When B-64 heard what Lied had said, he wasn't that surprised. He had already seen that Mason could tap into Boson Energy, his green stripe said as much, but he was a little shocked that the others could as well.
Mason stood beside B-64 and gripped his hand tighter. He wasn't sure if he had heard Lied correctly, because if he did, that would mean...
Lied smiled broadly, his blue nose twitching once again, "Yes, you did hear me correctly. Please, follow me." Lied swiftly turned around, nearly skipping across the little sidewalk area through the lab.
Mason and B-64 followed quickly behind them, both intensely curious as to both why, and how he knew that. Marissa and Axel, with Hannah in tow, followed after them. Marissa and Axel did share a look of intrigue before taking off after Lied.
For someone that looked like they couldn't run fast, Lied was surprisingly speedy. Mason and B-64 ran beside numerous dangerous looking machines, weapons, and what seemed like a sort of living matter.
B-64 managed to guard against a small burst of white fire that came out of an exhaust pipe from a vehicle with his shield, gripping Mason's hand tighter as the shield fizzed to life. Lied, despite being quite a ways ahead, apologized for it when they reached him.
"Sorry about that. Most everyone here just stays at their stations and doesn't use the walk area." Lied breathed out, panting every so slightly. Mason and B-64 rested for a moment, their hands finally parting for the first time in a while as they waited for the rest to catch up.
Hannah was the first to catch up with them, slamming into Mason's knee with a full force jump and squealing happily, chanting, "Again! Again!" Marissa and Axel followed, looking moderately displeased yet still curious.
Lied glanced at them, "Again, sorry. Now, we just have too-" He fumbled with his lab coat and searched around in his pocket in search of his keycard. After much too long of a wait, Lied managed to get the keycard again, and swipe it against a door's card reader that plainly read, "Infinite."
Maso and B-64, plus all the rest, entered the pitch black room.
Suddenly, as soon as they took the first step inside, it brightened up. Life-like recreations of grass and trees soon materialized inside, seemingly pulled up from the infinite void of darkness from below with some stream of green energy placing them where they were meant to go.
The ceiling turned a turquoise shade with numerous fluffy looking clouds suddenly appearing. As they took another step, they felt the temperature shift suddenly, turning a cooler temperature as a hard and cold breeze swept the area, grass sprouting at an increasingly fast rate.
Mason gasped out, feeling fresh mountain air invade his lungs. It felt real, but again, he could sense that it was not. Just like that hallway. He blinked several times and crouched, brushing his hand against the grass, feeling the soft texture.
Marissa and Axel gasped alongside him, even B-64 seemed to take in a breath. Hannah smiled widely, a toothy grin showing as she began to run around the group, smelling and feeling the air that she was missing.
It reminded them of home.
"This room was designed to understand the habitats of the creatures we've captured. To perfectly recreate the conditions in which these creatures spawned from." Lied told them as he stepped inside, the door they entered through melting away into a mountain's side.
Axel looked around, absolutely dumbfounded. He turned to see Lied, "How much... How?" he simply asked, at a loss for words. Lied laughed a little, nearly a giggle. He held his hand behind his back as he walked.
"Boson Energy allows for it. Before, just like simple teleportation, it was too costly and too ineffective. Something like this would, at the best estimate, cost around several billion, maybe close to a trillion, in U.S Dollars alone for a couple of seconds of simulated activity." Lied explained, sitting down right next to a flower.
He plucked it with little effort, smiling as he looked at the healthy stem, "With The self-replicating and self-sustaining power source, just as long as the processors are able to handle continual generation and not degrade, this could hold up indefinitely."
Marissa watched Hannah trip and fall onto the ground, mesmerized as it didn't seem to hurt. She pursed her lips, turning to look at Lied as the others looked more closely, finding that up close, everything was rather fuzzy.
"But, why here? Why show us this?" Marissa asked, finding her voice slightly echoing, like they never truly left the empty black void. Lied sighed, letting the flower slide off his hand and sticking it back onto it's stem, where it stayed as if reattached.
"Because it's familiar. I want to show you what we know, and what we can do. As I have said, you all are our plan C, and if you fail, well, we have close to no other option then release our Pattern Screamers, which... Well, we don't want that."
Fidgeting inside his pocket, Lied drew out a little remote. It had a small white keypad and a black screen. There were just three buttons, the symbols inscribed being unable to be made out. Lied pressed the third.
In an instant, the entire area was evaporated, like a computer turning off mid-game through a power outage. One second it was there, the next there was nothing but the void.
B-64 stood firm, holding onto Mason's hand against its support. Even among his own planet, technology like this was only ever dreamed off, and the schematics unable to be comprehended. He guessed this was why this planet possessed a chance against his own. They, despite being less advanced in general technology, had incredibly advanced machines with the likes of which his race could only dream up.
After a series of clicks emitted from Lied's device, light erupted from the center of the room they were in, hard blue and silvery white. The entire room changed with it, small spectral wisps that resemble furniture soon emerged from the ground as they felt themselves stand on a solid surface.
