Nawx (Project IzeBorn Book 1) Page 11

  "My mistake! It's been so long. I don't know if your memory chip would be able to restore with such lengths of time. It has been a few hundred years since we last contacted." The man laughed.

  "A few hundred!?" Atreyu shouted loudly in disbelief.

  "Quite so, indeed." The man answered, looking back at Atreyu with his calm look still stained on his face. "Atreyu, I remember you as well."

  The man stepped over to Atreyu and attempted to put his hands on him, but Atreyu quickly jumped back, looking a little frightened.

  "The heck are you doing!?" Atreyu asked.

  "Hold still! I'm checking to see how your cooling system has been over the course of your exploration."

  Atreyu stopped and looked at the man seriously, looking back at Bastion with a confused look on his face. Bastion eyes jolted over at Atreyu, as he got up on his feet and started his way to the circle of conversation.

  "Memory chip? Cooling system? Something tells me you're not just a strange guy who appeared out of nowhere in a white block of mystery."

  The man chuckled as he stepped toward Bastion and pulled out a pen, as he started to analyze Bastion's dragon scales.

  "The dragon is right? I am no mere person, I am Drenawx!" Drenawx shouts.

  Nova placed her hand on her hip, with her head still tilted to the side. She looked over at Atreyu with disbelief, but she was not completely convinced he was who he said he was. The man was a shorty. Nova had gotten into her head that Drenawx was some sort of being who had the capability of restoring Humanity through a sacred power, she didn't realize how wrong she was. She pinched the bridge of her nose as she grew a bit frustrated.

  "If you are Drenawx, where have all the Machina gone?" Nova asked.

  "I could ask you the same question. I had them held up in my lab, and suddenly they've disappeared without a trace!" Drenawx answered with a sense of overdramatic sense in the tone of his voice. "However-! I still have some in the lab, if you'd like to check them out!"

  Nova frowned and looked to Atreyu and Bastion before nodding, "Yeah, we'd like that."

  "The dragon's gonna have to stay. He's a bit too big for the white block thing." Atreyu muttered as he stepped toward the white block.

  Drenawx tapped on Bastion's dragon scales, nodding and mumbling at Atreyu's observation about him.

  "You appear to be right, Atreyu... And it's an elevator!" Drenawx shouted out of nowhere as he rushed to Atreyu and wracked his hand as Atreyu tried to press a random button on the elevator.

  Bastion closed his eyes and shrugged his own shoulders, not caring at all about going in the elevator, or Atreyu's assumption about how big he was. He opened his eyes to see Nova walking toward him and laying a hand on his dragon scales, about the same spot Drenawx was irritatingly tapping with his pen.

  "You don't mind, right?" Nova asked as she looked up at him.

  Bastion sighed as he turned his head to look at Septimus, who was dead on the ground a few feet away, "It gives me some time to mourn."

  Nova looked around Bastion right at Septimus and sighed, she looked at her hand as it still laid upon his scales.

  "You had feelings for her, didn't you?"

  Bastion looked down at her, kind of surprised she had asked a question like that. But Atreyu had shouted across the way for Nova to hurry to the elevator. Nova slowly slides her hand off his scales as she shot an assuring smile up at Bastion as she turned and walked toward the elevator. She entered slowly, stepping aside Drenawx who stood in the middle of the three. Drenawx reached his arm over and pressed a big red button as Nova watched Bastion. The doors slowly began to close as a wave of white fog surrounded the area outside. But she could still see Bastion as he turned to Septimus and just stare down at her. Nova looked down and held her fists tightly. She tried not to let any tears of sympathy for the two dragons escape her eyes, but Atreyu glanced over at her.

  "Nova, you all right there?" Atreyu asked.

  Nova jumped from hearing his voice. She quickly wiped away her tear as it ran down her cheek. She nodded and looked at the opposite direction. The sight outside of the elevator through the see-through door showed off the underwater, but it eventually looked as though it went underground as the whole elevator. A loud shrieking sound made both Atreyu and Nova react as the elevator was making a slow stop to their destination.

