N.B : If you'd like to get early access to Universal hope chapters, why not consider supporting me at Patreon.com/Weeb Fanthom. Your donations will be very much appreciated. On my Patreon, supporters get the complete, uninterrupted chapters in full.
Survey Corps Headquarters…
Hange Zoë sat at the center of what could best be described as...chaotic…to say the least. Before her on the table lay the accumulated evidence of a week's worth of horrors. The damaged device from the 103rd sat closest to her, beside it was the small vial of dark sand from their captives' cell, sand that she was increasingly certain wasn't sand at all, because ordinary sand doesn't shimmer purple when touched before dying off.
She'd written that down. Twice.
Obsidian's shard was just lying around there.
The demon dog's fur; she'd been meaning to examine it under the microscope again for inspection, but she'd gotten distracted by the ID masks.
Recently out of curiosity she had picked one up, turning it over in her hands. It was a smooth, featureless oval of grey metal, unremarkable at first glance. But when she'd placed it on her own face, it actually worked.
Moblit had nearly fainted from seeing his own face.
The implications were staggering. Unfortunately, she realized she had no way to replicate the effect, no understanding of the underlying technology, and no test subjects left to experiment on because the only two people who'd worn these masks were now dead.
…Dead because of a girl who could vanish into thin air.
Hange stared at the collection of impossibilities before her, and for the first time in her life, she felt something she had never expected to feel: overwhelmed.
"Okay," she muttered to herself. "Okay. Let's just... let's just take this one thing at a time."
She reached for the machine for the umpteenth time. She ran her fingers over the symbols, trying to find a way to see if it can still operate regardless of its missing power source, anything that might trigger a response.
Nothing.
She tapped the casing. She shook it gently, then roughly. She held it up to the light and squinted at it through her lenses.
Still nothing.
"Come on," she growled, her frustration mounting. "You're a machine. You have to do something. You have to have a purpose. What are you for?"
The device remained stubbornly, infuriatingly silent.
Hange set the device down with more force than necessary. The clatter made Moblit look up from his corner, where he'd been carefully transcribing her notes into something resembling legible script.
"Squad Leader?" Moblit asked in concern.
"I'm fine, Moblit." Hange didn't look at him. She was staring at the device, her eyes glaring at the contraption in front of her. "I'm just... thinking."
"You've been thinking for six hours."
"Thinking takes time."
"You haven't eaten."
"I'll eat later."
"You said that four hours ago."
Hange finally looked at him. "Moblit, I appreciate your concern, I truly do, but I have a puzzle here that is actively defying my attempts to solve it. I have a device I can't turn on, sand that might be alive, Obsidian shard I still have no idea what it is made of, fur of some strange creature, a mask that copies faces, and a book that—" She stopped, her gaze landing on the book.
That Knight's book; a small, leather-bound journal that had fallen from the masked figure's belt during the chaos at the 103rd. She'd meant to look at it. She'd planned to look at it. But then the device had demanded her attention, and the sand had needed testing, and the mask had been so fascinating, and—
Hange slammed her head onto the table.
THWACK.
The sound echoed through the small room.
"Hange! Do you want to have a concussion?!" Moblit yelled as he abandoned his post and went to her side.
There had been too many other mysteries demanding her attention.
"At least it easier to get than this mess." Hange's voice was muffled with her face still pressed against the worn wood. "All of it is right here, and I can't make sense of any of it! Every time I think I've found a thread, it leads to another knot! And I've been so focused on the masks and the device and the sand that I haven't even looked at the book!"
Moblit cautiously hovered his hand near her shoulder as if she might bite, he knows how cranky Hange can get when worked. "Squad Leader, maybe you should take a break. Get some air. Eat something."
"I can't take a break!" Hange lifted her head. "This is the most significant investigation of my career, and I'm drowning in it! The government is lying, the knights are hunting something, the creatures are connected, and the only leads who could to have any answers are dead!"
She reached for the book, pulling it toward her with a desperate energy. "Fine. Fine! Let's look at the book. Let's see what was so important that knight had to break from retreat to come back for this."
She flipped it open.
Moblit moved to stand behind her, peering over her shoulder. The first page was covered in scribbles she could barely make out. Then the second page filled with the same thing, flipping through more pages was just more and more scribbles that barely made any sense.
"This…doesn't make any sense." Hange murmured.
"Wait." Moblit held up a hand. "Are those drawings?"
Indeed, there were drawings. Hange flipped through the pages faster. There were diagrams of rooms she hadn 't seen before. Sketches of strange machines and even the one on eht table. And then—
She stopped.
The page she'd landed on was different from the others. The paper was newer, the ink fresher, the sketch more detailed. It showed a house; a wooden manor perched on the side of a mountain. The view from the house was a valley, with forests and a distant river. It was beautiful. It was also utterly unremarkable. And for some reason incredibly detailed.
"A house?" Moblit frowned. "On a mountain?"
There was another drawing on the other page that shaped like a body figure. Was that a person?
"Hold on." Hange said, her voice suddenly very quiet. "Wait, wait, wait."
She flipped to the next page.
Both her and Moblit's eyes went wide.
"By the walls…"
Early access to chapters/uninterrupted chapters already available on Patreon.com/Weeb Fanthom.