OBLIVIOUS

Chapter 8

"W-What are t-those?" I stuttered greatly as awe and fear seemed to mix freely on my yet uncontrollable vocal cords. Just above us are hovering in the air were some kind of small robots the size of our heads that had the appearance of an animal.

"They look like insects, but they're robots," Baron concluded.

"Are they from the facility too?" I asked. Interestingly, these hovering things were not attacking us as of the moment so I thought maybe they were unrelated from the medical facility.

"Maybe no. Maybe yes," said Baron who could also not keep his eyes off from these 'flying' mechanical things. "This is the first time I have seen these robots."

"But are they going to a-attack us?" I asked nervously because despite not being hostile yet, these robots look menacing with their eyes that appear in the form of small blinking yellow light beams and I could feel that they already spotted and identified us right now using these eerie eyes.

"I think they are not our friends. They swarm above us and that's not a good sign. That's all I can say about them right now," Baron added while the buzz that we were hearing was getting louder and louder that it made me dizzy again. It sounded like it was because their mechanical wings were flapping and spinning faster, which I observed were made from some kind of glimmering material and it didn't help that they were half-invisible because of this. "My advice is to run away now."

"Okay," I agreed and we both moved. I tried to dash like baron but I'm still not a hundred percent, so what I did was pure walkathon. We tried to be as far as possible from these new robots but they automatically followed us. "They're still following us!" I yelled at Baron who was already a couple of steps ahead of me.

He yelled back at me without looking around. "Just keep on moving! Try to cover the back of your head with your arms! They might attack us!"

I did what I was told but covering my head impeded my movement. And then the inevitable danger happened. One of the flying robots swooped on me and attached itself to my arm like an oversized wristband. I yelped from the pain because I discovered that the robot's small legs were sharp as it dug deep into my arm.

"What happened?" Baron came back to me and saw that the robot started emitting a loud beep as it settled into my right arm. "What's happening?"

I shook my head. "How the hell would I know?" I almost sobbed because of the extreme pain it gave me as blood started oozing from the wounds it had just opened from my skinny arm. "Help me remove it!"

Baron tried to pull it off from my arm but as soon as he started to remove it unbearable pain seared through the whole being that I screamed so loud. I was so loud that it reminded me of the first time I screamed at the top of my lungs back in my room the moment I was able to get up and move.

"It ticks like it's counting up to something," Baron added frustratingly. Noticing what he said, I relaxed my arm and stopped him from doing further damage because the pain was so intense that at any moment my arm would be cut off.

"Is it like a b-bomb?"

"Let's hope not."

"It dug into my bone," I exclaimed wincing. "Maybe this is what it wanted to do in the first place? To attach to one of us so that it can follow us around and monitor us?"

"You're probably right." Then he pointed at my back and I looked around to see what he was pointing at. It was the swarm of the other insectoid robots flying away. "Look at them go. Since one of them had already attached itself to one of us, the rest had already left. Mission cleared."

"So these pests are tracking robots, I believe. Are they crazy? Are those Slackers not enough?"

"Come on now," Baron cut me. "We have no more time to spare. If your hunch is true, the Slackers or the White Shadows will be here any minute now."

Baron was right. We could not afford to be caught. Not now, when we already reached this far. Because of this, we continued walking towards the said fence-bridge hybrid. And after just a couple of minutes, I saw the bridge.

It was foggy where it stood but it's definitely a bridge. It was the part of the same electric fence that we were following but in the form of a steel bridge as it was still connected to the rest of the great steel fence. Now, this bridge isn't technically a bridge, because it has no space for people to walk on it or to cross it to reach the other side. It just looks like a bridge because of its design especially as it is shaped like an arch over the water.

As we draw nearer to the water the vegetation became wider. The plants here are mostly larger than humans. The trees are gigantic and creepy looking. Most of them looked like the one tree that we saw earlier.

And if the plants were weird-looking, so is the spring in front of us that we are supposed to cross. The water is actively gurgling, bubbling, and rippling like something huge and alive is breathing underwater. It is also not colorless, as it has this tinge of neon blue.

"We're here," Baron announce and he started removing the suit he was wearing.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm going to let you wear this suit," he answers back as he continued stripping the protective suit off his body, revealing that he was also wearing the same white clothing I am wearing. Only dirtier. "This suit inflates on the water so at least you're not going to drown. Your muscles are still stiff from the comatose so you will have a hard time swimming on that kind of water."

"Oh. T-Thanks," I replied gratefully. "But why is the water like that?"

"I don't know." He already gave me the protective suit and nudged me to wear it on. I obliged, despite it being large for my skinny body. "Let's not talk about that right now. We need to cross this thing to get outside of this territory."

I had no objections at that, so after I wore the suit I followed Baron to the edge of the cold spring that was illuminated by the lights the eerie plants were giving off. Baron started wading on the water and I followed suit. I looked into the bridge just a couple of steps away from us and saw that the water under it was moving swiftly in a spiral motion. I gulped in fear because I know what that means.

"Just follow me," Baron called me. "We will try to avoid the whirlpool so that we will not have to risk our lives. We'll walk along the riverbank as much as we can, but that will also mean that we have to move through the gas."

"What? You mean the gas?" Because there was so much to think about right now, I had totally forgotten about the poisonous smoke.

"That's right. See the fog around us? That's actually the gas that we should avoid."

I immediately covered my nose with my hands. "T-This place sucks," I exclaimed because I had unconsciously lowered my ground from this traitorous smoke.

"Don't worry, the fog here is less thick than the smoke we encountered earlier..."

My brow furrowed at that. "What does that mean?"

"It means it is less harmful than the thicker gas you had previously inhaled."

