In the control room, the voices of the monitoring staff crowded over each other.
"He's released all the monsters. We're currently struggling to get the situation back under control, let alone catch him right now." The head of the control room listened to the pursuit teams' report with a grim face.
He didn't understand anything anymore.
How did 01 know the facility's layout in this much detail?... it didn't make sense.
And why was the chip showing his location, while its other functions weren't working?
More importantly... what was his goal in all of this... revenge?
Countless questions spun in the head of the monitoring room's mind, if he wanted to escape and knew the place, why didn't he go straight to the teleportation gate?
And worse, 01 had already disabled most of the cameras, they couldn't see him except as a red dot on one of the screens, pointing to his location on the floor that held the monsters.
The tall man knew they'd underestimated him, believing he could be subdued easily by sending their strongest fighters... they never expected him to use their strongest timed explosives.
And that raised another question... how the hell did he know those things existed, let alone where they were?
'If I were in his place, and knew where the teleportation gate was, I would've escaped by now after all this chaos.' He bit his lower lip, thinking through the possibilities.
Finally, after minutes of thinking, he seemed to make a decision, he raised his hand to his ear and pressed the communication device.
He was calling the last Rank 3 who was still alive here. "Mike, take all the other experiments, and go guard the path leading to the teleportation gate."
After a moment, a deep, rough voice came from the earpiece. "You're asking me to leave this monster chaos and guard the gate? Why?"
"Trust me. You won't be able to catch him in the middle of that chaos."
"You think he knows where it is and he's trying to escape?" Mike's answer came calmly.
The head of the monitoring room nodded, like he was talking to someone in front of him. "Yes. Take the other experiments and do as I said. The others will handle the monsters."
"..."
Silence fell over the earpiece for a few moments before Mike spoke again. "Alright. I'll trust you."
The man let out a breath of relief. "Thank you. I'll tell them to get ready."
With the call closed, he stepped toward the console, specifically in front of a small microphone, and turned it on.
His voice echoed in many rooms identical to 01's at the same time.
"To all numbers, you have a mission now. 01 has gone out of control, and you have to bring him under control. You're authorized to use essence. Someone will come to supply you with equipment and lead you... I repeat, your mission is to subdue 01. If you succeed, you'll get a big reward."
With that, he ended the message and turned off the microphone.
...
In many rooms, young people, boys and girls between fifteen and eighteen, were getting ready for their mission... some of them even looked twenty.
But among them, one stood out more than the rest.
In a separate room a girl sat on the edge of the bed, her long black hair falling down her back like threads of silk, and her gray eyes shining with a faint resolve... she looked about eighteen, and by every standard, she was beautiful.
On top of the strong pressure coming off her, it was obvious she wasn't just a girl being held here.
She was Intermediate Rank 2. Like Caius... and she was Number 02.
Sitting on the edge of her bed, a whisper full of doubt and confusion escaped her, her voice was soft, out of place in this place. "What are you doing, 01?"
Then with a sigh, she stood up and started getting ready like the others... at that moment, memories of the past started coming back to her mind.
When she first arrived at this place, everyone had been put in a big closed room, with very little food and water, left there to fight each other to survive.
She was about four or five years old at the time... she couldn't remember clearly, maybe seven or even eight, who really knows.
After weeks, many of the children died. Their number, which had been in the hundreds, shrank to only dozens.
Every day was a battle against hunger, and against whoever was trying to eat you.
One day, 02 was drawing her last breaths, lying in a filthy corner of that rusty room. Her skin was clinging to her bones, telling of weeks without real food.
She couldn't move, she couldn't even think. Her vision was blurry in shades of black and gray, the smell of rot had ruined her nose a long time ago.
That's when she saw him.
Another child her age came closer to her, with black hair and black eyes. He wasn't in good shape either, but he was better off than most.
He was walking without anything stopping him, the others avoided him, driven by fear, and the desire for a painful life.
And now he was the one coming closer to her, while she couldn't even move to get away.
He stopped in front of her, through her blurry vision, she saw his eyes... two pools of pure black, like he was looking straight into her soul.
He obviously didn't belong in that place.
He knelt in front of her and put down two things, a piece of bread and a bottle of water. "Eat." With that one word, he turned and walked away.
The others' looks were drawn to her, or rather, to the food in front of her, but the boy's look stopped them from doing anything stupid.
Using every bit of strength she had left, she grabbed the bread and started eating. It was so hard her weak jaw could barely chew it, but... it was food.
...
That wasn't the last time he did this, after that...
Every day, he brought her a piece of bread and some water, then left. After several days, her body started recovering a little, until she was able to move again.
One day, when he came to leave the bread as usual, she grabbed his wrist and asked him something simple. "Why are you helping me?"
Silence fell between them before he shrugged indifferently. "Because I want to."
It was a strange answer.
Later, he became 01 and she became 02, the second strongest person from that room.
And now, she stood in front of the door, waiting for the mission to start, to subdue him... or kill him.
After moments that felt very long, her door opened.
A man who looked to be in his thirties, taller than her by two or three heads, stood there with his body giving off the pressure of Rank 3... it was none other than Mike.
02 stepped into the corridor, where many people like her had gathered, lined up near the walls like old statues.
When he saw she'd come out he looked at the rows, his deep voice filling the corridor. "Your job is to position yourselves in the corridors and guard the path leading to the teleportation gate, report him the moment you see him and try to surround him."
When everyone nodded in stunning silence, the stern guard turned his face to her. "And you, 02, you'll come with me to guard the gate itself."
02 nodded obediently. "Yes, sir."
"We'll equip you now. Follow me, quickly."
...
In the control room, the leader tracked the red dot on the big screen while giving orders to the people there.
"He's in Section B now."
Someone answered through the earpiece in his ear. "Sir, we can't find him. All we see are rampaging monsters."
The leader clenched his teeth.
He didn't understand. Before, 01 had been moving in an organized way, like someone with a clear goal. But now, he was moving in random chaos... like a monster.
A lot of the cameras were disabled, and many screens had gone dark, it wasn't possible to see what was happening there now.
"What is he doing? Isn't he supposed to be escaping now? Am I wrong?" he muttered, then suddenly, he noticed something strange.
Other screens were showing static, specifically the ones showing the floor he was currently on.
He hadn't noticed that before, because they'd been focused on tracking the runaway 01.
"Why are these screens showing static?" he asked, but he already knew the answer.
One of the staff turned his head toward them, and went quiet for a moment, then answered. "Sir... it's not the screens. It's the cameras."
Something finally clicked in his mind, the chip works, but it doesn't perform its other functions.
He almost slapped his face at that moment. "Damn it... why didn't I think of this?"
"What is it, sir?" someone asked from his seat.
"01 removed the chip and kept it, which made us think it was just a temporary malfunction, and that we could track him through it. He planned this... and if I were in his place right now... I'd probably attach it to a monster that keeps moving around the floor and make everyone follow it."
Silence fell in the room for a moment, until someone broke it. "So if we've been tracking a monster this whole time... then where is he now?"
To answer that question, the leader looked at the static-filled screens. "He's here."
A moment later, a tremor spread across the whole floor, a devastating explosion erupted in the monitoring room and wiped out the life of everyone who was there.