Chapter 10 - Underground Hall

Chapter 10 - Underground Hall

The door opened to a normal office with tables in the middle and drawers in the back. It was bare of anything aside from the few files of paper on the table.

Simon dropped her by the door and went to the desk, “But you don’t have a Rentom,” Simon continued talking to her. “You lived like a normal kid but you didn’t have a soul. You didn’t have any ounce of renisas on you. We thought you were a failure, so we let Fredrin take care of you to see if things change.”

He pushed the tables aside and then he pressed his hands on a seemingly random tile on the floor. A square panel flashed beneath his hand and a trapdoor opened below him with huge wide stairs leading below.

Pretty’s face turned incredulous, “So that’s why — when I was a kid — you let them bully me even if I’m your niece? Just because I don’t have a soul in your eyes?”

She once saw him a couple times when she was being made fun of with the other kids, but he never interfered. She thought he did not see her.

“Why? Yes, because we all think you are useless, just a fluke. How could we expect a person born out of synthetic and not born out of natural insemination to have a rentom? But I thought maybe you needed to have a little push, an emotional distress maybe would wake up your Rentom. But it never worked.

“Apparently, It’s just that you are too good at hiding it. You have your Rentom all along, it was just hiding. Then you turned ten and you immediately went to the repository at your first try. You even come back with an ability to go invisible. You don’t know how thrilled I was that time”

He picked her up again by the stomach and then descended the stairs with her mangled feet skidding along the stairs.

“But that does not mean you are the one we are looking for.” Simon continued. “It could be just because you were a synthetic being that you are able to get into the Repository. It could be that all of the synthetic beings have the ability to enter the Repository. We increased the research efforts — but none of them even woke up like you. So I turned my attention back to you. My hunch increased when it was apparent that you have renisas, but Fredrin made you keep it a secret while secretly supplying you with renbo. I let it slide as you were useful in the Summit and I hope without my interference you’d meet the book, but nothing happens for years — until you went missing six months ago.

“We’re not worried because there’s a tracker embedded in your body. But you surprised me Pretty. We couldn’t even see the shadow of you. One day, you’re in LA, the next day, you’re in Xiandu. Then a few days later you're in Dublin. We thought the tracker was malfunctioning but indeed you were there traveling that fast. The bombing incident in Melbourne revealed your tracks. You have been caught on camera. Then the next day you are in Johannesburg, when you couldn’t help yourself buying a movie ticket,” he laughed through it, “We located you through it. We know then that you have the ability to travel everywhere.”

They descended for a full minute till the last of the steps finished into a small room. There was only one door in the room full of padlocks and they headed towards it.

“We are not worried though,” Simon said while opening the locks. “We let the branches chase you but even if they couldn’t catch you, your pills were still running out and you will have to walk your way back here eventually.”

“Then why do you have to kill my Father?!” she shouted as they entered a dark room. “He’s just a normal researcher, he did not even have any ability, he’s not a threat to you at all!”.

Simon gave her a knowing look. “You must be there right?” he asked, nodding his head. “If not, how did you know I killed Fredrin? Everyone who knew about it has already been buried below the ground, killed at the same time as your father.”

Anger burst through her. She did not know she could hate someone like this. She wanted to lash out anything to him that would make him feel the pain she felt but she couldn’t even do anything.

Simon headed towards the right side of the door and he pushed something in it, “You want to know why? Because of this.”

The door opened as the lights inside turned on. It blinded her for a while and when she could see again, she saw a huge room laying in front of her. It was as huge as a football field and it was shaped like a dome. Countless huge bulbs hung on the ceiling lighting the room in a yellowish glow.

She roamed her eyes around and felt puzzled by her surroundings. From her vantage point, she could see random things cluttered around. There was so much color and materials that she did not even recognize. It was like someone made a warehouse where they just dumped things around. What was weird was that there were also inscriptions or symbols written on the floor, sculpted on wood, and arranged through stone formation. Those inscriptions nagged at her head for some reason and she did not know why.

There were also symbols that she had never seen before lining the periphery of the room where she could see. It formed into an intricate pattern depicting images or lines that she couldn’t understand. She didn’t even know why she felt that those lines conveyed a message, it just did. She guessed with odd certainty that those lines should form a border encompassing the whole room.

Simon traversed the whole area together with her with expertise. They passed a shallow hole in the floor with water and sculpted stones resembling figures of contorted creatures in it. There were containers with different colored waters, an assortment of stones cluttered from one place to another, wood blocks and dead plants, and there were even stuffed snakes spread in the ground.

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From their right, they passed a big wooden cabinet with flowers inside that she felt was too real to be artificial but too vibrant and colorful to be real. Beside it, nestled a stuffed toy as big as her, but she couldn’t recognize what animals it was, it looked like a cross from a whale, monkey and a bird animal.

In a certain area ahead, there were dense lines of darked colored party flags, shaped in different shapes, hanging on two yellow and blue bamboos. To her left she could see a huge object she could only guess was a giant soda bottle twice her size, it was empty except for an empty goblet with only a paper in it.

