On the day for our operation in the apartment, me, Kyra, and Cynthia decided to meet up with the tenth division at our usual café spot. We'd already gotten our drinks and sat in our usual corner when we spotted our new teammates walking in. Over came Emanuel, Sav, and Celeste.
"Hey guys!" Kyra called out to them. "Come, take a seat!"
They pulled some chairs over and sat at our table.
"How's it hangin'?" Sav said, his accent as prominent as ever. "Y'all got some tasty lookin' drinks there."
"You should go get one," I told him. "The latte here's my favorite."
"Nice to be working with you guys again." Emanuel sat between Cynthia and I. Us remnants of the Tenfold were fully reunited again.
"How's your arm, Em?" Cynthia asked him.
"It's good now. You know A.X.A.'s medicine, super fast-working as always."
"That's great to hear, man." I was relieved he hadn't been severely injured during the operation at New Zina. I remember being struck with fear the moment I saw the bullet graze his arm, but now, he was looking more healthy than ever.
"So, it looks like you guys have had some progress on Operation Zenith. You guys seem to have already found so many clues in Heathen's direction," Emanuel said.
"Something like that," I replied, uncertain. "We've had a lot of strange encounters that point in a general direction, but this could still all be speculation. I don't blame Overseer Azrael for refusing to deploy all his divisions on this mission."
"It's still something at least. Me, Sav, and Celeste, could barely find anywhere to start."
Celeste, who sat with his arms crossed at the side furthest away from us, scoffed at the statement. "It's because I'm working with a delinquent like you. Upper Four shouldn't be collaborating with any lower ranking individuals in the first place."
Kyra rolled her eyes. "These guys from the lower six are way more talented than you think, Celeste."
"Don't mind him. He's been like this ever since we started in the tenth division. Moody one he is," Sav said.
"Sorry you had to put up with that," I told Emanuel.
He shook his head. "It's no problem. I get where he's coming from, being Fourth in the Upper Four and all."
I nudged him. "Come on, though. You can't let him step on your status like that. You're way more worthy than he puts people like us out to be."
"Why are we even here?" Celeste suddenly said. "We're just wasting time. Let's go to the apartment and get this operation over with already."
By now, me, Kyra and Cynthia were already nearly done our drinks. Calling the others to the café was merely purposed as a meeting point. Celeste was right. There was no use wasting any more time, especially when hundreds of seemingly innocent civilians stood captivated in the hundreds of rooms in that apartment.
We had to save them, somehow.
We left the café and set out towards the apartment. As we got closer, my heart beat faster. There was something oddly exhilarating yet terrifying about returning to a place I'd been victim to. It also helped the feeling knowing that this could very well be a location we could find answers associated with the Sin of Discrimination.
"Hopin' that Sin of Discrimination could just show up in front of us randomly like all those online encounters. Why's it so easy for 'em to find the Sin but so hard for us?"
"Maybe because we're looking for them," I replied to Sav. "Maybe they're aware of what we're trying to accomplish."
"But are we prepared if we do encounter them?" Cynthia asked, genuinely worried. She was one of the few people among us who truly witnessed the Sin of Discrimination's power up-close. She knew and understood what we'd be dealing with if we did encounter the Sin.
As all of us knew our main objective wasn't only to find the Sin of Discrimination, but to capture them and take them to A.X.A. Knowing the power they withheld, I doubted that they'd simply be willingly taken into custody by us, weaker individuals.
"I think we are," Kyra replied to the question. "We've got really strong Fractals ready to use among us. And we've also got the Man in Black."
In that moment, we'd just arrived to the front of the apartment. Already standing outside, waiting for us to arrive, was none other than the elite J himself. He dawned an all-black wrapped suit as insinuated by his codename, Man in Black. The suit even wrapped the entirety of his head, covering everything but a single one of his eyes, the left eye. It glowed a brilliant green.
