At Time's End

Chapter 14 - Chaos

"So, how's the situation with my... target?" An older woman stood with her back to a kneeling younger man.

"She hasn't answered to any of our threats yet, ma'am. We broke in, killed that researcher - her closest acquaintance, let her know it was you, but she just swore revenge and did nothing," the kneeling man answered. "It seems she isn't planning on coming here."

"It seems I'll have to do something more... radical." A sinister smile appeared on the woman's face. "You may go."

---

"Good morning, everyone," I yelled as I was moving from my room to Eterna's. "You better be awake!" I opened the door. The bed was properly assembled - surprisingly. 

Eterna was still half-asleep. She pulled her blanket over her face, as a reaction to the light flowing from the doorway. Karmella wasn't there. "Where's Karmella?" A sace came up to me. It was the one named Grape. "And why are her saces still here?" I heard grumbling from under the blanket.

"I don't know. Check downstairs." I decided to let her sleep. They were yelling at each other until midnight, or rather Eterna was yelling at Karmella, and Karmella answered regularly. She had probably slept 6 hours - or less.

"Will do," I said, leaving the room quietly. I tried to close the door, but Grape decided to follow me. I let him out, and the other sace followed. This continued for a while as the animals couldn't figure out if they wanted to be inside or outside, or then they did but just wanted to annoy me, but they ultimately decided to follow me.

As Eterna said, I found Karmella downstairs. She was cooking.. something. I don't know what, but it smelled delicious. I'm probably biased, but it still didn't hold a candle to Eterna's cooking. "Good morning. Is Eterna still asleep?"

"Yeah. Not asleep, but wanting to be asleep."

"She probably still has a grudge against me. I think I went a bit too far with the plastic snake.." Something spilled on the floor, but she didn't seem to mind. "Her reaction was hilarious though." 

"Where did you even find that anyways? It wasn't hers, was it?"

"Nah, it was Lucy's. She gave it to me for my birthday when she was younger. She couldn't afford more," she chuckled. "I've kept it with me ever since." 

"That's sweet." I looked over to the stove. "What are you making?"

"Just an old family recipe. I hope you guys will like it." Eterna stumbled down the stairs. "Good morning."

"Good morning to you too," she answered, with a clearly sarcastic tone. "I could've cooked." She sat on the couch and turned on the news from our broadcast device. Grape curled up next to her.

"Well, it's too late now. The food is almost ready." She looked around. "Where do you eat?" 

After eating the food - which was delicious, even Eterna had to say it was "alright" - each of us just left to do our own thing. Karmella went into Eterna's room to fix her laptop, Eterna went into the same room to make snide remarks about how the engineer is engineering, and I went into my own room to try to guess the password to Ignus' secret-er than usual diary entries. I'd ask Karmella, but she was too busy getting verbally assaulted.

It was getting pretty boring - so I decided to go ask The Man Himself about the password. He wasn't going to tell me, but I was bored and it sounded fun.

"Hello, Jaiden." 

"You know, when you were alive, you had the more secret diary entries on his computer?"

"Yeah? What about them?"

"And they have a password on them, restricting me from accessing them?"

"...I don't like where this is going."

"What is the password?"

"You seriously expected me to tell you that?"

"Yes? Besides, I could always ask Karmella to crack it?"

"I'm still not telling you."

He refused to answer any of my questions after that. I gave up after a while and went back to guessing. 

I eventually got bored. Was there even anything on this piece of junk metal? I decided to dig around in the files.

While digging, I realized I could listen to the new roommates argue through the vent. It took a bit of climbing, but it was worth it.

"How do you have so much stuff on this computer? It has like 50 TB left, what do you even use this all for?!" Karmella was questioning life, by the sound of it.

"...Research?" Eterna answered. It sounded a lot like an excuse.

"So, blue ants and pictures of... moldy grapes are research? Goodness, why do you even have these?"

Eterna stayed quiet. But seriously, of all the things I expected, why... those two things? What kind of research were you conducting while I was gone? ...Do I want to know, even?

I got down from the chair and resumed digging. Eventually, I found something. "Another diary? This one seems like it's full of resesarch notes." Mainly maps. They were pretty old, some going back to his first days as a researcher - probably why there were thousands upon thousands of files. He was always organized, I guess...

I decided to search for immortality.

'No results'

Surely he had documented something? Even if he gave up... why aren't there any files on that?

"Immortal?"

'No results'

"...Eterna Talon?"

'No results'

Not even Eterna was mentioned anywhere? She was his apprentice, for god's sake! ...What about myself? I mean, surely not.

"Jaiden Hawks"

...The program searched for a while longer.

'No results. Did you mean: Alice Hawks'

Right! My mother. Of course she has some entry on her. I selected her name.

'254 entries found.'

That was expected. But what was in them?

I skimmed through about 10 of them. They were full of data for her movements. That was why there were so many maps... and probably also because his main line of research was cartography. But why did he want revenge..? Or why did he just dislike my mother this much in general?

I studied the files to find an answer to this madness until Karmella came in. 

"Hey, I'm finally done with Eterna's laptop..." She sighed dramatically, or I at least thought it was dramatic. Maybe she was just tired and I was judgemental. "Do you have something on that computer that has a password that you don't know?" She held up some kind of device. I assume it was the password cracker. "This bad boy can crack into pretty much anything."

"..Yeah, actually. You see, Ignus has this diary that has a password, and...."