“What… what the fuck?”

  It was the only thing I could find the words to say as I looked from the bedbound SnakeBite, to the room around him.

  The room was every bit as sterile as the smell indicated, with a complete lack of decorations and a clinical smell that lingered in the air. Over a dozen identical monitors littered the wall opposite of his bed, neatly organized and lined up with each showing something different. The bottom row was showing live footage from the headquarters I had just come from, with one of the screens showing Dr. Lincoln and his team actively operating robotic looking arms that lowered from the ceiling to lift and move the non-Sapient Sal from this collapsed position.

  “Angie? Codex? Are either of you guys seeing this?” While all evidence suggested SnakeBite was telling the truth that this place was a zone where my communication with my A.I was cut off like The Common Ground, I couldn’t help but try asking internally anyway.

  Although he had claimed we needed to talk, SnakeBite wasn’t rushing to force my attention onto him and he allowed me to take my time as I looked around the closed off room. There was no noticeable exit on any of the walls, and while I was sure I could probably punch my way through the glass and fly away with a strong enough Gravity Punch, I found myself with a sudden pit in my stomach as I looked to my action bar and found everything was grayed out.

  “Why is my action bar grayed out? What is this place?” I finally asked, turning my attention back to the shell of a man.

  “I told you,” He replied, taking his time to speak to avoid another coughing fit. “It’s a dead zone. You should be able to still access your B.E.L.T... It was setup that way so that they could at least supply me with water and food through my own B.E.L.T. but that's the only part that is activated in this area. Now please, come sit down, it’s harder for me to speak louder…”

  He lifted a bony arm slowly, gesturing toward the lone other piece of actual furniture in the room, a plush armchair in the small space between his bed and the large window wall.

  “What’s going on here SnakeBite?” I asked, slowly making my way over to the chair and taking a seat.

  “Pl.. Please. I've really… I've really grown to hate that name and you already know my real one. Just call me Sal… It would be nice if someone did after all this…” He wheezed, reaching to the side as a cup of water appeared in his outstretched hand. It took him some time as he moved his face mask out of the way, but he pulled it to his chapped lips and took a sip.

  “Ok… Sal then. What’s going on here? What was the point of this?” I asked, staring at the man. His gaze was forward, focused on a single monitor on the bottom row of his display. The monitor seemed to respond to his gaze as it zoomed in on Hydramental’s prone form.

  “I really am sorry that you’re the one that was brought here… I had hoped that it would be my brother,” Sal finally said. “But I suppose that’s been your story since the beginning, isn’t it? The extra Augment… the Loophole.”

  I was about to say something when he started to cough again, and he held up a finger to stop me.

  “Pl.. Please… I’ll answer your questions… but I need to say some things... need to finally explain myself to someone...” he wheezed again, moving his mask to the side once more as he took another sip before the cup vanished from his hand. “I’ve been here… in this room… for the last few years. I made… I made some bad choices when I first got Augmented… trusted someone that only wanted to use me… His name… it was-” he found himself coughing again before he shook his head. “I can’t say it of course… he’s forcefully suppressed it.”

  “I thought only Axio could do that,” I said, unable to stop myself from interrupting and he shook his head.

  “The P.A.I.s…. Axio even might believe that… but no…” Sal said, repositioning the mask on his face as he took in a few deep breaths. “All of us… we’re all just puppets and pawns in a war for control over… well all of this,” he said, gesturing absentmindedly. “Haven’t you ever wondered why you’ve just… gone along with it all? Why you’ve barely taken the time to consider the ramifications of your experiences?”

  “I… Isn’t it just the Acceptance Matrix acting to keep me balanced?” I asked as my gut clenched. I must have noticeably winced as Sal looked at me with almost knowing eyes.

  “It’s amazing isn’t it? Even in this dead zone… you can feel yourself panicking even barely doubting it, can’t you? They gave it such a simple name and then the P.A.I.s act to embed its importance into you right from the beginning with you only barely even wanting to question it, all while it controls you so much more than you can even realize. I’d be willing to bet you just happened to see someone in Sanctuary Square having a moral dilemma on your first day, didn’t you?”