"Whoa…" I was star-struck. I'd heard the rumors that 95% of his body consisted of prosthetics. The only part of him true to his original body was the upper-left side of his face and the entirety of his brain. He was apparently found torn-apart and dead at the scene of a brutal accident, but his brain was found to continue functioning even in that state. It was thanks to Overseer Chamuel and his research that J was able to basically resurrect with a newly improved body. Now, he stood near the top, second to Overseer Azrael in terms of combat ability. He'd be assisting us with the weapon he always carried, Duality, a staff that could be separated into a dual-wield of swords with powerful capabilities.
As we all approached, none of us even tried to say hello. The aura was too intimidating. Either way, he wouldn't have replied. We'd been notified by General Michael that he was completely absent when it came to socializing. Apparently the only words he spoke were the titles of the different forms for his weapon.
"There he is." Kyra stood by his side, unknowing of what to say. "Looks like everyone's here then. Let's get started on the operation."
Unknowing of what to expect that lay further in the building, our objective upfront was to try evacuating every docile tenant in every room considered, all whilst trying to make sense of what put them in that state in the first place. We already had context of the circular symbols in their rooms, and how they pertained to the receptionist's delusion-imposing Fractal. So the first sensical reason would be that they were still under the influence of her Fractal. But now that the receptionist was dead, it shouldn't have been active anymore. It didn't make sense why they remained in their blankened states. That loose end was up to us to try tying.
We all entered the apartment, one by one, into the lobby. Unlike before, the scene lacked the receptionist's dead body now that it'd been taken away by the clean-up crew. Kyra went behind the front desk and began searching for the stash of room keycards we'd been told about. Then, she'd found it. It was a cabinet with five drawers, each containing a duplicate keycard for every room on every floor in the building.
"Let's get to opening."
The keycards were divided among six of us, as J was unresponsive when provided some. The six of us who did have keycards began unlocking door after door on every floor we could access. As I unlocked the rooms I'd been provided, I peaked into every single one to see if the rumors had been true. Sure enough, every room I looked into was exactly like Russo's. They were plain, white, void of any furniture and empty, with a sole painted circle on one wall that the docile tenant stared at. For a few of them I tried waving my hand in front of their face, or even moving them aside, but their bodies pestered to remain in position. It was like they were under some form of control. It reminded me of how Sixth and Tenth's Angels were acting in the war after they'd died.
"What is going on?" I wondered to myself. I had no clue what to make of this strange occurrence. I continued to open the doors with the keycards I'd been assigned, which was for rooms found on both the second and third floor. As I repeated the same process, there was finally a deviation in the pattern. Two out of the fifty rooms I'd unlocked were empty, as in, vacant of any tenant. Two rooms I'd counted lacked a person entirely. When I was finished with my task, I returned to the lobby to meet with everyone else once they were finished, and I made sure to speak out about the oddity I'd observed.
"Guys, two rooms I unlocked didn't have a tenant inside. All of the other 48 did, but two didn't."
"Were those two rooms the same layout as everyone else's?" Kyra asked.
"Yes. White, empty, circle on the wall, you know. Just, no person."
"That's really weird. It's almost like two people were missing then."
"Twelve." Celeste spoke up. "Make it twelve people that are missing. I counted ten rooms void of a person."
"I came across three empty ones," Emanuel said.
Kyra was scratching her head. "Then that makes fifteen. Fifteen empty rooms that are missing a tenant. According to the pattern in this building, that's fifteen abnormalities. If everyone else seems to be captivated-in-place in their rooms, why are fifteen missing?"
"Maybe they escaped their mirages, just like how we did," Cynthia said. "But the building's been blocked off from the inside and outside ever since the day we escaped, right? No one should have been able to leave since then, which would mean that they only could have left before we even came."
"But that's when the receptionist was still here. If she noticed some people escaping the loop in her Fractal, and trying to leave the building from the lobby where she stayed, wouldn't she do something to keep them here? How could she just let fifteen escape freely?" I asked.
"I don't know. Another loose end," Kyra sighed. "For now, those fifteen missing aren't our concern. The rest of the tenants that remain in their rooms are our priority. We have to save those who are currently present."
I spoke up. "I tried catching their attention. I even tried physically moving them around the room. They struggled against it. Even if I'd moved them over a little bit, they returned to the same spot they originally stood in."
