyes to confirm he had read correctly. The owner of that card was Lucas Hoppenheimer.

"Do not look so bewildered. That man was of good nature. He tried in every way he could to halt the atrocities contained within these walls. Unfortunately, he failed. Nyx, on the other hand, was mad… Or perhaps not. Simply a visionary, not particularly favoured by fortune." Malcolm found it difficult to contain his sneer as he spoke.

"Do you know what happened here? What was done to the souls that ended up in this place?" Malcolm asked, with a grim relish. Grayson remained still, but his curiosity compelled him to shake his head.

"Lambdite was altered by that reactor and fused into our bodies. Many did not survive. Those who kept their minds intact were swept away during the accident." He descended from the rubble, turning Grayson's head toward the ravaged scene of the room. Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

"I imagine that when you found this place, it was a field of wreckage, except for this room. Am I right?" His fingers were cold, though not through any natural means. Against Grayson's skin, whatever was brushing him was not a human being.

"The entire original complex was obliterated when the reactor malfunctioned, and after the war, I decided to rebuild it, in exchange for certain services to my client." Malcom released his grip on his interlocutor, walking slowly toward the Demiurge.

"There is one thing you got wrong, however. The Demiurge is not a reactor. That is merely a facade." He touched the glass, and immediately a plume of smoke rose from his hand. He examined his burned skin, waiting for it to reconstitute itself.

"You had them too, didn't you? Those visions…" A flash ignited in Grayson's mind, strong enough to send him sweating to the ground.

"What you call a reactor is a portal to the other dimension known as Hel." His focus left Malcolm entirely, settling instead on the memory of the pale desert.

"What you saw was the submerged memory of the other world. All those found unfit to become Metas were absorbed into the black shard." Grayson rose from the ground and walked forward until he stood directly before him.

"WHAT IN THE DEVIL DOES THAT MEAN?!" He seized him by the collar, driving him against the column. The darkness in Malcolm's eyes deepened.

"Simple. Quite simple in fact. The Demiurge incident was the opening of a single portal to that white hell." Malcolm spoke with a thin thread of voice, unmoved by Grayson's grip.

"When it happened… It was a surprise to everyone. A vast white dome enveloped the facility, devouring and transporting every person present to that place. The few who awakened with their minds intact had to face the creatures that emerged from it shortly after." For Malcolm, that scene had been the spark that brought him to his Awakening. Screams, snarling, weeping, these were the chorus that carried him out of that structure. He had been young when it happened. An ordinary morning.

As usual, he had smiled at the wretches in the corridor near his room.

"Nyx… When do you think I will be allowed outside?" A young Malcolm had asked the boy seated across from him. His long black hair and amaranth-coloured eyes made him a magnificent sight, like a night adorned by a red moon. He took a pencil from his coat and kept writing. Despite being a scientist, he was extraordinarily young.

"Sooner than expected." He murmured, pressing his thin lips into a faint smile. Some hours passed from that exchange, and then, without warning, he found himself in a field of corpses. Everything around him dissolved, submerging him in the stench of the end. Even in the present day, he could feel the same bliss of that century-old tragedy.

"Looking back on all that death, all those extinguished lives… I am seized by joy." His laughter became something like a distant echo, forcing Grayson to release his grip.

"Is it not magnificent? The desire for the end." He smiled, turning the scientist to stone where he stood. His entire face seemed wrapped in the most sinister darkness the man had ever witnessed. The gleam in his pupils exuded a malice at the very limit of what could be recognised.

"This is why you and I are alike. If you activated the Demiurge once more, you might see her again. A sacrifice can be made for her sake, can it not?" Grayson stumbled, finding himself at the feet of that horror known as Malcolm.

"Bring calamity upon this land, for a reason as trivial as that. I want to see what expression that woman will wear when chaos arrives." His laughter grew lower and more distant, the ground at his feet began to fracture, and the air turned glacial.

