Shattered Illusions Part 4

My sisters did not hear the comms, but they immediately understood what had happened following my panicked call outs and distress. What followed was a moment of deafening silence.

Words were not spoken but we still were communicating, as they immediately predicted my next move

“Nii-chan, hold on….” But I ignored it, quickly dashing past them as I sprinted out of the door

“Nii-chan!” I heard Mai screaming out to me as I found myself in the cold night street, as I picked up the pace

I was completely on auto-pilot as I ran down the streets avoiding the many crowds in my way, while her haunting words returned back to me

“HELP ME…..JUN!” No….I won’t let it happen again. Get….out…of ... .my…head.

On the way, I managed to trip and fall onto the ground after I collided with a random passerby, causing my glasses to drop. The man also happened to fall with me and was looking at me from the ground….like how her lifeless eyes looked at me after she…..No!.... I forced myself onto my feet, grabbing my glasses in the process and accelerated back to full speed

It won’t be like that this time…

I ran all the way without paying any mind to my stamina bar, but as my destination was in sight, my heart started to cramp up as I had depleted it all during my mad dash. Inching myself towards the door, one step at a time, I dug in my inventory and got an SP potion, which I immediately used and smashed the vial on the floor.

Getting a bit of my stamina back, I crashed onto his door frame and started knocking violently.

“YAMORI-SENPAI….. IT’S AN EMERGENCY…AKIO….he’s…..HE’S IN TROUBLE.….”

But as I was knocking at his door, I felt a slight resistance on my foot. Something was puddling under my left shoe, and I took a step back for a second, my foot slipped under a direct ray of night light from the Sphere above to reveal my shoe to be covered in red.

“Blood?” I immediately armed myself with my pistol and moved back towards the door frame

“Senpai?” I moved my free hand towards the lock to find it flimsy. The lock was broken just like the last time I visited and without any effort, I was able to turn the handle and open the door slowly, as I observed around for any dangers. However, the moment I opened the door half way, I saw a scene of nightmares.

The moment my eyes saw it, my sense of self-preservation left me as I ran to the scene of the two bodies in the middle of the room

“Oh no….oh no…oh shit…. AKIO!”

He was lying in a pool of blood, gasping for breath while spasming like he was in a lot of pain.

“I’m here, I’m here…. I got you. Just stay with me” I turned over my left hand to check the condition of his health bar. He didn’t have much time.

HP vial!..... I acted quick and got an HP vial out of my inventory. I tried to have him drink it but he was just regurgitating it up. And all of a sudden, his veins turned black and his screams started to echo around the room. He grabbed me by my clothes and looked me in the eye, it's as if he wanted to tell me something but his heavy breaths and pain was keeping him from it.

“Shit….SHIT!” I need to do something, I need to….. “I’m not going to let you die on me”

What can I do?

“Nii-chan!” I heard an all too familiar call-out to me from outside, and appeared my sisters and Lawrence-san from the door

“Oh my god!”

“What the hell happened here?” asked Lawrence-san

“GUYS! I NEED HELP, Akio… he’s”

Lawrence-san swiftly approached me. “I got him….”

But peculiarly, he paused for a second as he saw Akio’s face

“What’s happening to him?” Lawrence-san asked me

“I don’t know…. He was like this when I found him…. He doesn’t have much time….”

“GIVE ME SOME SPACE”

We all took a couple of steps back, letting Lawrence-san to try and help him. I looked at my hands which were drenched in blood, and the nightmare of me in the same situation in front of Misha’s body flashed into my head at that very moment.

“Holy shit” Lawrence-san said suddenly

“What’s wrong?” I inquired

“His breathing and heart rate is through the roof” He quickly performed another couple of checks on him and appeared clueless “He’s going into neurogenic shock”

All of a sudden, Akio had another episode where his veins darken and he screamed his lungs out. Lawrence-san held him down until he settled down, but I could see his hands shaking as he let him go.

“His leg wound isn’t bleeding then…how is going into shock?” Lawrence-san iterated

“Wait, if this blood isn’t his, then?”

In my panic, I completely missed checking the body beside him… And there he lied with a machete lodged on the side of his neck.

“Oh no…. Senpai…. SENPAI!”

I didn’t have to do too much to realize that he was dead as if the pool of blood that reached to the outside of the door wasn’t a dead giveaway. His eyelids were open but one of his eyes was punctured, indicating that he had gotten himself into a struggle with someone. As I blinked, my mind played tricks on me yet again as it made me see Misha’s body in his place once again.

I shook it off and extended my hand towards his face and closed his eyelids.

