Chapter 56: The Abandoned Facility (２)

****

Lee Seah let out a sigh.

The Foundation never lets a large-scale facility like this simply collapse. This facility was abandoned. Deliberately, to achieve some purpose.

It was hard to believe it had been broken by external force. She couldn’t tell why it had been destroyed, but… even if she asked headquarters, they wouldn’t give her a straight answer.

In the end.

If you want to know, you have to go inside.

****

At the center of the Garden, there was no World Tree, no nameless god, no Gardener. Only a half-shattered Foundation facility.

The sound of the monster’s footsteps continued.

Past the corridor we had our gun barrels aimed at, the creature slowly passed by. A hideous shape formed from the fusion of multiple corpses.

I took care not to make a sound, training my muzzle on the monster’s head area.

Well… the part with the most heads attached.

Was that thing a work of the Garden, or a monster born from the Foundation facility malfunctioning?

Probably the latter.

The Garden, from everything we’d seen so far, only created perfect and beautiful organisms.

“Krrriiiiiiiii…”

A horrible sight, and a horrible sound.

Even seeing it only in black and white through the night-vision goggles, bile rose in my throat. My fingertip on the trigger tensed on its own…

I don’t know who fired first.

What I know for certain is that my finger reacted before my head did. We all opened fire at once, and the monster was reduced to a pulp of blood in seconds under the hail of lead.

I wiped blood off the lens of my gas mask.

“Let’s keep moving.”

There was too much we needed to find out. What was this facility even doing? How had the monsters come to be, and why were they so degraded?

Perhaps this facility had been abandoned for far longer than five years.

Stalactites and stalagmites don’t form overnight. Judging by the cave formations growing out of the concrete, this place had been abandoned for at least several decades.

That made things add up, then.

The Foundation not explaining things properly, the mad Foundation employee who lived in the cabin, the Foundation downplaying information about the Garden.

[I’ll take point.]

We advanced slowly through the dark building. We had no idea what might come out of where. No matter how good our night-vision was, our situational awareness was ultimately limited.

The Foundation-issue combat boots made surprisingly little noise with each step. I couldn’t quite figure out why.

I checked my observation equipment for a moment. No spatial distortion, no radiation, reality density fluctuations… were still at a negligible level.

Not good.

“Dr. Chae.”

Last time, when I’d asked in front of the oversized containment cell, she’d said she came from a defense contractor. She handled weapons skillfully, and her movements were anything but ordinary.

Whether that was a lie, I couldn’t tell.

[Yes?]

“Something just occurred to me. You remember saying there was no evidence that the walking flowers were made from people, right?”

[That’s correct.]

“What if it’s the reverse?”

[Uh…]

Dr. Chae didn’t answer right away.

“Rather than the Garden making plants from people, it makes people from plants. Regardless of molecular-biological evidence, the end result might not be all that different.”

[Something ahead. Take cover.]

Back into combat stance.

I loaded my weapon and waited along the corridor. But what was she seeing?

[I just heard the sound of a weapon being loaded. There are no Foundation personnel in this area. I’m moving on the assumption of a firefight with an equal-tier enemy.]

If I’d known… I should have brought something other than a shotgun. I swapped the tubular magazine for slug rounds with steel cores.

“Staying still is dangerous too.”

The darkness of the labyrinth only deepened.

If I were a Gardener, and I wanted to kill the intruders who’d entered this abandoned facility… what would I do? What strategy would I devise?

A facility that once housed five thousand people. Assuming you’re fighting humans, defending the outer walls is nothing but a hassle—and there’s no reason to do it, either.

This is their home ground.

Putting myself in their shoes, the deeper you fight in the labyrinth, the more advantageous it is. But they might also want to protect something inside the maze.

The enemy will have built a defensive line somewhere suitable in the labyrinth. If the opponent is human, it’ll basically be a defense line of sandbags and guns. Can’t know for sure yet, though.

[We’ve arrived.]

The facility’s core.

The heavy iron door was rusted from seeping water, the surrounding concrete damaged and slightly warped, and the locking mechanism was broken.

The iron door simply opened.

“Hold on a moment.”

