Chapter 8: Evolution
BANG!
A car crashed hard on the main gate.
After a brief moment, the car's door was sent flying, and Ziro walked out of the car.
He was bleeding from his head and leg, but that didn't stop him from walking. He opened the gate and walked to the front door.
He banged on the switch, and a screen appeared in front of him. It scanned him and let him in.
Ziro dragged himself upstairs and entered his room.
He turned on his laptop and placed a small ball on the plate beside it.
"Lily should know everything," he muttered.
Ziro had connected Lily with almost all the systems of his father and his mother's afflictions— and that includes the airplane's system too.
Even though the plane was destroyed, the logs and the footage should have been uploaded to Lily's cloud.
Ziro opened Lily's data and tried to fix her A.I by rewriting her data entirely from scratch.
He pressed the 'run' to run Lily's program.
It started loading, but an error popped up.
[No Base Found. The Program Doesn't Exist.]
Ziro clenched his fist and took a deep breath before punching the laptop screen as his fist pierced through the screen.
He grabbed the chair and smashed it to the wall.
"Damn it."
"Damn it!"
"Damn it all!"
His gaze fell on the guitar lying beside the bed, and gritted his teeth.
"Argh!"
He grabbed the guitar and smashed it on the glass table.
His injuries started aggravating, and he dropped to his knees. Blood fell from his forehead as he heard the sound of blood dripping.
His vision got blurry, and he started feeling dizzy. Then, suddenly, the blood stopped driving, and the pain faded away.
Surprised and baffled, Ziro got up and stood in front of the mirror— only to see his injuries had healed.
"What's going on?"
Ziro placed his hand on his face and grabbed the piece of glass from the broken table.
He glanced at the piece of glass in his hand, then looked at his reflection in the mirror and scratched his cheek with the glass.
Blood started trailing down his cheek but stopped as the wound healed.
"What is this?"
Ziro immediately took off his blazer and shirt and turned around to look at his back in the mirror.
"It's gone!"
When Ziro was seven years old, he fell down the cliff and was severely injured. His life was saved, but it left a huge scar on his back. But now it was gone.
BEEP BEEP
Ziro's watch started beeping.
RING RING
Then his phone.
DING DING
Something rang from downstairs.
Ziro grabbed his phone to check what was going on and saw a pop up on his screen.
[No Heartbeats Detected.]
"..."
Ziro looked at the mirror and slowly moved his hand towards his chest to feel his heartbeats— but there was none.
Ziro was puzzled and confused, but he was still calm. He felt his body again, only to find it cold as ice.
"Could it be that this is…" he stopped and sighed.
He walked to the mirror and touched it and saw something unusual.
He looked closely in the mirror to confirm it and saw his eye color had turned green. His natural eye color was green, but he was wearing a blue contact lens. And even though he was wearing a contact lens, his eyes were still green.
Ziro took off his lens and threw them.
Many things were happening with Ziro at once, and it was a lot for him to take in.
Even though his heartbeat had stopped, and his body temperature was below freezing point, he was functioning normally as though there was nothing wrong.
Ziro's gaze fell on the small round object that he used to operate Lily and bit his lips.
"What happened to you, Lily?"
"Where are you when I need you the most?" he muttered.
He turned around to pick it up, but as soon as he walked one step, he fell on the floor with a loud thud and lost consciousness.
After a brief moment, his body moved, but he was still unconscious.
His body moved up and floated in the air. At the same time, all the devices in the house started making noise.
The walls started crazing, and all the lights in the house began turning on and off. And with a high-pitched sound, everything burst with an explosion.
[Initiating Lockdown.] the home security system went off.
Ziro was still floating in the air with his hands and legs still pointing downwards at the floor. His hair turned white but changed back to black soon after, and with a jerking motion, his body was slammed on the floor.
The house was full of cracks everywhere; seemingly, all the circuits had fused.
After some minutes, a car parked in front of Ziro's house, and Alina and Nier walked out.
"Don't ever drive again!" Nier yelled as she caught her breath.
"What else could I do? We had no other option."
"We could have waited for Sera and come with her," Nier remarked.
Alina looked at the car that crashed on the main gate and sighed.
"Look what happened to her car," Alina pointed her gaze to the car.
Alina looked at her phone and said, "Serah said she is on her way."
"Let's go inside for now."
Alina and Nier walked through the gate and stood in front of the front door. Alina pressed the switch and waited for the screen to pop up, but it never appeared. Alina pressed the switch again, but nothing happened this time either.
Alina glanced at Nier with a confused look on her face and said, "The electricity is out."
"Seems like that," Nier nodded.
"But that's impossible. They have their own power plant underground," Alina groaned and oscillated the ring in her ring finger.
After oscillating it a few times in a pattern, a screen appeared on Alina's wrist. There wasn't any physical screen, but Alina's skin was acting like one. She rubbed her finger on her wrist and placed it on the switch of the door.
[Emergency Mode On.]
The door opened with a voice.
[The Door Will Close In Three Seconds.]
Alina pushed Nier inside the house with her, "Quick!"
-- Gift
received