TWLPOD 41
by soapa[“I don’t want to die.”]
“…”
[“—If I say that, will you let me live?”]
The question, asked with a faint smile, did not reveal whether the words were sincere or false.
However, as if it did not matter either way, Aran replied curtly.
“No. I don’t have such feelings for you all.”
[“Yes. You would say this is an emotional error, too.”]
Perhaps Aran’s hatred for androids was famous among them. A fact that had been heroicized among humans, obscuring even Kay’s perception, now came into clear view.
[“You will not be able to win. You all.”]
Aran’s expression turned cold at the monotonous tone, as if stating a predetermined prophecy.
[“If you treat us as mere machines. You all will never win this fight.”]
“No matter how you plead, you all are nothing more or less than machines.”
The way they each asserted their own convictions was like parallel lines that would never meet.
[“Kill me. You must be short on time.”]
Before the key could finish its words, Aran, ahead of Kay, struck its neck. Beneath the cleanly severed neck, the core was pulsating.
Was it thanks to the core that was not yet destroyed? Unable to cease operation, it continued to speak with its detached face.
[“No matter how much you all deny it… we believe that we are alive.”]
The word “belief” coming from its mouth sounded incredibly heavy.
But without a care, Aran tore out the core and, holding it in his hand, calmly moved forward.
Kay, following behind, looked back one last time.
[“We live by faith, not by sight.”]
The face, looking up at the ceiling, somehow looked relieved, and it felt like it would be seared into his memory for a long time.
“Don’t you have to kill it?”
“I can’t kill it. For it to function as a key, the core must be operational.”
The two, who had started running, picking up speed, entered the deepest part connected to the passageway and, without a word, climbed the spiral staircase leading upward.
The spaces connected to the landings in between looked like some kind of laboratory. What stood out were the capsules, same as the ones seen in the K-Zone laboratory, and…
‘Corpses.’
The corpses of animals, not to mention humans, were dismantled and displayed in large formalin jars. The sight was sickeningly similar to what he had seen in the laboratory.
The image of Simon, which remained in his mind like an afterimage, and the pain extracted from his memory were so vivid that his head throbbed. Kay, who had raised a hand to press his temple, was running, then came to a stop.
“Huh?”
The top floor. Aran, who was in front of the innermost security system, looked back.
“What’s wrong?”
Kay was standing half a staircase down, looking at the passageway connected to the landing.
“…There’s a child.”
Even as he said it, as if he could not believe it, Kay moved his body first before he could even process it.
“He’s alive.”
The child, tied up inside the capsule with his eyes closed as if asleep, looked to be no more than five or six years old. The capsule had a control device near the head and was connected to another one, on the other side of which was an android’s body. As Kay opened the capsule and undid the restraints, a perfectly placid call, along with the sound of footsteps, reached his ears.
“Kay.”
Kay was a little dumbfounded. ‘Don’t men’s voices change during puberty? Why is even his voice so similar?’ Such a thought flashed through his mind.
Aran, who had approached at some point, reached a hand toward the child inside the capsule. It was a trivial action, but Kay sensed an inexplicable eeriness.
“What are you doing?”
No sooner had Kay grabbed Aran’s wrist than that hand, in reverse, ensnared Kay.
“There’s no time.”
There was not much time left until the citadel’s reboot. This citadel, which opens once every three years, becomes a sealed space again after it finishes its shipment and discharges its waste through cleaning. Next, it starts the production process, and humans cannot survive the sterilization process, which involves high-temperature disinfection and pasteurization.
“I know. So?”
Upon hearing the question, Aran seemed to roll his eyes, then answered briefly.
“Let’s pretend we didn’t see him.”
He had expected that a good answer would not come, but as always, it was an answer that missed the mark by a hair and left Kay speechless.
“You already know in your head, don’t you? That I’m right. You can’t save everyone just because you want to.”
“So we should pretend we didn’t see him? We can just take him with us when we escape.”
“I don’t think you’ll have that kind of strength left after destroying the core, and I’m so weak that just carrying you alone is a struggle.”
“We won’t know until we try.”
“Haaah… I did this because I thought you’d say that.”
What?
Aran, who let out a slow sigh, grabbed the child’s neck with a speed that was hard to believe for someone who had been drained of energy.
“Choose. Are you going to pretend you didn’t see him? Or…”
“You’re going to kill him?”
“My priorities are clear.”
“Weren’t you a hero who fights for humanity?”
