Operation: One percent

Chapter 55

Ace

I almost lost my voice cussing Alin out.

I felt hopeless and useless. The way he manipulated Margaret with Maryam made my stomach turn.

Before I knew it, we were back in the HQ. Maryam disappeared somewhere in the middle of the way back, and now it was only me and Alin.

"Well, what are you waiting for? Kill me. "

"Kill you? Why would I possibly get rid of a brain like yours? " Alin laughed it off.

"You are joking, right? "

"Well, I DID want to kill you, but your knowledge of Lilith could be useful to make it ...perfect. I have also... given you an incentive if you would check your credits.. "

I didn't want to check it. It felt like dirty money.

"How could you do that to Margaret? To me...? "

He approaches me in a calm and collected manner.

"If you knew what I know about Margaret, you would have done the same. "

"What exactly is that? "

"Margaret...killed her daughter and will kill her again."

"... "                                                                                                    

"I don't understand...Margaret would never do that, and Maryam is clearly alive, besides, why do you care about what she does? "

"Do you even know who Margaret is? "

"...."

He sat down in a large chair, crossed his legs, and interlaced his fingers between each other.

"Margaret stole an AI in her original universe unbeknownst to its potential. She could very well mix up her lives and timelines in her head because the human mind was not meant for traveling yet."

"When you say travel..."

"I mean traveling to the parallel universe."

She what?

"Let me explain. When we first started developing our AI for monitoring, we were taking volunteers. On that fateful day, the moment Margaret came in contact with our prototype, she caused an absolute haywire to Lilith 1.0. At first, we didn't piece it together that she was the reason. We only figured out something was off when we saw her brain scans readings were off the charts. When we checked Lilith, we found that its code was absolutely rewritten."

"Only when we printed her memories out, we were dumbfounded to realize the cancerous truth of her AI and the fact that it made her travel, all because she wanted to save Maryam who kept dying in every universe. We found that it upgraded itself with monitoring capabilities, merging with Lilith."

Alin shifted in his seat, then continued.

"She is probably unaware of Lilith's protectiveness over her but, when we tried to look for her, Lilith would just block out her location, and even when we got close, Lilith would mess with anything electrical, and devices would blow up, including pacemakers of our people. Probably because Lilith would look for any messages and listen in on anything we say, using any CCTV, devices for communication, or anything electrical sourcing any threats. We took the next best possible thing, her parents, but they were clueless too. At the time we didn't trust them, so they pretty much died in vain during interrogations. "

The explanation was surreal, and I couldn't believe anything he said. Especially because I was the one who went after her then, and also because he too had a pacemaker. There was something he wasn't telling me.

He then took something out of the folder, and there she was. A photograph from her point of view, her hand holding a picture of her together with scientists.

"This photograph is clearly manipulated. "

"You can trust what you want to, but go ahead and check her real file. You will see that she has no thoughts posted. "

"...."

"That is because Lilith deems her as her mother, as it has become self-aware, the people who made her but much more important let's say. She is registered within Lilith down to her DNA, and the data cannot be corrupted. Not I nor you have Margaret's privileges even if we created it in our reality."

Maybe, if Alin himself went after her, Lilith wouldn't attack him. Knowing how he works, he would be sending other people to do his job for him. 

I wanted to vomit. Cold sweat started dripping down my spine.

"Why didn't you shut it off, and start from scratch?" I asked. 

"At first we wanted to, we just thought that it was a matter of malfunction, but when we dug deeper, we found that Lilith broadcast signals further away into the galaxy, limited only to compatible AI probably for self-preservation. Now Lilith can be only in one place at a time, just like Margaret. Lilith was not interested in other cities at all in our world, but the moment anyone tried to even touch a single line of code, Lilith acted just like it did when we tried looking for Margaret. When you two disappeared Lilith shut off too."

"I still don't understand what you said about Margaret killing Maryam. If Margaret traveled to save her daughter, why did you say she would kill her?"

"Margaret brought with her the fate of Margaret from her original universe. "

No..... 

"That's why  Puella Mortis is important. It's the only true way to get rid of a person. As long as their soul exists, they are able to live in whatever reality they want, so we developed a device that literally destroys every atom of our enemies and as a last resort in ending Margaret. Because in her 6th universe, she tried to destroy everything, she got transported here before she was successful. Knowing that she might try that again, We tried to reprogram her prototype later when we figured out a way to bypass Margaret's AI to make Lilith reject her, but it never did. It could never destroy its creator as Lilith deemed her. So...she escaped to this universe, trying to mend it all. "

"What is different in this universe? "

" That's only something that Margaret knows...we tried to figure it out, but we were unsuccessful. Margaret is so much more dangerous than you think. She could end everything with her deterioration. Destroying Lilith would do nothing to her, but destroying her would do everything to Lilith. "

"How do you know all of this? "

"Come with me. "