I looked around from my position to get an idea of what had happened, but all I could see was a wide open passage behind his office. I got back up to check up on Lawrence-san and Akio

“How is he?”

Lawrence-san froze for a second.

“Lawrence-san!”

“There’s nothing I can do”

Now I froze in disbelief “What?”

“I can’t…. None of this makes sense, his episodes of agony, the diagnosis…. Neither HP vials nor my own remedies are working and….”

I grabbed him by the collar “Don’t give me that…. You said you always get the job done….I’m begging you to do it one more time….. Please…. Save my friend.”

Lawrence-san looked at me with an aura of seriousness and concern, as I let go of him.

“I can’t figure out what’s wrong with him here, but I might be able to back at the house”

“WHAT?” I said

“I got no proper tools here, but I do in my room. He won’t last long enough for me to get what I need and return, so we need to move him immediately” He looks at the knocked out but still struggling Akio

“I gave him something to dull the pain along with a strong sedative, but he is still losing health… we need to get him back now”

Our house isn’t exactly next door from here, but Night Rules are still not in effect….. We had no choice

“Jun-kun, I need your help to carry him…”

“No” I interjected on Lawrence-san as I had a plan of my own

“Meguru…. You help carry Akio. Mai, you are their lookout…. The alleys are the fastest way to get back..... guide them through and quickly take care of anyone who gets any ideas. Meguru, if he wakes up, knock him back out before he starts screaming”

“What about you, Nii?” Mai asked

I looked around the room and at that open part of the wall behind the desk “I’m going to find out what happened here.”

“Are you out of your mind? You don’t know what’s down there… or who’s down there.”

“If I wait, whoever is responsible for this could get away…. All this happened fairly recently, so they have to be close.”

“Nii-chan….”

“There isn’t any time, Mai…. I’ll be fine… I’ll be careful. Just help save Akio….. We are not going to bury another one of us ever again, not until I’m still around” I told her

“Mai-chan! We need to go”

I turned around but she grabbed my arm “Please…. Stay safe…. I’ll be back as soon as I can”

I gave her a nod of approval before they left me. I took a deep breath and checked my rifle and equipped my sidearm, as I proceeded to clear the building

I moved away from Senpai’s body and moved towards the hard right, towards the door that led to the holding cells. I kept my head away from the glass window on the door which I could look through and reached out to the door handle. When I realized that it was locked tight, I peeked my head through the barred window to notice the cells empty…. Which I found weird for an active precinct.

Timing my footsteps equally, I moved further inwards, taking cover behind the opening, where I was able to get a look at what was inside without exposing myself. What lied was a flight of stone stairs that led to a basement of some sort. Turning to my side, I descended the stairs slowly, and on my way, I noticed a snapped wire….. I crouched to observe it and I noticed that it was covered in skin and blood.

I proceeded further downwards only to come face to face with a massive metal door. The lever lock on it was unlocked, however it proved to be extremely heavy after I attempted to push it open.

There was no way I was getting past this without making a lot of noise. I leaned on the door and used my shoulder to power it through, causing it to screech loudly on the stone floor below it. I slowly opened the door, clearing every corner I saw in case someone was waiting to pounce on me and after I made it through the door, I was met with a corridor of prison cells.

The area of wide open so I quickly put my sidearm away in favor of my AR, but I started to hear a whisper up ahead, one that was getting louder and clear the closer I got

“no….No, it’s still too soon…. You bastard! Where is he? WHAT DID YOU DO TO HIM?”

I quickened my pace towards the voice, still keeping my gun up in case it’s a trap.

“ANSWER ME YOU HACK!” the rage-filled voice was followed by the sound of a metallic rattle, and I could’ve sworn I’ve heard that voice before

The voice was coming from a cell, I slowed my approach as I was getting closer to it

“Who’s there?” I demanded

“That voice…. You are not him..”

I turned towards the cell. There he was, restrained by his arms and legs on what looked like a vertically placed metal table.

“Riley” I said, still having my gun trained at him

“Kanie….. Wait, where is he?... Never mind that…. Akio…. Where’s Akio?”

“He’s safe ... .What's it to-” I lowered my aim for the moment

“Oh, thank god…. Son of a bitch made it…. Please, now help me out of this”

I lifted my gun at him again “You are not going anywhere until you tell me what is going on here. And don’t you dare fucking lie to me”

“What? Didn’t Akio tell you anything….”

“He’s out cold, Riley….. He was left dying in front of this place along with Sen…. Along with the Sheriff”

“THE SHERIFF…. Where is he?”

“He…..”

“PLEASE… Tell me he is dead. Tell me that Nishigaki is dead!”

