-Nata~

Natalya’s thoughts were disturbed by the sudden input of an annoying childish voice. It was too much of a coincidence that whenever she thought she was on to something, Kyel would interrupt her line of thinking.

-Say, Nata~ Seven also spoke to you. What did he say? To me, he said you fucked up royally! Hehehe.

Kyel's snarky comment didn’t reach her, but Seven's words came back to haunt her.

“I fell for Ai’s bait”

If she didn’t get swept up by the events from the evening, she would’ve already finished her business. The worst part was that it wasn’t a direct restriction, if she so willed, everything would be over before the rest period ended.

While speaking gibberish, Kyel struck his head on Natalya’s back. She had stopped walking all of a sudden.

-Seven said, since I didn’t completely annihilate the ants, they are now as strong as me. Makes sense to you?

-Hmmm, there is some logic to that, but I don’t see how that would happen.

-The river. It is a pool of ingredients for the Queen to devise or select suitable genes for her army. Ever since I started my massacre, they have been moving back the pool towards a sort of Matriarch ant, and since I didn’t finish my business earlier today, we now have an unknown amount of super resilient Princesses and Royal Guards that will colonize the nearby areas. Due to Ai’s 2 days of rest, we have a “grace” period in which they won’t attack us, but the only way is up and they will necessarily pass through the F terminals.

-So~ We have a massive stack of Heavenly Ancestor level insects knocking at our doorstep?

Natalya pressed her lips together in annoyance.

“It gets worse... If it reaches the 2nd Research Station: PLUS, and obtain their genes... End of the line”

A massive blunder.

***

On the next day, Seven called the remaining people of the 7th Research Station. He had the aid of Kyel and, by extension, everyone in his clique, all he needed to do was get the rest to work as a group under his instructions.

-They’re here, I’ll get the door – Milen heard the knock and received them. It would be a strange action if they were in any of the common labs, since anyone was free to enter. This, however, was the Control Room.

As Seven slowly moved the panels on the holographic screen, he felt the discomfort of many gazes upon him.

-I am sure... Many of you have some doubts about why I called you, but we are racing against time. I hope we can ignore our differences and work together against a common enemy.

Switching between the screens, he showcased the cameras on the F terminals. Weren’t for the fact that ants still needed to feed and had a good sense of space, they would be full to bursting, but all of the different Princesses and their varied Royal Guards were stationed nearby. If one didn’t look carefully into the topside images, they would look like a group of survivors.

-Wait. I’ve seen these people before... Isn’t that Sarah? - Arthur exclaimed.

-At one point, maybe... Those, are enemies as strong as Natalya – he said flatly, and the temperature of the room dropped to chilling degrees.

-T-t-this...

-Calm down, let me finish – he continued in a surprising display of patience.

Seven’s serenity at this moment was completely unlike his usual self, and even he would admit to that. He gazed into the person’s eyes, and a bolt of sage wisdom seemed to pervade her, quietening down.

-It is the first time some of you are coming to the research lab – he gazed at Arthur – and only Nathan, amongst the present, has chanced upon this room, also. This is, summarily, our base of operations. It should be a place for you to develop your skills and learn... Right now, it is where we organize our last stand.

Seven quickly explained the situation with the ants and the mood in the room turned even more severe.

-We have little more than one day to get things running, and with the information I got from this room, as well as with my late conversation with Kyel, I’ve already come to a conclusion on what each of you should do.

Seven switched the holograms to the different laboratories, explaining them on the go.

-Me and Milen... We will work on the Obscure Technology lab. Nathan will start on the Advanced Programming. Arthur will be in charge of Materials Engineering, and some proceedings will have you go to the Nuclear Engineering section. Don’t worry, you will only have to do what’s on the papers I give you. Kate will be in the Biology lab and similarly work on the Advanced Chemistry lab when necessary. Milen will distribute people to each of you, and those without assignments will sort out the materials from me, Natalya’s, Arthur’s and Kyel’s boxes, it is time to make use of them... Any questions?

-… Can we really do it?

-No - he immediately responded - if you are asking if we can kill them all, the answer is definitely no.

-Then why-

-To buy time. If we hold off until three days from now, Natalya and Kyel should be able to bring back all of the people from the other Research Labs, if they don’t stumble upon any predicament and return at maximum speed... This is too idealistic. We should aim to stall them for at least five days. And that we can easily do.

From that, he issued specific tasks to each member and had them set off immediately. Soon, he was also leaving with the help of Milen to perfect his comprehension of her magic.

-...Can we really hold out for that long? - she whispered.

-Do you think I would waste my energy if my plan held no chance of success?

-S-sorry...

Seven gazed down towards his crutch.

“Too easy to bully...”

-Say. Why did you want to kill the Matriarch so desperately?

Milen pressed her lips together and slightly parted them.

-It was my only choice.

-What do you mean?

-This place... It is where captured Naiyid are banished to. Our magic cannot affect the outside world from here, and because of this, there is no hope of getting out... But that God you call Ai, she gave us a chance. If I completed her mission, she would allow me to become a “player”, someone who can defy fate and leave this place. My mission involved killing the Queen, mostly alone. Yesterday was my last chance... Now I’m stuck here forever.

“Natalya managed to kill the Matriarch, but it doesn’t matter since she generated all the princesses. Unless Ai changes Milen’s mission, there is no way she will ever leave this place”

With his head hung down, Seven felt something moist tickling his hair, and the pace in which Milen guided him to the sofa was slow and faulty.

