Factory Reset: Divine Corruption

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Eighteen: Base Sixty-Four

A familiar stench eroded the bleak wasteland, one rotting of ashen carcasses and decrepit homes. A miasmic fog seeped into the very core being of the planet, decaying at it's very core, infecting the few remaining survivors.

Mason stood alone in the mayhem, perched atop a mountainside, and yet yearning. His heart recognized this place, yet his mind did not want to process it. The ground was familiar, the stench was the familiar. The heat was familiar.

It was like an evil presence corrupted the soil, entrapping Mason to stare ahead as he could hear those final words he uttered to his love, "B!" he heard himself yell in the distance, the now Mason's heart shattering as he heard it, "I love you!"

A thundering roar came next, an explosion of dark smoke and vapor. Mason felt his body give way, tumbling off the cliff. His body hit the rocky terrain hard, singing his fur in the process, leaving his fur burnt away, and his skin scorched.

"Why..." Mason cried out in sorrowful mutterings. He hadn't been back to this place in so long. He hadn't thought about this place in so long. He hadn't had this... this nightmare for so long.

A blinding emerald light shone through the darkness, and shadows blasted off from the beam. Overwhelmed with color, the emerald broke into a spectrum, shining rays of it's radiation across the dreamscape.

Mason pushed his forehead against the ground, hoping the searing pain would wake him from this nightmare. He mushed his face, his nose and his eyes against the soil, and yet nothing came of it. It was no longer hot, it was only cool. Dust and debris.

The parts on his body that he had singed in trying to recover his long lost lover had given him permanent scars. Underneath his smooth and silky fur was a mess of charred and molten skin. He was perfectly fit for combat thanks to futuristic medicine. But...

Mason chided himself. He was not meant to think about this period. It would be unhealthy for him to think so, it would be unwise for him to dwell on something so long ago, that he should have reconciled with himself that happened.

But, he never could.

Mason pushed himself off the soil, singular tears of ash rolling down against his ashen cheeks. Mason steadily walked towards the crater, sniffling. He was determined to end this nightmare. He has had it before. He knew what to do.

There would be that one relic he still had of his lover. The one thing recovered by his friends at the epicenter. A singular broken disk, one of a shoulder pad. A robotic joint that connected a dark green furry arm to a protogen body.

One originally colored a solid silver, but charred to a molten, rustic red and charred black. One with a sphere embedded within, colored blue but now a broken cyan. One with a singular name, an insignia, a captain series.

Colored in yellow writing were the words "B-64'.

It would lay at the center, among the debris of countless other protogen. It would rest next to a charred pillar that once supported The Vortex, a plant killer. It would be half buried in the dirt, covering half of the B on the blue sphere.

But, as Mason shakily made his way to the crater, he felt that something was off. He would always feel some sense of remorse, of guiltiness, of doubt in his mind. Now, there was just fear. Fear, and an underlying sense of betrayal.

A dust storm kicked up, one nothing like Mason had ever seen. It shrouded his vision in total blackness. Mason felt tiny rocks pelt his fragile body, dust and sand and rubble suffocating him until he couldn't breathe.