Unreality

19. Unwanted Reminiscences

After going down a short slope within the grove and through the remains of a crumbled gate, Umbra and Virgil started their lengthy walk through the darkness underground, marching side by side with high frequency flashlights in hand.

As they traversed the long and wide initial corridor with echoing steps, it didn't take long for a chill to run up Umbra's spine.

'Is this... unreality?' she questioned nervously, bringing her march to a halt. 'Are we within its range already...?'

'Seems that way,' confirmed Virgil.

'...It feels a little spookier this time,' said Umbra, slowly resuming her steps. 'I guess it's because Joshua isn't here with us... makes me feel all the more cut-off from the world... with no way to contact the outside.'

'Observational droids can't really contact it either. Anima just monitors the signal they give off and tries to guess from it. Actual communication is still impossible from within unreality, since there's still so much they don't understand about the nature of the phenomenon.'

'Oh... right...' the silver-haired girl murmured as she tried to remember whether she had been told that upon joining Anima.

Then, feeling a little extra uneasy with that knowledge, Umbra couldn't help but bring her free hand to her back, upon which now rested a small laser gun, tucked away in between her black pants and white shirt and shrouded by a dark jacket.

That was the agreement the two agents and their Commander had reached. The latter explained that Victor had chosen Umbra to accompany Virgil because — due to her lack of action during their first meeting — he did not expect her to pose any sort of threat to him. Luther claimed she could use that to her advantage by catching him off guard, should the need for her to defend herself arise. She could even try to use it to assist Virgil in an eventual battle between him and Victor, although this possibility had not been suggested to her and she had thought of it herself, remembering how powerless she had been to help her partner while he was at the mercy of his brother last time.

Suddenly, while she was going through these thoughts with some trepidation in her mind, a light began to form and manifest at the end of the dark tunnel.

But before this light could give way into anything, shouting was heard in the distance. Albeit startled by this, the two agents had no choice but to continue to move forward until said distance was cut short. Once that happened, the white light lead them into a place as far removed from what should have been inside an underground laboratory as possible.

They were now inside a place of residence, namely a living room painted in glossy white and boasting abundant windows. On one end, there was a large television set affixed against a wall, next to a couple of white sofas, but the shouting they continued to hear clearly stemmed from the other end, near the entrance to the room, where an adult couple and two teenage boys could now be seen.

Immediately, Umbra recognized the two teenagers as the young Virgil and Victor whom they had glimpsed in the latter's unreality during the Schwarz family case, although at the time Virgil's figure was replaced with Adam Schwarz's in order to throw off the Anima agents.

This time, however, there was no such deceit, and the younger Virgil appeared as he presumably was then, with his black hair a little shorter in length than now and without any traces of an unkempt beard. And, perhaps more striking than anything else, his expression was not short on emotion then.