I was brought to a silence after he said that, as my rage flared up as I heard him ask that

“So that was your plan? To kill the Sheriff…. Is that what the bloodbath out there is?”

“After all he has done, how could not want that?…. Wait….. you still don’t know do you?”

“Huh?”

“It was him…that damn poser of a Sheriff…. He’s the one who did all this. He tortured all he brought into this place for weeks until his experiments finally killed them.”

“Don’t bullshit me, Riley”

“Look around you, mate….. Who’s building are we in right now?”

“No”

“It’s his basement, all of the things in here, it’s his own”

I stopped pointing my gun at his and started to pace in the opposite direction trying to process my thoughts “Maybe he had someone who was working for him…..”

“Yeah, he did… He had many people who he showed this to, and he did to them what he did to us…. I saw Nishigaki kill many people in front of my own eyes… Women, children… he stopped at nothing in his pursuit of…..as he called it….. knowledge”

“SHUT UP!” I turned around and shot the ground beside him to intimidate him “I know what you are trying to do…. You are trying to get into my head, just like you did before….. but it’s not going to work. I’ve known that man for years…. We went through hell together and when I fell, he didn’t…… Experiments? Knowledge? That isn’t him. That never could be”

Jayden took a moment to catch his breath and leaned forward as much as he could….. “Then you didn’t know him at all….. And I’ll tell you what I told Akio. I knew exactly what I did back then, and I’d do it again if I had to. Look at me…. I’ve been locked in this hell hole for god knows how long…. Do I really look like I’m in a state to lie to you?”

He pulled himself back again and sighed “You know what, screw this….I can tell with one look at your face you are still not willing to believe me….. You want to know the truth, see it for yourself” he nodded towards my left.

I looked towards where he gestured to see another metal door just like the one checked at the holding cells in the precinct

“That door has a finger scanner with a keypad under it…. Akio deduced the code to be 8129. I don’t know if that works but it was a date, January 8th 2029. You got three tries before the wire trap triggers so, best you be ready for that”

I looked back at Jayden “You…. stay put”

“Does it look like I have a choice?”

I ignored his comment and moved further in, rifle at the ready. I didn’t buy a word of it….. All I’ve seen so far are a bunch of holding cells, which doesn’t prove a word of what he said. Yamori-senpai torturing people to death? How dumb does he think I am.

I checked both branching routes at the end of the corridor to see if there were any surprises lying in wait for me but there were none, allowing me to approach the door lock. I put away my rifle and reached out my hand to it but I hesitated

Could this be a trap? What if I try to bring out the keypad and the trap triggers….. No, but it doesn’t make any sense. There is no one in this room except Jayden… and even if a trap springs and I die, it doesn’t guarantee him a way out…. He knows I’m not alone and if the others walk in on my body, he knows that he is not going to live for another second after that.

With utmost caution, I extended my arm towards the finger scanner and shook it after holding it from the edges, to see if it revealed a keypad. And after I was able to swipe the scanner towards the left, a keypad did emerge from under it. Distancing my body from it as much as I could, I entered the code he told me digit after digit. 8….1….2, but as I touched the 9 key, I jumped back to see if it triggered a trap…. But it didn’t.

Instead, I heard the lock disengage, waiting for me to pull on the lever . I equipped my sidearm and pulled on the lever, and pushed the door in while making sure my gun barrel doesn’t extend through the door as I was clearing every possible angle.

I took a couple of seconds from outside the door to take in what was inside, as it was a very dark room with only a few lit braziers for lighting.

“Wish I had a pair of NVGs right now.” I told to myself as I dug through the list on my inventory

After a moment, I took out my flashlight from my inventory and held it on my other hand under my sidearm. And I entered the room.

I kept looking left to right as I moved through the massive room, pointing my light beam at all the dark corners I came across.

What I saw were crates and barrels with tubes going out of them, lining the walls leading into god knows where. I stepped towards the barrel close to me and pointed my light at it. And after beaming around in the dark, I managed to spot a corrosive symbol with the letters HF on it.

“HF? Hydrofluoric Acid?....Nah, can’t be”

I left the barrel and pushed forward towards the center of the room where it was clearly lit. In the center, there were three chairs with metal restraints on them. I took a closer look at them.

The chairs were polished to a shine, however the ground around it told a different story, with splatters of dried blood. But what caught my attention as I moved my flashlight up from the floor was a moving metal table. It was stocked with saws, hammers, blades and the lower compartment was stocked with a beaker of transparent liquid and syringes with who knows what in them.

I picked up a loose bit of cobblestone from the ground next to me and placed it in the beaker, only to see it bubble and shrink slowly… It was definitely acid.