  “I… Is this some sort of mind game? Did you just bring me here to fuck with me?” I asked, finding myself getting defensive.

  “Do… Do I really look like I’m capable of doing anything right now?” He asked, his eyes meeting mine. There wasn’t any malice or ill intent hiding there, in fact, it was almost entirely compassion that I could see in his expression. “I can't be positive... this really is my own conjecture based on the footage that I've been shown... but I think it was Axio that brought you here, Axio that poked and prodded you, gave you hints and every little thing you’d need until you found where I was being hidden. He couldn’t unlock this area due to the nature of the dead zone, so he used you to do the job for him.”

  “Why would Axio do that? Isn’t he playing some sort of game of his own?”

  “They all are… I told you.. Every single one of us Augments are just pawns… Even if Axio has his own goals, he still needs pawns to test and use... and there are others working against him… When my mentor first got his claws into me, first took control over my Acceptance Matrix, Axio appeared to me and promised that he’d undo this. While he has no qualms using the Matrix himself for some things, the amount of influence that was being exerted over us went against the rules he was bound to follow and he didn't like what my mentor was trying to do either," Sal explained and took a moment to catch his breath and find his words. "I didn’t think much of it at first… but as my mentor made me do more and more things that I couldn’t forgive myself for, I started to give up hope. At least… until just a few days ago… when your wave started. My brother has had anger issues for a long time and I never expected him to get selected for Augmentation, but when these screens started to show him… I assumed it was Axio’s way of finally living up to his promise… but Marco… Hydramental… his anger at the system he was brought into clouded his vision and I think the nature of his power made his bipolar tendencies worse. It made him short-sighted and unable to look deeper than surface level at everything… and then you showed up.”

  “And I found the key…”

  “And you found the key,” Sal nodded. “I’m not sure what happened to add you into the wave, but in those first 12 hours there was a gap in the dead zone here. I never had a lot of people on my friend’s list but, even though I had only met her once, Calypso had made a point of adding me after I first started working with my mentor. Just like with Axio, she had said she wanted to keep an eye on me…”

  “Wait… Calypso? As in one of The First’s teammates, Calypso?” I asked and he nodded. “Are you saying that she’s one of the people… what… fighting Axio for control?”

  “That… That I don’t know… It’s not like she told me exactly what she was up to… It was only for a brief moment during that twelve hour gap, but she was able to get a message to me… she said… she said this was all going to be over soon… she said she was sorry that it had taken so long, but that it was all going to be over… I don’t know if she was working with Axio or if they were just separately working toward the same goal… but it gave me hope.”

  A sudden stream of red rushed down one of the tubes, hitting Sal and causing him to lurch and shake as his health bar suddenly returned all the way to full. I jumped to my feet, looking down at the man as his eyes rolled backwards only for another tube to start pulling a greenish looking fluid from a spot on his side, sending his health plummeting back down to critical. He slowly stopped shaking as he clenched his eyes shut, struggling to catch his breath even with the assistance of the mask.

  “So what then… am I on some sort of rescue mission? Are you a prisoner here?” I asked as his eyes started to unclench and his amber eyes met mine.

  “Not a rescue,” He said, shaking his head slightly. “Not a rescue…”

  “Then what-”

  “We’ll get to that,” Sal interrupted, making his glass of water appear once more and stopping to take another sip. “Like I said, Marco was supposed to be the one to be here… I wanted to apologize to him… to ask him to get Giada and Ozzy out of all of this… I guess I’ll have to ask you to do that for me… You don’t owe me anything, truthfully, you have every right to say no to everything I need to ask of you... but ever since you found your way into this, I’ve been watching you… I don’t know if it’s something in your Acceptance Matrix or something that affected you with how you were added to the wave, but you put more priority on life than many in our positions… I don’t think that will change after you do what I ask you to do, even if it does go against that very value.”

  “And what is it-”

  “Not yet… there’s something else you’re going to need to do first… and you’re not going to like it,” Sal wheezed as a hand reached out and gently tapped against my chest. “You need to disable your Acceptance Matrix and you need to do it now while your P.A.I. can’t talk you out of it.”

