Berserk of Gluttony (LN) - Volume 4 - Chapter 10

Chapter 10:

Research Facility No. 7

I SNUCK AROUND MORE guard patrols, and eventually, a large research facility came into view. Emblazoned upon its wall was the Vlerick family crest. I carefully studied the place as I crept closer.

Just as expected, security is tight… Of course they’d have strengthened their security detail—one of their forsaken prisoners had just escaped.

As I surveyed from the shadows, Greed spoke. “Well, what now? It’ll be no mean feat to get past all these guards.”

“Well, it won’t be easy if we try to get in through the front door, that’s for sure. Let’s do what we did to get into the Military District.”

“Oh, you mean we’ll bunny-hop our way inside? Or do you call it the frog jump? I forget.”

“How about staying quiet?”

Greed’s mediocre punchlines could only break my focus, and I needed to be sharp if I wanted to sneak inside without being seen. I slipped from the shadows to a blind spot in the security patrol, and without losing any momentum, I leaped up the wall. It wasn’t nearly as tall as the walls surrounding the Military District, making the job much easier.

As I bounded up, I noted the pristine smoothness of the facility walls. Not a scratch to be seen, and no seams or signs that the metal had been constructed of interconnected plates or bricks. Greed was right. The military understood exactly how to use this lost technology. Light pulsed gently from the walls as they reacted with the atmosphere.

Something about it was somehow…familiar.

I landed on the roof without a sound. “Here we are.”

“No guards up here.”

“Funny, it’s like an ant nest down below.”

The wind on the roof blew fiercely, probably due to the ventilation shafts expelling the heat produced inside the facility—which made that fierce wind hot. No matter that winter reigned everywhere else in Seifort, up on that roof, it was summer. Sweat beaded my brow.

“Greed, what’s that massive thing over there making the wind blow like that?”

“It’s just a propeller. It’s connected to a machine that makes it spin. Basic tech, but lost all the same.”

Greed called it a rudimentary mechanism, but it didn’t look like that to me at all. How on earth did it spin without manpower? I couldn’t understand it, but it didn’t matter; that propeller would get me inside.

“We’ll drop in through there.”

Greed cackled. “This should be fun.”

I cut through the wire mesh that covered the ventilation shaft, making a space just large enough for a person to get through. Now I just had to gauge the timing of that massive propeller and drop between its swinging blades. After that, I’d need to engage Night Vision to navigate through the darkness of the vents.

“It’s harder than it looks, Fate,” Greed warned. “Being as strong as you are now, the propeller won’t mess you up if you hit it—but you’ll mess up the propeller. And if that happens…”

“Then our stealth mission loses all its stealth.”

“Good, you get it. All that’s left is to sit back and watch you take care of it.”

“Isn’t that what you do all the time?”

“What else do you expect? I’m a weapon!”

Greed’s cackle was all the signal I needed, so I dropped through the vent and gripped the edge as I hung inside. The roar of the propeller deafened me, and the force of the wind made me feel like I might float. I studied the rotations closely, until—

“Now!”

I kicked off the vent wall and flew downward headfirst. One arm of the propeller brushed the top of my head as I passed between the blades, and the other arm slid across the bottom of my feet after my body cleared.

Whew, that was close—but not nearly as hard as having to dodge Myne’s axe!

Once I escaped the propeller, the wind died and I picked up speed. Time to see where this vent goes.

According to the nun, the forsaken brought to the facility were taken underground. In other words, I had to head for the basement. Whatever was going on down there…I needed to see what the Vlericks had done for myself.

“The farther we fall, the more mesh openings there are,” I said. “But I think it’s this way.”

“It’s a big facility. It’s not odd that the ventilation system is a mess. Make sure you pick somewhere spacious to land, or we could be here all night trying to find the basement.”

“Yeah, yeah…”

I did as Greed said and found a large opening to continue our fall toward the basement. As we dropped, a scent caught my nose and enveloped me. It smelled…raw. Fleshy. I didn’t like it at all.

