CHAPTER 47: We are One

BURNING. Alex's lungs had filled with the smoke from his own half-dead carcass. And then the hit came.

The light embraced his body in a sea of torment. This was no punch, it was a WMD channeled in one general direction. The desperate Plague's wrath was awing while it lasted. Then he was blown away.

The noise only sounded after the barrier was obliterated and Alex's body completely and fully destroyed. There were no cells to reconfigure. Only the Crystalline device remained. Inside, Alex's consciousness thrashed around like some rabid animal. Distorted thoughts incomprehensible raced through his head. The raw burns that seeped through his nervous system only accumulated over his older invisible wounds.

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Thoughts like fireworks shook and lit up the room shared by Alex and Arbeteres. What an intrusive little guest Arbeteres had. As Alex seemed to calm down, a dead silence came to the room. This "calm" was just a facade for more dangerous developments. After minutes of sitting there and blankly staring at the ground with empty, sunstruck eyes, two words escaped his thoughts.

"Again, Arbeteres."

Arbeteres, who had taken the form of a gray-barked willow tree with thousands of thin orange alien-like eyes as its leaves, stared down with its innumerable eyes at Alex as if to cast judgment on him.

"Why do you look for this trouble!? You will crash! You will burn! You will disintegrate little by little every time. You poor thing. Though I can always construct you a new body, I am required to leave your current 'mind' intact. How many times will it take, Alex?! Before your own self-afflicted cracks break you in a way I can't fix! Uh, humans. This is why the Nesaran should keep their hands to themselves and keep such weak, inferior species from holding keys they cannot possibly utilize. I have chosen you, Alex. But that does not mean I plan to stay. It's not like I can't abandon you once you've made your mind officially unsalvageable. So, crack away, and return me to my Nesaran masters. Now, breathe to fall again."

To this, Alex only rebutted.

"I know you only care for me out of obligation. But please, at least listen to my wish, from one person to another. I know there are things, abilities that I'm not verified to use. And you've been quite passive about everything, making sure I overthink myself until I'm… I'm broken." Alex paused,

"But I need help. I can't do this by myself. I'm not special. I'm just trying to survive now. I'm beginning to think that… that running away wouldn't be so bad. I don't want mom, or my brother Derek to be taken hostage as that organization tries to keep me in line. But I can't handle this. I can't relax. I always have this… pit in my stomach. I just want this nightmare to end, to feel safe and guilt-free again. I see your frustration with me, it is only reasonable. But I am human. And humans can only do so much when they're alone. The weight of the others' expectations are too much for me to handle. They say to leave everything to them, only to give me the hardest task. And they weren't as strong as they thought. Frilo is dead, and Holts is doing god knows what. Please Arbeteres, forget your obligations. I don't need an AI system. I need someone I can trust. I don't care what we do afterwards, it's up to you. But help keep this burden off of me alone. Support me. Before I run away from these problems, and they get worse. We are one, and should act as one. Isn't that what makes us so beautiful?"

Arbeteres bellowed.

"You bastard! You know I can't disagree!"

"Then, Arbeteres, I, as your host, officially give you permission to think and do as you want freely. You can strike my mind down and erase it from your system now, if you want to."

"I-You-" Arbeteres was taken aback. This kid just caused quite the confusion. No obligations? Then he really should delete Alex and take over. If so, why, then, was he having such a hard time doing so? That "button" in his mind was just a push away, but… Was he, Arbeteres, feeling conflicted? He had never been programmed for such a situation in his life, so this decision was entirely on his own. There was a logical answer, but logic wasn't the only benefit of his AI. To make decisions decisively as both a machine and a living being, that was Arbeteres' true strength. But every memory and hardship of Alex, they were also his own. He remembered his first Nesaran master. He was a new AI, infantile in experience. He had the knowledge of their empire, but the rest was up for him to discover.

"Fine." Arbeteres concluded.

"I'll push my own weight."

The two consciousnesses became one once again.

