The headache was unbearable. I hadn't even opened my eyes yet, but I could feel everything spinning around me.
I wasn't lying on asphalt anymore, surrounded by rubble, screams, flames, and corpses. Instead, I was lying comfortably on a soft mattress. I wished that when I opened my eyes, I'd see that nothing bad had happened, all the recruits were alive, Samurai was sitting somewhere alone, picking his teeth with a toothpick, and the mutants never appeared. Unfortunately, I knew that deceiving myself wouldn't change anything. The only upside to this whole situation was one mutant killed by me. I regretted not killing the laser woman, but I had to settle for just one murder.
I heard someone entering the room.
The steps were light but firm. The scent of perfume wafted in the air. It smelled like blooming cherry blossoms.
"I don't recall having a woman in my apartment," I quipped without opening my eyes.
"If it weren't for command, I wouldn't even touch you with a stick," she retorted, approaching some piece of furniture beside the bed. "Besides, this isn't your apartment, or at least not the one you think it is."
"I had a feeling that the springs suspiciously weren't digging into my ass."
I decided it was finally time to open my eyes. Everything was blurry for a moment, but after yawning, stretching, and rubbing my eyelids, I could finally look around the room.
The black-red room of a high-ranking soldier. Just from the colors, I knew I was on the GC campus. However, I wondered what I was doing in someone else's room with a woman I didn't know. This woman stood by something like a dresser and "unlocked" a vial with at least three infographics warning of the harmfulness of the liquid inside. She held a syringe in her mouth, then placed it in the vial and filled it with the liquid.
"I hope you like syringes," she said.
"And where's the 'won't hurt' part?"
"I'm not a dentist. Not a doctor. Just a regular woman, so it will hurt."
She leaned over me, swiftly finding a vein and piercing it, performing her task incredibly quickly and precisely.
When she stepped back, I could finally look at her. She was a very tall, short-haired blonde. She had rather sharp facial features. From her forehead to the left corner of her mouth, she had a large scar. She wore a black shirt tucked into equally black pants secured with a belt. Frankly, the longer I looked at her, the more masculine she seemed compared to some of the Cleaners. I also felt that for some reason, she was scrutinizing me with her almost yellow eyes.
"I got the impression that sticking a needle in someone's vein is routine for you," I bent my forearm a few times to get rid of the irritating sensation. "And can you tell me what you injected me with?"
"I don't know," she glanced at the vial searching for an answer. "Ask at the medical building, although I doubt you'll get any answers from them."
"Okay... Since that's done, tell me what happened when I passed out."
The woman sighed and moved to the other side of the room, then pushed aside a rather large chair next to the desk and sat down.
"You look at me like I'm a fortune-teller," she glanced from under her brow. "They found you in the middle of the rubble with a bloody face. There was no trace of mutants. The corpse cleaners found a camera near one of the bodies, which, after the owner's death, recorded in rather poor quality what happened at the intersection, but you'll have to talk to the command about it. They're summoning you for a meeting tonight."
"Me? What do they want from a recruit?"
"I don't know everything. You'll find out at twenty."
"As if you know much more than I would expect from someone who gives people injections."
"I told you, I don't do that. You were an exception. And those who give you injections usually know more than all of you, idiot."
After an unpleasant silence, the woman got up and headed for the door.
"Wait..." I stopped her in time. "What's your name?"
"Athena," she replied without turning towards me.
Athena... I thought I had heard that name before, or at least, I heard it during my education, but even in the base, I've heard it a few times. It intrigued me enough that I was ready to check it out.
Clumsily, I rolled out of bed, still feeling dizzy. I was wearing only boxers, so it would be appropriate to put on something suitable for a visit to the archive.
I dragged myself to the wall, which, thanks to a special button, opened to reveal a considerable supply of clothes, and since I didn't expect any major emergencies today, I put on a simple shirt and worn-out pants.
I left the room where I had been lying so far. "404" said the sign next to the door. Of course, it didn't mean anything to me; I never bothered to remember who lived where. The corridor looked quite luxurious. There was a patterned carpet on the floor, and the walls were decorated with various paintings and posters. It looked like war booty that was supposed to adorn this luxurious corridor. Leaving the corridor, you entered a larger open space, mainly glazed, from which you could see a larger part of our base area. I found myself high above the ground, which was a significant change from my last place of residence, and probably for the first time in my career, I visited a part of the building so high up. It made me feel slightly disoriented. It was very different from the dark but even cozy areas of my underground dwelling, and frankly, I felt a strange unease here. At the end of the glass space, somewhere to the left, there was a small reception desk, similar to the one where Nikolai usually sat, but much more modern-looking. Behind the desk sat a constantly smiling woman with an exceptionally empty look in her eyes. Since I left the corridor, I felt her gaze on my back, which, apart from constantly observing my movements, did nothing more. Slightly embarrassed, I approached the reception desk.
