It was a bullet… Yes, definitely a bullet. This massive 30 mm projectile had been fired from kilometers away. Sevda's cybernetic defense modules had detected it quite easily. Being one of the greatest doctors of the SWR meant possessing such exquisite technologies.
At that moment, she and Urgan had entered the antenna they had lowered in front of the door with their tool kits, attempting to modify the antenna into a satellite. Urgan's arms were straining as he tried to loosen a rusted screw, his tongue poking out from the effort. If that developed elder pushed himself this hard, the components forcibly integrated into his body could tear his lungs to shreds. But in that moment, the old man's protruding tongue or his potentially exploding lungs weren't what mattered. What mattered was the bullet heading their way… It would impact in a matter of seconds. Sevda's cybernetic module didn't even have time to calculate its velocity. It merely provided a notification of where and when it would strike.
Sevda was sitting on the ground, covered in mud. The antenna was practically in her lap, but she could toss it aside at any second. Her hands were braced behind her, leaning against the earth. She was sitting quite comfortably, but… But there was a bullet coming toward them.
She determined the bullet's speed and direction, and interestingly, realized it wasn't headed for her. If the bullet had been aimed at her, her reflex modules would have kicked in, moving her away as fast as possible, or at the very least, positioning her so it wouldn't hit a vital spot. But the bullet wasn't coming for her.
56 was playing with a worm under a stone he had lifted a bit further ahead of the antenna. 18 was leaning against the door, watching them from a distance. According to the analysis her computer brain performed in milliseconds, the bullet was heading straight for the neck of the old man named Urgan. "Urgan? Why Urgan instead of me?" Sevda wondered. In those split seconds, before the breath in Urgan's chest could even leave his mouth, Sevda lunged her arm forward to stop the bullet.
Thwack! A sound echoed. The bullet had embedded itself in Sevda's arm. As Urgan cautiously raised his head to see where the noise came from, he realized that Sevda had lunged from her seat with an instantaneous reflex and stopped a bullet. It was a specialized bullet. It was powerful enough to pierce her arm, but it stopped after impact because it was an electronic circuit-breaker bullet. In short, it was a short-circuit round.
The tail of the long bullet was visible. Bringing her bullet-riddled arm toward her chest, Sevda signaled everyone to get inside. She reached out to Urgan, who was struggling to lift himself, and threw the old man toward the door with great strength. As the metal door split open, everyone rushed through in a panic. But Sevda knew something was wrong with her body. Therefore, she didn't head for the door; she pressed the emergency help button near the entrance and fell face-down on the ground. As the metal door closed, 18 broke free from Urgan's grasp to run toward Sevda and threw himself outside.
As Sevda slid down the wall to the floor, she could feel the rogue electricity coursing through her body, short-circuiting every module one by one. Million-dollar components were burning out as she fell to the ground, trembling. 18 ran, gathering the hem of her white coat, and knelt on the ground.
"24!" she said. "Are you okay? What's happening to you?" At least her mouth was mechanical, not electronic. She could still speak. Until it reached the brain, this rogue electricity would damage every circuit it could in her body. Once it reached the brain, high-level protection circuits would destroy it.
"Well…" Sevda said. "…I've been shot."
"But there's no blood…"
"Now is not the time, 18. You must go inside! We are under attack."
"Are you sure? Maybe your battery just ran out."
At that moment, Sevda pointed to her arm with her eyes. Looking at the arm where the bullet had torn a massive hole, 18 began to look around in terror.
"Where are they?"
"They're coming from the north… 18… get inside! Or run away now! Whoever these bastards are, they targeted old Urgan, not me. They did this because they knew they couldn't hit me! Bastards! They even put a circuit breaker in the bullet! I'm no different from a paralytic! I can't protect you." Before her eyes, she tried to connect to the internet countless times. If she could reach the SWR Network, she could request emergency help from SWR teams, but it was futile… For perhaps the first time in thousands of years, this planet had lost its connection to the Network. In that moment, a foul stench reached Sevda's nose, even though her scent module was damaged.
"I'll tell the ones inside immediately. Tell them to arm themselves… If we know they're coming from the north, maybe we can do something."
"Yes! Yes, get inside now, 18. Inform them!" As she spoke, another shot was fired. This time, she could hear the shot from the sound coming from meters away. 56 and the other children, looking out the facility window, began to scream in terror as they saw 18's head explode.
