Chapter 150: We may or may not belong
Chapter 150: We may or may not belong
Blake squeezed his eyes shut.
For one agonizing second, nothing happened.
Click.
The lock disengaged, low mechanical hum following as the reinforced door slowly slid open.
Blake nearly stumbled backward.
"...Phew."
He exhaled so heavily that his shoulders sagged.
He had been so unbelievably anxious that he genuinely thought he was about to faint.
’It actually worked...’
The door was fortunately open, and that was all that mattered!
Taking a moment to steady his breathing, he stepped inside.
The atmosphere immediately changed.
Compared to the floors below, the fourth floor was remarkably dark. The ceiling lights remained on, but only faintly, casting long shadows throughout the corridors.
Most of the illumination came from somewhere else.
A soft green glow.
It wasn’t bright enough to reveal its source, merely enough to tint the hallways with an eerie emerald hue.
Blake quietly looked around.
What surprised him the most, however, wasn’t the lighting.
It was the soldiers.
’So this was just bound to happen huh... they really were stationed inside the facility, after all.’
They stood beside reinforced doors, at hallway intersections, and in front of corridors leading deeper into the floor.
Unlike the guards Blake had seen at AFE, or that whole fifth section, these soldiers all wore masks nearly identical to his own.
’Yeah, figured that was the case. I mean, this is also dangerous for their health.
One of them noticed him almost immediately.
"Greetings, sir Trevor."
The soldier approached casually while holding out a handheld scanner.
Blake silently pulled out the borrowed identification badge and pressed it against the device.
Beep.
A green light flashed, so the soldier nodded.
"You’re free to go, sir."
Without another word, he stepped aside.
Blake slipped the badge back into his pocket and continued walking.
’Alright, this floor is dangerous... not that I had any doubts about that but there are too many soldiers around.’
He couldn’t wander around opening every door he saw.
He couldn’t stop beside random conversations hoping to overhear useful information.
He couldn’t spend twenty minutes pretending to be lost.
There were too many people here for that.
Every action would stand out, so he had to be careful.
Every decision mattered now.
As he walked deeper into the corridor, another thought quietly settled into his mind.
’If they’ve stationed soldiers here, at least that means that they’re guarding something.’
His gaze wandered toward the reinforced doors lining both sides of the hallway.
’Could it be aliens?’
Compared to before, the possibility felt much more real.
He had already seen preserved body parts.
Harvested biological material.
Machines developed from alien anatomy.
’Eh, but they could already be on the fourth level?’
Another detail slowly became apparent.
There were plenty of soldiers, but basically no workers.
Blake frowned slightly.
Aside from himself, there wasn’t a single researcher or engineer walking the corridors.
No technicians.
No maintenance crews.
Literally nobody but armed personnel.
Of course, that further complicated things.
Blending into a crowd had always been easier than pretending to belong by yourself.
Here... there wasn’t a crowd to disappear into.
Still, he kept walking straight ahead, something catching his attention.
The green light.
It seemed much brighter.
Only slightly at first.
Almost impossible to notice.
But the farther he walked, the stronger it became.
Blake narrowed his eyes.
’I’ve seen this before.’
He slowed his pace, not because he wanted to, but because he was trying to remember.
Where? Where had he seen that exact color?
His footsteps echoed softly through the empty hallway.
Then, he reminisced the very first dangerous mission he had to take.
At AOP.
Just before he had discovered the room containing the black stone and unlocking the blueprints...
There had been another faint green glow.
It had grown brighter with every step he took.
At the time, he hadn’t investigated it, there simply wasn’t been enough time for him to be doing that.
After that, he also couldn’t really theorize what it was, since he knew nothing about it. He simply let it go.
However, maybe this was his chance to finally find out what it was.
It couldn’t be coincidence, two underground facilities under AL-TECH, both hiding the exact same mysterious green light.
There had to be a connection.
’Well, let’s hope that the sources are the same. Although I don’t know if AOP is keeping aliens captive.’
Without thinking, Blake quietly quickened his pace.
Not enough to seem desperate, just enough to reach the source sooner.
Yet...
The closer he got...
Ba-dump.
Ba-dump.
Ba-dump.
It wasn’t fear of death, of course. He will get away, just like any other time.