Seven didn’t ask why she still bothered with everything going on since her fate was sealed. He glanced over the blank sheet of paper with his picture plastered at the very top, a part of his brain got to work.

-Find some pen and paper.

He already had his book covered and wrote a few chapters in, but at the moment he didn’t feel any inspiration towards that story, or anything for that matter. It was a strange thing, but inevitable since he came to discover one last “boring” truth.

-Here – she gave him the items. Slowly, he wrote the beginning lines of a bland and colorless tale.

***

In the dimly lit ID room, Kate scanned the archives of all the tests from the people who died outside, along with those of the still living, classifying them into the most dangerous according to Seven’s preestablished tier list. The princesses carried most of their genes from the dead or missing members of Arthur’s group that faced the Matriarch, but there was a possibility of the river possessing genes from the others. While the bigger ants could only go up, there were enough tunnels for the workers to furtively collect food and blood for the colony. They were granted free access to all locations.

This was the easy part. The hard one would be searching for the appropriate chemicals to deal with that, and hope they could manufacture them in time. Included in this was the white substance that would disintegrate all princesses.

It was a boring job, to say the least, and in a moment of drowsiness, she sensed the light flickering from above. It was strange, she didn’t detect any change in the illumination, but the sound of the electric current was like thunder to her ears. Suddenly there was way too much light and a loud buzzing inside her head. She scratched her eyelids for a bit while searching for the interrupter, there ought to be something wrong with the electric system, she thought.

It never occurred to her that the possibility of fail in this top-notch facility ran by an otherworld artificial intelligence was very low.

-Ouch!

The back of her fingers somehow hurt her eyes, and passing her hand over her arm gave the feeling of grazing past a man’s recently made beard. While not unpleasant in itself, it felt cold to the touch and most definitely wasn’t how her skin should be like. It was a somewhat horrifying discovery, as she couldn’t see whatever it was that stuck to her like glue.

“What the hell, am I sick?”

-Argh! - another obnoxiously loud noise. She covered her ears, but even the slight movement of the wind from springing her hand up made her head hurt.

-...

“...I think I heard something”

Everything was so loud that she couldn’t quite discern one sound from another.

-...e.

-…

...te.

-…

-Kate!

She opened her eyes and sucked in a mouthful of air. It was one of the assistants issued by Seven to aid her.

-Are you feeling alright?

She quickly filled a cup of water and drained it. Although only slightly, the headache receded.

-Yes... I mean, no... I’m feeling a bit sick.

-Give me the papers, rest up a little. You can go check the temperature in the chem lab in the meanwhile.

-Ok...

She walked slowly while making circular motions around her temples. It worked for a while, but for some reason she felt like she was walking on killer heels instead of well used shoes, each step making an audible cling on the slick floor. She would hear the movement of small insects, or more accurately their hair or cilia. She wasn’t afraid of insects, but the sound was quite irritating.

She opened her eyes again, and the world she saw was like a multifaceted jewel with only black, white and different textures of grey. She blinked and all of the facets contorted and moved until fusing into a single image, which she thought felt more tridimensional than she was accustomed to, as if the front view had been tugged at the borders and expanded so she could see further.

“I need my gun... I need to shoot something, that will make me feel better... One more day, just one more day...” she chanted in her head like a mantra, dismissing everything as a sign of deprival.

***

Reclined on his chair, Nathan analyzed the data and what he was asked to do with it. Though it wasn’t his area of expertise, he had to work many odd jobs during his entire career as an actor, and most of them were subject to great development once he was scouted into SIU. If programming was already considered an essential skill everyone should learn, it was even more of a necessity in his field.

The Advanced Programming lab was much smaller in size and simple looking than the others, only a tiny cabin with an old computer of the late nineties, which looked like a washing machine, and a pet television of similar depth hung on the wall, showcasing in black and white what appeared to be the diagram of a brain.

“It feels like those recent detective stories that try to be old school. At least it is as fast as modern machines”

The PC had only one archive, the rest were programming tools that had the user devise the programs from scratch. That archive regulated the range of responses of an artificial intelligence, and from the walls of text, Nathan could tell it was needlessly complex and cryptic on purpose. A lot of data was completely useless garbage with a "skip” signal hidden somewhere, and the fact it was written directly in binary code and not any other language made it excruciatingly difficult to tamper with.

Despite all of that, Seven denoted the lines of code he wanted to change. Most of them required Nathan to delete a few lines or swap them for a blank slate, occasionally needing to hack into the system since the access was not permitted even from the Control Room.

While doing this boring and somewhat tiresome work, he could only wonder what was the significance of doing this.

***

Seven finished writing the first chapter of his new book. It was more of a badly written comedy than the remarkable soliloquy he wanted to achieve, but the result wasn’t too far off from what he wanted to achieve. It complimented his dark mood.

-What is your story about? - Milen peeled an apple and offered him half.

-Nothing much. Some badly written collection of gags – he accepted the fruit, putting it aside.

-Huh, I took you for a writing maniac – she half-heartedly spoke.

Seven smiled for a second. Milen thought she caught a trace of pain in that strange countenance, but any trace that it existed disappeared as soon as it was born.

-That is so... Writing... It is oddly liberating.

Seven bit on the apple, the sweet and sour mixed in his tongue at the same time he felt a pleasurable feeling springing from his brain and spreading throughout his body. If Milen paid more attention, she would’ve noticed the slight change in his tone.

-Oddly liberating...