▪︎ Energy can neither be created nor destroyed ▪︎
In the laboratory, Felix had his left hand still holding his left eye, staring at Zita, who had both her eyes shut tight.
Felix glanced towards Devlin, who was staring at a machine, and shifted his gaze back at Zita.
"Time travel, was it really time travel or was it something else?" He muttered softly. As he flipped his lab coat, his arm slowly fell by his side.
Zita's eyes slowly took a peek, seeing Felix calmly staring at her. She was unsure of what to do.
"Follow me." He simply said and turned around. He pressed on the air, and the wall split apart. Revealing a white coloured room on the other side, "I will see if I can recover your hand. Seeing you don't have any kind of lifeform energy, the chances are slim."
Her teeth clenched, feeling nervous at the fact she might permanently lose her arm.
"But, my wounds had healed before." She responded while stepping inside, "Isn't the technology advanced enough for it?"
Zita observed the white room, seeing what looked like a vertically standing pod at the corner of the room, the floor seemed to be metal with lines engraved along it, there doesn't seem to be any particular pattern to it and was just randomised.
"Technology used to be advanced." He sighed, "Within a few more years, everything falls. Literally and figuratively."
Zita didn't know how to reply to that and just stood there watching him type on air.
On the ground, the lines lit up blue, forming a rectangular shape as it slowly rose up.
"Place your hand inside." The rectangular box clicked, and the top opened with smoke, "It's to scan your arm."
She stared skeptically, not moving an inch forward.
"Come on, you won't kill your arm." He said while swapping up in the air and continued typing.
She hesitated for a while more before slowly taking a few steps forward.
"You're not losing a life. You don't have to be scared." He sighed, feeling annoyed by her lack of trust towards him, "I know you don't trust me after that, but let's just get this over with."
She finally reached the machine, using her right hand to remove the metal scraps around her and lift her left arm inside. She turned and faced Felix, "If I die, I'm coming to hunt you."
"Yeah, right." He scoffed.
In Felix's vision, everywhere in the room, we had a hologram layout of the machine hidden inside.
He had two systems in front of him, swapping up he created another one to gather the data gathered.
One of the systems is the main system connected to his laboratory, with his glove being the trigger. The other system controls the machine Zita's arm is in.
On the machine system, there's a label on it named 'Frazrd microbot.'
The view of both parties is different, but none question the other.
Zita felt her left arm slowly becoming colder as she saw steam escaping from the back of the machine.
"This.. won't hurt.. right?" She gulped, hoping to get a response but saw Felix seemed immersed in whatever he was doing, "Fantastic."
Felix heard what Zita said clearly, but whenever he heard people ask that. He felt a sense of anger, causing him to not respond at all.
It was like the magic word for the memories he wished to bury away.
Felix left the machine in auto mode and just left the room.
"Hey! Hey!" Zita called out but stopped when she saw her attempts were useless, "I will seriously hunt you if I die." She mumbled, even though she knows she won't die from this.
Felix walked across the hallway and entered another room. He took off his headphones and threw it at the floating hanger.
He swapped up, and all the equipment in the room came up. There's a few punching bags around and wooden blocks. He pulled his glove out, tossing them on the ground.
Meanwhile, Zita was just standing around and waiting for results.
"This is boring.." She muttered, "He didn't even give me a cha-." Before she could finish her words, the room turned red -, "That's not good.."
She felt her arm getting colder, and her skin started to hurt from the frostbites. She tried pulling her arm away, but it was futile.
"Damn it!" She cursed, using her right hand to touch the machine, hoping to find some kind of off switch.
The microbots, being unable to detect any life force, skipped the program code and began to sanitise itself.
The first step is to minimise the amount of power it uses by going into a cold state to gather enough energy as the bots slowly retreat into their original position.
The next step after storing enough energy is to incinerate.
The freezing had stopped, causing Zita to breathe a sigh of relief.
"Guess I'm not going to freeze my arm off." She smiled, "Now I guess to just wait for him.."
Saying that, she rubbed her head, "Was it because of my words, I triggered him? I should apologise later.."
The machine came alive again. This time, there were red lines glowing around it.
Buzz
Zita felt as if she could no longer feel any emotions, and her mind felt crystal clear.
This state of mind is what Zita calls auto mode. Where she can't feel any emotions, but her logical thinking goes full swing. It usually only happens when the body can't afford to die.
Her right hand reached for the metal scraps laying around and took the sharpest one.
Without auto mode, even if she thought of this, fear won't let her do it.
She swung the metal below her shoulder. She gritted her teeth from the pain. Despite her arm being broken, it was hard to break apart.
Zita took a deep breath and pulled her arm, swinging the metal. The metal became redder, and so did the lines covering the machine.
Buzz
She managed to separate her shoulder from her left arm as she fell back and landed on her butt. The left sleeve remaining on the arm seemed to burn along with the left arm.
She panted, feeling dizzy from the pain.
Cling
She dropped on her back, panting, and she slowly closed her eyes.
/"Sis, don't cry. I still have one arm."/