Interlude//Light (Part_1)

“Tamer 8, you are clear for takeoff.”

“This is tamer 8, roger that.”

“Launch will commence in 5… 4…”

3…

2…

1…!

The floor below the mk1 rose at lightning speeds to send the giant metal creature flying above the concrete forest of New York City. Meeting it below the skyline was a giant, two-headed mechanical canine of some sort. “I have eyes on the target.” The mk1’s pilot said.

“We have a visual.” Hannah Kennedy stood inside the DEED facility’s control room. “This is the 7th kaiju, nicknamed Cerberus. You are clear to engage.”

“Roger that, preparing to engage.”

“Understood.”

The mk1 charged at the 201st kaiju at blinding speed using its new propulsion jets. Drawing its sword just before the impact, the knightly kaiju sliced the Cerberus in half, destroying its DCP instantly.

“Target has been neutralized; retrieval of DCP was unsuccessful, however.” The pilot said. “We’ll get em’ next time.”

“Understood.” Hannah replied. “The operation is over, return to the launch pad.”

“Roger that, out.”

[ KAIJU//HACKER Interlude: Light | Part 1/3 ]

“Did you notice any technical problems we couldn’t diagnose?” Hannah asked Kaden as they leisurely walked down a hallway at DEED HQ. “We can’t have the mk1 fail in the middle of combat.”

“Nope.” Kaden replied. “Everything seems to be working as normal.”

“Did you hear the news about Lucy?”

“About Lucy?”

[ cut ]

“You think there’s a way to fix her?” Kaden asked hopefully. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“I don’t think so.” Gabriel said. Him, Hannah, and Kaden were all standing in the DCPm room around a strange, holographic diagram. “Lucy should be able to do a majority of the work for us. I’ll need you around just in case things go wrong, but you’re actually our second stopgap.”

“Who’s the first?” Kaden said.

“I’ll just let you figure that out.” Gabriel said coldly. It was a different kind of cold than when Orphan was in control of his body, but cold all the same. “We’ll start the activation process now. Remain ready.”

“Activation?” Kaden asked as him and the two other walked into the testing room. Inside was Lucy, lying down on what seemed to be a hospital bed. Her arms and legs still weren’t functioning, and she seemed almost dead by how little she was moving. This was how she’d been since her fight with the 6th kaiju.

“The plan is to use the 2nd DCP, which is currently inside Lucy, to fix her body and neural connections. We have a map of both from during the 5th kaiju’s attack, so we can manually interface with the 2nd DCP using the DCP Mini.” Gabriel explained.

“What are the chances this goes wrong?” Kaden asked concernedly.

“High.” Gabriel replied. “High enough that we needed a second backup. If everything else fails, we’ll need you to connect with the 2nd DCP and manually reconstruct Lucy’s body.”

“How do I do that?”

“We’ll explain it if we need to.”

“No! You should explain it to me now!” Kaden said assertively. “We can’t afford to waste time in a situation like that!”

“Shut up.” Gabriel said.

Kaden slammed his hands into the medical table at Lucy’s side. “Why is it that you’re making all of the calls here! I thought DEED kicked you out?!”

“Kaden, relax,” Dr. Miller was standing in the corner of the room. “This is our best shot. A team of some of the best scientists in the world has been testing day-in and day-out to save Lucy, they’ve all come to the same conclusion.”

“What happens if this goes wrong, dad?! She dies! You know that! You know that too, asshole!” Kaden’s ire snapped over to Gabriel once again. “I can’t believe anyone here still trusts-“ Kaden’s rant instantly stopped when his gaze locked with Lucy’s lifeless, hollow eyes.

He knew that she wasn’t coherent enough to understand the situation, but it felt like her eyes were telling him to stop. Lucy wasn’t fully aware of her surroundings, nor the passage of time as far as testing had revealed. It was like everything around her was moving at sixty miles-per-hour and she was at a full stop. Her mind was broken.

