As soon as Neiman heard the explosion he knew he’d pressed the wrong button.
“I really should have labeled these,” he muttered to himself and stuck the remote back in his pocket with the five others.
It had served its purpose though and he heard the alarms blaring overhead, beckoning all available agents to the Scout’s division to help with casualties and first aid. Neiman had been careful to put the bomb in the underground garage so that there would be no fatalities and minimal damage to the facility itself, he couldn’t bear the thought of harming anyone for the purpose of distracting everyone from his true purpose.
He hadn’t planned on setting his plan in motion this early in the creation process but the circumstances were dire. It was only yesterday that he’d met with his friend Professor Homin in the Biology department to discuss the team’s recent findings regarding the body in the stasis tube. Neiman had been meeting with Homin on a daily basis to learn about the condition of the body considering that, according to Terra’s tale, it was the robot’s original body. Although his original purpose had been to negotiate with the biology team on releasing the body so Neiman could attempt to put Terra back in her original body, he’d quickly agreed to let them keep taking samples because of the wonderful things they had discovered about the scientific marvels it held.
The little girl’s body could process the nitrogen and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and convert it almost immediately into oxygen. It could also produce its own nutrients simply by being exposed to ultraviolet light, living solely on light and air. Apparently, the biology team had been so shocked on discovering these two seemingly simple facts that they ran a total of three tests all on different computers, all proving that the data they collected was correct and not an error caused by faulty code.
Neiman had conveniently been at the lab to witness the final results of atmospheric readings in the stasis tube that proved the girl was an anomaly, which is when Homin promised Neiman to keep him updated on progress if he didn’t release the news of the discovery since GreenHouse was notorious for a high staff turnover rate.
Neiman sighed, wishing he hadn’t gotten involved with GreenHouse at all. What had first seemed like a great opportunity to help better the world technologically had left him wondering if anything he had ever created ever benefited anyone other than the large company he worked for. It was nearly sixty years ago that he’d first joined, eager to please his bosses with his incredible ideas and inventions. That was before he had learned the truth about GreenHouse and their hand in the destruction of the old world. But Neiman had promised himself that he would keep his head down and play by the rules in order to keep his life.
That was before he took Indo under his wing. Neiman had been passed the prime of his life when he’d hired Indo as his assistant thirty years ago and had instantly felt the need to protect this young man from what his job resulted in. Things had been going swimmingly for years, the first Efficiency prototype had been released and the Council gave them funding for even more evolved robots. Indo had wanted to experiment with allowing human consciousness to transfer to robot bodies in order to allow soldiers to work from the headquarters rather than having to go out in the field themselves. It was a long and fruitless process since commands couldn’t be transferred more than a mile away from the robotic body without getting other interference, so the project was scrapped. It was around that time that Indo met 021B, the oldest and most resilient lab rat known, and Neiman had watched from afar as the two bonded, often spending countless hours in each other’s company.
Knowing that the robotics division was in good hands, Neiman retired at the age of sixty-three, leaving Indo the role of the head technician. It was just a mere year into his retirement that he received news that Indo had destroyed his research and bombed several buildings and then fled with a lab rat in tow. Neiman suspected that Indo had learned the unadulterated history of GreenHouse’s dealings and escaped, no doubt rescuing 021B from his life of torture as a lab rat in the pharmaceutical division. He was glad to know that they had successfully escaped; something he could never bring himself to do.
Having nothing but time on his hands, Neiman started building a shelter for the two in case they ever came to him in a time of need. In order to remain concealed in case GreenHouse was tracing him even in retirement, Neiman would reroute his tracker to show that he never left his house while in reality, he would make frequent trips to the Eldern Landfill in order to build a makeshift bunker.
