Chapter 48: We Are Human

Thud.

Casca and Corie collapsed to their knees on the floor. Clyde and Craig immediately dropped into a crouch beside them, holding their younger sisters’ shoulders. All four of their eyes remained glued straight ahead, question after question racing through their minds, the agony evident on their faces.

Tears streamed down the cheeks of a bewildered Casca and Corie. Clyde could only embrace Casca from behind while Craig held Corie close from behind; both brothers stayed silent, staring blankly at the rows of pods filled with copies of themselves, tangled in countless cables.

After a few moments, Craig’s jaw tightened and his teeth ground together. He released Corie’s shoulders and stood up. A reddish-black aura swirled around his feet, drawing the eyes of Clyde, Casca, and Corie, who turned to look as Craig began shifting into his combat form. Seeing Craig transform, Clyde stood up,

"Craig, what are you trying to do?!" Clyde shouted.

"I’m sorry, Brother... I can’t stand looking at this... I’m going to destroy it all. They aren’t us... I don’t care what they are!" Craig retorted telepathically, his voice burning with rage.

Before Clyde could stop him, Craig spread his arms wide and slap! slammed his hands together in front of him. The ground before him instantly split open, forming a freezing chasm that surged forward. The pods ahead shattered into pieces, falling into the rift as their glass casing broke apart, casting the copies of themselves out of the tubes to be crushed or frozen solid.

Witnessing Craig’s rampage, Corie stood up as well. Transforming into her combat form, she leaped high into the air, landing right in the middle of the standing pods. Boom! She kicked the floor so hard it caved into a crater, pulverizing every pod around her as the children inside—identical to them, shattered like broken mannequins.

"W-what are you doing?! What are you doing?!" Casca screamed hysterically.

"They’re not us... I won’t accept this! I’m human... yes... that’s right... I’m human!" Corie screamed, executing a sweeping kick that shattered several nearby pods at once.

"That’s right... they aren’t us! We have memories... we’ve been together since we were kids... above our house... my name is Craig... I have a name! I don’t care what they are, I’m going to destroy them all!" Craig roared, spinning around to smash several pods into pieces with his forearms.

Hearing Corie and Craig’s shouts ringing in their minds, Casca opened her mouth only to close it again. Clyde was speechless; he could only hold and embrace a sobbing Casca from behind. Deep down, just like Craig and Corie, he refused to accept that he wasn’t human, that he might just be one of many mass-produced clones, even as a pang of doubt lingered in his heart.

He watched his younger siblings obliterate the pods containing their clones, knowing full well they were crying through the words echoed in their heads.

"Brother... we... we’re really human, right? We’re alive, aren’t we?" Casca sobbed.

"Yes... Craig is right... we have memories... we have a life... we’ve been together since we were little... we were raised together... we are human," Clyde answered, holding Casca tight.

In just a matter of moments, the room that had once looked immaculate, despite being inactive, was reduced to complete ruin. The ground was gouged into crater-like pits, split open into frozen chasms, pods lay smashed to bits, the bodies of little children littered the floor in gruesome conditions, and the fluid from the broken tubes flooded the entire room, cascading like waterfalls into the fractured abyss.

In the middle of the devastation stood Craig and Corie, having reverted to their original forms. They were panting heavily, tears pouring down their flushed yet pale faces, their fists clenched tight. Casca and Clyde walked over to them, and the four embraced, falling to the floor together. All four sobbed hysterically, pouring out every emotion locked inside their hearts, utterly oblivious to the wreckage surrounding them.

After a while, they stood up. Holding onto one another with heavy steps, they walked toward the door at the far end of the room, which had been open from the start. They proceeded down a corridor flanked by glass walls on both sides, revealing neat, dust-covered research labs and facilities that had long been abandoned.

The four kept walking without looking left or right, their steps unsteady and their faces deathly pale. When they reached the end of the hallway, suddenly,

Na... na... na...

All four froze in their tracks. The melody they had been hearing all along now echoed with crystal clarity, seemingly originating from behind a tightly sealed steel door directly ahead. Snapping back to their senses, they stared at the heavy door,

"Craig, help me," Clyde said.

