Codename: Angelus

Chapter 15 - Subject Zero

<pre>Naoko materialized in Kaori’s whitespace. Her sister was sitting at the center of the room, sorrounded by holoscreens, as usual.

“I got your emergency call,” Naoko said. “What happened?”

“Two of the Lost found their way back to the Metro layer.”

“You mean, by themselves? How?”

“They had modified a book before, to send a message over to a boy named Michael. He’s a friend of Milla’s and Claire’s brother. Claire’s one of the Lost.”

“You didn’t tell me.”

“I didn’t think they would apply the same logic to open a portal back to the Metro layer. They’re smart!”

“You sound... happy?”

“Do I? Well, I am. The human mind is something wonderful! Don’t you think?”

“So, how many of the Awakened do we have on the Metro layer, now?”

“Three. You should tell Milla and the other on your layer. Who were they again? Oh, yeah. Linda and Simon. I think it’s time.”

Naoko frowned.

“Time for what?”

“Our little rebellion.”

“You crazy?” Naoko snapped. “It’s too soon! You still haven’t finished the analysis — we don’t know how the chip would react if one of the test subjects is killed!”

She glanced at the data being displayed on the holoscreens. Source code, a multi-layered blueprint of the SimWorld, a 3D model of the chip with captions that described it’s architecture. Some spots were still blank.

“I don’t think the chips are designed to kill people,” Kaori rebuked. “Think of the aftermath they’d have to deal with.”

“They killed dad and caged us in here, Kaori!”

Kaori shrugged.

“Look, Naoko, I’ve been here for the longest time. I’ve been here ever since papa put me in that capsule to stall my disease and try and find a cure. Papa was... too trusting. Or maybe just desperate. He needed the money and turned to the military. They killed him, made me the pillar of this goddamn System. And — they used *me* and the System, to their ends! They just see this whole thing as something they could turn into a weapon or or or — I don’t know. I don’t want to be turned into a puppet, Naoko. I don’t want to kill people. I — I — I...!!!”

She burst into tears. Naoko reckoned she had gone too far. She reached for her and hugged her.

“I’m sorry, Kaori. We’ll fix this mess.”

“I don’t care about a cure anymore. I just want —”

She looked Naoko in her eyes.

“Let’s end this, Naoko.”

“But then... you...”

“Let me go, Naoko. I’m tired. So very tired.”

Naoko hugged her tightly.

“We’ll regain control of the System and when we do, we release the kids. They’ll let the world know what’s going on with this experiment. I’ll find help. I won’t let you die, Kaori.”

She let go.

“You just focus on your data. Leave the rest to me.”

Kaori nodded and smiled.

“Milla! Wake up!”

Milla opened her eyes. It was dark. She glanced at the small holodisplay of the alarm clock. 03.00 A.M. — who was calling her that early?

She looked round. The holoscreen of her terminal was turned on. Naoko’s face was on it.

“Naoko?”

“Come over to my room, Milla. I need to talk to you.”

Milla frowned but she got out of bed and got dressed with the tracksuit she left on her desk chair when she changed into her pajamas.

Naoko’s room was cramped and Milla wasn’t the only one she called over.

“Milla, I think you already know Simon. He’s one of the Angels,” Naoko said. “The one over there is Linda. They are beta testers, like you.”

“What about the other Awakeneds? Or —?”

“You are the three kids that applied to be beta testers who were assigned to this layer. The others are all NPCs.”

Milla glanced at the other guys.

“Just the four of us?”

“I’m not a beta tester,” Naoko replied. “I am Subject Zero. There are... two of us. My sister, Kaori, is — uh, the one the System was built for.”

Simon glanced at Linda and then looked back at Naoko.

“Subject Zero?”

“We’ll get to that but first I need to talk to you about me and my sister.”

Naoko told us her story. Her sister, Kaori, has been suffering from an illness ever since she was little. The illness is related to the heavy use of wireless systems to transmit data. An hypersensitivity to the electromagnetic field generated by wireless devices. It manifested as a form of autism which deprived her of her senses and impaired her ability to talk. By the age of five, Kaori was mute as well as unable to react to stimuli and it seemed the condition could only worsen. Her father, in a desperate attempt to stall her illness and find a cure, devised a system to put her in cold sleep and keep her mind alive by connecting it to a computer-simulated environment. But then he needed money to research her illness and approached the military. They gave him money, but they wanted to use the system to their own ends. They killed Naoko’s father and ensnared Kaori, making her the pillar of a mind-controlling system. When Naoko found out, it was already too late. Kids had responded to the call for beta testing. She just barely managed to mod a handful of chips before she was trapped into the system herself.

“As we are speaking, Kaori is trying her best to find a way to regain control of the system. If she does, we just might be able to — The chips in your brains, we have yet to find out if they are designed to transmit death feedback if one of you dies in-game. We are looking into it and we want to find a safe way to release you — to send you back to reality.”

Simon and Linda turned pale.

“Death feedback? Mind control? The military?”

“We were told this was OmniSoft!”

“They tricked us!”

“I don’t want to stay here any longer! Release me! Now!”

“I don’t want to die!”

They were panicking.

“Ah, shush! Cut that out, will ya?!” Milla snapped.

Simon and Linda both glared at her.

“No one’s gonna die. I trust Naoko. We’ll find a way to go back, all right?”

She glanced at Naoko.

“Do you have a plan?”

“Kaori and I are still looking into that.”

“Is there anything we can do to help?”

“You should tell your friends on the Metro layer. But have them stay put for the moment. I don’t want to trigger the fail safe system. We’re not ready yet to deal with the Macrophages.”</pre>