Chapter 52: The Dark Archives

After finishing their meal, they all walked out of the cockpit. Casca and Corie supported Celes, who was still adjusting to walking after not touching the ground for so long. Celes’s eyes glistened with moisture, and she couldn’t stop looking around, a smile gracing her face like someone who had been trapped in darkness for so long and was now experiencing freedom. Clyde and Craig, walking ahead of the three girls, glanced back at Celes as they moved, both smiling before turning back forward to lead the way.

When they reached the development room for super soldier clones, the room filled with replicas of the five of them that they had previously destroyed, Celes looked visibly shaken by the reality before her. But having likely seen it repeatedly on the monitor, she wasn’t overly emotional as she looked at the replicas of herself lying flat and piled up near numerous shattered pods.

Clyde, Craig, Casca, and Corie, who was helping support Celes, walked briskly, quickly passing through the room, ascending the stairs onto the platform, and passing back through the door toward the lobby. Upon returning to the lobby, they stopped again to look around, and Clyde spotted the door on the far side opposite the one they had just exited,

"Let’s go over there... to the archive room," Clyde urged.

"Yeah... let’s go," Craig agreed.

"Are you doing okay, Celes?" Clyde asked, looking back.

"I’m fine, I’ll be able to walk on my own in just a bit," Celes replied.

"Take it easy, Sister, don’t force yourself," Casca cautioned.

"That’s right... we’re still here to help you, so please rely on us," Corie added.

"Okay... thank you, Casca, Corie... you two haven’t changed a bit, just like back then," Celes replied, looking at both of them in turn with a smile.

They continued walking, stepping carefully to avoid dangling ceiling cables and fallen debris. As they passed the GDAB emblem, they glanced at it once more before passing right by. Entering the door on the opposite side, they traversed another corridor in complete silence; the only sound was the rhythmic thud of their footsteps against the floor.

Passing through the door at the far end of the hallway, they arrived at a command bridge that had clearly gone untouched for a long time. Countless wires hung from the ceiling, cables lay strewn across the floor, chairs were overturned, and dust-covered documents remained scattered across the consoles.

Everything matched what they had seen on the holographic display inside the cockpit through Chimaera Z-X’s vision. Having already studied the layout, they went straight up to the mezzanine, accessible via stairs located before the firing range. They then walked past the commander’s office, pausing in front of the wide-open door to peer inside. They saw a ruined sofa set, a caved-in ceiling trailing loose wires, a decaying desk with all its drawers pulled open, an iron archive safe with empty, open drawers, an overturned bookshelf, and a yellowed ancient world map pinned to the wall directly beneath the GDAB emblem.

Passing it by, they entered the archive room next door. The internal layout was just as they had seen, filled with iron shelving, line after line of stacked cardboard boxes labeled CONFIDENTIAL, a long desk at the far end covered in piles of folders and files, and a filthy, dust-caked desktop PC beside it that looked long dead.

"Alright... let me spread out to look for clues and learn whatever we can here," Clyde said.

"But everything here says classified?" Craig asked.

"Hah... nothing is classified to us," Clyde answered.

"Ah... good point. Let’s get to work," Craig replied.

"I’m helping too. Please let go of me, Casca, Corie," Celes said.

"Wait... can you walk now, Sister?" Casca asked.

"Yeah... we can just stick together, it’s fine," Corie added.

"I’m okay. Besides, I need to practice walking anyway. You two go look for clues and don’t worry too much about me," Celes said.

Casca and Corie glanced at each other. Clyde then turned around to stand before Celes,

"Alright, let her go. Please help us out, Celes, but don’t push yourself. If you get tired, sit down and rest. You just woke up and your stamina isn’t fully restored yet," Clyde said.

"Okay... I understand. Thank you, Clyde," Celes replied, smiling as she touched Clyde’s cheek.

