"I... euh... wow... I haven't seen another human in..."

He tried to remember, visible struggling to do the maths, not coming up with any viable answer.

"In too long," he then continued "I have no idea how long it's been. I wasn't sure there still were people."

"Are you the only one here?" Melissa asked, still surprised.

"In a manner of speaking, I suppose." the man replied.

DrOS stepped in front of Melissa and brandished the weapon in his direction.

"Who are you? What happened here? And how are you even here?" DrOS demanded.

"I am Frederick Robina, I used to work here back when this was still an active lab."

Frederick felt in the pocket of his lab coat and found a pack of cigarettes, he opened it but he was disappointed to see it was empty. He crumpled it and shoved it back in the lab coat with a sigh as if it was something he had simply forgotten.

"You wouldn't happen to have any cigarettes would you?" he inquired.

Melissa had no idea what he was talking about and tilted her head slightly in confusion.

"Tobacco hasn't been produced in over 150 years." DrOS replied in a slightly too monotonous manner.

"150... what?!" Frederick replied while he finally took notice of the manner of weapon aimed at him, "Wait, are you... a robot?"

"Yes I am, now explain yourself." DrOS exclaimed in a rather threatening demeanour, "This facility was presumed destroyed for almost 200 years, how are you even here?"

"200 years..." Frederick sighed, "Has it really been that long?"

He walked over to the chair on which his lab coat had hung and sat on it, plopping himself heavily and slumped.

"When this was an active lab we were on the verge of a great discovery. A new dimension of science that would help us reshape our understanding, our fundamental understanding, of the world around us. Based on the preliminary work of someone dear to me, we thought we could find an answer to everything."

He went silent, reminiscing, after which his face turned sour.

"I went too far, I went too fast, we didn't understand what we were doing. Perhaps looking back now, it wasn't in our hands to begin with."

He started squirming slightly, holding his abdomen tightly. He was clearly in pain.

"Then what happened?" DrOS demanded to know.

"You'll have to excuse me," Frederick managed to speak in a soft and pained way through gritted teeth, "I'll be right back."

Frederick's body started to heat up and his skin was visibly reddening. Something alerted DrOS, its sensors were picking up a burst Davidson-Robina radiation.

"Quickly, get behind me" DrOS ordered Melissa, "Radiation is increasing."

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

The robot went into full battle mode, both arms now revealing a serious arsenal of weaponry as did many other parts of the body such as the shoulders, breasts, abdomen and knees.

Frederick's skin started to catch fire. As he burned, he screamed loudly and fell from the chair onto the floor. Light radiated from his core while his entire body was engulfed in a colourless flame that visibly distorted the air around him. The light emitted eventually blinded the entire room into a single white solid. From his burning body emerged a shadow, which would have been visible against the background of white, had it been possible to see anything. The shadow was thick, solid, black and three dimensional, yet not of any recognisable shape.

When the light dimmed and the room recovered its features and colours, the shadow was gone and the body of Frederick had become a burning husk waiting to turn to ash.

DrOS and Melissa set their sights on the crumbling ashen hollow corpse and watched as it became a pile of nothing before their eyes.

"Sorry about that!" rang a voice from behind them.

The robot turned around, placing itself between the voice and Melissa as it fired a warning shot only centimetres from the origin of the voice.

"Woah, careful," the voice began, "It's only me, relax, don't shoot."

Slightly cowering and waving his arms back and forth, the voice was Frederick, once again naked and seemingly younger than before. The grey highlights in his hair had gone, the wrinkles of dread diminished, the light in his eyes far dimmer than before.

"What happened?" DrOS and Melissa asked simultaneously, one truly puzzled, the other more frightened than anything else.

Frederick walked up to the chair, which had somehow found its way back to its original position with the lab coat hanging from it. He put on the lab coat and grabbed into the pocket for the pack of cigarettes, which this time, while not full, was not empty either. He took one and lit it before sitting in the chair once more.

"I waited a long time for another chance to have one of these." he stated almost gleefully as he exhaled smoke.

"I don't have a good perception of time anymore, I don't think I've ever aged more than 10 years before burning up and finding myself the same age I was when the accident happened.