"How do you know what happened to her? Lug could not have told you…" His tongue trembled in his mouth. He was struggling even to form coherent words through the panic. Malcolm stopped, fixing him with a grin.

"Because I caused the incident." He answered, leaning over him. In that moment, time seemed to stop for Grayson Dirac.

"How desperate you must have been over those calculations of yours… Given that you also pulled the trigger. What does it feel like to be unable to reach an end?" He seized his shoulder and helped him to his feet, though all that stood before him now was a marionette.

"Why… How… I…" He babbled, along with other disconnected sounds.

"I wanted to make certain the Demiurge was functional, and then you arrived." This was his answer, and Grayson could not accept it.

"IS ALL OF THIS YOUR FAULT?!" He lunged at him, but the moment his eyes closed, he found himself hurled across the room. His ribs had caved inward toward his organs, lacerating them. His breath stopped entirely, and the taste of blood flooded his palate.

"It hurts… God, it hurts!" His mouth was incapable of containing the pain in that moment.

"You will not die from so little… But I hope you remain conscious long enough to hear the truth." He turned to look at the Demiurge. The fastenings holding the shard in place were rapidly coming undone"The responsibility for the incident is mine, but Erika's death was your own failure." He turned, his expression cadaverous, drained of every trace of life"Had you convinced her, had you not been weak and blinded by love… She would still be here."

He spoke without looking at him, simply walking toward his group of soldiers.

"Where are you going?" Holding back tears, Grayson asked as the man passed him by.

"The Lambdite shard is all I require. At this rate, the entire complex will detonate before the singularity can complete itself." He took a yellowish packet from his coat, snapped it open, and extracted a second cigarette. He dragged it along one of the walls, and it lit itself at once.

"All this dust you see is nothing but the snow emitted during the opening of the portal. It can produce rather peculiar effects." He pressed his lips to the filter and drew a breath.

"You are free to use the Demiurge. Afterward, you can tell me whether you wish to join me or not." He drew another pull from his cigarette. White smoke escaped his dark lips.

"WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME?! AM I NOT MISERABLE ENOUGH IN YOUR EYES?!" Grayson shot to his feet, shaking his body as though trying to tear free from the yoke Malcolm had carved into his flesh.

"Simple… I want to see how far you will go to build your world. How many lives will you cast toward their end to avoid your own catastrophe? That is what interests me." He dropped the cigarette to the ground and crushed it underfoot immediately.

"You are… A monster." He murmured, staring at his blackened, lacerated palms. Malcolm looked at him, then returned to that characteristic smile of his.

"As I told you. For those like us, the only difference is where we place ourselves on the line." He answered, brushing ash from his knuckles.

"Once that line is drawn, one bids farewell to the realm of human beings." The automata stirred to life, stacking themselves like a staircase as they attempted to climb back through the opening.

"Until we meet again, Grayson Dirac." He turned toward the vast opening above, but something fell at his feet. A disconnected tangle of cables and wiring, joined to fragments of Helspawn plating. Malcolm remained unmoved, lifting his gaze toward the exit. Above him, one of his soldiers was wretched. The arm had been severed, and the creature beneath the armour had somehow been made to collapse inward upon itself. A rivulet of violet liquid slid down the wall, staining it in a thoroughly unpleasant manner.

The soldier attempted to hiss, but a blast shook the entire structure. A white flash, and of the automaton, only part of one leg remained. Shards of rock and iron spread across the room, yet not a single one grazed Malcolm. Behind them, a colossal crater had formed.

"I was not expecting special guests…" A boy made his entrance through the hole, covered in snow and violet blood. Tied around his waist, a heavy white fur-lined coat.

"You arrive at just the right moment… Lance Klint." He positioned himself in the opening, training his weapon furiously on Malcolm. A thread of smoke still curled from his revolver.

"Malcolm Van Jir…" He snarled, shifting Supplicium into its cubic form.

"Lamb?" Grayson stared at him, stunned, excluded from the atmosphere radiating between the two.