Kaden caught has composure once more. “I… Look, just do it. I don’t care about how; just know that if you mess this up, I don’t know what I’m gonna do,” He walked out of the room.

“Well, you heard him,” Gabriel said, holding up a tablet interface to the DCPm. “I just hope we don’t need his help.”

“You could be a bit nicer,” Dr. Miller advised.

“Nice doesn’t fix problems,” Gabriel replied.

“It could fix this one.”

“Look, I’m not worried about my personal relationship with Tamer 8. He’s just a co-worker, we don’t need to be friends.” Gabriel explained.

“You seemed to be good friends with Dr. Turner-“

“DOES IT LOOK LIKE HE’S STILL AROUND ANYMORE?!” Gabriel shouted. “He died because I wasn’t fast enough. Yes, he was like a father to me, does that mean I have to be like that with everyone else I work with? No!”

“Gabriel, this kind of pent-up frustration isn’t healthy.”

“Thanks, I didn’t know!” Gabriel adjusted a panel on the wall before walking over to the 2nd DCP. “Hopefully, once Lucy is back, I don’t have to deal with Kaden’s sh*t anymore.”

“You need to grow up, are you sixteen?!”

“No, sir, I’m twenty-six,” Gabriel tuned a few dials of the panel connected to the DCP. “You know, you can shut up too. I’m tired of being chastised for not putting up with a child and his first crush.”

“Honestly, I agree with Kaden here,” Dr. Miller walked out of the room. “You really are an asshole.”

“Glad to see you go…”

[ cut ]

“WHAT?!” Kaden shouted. “After all of your big talk, it didn’t work?!”

“No, Lucy isn’t cognitively capable of reforming her body, you have to do it,” Dr. Miller explained. “We don’t know how long we can keep the DCPm connected to the 2nd DCP at this point, so we have to act now.”

“I hope you know I’m not going to forget this,” Kaden scowled at Gabriel. “Once all this is done, I quit, and Lucy is coming with me.”

“Good luck with that,” Gabriel said sarcastically.

[ cut ]

“This is really simple” Dr. Miller said as he guided Kaden through the process of connecting with the 2nd DCP, “all you have to do is point this tablet at the device and press the go button down here.”

“Why wasn’t this the first thing we try?” Kaden replied.

“Because it could leave you in the same state as Lucy.”

Kaden pondered whether the risk was worth it, but every fiber of his being said yes. “Alright, I’ll do it.” He aimed the tablet as instructed and connected with the DCP, except it didn’t go quite as planned.

“Rejected? What does that mean?” Kaden asked. “That’s what the tablet says. Nothing happened.”

“You’re compatible with the mk1’s assist systems, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Then this should be working just fine.”

“Why isn’t it?”

“It’s because ALICE is rejecting any tamer other than Lucy,” Gabriel said. “You’re going to have to convince it that saving Lucy is to her benefit.”

“Who’s ALICE?”

[ cut ]

June 5th, 2037.

Gabriel looked down from a military helicopter at the kaiju rampaging about the city. It was a bestial yet humanoid figure clad in crimson armor with a blade extending from each of its forearms.

“I have eyes on the 5th kaiju, designated Berserker. Do we have permission to engage?” One soldier in the helicopter asked over the radio.

“Permission granted, you are free to dispatch,” A faint voice played from over the intercom.

“Well, it's your time to shine,” The soldier said to Gabriel. “I don’t know why the commander is so sure of it, but supposedly you can take that thing down. Why don’t you show us?”

“Fine then.”

Gabriel formed a viewing frame with his hands before the right lens of his glasses flashed red. In that instant, the 5th kaiju disintegrated into millions of tiny red cubes as the city was bathed is a shower of blood.

“What the… f*ck?” The soldier was stunned.

For the helicopter ride back to the base, Gabriel kept his right eye shut, only opening it once again long after the crew had arrived at their destination.

[ cut ]

“ALICE is the AI contained within the Atom-3. The KF system, the one that you use to interface with the DCPs, runs on top of the Atom-3. Unless ALICE allows it, nobody can use the FK system,” Gabriel explained.