  "So, we're underground now?" Atreyu asked within the silence that had filled the inner side of the elevator.

  Drenawx nodded, "The world is corrupted, for sure. So I've been experimenting with the underground portion of the world."

  "How has that been going?"

  The elevator stopped and opened it's doors rather quicker, presenting a large room. Everything was a white color; the floors, the walls, the ceiling, and what it looked to be missiles, rockets and other unknown airships that looked destroyed from time. Nova and Atreyu stepped out of the elevator slowly as they observed and admired the room.

  "It has its share of complications, but it's working as well as one would expect," Drenawx explained.

  He kept his walking, he walked toward a set of giant white doors and it seemed to magically open. The nervous but intrigued Atreyu followed closely behind. But Nova was a bit behind them, as she looked through some glass windows. She saw some machines. But they weren't humanoid or anything. They looked rusted and damaged, and the outer part of the skeleton that held all the mechanical parts that allowed the machines to become functional was shown, with no coverings for defense or a decency of appearance. One of the machines crawled over to the window and looked up at Nova, but it didn't say a word. Perhaps it didn't have the ability to speak. But the shutters quickly fell down, covering the vision Nova had the room and the damaged machine who was looking upon her.

  She decided to keep following the two, the place was huge enough. She could easily get lost. Drenawx's voice was heard in the room just ahead, so she proceeded inside and saw that a diagram was being presented to Atreyu. Nova gasped silently, as she saw Atreyu's silent reaction. On the diagram, there were a bunch of similar parts she had seen on those rusted and damaged machines from that room with the observation windows.

  "S-So... I'm a machine, too?" Atreyu asked as he held the diagram in his hand.

  Drenawx nodded his head. Nova looked at Atreyu's arms and saw him shaking with anger. He gripped the page tightly, crumbling it with his fists. Drenawx gasped and rushed to a table to grab a wrench.

  "There's your cooling system malfunctioning again!" Drenawx shouted as he seemed to run around the room to look for tools.

  Nova raised an eyebrow as she leaned her hand on her hip again and watched the little scientist rush around the room.

  "Erm... Maybe Atreyu is mad, or sad? He didn't really know he was a machine until now..." Nova muttered.

  Drenawx stopped his running right in front of Nova. He shook his head and appeared to have been quite annoyed by her response toward Atreyu's condition.

  "Machines cannot develop emotions." Drenawx frowned.

  "Why?"

  Drenawx hesitated before answering, "Because emotions have been what made the Humans weak. It's the biggest flaw within a Human, and it made them vulnerable to that wretched virus on the upper lands."

  "Wretched virus? You mean Ruse?" Nova asked, looking surprised.

  Drenawx nodded his head and shrugged his shoulders, "Call it what you want. I studied it, and it manipulates one's emotions. If you're mad, you grow more rage. If you're sad, you grow more sorrow."

  Nova's voice whined silently as she remembered the rage Drakkar showed in their previous battle. But Drenawx climbed on a step stool in order to reach Atreyu's head. He moved his locks of hair around and eventually found the screws to open the back of his head. This instantly put down Atreyu and allowed him to go into a sleep mode so he would not intervene with his repair or feel Drenawx messing with his inner head. Nova leaned against the doorway as she quietly watched. She glanced back at the observation windows with the shutters. She shuddered as s
he quietly heard some of the machines within that room shriek or malfunction.

  "Hey, can I ask a question?" Nova asked.

  Drenawx kept his eyes on the repairing as he nodded his head, Go ahead."

  "How... How did you find us?" She asked as she looked back at him. "I've been trying to find you since I first heard your name."

  Drenawx stopped his work and looked at Nova, "What do you last remember?"

  Nova sighed, as the feeling of pain appeared in her eyes once again as she tried to speak, "I... I woke up in that abandoned factory. I heard a loud alarm, and I was scared. I was in a dark room with all these machine remains on the floor-... Like they were mutilated, cut up. I rushed out of the room, but that's when I saw a mirror and saw that I did not look like a machine. I looked human. That feeling I had, when I saw my reflection, as given me strength up until this point." She hesitantly explains, showing her deep pain within her voice. "I was still scared though. I wanted to know what I truly am; a being of extinction or something who brought on the Human's extinction..."