  “I…” I started to say and felt my heart start to race. “How do I know you’re not just trying to do something to me? Or if it’s whoever’s done this to you that is trying to do something to me…”

  “You don’t,” He responded with a long sigh and his hand pulled back as an injector materialized into his hand. “Because in truth, I was supposed to do something to you.”

  I highlighted the injector but was only met with a series of question marks before I looked back to Sal with a raised brow.

  “It contains nanites that would alter your Acceptance Matrix… and give my mentor a lot of control over your decisions. While Axio certainly does push people to do things, he at least maintains people's general free will. My mentor… my captor… doesn’t have the same restraint… He sees us all as his test subjects… This showed up in my B.E.L.T. about an hour ago… right after he taunted you to come find me… I've learned what it feels like when he wants me to do something... he wanted me to subject you to this...”

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  “If he can make you do what he wants… why didn’t you?” I asked, finding myself backing up and sitting back down into the chair, just to put a little bit of distance between us.

  “Calypso…” He wheezed. His health wasn’t regenerating and I looked at the list of debuffs he had floating under his diminished health bar. Hemorrhaging, Fatigued, Bound, Technologically Sustained. These were just a few on the list that seemed to be keeping him in the state he was in. “I don’t think I could explain it if I wanted to… but when she messaged me, she did something… I’m not sure if it was something embedded in the message itself or something else, but she tweaked my Matrix… It wasn’t the same thing as her wresting control of it with nanites like this… but it let me see clearly for the first time in so long… it let me ignore new orders… Maybe most importantly... it let me see just how much influence others could have over us... all because of a Matrix that they want us to believe is just keeping us calm.”

  My gut was still squeezing as I wrestled with his words. I didn’t want to turn off my Acceptance Matrix. It outright felt like a terrible decision to make, especially since I had absolutely nothing to go on other than the word of someone that, up until a few minutes ago, I had thought was the person behind everything I had had to deal with over the last few days.

  “If you can see clearly… why haven’t you turned off your own Matrix?”

  Sal’s head fell to the side as he looked at me. There was an almost longing nature to his expression that was haunting. “I still need it… I still need it to finish this.”

  “I’m sorry… I’m really lost here… Why do I need to turn off my Matrix? What was Hydramental being brought here to do? And why are you even being held like this? What the hell was your mentor doing?” I rattled off, scratching at the side of my head. I really wished I had Jon to talk to, just to have a second opinion if nothing else.

  “Where… Where do you think the Temporary Augmentation Injectors come from?” He said. His words were coming slower and slower and it was clear the amount of speaking he was doing was taking a toll on him, but even if he seemed to be meandering from one topic to another, he didn't seem like he was confused. He was determined to make sure someone knew what had been happening. “An army of Augments with the one specific power that you want them to have… It’s the ultimate private force.”

  “But it’s been killing the non-Sapients that have been using it…”

  “Test subjects… that’s all they are to him… that’s all we are to him… Though I don’t doubt that he has more than enough human subjects lined up and ready to go once he has a working formula. It’s all been incremental…”

  There was another round of coughing that escaped him and he began to wheeze as soon as the fit ended. I found myself standing up as I waited for him to catch his breath. I walked over toward the window to look down over Central Park as I tried to comprehend what he was telling me.

  “You… I think the only reason he let you get this far, get here, is because he wanted you to be his next subject. I’m not sure what your powers are… but they seem versatile… they seem like something he’d want to try to take. It’s the only explanation that makes sense… I can’t let what’s happened to me happen to anyone else… That’s why you need to turn off your Matrix. If it’s off, I think even if he finds a way to inject you, he won’t be able to control you,” Sal finally said after a few minutes passed and his breathing calmed. I turned from the window to look back at him as my eyes met his. “If I could tell every Augment to do that I would… Maybe you could do that for me too… There’s so… There’s so many things I wish I could have done differently.”

  He choked up, eyes welling as he reached a frail hand up to wipe away a few tears that had started to fall down his cheek.

  “I wanted to be a hero… I wanted to save people…”

  “Have you… Are you really not the one controlling the Vipers?” I asked, walking back toward his bed and staring down at him. He shook his head slowly and looked down at his lap.