“Two questions,” Dr. Milled said. “First, how do you know this? Second, how do we circumvent the problem?”

“I know about it because Orphan did,” Gabriel said.

“Hold on, you remember everything that’s happened since the attack on New York eight years ago?” Kaden asked.

“Of course, why wouldn’t I? Just because Orphan was in control doesn’t mean I wasn’t aware of what was going on.”

“Hold on there, how did Orphan find out?” Dr. Miller brought the conversation back to its roots. “How do we know you aren’t lying?”

“Why would I lie?”

“Fine, if you won’t tell us that, how do we fix this?” Kaden asked.

“I already told you; you have to convince ALICE that this is what’s best for Lucy.”

“WHY?!” Kaden shouted, knocking over an empty table. “Why can’t you just tell us everything?!”

“Fine, but we’ll need to take a trip to the Atom-3.”

[ cut ]

“Through observation and study of my own condition, I can only come to the conclusion that the soul must exist. There is some kind of ethereal presence that defines what a person is, something that interacts with the human brain in ways we don’t understand. When Orphan took over my body, I was still there. My brain’s entire electrical and biological structure was rewritten, yet I was able to take over once Orphan was suppressed,” Gabriel pointed to the choker around his neck. “Orphan must have known that as well, which is why he designed this.”

“So, wait, you mean that Orphan designed the device that currently keeps it from interacting with the physical world?” Dr. Miller pondered out loud. “How do we know it even works?”

“Because it’s working now.”

“That… is dubious,” Kaden added.

“Regardless, Orphan was aware that its own mental faculties were conforming to my own, if only slightly. The only reason for that to happen is if some of a person’s character is determined by a force outside of the body, something that can’t be affected by the DCPs. This lines up with why the DCPs can’t bring back the dead, they can’t access a soul that isn’t in the world anymore.”

“Couldn’t it just bring back the soul? Where do they go?” Kaden asked.

“I have no idea; I doubt it’s something humans will ever understand. DEED’s West branch would probably know more, especially after what happened in Seattle all those 13 years back.”

“Seattle?” Kaden said.

Dr. Miller answered this time. “DEED’s West branch was trying to deal with a situation involving the supernatural, they specialize in that more so than us. The “extradimensional” and “extraterrestrial” parts of the organization are separated into the West and East divisions respectively. Supposedly they work with spirits and curses over on the West coast.”

“Those things are real?!” Kaden said.

“Supposedly. I’ve never seen either with my own two eyes. Your mentor, Dr. Turner, made a visit to the West branch during the New Pentagram Investigations, if he was still alive, he’d probably know more,” Dr. Miller scratched his beard.

“Back to the topic at hand” Gabriel said, “the human soul seems to store information, much like a DCP can. Whatever species created the DCPs likely was trying to recreate a soul, and they seem to have come quite close.”

“Hold on, the DCPs were created by aliens?” Kaden had never heard this information before.

“Yes, now try to follow,” Gabriel continued. “While they can’t overwrite them, as evidenced by Orphan’s inability to dispose of me, they can read them. Within the Atom-3 is the soul of Alice, Lucy’s younger sister. We have no idea how it got there, but all evidence points to it being responsible for the anomalies in the KF system, such as how tamers are able to survive the disconnection process now. We worry that the past 6 tamers’ souls might be within the 2nd DCP, but it doesn’t seem to have the same properties as the Atom-3. The Atom-3, as well as being the first DCP we encountered, also has been identified as something of an administrator unit to the other DCPs, acting as an intelligence hub, hence how it reactivated the 2nd DCP during Lucy’s battle with the 6th kaiju.”

“You’re saying so many things that I don’t understand,” Kaden interjected. “What does all of this have to do with saving Lucy?”

“Basically, you’ll have to communicate with ALICE, the fusion of Alice Turner’s human soul and the DCP’s onboard intelligence, to get it to reactivate the KF system. The only way to do that is to use the device that Dr. Turner made, the Digital Space Communicator, to “talk” with the Atom-3.”

