Proof of Existence

Final Chapter: Proof of Existence

Well, this is the end. It's been a while since I updated.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Franz was well acquainted enough with firearms to understand that their tiny size and odd shape belied the true lethality of the weapons. Attempting to shield Amelia from the bullets would likely be a futile gesture; and so swung around, one arm grasping Amelia's own, pulling her body close to himself, and trying to dive out of the way.

He heard the report of the guns, and for a moment he wondered if perhaps they had indeed missed him, after all. Then agony flared through his right arm, and a quick glance there showed a long streak of ragged flesh across the elbow. The bullet hadn't went inside the arm, but in the scheme of things, he was still wounded.

He didn't have time to check how Dylan was faring, as the comatose Amelia's safety took first priority. Reaching for his own weapon, he brought it to bear on the four guards-

Three now. A digitally created Renaitian soldier had interspersed himself between Franz and the guardmen, his blade cutting through the leftmost one's shoulder. The remainder let out various cries of alarm and quickly tried to bring their weapons to bear on the newcomer.

The fight was short and vicious, terminating in the guardmen quickly being incapacitated. The soldier, however, had been severely… well, Franz hesitated to use the term 'wounded', as no blood was actually coming out, but the person was shimmering and flickering, indicating that he wasn't going to maintain coherency for very much longer.

Then he turned to face Franz, and the former knight had to restrain himself from loosing a gasp of horror.

"Ge- general Se…" No. No. It's not him. It never was. He was never real. Franz forced the thought down, as the digitally realized being stared straight at him, his expression unreadable.

Finally, it faded away into nothingness and Franz sat back.

"Friend of yours?"

He didn't bother to glance up to acknowledge Dylan. He merely nodded. Then, when he did look up, his eyes were hard.

"Loren's vanished."

"Well, no one ever claimed he wasn't good at looking after his own interests. How's Amelia?" The man sighed as he crawled out from his hiding place.

"Fine." Franz glanced down at the unconscious girl, wishing there was some way he could help her recover faster.

After fashioning a makeshift bandage for himself from the sleeve of his shirt, Franz shook Amelia's shoulder.

She uttered a low moan and cracked her eyes open. "I…" She mumbled thickly. "The vial…"

"It's all right. Dylan got it for us. I've already given you the dose."

"D- Dylan?" Slowly, Amelia pulled herself into a sitting position, then, glancing around, noticed her colleague's presence for the first time. "You… you came… after all."

The man's face wore an unreadable expression on it. "Yeah, I did. But in case you're wondering, it took more than what you told me to make me budge."

"H-huh?"

The man stood and turned. "We don't have time to sit around and tell each other stories. You well enough to walk?"

In response, Amelia clambered to her feet, and though she wobbled slightly for a while, she nodded. "Fine – I'm fine."

Silently, Franz offered her a supporting arm, and she gratefully accepted. Then the three of them made their way through the halls of the complex as quickly as they could.

Chaos reigned throughout the area as soldiers from a seemingly medieval era roamed through the building, systematically disarming anyone who appeared to be carrying a firearm. Most of the standard employees had already fled at the first sight of the soldiers, and a large portion of the guards, although disciplined, were quickly outnumbered.

And so it was that as the trio continued their trek, the met no one else on their way.

Kinda eerie, when you think about it. Amelia thought. Out loud, she said, "Dylan, you were saying something about how it took more than what I said to convince you?"

Dylan nodded. "You're the first success of the Energy-Matter Transferal project, and even then you're still pretty unstable."

"Don't I know it." Amelia muttered. The searing pain that had tormented her so recently was still fresh in her mind. "Anyway, what's that got to do with anything?"

"Yeah, just let me finish, alright?" Her colleague sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "Anyway, like I said, you're the first success, and the higher ups don't know about you yet – to them the final investigations are still pending. Anyway, after you told me about Franz – and apparently since Esther knew, I'm the only own who didn't – I decided to do some searching of my own, concerning procedures to be taken if we met success on our project."

"And what did you find?"

"Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Once we've completed the project, there was zero indication of what they planned on actually doing with the tech."

"What? That's nuts. Surely they would've put into place some preliminary utilization functions." Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that Franz was steadily tuning out the rest of their conversation as he kept a careful eye out for potential hostiles.