As the red blood spraying from 18's shattered head painted half of Sevda's face and part of the wall, the headless body slumped to the ground. While blood continued to gush from the body, she looked North with blood-stained eyes. Four massive drones were approaching the facility. Robots clinging to the bars beneath each drone aimed their weapons at the building. In the center of these four massive drones, a spaceship only half their size raced toward the front of the facility and landed quickly on the mud-covered ground. From the opening door of this spaceship emerged two robots and that useless man called Nuskul.
"Why? Why are you here?"
As the drones passed over the facility, the security systems woke up. Before the turrets appearing on the roof could even position themselves to fire, they were struck repeatedly by the hovering robots. Although a few turrets hit the drones with bullets, they couldn't penetrate the thick skin; even when they did, they caused no more damage than a few minor electrical leaks.
As the robots reached the facility, they lowered themselves to the ground using the ropes behind them. As robots surrounded the facility, Sevda realized that eight robots were waiting right above her head.
Nuskul, being a foolish man, was wearing a white suit. While he was tucking his fingers into his sleeve to pull out the shirt that had bunched up, his pant legs were immediately covered in mud as he stepped off the ship, erasing most of the white color. Clearly, he had wanted to dress elegantly today, and clearly, Nuskul was useless enough to forget how muddy it was outside.
His bald head must have been freshly polished because it managed to shine despite the pitch-black, sunless sky. Straightening his tie, he walked across the muddy ground toward Sevda.
"Hey!" he shouted at one of the escorting robots. "You're splashing mud everywhere while walking next to me! Everyone will be cautious while walking beside me! Hey, you!" he said, pointing to two or three robots. "What is the status of security?"
"The facility is showing little response, sir," the robotic voice replied.
"Because this facility wasn't built for us," Nuskul said with a sleazy smile, stroking his bald head.
Meanwhile, Sevda could faintly hear the voice of one of the children pounding on the facility window, when suddenly the security alarm triggered, and all the windows and doors were covered with metal shutters. What difference would it make? These security systems were meant only for Uruzenians; they couldn't stop the TESO corporation.
Sevda tried to connect to the Network a few more times. If she could connect, she could ask the SWR for help. After all, Sevda was an SWR citizen, and the SWR could not accept any of its citizens being harmed. It would be a situation that damaged the prestige of the SWR and its citizenship. But the connection she tried repeatedly at the edges of her mind simply would not establish.
"What happened?" Nuskul shouted arrogantly, walking slowly toward Sevda. "You were blowing quite a storm back in the cave? Pulling out your knives and acting like an artist! What happened now? Look at you!"
"Could it be…" Sevda said, smiling from the corner of her lip, "…did you really shut down the Network just for this? If only you knew the investigation the SWR will conduct… The TESO factories whose work is disrupted because they can't connect to the Network will also tear you apart! Even if you lie, they will find out eventually! You'll be neck-deep in shit… You're incredible."
"Labiba planned everything," Nuskul said. "My director has been planning this for years."
"Planning everything?" Sevda said. "That seems impossible. Let two or three inspectors come and see if she can hide it. Accounting for such an interruption…"
"We certainly have puppets to take the blame!" Nuskul said, leaning down to grab Sevda's hand, which was riddled with holes from the bullet. "What a beautiful bullet, isn't it? We knew you were a self-sacrificing fool who would try to play the hero."
"Why do you want to destroy the facility so badly?" Sevda asked.
At that moment, Nuskul gripped Sevda's energy-depleted hand tightly. "We don't want the facility…" he said, and suddenly pulled, ripping the arm from her body. He tossed Sevda's severed arm aside and said: "…we want you."
"Me?" Sevda said in surprise. "I should tell you, if you want me for my body, you've probably broken most of the mechanical circuits beyond repair with that stupid bullet."
"We don't want your cybernetic parts."
"My body isn't a woman's body either," Sevda said, laughing. "In case you're expecting something like what I'm thinking, I don't have sexual organs."
"Stupid woman!" Nuskul said, grabbing the woman by the head. "We want this," he said, pressing his index finger against her head. "We need your skills as a doctor."
"Everything is on the internet."
"It's not something the ones on the internet can do," Nuskul said, picking up her cybernetic body. She was quite heavy. "We need someone who can conduct research, someone who can create a new treatment." As he walked toward the spaceship with heavy steps, he signaled the robots with a glance. As the robots began raking the building with their weapons, Sevda screamed:
"Stop! Why are you doing this? Fine, if I'm what you want, you have me!"
"Ah… according to our plans, there must be no witnesses. Boys, if you please…"
As soon as they received Nuskul's order, the robots entered through the windows they had broken on all four sides of the facility to empty their magazines. As the children's screams rose, the robots dropped grenades inside. When the eight robots entered the facility, gunfire, screams, and green smoke rose from within.