“Atomic code generation….Just what has Sacchan put us into”

But as I looked around from there, I noticed that there had been some sort of an incident on the left side as I see a few items having toppled from a shelf. But as I was trying to move towards it, my light picked up a trail of blood, which once I shined the light ahead, seemed to have come from the shelves that caught my attention and seemed to be moving towards the right side from around the mid, lit area.

I followed the blood trail to the opposite side of where the shelves were and it led me to a bloody handprint on what looked like an oddly shaped pillar from where I was standing. As I got closer, I felt something touching me in the face.

I twitched by reflex and took a step back to see what it was, and it looked like a pull switch. I observed a switch just in case I don’t get home alone’d, and after I saw that it wasn’t rigged, I pulled the switch, which caused the braziers in the area to light up with a loud whoosh and crackle. But it was at that moment that the saying ‘ignorance is bliss’ showed its meaning.

“What…..the hell?”

As the room lit up, I had an eyeful of the horrors that stood in front of me. The bloody hand print was in fact not on a pillar, but on the lid of a half closed Iron Maiden… a chamber of spikes that was used for torture and execution. This side of the room had been acting like a storage room for all kind of inhuman torture apparatuses. A large wooden palette, shaped to be able to hold pieces of the large rock tower that laid beside it…. a doored vertical vessel with unlabeled gas cylinders attached to it, a similar horizontal vessel shaped like bull with a fire pit under it, and the glimpses of the top of a guillotine on that tall stage above me.

A regular person would not know about most of these, but unfortunately, I was made to study most of these extensively back in the day. After seeing this, Jayden’s words started to seep into my mind again and all I could do was clutch my arms and deny my eyes as my mind started to go into horrific places.

“No, no, no. It can’t be him, he would never….. You know it isn’t true Jun, you’ve known him for ages…. Yeah, you know him better than most others. There has to be an explanation, something that proves it wasn’t him…. I just have to keep looking… I must keep looking” the whispers I told myself were the only thing that was keeping me from falling apart right now. I didn’t want to even consider the possibility.

….I need to find it, what will prove all of this. That Yamori-senpai is innocent.

<<Innocence…Innocence…..Innocence>>

That word was spoken to me in whispers in the back of my head, and as I grew more driven to prove it, the whispers started to fade into nothingness.

I returned back to the other side of the room where there had been a struggle, to notice a flash that had been shattered. The pattern on how the glass has dispersed suggests that it wasn’t shattered on impact with the floor, but that it was thrown at something…..or someone.

I took a gamble and rubbed some of the contents on the floor on my finger, carefully avoiding the shards of glass. It didn’t burn so it wasn’t acidic, so I decided to give it a whiff.

“Acetone” I deduced

I left the shattered flask and moved to deduce the contents of the crates I saw next to the barrels when I came in, but that is when I noticed that some were wooden, and some were metal. I pulled open the metal crates, only to find rows of opaque and colored containers, all labeled with chemical formulas.

…. How the fuck is this even possible….. simulating real-life chemistry, and why?

I put the containers back where I found them in the crate and then moved to deduce what is in the metal ones…. And there were a lot of metal crates tucked away in this one spot. These crates were much smaller and could be opened from the top like the trunk of a car. I opened the crate and it contained dozens and dozens of small vials filled with a purple concoction, and as I observed the top lid, I noticed that crates were labeled

“Abyss Venom batch 60?”

I took one vial and opened it up, reluctantly putting my nose in front of it, and it was odorless. I poured it on the lid of the metal crate and it didn’t corrode, so it wasn’t an acid…..

What the hell is this? And why are there a whole lot of them?

I returned the vial and closed the crate…. Still no closer to any answers.

I’m still trying to wrap my head around why Senpai would have all this….. I can understand the chemicals but…. why does a law-bringer have a basement full of torture equipment?

For re-enactment? But these are not apparatuses that regular people have access to…..

For all my questions, I looked towards the next door for answers.

I approached the door with my sidearm out just to be on the safe side and performed a textbook breach and clear. I moved into the much smaller room, checking every corner until I was sure that I was in the clear. I put my gun away, and restarted my investigation

Stone walls and floors, just like the rest of this place. Massive PC at one end and a desk of lab equipment beside it, while a table of tools lay on the opposite side. Once again, it was also graced with the presence of restraining chairs and one of those vertically hoisted table-like things that Jayden was restrained onto, as well as the chemical crates from where I came from. But unlike the room before, there was one difference with one of the chairs…..There was someone strapped onto it.