“I… I think I can do that,” Kaden said. “Point me to where I need to go.”

“We can all do that, it’s as simple as plugging a laptop into the device,” Dr. Miller explained. “I’m sorry to get your hopes up but I don’t think you’re really needed for this step.”

“Oh.”

The group stood in the Atom-3’s chamber next to the old prototype DSC, which was on top of a rolling table next to an intricate laptop. Kaden had never seen anything like it and would find difficultly describing it to anyone who had never seen it before. It looked almost a little like a videogame console to a casual observer like himself.

“While the hardware is the same as it was eight years ago, I took the liberty of updating the interpretation software after the last time I used it. It can synthesize a voice and interpret a microphone input now, letting us literally talk to whatever’s on the other end,” Gabriel was fidgeting with the device on the table while simultaneously adjusting the various settings on the laptop. “Don’t worry about saying something stupid, it uses push-to-talk by default.”

“Have you used it before?” Kaden asked.

“Yeah, I have,” Gabriel turned back to Kaden. “When I first interacted with Orphan, it was through the DSC. The Egg of Orphan, the giant organism underground that Orphan came from, is effectively a biological DCP. It’s basically what Lucy got turned into during her fight with the 6th kaiju, except much more advanced. The egg is sort of an embryonic state of the original species that created the DCPs, but it seems to be genetically engineered to produce a creature with an artificial soul, a DCP core. We could probably learn a lot about how the original species functioned by studying both it and the kaiju they created, but we don’t live in that world right now.”

“I… honestly don’t care that much, sorry,” Kaden laughed nervously.

A synthetic voice played out from the computer. It surprised Kaden at first, but it reminded him of something. Lucy was always a big fan of rhythm games, and at least one of them had songs that were made with a computer-generated voice. This was similar.

>big brother, who is this person? why is he important to lucy?

“What… what the hell?” Kaden was still startled.

“Ah, I should mention, ALICE is aware of the Atom-3’s surroundings to an extent. Even if you don’t say something while the microphone is on, she might hear it,” Gabriel said. “We don’t understand how either.”

>i am listening very intently, this isn’t necessary to explain

“I figured something like this would happen,” Gabriel said. “Try to overload her senses. Kaden, you might want to cover your ears.”

“Huh?”

A screeching sound echoed throughout the room that pierced Kaden’s hearing. In addition, the group could audibly hear the computer scream in agony.

“What the hell are you doing?!” Kaden tried to shout over the sound. “It sounds like she’s in pain.”

“That’s the point,” Gabriel replied as the screeching sounds stopped. “She doesn’t understand the concept of human relationships, so I doubt she’ll hold this against us. We can’t have her hearing everything that happens in this room for confidentiality’s sake.”

“That doesn’t matter, you’re hurting someone,” Kaden was stubbornly taking an aggressive stance. “Doesn’t that disturb you at all?”

“No, ALICE isn’t a human being. She doesn’t operate on the same principles as you and I. Pain is just a sensation to her sensory programs, her cognitive programs only know that the sensors were disabled.”

“How do you know that?”

“She’s a program.”

“You said she has a soul.”

“We still don’t know what that means.”

>why are you hurting me?

Kaden and Gabriel stood in the room with the Atom-3 stunned. Kaden must have been correct about her ability to feel pain. Gabriel gritted his teeth in contempt as Kaden took another step towards the laptop.

“What’s the push-to-talk key.”

“backtick/tilde.” Gabriel answered.

Kaden held down the key. “Alice, I’m sorry that you’re hurt. We need your help,” He said.

“You can’t ask her for-“

>i’m only supposed to talk to big brother

“That’s you, isn’t it?” Kaden asked.

“Unfortunately, yes,” Gabriel walked up to the laptop as Kaden held the key back down. “You’re permitted to speak with this individual here, his name is Kaden.”

>i knew that already

“Wha- how?” Kaden said.

>lucy told me, just like she told me about big brother

“Lucy… she… when? Where?” Kaden was determined to get answers.

