The heavy metal doors closed behind them with a dull, definitive thud, as if a tomb lid was being sealed. The weight of those thousands of frozen eyes outside had been cut off for a moment, but the air inside was much denser, much more electrically charged.
Kaelen stood on edge, aiming the barrel of his Yargıç into the darkness. But this was not darkness. A hypnotic blue light, emanating from the center of the room—or rather, this colossal hangar—illuminated the deep lines on the detective's tired face.
"This place..." Kaelen murmured, his breath misting in the air. "This isn't a server room. This is a pool."
He was right. In the very center of the room was a cylindrical, transparent column stretching from floor to ceiling. It was filled not with cables or circuit boards, but with a dense, silvery, constantly shifting liquid. The liquid curled within itself, changing shape, sometimes forming silhouettes resembling human faces, then dissolving back into abstract chaos. It was living data. A liquid computer.
Jester stood a few steps ahead of Kaelen. The metal prosthetic on his left leg made a rhythmic *clink* sound every time he stepped on the floor grates. The blue light of his arc reactor on his chest flickered in sync with the liquid's glow inside the tank. He had tilted his head, looking at the tank as if listening to a melody from far away.
"The Data Pool," Jester said, his voice unusually flat. His jocular tone had given way to a surgical observation. "All of Nova-Veridia's dreams, all its nightmares, all that 'White Noise'... It's all distilled here. Like a whiskey factory, Detective. But here, they're crushing human souls instead of grapes."
Kaelen could see the tension in his partner's back. Jester had just confronted a photograph from his childhood. Now he was in the very place where that photo was taken, where the fruits of those tortures were harvested. Kaelen involuntarily brought his hand to the silver whistle around his neck. If Jester broke, if that "Red Mode" activated, this room could become a tomb for both of them.
"Be careful," Kaelen warned. "It's too quiet here."
"Quiet?" Jester suddenly chuckled, but the sound lacked mirth. "Ah, Kaelen... What a blessing it must be to be deaf. This place is screaming."
Just then, the silvery substance inside the liquid column rippled. Beams of light separated from the liquid, converging in front of the tank to form a three-dimensional hologram.
This was no monster. Nor was it a colossal robot or a terrifying mutant. What appeared before them was an old, gentle man with snow-white hair, wearing a beige cardigan and looking over his glasses. He resembled a university professor or a grandfather reading fairy tales to his grandchildren on weekends.
"Welcome, Prototype Zero," the hologram said. His voice echoed as if coming from everywhere in the room at once; soft, paternal, and with a digital smoothness. "And of course, his loyal guardian, Detective Vance."
Kaelen aimed his weapon at the hologram but didn't pull the trigger. He was experienced enough to know that shooting a beam of light was a waste of bullets. "Who are you?" he growled.
"I am The Architect," the old man said, clasping his hands behind his back. "I am not a leader. I am not an administrator. I am this structure's... brain. The mind of The Consortium."
Jester took a step towards the hologram. His hazel eyes narrowed, scanning the data stream. "My father..." Jester said, chewing the word as if it left a sour taste in his mouth. "The Emissary... Was he just a subcontractor?"
The Architect smiled. In this smile, there was neither mockery nor malice; only pure, icy logic. "Julian Vane was a visionary man, but his vision was narrow. He merely wanted to bring back 1989. A small, emotional goal."
The Architect waved his hand towards the liquid tank. The images inside the tank changed; the hazy streets of Nova-Veridia, skyscrapers under the rain, appeared.
"Nova-Veridia is not a city, my children. It is a Petri dish," The Architect explained. "That anomaly-ridden environment where human emotions, fear, and obsession materialize... It was merely an experiment. We were testing the limits of human consciousness. Aion, however..." The image changed, showing the frozen facility they were in. "...Aion is the control group. Immutability. Static."
Kaelen felt a punch to his gut. All that suffering, the people who died, Miller, who had turned into a monster... Was it all just a laboratory note?
"What's the purpose?" Jester asked. His voice had dropped to a dangerously low level. "What are you trying to turn us into?"
"Immortality," The Architect said, as a fanatic gleam appeared in his eyes. "Bodies are weak. Flesh rots. But data... Data is eternal. Our goal is to transform humanity into a single digital Hive Mind. No pain, no separation, no death. Only pure consciousness."
The Architect turned his compassionate eyes to Jester. As if looking at a sick child.
"And you, Zero... You are our greatest failure and our greatest hope. You are proof that flesh and data can merge. But you are too noisy. Your mind is like a storm."
The hologram reached out towards Jester, his ghostly fingers hovered in the air, not quite touching Jester's painted face.
"I can fix you," The Architect said. His tone was so convincing that even Kaelen paused for a moment. "I can silence that static noise in your head, those constant screams. I can erase those chaotic sounds and replace them with a peaceful silence. You just need to integrate into the system. You need to come home."
The room fell silent. Only the faint hum of the liquid tank could be heard. Kaelen looked at Jester. His partner's shoulders were slumped. That constant, weary smile on his face had faded. Kaelen could only imagine the hell inside Jester's mind. Peace... This was a difficult offer to refuse.
"Jester," Kaelen said, his voice warning but soft. "Don't listen to him."
Jester raised his head. His eyes were closed. He took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the sterile, ozone-scented air. Then he opened his eyes.
There was neither the terrifying red nor the divine purple light in his eyes. Only a hazel, human, and melancholic gleam. And the corner of his lips curled upwards into that familiar, twisted grin.
"Silence?" Jester asked, as if he had been offered a stale sandwich. "You're offering me silence? How boring."
The paternal expression on The Architect's face subtly froze.
Jester raised his gloved hand and bit his thumb. His sharp teeth pierced the skin, and a drop of dark red blood spread across the white fabric of his glove.
"That noise in my head..." Jester said, walking towards the liquid tank. "That static, that crackle... That's my orchestra. That's my symphony."
He approached the tank's glass. The Architect's hologram could only manage, "Don't," his voice becoming mechanical for the first time.
"My chaos is my music, old man," Jester whispered, and pressed his bloody thumb not on the data input port on the tank, but directly onto the glass surface.
This was no ordinary glass; it was a tactile, permeable interface. The moment Jester's blood—that corrupted, glitch-filled, anomaly-washed blood—touched the glass, the system registered it as a biological data input.
**[ERROR: UNKNOWN DATA INPUT]**
**[SOURCE: NULL]**
The silvery liquid inside the tank suddenly darkened. The perfect, smooth flow was disrupted. The liquid began to foam and tremble in purple and black hues, as if a poison had been injected. Jester's blood-borne chaos spread like a virus through The Architect's order.
The Architect's hologram began to crackle, its pixels shifting. That gentle grandfatherly face momentarily contorted into horrifying, geometric shapes before returning.
"Disappointment..." The Architect's voice said, now choppy, as if coming from a broken record. "Defective products... must be destroyed."
Panels in the room's walls hissed open.
Kaelen cocked his Yargıç. "Jester! Get back!"
From within the walls, a pitch-black mist, appearing like smoke but devouring light, began to pour in. This was not a gas. As Kaelen squinted, he realized the mist was actually composed of millions of microscopic metal insects. A buzzing swarm of metallic locusts, climbing over one another.
The Nanobot Swarm.
"Oh, wonderful," Jester said, moving away from the tank and leaning against Kaelen's back. He was in his element again; right in the heart of chaos. The grin on his face widened, the melancholy in his eyes gave way to the sharp gleam of madness. "They've invited the audience onto the stage. Ready to dance, Detective?"
Kaelen gritted his teeth, his finger moving to the trigger. "Just play the music, clown. Just play the music."