Discovery

GASP!

Cypher pants heavily as he rose. He saw the boy on a corner, cowering. They were in a dark alley near the NTC building. Cypher quickly checked his shoulder and saw no injury.

"I thought I was shot?" he mumbled in confusion.

He checked his body and found no wounds nor injuries which were inflicted by the masked man earlier. However, his shirt is covered with blood and there is a hole in his shirt where he was shot.

"Izac, what happened to my wounds?" he inquired with disbelief.

"I…I took it away!" he replied with wariness as he looked away.

The boy looks like he is exhausted.

"Wha… what do you mean, 'took it away'?"

Cypher has completely no idea what the boy is implying. The boy remained silent and didn't respond. The boy then handed Cypher something.

"What is this?" he asked.

"Before the masked man hid me inside his car, he gave this to me and told me to give it to you after," he replied.

Bafflement was all he felt. He has no idea why would someone do that kind of thing. What really is happening?

"Izac, did that man told you anything more?"

"He said to leave the empire before sunset tomorrow or else we will never get out of this place anymore," the boy confessed. "He also said that our escape is already planned and we just need to go at Roid City Emperial Gates."

What is that man's intention? What really is happening? Cypher wondered.

What the masked man said was actually true. The ASP is scheduled to expire tomorrow at 5 pm. If that happens, the DPS will regain power over the droids and it will be harder to move around.

"Izac, is he an accomplice of yours? Is he part of the Project Reminiscence?"

"I do not know. I have no idea why this is happening to me."

"Izac, I have a lot of questions I wanted to ask you but it can wait for another day. For now, we need to leave the empire!" Cypher instructed. "However, we must not follow that man's instruction."

The boy didn't come in complaints.

"He and his group murdered many people and if we follow his instructions, there might be people waiting for us at Roid. We must take a detour and run away. From this point, no one will help us. We are both vigilantes now and if we're caught, we will be imprisoned. I don't want to get lockup, not today, not with this kind of situation. Is that alright for you, Izac?"

The boy didn't say anything and lightly nodded in agreement.

Cypher began thinking of other escaped routes.

"Based on my judgment, the place I would never go as an escape route is at Chine City. People chasing us would exclude that place as an escape route since it's packed with droids after being suspected as Caleb's infiltration route. But, it will be difficult if we use that route."

He walks back and forth as he thinks when all of a sudden, a realization sparked.

"Caleb's infiltration route?" he mumbled. "That's it!"

As critical thinking began, his sight came across with the file and the notebook he received from the boy. He was hoping that the file has something that could help him such as escape routes or whatever he can use.

He opened the file first and was shocked by its content.

As he scanned the documents, things like shut down websites, testimonies, incidents that he never knew, and other intriguing information greeted him. One thing that caught his attention was the Stellar accident that happened in the year 2990. Mr. Alexander Troy and his son, Xyron, miraculously survived the intense fire coming from Stellar's Research and Development Center (SRDC). That was the talk of the year. The cause of the fire was still unknown. Despite surviving, Mr. Alexander Troy died because of lung failure caused by the harmful chemicals, months later. Stellar refused to unveil the cause of the damage. With this document, he was perplexed on how did the masked man retrieve such information.

He then flips the page to scan it even further. The newspaper where the murder of his wife was reported greeted him.

'A woman's dead body was discovered inside an abandoned car. The woman was recognized by the forensic team after finding an ID card in the woman's purse. The woman was Alexa Greffin, wife of Agent Cypher Greffin, both SFD officers. Reasons for her murder still baffled the DPS.'

Those were the darkest days Cypher ever experienced. The thing that outrages him the most was nobody talked about it for the following days. It felt like nothing happened. Because of that, he did what he can and that is to investigate it himself. Chief Wesler hindered him from his plans when he told him about it. He then suspects that Chief Wesler knew something. Because of that, he investigates in stealth.

His arms trembled in disbelief when he advances through the document. He couldn't believe what he just read. The paper was marked as classified.

"Officer Alexa Greffin was murdered by a group of unknown people. It is believed that she discovered the people behind a malicious organization. In her briefcase, evidence and classified photos were retrieved."

Cypher grab the photos that were clipped on the paper. It was a photo of the logo of Project Reminiscence, the same image he showed the boy. However, the only difference was the logo is on a wall. And what intrigues him the most was the second image, a zoomed-out version. It revealed another symbol beside it and that was the logo of Stellar. The third photo was a screenshot image from the website where it all started. The screenshot photo revealed some information that only a few have read before it was taken down.

'A body of water that holds the gate where all the answers are found. Flowing continuously and endlessly. A massive river, friend nor foe. Water of life, known for calmness and destruction. Enthralling beauty, depth deeper than a mountain, endless horizon. Warm and shallow, cold and deep. Celestial Entity, Mother of Earth, Tree of Life, Primor​di​al wisdom, Child of the Creator, Mother of the Chosen, all will be answered.'

The website states that it is some kind of a riddle that holds an answer to the whereabouts of a celestial being. It is believed that once discovered, unimaginable power can be attained.

