Volume 1 – Chapter 17: The Final Choice

[April 23 – 8:00 AM]

It felt like the air had thickened with tension, the room had suddenly become chill. The machine before us emitted an increasing volume of noise, its pulse reverberated through the floor, through the walls. It felt almost alive — like it knew we were there to stop it, that we were there.

Rika leaned up towards the device, looking around at its illuminated panels. Engraved symbols on its surface glowed in time with the machine’s thrumming. She was seeking a remedy of some sort, a means to turn it off, or a way to understand it, at least. I saw the tension in her shoulders, the slight shaking of her hands. She wasn’t afraid, but the tension was building. It was in the way she held her body, in the way she kept looking at my face, her mind going hot.

“This is it, isn’t it?” With that realization, and the weight of it settling in me like a stone in my chest, I said quietly.

( Rika didn’t reply right away. She didn’t need to. There was something in her eyes that said it all. We were at the edge of something bigger than any of us, something that could save the world — or destroy it.

The weight of the decision pressed down on me. We had to make a choice. And a decision that would impact everything — everything we labor for. I wasn’t sure I was ready. But I wasn’t sure I had the emotional fortitude to do what was required.

But there was no alternative.

“We have to stop it,” I told him, my voice firm, though a thing of uncertainty gnawed at the back of my mind. “No matter the cost.”

Rika met my gaze, her gaze clear, steady. “We no longer have a choice. Not if we want to be of service to everyone. Not if we really want to stop Project Eclipse.”

Her expression was a familiar one: the one that had pulled her through every hardship we had weathered together. She was right. There was no turning back.

But I couldn’t shake the feeling in my head that something was wrong, even as I was there. That this was more than we knew. What was the final choice? That voice in my head — the voice from this video — kept repeating, “It’s one of those things in a franchise where it’s a one-way decision, you can’t go back on it.”

What did that mean?

Before I could respond, the earth trembled beneath us. And the sound of the machine’s hum increased, something more urgent, as though it were flying to our sides, responding to us, responding to our decision to stop it. The room was broke up with flickering light and shadows.

“We don’t have much time,” Rika said, her voice harried. She bolted toward the device's control panel, whiz bang at the buttons, struggling to understand everything, struggling to find a way to turn this off. But the machine fought back, its heartbeat getting louder.”

I was so anxious when I approached her. “What are you doing?”

“I’m trying to shut it down,” she said, in a tense voice. “But there’s a security procedure. It’s not going to be easy.”

I touched her hand & extended out. It was just a small act, but it was everything to me in that moment.” She didn’t pull away. She does gaze up at me for a beat, her smile warm, but it’s fleeting.

“I’m scared, Kaito,” she said quietly.

I nodded, feeling that same fear rising in me, blurring the corners of my will. But I squeezed her hand, offering what comfort I could. “We’ll do this together. We’ll stop it together.”

Her lips were opening to say something more, but the machine abruptly started shaking — the room rattled again, but stronger this time. The machine made a loud screech, and there was a bright flash of light that came from the panels on it.

Again my voice shaking with urgency I reply “I do not have much time” “Rika, hurry.”

She didn’t hesitate. Her fingers flew across the buttons as her eyes tracked like a hawk. The symbols splayed across the machine flickered and bounced, shifting too rapidly to fix on, as if trying to fight her, trying to keep us from stopping it. But Rika was relentless. She was not going to let it win.

There was a click and the machine stopped dead.

Silence.

The hum died away. The room was still.

We both froze, looking on helplessly at the machine, willing something, anything, to happen. But nothing did. The device remained silent, and, by relative terms, inert.

Had we done it?

“Is it over?” Really, I asked, my voice almost a whisper.

Rika drew a sharp breath, her shoulders falling in relief. Scrubbing a towel over her forehead, she looked gaunt but determined. “For now,” she said, quietly. “But I think this is just the beginning.”

I frowned, confused. “What do you mean?”

Rika looked at me, her eyes stained deep with something I couldn’t name. “We halted the machine, but that does not mean that everything has been halted. Project Eclipse — that’s out of scope. This was just a piece of the puzzle. There’s more. And if we don’t find it, if we don’t intercept it...”

She did not have to finish the sentence. I knew what she was getting at.

There was no victory here. Not yet. Not until we understood what we were actually confronting.”

We had stopped one piece of it, but the rest of the nightmare was still out there. Waiting.

I looked back at Rika and for an instant I saw the horror mirrored in her eyes that I felt within me. But there was something else there too. The type that made her tougher than anyone I’d ever known.

“Keep going,” I said, my voice steady again. “We’ll find the rest. We’ll stop it.”

Rika greeted this change with a sly, fierce smile as she nodded. She grasped my hand one last time, then glanced at the door. "Let's go."

And together, we walked out of the room — leaving in pieces Project Eclipse, but with the knowledge we had not completed our mission. There was also more to come, it turned out. More to stop.

The final ruling had been entered. Now came the time to discover what it would cost us.

Vol 1 Final Note: 

This is where Volume 1 ends. The journey of Kaito and Rika is far from over, but their path forward is set. The choices they’ve made will guide them through even darker days ahead. We are left at the edge of a precipice, unsure of what the future holds, but knowing that whatever happens, they will face it together.

The story continues in Volume 2...