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“...Really?”
“It was old footage from a surveillance camera... I saw him when he was younger, and I was a child. He was talking to someone, but I didn’t get the audio.”
“Oh... I see.”
His enigmatic words that didn’t answer anything annoyed her. Since the beginning, Eden was dying to know the relationship between Pan and her dad. She had always had a feeling it was something complicated, but the more she knew about either of them, the more enigmatic the other was...
“It must have been nice,” he said with a sad smile, “for you to see him. I also come down here sometimes... to rewatch a few things.”
“Like what?”
“Like that one you saw. Memories of when you were still here, in the Core... as a child. Of the happy days before I was trapped here, before what they did to your parents. I hope you’ll be able to see it all someday. Sadly, we don’t have time for that right now, do we?”
Eden swallowed her saliva and her mixed, torn feelings. She just couldn’t figure out Pan at all. There were a million questions she wanted to ask him, but none that she could decide on first. She glanced down at her leg, realizing she had forgotten the fake pain already. She glanced to the side. No monsters were coming, and the box she had come to get was right there. Was that thanks to Pan protecting and hiding her?
“...Where are you?” she finally muttered.
“Fifteen floors above you. The seventy-fifth one. You’ll get in trouble for getting there, my Eden.”
Eden’s heart felt a pinch. Just fifteen floors above her? Only fifteen floors? This was the closest she had ever been to meeting the real Pan, all this time... She was so curious and suddenly dying to see his physical self. Whoever he was, whatever he was, she wanted to see the real Pan. She tried to breathe, but to her surprise, he suddenly grabbed the box she had come for and handed it to her with a smile.
“Come on, pretty songbird,” he said. “You still have a lot to do.”
“What did you call me?” she asked.
“I told you. I’ve been watching you from up close for a while... See you soon.”
Before she could protest, Pan grabbed her hand and put it on the box. Immediately, everything around Eden changed. She dropped the box as soon as she could, but he was already gone, and everything around her had changed. She gasped, feeling like she had just finished a marathon. She turned around, analyzing her surroundings by reflex.
“Ghost? Ghost? Oh, that damn thing... Come on. Ghost, please? If you hear me, can you–”
“I hear you,” she sighed. “Sorry, Greed, I hear you now.”
“Oh, thank God! I had half the Edge about to tear me apart and that was not cool at all, lady. What the heck happened? Who did that?”
“Pan.”
“Pan? You mean... Prometheus?”
“You saw Prometheus?” suddenly asked Lecky.
“Yeah. He said his real body is upstairs, in this building. On the seventy-fifth floor.”
“Oh, we should have expected so...”
Eden was torn. She had come here to find the safest way into the System, ruin the Core’s plan, and destroy them from the inside. They were supposed to bomb everything, in the Dark Reality and in the real world alike, but what about Pan? She couldn’t help but glance above her again. He was upstairs, just upstairs...
“I need to get to him,” she suddenly declared.
“Oh, uh... okay... Really? I mean, no offense, but that’s a whole lot of floors to get there, and nothing nice on the way, Ghost. I know we’ve been playing it safe that way, but I’m sure that was what we all agreed on to begin with. Get to the servers, destroy what we could, and get out of there. If you really want to go upstairs, we’re putting the whole plan in jeopardy...”
“Nebty?” Eden asked with a sigh.
She knew it was selfish of her, but now, she just couldn’t get it out of her head. Perhaps she would change her mind if literally everyone was against it, but...
She heard Nebty sigh on the other end, and chat with Lecky, Malieka, and A. for a few seconds.
“...Okay,” she sighed. “I would have said no, but frankly speaking, you’re just going to keep circling around in the archives for nothing if we keep going like this, and we need to be more decisive. The seventy-fifth floor is also where one of their biggest servers is. If you get there, this time we can really get to them, without the archive maze bullshit.”
