Leave The Monster Alone

"Kuro?" Kuro was growling softly, her eyes trained toward a section of wall distinguished from its surroundings by nothing but the slightest shift in colour. But Alan saw what she wanted him to see, the barest hint of green so different from the others inside that it was a dead giveaway that something was wrong with that section.

They had found a clue at least.

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Unauthorised access.

Asking unrelated party to leave for the relevant party to gain access further. Kindly follow the given instructions.

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The line that was written on the program alarmed Mark instantly since it indicated that they were being watched from somewhere. The line felt personal and not a code either which meant someone had anticipated him coming in with another person.

"Luna, you should leave me to solve this on my own" as cautious as Mark was, he was also curious about the current situation and wanted to look further into it. And since this situation required Luna to leave then that was what he was going to follow through with.

"Are you serious? I cannot leave you here alone in this situation. You have no self-preservation instincts at all" Mark wanted to take offence at that but he did not want to fight with the other right now. 

He needed the other's cooperation currently and he would only get that once the other understood that Mark only wanted the best for them all. He needed to win the other over before he could progress.

"It will only allow one person to access it and this message seemed personal. Don't worry, I will alert you as soon as something wrong happens" Mark definitely will yell once he was in danger but what level of danger it was, he did not specify.

Luna knew that as well and that was why he refused to accept the other's words at face value. He needed some kind of proof or validation that the other would call him once danger arrived.

But then a message reached Luna's system and he instantly became alert at the line he had read. Alan had messaged him for help and he could not ignore that call for help. Ideally, Mark was the party who was most vulnerable to getting attacked but Alan was his brother.

Alan had Kuro with him though, and a divine core but the opponent was a divine beast as well or so his brother thought. It was a tough decision, but one of his logic was telling him to make quick and not help out Alan.

"Just go out and spend time with your brother. I will talk to you soon enough" Luna just sighed, his mind finally being turned by the other's words and he could agree. His mind really wanted him to help his brother out and so did his heart.

Mark looked at Luna one last time before he left. 

His brother was not in a good condition when Luna arrived and that was when he attacked to interfere. His bullet hit its intended position and the female went down far too fast for his liking. 

"What were you doing? Being taken over like this is suicidal, don't you know? We might need to up your training and even add more parameters to them" his brother snapped out of whatever daze he had been in, his eyes clearing out as he looked at him and Luna felt the relief flood over him.

At the same time, he felt dread and a sense of failure. Things were not right and this encounter was not something that should have happened at all.

In the meantime, Mark hurriedly typed away at the screen to access the codes before they would be lost forever. The system had started to act strangely once Luna had left and his arm shone in a variety of coloured sequences. 

His hands were typing all on their own without any control from him and it was being able to keep up with the system. His fingers were aching as well, their speed, not something he was used to and the blank screen had too many words on them now.

"You are finally here at last. We were waiting for you so that we can finish this program. A shame though that you were the one chosen in the end, a shame indeed" the voice was directly in his ear, the physical mouth on Mark's ear blowing air inside his ear.

He wanted to turn around and look at the other once to confirm his suspicions but he could not move. His body was not in his control but his system's.

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System scan in motion: welcome agent 002.

Authority level: Clear.

Access level: all access available except personal 

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Mark wanted to check more out of this but he had to control his emotions to not give anything away since that was the only thing left of him. His consciousness was cursing him forever leaving himself alone.

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Project Noah: welcome users to the database

Click here to log in...

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The log in happened so fast that Mark did not even get a chance to check what he had typed before he was inside the database. He had to keep on typing and trying to make sense of what he was typing at the same time.

He wanted to remember a little of this time at least to replicate this in the future but it seemed to be impossible for the current him. He could only watch himself typing away at the screen in front of him without failure on his part. 

"That's good. A little more and you are done, though I did not know this system was with you. Luckily you did what was intended with this system" The voice continued further, changing in pitch and vibration and sounded anew to Mark. It was a familiar tone for him to hear, one he had likely liked a lot before as well but could no longer remember that distant memory of home in it. 

"Wear this cloak and save this data. We have more work to do now that you are actually back with us, or well your core is. Your successor though, we still need to work on him a little more before we can transfer your core and system to him" the voice was melodic and female now, finally having settled down.

Someone handed Mark a cloak, the hand coming from the other side of the voice which clearly meant there were two people there at least. Mark wished he could turn around to look at them but he could not move at all.

His body took the offered cloak and stood up to wear it. His body was not his one but his mind was which gave Mark a small suspicion that it was due to the system on his wrist that had expanded quite a lot in the last few minutes.

"We should hurry since the puppet fell. They must be coming in here at any moment" Mark had lost the sense of time but it had to have been a few minutes at least since he had been handed the cloak.

"You are right, we should leave now. We're lucky this human does not know how to work this system fully yet and also does not trust Liam much to tell him about this" ah, so it was Mark's fault for not telling Liam then.

It just never felt right to him, every from the first moment they met to the last they separated. He had not ever trusted himself to tell this to Alan till ut was too late to do so. This was a huge secret that was not only his own now.

His body moved behind them and the wall parted to give them way inside. Mark watched in mute horror as his legs took him inside the tunnel to disappear from the green light. He was moving in the dark now, his feet taking him places.

Mark could smell the sea and hear the waves but he could not see anything in front of him. Was this a domain? A part of this base or something entirely different? Mark did not even have hope for Alan or Luna to be able to find him because this place was really well hidden. 

Not only that, but he could also not contact anyone to be able to help him out either since his system was not able to send out messages. He was stuck here with two incredibly terrible and frightening people he had no idea what to do about.

And then there was the biggest hurdle of all, his own mind that was getting tired of all this stress and wanted to shut down to get some sleep. However, Mark could not fall asleep right now or everything would be over in an instant.

He had to keep himself alive and conscious, at least long enough to find out who had him and to be able to send a message back to his team.