The central control room of Sector M was filled with the weathered silence of death. Countless skeletons, still clad in military uniforms, sat in chairs, their guns aimed at one another, each with a bullet through the forehead, their heads slumped backward limply.

  The corridor was eerily devoid of even a single zombie—an abnormal sight. Danan, still gripping his gun, shifted his gaze from the blue orb and approached one of the corpses. With his mechanical arm, he crushed its skull and tore off the military uniform it wore.

  "…"

  The blackened, crumbling remains turned to ash-like dust. What had once been a brain, now a decayed lump of muscle, had withered over the long years into a small chunk of flesh. Likewise, the heart had turned to dust, trickling down from the underside of the uniform in a fine stream.

  Had the isolation door sealed this room from the corridor to prevent the spread of the Necros Virus? But why had such a measure been necessary? Danan, turning his eyes from the corpse to the blue orb, glanced at Eve, who was staring at it. "What's wrong? Something up?" he asked, following her gaze.

  The blue orb… no, perhaps it should be called a star. The surface of the sphere, cloaked in azure skies and seas, displayed fractured continents. Next to a humanoid mark, a nine-digit number flickered, constantly decreasing and increasing.

  "…"

  Eve clenched her teeth, her face a mix of regret and hatred. Her fists tightened as she glared at a red dot on the orb. She stabbed a repaired silver wing into the projection device displaying the orb, her seven-colored eyes glimmering with faint electronic light.

  "Hey, what's this?"

  "It's Earth."

  "Earth? What's that?"

  "The blue star that's gone. The remnants of a world trapped in a great prison. The name of the land humanity abandoned. Why do you look so surprised, Danan?"

  "I've never heard of it."

  "…What?"

  "I've never heard the word 'Earth.' What are you talking about?"

  Impossible. Eve's face contorted with a mix of shock and anger, while Danan couldn't comprehend why she looked so distraught. An invisible wall stood between them, a discrepancy in perception, a divergence in the worlds they saw.

  "Stop it, that's not a funny joke. The world we live in, the ground we stand on—it's Earth, you know that, right?"

  "No, that's wrong. The world we live in is the Tower, and the place we stand is the lower district. Earth… is this the world we live in? No, it can't be. Outside the Tower, there's no lush, green land like this."

  Outside the Tower lay a desolate wasteland, a world of death. The air was tainted with toxins so potent they rendered gas masks useless within a minute, and the scorched, reddish-brown earth was roamed by aberrantly evolved, dangerous creatures. In that outside world, humans were fragile, insignificant—mere specks of dust. The beautiful land Eve called Earth, like the blue orb, simply didn't exist.

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  Danan, who had once ventured outside the Tower with an old man, knew the outside world was truly a dead one. Rapidly corroding filters, the horrifying shrieks of alien creatures, and massive beings with rock-like hides that could barely be called living things…

  The lower district of the Tower was a purgatory, a brutal world where humans killed each other without hesitation. The ruins beneath the Tower were a hell where humans, killing machines, experimental creatures, and invading external beings slaughtered one another. Beyond the Tower was a gray and reddish-brown world of death, where reason and common sense held no sway. Recalling that desolate land, far removed from beauty, Danan stared at the orb and muttered, "Impossible…" as he swallowed the rising fear.

  "There's nothing impossible about it. Earth died once. That's why I had a mission, a plan to fulfill. No, not just me—Canaan, too… she had a mission to complete, but that foolish sister gave up on her own…!"

  The sound of Eve's teeth grinding echoed as blood trickled from the corner of her mouth. Wiping the blood that formed a single line, Eve hacked into the projection device, clutching one eye with a pained expression.

  *["Administrator Eve, you have not been granted permission to operate the Earth Hologram. The Ark's administrator remains anonymous. Cease hacking immediately."]*

  "Shut up! Don't give me orders, you mere AI!"

  *["Executing forced disconnection of the Earth Hologram. Signal received. Displaying coordinates on the Earth Hologram. Message received from Dr. Kamishiro."]*

  A sharp *crack*—electricity sparked from the silver wing, and Eve convulsed, her eyes rolling back. Frothing at the mouth, her limbs rigid, she was caught by Danan, who saw a man with round glasses appear overlaid on the Earth Hologram.

  The man in the white coat looked utterly exhausted, his cheeks gaunt. Perhaps in his mid-forties, though his wrinkles and unkempt stubble made it hard to gauge his true age.

  But… Danan felt a strange sense of familiarity with the name Kamishiro and the man in the hologram. A mistake? A trick of the mind? Somewhere in the depths of his primal memories, buried fragments seemed to hold the face of a scientist who looked like him. A glitch in his brain, a confusion. Danan had never met a man named Kamishiro.

  *["Uh, hello… can you hear me? Shero, is the mic and camera ready? Don’t laugh too much—oh, you’re not laughing? We’ve known each other long enough that I can tell what you’re thinking from the slightest twitch of your face. But… well, it’s been a while, Eve, Canaan, and—"]*

  The holographic Kamishiro looked apologetic, scratching his disheveled hair. The data was partially corrupted, causing static to interrupt the audio and distort the visuals, like watching a bug-eaten film reel.

  *["If you’re all together, it means it’s time to execute Plan E. But it will fail. Without a doubt. That’s why my ally hid hope elsewhere. Coordinates were left in Nephthys, accessible via a signal key to unlock my message and the location of that hope. Any further record might be detected by the higher-ups, so I’ll say just one thing: Shero and I love you sisters. As parents, we couldn’t leave you—"]*

  The transmission cut off abruptly, and Kamishiro, along with a silver-haired woman named Shero, vanished mid-smile. As the message ended, an image with coordinate numbers was sent to Danan’s mechanical arm.

  Despite it being someone else’s affair, an intense impulse surged through Danan’s chest. The familiarity of Kamishiro’s name and voice, the longing for the silver-haired woman, stirred his mind. His thoughts spun, his vision flickered. Clawing at the steel of his mechanical arm, fighting an inexplicable nausea, Danan shouted to regain his composure and glanced at Eve, who had regained consciousness.

  "Da…nan…?"

  Her body trembling, Eve’s eyes widened as she gasped for air, her shoulders heaving.

  "…"

  No time for sentimentality. Hoisting the girl onto his back, Danan ordered, "Nephthys, find the shortest escape route to the lower district."

  *["Understood. Signal received, identity verified through message confirmation. Emergency escape elevator access granted. Danan, preparations for moving from the central control room to the Tower are complete. Opening escape route."]*

  Beyond the folded metal wall was an elevator with space for three adults. Carrying Eve, Danan stepped inside and ran his fingers over the control panel, inputting the ascent command.

  "…Eve."

  "What…?"

  "Have we…"

  Met somewhere before? Seeing the faint trace of the silver-haired woman in Eve, Danan muttered softly, letting himself be carried by the trembling vibrations of the elevator.