Deadlock Pt. 3

Seven years ago, Nelia disappeared. Since then, I've used every tool at my disposal to find her—scouring the internet, asking around, even joining the High Order as a soldier just to access their internal network. But no matter how hard I searched, her name never appeared.

That's the strange part. Everyone in New Olympos has a file—even me. It doesn't make sense that there's no information on Nelia, especially when it's common knowledge that our father had two children.

Despite that, I've clung to hope, largely because of one lead I've been holding onto. I pulled up a file containing details on a specific individual. Back then, Nelia often brought home a close friend of hers: Judan. The files here confirmed what I already knew—Judan Ayana, codename: Holiday, the current captain of the Athenian squad, Calypso.

There's no doubt in my mind that Nelia had some kind of connection to the Calypso squad, but I haven't been able to figure out exactly what it was. Did she work for the High Order? Was she part of Calypso? Or was she just an associate? And if she really is alive... then is she with them now?

These questions have haunted me for years, and I've never been able to find a clear answer. But, with some luck, maybe today will be different.

Suddenly, a couple of knocks came from my door. I immediately minimized every tab I had except for a funny gaming video on Newtube.

"Sol?" Mother called out from the other side.

"Come in."

Mother opened the door with a glass of water in her hand.

"Thought you might need a glass since you didn't grab one on the way in," she smiled. "Don't tell me you're forgetting to hydrate at work as well. You need it, especially as a soldier."

"Don't worry, Mother. I won't forget something as simple as that. Thank you."

"Mhm. What are you watching?"

"Oh, this? Just a gaming video of a pretty popular streamer playing with his friends. It's pretty funny."

"Gosh, is this what you kids do nowadays? Why don't you play the game yourself instead of watching someone else play?"

"It's not the same. I don't really know how to explain it."

"Hah. Well, I'll leave you to it."

With that, she left to attend to her cooking. Sometimes, I'm scared that what I do will get Mother in trouble somehow. If it comes out that I, her son, am a defect, then what would happen to her? Unfortunately, I can't stop—not yet. This is something I have to do.

I opened up all of my tabs again. Now, it's time to get to work.

My target for today is a place called Echelon Intelligence Agency. It was one of the locations I had marked as being an undercover databank for the High Order.

I don't claim to be the best hacker in the world. Most of my endeavors involve penetrating servers and malware injections, which is what I'm doing now. In the end, they always get taken care of relatively quickly. Nonetheless, I was able to get my hands on some trash info.

"Project: Augmentation, Project: Ajax, Project: Hippocampus... Hah..." I sighed. "Useless. Hm...?"

Within the traffic of information, my eyes caught onto a rogue file.

"Project... Regulus?"

Suddenly, a sharp burst of pain erupted in my head. My vision went blank, and I saw... something. Like always, there was fire... a lot of fire... but there was something else. Soldiers... burning. They're wearing the army's standard uniform. In my hand was a blazing sword. Did I... cause this...?

"Sol!"

At the sound of Mother's voice, I snapped back into reality. I found myself on the floor with Mother next to me, her hand on my back.

"Are you alright?" she asked.

"Y-yeah... I think."

With her help, I stood back and leaned back on my chair, gasping for what little air I could take.

"Your episodes are getting worse," she said. "Are you sure you don't need to go to the doctor?"

"I'm fine. I just... need to shut my eyes for a bit."

"...Okay. If you need anything, call for me."

"I will. Thanks, Mother."

When she left the room, I reached my hand out as far as I could. Over the past seven years, I've been having these... visions. Every time it happens, I'm left questioning what I just saw. Normally, I'd wake up with no clear image, only the feeling I had felt. But every so often, I can recall what I'd seen. This time was no different.

The Tower of Babel... was on fire.

Suddenly, all three monitors of my computer went blank, as if they had been forcibly shut down.

"What...?"

There's no way. These three monitors are connected to three different virtual machines, independent of each other. For all of them to get taken down at the same time is near-impossible, especially when they all have different operating systems and firewalls.

Just then, a new window appeared on the black screen, confusing me. It rang like a phone would, and on it were two buttons: accept and decline.

An incoming call? Should I accept it? Even as I asked myself that, I was already moving my hands. I plugged in my headphones, readied my mic, and clicked the accept button.

"Ah~! Hello there, love!" a girl's voice exclaimed joyfully. She sounds... young, and the voice is too crisp for it to be a voice changer.

"Who is this?" I asked.

"Whoa there. Asking me to reveal my identity? As a fellow hacker, you should know why that's considered taboo."

Oh, right. I was hacking into Echelon. I had completely forgotten after collapsing.

"It's the only plausible question to this sudden call, don't you think?"

"Heh, maybe so. Well, rest easy. This is a secured line that not even the best hacker in the city can break into, and that's me, by the way."

This is strange. I've been counter-hacked a couple of times in the past, but never have they initiated a call like this. Using an unidentified program, no less... Whoever this girl is, she's a pro.

"What did you do to my computer?" I asked.

"Oh, nothing much," she replied. "I just manually took control of your PC and stole the files you were looking into at Echelon. Oh? Am I seeing some files hidden deep within the hard drive? Come on, kid. You can do a better job at hiding something as sensitive as this."

I thought I paid extra attention to hiding those files, but it seems it was all for naught. Within seconds, all my hard work over the past couple of years—gone in an instant. I guess that's the price of dabbling in the shadow network.

"Hah," I scoffed, completely flabbergasted.

"Don't feel so bad, love," the girl said. "It was unfortunate that we happened to be looking at the same place."

"I guess so. Then, since I've lost everything, why don't you tell me what you're planning on doing with all that information?"

"Hm... Well, I guess there's no harm in telling you since you wouldn't be able to do anything about it anyway."

A new window popped up on my screen, and I nearly let out an audible yelp. The shock hit me hard, but I swallowed it down, forcing myself to stay composed. It wasn’t easy at all.

Staring back at me through the feed was a small girl with bright cyan hair cascading to her shoulders, a loose ponytail resting over her left side. She smiled widely, her blue eyes gleaming with an unsettling cheerfulness. The most polarizing thing... was the gleaming pair of hollowed diamonds embedded within those eyes.

"Hello, love!" she grinned with an exaggerated wink. "They called me a lot of weird names back then like 'snobby bitch,' or 'arrogant slut,' but I prefer to go by Astrid."