Everywhere she looked, there are things that she could not even recognize, like a plain box that had some holes in it. Everything seems so random and cluttered as if some manic person designed this room. But oddly, Pretty felt there was an order and symmetry in this cluttered mess. Like everything was in their right place. Just like those intricate lines at the periphery, they felt like they were saying a message or something.

They reached the center of the room, which she guessed was approximately 50 meters from the door. There, stood in the middle of everything was a giant diamond or quartz structure resembling a throne. It was four meters long and five meters wide. There was a platform in the middle of it where a giant person could sit, but it could probably fit ten people lying down.

Simon dumped her casually below the throne-like structure. She felt the fall but thankfully she did not feel the pain.

A man who she did not notice before, who was standing by their side, handed Simon a tray with blocks of unfamiliar materials in it. She could see some metals and wooden blocks in it roughly at the same size of a fist.

“I planned to marry you with Norde.” Simon said suddenly.

Pretty’s face changed into a deep frown. Norde was her friend and cousin. He also happened to be Simon’s son.

She inhaled a strong breath to calm herself and asked him the question she always wanted to ask. “Why did you decide to do it?”

She was always confused by this. Days before she ran from the Summit, Simon blurted this out to her. She never heard his explanation back then because something terrible happened that time. Then days later she ran away without knowing the reason why, it was not important that time. She thought maybe it was because Simon wanted her tied to their family directly. But marrying Norde, even thinking about the idea was impossible.

What prompted Simon to make that stupid decision? It puzzled her because it was offered as a reward from a mission she just did, a mission she regretted. Most importantly, did Celine know about it?

“I thought you wanted it,” Simon replied

She looked at him incredulously. “What? I wanted it? That’s marrying my cousin! How could you even think about that! And— And you knew!” she paused and took a painful breath, preparing to say the name that still brought pain in her heart. “You knew he’s planning to marry Celine.”

He looked up from the tray he was tinkering. “But I thought that’s what you wanted — and apparently I’m wrong. And Celine…” He gave her a meaningful look. “She's just a distraction.”

A dawning realization came into her.

“No, you did not!” she shouted.

“Oh. If you are asking if I killed her — no I absolutely did not kill her.”

Pretty did not believe him. “She was depressed! What lies did you tell her! What concoction of lies did you make to push herself to kill herself?!”

Simon just nodded and went back to what he was doing. “I just told her that you and Norde were getting married. I told her you are in love with Norde and that she is the reason why you don’t want to marry but I did not know she’s cuckoo in the head and killed herself later on.”

“How dare you! I never once harbor any feelings with Norde. He’s my fucking cousin!”

Tears started falling out of Pretty’s eyes. She always blamed herself for not being there enough for Celine. They always wanted and planned to leave the Summit but they never had the chance to do it. Celine’s suicide was one of the reasons she left the Summit.

Celine has been dealing with depression for years. She was an adopted kid taken to the Summit by her adopted parents to train in Rentom Arts but she had no talent in it.

Her adopted parents abandoned her but she begged them not to. Leaving the Summit means she’d have to die but she did not care about it, she just wanted a new home.

She was abandoned as a kid and then was also abandoned by the parents who she thought would be her new family.

Pretty begged her father to take Celine as an adopted daughter and they let her take her.

Long story short, Celine met with Norde and they fell in love with each other.

Celine had always been soft and weak at heart. She only had Norde and Pretty in this world, her boyfriend and her best friend.

Celine has been facing insecurities and blaming herself for being weak. Pretty could only ensure that she was not like that, but she was always not at the Summit. Even with Celine’s last moment. she was not there.

Pretty did not know what went to Celine’s mind but now she could guess she must have blamed herself for it. Why could she be so naive? She must have felt trapped when the two persons she loved were torn apart by her. No matter how foolish that sound was, Celine would buy it.

“Josh told me you like Norde.” Simon replied nonchalantly.

Josh? What kind of thought has he had in his head to think this? There was never something with her and Norde. Norde was one of the few people who had been kind to her but it was because he was just that, kind. What she had was just familial affection. They could be considered close, and they hung out sometimes, but she knew it was just an excuse for him to be with Celine and she did not mind, as she could see Celine liked him too.

But Josh probably never considered her as family, he must have known she was a human grown from a lab and never considered her as a cousin, and seeing her with Norde might have given him the idea, no matter how absurd that was. How could he think about that? But apparently he did and was convinced by it, like they all have, just like Simon. Cause how could he believe she liked Norde if he did consider her as family?

Simon turned to her and grabbed her towards the throne. There was a ladder beneath it and they used it to ascend to the throne’s seating platform. The seating platform was three meters wide from both sides and he positioned her in a sitting position with her upper body strapped in the huge backrest of the platform.

“Then you ran away later on.” Simon said as he jumped below the platform. “That was a mistake. You see, if you hadn't been so aggressive to us, we would have not resorted to this. Fredrin would have stayed alive. I know you won’t be coming back to the Summit willingly. Even if we tied you here with Fredrin, he would just remove himself from the equation, just like he did. That fool,” he laughed. “But we have contingencies for that. This…” he spread his arm around the room, “a rentom extractor.”