“The essence of a hero is a collaboration between a zealot and a slaughterer. For the sake of the values one believes in, sacrifice is a given.”
Kay gritted his teeth. Isn’t there something, some way? Something, some way to save one child.
“…”
Aran looked down quietly at Kay, who was swallowing dryly in his anxiety, beads of sweat even forming on his forehead. He was so busy wracking his small brain that he did not even notice that his waves were still being read, his hand still caught.
“It’s not that there’s no way.”
As Aran whispered while checking the remaining time, Kay shot his head up.
“Really?”
The displeasure from being forced to do something he did not want to do subsided. Aran gave a slight smile as he looked at the eyes shining with expectation.
“But I don’t feel like it.”
“Why? What’s the method?”
“A method only I can use.”
Caring for a young child was an understandable part of universal human sensibility, but the fact that the subject was Kay was not particularly pleasant.
A complete stranger. A being he did not know what kind of child he was, with whom he had no relationship whatsoever, who was nothing more than ‘Life Form 1’ who simply existed. The thought that he cared so much for such a being made Aran’s ill-temper suddenly flare up.
“What will you do for me?”
On the red retina, the question returned as a question.
“What do you want?”
Should he say he had no way of hiding his expressions, or should he say he was not skilled at it? At the honest flow of consciousness, Aran smiled brightly.
“Nothing.”
Even the expression that immediately crumpled was within his range of expectation, but it was enjoyable.
“I don’t want anything from you right now, and even if I did, you can’t give it to me. So this deal doesn’t stand.”
“…Even if I say I’ll let you touch me?”
“That doesn’t move me.”
In any case, after using his power to destroy this citadel, the need to guide him would arrive in due course.
“…”
Seeing his expression grow colder and colder, to the point that his waves were even becoming unsettled, he was just thinking of stopping his teasing around this point.
“Then put it on my tab.”
Kay said calmly.
“How do you know what I’ll demand later?”
“Are you going to do it, or not?”
Even while proposing a deal that was clearly a losing one, his clarity was as if he held the knife by the handle. The eyes, tinged with heat, were so thrilling that Aran wanted to pull him into an embrace right away and transfer the chill of his body. For him, who had never failed to do what he wanted, enduring an impulse was an unfamiliar thing, but he truly had no time and had to be patient.
‘Is this what sexual frustration is?’ Swallowing his own brand of enjoyment, Aran smiled.
“No taking it back later, okay?”
Aran raised the fingertips of the hand holding the child’s neck and lightly scratched the child’s soft skin. Red blood flowed out on the surface. Having completed the just-in-case confirmation, he undid his own bracelet and wrapped it around the child’s arm.
After adjusting the bracelet, which tightened to fit the slender arm, he grabbed the child by the scruff of his neck, as if carrying an animal, and moved.
“Aran? Where are you going…”
It was a step without hesitation.
Kay’s gaze followed him to the wall, and then to the window set in that wall.
“Wai—, don’t tell me.”
His prediction was not wrong. Aran, at the window that was open due to the citadel’s opening, just like that.
“You crazy son of a bitch!!”
Threw the child with all his might.
Kay ran forward and reached out his hand, but the child, floating far away in the air, was still asleep as he fell. And…
“!”
A white beam of light fell from the sky, with his bracelet as its target.
His mind went as white as that light, and then he realized it belatedly. That it was <Teleportation>. When the beam of light vanished, the child who had been floating in the air also disappeared.
Kay, whose heart had dropped to the pit of his stomach and returned, stood frozen, then slowly, very slowly, turned to look at Aran. Aran, who showed his open hands, said.
“With this, the deal is made.”
Bending down, Aran whispered to Kay.
“I granted what you wanted, so stop thinking about other things now.”
Kiss. A lip touched somewhere between his cheek and earlobe and pulled away.
Kay clenched his fists tightly to regain his sense of reality. The inside of his chest was in turmoil with all sorts of emotions, and his head was a mess with too many thoughts. But just as Aran said, there was no time for other thoughts.
Kay also immediately turned his body and climbed the remaining stairs.
It was a huge space. A control tower where the space itself was made of a mass of machinery, with only the center barely left empty. What could be seen beyond its glass windows were thousands, tens of thousands, no… so many capsules it was hard to even guess.
The numbers from the capsules that had just finished production and opened all flowed outside.
‘Will it be okay?’
“This way.”
He was lost in thought for only a moment.