If something went wrong, he might get injured.
Captured.
Maybe worse.
Even then, he had already accepted all of those possibilities, so while he was still scared of death, he had to ignore it for the sake of his missions.
Knowledge was, undoubtedly, the most worrying thing in his mind.
Every new thing he discovered somehow made everything heavier.
His thoughts drifted toward Spoon’s storage.
The alien arms, the unidentified organs, the strange mechanical components, the glass filled with shimmering blue-violet liquid...
He had collected so much already.
Enough that merely thinking about it made him feel sick.
Eventually... he would have to examine every part of it.
Dissect them.
Drain away any remaining fluids.
Study their anatomy a little, too.
Blake grimaced.
He knew perfectly well he wasn’t like AL-TECH.
He wasn’t collecting them out of fascination or for profit.
But somehow... that didn’t make the task feel any less disgusting.
He lowered his head for a brief moment.
’I have to do this.’
He continued forward.
He walked left, then right, finding another corridor.
The green light rapidly intensified.
Soon, it became so bright that Blake instinctively raised a hand over his face to shield his eyes under the mask.
He could barely make out the walls anymore.
Everything ahead dissolved into glowing emerald.
Another few steps.
Then, he froze.
"...A door?"
That was all.
A single reinforced door stood at the end of the corridor.
The green light poured from beneath it and around its edges, flooding the hallway with an unnatural brilliance.
Whatever produced it, lay on the other side.
Blake slowly approached.
Mounted beside the entrance was another security panel.
A fingertip scanner.
"Seriously..."
He quietly swallowed.
At this point, there wasn’t much point hesitating.
If the Trevor had access to the fourth floor, that meant he had the authority to also open this door.
Slowly extending one finger, Blake pressed it against the scanner.
A soft electronic tone answered him.
Access granted.
The lock disengaged automatically, and the heavy door slid open.
Blake released a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.
Then he stepped inside, the door quietly sealing shut behind him.
The brightness became almost unbearable.
Keeping one hand over his eyes, Blake slowly waited for them to adjust.
Several seconds passed.
Then, he lowered his hand, his eyes widening.
’What, a staircase?’
Really, it was an impossibly long staircase.
It stretched downward until it disappeared into the emerald light below.
There was no laboratory, no machinery, just stairs...
So many stairs that the end couldn’t even be seen.
’Another underground entrance?’
He stepped forward.
As he slowly descended, another realization surfaced.
The blueprints.
The ones he had risked everything to obtain.
He quietly smiled to himself.
’So they really were outdated...’
Freddie had been right.
Sooner or later, the discrepancies had been bound to catch up with him.
Apparently, this was one of them.
Step after step, Blake continued downward.
The staircase seemed endless.
After several minutes, his legs began to ache.
Then his feet.
He couldn’t help but let out a tired sigh.
Seriously, at this point, it was almost funny.
How had nobody found Trevor yet?
Surely someone had already entered that bathroom by now.
And even if they hadn’t... how was Trevor himself still unconscious?
Blake had hit him hard, certainly, but was it that hard?
The entire situation felt increasingly unbelievable.
Still, he kept walking.
Five minutes became ten.
Ten became fifteen.
Eventually...
Nearly twenty minutes had passed.
Finally, solid ground appeared ahead.
The staircase ended.
Blake stepped onto the floor below.
Before he could properly look around, someone approached.
Blake immediately tensed.
The green light remained so intense that he couldn’t make out the person’s face.
His heartbeat quickened.
’Have they figured it out? Are they going to question me? Did they already realize Trevor isn’t Trevor?’
The figure continued walking toward him.
As the distance closed, Blake finally noticed something strange.
The clothes.
They weren’t military.
They weren’t laboratory uniforms.
They weren’t anything he had seen anywhere inside AL-TECH.
Even the shoes looked unfamiliar.
Blake instinctively began raising his head to finally see the person’s face.
Before he could, two hands landed on his shoulders.
The stranger gently, but firmly, pressed both of Blake’s shoulders downward.
"Shh."
The voice sounded almost amused.
"You’ll see one of your so-called products, so shut up, alright?"
Without another word, the stranger walked past him, disappearing up the staircase Blake had just descended.
Blake remained frozen where he stood.