"Same thing for me." Emanuael showed a display of how they acted. "They wouldn't budge. Their bodies acted as if they wanted to stay in the room."
"Hm… Then how are we going to go about evacuating them? Any ideas?" Kyra asked.
"I could use Gateway," Sav made the suggestion. "I could send 'em through my wormholes and bring 'em out front. That way we won't need to get physical and force 'em out of the rooms."
It was a brilliant idea that used Sav's Fractal to its potential. There was only one inconvenience that came with it, so I brought it to light.
"You're okay with sending 285 people through your wormholes, one at a time?"
"Unless there's another valid way, I don't see why not," Sav shrugged. "May take a bit, but won't matter as long as we can get 'em tenants all outta here."
We nodded in unison, agreeing with Sav's idea. As long as we could get the people to safety, then it'd be worth it no matter how much time it took. We decided to take the elevator to the fifth floor and start from there, eventually making our way down to the first floor.
"Keep me awake y'all, alright? This one's gonna be a lil' tirin' for me."
"You got it, Sav," Kyra giggled. "We'll treat you to something after."
Once we arrived at the top floor, we were met with the usual division of a hallway. Rooms 500-537 were towards the left, and rooms 538-560 were towards the right. To go with our theme of a descending order, we decided to go to the right and start all the way at room 560.
As we passed them by, every room's door had been opened. Soon, we'd have all of them emptied. Arriving to room 560 first, we entered and were met with a tenant who was a tall man that stared at his circle, just as every other tenant did. First, we tested the usual—moving them aside from their docile positions, but as expected, they resisted and even returned to the spot if moved too far.
"Guess we'll be doin' it after all." Sav readied his Fractal. With Gateway, he operated by the hand, eyes, and the mind, connected into one. First, he visualized the location of his wormhole by estimating its size, dimensions, and distance from where he looked. Then, he reached his hand out towards where he envisioned the wormhole to exist, performing a twisting motion with his hand as if rotating a lightbulb off its clasp. This action was in synchronization with the activation of the Fractal in his mind, which would begin emitting the wormhole into existence. With Gateway, through thought and motion, Sav was essentially reforming reality at will.
"There we go!" He continued his hand-twisting motion, and although we couldn't see it, the wormhole was coming to exist. I felt a slight force leaning me in the tenant's direction, as if its invisible presence created its own gravitational pull. As we were all ready to witness the tenant disappear, he suddenly stepped away from Sav and retreated to the back corner of the room, avoiding the wormhole entirely.
We were all stunned by the sudden change in movement.
"What's he doing?" Celeste was annoyed. "They don't move all this time and as soon as Sav's ready to teleport him he runs away?"
"Did he detect the wormhole?" I asked.
"Can't be. I always try my best to keep it on the lowkey. Thing's invisible!" Sav claimed. "Lemme have another go at him."
Sav began approaching the tenant in the corner who still seemed absent-minded. But as he did, the tenant began moving again, this time towards the opposite corner of the room once again away from Sav.
"Huh?!" Now even Sav was annoyed. "Why're ya runnin'?"
I watched in confusion at this whole ordeal. The tenant moved away from Sav as if he knew he was going to be transported away. It occurred to me that whenever we tried moving any tenant out of their room, they always resisted the hardest, almost as if they fought so desperately to stay in the room.
Something then clicked with me. The tenants weren't stuck in the rooms, because they didn't act like they couldn't leave. They acted like they didn't want to leave. They wanted to stay in the rooms.
To contradict my thoughts in that exact moment, the tenant dashed out of the room and into the hallway.
"He ran—?!?"
"I was this close to gettin' 'im in the wormhole!" Sav facepalmed. "I'll predict his movement and place the wormhole ahead of 'im next time."
He went out into the hall to pursue the tenant, and we followed behind. What we saw next out in the hallway was the last thing we would have ever expected.
Running towards us, nearly trampling over each other, were dozens of tenants moving with brutish intent. Some spilled out of the rooms we'd left open for them, while the rest were approaching us with absolute aggression.
My fight or flight response had been initiated. Things had taken a turn towards danger.