“It’s the stench of death,” I muttered.

“Get ready to land, Fate.”

I landed on more mesh at the bottom of the ventilation shaft, where air from inside the facility made its way out. Below me stretched an enormous room, the floor of which I couldn’t see. Instead, a pool of water spread out below, over which lay a few foot bridges for people to pass over. The water was stained red. It brought to mind fresh blood. I cut through the mesh with Greed and dropped into the room.

“Well, this is creepy.”

“Yeah…”

“What’s wrong? You don’t sound like yourself.”

“Hm… What are you worrying about me for, anyway? Don’t you have something to investigate?”

He was obviously dodging the question, but all the same, I headed toward what looked like the exit. It was a door that resembled nothing I’d ever seen before. It had no doorknob or handle, and it didn’t open when I pushed it.

As I puzzled over how to open it, Greed interrupted. “It’s an automatic door. See that panel by the side? Anyone who has permission to be in this area can touch it to open and close the door.”

“Seriously? But I’m the complete opposite of that, which means I won’t be able to open it at all. And breaking it down is kind of out of the question at this point…”

But if I couldn’t open or break through, what next? We were at a dead end.

“Try holding my blade against the plate,” said Greed with a chuckle.

“What? But why?”

“Just do it already.”

His voice was full of confidence, so I did as he said. The door slid open.

“It opened! We’re in!”

“How’s that for service? Stick with me and life will be a breeze, Fate.”

If Greed had the right of it, and the door only let you through if you had permission, then that meant Greed was permission—or he could bypass the entire thing somehow. This sword could at times prove useful outside of battle, it seemed.

“The door’s internal structure is much simpler than my own,” said Greed, “so if we find any other automatic doors, I’ll get us through those as well.”

“Wow, it’s downright uncanny that you’re so useful today.”

“What do you mean today? Take that back this instant! I’m always useful!”

I peeked out past the doorway to check if anybody was on the other side, but it was eerily quiet. “Let’s keep moving.”

“Hey, we’re not finished. I said take that back!”

“Okay, okay, you’re always useful, all right? All the time. I’d be lost without you.”

“Ha! You’re damn right. And don’t forget it!”

I crept forward into a passageway brilliantly illuminated by lights in the ceiling. Not candlelight either—I couldn’t have told you the source. The materials that made the walls and floor were similarly unidentifiable. If they were metal or rock, I’d never seen their like before. Everything about this place, from the propellers to the automatic doors to the very surface on which I walked, made it utterly alien to me. It felt almost like I’d passed into another dimension.

“Hey, Greed,” I muttered. “You said the technology in this place is all Galian?”

“Yep. But this is just the tip of the iceberg.”

“Only the tip? You mean there’s more? Galian technology really must be something else. How in the world does a civilization with this kind of power go extinct? I don’t get it.”

“They went too far. They threw their ethics aside and went past the point of no return. That might not even be the worst of it either…”

Having said his part, Greed dropped into silence. I walked on through the passageways quietly, and Greed opened each automatic door we found without so much as a word. Then, as the next passage turned a corner, I felt the presence of humans and stopped in place.

I peeked carefully around the corner and spied a group of men in guard uniforms pushing a huge metal box on a trolley down the hall. They shoved it through an automatic door and out of sight. Whatever lay in that box, it was so heavy that it took all five guards to move it. Once sure that nobody else was in sight, I slipped into the room they’d just left. In there, I found more large boxes—so many that they nearly filled the room.

I drew close to study one. The lip around the lid was smeared with a rusty, sticky fluid.

“This…no way,” I whispered, my mind filling with an image I couldn’t ignore. “No, they wouldn’t…” I moved my hand toward the lid of the box.

“Don’t do it, Fate—stop!”

I pried the lid off anyway. I’d seen five men transporting one of these horrors as if they were performing a mundane household chore. I wanted to believe the boxes couldn’t possibly contain what I had imagined. I wanted to believe it, but…

“Greed, this…how is this possible…?” With shaking hands, I set the lid back down on the box’s stained rim.