  Drenawx sighed as he put down his tools and shut the back of Atreyu's head. He jumped off the step stool and stepped toward Nova, looking up at her.

  "Nova. You are not a Human, you're purely machine. You were my first machine, actually." Drenawx answered bluntly.

  Nova's lips shook as a few teardrops emerged from her eyes and ran down her cheeks.

  "You were-... Like an experiment. A mimicry of Humans, but you were still my best-achieved machine." He continued to explain as he stepped out of the room, wanting her to follow. "But you were something more than the others, you are-"

  Nova kept listening until she heard him cough from pain. She looked forward at him and saw a sword slashed right through him. The tip of the blade dripped his blood onto the white floor just in front of her. He tried to speak as he slowly fell to the side and hit the observation window. As he fell, Nova saw Blaze hiding behind her long silver bangs. She was just standing there, letting her sword out of her hands as it followed Drenawx's dead body onto the floor. Nova stood there, completely frightened at the fact that her creator was on the floor bleeding to death. She frowned and stared at Blaze with immense anger.

  "Blaze... What the hell!?" Nova yelled.

  Blaze had no response, but Nova could hear her sniffles and her silent sobbing as her eyes were still hidden behind her silver bangs. Nova could see the dozens of tears falling down her cheeks.

  "B-Blaze..."

  Blaze finally reached down and grabbed onto her blade, pulling it our with no strong force and turned around. She lifted her arm and wiped her tears off her face with her lower arm as she still sniffed.

  "My business is done here. You can forget about me now." Blaze muttered as she started slowly walking to the entrance.

  "Wait! Why did you kill Drenawx!?" Nova asked as she ran toward her, but stopped in the middle of the hall.

  Blaze stopped her walking and kept facing the other direction, "Because... Machines do have emotions."

  Blaze muttered her answer as she continued her walking toward the exit. Nova watched her and remembered the look on her face while she killed Drenawx. She knew she was a machine, just from her response. Blaze, at that very moment, showed more emotion than any Human Nova had ever seen before. Maybe she wasn't so bad, she killed the person who made the machines, who eventually contracted the Ruse virus and helped destroy the Human race at least.

  Nova wiped the last tear from her face as she walked past Drenawx, who was still on the floor and pouring more and more blood. The whiteness of the floor had entwined with the color of the blood, slowly turning bright and into a pink color. But it wasn't long until the eerie color of the redness stained the white floor and made its mark. The lasting mark Nova assumed Blaze was going for.

  She walked back into the room where Atreyu was sleeping in. She just had to wait until he woke up. Nova stared at him and smiled, she thought he was at least somewhat attractive when his mouth was closed. But how he slept was somewhat cute, as well. But she took herself away from the distraction and looked around the room for anything of interest. She opened up a drawer and found a journal inside. Grabbing it softly, she glanced at the sleeping Atreyu and took a seat just next to him and opened the journal. It was a journal recorded by Drenawx, an entry on his opinion of the world. But she thought most of it was boring until she saw his entry about the creation of machines.

  They were built to assist the Humans as they battled the ones who were infected with Ruse. But the machine known as NOVA-1449 was the start of something new, something Drenawx didn't mention in this journal.

  She sighed and shut the book, placing it aside on an end table. She had come to see Drenawx, but only to leave and have more questions than answers. She heard the mumbles of Atreyu, knowing he was going to wake up soon, so she smiled and watched him wake up. He opened his eyes slowly and yawned.

  "Ugh... Where Drenawx?" Atreyu asked as he stretched his arms.

  Nova looked down before answering, "He's dead."

  Atreyu's eyes widened, as he rubbed the back of his head where Drenawx had made an entry to perform repairs to him. It had been irritating him.

  "Well... What now then?" Atreyu asked.