  “The only thing I’m good for is my power. As long as I’m alive… the injectors will still let them transform… the injectors will still let them hurt people,” he croaked, his voice getting increasingly hoarse even as he materialized another cup of water. “He hasn’t been able to break the connection… in order for a powerset to work… there has to be a source for them to work from. It's something to do with how our powersets are activated and given to us... He was very specific when he told me that that’s what had gone wrong when he tested on Valor Viking.”

  “Wait are you saying-” I started to say before he began to cough again, the glass of water tumbling out of his hand from the sudden fit and down to the ground.

  “It’s… It’s…. It’s not fair of me to ask you to do this. But I need you to kill me,” he finally was able to spit out as my gut wrenched painfully. “And it’s less fair that I need you to turn your Acceptance Matrix off first. This room is classified as my Safe House. Its code has been altered to turn it into a dead zone to hide me and make it mostly impossible for someone to stop my mentor's experiment. When I’m dead… this room’s code will break, and your P.A.I. will be able to try to stop you from turning it off.”

  “No… I can’t…” I said, shaking my head back and forth as everything clicked into place. “I haven’t even killed one of the non-Sapients… at least not on purpose… Can't I just break you out of here? Get you away from the person doing this to you?”

  “I know… I heard your argument with Marco… It’s why he was supposed to be the one to come here… It would have made this so much easier... I could have just leaned in to what he thought was the truth, angered him until he just put me down…” Sal said, groaning as he tried to adjust himself in the bed. Even as I wrestled with the growing panic in the core of my being, I couldn’t help but wonder if he even needed me to do this with the shape he was in. His breathing grew even more labored as he continued to push himself. “I wish I could send you back… to have you just send him in… but… but… but I’m pretty sure that the key Axio made for you was a one way thing… and once my mentor knows that you haven’t been injected… well I don’t think anyone would find me again. It doesn't matter if I'm hooked up to these machines or not. As… As… As long as I’m alive, the Vipers can transform… As long as I’m alive… my wife… my son… they’ll never be safe… I know you value life… I know I'm asking you a lot... but trading mine for the people of our neighborhoods… isn’t that a trade worth making?”

  “I… I just…”

  “If I could do this on my own… I would. I’ve… I’ve tried... but nothing I've done can lower my health faster than this damn equipment replenishes it. I’ve seen the guns that you’ve been using… I think with the venom coating the ammo… I think that will be enough… It is my powerset’s natural weakness…” His voice broke and a small sob escaped from him that echoed in the empty room. “Even if you don’t turn off your Matrix… Please... Please don't make me a victim in your story... let me be a hero in mine. Please... just make it stop.”

  Almost as if to prove his point, the red liquid surged through the tubes and his body began to convulse again as his health rapidly increased and then rapidly decreased as the green goo was extracted from him. He didn’t scream, but the groans and gasps that escaped his lips grated against my nerves and I winced for him.

  “I…” I started to say before stopping myself. I didn’t want to take a life or to hurt someone… but this… even I could admit that this felt like a mercy. I was about to vocalize this when I felt my gut twist in pain. If the Acceptance Matrix was doing more than just stabilizing my emotions, how could I be sure that that was my own feelings. How could I be sure any of my decisions were my own. I had to do this on impulse... on instinct, and I couldn’t think about it too hard, even if I did end up regretting it.

  My stomach was still in knots at the thought, but I swallowed hard as I concentrated on my Acceptance Matrix and the monotone voice spoke.

  “Are you sure you’d like to disable your Acceptance Matrix: Y/N?”

  Sal was practically doubled over in a coughing fit, his frail arms holding his sides as his health bar seemed to shudder with the shaking of his body. I took a deep breath and pushed back against the warring feeling in my stomach as I selected Yes.

  It felt like a wave of fresh, crisp air entered my lungs and my eyes widened as I felt a wave of relief pass over my body. That relief was short-lived as a rapid wave of panic, amazement, fear, ecstasy, anger, and then even more relief rushed past me, like a slide show presentation of the emotions I should have been feeling over the last few days. When the rush finally passed, I took a few short, rapid breaths. I reached up and rested a hand on my chest, feeling my heart beating so hard that it threatened to burst out.