"Mr. SV7, welcome to the relaxation area," she blurted out before I could say anything. "Is there anything I can help you with?"
"Er, yes. How do I get to the main military archive?"
"To my right is the elevator. You should go down to the zero floor, then go to the employee canteen, turn right past the cooperation monument, and then go straight until you reach the large doors with the sign 'Archive'." She gestured intensively. "Do you need any more help?"
"No, that's all, thanks."
"I recommend myself for the future." She bowed.
Only when the elevator was out of sight of the receptionist's eyes did I feel relief. Everything there felt so artificial. I felt overwhelmed by the atmosphere, and it was only when I descended to the ground floor that I was slightly relaxed. I also wondered why I was immediately recognized on the floors designated for high-ranking Cleaners, since I hadn't finished my training yet. But remembering the receptionist's gaze, I quickly abandoned those thoughts.
"Where was I supposed to go?" I asked myself, wandering through places, this time quite abundant in people. "Employee canteen?"
With not much experience in navigating floors to explore, I probably looked like a lost child running around a supermarket in search of their parent, except I wasn't crying.
"And who are you?" came an older voice from a small room on the left. "Probably some thief."
"What? No, I'm looking for the canteen," I instinctively lied to the very old man holding a bucket with a mop, which he aimed at me.
"Aha! Probably a beggar! Wants to eat for free! I'll show you!"
The janitor was about to perform his secret mop-sword technique, but he was stopped just in time by a voice from the other end of the corridor.
"Mietek, you old donkey!" Right after the shout, a stout, red-faced woman, well over sixty, ran over, ready to break Mietek's mop over his head. "How dare you address a soldier like that?! Huh? You'd better mop the floor, you old fool!"
Grumbling something under his breath, the janitor limped away to clean the floor somewhere, and the woman turned to me.
"Sorry, dear, the older they get, the dumber they become, that old coot." She smiled widely, patting me on the shoulder. "So, what are you looking for here?"
"The archive."
"All right, come on, I'll show you."
The society of this place was so diverse that I preferred to go with the flow and let myself be led rather than wander or get hit with a wet rag or anything else the older cleaning lady could pull out from under her apron.
It turned out that the way to the archive was neither long nor particularly difficult, contrary to what I might have expected from the receptionist's words from above. As I walked along the wall to avoid stepping on the freshly mopped corridor floor, which had just been cleaned, and as it is known, the greatest crime against a cleaner is to step on a freshly mopped floor, I was forced to listen to some rather uninteresting gossip about people I didn't know. Unfortunately, my question about Athena met with ignorance and further discussions about insignificant people. So when we finally reached the large doors with the almost illegible sign Ar...chive, my joy reached an unprecedented level. However, I had the impression that my traveling companion for the last few minutes was slightly disappointed, as apparently not all her gossiping energy had yet drained out of her, but with a nimble excuse of quickly delivering something to the management, I slipped away from the woman's clutches and with a loud creak of the sizable doors, I found myself inside.
The smell of dust and ubiquitous cobwebs almost drove me out of this place, but I decided that as an adult man, I could walk past a few spiders.
From the inside, the room seemed at least four times larger. Countless shelves, racks, and books, none of which anyone ever read due to the ability to access everything one wanted from the resources of the internet. However, only here could I get information about employees, which was updated and printed on the spot, then stored wherever.
"I've already said, we don't have any fireflies," someone grumbled from behind the counter where a large angle bracket was catching a mosquito.
"Firef... What?"
Clearly thrown off, the person behind the counter first fell to the floor with a mighty crash, and the chair she was sitting on slid somewhere behind one of the shelves, then she almost jumped out from behind the wooden furniture to inspect the new visitor to the library's broken archives.
"Oh! Someone new!"
It turned out that the archive-librarian was a young, about seventeen-year-old girl who clearly lacked company. Given my recent confrontations, I hoped I had finally come across someone relatively normal. Although I myself didn't know what it meant to be normal. The girl was a short, bespectacled individual with hair that lived its own life and stuck out in every possible direction. She had a crooked nose, asymmetrical eyebrows, and almost invisible lips, dressed in a white shirt, black pants, and a tie, which looked very strange.