When Indo and 021B never reached out to him, Neiman wasn’t discouraged and instead used the extra time to build a water-purification system hidden under a mountain of trash that would collect water from the air and filter it. When there was still no word from Indo and his companion, Neiman experimented with creating an energy source so that he wouldn’t have to reroute GreenHouse electricity to the hidden bunker. It took several years to complete, but Neiman had created an original mechanism that relied on the discarded waste from the water purification system and ignited the molecules to create a miniature sort of combustion that powered pistons which then relayed to coils that gathered the charges created by the pistons, much like how their vehicles ran.
Under the pretext of wanting to check on the robotics teams progress in his absence, Neiman often visited the lab and swiped spare pieces of metal and equipment that wouldn’t be missed and would covertly visit the location GreenHouse used to keep the items Indo left in his apartment and gather up the items Indo had swiped for himself when he thought Neiman wasn’t looking. It was a slow process but Neiman recreated something that resembled suitable living quarters in the bunker, even creating a lab for Indo if he ever came back.
It took fifteen years of waiting but Indo finally reached out to Neiman, desperate when ‘Petri,’ 021B’s new name, had been heavily injured when Patrollers had caught wind of their location and hunted them down.
For the past five years, Neiman occasionally visited Indo and Petri in their new bunker and was pleasantly surprised when Indo had quickly assembled an Efficiency model out of the pile of miscellaneous materials Neiman had stored in one of the rooms. Indo looked worse for wear but Neiman was glad to see his prodigy was faring well under his circumstances. It didn’t take long for Indo to enlightened Neiman on what he and Petri had been doing for the past fifteen years and it truly shocked the older scientist, and there was little that shook him. He’d tried to discourage Indo from taking action on his plan, to tell him that there would be others that could execute the plan, but Indo insisted on following through. It had been many years since their last discussion of Indo’s master plan to take down GreenHouse, but no action had been taken yet so Neiman thought the man he saw as his son had come to his senses and would allow others to take his place. But now Indo and his significant other were taken captive by the very company they had vowed to destroy.
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Neiman left retirement as soon as he heard the news of his ex-assistant being taken in, and the Council gladly placed him back in the head role of roboticist in order to research the sentient robot. Although Neiman had planned to somehow break Indo and Petri out of their prisons, he’d been instantly enamored by the odd robot they showed him and couldn’t bear not discovering more about the robot’s behavior before rescuing Indo.
After hearing Terra’s story, Neiman left to the biology lab to negotiate to get her body back mostly out of pity for the soul trapped in the numbing metal body, which is where he learned of the girl’s ability to change the chemical composure of the atmosphere itself and he found himself in another predicament.
Homin was hiding the facts from the Council since if word got out that the secrets the girl held in her genetic code could undo what GreenHouse had been striving for the past century, all their research would go to waste and there would no hope left for anyone. Neiman promised, siding with Homin’s actions considering their long history together, and understood that he couldn’t give Terra back her body just yet; not until the biology lab discovered how the girl was stripping the very atoms of the air apart in her lungs to create pure oxygen and living off of it.
It took a week of no sleep for the biology team when Homin contacted Neiman of their discovery; Ambrosia. They had compacted the dark green gas into vials, mass-produced a hundred of them, and put them all in a small container and asked Neiman to keep it hidden. He complied, not asking any questions, but somehow the higher-ups had gotten word of the creation.
Acting quickly, Neiman rigged small bombs and hacked into the security feeds so that he could wander the halls between divisions inconspicuously to plant his explosives. Not long after he’d headed back to the biology lab to see if there was any word on what the updated status of the research, but men in biohazard suits had stopped him, claiming that there had been a mass leak of a new virus that had killed everyone.
Noting GreenHouse’s work, Neiman quickly packed two bags; one for him and one for the man who had caught his attention; 895G. It seemed that the Scout was interested in learning the truth behind GreenHouse according to the man’s search history and Neiman couldn’t help but think that Indo had somehow swayed the Scout to open his mind up to the possibility that GreenHouse wasn’t the god everyone had been raised to worship.
He’d dropped the bag with the vials off with 895G since Neiman’s work still wasn’t done and he knew the younger man was more limber and agile than his eighty-four-year-old-self and would have a better chance at acting on the instructions Neiman had left in the bag.