  “Please… Please…” Sal continued to rasp out. I looked over at him, trying to get my heart to stop racing as I felt a natural aversion to what he was asking.

  Simply knowing that that feeling had come from me, unaltered by the Matrix made me feel like I was myself. But that didn’t change the fact that I couldn’t leave Sal like this either, even if I knew the cost.

  “You won’t turn your Matrix off because you need it to face this… don’t you?” I said as I materialized the last remaining gun I had into my hand. I felt myself let out a wry, pained laugh as I looked at it. “Maybe I should have done it before turning mine off…”

  Sal let out his own sad, pained laugh that turned into a cough as he fell back onto his bed. “For what it’s worth… I think both my brother and you have it half right… There has to be a line… But that goes both directions... You can't pull your punches just because you don't want to take a life, most people won't offer you the same restraint.”

  “I’ll do what I can for your family Sal… I don’t know what I’ll say to your brother… he thinks you’re dead already… it might be better if I just let him believe that instead of letting him know what was happening here. I already don’t think I’m his favorite person... If he knows I killed you... even at your own request...” I said trailing off as I thought about his advice. I ran a thumb over the grip of the pistol before I looked back at the shell of a man.

  “Probably the better plan,” He agreed, meeting my eyes as he reached a hand up and pointed toward his heart, tapping his chest just a few times as lightly as he could. “Right here… it’ll… it’ll… it will spread the fastest from here.”

  There was nothing that was going to make this any easier, and I slowly lifted the gun toward him.

  "I wish there was another way..." I said, my voice lowering as another set of tears welled up into Sal's eyes.

  "Me too..." Was all he could manage as his hand dropped from his chest. It was only my own desire not to kill that I had to fight against, but I pushed and forced my will against it as I pulled the trigger, hitting him square in his chest.

  The equipment surrounding him went crazy as the Weakened debuff was added to his stack and his health bar started to dip downward toward empty.

  “One... more...” He grunted as his body started to shake. I saw the red fluid starting to descend the tube and in a panic that it might make it all for nothing, I fired again, hitting him and dropping his health further. His heightened level was doing a lot of the work of lowering just how much damage each bullet was doing to him, but the venom was doing the work that really mattered and even though the red fluid hit him, his health didn’t replenish. I saw a brief bit of static pass through his eyes and his jaw set. As his health neared the bottom, while his eyes had a touch of fear in them, there was a practically defiant smile that spread over his lips. “Thank... You... Loop.... Hole....." He struggled to say through labored breaths and gritted teeth. Then just before his health bar emptied, he let out a small laugh before adding, "Fuck… you… Tech…. Warden.”

  Sal went still and the equipment attached to him started letting out a rapid set of beeps and alarms that filled the space. The monotone voice suddenly popped back up without an accompanying notification or window.

  “The owner of this Safe Room has died. Safe Room status and all effects granted by this Safe Room will be eliminated in thirty seconds.”

  A myriad of different notifications started dropping into my interface, including several achievements, a huge Phase Point gain, and more than a few Level Up alerts. But as I watched the life leave Sal’s eyes, my own resolve finally gave out and I fell to my knees. The weight of everything Sal had told me, of the mentor he tried to warn about, washed over me and without the safety net of the Acceptance Matrix, it threatened to overwhelm me. I started to take short rapid breaths as I let the truth of what I had just done hit me.

  It didn't matter that he had begged me to do it. It didn't matter that I knew it was the right thing to do. It didn't change that I had done it. It didn't change that I had pulled the trigger.

  Before I knew it, I was sobbing, and I wasn’t sure when I was going to stop.

  Happy Friday! After 175 THOUSAND words, this chapter marks the end of the main story of the first volume! There will still be three chapters next week, acting as the epilogue/interlude for this arc and the lead in for the next. Unlike the rest of the story, these chapters won't be from Nate's POV. As I'm sure you can tell, there is still so much more story still to come, and a lot more mystery to still unravel.

  If you have enjoyed this first arc, please, please, please leave a Review, tell me what you liked and didn't like about the first arc and what I could do better. There is still so much more story that I have to tell and I truthfully hope you all continue to stick around for the ride because I think it's going to be just a whole lot of fun.

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