"Why is that?" I asked curiously. "Does the water here helps in condensing the gas?"

"I don't even know what you are talking about," Baron said. "I only knew about it because I accidentally inhaled the fog here the first time I came here. Unlike the smoke earlier, the fog doesn't make my head ache."

"I see," I responded. "Maybe the river's temperature helps in detoxifying the gas." Baron looked at me like he was alarmed at something I said so I had to inquire what's the thing. "What?"

"Nothing. I just wondered who are you really."

I gave a wry smile. "Just call me Axis."

"I know that. The White Shadows call you Axis 1. But that's not what I'm saying."

"Then what?"

"Your identity before you were here."

I was more puzzled by that. "I wonder that myself too."

"You sound like a knowledgeable person," Baron explained, and I was not surprised that he noticed it because I also do. It's really bizarre that I have this stock knowledge like it has been there on my mind all along. Things like muscle atrophy, or how physics work on gas and moisture, these things have been boggling me ever since I realized that I know something about them. At least.

We proceeded to wade through the shallow waters, where the fog became thicker around us so Baron had to cover his face with that respirator mask again while I used only my bare hands. As it was so dark we were only able to see our surroundings because of the faint glow of plant life by the bank and the ghostly alien-like trees in the distance. Baron was leading me the way, with caution so high he was holding his weapon tightly. The sight of him like that only made me nervous. I was still recuperating from the physical pain that I got from this metal bug on my arm and now I have to worry about the fog too.

"W-Why are you so alert with that w-weapon?" I inquired. "Is there anything else here that we need to worry about?"

"Aside from some creepy looking animals, none," he said. "I just have to be alert in case those flying robots come back. And this long gun could not be wet."

"C-Creepy animals?" I repeated what he said, because I'm not sure if I can still handle new enemies o new obstacles.

"It's not only the plants that look like they're not from this world, you see. Even the animals look strange."

I was not surprised anymore by that, because those snaring plants that tried to kill us earlier were enough to let me believe in the unthinkable. "I see... But where did you get that weapon again? Did you went into a fight with the White Shadows?"

"The second time I tried to infiltrate the facility, I had to fight a White Shadow who spotted me. Luckily he was unprepared for a fight so I was able to nick his weapon. I had been using this since then," he shared while waving the weapon over his head like he was proud of it. And he should, because I don't think I'm strong enough to pull off that same stunt. I will be dead within minutes before I can even lay a finger on one of those with the body I have now.

"You already managed to escape the first time right?" I asked, then thought about his possible reason for returning to the facility. "And when you can't find Vista you could've just left alone. So I was thinking, why did you save me? You risk your freedom by coming into my room."

"I thought about that," he confessed to me while we were still wading through the water. His voice echoed differently because of the respirator. "I know what I was doing and what will happen if they catch me. Like I said before, they don't want to capture me alive anymore. I am no longer being treated the way they treat the rest of us, so it was not hard for me to decide to save others as much as I can."

"But why m-me?" I asked because I know that I am not the only one left there in the dull rooms.

"Your room was guarded the most. I had to go through extra-tight security before I can reach the door of your room. It was challenging."

"What? You were just challenged by the level of security they prepared for me?"

"Yes, and not only that," he added. "I could feel that you were somehow different from the rest of us."

"Different? In what way?"

He shook his head. 'I really don't know. I just felt that you were an important patient to them. Forte thinks about this about you too."

That surprised me a lot. "Forte knew me?"

"Of course. Just like me, he was able to escape. He was just caught again, but before he was sent to that new place we managed to communicate through a Jackphone and that is when he told me about you."

"What did he told you about me?" I was literally dying from curiosity because I feel the same. Ever since I woke up, and then when I witnessed something weird but spectacular at the same time happened when I was miraculously been able to produce sparks of electricity on my palm a wild thought had already been circling on my mind.

"Forte was telling me about how different were the arrangement of your security from the rest of us Mosses. He thinks that you are an important person."

"I don't know about that," I replied with a confused state of mind. "Yes, something is suspicious about me but I don't think that's because I'm special or important or whatever."

"What do you mean? You don't think that you could be a special case?" he asked with a subdued look on his face. He probably believes what Forte said to him so he feels like he wasted his time if I really wasn't someone important.

"It's not that..." I explain trying to gather my thoughts. "I just think that there might be other reasons why they were guarding me that tight. Maybe I was more sick than you. Or maybe I was contagious. I could have been an imprisoned enemy too, you know."

"You have a point, but I'll go with Forte. It's not every day that I'll see someone who can shoot electric bolts from their hands."

"Yeah that's uncanny but so was what happened to you when the Slackers didn't see you. It was like you were invisible to them."

"That's beside the point," he says, still trying to win the argument. "I will still believe Forte's assumption about you. After all, it was you who has been targeted by the flying bug robots. They didn't attach to me."

I could not reply with a sound argument about what he said because that also puzzled me. And if I am being honest, I would have expected that it was me these mechanical bugs have been trying to catch and not Baron and I wonder why.

What's so special about me? What on earth is really happening? Was Forte really right in saying that I might be someone important?

I saw Baron was staring at the winged robot that latched itself into my arm. The robot was still emitting a ticking sound and it only gave me another big reason to be anxious. "They're monitoring your location through that small robot and we could only guess why they did that. However, the fact that everything that has been happening since I took you out of that room is new to me tells me that you might be someone I really should have saved."

"T-That sounds cool..." I only could reply with my thanks, because I could not think of anything else to say.

"Forte thinks that you might hold the answers to everything we want to know about this place, and what is happening here, and I think that way too," he added. "That's the reason I saved you."

I was about to reply sheepishly but we suddenly heard a loud voice shouting and it was coming from where we came from. Someone was crying for help.