The whisps soon hardened and gained shape and form, color and radiance soon beginning to blend into them, creating close to perfect imitations of the inside of a house. Marissa and Axel found themselves slowly moving forward, the very floor seeming to move them closer.
Lied knocked against a wispy table turning brown, "Hard Light. Amazing stuff. If I'm not mistaken, it's what makes up B-64's shield." B-64 looked at his arm, noting that Lied was right, as the room was formed, he could sense that it was hard light constructs that made up most of everything in it.
"You still haven't told u-"
Lied sighed, stopping Axel mid sentence. Hannah looked slightly downtrodden that they were no longer in a mountain view, "The species that B64 here hails from are called the Protogen. We are not sure how far away his home planet is, but since we still haven't found a planet like it, we guess much, much farther away then we could've ever hoped to achieve."
A large screen soon took form on a mantel place behind the desk, Lied rapped his knuckle against the flat side, "After just a day and a half of him escaping, they attacked. They just appeared in our atmosphere, large black pikes that drilled deep into the crust to station themselves."
The screen soon shuddered to life, showing a fuzzy recreation of the event he was saying. It soon flashed to another image, this time of what looked like a dead protogen, "Luckily, they had no idea what we had."
Lied turned to B-64 and pointed to his arm, "Most of the Protogen's weapons were based on hard light generators, which require a lot of energy. Boson Energy could supply it and replace itself tenfold. It was the perfect tool. Too bad we had the countermeasure."
The screen soon flashed to a large device, completely solid black with two small, nearly invisible buttons, "Most weapons needed Boson Energy, which can really only exist with low enough hume, or reality, levels. This normally isn't a problem for them, but we've dealt with realty benders before."
The screen shifted to a large red protogen, spewing what looked like magma from it's mouth with no harm to its body. A single soldier pushed the first button, activating the black machine.
In an instant, the protogen keeled over, the magma now starting to eat away at the protogen as it's systems began to fail, and it's Boson Generator to shut down. Ceasing the Protogens life.
B-64 nearly crushed Mason's hand as he viewed the event, feeling anger begin to fester within him. But he calmed down as Mason brushed a hand against his shoulder, a soft coo coming from him.
"Reality anchors fight for control over reality. Using enough electrical energy can cause them, through a series of events, to fight for control. They push back harder for reality to stay the same harder than what want's it to change."
Lied then turned to B-64 and looked at him straight, "I am sorry to say this, but the Protogen did not come to rescue you, nor to find you. If they were, they would've gotten you already. No, they see us as a threat because of what we have."
The room was silent, so silent that they could hear Axel gulp, "H-How can you be sure? Surely..." He began to trail off, staring at the disintegrating body of the Protogen on the screen.
Lied rubbed his temple, his nose twitching again, "Because we said that we would return B-64. They did not care, nor did they answer us."
Satisfied with that, it was Mason's turn. He looked at his friends and asked the question that was on all their minds, "Why did you say we four are able to tap into this Boson Energy?" Lied smiled, though it didn't reach his eyes.
"Well, it was mostly by accident. Close to eighteen and a half years ago, B-64 crashed landed near a farm. The Amor Family Farm, to be exact." Mason's friends looked at him, stunned, "The ship itself managed to leak out huge portions of radiation so intense, it could cause rapid entropy."
"It would seem that at the time, all three of you, including little Hannah later, were affected by this expanse of energy. Mason has the obvious mark, the green stripe across his neck." He said, then quickly turning his head to face Axel and Marissa, "And you two both experienced something different when interacting with B-64 for the first time, no?"
"Wait, how did you know that?"
"What? You don't think that a foundation based on protecting secrets would let it's biggest secret go with monitoring? No, we knew he left. We followed him. You all did have different reactions, correct?"
Axel nodded slowly, "I only felt the heat..."
Marissa nodded as well, scratching the back of her head, "And I couldn't stand it. It felt like being stabbed hundreds of times..."
Lied nodded, knowing they got what he was saying, "That was your reaction to something called Red-Boson Energy, what flows through B-64. There are different types, and if we figure it out, you all might be the saviors of the world."
"But, we are not ready yet. If you would please, exit this room. We have much to focus on tomorrow, and we have to get prepared for the tests." With a single click of a red button, the room suddenly snapped back to the mountain scene, the door inside the mountain wall bleeding back into their reality.
Lied pushed open the door and led them through, where he promptly showed them to another room, one with beds and a kitchen. WIthout so much as another word, he left them there to mull over everything that he had just said.
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I'm not sure if it was apparent, but I grew very bored and very unenthusiastic near the end. I am really, really tired at the time of me writing this, so if I seem a bit apathetic, then I am.
Honestly though, I am proud of the description in this chapter, if a little lacking some area. I tried my best in describing what I could really only describe as world generation in sandbox games, like Minecraft when you don't have a good processor.
So, yeah. Oh, and that Red Protogen. While not important to THIS story, well... Y'all will see later on.
Anyways, thanks for reading!
~ Candle