"Yes, erm, hi. SV7."
"Good day! My name is Mathilda, but some people also know me as 'C4's daughter.'"
C4? The one who died so brutally?
"Oh, I'm sorry for your loss, I know how it feels. And you can call me Seven." It sounded more awkward than I expected.
"So, it's you who killed that mutant! How does it feel? Do you feel like a hero?"
How did I feel? Betrayal had blurred all feelings I experienced. I didn't know what I was supposed to feel.
"It had to be done," I cut off the subject.
"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have asked, you must be here for a reason, so how can I help?"
"I would like to see the list of current employees."
"Coming right up! I'll be back in a minute."
The girl, sitting on a swivel chair, pushed off with her feet from the floor and rode between the shelves.
With a moment to myself, I could look around the room a bit more. It turned out that among the haphazardly arranged books on the shelves, you could find something on almost any topic. There was no alphabetical or genre arrangement, but I managed to come across a few interesting titles from various scientific fields, and even some very old comics. During these few years of training, we stuck to electronic versions of everything we needed to learn from, so no one really checked in here. I don't know if it made sense to maintain this place, but maybe it was just in case of some apocalypse that would destroy all electronic and internet assets, which was not entirely unlikely, but rather unlikely. In addition to typical library props, because I don't know what else to call these relics of the past, there were many items and pieces of furniture that indicated that someone had once used this room. Worn-out armchairs, coffee stains on the table, and even quite crumpled plush bears in a corner that must have been child-friendly. I started to look more closely at this place. Something didn't fit; from the outside, it may have looked typical for our base, but inside it was like a word taken out of context, completely mismatched with the character of this building. I didn't know the history of our base, but considering that mutants haven't existed for centuries, and rather recently, it would mean that the base is built on an already ancient library. In itself, it didn't shock me particularly strongly, but it was quite interesting that our army built itself right here without demolishing the library and still employing someone to look after whether the plaster was not falling off.
I heard the familiar sound of a swivel chair gliding across the floor that hadn't been washed in centuries.
"I found it!" The girl exclaimed joyfully, triumphantly holding up a stack of papers with a considerable number of names spilling out.
This time, however, I was fortunate that the names were assigned to specific positions, which were assigned to floors and so on. Interestingly, women who held high-ranking cleaning positions had their own section called the "Companions in Arms." I quickly scanned the entire sheet three times, finding no one whose name included the word "Athena." So I had to go through all the remaining sheets with possible positions that the mysterious woman could hold.
Unfortunately, sitting for a good hour, during which Mathilda decided to help me halfway through, and we searched together, we couldn't find a trace of anyone resembling her.
"Do you care about her that much?" The tired girl asked, spinning in her chair.
"I don't know... There was just something about her, how to say it... Different? She seemed closer to a soldier than to an ordinary person employed here, and yet I'm sure she's not a soldier."
"If you were a character from the books on these shelves, I would think you fell in love," she said, not calling me "sir" for the first time.
"That's not it. With her, even though we had a rather pleasant conversation, I could sense a hint of something that would cause fear faster than drooling at the sight of her."
"Well, I don't know how else I could help you. But you know, if you saw her once, you'll probably see her again, and then, hehe..." Her eyes lit up. "You can stalk her!"
"Do I look like a desperate man to you?"
"Well, you've walked through the whole building just to find her. If you were motivated enough for that, why wouldn't you stalk her?"
There was some truth in that. After all, I wasn't even sure why I cared so much. Was I intrigued by her? Curious about who she really was? Or something else? Currently, I was relieved of my military duties, so I could either sit in my room staring at the ceiling or conduct this idiotic investigation.
"All right, but you'll help me with this. You'll also look for any information about her."
"With pleasure!" Her eyes lit up again.
Although I usually only stuck with a few people when it came to spending free time, except that most of them were already deceased, Samurai betrayed us, and Nikolai would probably offer to drink inhuman amounts of alcohol, I decided to spend my afternoon with Mathilda this time, who was extremely excited about it. She knew that no one would come to her for help anyway, so she led me to the second floor of the library-archive, opened the very ugly and creaky door, and then showed me the inside of the room. It was quite empty, and above all, very dark. There were many surprisingly good quality mattresses on the floor, from which, although the dust poured out, they still invited you to sink into them. Somewhere in the middle of the room was an old projector, aimed at the ceiling. Decorations resembling space were randomly placed. Small solar systems with missing planets, plastic rockets, a headless astronaut figure, and a very ugly alien, which seemed to be the only one intact, which frankly didn't do the room any good.