I knew at a glance that he was dead, his upper body was exposed just like Akio and Jayden was, allowing me to clearly see that he was pale as snow. I cautiously approached the body and placed my hand on his shoulder and pushed him back upright.

“Oh…. shit” The sight of the darkened blood seeping out of his eyes and mouth shocked me. It was just like what Sacchan showed us on the first day, about what had happened to the people who had died in-game.

…..Who was this guy? Was he a criminal?..... Did Senpai…..

I was backing up as my thoughts were racing, and my foot managed to get caught on a bucket. I stepped further back trying to get it off, and ended up bumping on the table where the towering PC lay. The PC table lit up and the three large displays came to life. I turned around in reaction to it, and managed to see…myself?

I looked towards the direction where the POV on the monitor was showing me, and I was in the line of sight video camera set up in the closest corner of the room from where I was standing. The one thing that had caught my attention was that the current video had been running a couple of hours now. I stopped the video and started it back at the beginning.

Senpai was staring back at me from the middle of the room, pointing at a remote, making it clear that it was indeed him that started the recording….. and another figure presented himself in frame as soon as Senpai started moving to the side.

“Akio?” I muttered

He was restrained onto that very same chair next to the dead body, and he looked…. exhausted. Yamori-senpai moved towards him and grabbed him by the face.

“Guess you are in luck, Nakamura-san….. You get to live for just a couple more minutes.”

What?

“Hey, Nishigaki-san” I heard Akio’s voice after quite some time.

“Hm?”

“Remember that promise I made to you? About who my next kill was going to be?.... Time for me to deliver”

I couldn’t see exactly what was happening at the moment, as the angle I was watching from didn’t catch it clearly, but all I saw the next moment was Senpai struggling, and….. did the veins on his arms just turn red?

“What did you do to me? You son of a bitch”

Senpai was infuriated, but Akio ran at him the next moment and slashed him with what looked like a knife….. But it wasn’t his gear. What followed was a violent struggle…. Senpai’s eye got slashed and both of them moved off frame. I closed the video as it was too much to process.

This doesn’t make any sense….. Senpai said he knew where Akio was…..why didn’t he. And that promise….. Did Akio kill Senpai?

But that still makes no sense, why didn’t he use his weapon…. That blade he used was clearly Rel bought, how did it break through Senpai’s shields?

The more answers I got, the more afraid I became…… and I knew all the answers I needed were in this computer. But the bigger question was that was I ready to face the truth?

Ever since that first incident all the way back, I’ve always looked up to and relied on Senpai, and it was because of him introducing me to CG, I learned to regain back my lost confidence…. To trust my decisions and learn from the outcomes. Ever since we fell into this death game, it didn’t take me long to realize I had relapsed….. I first looked upon Misha, and after I saw what she was becoming, I looked upon Senpai…… I was afraid of what I might find if I looked deeper.

<<Innocence…Innocence…..Innocence>>

The whispers started blaring in my head once again, but this time it was loud enough to deafen me. I clutched my ears trying to get it to drown out. And as I turned around and opened my eyes, the dead body in front of me had turned into Misha’s lifeless eyes looking back at me.

I couldn’t live in ignorance anymore and I couldn’t let my cowardice take over me anymore. I did that to her and I am paying the price…… I will not let that happen again. I will fall victim to regret ever again.

As the voices drowned out, I pushed myself to explore the contents on his PC…. I didn’t have the slightest clue on what I would find, but even there was nothing… I’d be able to carry on with my life with no lingering regrets.

Unlike my PC back in the real world, Senpai’s one here was very well organized…. Every folder was labeled and it was all on his desktop without any security measures whatsoever….. Guess he was that confident in his security

I opened his cases folder and it expanded into a list that went on forever and ever. Guess he really was taking his job seriously.

His profiles folder consisted of an even bigger list, as he looked to have one on almost everyone in Helios….. No wonder he was a black spot for the Broker, he had all the information he ever needed in here.

However what caught my attention was the folder that said personal logs, separated from the other folders as it was in the bottom end of the spacious desktop.

I opened the folder to find video logs with different titles…. Pain perception, Healing rate limit tests, personal psychological evaluations….for lettered subjects, Abyss Venom…. There was that name again……”

“Special Study…. Subject Prime/Nakamura. A”

The moment I saw that folder I had to see its contents, and inside was dated logs going back…weeks? Wait, this was the day after Akio ran away.

My hand shook as I reached out to open the first log, but I fought my hesitation…fought the voice in my head that was getting loud to the point I felt like it was ripping my brain apart as I decided that I would rather suffer the repercussions of the truth rather than find momentary joy in living in a lie.