Ally's artificial stomach is capable of digesting and breaking down food, though she didn't know she also had a function to vomit. Leaning against the wall with a hand of Jon's around her back, she continued to pump out fluid that she didn't know was inside of her until she felt light and dizzy.
Jon handed him a bottle of water, and she nodded towards him with a tear in her eye.
Neither of them spoke until they got back into the tent.
'Master! You are back!' Pethant said, poking his head out excitedly when he saw the paleness of Jon's face and the silent android girlfriend. Sensing unease in their entire existence, he approached them before asking with a low tone, 'Did something happen?'
Jon dropped the shopping bags onto the ground and reached out to grab onto Pethant by the shoulder.
Bones and Patty joined the group quickly as Patty sealed up the door of the cave with Purple acting both as a door and an AC. Then, as they sat around the shopping bags, Jon told them what he saw.
There was only a deathly silence around the group after that, and from the looks of Pethant and Patty, Jon knew that he wasn't the only one revolted by what he has learned.
Bones, on the other hand, lets out a sigh and reached to grab the box of protein bar that he particularly wanted. Then, he peeled away the packaging and took a bite.
It tasted like blood, and he silently put it down onto the ground next to him.
Over the years as an investigator, he has seen some shit, however, this level of cannibalism is still something...
He didn't want to think back to some of the more unpleasant cases from his past, but the current case is already starting to crawl its way to the top.
'So what do we do now...' Patty asked, her stomach grumbling yet appetite nowhere to be found.
'We start our investigation tomorrow.' Bones said, 'we use whatever means, and divide ourselves into various teams looking at it from all of the possible angles.'
Jon nodded in agreement and chimed in, 'The supermarket must be getting their supplies somehow, so Pethant and I are going to track down where the supplies are coming from.'
'Ally, if you would help me, I am going to hack into the servers nearby to see what I can get.' Patty said, looking over to Ally, 'you have enhanced learning right?'
Ally nodded before glancing towards Jon, who nodded back at her and mouthed that he would be alright.
'Yes....yes-I-can-help-you.'
'And I will act like the dirtiest of them all.' Bones said with a painful grin on his face, 'this sickened me to my stomach, but I will be one of the buyers looking for only the best and worst shit out there. I want us to be able to meet at wherever their site of production is, take in all of the photo evidence and then destroy it all. Now, I am not speaking as the detective, but rather a member of the TEN FINGERS.'
Then, they shared whatever fresh fruits that Jon and Ally had brought and headed to bed nice and early. For the first time since they have been sleeping together, Jon's body was ice cold, and Ally was the one constantly keeping him warm underneath the sheets.
'Ally...Are you awake?' Jon murmured in the dark, and she held him even closer before burying his face in her soft perky breast.
'Yes, my-love?' Ally replied, making sure to keep all of Jon arm and running her hand along his freezing back.
'What...did I do over all these years...' Jon asked, his voice barely making through the gaps between Ally's breasts though she heard everything as clearly as she needed to, 'Did I make things worse...all those lives lost...are them on me?'
'I-cannot-answer-that, my-love.' Ally replied honestly, 'but-what-I-can-say-is-you-can-decide-what-you-are-going-to-do-in-the-years-to-come.'
'...Was the principle of non-interference just an excuse, or a safety blanket that people use to excuse their non-actions?'
'You-told-us-yourselves-that-a-narrative-is-the-most-powerful-weapon, right?' Ally said, 'More-powerful-than-the-world's-strongest-fist-or-sharpest-blade.....'
'But that really shouldn't prevent us from helping the people in need then and there right...?'
'No.' Ally said firmly.
She can felt Jon rubbing his nose along her chest as he nodded, and she lets out a moan without realizing that she did it. Damn pressure sensors. Jon wrapped her hands around Ally's body and pulled himself closer to her as he fell asleep again.
Looking down at the man who brought her out of the darkness, she kissed him gently on the forehead and watched him breathe slowly and deeply in his slumber with a light smile on his face.
