"So you're saying this man is a revolutionary, is that it?" Aldo asked. Although he was being perfectly serious, he was struggling to keep himself from chuckling internally.
Even if this Bioethical Oversight Inspector was the same man Mael's master had mentioned, he didn't think this man could be of any use to him or this colony. He was about to say, "He can't do shit, let alone a revolution," but when he saw the Calosian people watching him with great curiosity, he settled for saying: "He looks like a great man."
"Is there a possibility that you know him?" asked the young man named Calmo.
"I worked as a resource collector for a while, and during that time I wasn't within the SWR network. I didn't even know a Bioethical Oversight Inspector existed."
Calmo must have found the answer disappointing, as his face fell and he clung to the hem of the woman in the red dress.
"Where is this place?" Aldo asked.
"This is Level Zero... We are the Calosians who work in the management of the Calos factory."
"I caught a glimpse of the people in Uruzen while flying over them in the ship, and your conditions seem better..." He scanned the surroundings a bit more. "At least you have clothes."
"Ah... actually, the situation is like this... We lead such a comfortable life because we are the Calosians in top management. Our total population here doesn't exceed 35. But in this city, unlike Uruzen, there is a caste system. We are at the highest rank. As you go down the levels, the rank goes down as well. The total Calosian population is 48 thousand... 47,550 of those 48 thousand are at the lowest layer, on Level -4."
"I hope the surface area there isn't as small as this town."
"Of course not... don't be ridiculous..." The woman glanced around. "It's twice the size of this place."
"How so?" Aldo asked in surprise. "If I lined people up side by side here, maybe..." He thought for a moment and calculated in his head. "...I could fit maybe 1,000 people. And that's pushing it."
"Sir... the Calosians belong to Level -4, but they don't live there. They live in the factory anyway. Only some have one day of leave every 45 years. Then they are allowed to descend to Level -4. Considering the average Calosian lives a maximum of 33 years..."
"Ah... I'm sorry," Aldo said. "I forgot that this place is also a colony."
"This situation seems to bother you as well," said the Old Man. "Or... or are you also against exploitation?"
"You won't get a revolutionary out of me, old man. Don't get your hopes up for nothing..." Aldo said with a firm tone.
"Well then, what is your name?" the old man asked.
A name? Aldo knew that after coming back to life, he couldn't use his own name; he didn't want to put the Weisshafen family on his trail. While the old man and the child looked at him with great curiosity, he scratched his temples with his finger and searched for a name for himself. His biological father had named him Aldoux. Before his father died and his mother married Damon Weisshafen, Aldo's family were merchants. In fact, they were merchants working for Damon Weisshafen... Damon Weisshafen had seen Aldoux's mother wandering the market and checking stocks from the cockpit of his ship during one of his voyages and had taken such a liking to her... Aldoux didn't remember those times much, but if there was one thing he knew, it was that the name Aldoux meant "the merchant's most precious treasure." His father had given him this name because he was a merchant. But he had never seen that much value... In fact, quite the opposite, the Weisshafen family had seen Aldoux as nothing more than a worthless creature.
Therefore, thinking he could set aside the wrong name given by his dreamer father, Aldoux felt a bit of excitement.
"Well... as for the name..."
"We understand if you don't want to share your name with us Calosians," said the woman in the faded dress. "But our shift is about to start, so we beg your pardon. Would you like us to drop you off at the upper floor?"
"Ma'am..." said one of the young men in the crowd. "...this nameless friend of ours has put the factory into alarm."
"How so?"
"The chase might have been a bit heated," Aldo said and smiled.
"This gentleman seems to have angered the TESO2 units. A small team is currently visible coming to this floor," he said, pointing to the elevator.
"Damn it... this man being here could cause unwanted trouble for us," the woman said.
"What should be done?" Aldo asked.
"Sir..." the woman said, approaching Aldo. "...if they find you here, since they can't punish you, they will punish us." Meanwhile, a group of people had climbed the ladders to cover the statue with a sheet, doing their best. "That's why I have to ask you to leave."
"No problem," Aldo said and smiled. "Is there an elevator I can take to go up?"
"Sure... let me show you," said the young boy named Calmo, and taking the man by the hand, he led him toward the elevator. After pressing the buttons in the elevator, he said: "I hope we meet again."
Just as Aldo was going up with the elevator, robots had descended via another elevator. As the robots stepped out and lined up on both sides of the elevator, Borvel, the TESO2 Security Manager, walked with quick steps toward the sheet-covered statue.
He had an officer's cap on his head. His graying hair was visible here and there from under his cap. He wore a dark blue suit, and there were various medals on the chest of the suit.
"Greetings, upper-floor Calosians!" the man shouted, giving an insincere greeting.
"Our shift is about to start, Borvel..." said the woman in the red dress. "...we need to prepare."