"Of course – that's standard procedure. Which would be why the fact that nothing was there was so surprising." Dylan sighed. "So, well, ordinarily I'd let sleeping dogs lie, but after what you told me, I decided that it merited further investigation."

A frown creased Amelia's face. "I'm probably not going to like this, am I?"

"No, I don't think you will. Admittedly I wasn't able to get too deep – they've got good security and trying to crack it would have alerted them that something was up – but from what I could find… well, you know how we always theorized that we could use the potential for infinite resources to restore the world's atmosphere?"

"Uh-huh…"

"Well… look, Amelia, I didn't have much info to work on, but from what I could dig up, well, they don't plan on using the tech for any of that sort of thing."

"Okay, so what do they plan on using it for?" She said with a fair amount of impatience, partly influenced by the fact that she couldn't shake the feeling that they were taking entirely too long to reach the exit.

"…Apparently, not much. But records indicate that if the World Restoration Project starts making significant headway, they'll step in to impede it. With the Matter Conversion technology."

"What?" Amelia's frown sharpened. "That's insane! Why would anyone want to prevent the World Restoration…" Her voice trailed off uncertainly as a host of unpleasant thoughts made its way into her mind.

"Right now the executives hold most of the power in the biosphere, nominal or otherwise. That's because they already oversee so much of the essential services in the place, such as the power supply, the water purification systems…" Dylan continued. "The higher-ups – they're afraid of giving up that power. And that's why they're doing what they're doing."

Amelia pursed her lips, contemplating the issue for several minutes. "And… and that was what made you decide to join us?"

He shrugged. "Come on, time's wasting."

Esther had never considered herself particularly smart. Or beautiful. She personified the idea of a 'plain jane', with the possible exception of the fact that her name was in fact not Jane.

As chaos raged around the building, she sat at her desk, staring silently at her computer screen. The tiny blue bar was taking forever to cross the screen. Oh, well, at least it was almost done…

She'd long since ascertained that the soldiers weren't interested in anyone who wasn't behaving in a hostile manner, and thus she was (mostly) secure in doing what she was doing. All around them the intercom was urging everyone to stay calm and move to the designated 'secure' areas until the problem was solved.

She sighed, discreetly peeking at her chronometer. Well, there was not much time left. They would have to make do.

An observer, had one been close by, would have noted a stack of discs at the side of her desk, each one labeled. And after there was a soft 'ding' sound, and a final disc was ejected from the computer. Barely pausing to slip the disc into a case, and the cases into the bag she was carrying, she stood and begun walking.

"Locked down?" Amelia cried anxiously as she tapped a series of interface commands into the magna-lift controls. Like the previous two attempts, she met with absolutely no success whatsoever.

Dylan frowned, cupping his chin. "If I had to guess, I'd say it was your little stunt with the soldiers that caused this. Security doesn't want them going free into the rest of the Biosphere. Nevermind any potential wounded that would need to be brought to med bays as quickly as possible."

Amelia rubbed her forehead. "I know. And I'd placed some safeguards to delay the lockdown taking effect-"

"Not well enough, then."

While the two of them continued their efforts to get the lift working again, Franz frowned, all his senses on high alert. While he couldn't pinpoint the sense of his unease any more than he could help Amelia with fixing the lift, he nonetheless swept his gaze across the shadowed hallways, seeking out the threat.

"Hurry up, would you?" Dylan's impatient voice swept around.

"What, am I supposed to bust out a set of hacker skills I've been keeping to myself all this while?" Came Amelia' annoyed barb back at him. "Just cool your bree-"

And out of the corner of his eye, Franz caught the barest glint of metal shifting.

He wasn't aware of himself bursting into action to throw himself in front of Amelia, nor was he aware of him bringing his gun up to bear. The next thing he was aware of was the burning pain in his right shoulder, and his weapon falling with a dull 'thud' onto the carpeted floor. He winced, staggered back, and would have fallen had Amelia not rushed to his side, trying to support him.

He got me… did I get him? The roaring pain had caused tears to rush to his eyes, and as he tried to blink them away, he caught sight of a blurred form sprawled on the ground some meters ahead, unmoving.

And then Dylan was looking over him, concerned. "Bleeding looks bad. We need to get him to a med bay, stat."

Franz groaned. "I'll be fine," he managed to mutter. "Focus on… on the lift."