>i helped her save him, back when she fought terminal 29223

“That’s the 6th kaiju, by the way,” Gabriel added. “These terminal numbers correspond to the various DCPs, as well as each tamer. You haven’t ever fully connected with a DCP, so you don’t count, but the mk1 is terminal 29345.”

>what is it you require?

Kaden held down the key once more. “I want to save Lucy.”

>i do not understand

Kaden paused for a moment to rephrase his request. “I want Lucy to wake up. I want to see her alive again. She seems miserable as-is, and I want to help her.”

>lucy is not miserable

“I DON’T CARE!” Kaden shouted. “SHE CAN’T EVEN TALK ANYMORE, HOW CAN YOU LET HER LIVE LIKE THIS?!”

>i don’t understand your anger, isn’t she with you? can you not access her?

“It isn’t about being able to see her. I want her to smile, I want her to be happy. I want to talk with her about schoolwork and have her beat me at rhythm games again. She hasn’t been herself since the first kaiju attack, I…” Kaden paused to wipe a tear from his eyes. “I want her to live. The way she is now, she isn’t alive. Don’t you understand that?”

>is that what it means to be alive?

The room was silent after Kaden’s outburst of emotion and ALICE’s cold quandary. The answer to the question hung throughout the minds of each of the chamber’s inhabitants before Gabriel dared to speak it, forcing Kaden to remove his hands from the keyboard as he himself held down the speak key.

“Yes, Alice. That’s what being alive means.”

>am i alive?

“No.”

>why do you want lucy to be alive then?

“Kaden wants Lucy to be alive so that he can be together with her. He loves her,” Gabriel explained.

“Hey, I never-“

>is that love different from how lucy loves me? can lucy love me if she’s alive?

“Yes, it is different,” Kaden replied. “And… I don’t know.”

>does lucy love me?

Another pause.

“I can’t tell you that, only she can,” Kaden answered.

>then i want lucy to be alive so she can tell me herself

“How can we do that?” Gabriel finally asked the question they can here to answer.

>her core still resides within her body, but her mind is within terminal 29344. they will need to be connected for her to awaken

[ cut ]

“All systems are go! We’re ready to transfer the DCP core back to tamer 7. Are you sure you want to do this?” Dr. Miller turned to Gabriel and Kaden. The three of them were standing outside of the testing room, waiting to pull the trigger.

“We don’t have another option, let’s do this!” Kaden said in reply.

“Agreed,” Gabriel’s pronunciation betrayed much less enthusiasm, but not a lack of it.

“Ready in 3…”

“2…”

“1…”

“0…”

The lights in the laboratory went dark. All of the monitors showed static. The group had no way of seeing into the testing room now. The two Millers sprang up to open the sealed door, but it wouldn’t budge. The facility had shut down.

“What happened?!” Kaden asked.

“I… I don’t know,” Gabriel stared into the room intently, but it was pitch black. The window didn’t let any light inside, only out. His slightly enhanced ears could pick up movement from inside, however. Was Lucy… walking?

Gabriel had his ear to the ground trying to listen for the sound from inside, which inevitably stopped. When he rose from the floor, he looked through the window to see a pair of alien, beautiful crimson eyes staring back at him. All he could see through the darkness was those eyes and the face they barely illuminated. To his horror, he recognized the face.

“Hey Gabriel, you said something about the previous tamers’ souls being inside the 2nd DCP, right?” Kaden asked. “Are you sure that won’t be a problem?”

Gabriel turned towards Kaden, his finger forming a line crossing his lips to signal silence.

“What is it?” Kaden said casually. “Is something wrong?”

Gabriel looked back through the glass, but Lucy was gone, her red pair of eyes with her. The facility’s lights once again flickered to life, revealing the testing chamber and its lack of inhabitants.

“Gabriel, where did Lucy go?” Kaden asked. “What did we do?”

“I… I don’t know what we’ve done,” Gabriel answered. “I just know it isn’t good.”

[ cut ]