  "Let's... Let's just get out of here, please." Nova answered with a soft and emotional voice.

  Journal Entry V

  The Color White

  White. It was a peaceful color. A color that had become missing in the world as it grew darker as the days quickly passed.

  I had created the machines in an attempt to give some support to my Human brothers and sisters as they not only fight for their lives, but for the future of this world. It was ending, we all assumed that, but we didn't actually say that. It would anger someone, and we didn't want to lose another life. It'd be another small step toward extinction.

  I remembered the last day I saw a true sunny sky. There were no clouds in the sky, the clouds that appeared in the world's mythology was missing in our world, and I predict that is the reason why our world is so messed up. There is no powerful force driving the darkness away.

  But what if there was a Heaven above us, and they found out that the darkness that resides in our world is ourselves? The darkness that we hide within our hearts? Everyone has a dark side, everyone has something that pops them out in a picture. Even if that was the case, it wouldn't explain everything.

  The day my experiments really came to life was when I fully completed the machine known as BLAZE-0X119. She took over my priorities, simply because I'd hear a strange sound coming from her vault room. I heard crying.

  The other machines tell me they have not heard or seen BLAZE-0X119 express any sort of emotion, or what I called 'physical malfunctions', but I was sure they were lying to me. Why would they lie to me about a matter like this? I am their creator, I deserve the truth. But I feel like the machines have grown a sort of trust for one another, as the signs of adaption in this lab for them carries on through my observations.

  How would they act in the outside world? I keep the ones in this lab from being contaminated, because I fear they will contract this virus that drives the Humans mad. I called it a corruption- the machines fear whenever I'd use that word in my vocabulary. However, BLAZE-0X119 did not. She was quiet, but also curious. She embraced the fear.

  I kept these machines in the lab with me when I heard the first wave of machines I had sent out went crazy themselves. Like they become corrupted, but I felt deep down inside that they became adapted to the outside and didn't want anything to do with me or this lab ever again. I would, though, feel insulted when a Human survival group approached me and expressed their concern for the machines I made. I knew they did spread the rumor that I created machines to wipe out the Humans. But even in my darkest moments, I wonder that myself.

  The machines refuse to accept that they are my family, they fight back against my orders. I did not apply any sense of self-order into these machines, I must remember to dismantle them. Th
ere's been a lot of machines I've had to dismantle, it seems like I dismantle more machines than I do create them.

  I witnessed a few machines crying today. They weren't like BLAZE-0X119. They were machines who had no outer shell, a shell that would protect them from physical and environmental pain. They kept crying, even though the water of the machine's tears electrocuted them slowly. I told them to stop, but they wouldn't listen. So I let them be, and within minutes, the crying stopped and I had another pair of machines to dismantle. Only these particular machines weren't functional.

  These machines did become smarter as time went by. They seemed to study all sorts of stuff in my own personal library. They had their own interests, as well. This struck me as odd since I developed the machines as mere puppets, puppets of war they did not understand. I felt it was necessary for them not to understand the term war or the adrenaline feeling of killing someone. They wouldn't hold back the killing, otherwise.

  One child machine asked me why this world resides only one color; white. I told him white represented peace. Peace and hope of a rebuilding world I wished to be a part of. But when I gained the knowledge that most Humans on the outer world had disappeared, or died, I knew the machines could serve as someone purer than puppets of war.

  Especially BLAZE-0X119, I used her as an example of how to build future machines. To build these humanoids that could possibly replace the dead Humans and fill my void of lonesomeness. But each machine in BLAZE-0X119's class failed. They malfunctioned after only a few seconds of living. Like this world was too corrupted for their precious little hearts to overbear.

  The last of her class survived a little longer, but I made it in the appearance of myself. It was scary and saddening just to see myself function for those few minutes. It stopped moving within a minute and looked at me as if it knew we were the same. But we did not have the same mind or heart. It ended up dying after that eye contact we had. But as a reminder of how I felt, I did not dismantle that machine. Because it helped me at least feel how it is to die a little, just watching something of my same appearance die right in front of me.