The scent of fresh blood, sucked by the mosquitoes swarming around, had permeated everywhere.
With every running step, Meyer felt the stench intensifying.
With his speed and ambition, he had left Emma, Magnus, and the carcass of the Slasher far, far behind.
What caught his attention now were the vectors buzzing nearby, their wings opening and closing like gauze curtains.
Two voices echoed involuntarily in his head:
"2048, Heist at the Magma Protection Area Precious Metals Meeting Office!"
"2047, The Death of the Chief Executive of the Precious Gems Union spread terror everywhere!"
He postponed the task of solving what these were. He knew now was not the time.
And then there was the zoo, flickering between these two visions.
Everything became utterly entangled.
Meyer felt a slight fear arising from uncertainty. Instead of accepting this fear, he instantly rejected it. Everything would go as he wished; he hurled oaths into the surroundings.
Before long, he reached the entrance of the tower, formed by a roof built upon two giant pillars.
In front of the door were foul-smelling, dark green plants. Above them, he saw mosquitoes with blood dripping from their mouths, flapping their wings. Each was moving in strange directions like someone who had lost their way, drawing zigzags or circles.
"I don't think you quite know what you're doing," Meyer said defiantly.
Afterwards, this defiance seemed absurd to him.
"Defying someone who doesn't know what they're doing? If the only way is not to be afraid, then I won't be afraid," Meyer said, promising himself. He walked slowly toward the roof, where the mosquitoes had already begun to make his arm itch just by their presence.
The direction of the flying mosquitoes had changed. The target was now Meyer.
One of the mosquitoes, inhaling his scent, landed with its hairy legs on Meyer's arm, which resembled the handle of a golden pitcher.
Meyer examined the mosquito in astonishment.
It had a wide mouth, two large oval spheres for a head and body, and exactly six hairy legs. Its shape was triangular, like a computer cursor. It had a strange color, like rusted aluminum. He gently touched one of the mosquito's wings. It was thick, like velvet. He immediately realized the gauze curtain comparison was wrong.
The mosquito strolled over his micro-porous skin, swaying. Like an acrobat trying to maintain balance on a rope. It had raised its needle into the air. Meyer repeated, "I feel no fear." However, when six mosquitoes landed on his other arm at the same time, things changed. When he felt even a little fear, he saw the mosquitoes reach for their specialized blades more preparedly. That is, their needles.
They all wanted to drink his orange-juice-colored blood.
Meyer, without compromising his comfort, allowed them to perform their little show.
The mosquitoes continued to wander over his skin. They dragged their legs like a cumbersome man. Sometimes the opposite. Light as a feather. Tiny mounds formed at the points where their legs sank into the skin.
Meyer was sure the needle hadn't entered the vein.
Actually, humans wouldn't feel the pain as soon as the needle entered the vein; this was a strange defense mechanism of the mosquitoes. Someone who noticed it could very well attack the vector instantly with the sting of pain.
Meyer, cutting through the dense web of his thoughts like a knife, examined the mosquitoes more closely. There was a voice in his head telling him he needed to go even deeper. He looked at the rough, dark green stone steps. He no longer felt a shred of fear from the mosquitoes dusting the air and wandering on his arms. He wondered how he had achieved this.
The Devil Chip activated.
"You're good at this, but I'm afraid there's a difficult stage you've overlooked," it spoke.
Meyer smirked crookedly and asked, "What is that stage?"
His voice was another expression of the fact that he didn't care about the whole world.
He didn't question how long he had been like this. Undoubtedly for the last four hours.
What was happening in his brain?
Under the steps, Meyer saw mosquitoes piled in clusters at a corner of the concrete pillars holding up the roof. They were all hovering over something, moving their limbs. When Meyer approached that area, he could see nothing but bloodstains. He advanced a bit further with effort. A color composed of dark purple and light green dominated the sky. Over there, ground water was constantly erupting from the pool in front of the peach-colored building.
Meyer turned his head; his sharp senses had detected something.
Reflexively forgetting the mosquitoes on his arm, he walked toward the stone building.
His shoes made thud-thud sounds as they hit the ground.
"I wonder what my fear level is?" he asked.
The Devil Chip worked. Communicating with this chip was simple.
"Fear level is currently at 10 percent."
"Ten percent?" Meyer said in amazement. "And here I was sure it wasn't even one percent."
"Fear is a wild treasure hidden within a human," said the Devil Chip. "Where are your instincts leading you, Slasher?"
Meyer strangely couldn't take the nickname 'Slasher' upon himself.
"I'm not the Slasher; the Slasher is that hulking man I gutted!" he countered.
The Devil Chip approved mockingly. "Well, well. Do you have the courage to enter?"
Meyer didn't think about the question for even a moment. His feet felt the floor of the interior, his lungs its scent, his hands the shell of the walls, his eyes the darkness, and his tongue that imaginary sour taste. When he descended the steps and reached the steel door surrounded by a large frame, a code was written on a tag hanging from the doorknob. "Kill 100 mosquitoes to enter."
"Wait a minute, wait a minute!" Meyer shouted.
"Killing a hundred mosquitoes? Code 43 told me there was no way to do that. He said I only needed not to be afraid, so I could be protected from them." He fumbled through his pockets; all his weapons had remained on the ground where he killed the Slasher. That fight, which had provoked him enough to abandon his weapon, seemed even more illogical to him now.
The Devil Chip had fallen into silence. It didn't answer, didn't say a single word. "Is our frequency not matching?" Meyer questioned. Then he turned his back and closed his eyes against the swarm of mosquitoes that suddenly rushed toward him. As everywhere became part of a dark silence, he noticed the needles sinking into various points of his body and jumped into the air, throwing himself backward. "AAAA!"
The flies also circled around him, buzzing.
"Leave me alone, you filth!" Meyer said, breathing rapidly. His chest was shaking violently.
He swung his fist, sharp as a dagger, into the air; the mosquito possessed advanced survival capacity.
The Devil Chip said, "Wrong choice, friend. Your fists will never save you from this situation."
Meyer became uneasy after the Devil Chip said these things.
"Your fear rate is at 20 percent; I wouldn't want to scare you," said the Devil Chip.
"Oh, really," Meyer said, annoyed. Then he scanned the materials before his eyes that he could use. "Code 43 said the only way to deal with them is not to be afraid. But this door tells me to kill them. There's a novelty in this! Maybe I shouldn't go through the door!" he said and jumped toward the back of the tower through the gap he opened among the flies.
The buzzing had intensified; the vectors were in pursuit.
Meyer noticed at that moment that the flies were going in another direction, not toward him.
He looked at the cove where a streak of bright light filtered through.
There! A body lay on the ground, so mutilated it was unrecognizable, clearly belonging to a woman by her hair. The smell of a corpse had filled everywhere; the horror mixed into the air nauseated him.
Meyer covered his mouth with his hand. "Oh my God!"