"Being the only human, unable to leave the bubble outside, I've remained down here surrounded by harmony."

Melissa ran her hand through the pile of ash and let it drop through her fingers like sand. The flowing particles tickled her hand, felt like sand would, yet felt empty and devoid of weight or presence. She held it up to DrOS, telling it this ash was weird before the robot analysed the tiny pile in her hand. It yielded absolutely no results other than diminishing Davidson-Robina radiation.

"Your ashes are not organic, what is the meaning of this?" DrOS pointed its weapons at Frederick again.

He exhaled one last time before throwing the cigarette bud away, letting it burn itself up rather than putting it out himself. He stood up, cleared his throat, and as he did the beautiful aria of music began once more, resounding from above them echoing loudly in the large, seemingly empty chamber.

"I am but a vessel for the shadows of something greater than anything in our observable universe. Something that has been here before us, and will be here after us. You think hiding underground is keeping you safe? Or keeping you from their watchful gaze? Their meddling?"

"We never told you where we came from, nor about other humans out there." DrOS said, alarmed at the sudden change of tone and demeanour Frederick was displaying.

"No you didn't," Frederick replied as he pointed up into the empty air above him, foggy with the smoke from his cigarette, "They did, just now."

Both DrOS and Melissa looked up at the same time. DrOS saw nothing but Melissa started to scream in horror.

Becoming only slightly visible due to the cigarette smoke, she was beginning to see the outlines of shadows of variable size and shape that were filling up the entire room, gazing directly through her with intensity and pressure, while having no eyes.

"They are everywhere!" Melissa screamed.

As Melissa began to scream, DrOS began picking up big bursts of Davidson-Robina radiation that seemed to emanate from above them.

"I want to go home, I want to go home, DrOS. Take me home now! Please!" she continued to scream frantically.

DrOS hesitated to do as it promised Melissa: to return her only if and when she desired it. Before deciding what to do DrOS began firing at the various more dense accumulations of smoke above them. While it could not see the figures that were frightening Melissa, the radiation reading and the thickened smoke corresponded, so something had to be there. No matter how much DrOS fired its weapons, the smoke wouldn't dissipate or even move at all, it seemed no longer affected by conventional physics.

The song all around them continued to be majestic, but turned darker, grim and started to generate a feeling of increased weight in the air.

"Go on metal woman-operating system hybrid, you promised her you'd take her back, if she wanted," Frederic taunted, not quite sounding like the person they had met only minutes earlier, "Or is your curiosity making you more human than you'd hoped?"

Frederic turned his head upwards while spreading his arms. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

"You've made me proud Augustin, so I'll give you what you want." Frederic said as he opened his eyes. He then took out a cigarette from the pocket of the lab coat without taking the packet out, reached for something from the inner pocket before he put the lab coat back onto the chair.

"We tried to play god. We probed into a greater world and it probed back. They had waited for us to do so, but that isn't important now."

He put out his hand towards DrOS.

"What you want to know is on this flash drive, but none of it matters now. It won't help."

Frederic threw the drive over which DrOS caught and stored in its breastplate. Without a moments hesitation it grabbed Melissa and flew up to the broken glass as quickly as possible. As fast as it could out of the facility the way they had come, leaving the arias to slowly fade behind them.

"You can't undo the world's ruin..." Were the last echoing words DrOS and Melissa heard as they sped through the corridors, accompanied by the loud and deafening metallic scratching of Frederick struggling to light his cigarette, over and over.

DrOS carrying Melissa made it out of the complex and without a moments pause launched itself into the air at the highest speed it could achieve. They left the bubble, then the valleys and over the woodlands, heading back to colony 147 without stopping.

DrOS was preoccupied with flying while Melissa looked down upon the various landscapes they had previously flown over. This time, however, she could not see the landscapes. Instead, she saw only uncountable shadows that were causing all the unexplained phenomena they had seen up until now. Crushing the land beneath them, drinking the oceans dry.

They never knew. All this time they were surrounded by monsters whom they were utterly powerless against, and really, had no concern for them in the slightest.