0. The Siren

Chapter 0: The Siren

The shrill call woke Akane up, ringing violently as it pierced right through the walls of her sleeping pod. Her eyes fluttered open slowly as her brain registered what exactly that call was for. It was a call from work. A call from work only meant one thing.

Akane definitely hated getting woken up in the middle of the night. The total comfort of her dreams, where she could come up with the best stories for which she would then pen down the moment she woke up, were always one of her favourite routines. It was something peaceful, a nice habit to make her forget of what her job usually consisted of. Her dreams had her always have some zany cool adventure plot to write down, a small part of her that she did not completely dislike. A fragment of human ingenuity that made her unique. Of course in her day and age with the power of technology and AI, it was near impossible for creatives to be able to compete with the actual output of those beasts, and yet she always felt her dreams had that human touch that could distinguish hers from theirs.

'I need to shut that alarm' Akane pondered, her pod vibrated in sync with her thoughts, the tech realising its owner is now awake and thinking and thus ready to eject them once they give the command. Akane decided that she would get up, switch that damn alarm off and while getting ready for her field work, to doomscroll on her socials, see what the creatives are now saying. A yearning for a career in the creatives, as well as a desperate need of distraction for what she has to do has made Akane an addict to the social sphere. She realises consuming such content made her superficial, but it was the ease of comfort superficial content gave her that made her forget the horrors that she would have to face daily.

Her eyes gazed over at her holographic calendar and clock within her sleeping pod on her right, it said 1:23 am, Thursday morning, October 2125. She groaned to herself looking at the time and then she decided it was time to move. She then let her sleeping pod know that she wanted to get up, her thoughts formulating her need, her chip in her brain sending the needed signals and the pod responded. It then slowly opening its side with a hiss as the oval door slid upwards, allowing her to roll out of her bed and to turn off the alarm that had still been ringing. Akane was about to make her way to the bathroom to clean up when her body froze up.

"Dammit" She muttered under her breath. She forgot to take her pill before sleeping. With a roll of her eyes to show her discontent, she mentally summoned her personal assistant robot or P.A.R for short. It was a small drone that had the ability to do small chores around the house with two in built human like hands which could do whatever it needed, and right now Akane needed her movement pills.

The robot hummed to life and flew quickly to her medicine cabinet in the bathroom, took out the necessary blue pills and flew back to her, all the while playing the radio through it's in built speakers. Usually Akane would be awake in the morning and you would get the classic warm tunes but in this scenario, it was just droning sleep music.

Akane opened her mouth wide as the drone cheerfully tossed the pill into her mouth, which she swallowed. The pill took a minute to do what it needed before Akane could move again, her limbs and joints no longer suddenly forced to freeze, that was until the effects wore off within another 12 hours.

"I should cancel the dance party coming up this weekend, these joints have been feeling pretty bad lately..." Akane muttered to herself. Her body did not necessary glide to the bathroom as she made her way to clean herself up, each movement was a necessary mechanical process that she needed to plan with each movement, a tug of war between her brain and the rest of her body. It was never usually as bad as it seemed, but without having checked with the doctors for about 6 months, her condition has been getting slightly worse. This awful tension in her body is caused due to only her head being original, or human. Everything else underneath neck down was all metal.

A fascinating story, something Akane did not feel the need right now to reminisce about, maybe when a more relevant time later shows up.

  "Would need to have to get my body checked up soon..." She muttered as she run her brush on her teeth, cleaning her face and putting just enough makeup to make sure she looked presentable. She then decided to toss together a quick set of black clothes and black pants, all bundled with a black scarf, black hat and a brown jacket, not entirely fashionable, but Akane had an important business to attend to. she did this all the while doing exactly as she wanted by doomscrolling on her socials, her phone being happily carried by P.A.R. With that all covered Akane decided it was finally time to see what the exact conditions of her job was.

The message on her phone was short but it was all she needed to know it was the most important thing she has been assigned yet. Having been doing the job for so long these prompt mission descriptions barely phased her. Usually what did annoy her was the sharp blaring of the siren call to announce to her a new task has been allocated, but she is usually ready to read what comes next. This time the severity of the situation took her off guard, she was not prepared at all.

Her eyes were glued to her phone and her body frozen in horror as she took in the message she read.

"The king is dead. This is a state of emergency. Make your way to the castle as swiftly and quickly as you can, the nation needs you."

Akane mulled over the message several times before deciding to rush to her vehicle. Time was of the essence. Only those in power had access to the elixir, or the key to immortality. So many questions swam through Akane's head as she tried to make sense of this, but one question stood out way stronger than the others.

"The king had access to the elixir...how did he die?"

"Who could kill a god?"