Unreality

36. Sweet Seclusion

After getting no answer to her knocking on the door, Mephisto forcefully opened it and entered Ariadne Seymour's room.

'Umbra? Are you here?' she questioned as soon she entered, but once again there was no answer.

She then looked around the room, and immediately noticed the messy state it was in; there were sheets of paper — some with drawings, some with scribbles, and others blank altogether — scattered throughout the floor, as well as a few canvas, one of which, depicting a chained door, was broken in two.

But Ariadne herself was nowhere to be seen amidst this chaos.

Mephisto sighed, before noticing a trail of pills on the floor coming from the bathroom.

She pushed the door that was only barely open, only to see more pills lying on the bathroom floor, alongside the smashed pieces of the bottle from which they had presumably come.

But the bottle wasn't the only thing that had been broken — the bathroom mirror had also been shattered, and pieces of it were now lying on the sink, whose white porcelain had also been covered in bloodstains.

But again, no sign of Ariadne herself.

Where could she be? Mephisto wondered.

Without wasting time, she left her room and traversed the drab corridors of the living quarters for agents of Anima, before stopping in front of the door to another room — number 15, which belonged to none other than Virgil York.

This time, however, she didn't even bother knocking on the door, and forced it open immediately.

As soon as she did, she heard a loud, startled gasp, and quickly identified the person she was looking for in front of a desk next to a window, from which the dim moonlight outside entered the room.

Having been profoundly startled and taken aback by the sudden intrusion, Ariadne was now on her feet, with the chair she had been sitting on having fallen to the ground. Then, realizing the identity of the intruder, the silver-haired girl became even more panicked and started to back away from the desk and closer to the window.

Mephisto had gone to the trouble of covering her face, except for the eyes and forehead, with a dark scarf — after treating her recent wound with self-maintenance as quickly as possible — but it seemed that had done little to assuage Ariadne's dread upon seeing her.

'W-what are you doing he—'

'Calm down. I'm not gonna hurt you,' Mephisto clarified at once while glancing towards the desk Ariadne had been sitting at and noticing there was a computer turned on. 'I come in peace... there's something I think you should know.'

The silver-haired girl appeared to calm down a little, but she continued to look at Mephisto with lowered brows and with her gray eyes marked by apprehension and distrust.

'A lot's happened,' started the female cyborg, 'but I'll get straight to the point — I've found Virgil's location, and I've confirmed he's relapsed and is currently experiencing unreality.'

Ariadne seemed momentarily surprised and concerned by that information, but she soon dismissed it while looking away from Mephisto.

'So...? What does that have to do with me?'

'...You two were partners, weren't you?'

The silver-haired girl stood in a downcast silence for a brief moment, before speaking in an aggrieved voice.

'That's all in the past... I mean, isn't he a fugitive now? That means he ran away from this place and left me behind without a care in the world... So why should I care about a person like that?'