Cypher continued to flip over the pages until he saw a written document, written by her wife.

'It was something bizarre which forced the public to ignore it. Despite it being ridiculous to the general public, the website mysteriously vanished without a trace. There are only two reasons for its shut down: It's irrelevant and fake or; It's true. And as I've expected, it's actually a fact. This might defy the laws of science and physics but every weird event that happened for the past 31 years is all connected to this mystery. Everything I discovered is in my journal.'

After reading that, he immediately grabbed the journal of his wife and opened it.

"Week 1 of my investigation: I've received intel regarding the cause of the SRDC's fire incident. Someone notified me about it and demanded that we should meet up."

"Week 5 of my investigation: The fire was caused by a sudden burst of electrical energy which destroyed the generators inside the facility and caused an explosion. My contact said that it was not caused by any technical error but rather a human error..."

"Week 7 of my investigation: Everything is all messed up. The death of Alexander Troy sparks several conflicts which resulted in information leaked out and conspiracies."

"Week 8 of my investigation: We have done something we shouldn't have. I know it's already too late but we can still do the right thing. They are not what we think. We must do something…"

"Week 12 of my investigation: They finally found out what I'm doing. They're everywhere. I need to tell the world of what I found before everything we know vanish…"

Cypher didn't read everything but only read the content written on the topmost part in some weekly reports. The journal contains every detail of her activities and what she found out but Cypher skipped it for the time being. Cypher closed the journal and began sulking in a corner. He couldn't believe that his wife is investigating such a huge and dangerous organization without his knowledge. He does not understand why his wife didn't tell him about it. He blamed himself for being incompetent and being unable to discern her wife's current involvement.

Cypher weeps in sorrow as he cowers in grief.

"Officer Greffin? Are you alright?" Izac asked.

Cypher gazes at the boy and hesitates to answer. Despite that, he manned up and continue to plan their escape.

"Izac, do you know why I'm doing all of this?" Cypher inquired. "I want to avenge my wife. I don't care if I go to prison as long as I achieve the justice my late wife deserves. And with your help, I would achieve that."

Cypher grab the boy's shoulder as he sat on his heels.

"Would you help me find justice?"

The boy showed a bit of reluctance. The boy remains his sight fixed and Cypher saw a sudden spark from Izac's eyes. After that, Izac shows him a little smile.

"You've already proven to me that you are not a bad person, Officer. I can see how pure and clean your life force is. I will help you."

Cypher couldn't contain his happiness and hugged the boy.

"Thank you so much. I will assure you I'll protect you and get you to safety," he promised. "For now, we go to Chine City."

A piece of folded paper fell out of the folder which was Cypher was holding. Cypher grab it and then unfolded it. The piece of paper was the original copy of the boy's confiscated map.

"I think this is yours."

He then handed him the map.

"Izac, can I ask you? What is your connection with this Project Reminiscence?" Cypher asked in realization.

"I do not know. All they ever told me was to go to the places they told me to go. And if I manage to reach the meet-up point, they will help me find the things I'm looking for. They also said that they will try to find me after the countdown reaches zero."

"A timer? Do you remember how long will it take for it to reach zero?"

"As of now, I can't remember how many days are left but the timer started with 364 days or something close to that."

"So, they'll look for you after a year. If what you said is true, does this mean, that masked man works for somebody else?"

They became alert when a siren resounded. The SFD is looking for them.

"We should save this topic when we get out of here. For now, we'll escape and then try to figure everything out once we know we're safe."

Cypher silently peeks on the exit of the alley and scanned the surrounding area. Strangely, there were no droids on scout.

No droids on patrol?

"There were no droids earlier. I haven't seen any droids at the car crash too. No droids were around during the car chase either. What is happening?"

Cypher had a hunch that someone from the higher-ups is involved with this because the DPS have no control of any droids inside the Empire.

Only the higher-ups have control over them at this time.

It is very odd for Bionic, especially for Droid City to have no droids in every block. Even if the empire is under a power crisis, it is completely unusual for the capital city to have no droids roaming around.

However, an unexpected earthquake began to tremble the whole empire. It was so strong that even Cypher's balance was left disoriented. It is enough for a grown man and even for a droid to lose balance.

It was so violent that the NTC resounded an alarm. Despite its destructive power, this earthquake won't damage any buildings of Bionic. All of the buildings in Bionic are designed to withstand even a magnitude 7 earthquake.

However, it was odd for a strong earthquake to occur in Bionic. It was so strong that it feels like there is some kind of an undiscovered fault line underneath.

Cypher then realized that he is with someone else in the area. He immediately looks around and finds the boy.

However, he couldn't believe what he had witnessed.

It seems like the epicenter of the earthquake is closer than he thought.

And it wasn't caused by any fault line nor any ground instability or disturbance.

But rather, a man-made earthquake.

This boy…

…

…is the earthquake.

Cypher was left speechless after what he had witnessed. Izac looks at him with overwhelming fear in his eyes.

"I.. Izac… wh…what are you?"