"I'm sorry, Tita, but there is a security issue here, and I have to keep you from your work."
"Can you explain this to Hianyan, the manager of TESO2, as well?" the Old Man asked.
"No... I guess you didn't understand... I won't prevent you from going to work; I'll just prevent you from preparing. What's the harm in going to work without preparing?"
"We can't work without wearing our nuclear protective suits. That would be death for us."
"Then!" Borvel shouted, raising his finger and speaking powerfully. "Answer my questions quickly so that the radiation inside the factory doesn't tear you into pieces and kill you! Now I start with the first question, 'Where is the augmented?' If he's here, why is he here?"
"The augmented?" asked the woman in red, Tita. "Yes... a man came, but he went upstairs a few minutes ago."
"Is that so? And why was that augmented here?" Borvel asked, walking toward Tita with heavy steps.
"We don't know."
"Is that so?" he said, and suddenly grabbed the woman's cheek and began to squeeze. Borvel's cybernetic hands left a cold pain as they squeezed Tita's cheek. He looked into the woman's eyes for a while. Meanwhile, he examined the woman's pupils with a beam from his eye. "Strange things are happening in Uruzen. The Manager is afraid of these situations spreading to Calos."
The woman could feel the blood swirling inside her mouth.
"We..." the woman said. "...we are obedient to TESO."
"The Uruzenians were too..." In the man's eye scan, there was no sign that the woman was lying. He pushed the woman's face with his hand and turned away suddenly. "Now tell me... why did the augmented come here?"
"Because of me..." Calmo said. "...I stole that man's money, and he wanted it back."
"Is that so?" Borvel crouched down to be at the same level as the child. "Well, look at you..."
At that moment, Tita stepped between the child and the security officer and said: "He was just being a child, Borvel. Just a little mischief..."
Borvel first tried to look past Tita at the child, but Tita stepped in again. Tita felt no fear toward this man because she believed that fear was of no use against the inevitable. This man was someone with unlimited authority in the company, and the Calosians before him had almost no authority. If they died, replacing them with a Calosian from the lower floors would only take a few minutes.
Furthermore, despite being a cybernetic, Borvel was someone who still carried his pre-cybernetic traumas in the corners of his mind. He was on one of the ships that had raided the Maxerth Vilian during the Interstellar War. During the nearly two-year conflict inside the ship, he had seen the bottom of famine, hunger, poverty, hopelessness, and everything else bad. That was why he didn't want to erase some of his complexes with his cybernetic brain; he wanted to carry them as war memories. One of these was his tendency toward violence.
He liked to use Calosians as targets in target practice. During holiday breaks, he would amuse himself with Calosian women; he would use the power of his cybernetic body to such an extent that each of the robots lined up along that corridor would have to turn off their sensors to avoid hearing the screams. And Borvel didn't think he did this out of cruelty; he thought he did it out of love.
The next holiday was near. He had set his sights on Tita to take with him for that holiday. Knowing this, Tita could speak back to Borvel. Borvel slowly straightened up and pushed the hair falling over his eye back into his cap with the back of his hand. After adjusting his cap, he licked his lips and said, laughing: "You are testing our patience, Miss Tita. But I love this side of you more."
As Tita took the child behind her, Calmo clung more tightly to Tita's skirt.
"Because I love you..." Borvel said. "...I wouldn't want you to be late for work. So I'll handle everything quickly." He signaled one of the robots with his hand. "Take the child..."
When the robots stepped forward to take the child, the Calosian old man took two steps forward. Perhaps he thought he could convince them. Or perhaps, living on the upper floors, he had been carried away by prestige and forgotten he was a Calosian. Or perhaps the old codger just couldn't stand on his feet and took two steps to relax his legs. But as soon as he took those two steps, one of the robots fired a bullet into his head. As the old man's lifeless body fell to the ground, Tita let out a scream of horror.
Seeing Tita trembling with fear, Borvel grabbed the woman by her wrists, hugged her tightly from behind, and whispered in her ear: "Calm down... calm down... they are robots, they do whatever their software tells them."
"Go to hell! What do you want from a child?"
Calmo was in screams and tried to run and hug Tita. When one of the robots lunged to catch Calmo, it grabbed the moving Calmo by his arm. It had squeezed so hard that the sound of the arm breaking reached Tita. While Calmo cried in pain, one of the robots took him in its arms and headed toward the elevator.
After licking the woman's tear-filled cheek, Borvel kicked the woman's hip, causing her to fall to the ground: "Get dressed! Work begins!" he said and headed toward the elevator. Before the elevator door closed, Tita's tearful eyes saw Calmo, whose mouth was covered by the robots so he would be quiet while writhing in pain. The child was still pleading and crying as if there were still hope.