With a big smile on her face, the girl led me to the spot next to the projector and then turned to me and pushed me, but she couldn't even knock me off balance.
"Oh, lie down," she sighed.
Somewhat uncertainly, I complied with her request, trying not to choke on the dust that shot out of the mattress I lay on. In the meantime, she closed the door, making it quite dark.
"I don't know if you've ever seen anything like this, but I hope you'll like it."
She approached the projector and turned it on, and with a loud squeak, it started displaying the image.
The cosmos filled the entire room. Small, bright dots sparkled merrily across the width of the room. Rings of Saturn shimmered above the door. Earth rotated in front of me, with a tiny moon nearby. Mighty Jupiter changed its shape slightly, as it was located in the corner of the room. It was beautiful, and in the background, calm music played, giving this place more character. I felt warmth inside myself. It reminded me of a scene from my childhood when I watched something similar. I smiled sincerely.
"It's really beautiful..." I looked at Mathilda, who stood as smiling as I was.
"I know," she said, lying down beside me. "I haven't been here for a long time... At some point, I started thinking too much here and felt bad, but I decided to show it to you."
"It's probably the best thing I've seen in the past few years."
The next few dozen minutes were spent gazing at the night sky and talking about it. It turned out that training as a cleaner brings out such things in a person, and only when you experience something nice again do you feel that specific emptiness that cannot be described.
Mathilda was a really pleasant companion, and despite her frequent, overly long digressions, I considered the time spent with her successful.
Unfortunately, our pleasant time was interrupted when the door to the room was loudly opened.
"SV7?" The man in uniform stood at attention.
"Yes." I got up from the mattress.
"You'll come with me for a meeting with the command."
"Now? It was supposed to be at eight."
"It doesn't matter, please follow me."
Well, you don't argue with orders. I obediently got up, thanked Mathilda, and followed the soldier.
We returned by a similar route compared to the one I came here, but this time no one stopped us along the way. The soldier himself wasn't high-ranking, I wasn't sure who he was, but I had a feeling that he was exactly what I thought. He wasn't particularly talkative either, walking with a poker face, staring ahead, and his movements were so mechanical that at one point I wanted to ask him if he wasn't a prototype of a combat android, but if he turned out to be someone important, which was unlikely, I preferred not to say anything stupid.
He didn't inform me where exactly we were heading, but I guessed it was the northern quarters, where the command often had its meetings. It was a few hundred meters from the exit of the building I was currently in, which was also referred to as the western quarters.
The soldier waved his badge in front of the sensor, and the doors opened wide almost immediately. It was afternoon, so a rush of hot air hit me, making me realize how much of a technological miracle air conditioning was.
Outside the building was empty, with two soldiers waiting at a few entrance steps, who stood at attention when they saw us approaching.
"I feel like some big shot," I remarked, looking at the serious faces of the cleaners.
But no one replied, and I continued to follow my guide. He led me to a large room. As soon as we crossed the threshold, I saw five cleaners, interestingly, including two women, dressed very formally, waiting for me on a platform. The whole room, except for the platform, was shrouded in darkness. I felt a bit like in a theater here. My traveling companion just nodded to the command standing several dozen meters away, then left, closing the door behind him.
"Approach, Genetic Cleaner!" The one standing in the middle called out with a booming voice.
Without hesitation, I took a few steps forward and stood at attention.
"At ease," the woman on the right nodded.
It felt strange to look at a woman in our ranks and in such a high position. Normally, women weren't accepted, yet two were in the command, and I couldn't see the rest of the figures.
"Choose a name for yourself."
"What?" I asked, bewildered. "What name? I haven't even finished training, let alone been promoted to a guard."
"You have earned the title of a guard. Especially since one you knew, Guard Samuel, is dead."
It still didn't sink in.
"Why me? Surely there are more people who deserve this title."
"You killed a mutant, exposed a traitor... In short, where others failed, you fulfilled your mission and came back in one piece. Choose a name, Guard."
"I... Seven."
"Seven! Congratulations on your promotion to Guard. We expect you to fulfill your duties conscientiously and achieve further success. Any questions?"
"What about my underground apartment?"
"From now on, the apartment where you woke up today is yours, it belonged to Samuel, take care of it."
"And who was the woman who gave me the medicine and visited me?"
"We don't know what you're talking about."
"But..."
"No. We don't.," he extinguished my question like a fading flame.
"Yes, sir."
There was no point in arguing. From now on, I had new duties and tasks to fulfill.