The group moved forward in their plans as intended when lights of the morning lit up the thick layers of cloud overhead, and Bones moved out in the same fancy dress that he wore to Imogen's Gallery opening while Jon and Pethant headed through the woods and began tracking down all of the morning trucks and goes in and out of the area. Patty had turned Yellow into a work station and connected Ally to it as she began sieving through the oceans of data. Then, all of their actions are coordinated through the use of the communication device provided by Patty.
Over the next few days, Bones is able to secure an appointment with the sales representative, as the account provided generously by Ally is verified, which got him an invitation to visit one of the production plants deeper into the edge.
In the meantime, Jon and Pethant tracked down the truck which transported the ready-made RED products and retraced it back all the way into the woodlands. They tracked down the dirt road all the way to a compound in the depth of the Edge, beyond the waterfall, the reservoir, the lakes, the trees and the hills. On the other side of all that are a massive clearing with small towns, cities, factories and storage buildings as far as the eyes can see.
Patty obtained something similar through the supermarket server earlier in the investigation process, and Ally was then tasked of going to where Jon and Pethant marked out on the map and connect Patty into one of the junctions that tap into the network of what lied beyond the edge.
'Every city was settled before they were abandoned, right?' Pethant remarked as he looked on at the endless cityscapes, and that very phrase rocked Jon more than he thought it would.
'So those people are all going to be harvested.....' Jon said, pointing towards the streams of people walking in various corners of the city; the adults going to work, the children playing in the park, the grandparents sitting in the gardens... 'We cannot dwell on it any further. We will start by stopping the next harvest, and all of the future harvests.'
'Yes, Master.'
A week had passed, and the fateful day of Bone's visit to the Plant has arrived. It was a chilly evening with the cold sharp winds scratching against his face like razors. Bones dons his brown jacket, boots, a white hat and a scarf that obscures his tattoos that went as high as his neck. He met up with the manager who is in charge of the entire harvest right as the darkness completely covers everything, and a shuttle is already waiting for him.
'Do allow me to re-emphasize the peculiarity of the times and locations.' The manager said, 'The RED is best harvested in the state of urgency and highest stress levels, as we have discovered that when superhumans are pushed to the limits of their powers, the compound that was created from them also carries the highest amount of potency. Hence, you may find the scenes of the harvest a little distressing.'
'So it is just like slaughter farm animals?' Bones said with a chilling tone.
'Something like that.' He said with an uncaring shrug, 'But you see, the EDGE only produces the highest quality of RED, as the entire basis of our operation is based on a narrative created within the confines of the area...The compound is massive, and to go through all of the items on your lists would take a few days, so we have also prepared a luxury accommodation for your stay.'
The shuttle rattled off the ground and lifted off, with Bones tapping three times in a row in his communicator to indicate the start of his journey.
This also signals for Jon and Pethant to sneak into the city at the exact same time. The plan was for Bones to gather as much information about the plant as possible, which explains the long list of things he wanted to visit during this trip. For Jon and Pethant, this also gives them more time to investigate the city beyond the EDGE.
To their surprise, the entire process is extremely simple, as there is only a three-meter high fence that ran alongside the outlines of the city which is easily scaled by both of them. Jon used his eyes as sharp as a string of atoms to ensure that they are undetected, and the pairing found themselves on the grounds of the city without any trouble.
'Something does not feel right, master.' Pethant said with a low voice, looking around at the others and poking his camera lens through a gap in the cloak that he is wearing, 'all of them...looked too normal.'
'All of this is too...obvious...' Pethant continued, scanning around the city and filming everything that he saw. The handful of the people moving about at this time of the day are all dressed in the exact same way as they are.
Jon didn't say a word and simply walked towards the nearest supermarket. Pethant stayed behind in the darkness and waited for his return.
It wasn't long before he returned with a blanked look on his face. Then, he showed Pethant a picture of a box of RED pills.
'This isn't it.' Jon shook his head, 'this isn't where the plant really is.'
'Where could it have been then...?' Pethant thought, looking towards the few high rising chimneys of the factories nearest to them a few blocks away from the residential areas.
'Guess we will have to go in.' Jon said before turning towards Pethant, 'ready for some cameraman work?'
'A long time coming, master.'