The massive door of the facility finally opened. As the door opened, old Urgan emerged in agony through the green mists billowing toward the sky. Urgan was vomiting blood from the pain of the green gas he had inhaled.
"That green gas…" Nuskul said, smiling, "…can tear even a cybernetic's lungs to shreds."
"No! You're killing everyone! Please stop! All those efforts, all those people! Why are you doing this?" Sevda said. If her crying modules were working, she would have been grieved enough to drown in her own tears.
The voices of all the patients in their beds, all those Uruzenian children, were silenced one after another. As the screams faded, Urgan's coughing was the only thing left. "My lady…" he began to speak with a mouth full of blood, but Nuskul pinned the man's lifeless body to the ground with a bullet fired from his finger.
"Damn it!" Sevda shouted. Her strength was not enough for anything right now due to her broken body. What she needed to recover was an electrical current to restart her circuits, but she had to escape this cursed man's grasp to get it.
"Alright, boys…" Nuskul said confidently. There were four robots waiting directly across from the door, and there must have been eight robots inside. "…let's head back to the facility."
But there was no response from the robots behind the veil of fog. Something was strange. Sevda, who had lost all hope at that moment, found this strangeness quite meaningful.
Then something even stranger happened, doubling the oddity. A voice rose from within the fog. "Look at these damn robots!" a man's voice said. "If the robots in hell are this cheap, then woe to the afterlife! God, didn't you have scarier robots to punish me with? I take this as an insult to myself and the sins I've committed!"
"Who is this?" Nuskul said, looking at Sevda in his arms. Just then, a man emerged from the mists. Most of his body was covered in bandages, but some of the bandages on his face had fallen off, leaving half his face exposed.
As he emerged from the fog, he was inhaling all the green mist into his lungs like a man puffing on a cigarette. "Damn…" he said, exhaling smoke from his nose. "I'm still in the world of the living." Then he grimaced and spat on the ground. "What's in this green mist? It has a quite bitter taste."
"How?" Nuskul said. His shock was preventing him from giving orders to the robots. After all, the man before him was unarmed. Despite being unarmed, he was dragging a robot that had been torn in half by its head. The cables hanging down from the robot's torso were sparking electricity as they twitched. The robot was still alive—or rather, still functioning—with its moving head.
"You don't look friendly at all," the man emerging from the fog said, looking at the four robots surrounding him. "Not at all…" Then he looked at the robot in his hand. "…my friends don't use such cheap robots."
"Who are you?"
"Who are you? Who sent you?"
"Who sent us?" Nuskul looked at the woman in his arms. "Labiba sent us."
"Who the fuck is Labiba? Is that a furniture brand that sent you? Or was it Habiba? Whatever! I remember that damn woman you're holding." With the air of a bumbling man realizing something, he slapped his forehead with his palm and said: "Holy shit! That's right! That woman brought me back to life, didn't she? The moment I opened my eyes, I saw children begging Doctor Sevda while their lungs melted. Yeah, not a great moment to wake up. That's why I thought I was in hell, but I was in a worse place: normal life."
"What are you talking about?" Nuskul asked. The robots were still waiting for an order. "Do you realize what you're saying right now?"
"I don't really realize what I'm saying!" the bandaged man shouted angrily. "It's only been a few minutes since I came back from the dead and you made me kill eight robots with my bare hands!" He took a deep breath, then exhaled. "You can't be Doctor Sevda! You don't have a Sevda face at all! There's no grace in your face! You're probably Labiba!" he said, chuckling at his own joke. "If that's the case, I have to make a request of you. Could you please put her—I mean Doctor Sevda—down? I'm trying to act loyal here."
Nuskul didn't understand what he was doing at that moment. He had no reason to talk to this man, to listen to him. With hands shaking from rage, he pointed at the man and shouted: "Fire!"
"Holy shit!" the bandaged man shouted, using the robot he held as a cybernetic shield and hiding behind it. As bullets rained down, he reached his hand into the robot's heart and crushed it. The electricity squirting from the robot's heart traveled through his body to his wrists and he threw a bolt of electricity from his wrist toward the man directly across from him.
Nuskul was thrown backward with the impact of the lightning, still holding Sevda. The interesting thing was that Sevda's body, with the electrical current coursing through it, was coming back to life. Yes, most of her software systems were still malfunctioning, but she could now stand up and, at the very least, fight.
Before Nuskul could recover from the trembling effect of the electricity, Sevda lunged at him. Deploying the blades in her arm, she began striking the man's face repeatedly.
"Stop!" the man said, and punched her in the stomach.