"Right... Brother," Craig replied.

The two stepped forward, positioning themselves on either side of the door. Gripping the gap in the middle, they used every ounce of their strength to force it open. Clang! The door swung wide under their combined effort. The melody echoed loudly from inside, resounding as if the space behind the door were utterly vast. The four stepped through and clang! found themselves standing on another elevated iron mezzanine platform, bounded by protective railings on both sides.

The room ahead was pitched in complete darkness. Proceeding with caution and using their flashlights, they stepped forward.

Clang... clang...

Their boots clanked against the iron platform as they pressed onward, tears still streaming down their faces, drawing closer and closer to the source of the melody. Reaching the middle of the platform, they turned to the left and gasped in shock: before them was a glowing sphere of purple light, underneath which sat two red eyes, flanked by three more red eyes stacked vertically on both the left and right.

Clang!

The four recoiled, staring at the monstrosity to their left. Holding hands tightly, there was no mistaking it, the source of the melody was right in front of them.

"What is that ahead of us, Brother?" Corie asked.

"I don’t know... stay on your guard," Clyde answered.

"If it happens to be an enemy, I still need to blow off some steam," Craig said.

"But... our song is coming from right there," Casca replied, pointing ahead.

As they stood bewildered, a massive holographic display suddenly materialized before their eyes:

[Subject serial number : C – 3135 – Flatwood Monster joined frame network confirmed.]

[Subject status : Unconscious.]

[All subjects active and linked to frame network... initializing Chimaera Z-X.]

[Activation process... 10%... 40%... 70%... 100%... completed.]

[Chimaera Z-X Activated.]

[Open cockpit hatch.]

Pssssss...

White steam hissed out in front of them, and suddenly, flash! every light in the chamber flared to life. Clyde, Casca, Craig, and Corie recoiled in shock, for right before them stood the open, moving chest of a giant robot. The machine’s head bore a triangular frame on its brow with a single large purple eye, two smaller eyes underneath, curved horns protruding from both sides of its head, a yellowish-white body covered in scales resembling Yeti fur and Frogman hide, massive spiky arms and legs, moth wings that unfurled to reveal three eyes on each side, and a long tail that uncoiled from its waist and slammed onto the floor below.

As the lights flickered to life, they surveyed their surroundings and realized they were standing in the middle of a colossal hangar housing a giant robot, easily standing roughly seventy meters tall before them. The four of them stared up at the robot with a swirl of mixed emotions, huddling tightly together,

"Huh... this robot... it’s the robot from our dream," Casca said.

"Yeah... there’s no doubt about it," Clyde added, staring at the robot in front of him.

"Wow... this robot... is huge," Craig muttered, looking up at the machine before them.

"Hey... look over there, Sister Celes... we found Sister Celes!" Corie shouted, pointing toward the open cockpit in the chest.

The eyes of Clyde, Casca, and Craig widened instantly in the direction Corie pointed. Inside the cockpit sat a girl their age with gray skin and long silver hair, her head hanging limp. Her hands were raised, bound by pulsating, flesh-like sockets, while the lower half of her body was swallowed past her waist by similar throbbing organic sockets. The interior of the cockpit looked like the inside of a living organism, choked with muscle fibers, fleshy sockets, pulsing veins, and a sickening shade of crimson.

"Celes!" Clyde shouted.

"Sister Celes!" Craig and Casca cried out.

Without a second thought, the four of them ran into the cockpit, which was surprisingly spacious enough to hold all five of them and slowly approached Celes, who was bound inside and unconscious. Then, they carefully tried to unfasten the sockets encasing Celes up to her waist and holding both of her arms.

To their surprise, the sockets opened on their own the moment they touched them, as if waiting for their touch, and Celes’s body collapsed forward, which Clyde caught immediately. He laid the naked Celes down on the floor, and they all gazed at her face, looking as though she were sleeping peacefully.

"Finally... we found you, Celes," Clyde said, smiling as he caressed Celes’s cheek.