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Late Evening - Mid Winter : Acardi Research Facility | Eastern Bahamut

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*Beep* "Identity verified. All faculty please treat-" *CrAcKLe* "SuBjEcT #0-" *CrAcKLe* "With respect. Failing to do so will result in-" *CrAcKLe* "Death."

-Subject.. Zero...- My eyes instantly went wide as I looked up from the computer and glanced around the room, unable to slow the waterfall of thoughts ripping behind my eyes. -Does this facility.. know something about my connection to the Acardi..?-

Looking back down at my hand, my thoughts wandered and raced, attempting to solve the universe-sized maze of questions and answers that had been built around my memories as Nott.

But there was only so much I could figure out with what I knew.. only so many turns I could make...

Turning back to the computer in a hurry, I raced through the endless data directories, both manually entered and automated, sifting through the useless recordings like the reactors power output before eventually finding more useful things, one of which being a log of all the individuals to ever enter the facility.

At first glance, it was something completely useless to me, a long list of the names of scientists with their specialties attached, however, after looking a little deeper, I found details like their job, age, work history, and even short, manually inputed details.

For the most part, the extra detail was indeed useless, however, after scrolling a ways down, I found me: 'Subject #0'

Clicking on it in a heartbeat, the screen updated with a very small identity panel, detailing my rank as 'Divine Being', with essentially all other details being blank, and the manually entry being similar, reading: 'Do not disobey.' -How blunt...-

I, of course, didn't give up that easily though.

Scouring the rest of the data, I searched for anything that could be related to me, finding all kinds of fascinating directories relating to the results of several old experiments, and discoveries whilst only finding vague details relating to Subject #0.

But it was still just enough to make my questions multiply.

*Thump* "Fuck..." Slamming my hand down on the desk, I leaned back in the chair and tried to sort out what I found. By the sounds of things, Subject Zero was a god of theirs, however, considering not just the name, but how they treated and spoke of it, I could narrow it down to two possibilities.

Either me being recognized as Subject Zero had to do with being recognized as Nott, or it had to do with being recognized as the one who touched the artifact that injected my body with my past life's genetic material, among other things, right after I hatched.

-Considering how commanding the details were, as well as how a simple lack of respect would result in death.

. it could have been something done out of fear.

..- Perhaps the Acardi were just scared and set my permissions to max in order to satisfy whatever I wanted in an attempt to ensure the safety of the facility.

-But just the same, it doesn't make sense for me to interact with the Acardi in a friendly or even passive way.

..- Considering they were essentially at war with Delphi, it wouldn't make sense for me to leave them be. -So.. why..?-

Just thinking about that caused turmoil to rip through my mind.

Idly scrolling through the facility's precepts, looking at the list of protocols it would take if I appeared, I tried to slow down and sort my thoughts, but it only made me more unsettled.

Until eventually, I had to force myself to stop and switch gears.

"Haah..." Taking a deep breath, I looked up at the ceiling, tossing fuel at my curiosity with the other things I found on the computer in hopes of getting my mind out of the rabbit hole.

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But while I wasn't so lucky, after looking more into other things, hoping to find more pieces of information about Subject Zero, the unease in my mind settled before being replaced with a blazing fascination, similar to when I first found the Sirathan lab.

From what I could tell, this facility researched just about everything relating to extremely high mana levels, how life, machines, and quantum mechanics changed when exposed to it, and even how it preserved fossils, using what they called 'The Grave of the Colossus' as their testing grounds.

However, as the facility aged, and they discovered the more sinister details about the grave, such as how the fossil was somehow missing its head thanks to an atomically perfect incision, and how the entire grave had been buried only several thousand years before they arrived on Delphi.

But those discoveries only seemed to fascinate them more.

Over the course of about a thousand years, the facility steadily received upgrades and with it, took upon more and more complex studies, shifting away from the study of mana to focus more on the grave itself, or more specifically, its genetic and material compositions using two highly preserved samples called Sample X and Sample K.

-Those must be the two still in the specimen room. ..-

According to the countless studies conducted on them, not only were their organic structures still almost completely intact, but so was their genetic material, and through it, they were able to reconstruct a series of visualization detailing how the creature would have looked, how strong it would have been, and how the atomicly perfect incision through its neck could be explained.

But then, just as they were about to get to how the creature died, the more miscellaneous studies suddenly stopped, and I stumbled across the documentation of an announcement that was played throughout the facility: 'Project Re-XK has been terminated. Evacuation of the facility is mandatory.'

After the announcement, it only took two days for the facility and its storages to completely empty, with the population of well over a thousand scientists lowering to zero, and the reactor shutting down quickly following suit.

It was a complete closure.

At least that was until, three days later, the facility was powered on once more, and the population rose to one.

It was Mister Borealis, a scientist with one of the highest levels of credentials in the entire facility, who worked exclusively on the classified parts of 'Project Re-XK' according to the logs, and reported his findings directly to the mothership, bypassing the facilities logging system entirely. -Was he sent back here by the Acardi?-

But just three months after he powered up the facility again, among the sea of empty logs, another message was broadcast: 'Connection to Mothership has been broken.' And shortly after, one of the settings of the facility changed. 'classified Logging mode switched to Local Buffer'

At first, I didn't quite know what that meant, but after digging into what looked like blank logs of the facility's operations, I found a set of lines saying that Mister Borealis' specimen room was still in use, storing logs locally in a buffer that would send his data through the server or the mothership as soon as the connection was re-established.

But that was an event that never arrived. -Which means all his logs must still be in that buffer...-

Skimming through the remaining twenty years of logs that were automatically recorded while the facility was online in a rush, I made sure there weren't any other major events before rushing out of the control room and making my way back into the earthy-smelling specimen room.

-I just hope I can figure out how to get into the buffer. ..-

As I jumped into the half-corroded chair and logged into the computer though, I found it right at my fingertips.

A goldmine of information unlike anything I had ever seen, a list of diary-like entries from the scientists that worked in this room for things like personal notes and records, all kept classified, and requiring an excessive clearance to view.

But that excessive clearance was something I had, meaning I had access to every note and scribble of the dozen scientists that rotated in and out of this room from nearly twenty years before the evacuation, with another twenty years following it.. all the way until the day the reactor broke.

And I was going to read it all...

Starting with the first scientist to conduct an experiment for Project Re-XK, and the one with nearly eighty-five percent of all the recorded entries...

'Head Research Analyst Andrew Borealis. | 18,761 entries found

Day One: The Origin-Class creature.'

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