"Die, you dog!" Sevda shouted and plunged the blades into the man's chest. When she removed the plate on the man's chest with her blades, his heart was exposed. "I've been dreaming of this for so long! Cursed man! I was dreaming of killing you!"
"Robots! Help me!"
Sevda knew she could end the man's life with a single strike to his heart, but as someone who had saved lives for years, she hesitated. She imagined the heart shattering, the man lying motionless on the ground with his lifeless body and stupid face, and felt pleasure, but she couldn't react.
Nuskul had pleaded with the reflex of someone about to die, but he was aware that the turn was passing back to him. If he shot her suddenly in the joint of her arm with the bullet in his finger, she would likely lose her other arm too. While all this was happening in just a few seconds, a Thwack! sound echoed.
Nuskul fell onto his back on the ground with a massive bullet hole in his head. As Nuskul fell, the finger he had pointed at Sevda's joint also fell onto the mud-covered ground. In that moment, Sevda realized how close she had been to death and felt regret for her hesitation.
She looked toward the man waiting outside the pit they were in, with dark clouds rising behind him. The chest of the man, whose white bandages were covered in mud, was exposed, and stitch marks were clearly visible. In his hand, he held the arm of one of the robots. He had likely been able to use one of the robots' arms as a weapon by supplying electricity to the correct circuit.
"Hey!" the bandaged man shouted. "What do you think you're doing, huh?"
"What do you mean?" Sevda said, letting herself fall onto her back next to the dead Nuskul. She breathed for a while.
"That man almost killed you. For a moment, when you pulled out those blades in your arm, I thought about killing you. After all, with those blades coming out of your arm and your mangled body, you look like those women who go on a rampage in the horror movies I've watched. But when I realized you were going to die anyway, because I love fucking with fate, I killed the man instead of you. Oh, and you're Doctor Sevda, right? It's the first time in my life I've seen a doctor with blades coming out of her arm."
"Movies?"
"Yeah… movies… What? Don't you like them?" the bandaged man said, scratching his bare ass. He tossed the robot arm aside and walked slowly toward Sevda, extending his hand.
The face of this man, with dark clouds swirling behind him, was exactly as Sevda would have wanted it at that moment. If you didn't listen much to what this man, who had the face of a harsh seriousness, was saying, you would definitely be impressed by him.
Sevda took the man's hand. Although the man tried to lift her, he could only manage a grunt. Finally, Sevda had to lift herself up. "Damn it! You're heavy! You're many times heavier than even the other robots," the bandaged man said.
Sevda glanced at the horizon. They must have heard that Nuskul had been killed because the drones taking off from the TESO facility were heading that way. But the drones were slow, especially compared to Urgan's transport vehicle.
"We need to get out of here!" Sevda said.
"Do we need to go? Who was this damn man? Why are the robots trying to kill me? Who are you?"
"First of all, the person they were trying to kill wasn't you. It was me…"
"Sure, sure," he said in a sarcastic tone. "Sorry for stealing your spotlight, lady."
"Are you joking, man? Do you think now is the time for jealousy? Would I do something so stupid?"
"Who the fuck are you! How should I know if you'd do something like that or not!"
"Ugh… Enough!" Sevda shouted angrily. She felt as if she were entering a conversational black hole the more she spoke with this man. This man was truly a spoiled, noble Weisshafen. "We don't have time for explanations! We really need to disappear from here very quickly."
"Ah… damn it, fine!" he said and began following Sevda heatedly.
"God, why does all this happen to me!" the bandaged man said as he climbed into the cockpit Sevda had entered. "I know this happens just because I'm a powerful human! I should have lost my mind by now. You tire me out this much just because you see me as sane! This is a test, I know that quite well." As Sevda boarded Urgan's ship, she extended her hand to the man and pulled him aboard.
"Shut up, you damn man, let your mouth cool down a bit! And stop thinking you've become close to God just because you came back to life!"
"Oh, really?"
"God didn't save you, I did!"
"If Alora heard that, she'd tear you a new one!"
"Who the fuck is Alora anyway!"
"Who is Labiba then, really!"
"Ugh… Just be quiet! You're breaking all my concentration! I forgot how to use this damn ship because of you!"
As soon as the man got onto the ship, he looked into the mirror near the cockpit and was stunned by what he saw. As the spaceship slowly rose, the man shouted:
"No!" he said with all his might. As he shouted, he fell to his knees, spreading his arms like a clergyman begging for mercy. "It can't be! It absolutely can't be! What happened to my pure, baby-faced look? Who is this damn prison escapee? Damn it! This really is hell!"