His first bomb had gone off without a hitch, leaving him alone in the hallway leading to the evidence the Patrollers had confiscated when they’d taken the fugitive group captive. Opening the doors using his ID he shuffled towards the tables that had the materials laid out and labeled in an organized manner. Grabbing a pack from off the table, he shoved three sets of clothes and the respirator with the skull painted on it along with any rations he could find. The bag he was packing was meant for Terra and he knew that she wouldn’t need to eat but if he was going to come with her he would make use of her strength and have her carry all the heavier things.
“What are you doing?”
Neiman slowly turned around although he was surprised, hoping that a smile would disarm whoever was standing behind him.
“I was just checking if there were was any valuable equipment the criminals had and see if I recognized it. It’s possible someone was supplying them was materials.” Neiman said, trying to be as rational as he could to appeal to the Patroller.
“This room is off limits. Please leave everything on the table and exit the room otherwise I will be forced to take action.”
The Patroller rested one of their hands on the gun resting on their hip and Neiman knew nothing he would do would deter the Patroller from protecting the room. Neiman turned to exaggerate dropping the bag back on the table while one of his hands wandered in his pocket and felt for a remote trigger. Not knowing which button went where he pressed one at random in the hopes of the Patroller attending to the imminent threat and not Neiman.
An explosion rocked the ground they stood and the wall behind the Patroller exploded, launching the two men in the air several feet. The Patroller smashed his head against the edge of a table while Neiman felt the wind knock out of him as his body smacked against the wall behind him.
It took him a minute to recover and he got to his feet and dug around in the rubble for the bag full of the things he had packed and ran out of the room after making sure the Patroller was alive.
Alarms were blaring and Neiman had to traverse over broken bits of pillars and walls in order to make his way out to the main hallway. He tried blending in with the rest of the people fleeing for their lives but he still looked suspicious since he was the only one dressed in a grey lab coat among all the Patrollers in their stark blue uniforms and it didn't help that had a thick layer of dust and debris covering him from head to toe.
He gave up trying to look composed and settled for sprinting through the crowd rushing to see the explosion site and hoped no one followed him. Just as a safety measure, he went ahead and pushed another one of the buttons in his pocket and heard a boom far away; it was most likely the Environmental Impact and Educational Outreach offices.
With absolute mayhem in the walkways, Neiman pushed through the people as he trekked his way back to the robotics division to wake Terra up. Luckily nobody stopped him this time and he managed to enter the lab without issue.
He dropped the back he’d prepared for Terra at her feet and rushed across the room to grab the back he’d prepared for himself when he heard a familiar voice call across the room.
“Doctor? What are you doing here?”
Neiman turned and saw Creedus standing in the doorway with a look of confusion on his face.
“Nothing much just wanted to make sure all our machines are unharmed from the explosions.”
“Oh, alright.” Creedus turned to leave the lab but hesitated. “And here I was thinking you were making GreenHouse your enemy by destroying their facilities and then trying to escape, but I clearly don’t know anything.”
Neiman felt his blood run cold as Creedus opened the door and instead of leaving, three Patrollers and Combatants entered.
“The Council has been suspicious of you of late and had me monitor you. At first, you seemed like a senile old man but you hid your true intentions very well. I’m good at my job though and did some digging. Did you know that a software was created that recovers discarded footage on security cams? You made a mistake making us your enemy.” Creedus turned to the Patroller at his left. “Erase him.”
Neiman couldn’t move as the Patroller raised his gun at him. He body ached from being rattled around by the explosion he’d caused and the air in his lungs was trapped as he faced his mortality. He wished he had had the strength to do what Indo and Petri had done decades ago and regretted not being able to help them see each other one last time. Well, maybe there was still something he could do before he was killed that could help Indo and Petri escape.
“Ambrosia.”
The Patroller fired his weapon and Neiman fell to the ground, his last words still clinging to the air as he was finally laid to rest in the place he cherished most.