After that, they scattered throughout the room. They pulled boxes down from the shelves and opened them to inspect the contents. Beyond files, the archive room also stored physical specimens such as frogman scales, yeti footprints preserved in soil, Flatwood monster tracks, and various other relics from cryptid sightings such as the sasquatch, ahol, and more. Furthermore, items like giant weaponry, demi-human body parts, and other remains were neatly organized inside standard military storage crates and boxes.

Clyde walked over to the desk and spotted the pile of folders. Wiping away the dust, he picked up the top folder labeled FAILED and CONFIDENTIAL on the front, then opened it. The contents turned out to be data on the five of them, complete with photos from when they were ten, nine, and eight years old. Inside the folder were growth charts, mental stability records, IQ evaluations, and physical development metrics. Clyde’s jaw tightened as he read the heading at the top of the document: "Chimaera Initiative."

He closed the file, refusing to read any further, and picked up the next folder. His eyes widened as he saw records for five other children with different subject codes and cryptids, all marked DECEASED and FAILED, followed by detailed explanations of their failures and deaths. As he flipped to the next page, Clyde’s face twisted in rage, his eyes narrowing and his jaw clenching so hard it felt as if his teeth might shatter. The reason was clear, those children had been used as literal guinea pigs, subjected to multiple stages of gruesome physical experimentation.

He grabbed the folder belonging to himself and his four siblings once more and opened it. It turned out they had undergone the exact same experimentation in the past: conscious vivisections, pain tolerance testing, recovery speeds from wounds, diseases, and viruses, and even tests analyzing the effects of having parts of their bodies "forcibly removed," along with countless other inhumane procedures. Crumple. His hands tightened, crushing the folder in his grip as his body trembled violently, whether from rage or terror, he couldn’t tell.

He glanced toward the pile of similarly labeled folders on the desk as the horrific truth sank deep into his heart. Without even opening them, he already knew that he, Celes, Craig, Casca, and Corie were not the only children born from a giant’s womb, raised in an orphanage, subjected to barbaric, inhumane experiments, and assigned subject numbers instead of names. Blam! Clyde slammed his fist onto the desk, splitting it in two and sending the files atop it scattering across the floor in ruin.

"Damn it... damn it all... damn it!" Clyde cursed in his mind.

Naturally, hearing the desk shatter with a loud bang, Craig, Celes, Casca, and Corie rushed over to Clyde, who stood trembling with his head hung low, his face beet red, his jaw tight, and his eyes glinting with sharp tears. Without a word, Celes gently took the crumpled folder from Clyde’s hands and opened it.

Reading through it, Celes covered her mouth, her face turning to pure horror. Seeing her reaction, Craig, Casca, and Corie peeked over Celes’s shoulder, their expressions completely transforming as they took in the contents of the file.

Craig crouched down and picked up another folder, his face flushing red, turning pale, and then turning deep crimson as he read through the records inside. Riiip! He tore the folder and its contents to shreds, his breathing ragged and his face burning with rage,

"This is too much... this is way too much... we were supposed to have so many siblings... maybe hundreds... or thousands... those bastards!" Craig screamed in frustration, tears pooling in his eyes.

Celes, Casca, and Corie were rendered speechless, their heads hanging low, their faces flushed red with the exact same anguish that Clyde and Craig felt. Suddenly, Casca noticed an open folder lying on the floor and crouched down to pick it up. As she took in the revealed contents gasp! Casca looked utterly horrified, prompting Clyde, Craig, Celes, and Corie to turn toward her.

"Brother Clyde... this... this is the creature called a swarmer that we saw on the train, right?" Casca asked, her hand and voice trembling as she held up the photograph inside the folder for the others to see.

What Casca held up was a black-and-white photo of a swarmer inside the facility. It was revealed to be the result of fusing DNA between a fetus inside a giant’s womb with cryptid DNA back when they were being developed inside artificial giant wombs.

In other words, they were human experiments designed to mass-produce chimaera children using a womb filled with multiple specimens and because the process failed, those specimens fused together into a new, growing organism. The faces of Clyde, Celes, Craig, and Corie turned deathly pale as they read, looking as though they had just witnessed a real-life horror movie.