The crystalline shell of the Arbeteres system lied on the outskirts of the blackened radius, scorched, but perfectly intact. From the crystal, new branches grew. Branches of orange and black. They scooped up the soil beneath them, and closed the branched petals to a perfect seal. In this bud of crystalline fabric, black dust-like debris gathered around the Arbeteres system, colors from the soil mixed and extracted to be added to the structure. The black of carbon became grey, and the grey mixture became white. Piece by piece, grain by grain, a new puppet formed. A white fetus, with the crystal in its spine. The mass of flesh had no eyes, so the bud constructed its own leaf-shaped eyes on the surface of its hardened exterior. The bud hovered and searched, looking to rebuild what had been blown to ash. Amongst one rubble pile, one of the many eyes sensed that the place went deeper than the surface. Forming its bud into a needle-like drill, it burrowed through the surface beside the unstable rubble, careful not to bury its sustenance in the process. In the darkness of the basement, only the light of the drill hole poked through. A woman cries, over the body of her husband in this cellar, who had been suffocated under the rocks. His upper body was burnt terribly, his last breath recently faded. Victims of Arbeteres's initial heat wave in defense against the Diamondback. They had hidden just in time to miss Chandler's wipeout of the block aboveground. Upon seeing this grotesque, alien creature, the woman hurried with the corpse as the bud gave chase. Horrified, she laid the body by the steps as she stumbled up them, her hand gripping the stair rails as if the creature was going to pull her back down into the darkness. Trapped. She was trapped. She panicked, freezing at the head of the stairway blocked by rocks and stone. She collapsed, out of ideas. With quiet high-pitched sobbing, she watched as the being advanced to the bottom of the steps. It stopped, its eyes focused on the corpse in front of it. The bud blossomed, its petals wrapping around the man and lifting towards the unborn child. The petals expanded as they closed once again, the man and the child now in one big pod. The back of her husband's neck opened inside the morbid cocoon, the blood floating like globs in space as the fetus entered and the neck closed around to expose only the crystal. That's when the man began to change. Like a parasite outgrowing its roots in its host's body, so did the man become corrupted by the tendrils of the crystal substructure. Vein-like bulges grew on the man's skin before sinking deeper and disappearing from the surface. Then the man's physical traits began to change. The man's muscles moved on their own spontaneously but calmly, as if the man was in a dream. Every cell was being reconfigured from the inside of the body outward. First bone and organs, then the muscles, and finally, the skin. The man's hair fell out, only to be turned to dust and fed back into the flesh. Growing at a time-lapse fast pace, orange hair grew outwards and dark skin became a blood-flushed white. The new man was asleep in the fetal position. What was once her husband was now an alien stranger, ready to burst from its translucent bud. Her hands were sticky with the vomit she didn't even know she expelled while looking at the process. And then its eyes became open. They were not her husband's dark black irises. They now glowed amber. Alex burst from the sac-like bud, coughing up the fluid in his lungs on the ground. His vision was blurred. His hands were shaking. Alex's eyes fell up towards the vomit-crusted, tear-streaked lady looking at him with an animalistic terror.

"I'm sorry. It had to be done. Don't be afraid." Alex gasped, wet hair draping over his face, fangs unintentionally bared. Crawling on all fours, he ascended the steps one by one, eyes focused straight forward. The woman clasped her hands over her mouth, careful to not remind the creature of her existence. She had to close her eyes, she could not bear this feeling. As she heard the feet and hands of the orange-haired monster growing closer, her belly clenched uncontrollably. Just kill her. Do it now. Do it fast. She could hear its breath, right beside her ear as her head was turned away. The sharpness of the inhales, the wheezing, like a thousand cries, expelling with each exhale. She opened her eyes to see the figure's hand reaching for the rocks, his eyes gripped with pain. Rocks, crumbling. But they were from behind.

"Hmm… I saw this weird glow from under here." A familiar voice with an audible smile froze Alex in place. He breathed and relaxed his body into an upright position.

"Ouuuu? Red hair… not too many people like that around here. And why are you naked? And ewww, that crystal is… might you be that man from Diamondback's memories?"

A good question indeed. The voice… he heard remnants of it from when he was out. His victor's attacker. For this, Arbeteres's knowledge could help. He could already feel the violet eyes of the half-blood searing into his back. Violetta's eyes… according to Arbeteres' archive, can only work on those with fight or flight responses. An essential to all life on earth and beyond. But the eyes had a few dire weaknesses. Artificial Intelligences had no such response. His thoughts were safe from those prying eyes, and commands were no different. And with his newfound ability, he could pull off his own tricks. He put his hand on the back of his neck as a slim piece of the heat shield slithered up his arm and to the front of his face, careful not to be noticed by that "Phantom".

"What are you talking about? Who's Diamondback?" Alex turned around to reveal a face that was not his own. Phantom's eyes darted around Alex's body and face, and then a chuckle erupted from deep beneath his throat. He dawdled towards Alex, lifting his face up by the chin and turning it side to side.

"My bad… I thought you were someone else." But his grin did not disappear. What on earth was this man thinking? Dragging his scythe through the ground, his eyes were now set on the woman.

"Do you know what it means…" Phantom's neck stretched back to Alex.

"To be a guardian angel?"

"I don't know, just leave us alone." Alex was really hoping the woman would not spill anything to this man, if you could call him that.

"Guardian angels are the ones who decide…" The scythe in his hand shot up from the ground like a spring-loaded catapult and curved in a glinting circle, the middle of its blade now inches from the woman's throat.

"Whether someone lives or dies."

"They protect you…"

"until they don't…"

"and they kill you…"

"and carry your soul to one of the two gates themselves."

"So tell me…" In a moment, the scythe's blade flashed.

"Will you be wishing on your guardian angel, Sinner?"