Глава 16

Amiya does her utmost to ignore the spectral arms stretched out towards her. In the silence, she listens to the beating of her heart echoing through her chest.

A dozen or so corpses, all in abject misery.

Each of them has been twisted into incomprehensible forms. Their skin has ruptured, exposing their viscera and bones. They barely even look human.

It is as if their frames had been subject to some enigmatic force, intent on warping them both inside and out until they neared complete destruction.

Who knows how long they were subject to this agony? Who knows how they suffered during this torment?

A-Are you alright?

Amiya does not feel fear.

Rage.

She feels only rage.

...Mantra...

The very next instant, a familiar voice answers.

I am here.

What is it, Amiya?

Eloysius and I are in the morgue in the basement. We can confirm that the institute was conducting large-scale human experimentation. Experimental methods, unknown...

The victims we have discovered are all uninfected. No clues on the abnormal Infected at the moment...

Understood. I will inform the Doctor.

Stay safe, and stay in touch.

We can say that our earlier worries are more clearly defined now.

The situation here, or rather, in the Far North, is much worse than our intelligence suggested.

The strong emotion attacking me in the institute, alongside everything we experienced on our way here, like the Patrol Units harassing the Infected, and the contamination created by the Royal Guard...

All this goes to show that the issues here extend far beyond the Infected mutations.

Amiya and Eloysius found something.

The institute really was conducting illegal human experiments.;However, we're still unsure of the cause of the abnormal infections.

No matter who our target is, there must be some information waiting.

Hmm... Where is she, anyway?

I've searched all the rooms on the mineshaft side, and nobody was there.

What about the locked rooms?

Same thing. The locks are old-fashioned, easy enough to pry open.

But regardless of the status of their locks, most of the rooms had nothing except for things like empty shelves and cabinets or loose graph paper.

Could she have left?

Or maybe we're looking in the wrong place.

What do you mean?

Eloysius says every floor has an enclosed observation deck.

I never found anything like—

Wait, that can't be. It's regular rooms the entire way around the loop, and we've checked every single one. There's not enough space in this weird building for an observation deck!

Maybe, on the mineshaft side...;There's a hidden door we haven't discovered yet.

A room within a room.

The voice comes out of nowhere, hoarse and fragmented. It creeps upwards from the ankles of the listeners up to their napes, coming to an icy standstill in the back of their minds.

It sounds human, but it is hard to verify.

Did you hear that, Mon3tr?;A voice.

(Whispers) I did. Up ahead. I remember the room.

The lights here are broken, so stay behind me, Doctor.

Behind the door is hidden another, this one unlocked. Though the hands of humanity once left their heat upon its handle, now, it is as cold as ice.

Mon3tr pushes open the small, light door. Within the darkness, the visitors are greeted by feeble candlelight.

The first sound they hear is not the voice of a human, but the wet, squelching sound of viscous liquid.

Molten wax drips, melting into the disorderly, blackening dark-red stains on the floor and splattering onto scattered sheets of paper.

And on those sheets... Next to some handprints, a list of formulae is scrawled out, tremblingly penned like screeches of fear and anger.

Meaningless, it's all... meaningless.

Great Ursus sits atop all creation, but its vast domain lies barren...

Aside from never-ending disaster.

Hah... Professor Ilia...

I finally see that you were right!

You were right, absolutely right! But where are you? Where have you gone?

I tried my best, tried so hard! But in the end, it didn't even matter!

I wanted to look for you all. I wanted to. But now, all I can do is take everything away. Take it all... away.

Then...

I will find you.

The woman stretches out her hand, bringing a sheet of paper up to the candle's flame.

The fire soon consumes half of it. She watches it burn with an insatiable gaze, completely unaware of the company by her side.

Ksenia!

You're Ksenia, right?

Mon3tr rushes up to crush the burning paper, extinguishing it with her bare hands before it can grow into an inferno.

She is surprised to find that the slumped-over woman is surrounded by a tangle of wires.

Where do these wires lead? If they had not intervened in time, what would the ensuing blaze have led to?

Did she just say 'Ilia'?

She did, I heard it too!

Is that you, Ksenia? You've grown, you look different from before...

Why didn't you leave with everyone else?

No apparent response to sound. She may have entered a dissociative state.

Move her to the side, keep calling her name.

Ksenia! We—

I...

I will...

Find you...

These papers on the ground...?

You gather up all the sheets that were by her feet, flipping through them by candlelight.

They are not what you imagined, not failed formulae or blank sheets of paper. The words written on them are clear, and are in grammatical Ursine.

What I am about to write is not meant to be known by any living soul.

For there is no meaning in leaving behind words about me, or the things I love. What I write here is merely my recollection and repentance, for me to take to my grave.

I believed researching the Sarcophagus was a grand undertaking, with clean energy for the Ursine people close at hand. But the ember of that hope was ultimately snuffed out by our own divisions.

I was fortunate enough to escape that unjust massacre due to my ignorance, but my good fortune was itself unjust, for the price I paid was being forced to live the rest of my life in panicked mediocrity.

I have nowhere to go, no home to return to. The talent I was so proud of is useless. My life has amounted to nothing.

...Ksenia.

I'm Mon3tr. Do you remember... Do you remember Kal'tsit? I'm...

Ksenia!

It seems that whenever we are given the opportunity to advance, we always find a reason to hesitate.

This interminable failure of a life has made me truly understand those words I read many years ago in a book, words I once scoffed at:

'The reason why Ursus is constantly flooded with sorrow and injustice is because we lag behind other nations in many aspects.'

'No matter how many truths we discover or accomplishments we make, this backwardness will ruthlessly extinguish the fires of our inspiration.'

This appears to be a suicide note.

Still no reaction from her. Does it say where the Sarcophagus ended up after it left Chernobog?

No, but it mentions researching some kind of material.;I think it's describing mutations in Ursine Infected.

Oka should have been a chance to turn things around, but just like every other opportunity that passed me by, it was fleeting...

Was my research wrong yet again? Or is this inexplicable, miraculous substance from the mines truly nothing out of the ordinary?

It clearly contains no energy, yet it so callously tortures those patients who are already suffering from disease, driving them mad, making them act in unusual ways, even allowing them to accomplish the impossible.

I do not know, but I am unwilling to be the one who inflicts even more pain on them! Fortunately, I need not continue... That is all I have to say. Now, all I can do is make guesses using metaphysics, like some sort of poet:

Oka may simply be a part of Ursus's essence buried deep in the ground. It revels in the suffering of those it abhors, all behind a mighty, harmless countenance.

Enough. Stop heaping your egotistical, unfounded learning upon this man-made calamity, Ksenia.

Once more, you are a despicable survivor. You should have died twenty years ago at the hands of those soldiers, or here, at the hands of angry Infected.

But now, it all comes to an end.