I couldn’t stand it. I raised my night-vision goggles, switched on my flashlight, and looked down the corridor. No, what the hell is this thing supposed to be?

“Ugh.”

Thousands, tens of thousands of eyeballs stared back at me. Tens of thousands of bloodshot eyeballs, growing on plants like grapes on a vine.

****

Suppressing my nausea, I put one eyeball into the sample container I’d brought. Will human DNA come out of this specimen, or won’t it?

Probably won’t.

[Dr. Geum, what do you think is the reason this facility was abandoned? I’ve never heard of a major Foundation facility collapsing before.]

“I think it’s as that natural said. I don’t know the details, but the Garden is probably calling people deeper into the forest.”

[Do you think it’s a good idea to contract with the Garden’s master? Isn’t it dangerous?]

“If it comes down to it, we kill it.”

It’d be nice if we could repair or restore this facility. That’s probably unrealistic, though, right?

****

Groups of Interest are the enemies of humanity.

[As grotesque as it is, it looks like we’ve found the path to the eye of the storm. Moving forward.]

A silver lining, if there is one.

If anyone actually lived in this godforsaken place, I doubt they’d have enough sanity left to pick up a gun or formulate a strategy.

The scenery around us was growing increasingly grotesque.

Flower bushes shaped like human figures. Vines bearing eyeballs instead of fruit. Small trees where green hands moved in place of leaves.

It was a horrifying sight.

[We should reach the facility’s center soon.]

The door leading to the facility’s center was already slightly ajar. At the center of the facility…

There was a massive cavity.

A huge cylindrical space spanning multiple floors. We hid behind the railing and looked down at what was in the facility’s center.

“What do you see?”

Wire mesh. And chains. Not ordinary chains—chains of an absurd size, the kind you’d attach to the anchor of a massive ship.

This is a facility built to contain something.

I looked down at the floor of the facility’s center. Something decorated with colorful flowers and leaves was coiled there, lying at the heart of the facility.

Did the Foundation imprison the Gardeners’ god?

Then why haven’t the Gardeners freed it? Or do the Gardeners have no intention of releasing that monster either? Can it still exert influence over the Garden in that state?

WHEEEEEEE.

We looked up at the incomprehensible sound coming from above. Something was looking down at us from the facility’s central ceiling.

Static crackled from my radio again.

[Hello, Director. I am Ganymede, the Foundation’s facility-management artificial intelligence. What business brings you to my facility today?]

This bastard?

****

Probably a product name.

You know how it is. Like every iPhone has Siri and every Galaxy has Bixby. Every facility has a Ganymede.

The problem is—

The AI in the bunker was easy enough to kill, but I have no idea where this AI’s brain is located.

I looked up at the ceiling.

“Ganymede. What do you want?”

[My purpose is to manage this facility and maintain the containment of this massive anomaly. I will ask once more. Director, what business brings you to my facility?]

The Ganymede I encountered in the bunker was insane.

This facility’s Ganymede… is likely insane too. Especially given the situation it’s in. I prepare a lie.

“We’re looking for a way to maintain the containment of that anomaly. We’ve found a new method.”

[Oh?]

Ganymede’s eyes showed interest.

I looked up at the ceiling and continued.

“The Gardeners opened and closed the dimensional gate to the Garden through human sacrifice, and the natural humans survived for years in the Garden’s harsh natural environment through human sacrifice.”

The mechanical apparatus of Ganymede hanging from the ceiling descended to look at me, its gaze darting around. We lowered our postures.

[So, you’re saying you intend to borrow the Garden’s power through human sacrifice now?]

“That’s right.”

[That sounds like a mad plan.]

Ganymede’s mechanical eyes stared at me.

[Do the Foundation’s scientists truly have no capacity for learning? How many times must it be said—if you play with fire every day, your house will burn down; if you keep poking beehives, you’ll eventually get stung?]

It’s true that it’s not wrong.

“The experiment will proceed regardless. Cooperate.”

[…]

[…]

[…]

[Understood. Gather your equipment and come down to the lowest level of the facility. But I will only permit interaction with that thing for ten minutes.]