The Disparate One

Chapter 7

Sion got off with Ray behind him as usual. They arrived at a different area where it was surprisingly organized.

Walking through the path, Ray glanced around, eyeing each rollable board situated on the sides. Some had different maps stuck to them, all of which were unfamiliar ones. The rest of the boards looked identical to the one in the Manufacturing, covered with blueprints and other necessary documents. And as expected, everything on sight had a thin, or thick, layer of dust.

The path was straight, it led them to a circular space where three towering shelves pointed at the single flat table in the middle. It was made out of stainless steel, and strangely not a single speck of dust could be seen.

They approached it, Sion walked around it while placing his left hand on the smooth, reflective surface. The glass placed on top covered corner to corner.

"Have you played puzzles before?" Sion began when he stopped on the other side of the table, staring at Ray.

"I-I honestly don't remember," replied Ray, standing straight.

"Have you heard of Klotski?"

Ray shook his head No.

Sion pressed his hand flat on his side of the table and instantly holograms appeared feet above it. Sion's profile popped up before getting replaced by an ant colony. Ray kept his undivided attention before him while Sion resumed talking.

"Klotski is a type of sliding puzzle game, a flat one. The goal of it is to remove a specific piece from the puzzle, to do so, you have to slide other pieces around," Sion explained it clearly when next to the ant colony was a holographic Klotski.

Its blocks were moving about until the red block moved away from the group, ending the demo.

Ray understood everything he said, in fact, now that Sion mentioned it, he wanted to try one out for himself. But, what did that have to do with the ant colony?

The Klotski disintegrated into thin air, pulling their attention to the ant colony that was now getting bigger and clearer. Ray leaned forwards by a few inches, eyes narrowing. When the hologram got ten times bigger than its original, Ray could see tiny dots crawling through the tunnels which connected different large pockets of space. He still couldn't figure out where this conversation was heading until the hologram was now right up to his face.

He got a clear vision of what those moving dots were, it had four limbs. Humans. Immediately, he pressed his face into the hologram where he could now see more details such as writings, catwalks, doors, smokes, and other liquids, and even moving structures.

Ray retracted and gave a jaw-dropping look at Sion who only replied with a tiny grin. It reminded him of his first time discovering the sheer size of this monstrosity, same as Ray's.

"This is the entire structure of this facility; there are three parts, each part has numerous levels, each level has numerous districts, each district has numerous sections, each section has numerous floors, and each floor has numerous areas... so on and so on," Sion stated from memory when he looked down at the digital dials in his reach, he kept his hand on one of them before reaching for another nearby.

He turned it with his left hand counterclockwise. The hologram rotated like a nebula around a black hole, stopping at a particular section which looked oddly familiar.

"This is where we are at currently," said Sion, zooming in to the table in the middle of space, unfortunately, no pair of human bodies were near it.

"Decades ago, it had the same coverage of the land area of the State of New York but had the population size of Manhattan. Today..." Sion inhaled deeply, "... the management decided to expand. With that said, the facility is currently..."