A Distant Reverie

Chapter 103

The chair squeaked as Ame slumped against the back rest. She let out a sullen breath, glancing up from her desk for the first time in several hours. The sun was about to set. Evening arrived. The blood-stained skies peered over the snowy horizon.

She was in the command room of the compound. The doors were locked firmly behind her. On the table, underneath all of the mounted monitors and periphery devices, was the religious text of the Gnostic Group. Ame had a separate journal open, littered with diagrams, frustrated scribbles, and annotated notes. There were a lot of question marks. The meaning behind the words written on the pages were impossible to discern without context. To an outsider, it might have seemed like the ramblings of a madman.

I might really be going mad at this point.

Her brain felt like it was melting from the influx of information. The text of the Gnostic Group was filled with vague, prophetic statements that didn't seem based in reality. At the same time, Ame couldn't completely dismiss them. Not when Lady Ouro had purposefully asked her to read through its content. And then there was also the intimate mention of mana by Marine to Vesper over their private voice chat.

There was a connection that she didn't understand. Confused, she scoured the digital web for research papers that mentioned mana and similar concepts. Most of the materials were interpretations of relics and documents retrieved from past civilizations. Nothing particularly useful. Nothing that could give her an inkling as to why Lady Ouro had requested her to take interest in the Gnostic Group's dogmas.

Should I just ask Vesper about what they meant?

It was a risky endeavor. She would be admitting that she listened in on their private voice channel. That was a huge taboo. A breach of privacy. Something that could easily fracture this flimsy partnership between their groups.

Ame could not afford to lose them at this stage—not when they had invested so much effort into training them to become proficient in the Exos. Vesper and Suisei had grown into competent operators over the past week of training. Marine was already at the same level of proficiency before her amnesia. Ame was hesitant to admit it, but she desperately needed those three to ensure the success of their raid on the Incursion command center.

...There's too much I still don't understand.

She sighed, staring at the terminal, hoping for another message from Lady Ouro. The godlike entity was incredibly stingy about her involvement. It seemed to want to direct her onto a particular path, but it refused to divulge any information that would help her decipher her intentions. It felt like she was dealing with an annoying mentor who would lead their students on with cryptic hints and then tell them to figure things out themselves.

Tired of thinking about nonsense, Ame decided to pay her friend a visit.

She pressed the button that revealed the hidden stairway in the corner of the command room. She stepped into the frigid underground chamber. The space was deliberately kept cold, acting as a makeshift cryochamber to preserve the longevity of the machines and organisms stored here.

Ame threw on a jacket to brave the cold. Dim UV lights radiated the room at the bottom of the staircase. There was a liquid capsule in the center, connected to a variety of tubes and wires to maintain its function. Inside of the fluid was her dear friend.

"Hello Gura," Ame said, placing a hand against the chilly glass.

She glanced at monitor displays on the side, which showed Gura's vital signs in real-time. Her heart rate was steady. Brain activity was normal. Everything else had no abnormalities.