With a last worried look at him, Amelia quickly returned to her task. Meanwhile, raising his unmauled arm to wipe away his tears of pain, he finally managed to see the sprawled form clearly.

"Loren…" Franz whispered to himself. "What the hell were you trying to do?" Well, there was no time to mourn the passing of the man, even had he been so inclined.

A fresh wave of pain caused him to look over at the wounded section of his shoulder. Unlike the earlier wound, the bullet had pierced flesh this time, but if the wound itself was any indication, it hadn't stopped in his arm, instead puncturing. "At the rate I'm going, this arm will need to be amputated." Franz muttered, only half-joking.

"I think I've got it!" Amelia's excited shout resounded, and a second later the doors to the magna lift hummed open. "Hurry up, if anyone notices the breach and comes sniffing, it won't be pretty."

Staggering into the lift, Franz instinctively braced himself as the transportation device shot skyward.

They were home free. He could relax now… right?

Almost before they emerged into the upper level, Amelia could already tell something was wrong. Not with Franz, who simply stood cradling his wounded arm, behaving with remarkable resilience for someone who'd apparently been shot twice in the span of half of hour. Not with Dylan, who despite his silence, was someone she still trusted.

"Esther?"

Her friend and colleague nodded. "You're late." She said softly.

"We got delayed." Amelia replied. Her friend could see clearly enough that Franz was badly wounded. "And how were things on your end?"

"I couldn't get everything, but I got most of what was needed." She shifted her gaze to meet Dylan. "So you joined up, huh? Our little band of moralists."

Dylan merely nodded.

"We need to get as far away from here as possible." Amelia said softly. "Our first priority is getting a med bay for Franz."

Esther nodded her acquiescence, and the four of them set out down the street.

"Franz…?" Amelia appeared at his bedside, a concerned look on his face. "How're you feeling?"

"Better." He said noncommittally. "I've had plenty of time for thinking." About me, my life, and what's in store for us.

The blonde nodded wearily. "The doctor says you can leave the ward later today."

"That's good."

"Mm." Amelia paused. "I've… already made all the preparations we could, Franz. Once you're recovered, we're heading out for the Arcadia biosphere. Staying in Elysium any longer would be dangerous for us."

"I thought as much." Franz said wearily. "From what you've told me I know our esteemed company has men searching for us. Nothing too indiscreet of course, because they don't want prying eyes, but…"

Amelia sighed. "You'd better rest first, Franz. Don't worry, I'll wake you up when it's time to leave."

Heeding her words, Franz closed his eyes and sank back into his pillow, letting unconsciousness claim him.

"It's funny…" Franz said softly as he stared at the biosphere receding in the distance. "I'd come to think of it as home too."

In the seat next to him, Amelia closed her eyes. "This is what we wanted, isn't it? A fresh start. A break with everything old that held us back."

"And now that it's here…" Franz sighed. "I've been through this once already, you know." He paused. "At least this time I had some warning before everything got upended."

Amelia nodded. "We won't do badly for ourselves, Franz. Esther managed to get enough from the databanks that we can still recreate the Matter Conversion tech - and the governments will be very interested in such as offer."

The hovercraft was making good time – Amelia estimated they'd reach their destination in four hours or so. Maybe a bit less.

"Amelia?" Franz began. "Could I ask you a question?"

"What is it?"

"Back when… back when the first problems with Magvel started. Back when you'd first thought of extracting me from the Worldframe… did you ever imagine that it could ever come to this?"

Amelia shook her head slowly. "No… no, I couldn't. I suppose it's only fair, huh? I ended up destroying everything you believed in… and now it's come full circle." She closed her eyes. "I… I never really did get a chance to thank you."

"Thank me?"

"Well, at the end of it all, I ruined you life. Twice. But you still… you still tried to move past it, tried to… forgive…" Franz looked over to see tears running silently down her cheeks.

"We've been through this, Amelia." Franz reached over, resting his hand on hers. "Enough of that, okay?"

She sighed, nodded, and tried to smile.

"We've both lost everything we had now." Franz continued to speak softly. "Maybe it's just me speaking from experience, but we bounce back. We take stock of what we had, what we left behind… and we move on." He smiled. "Weren't you the one who taught me that?"

Amelia chuckled. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess I was."

The two of them sat in comfortable silence as the hovercraft continued on its way through the sky.

Towards the future.

The End?

Well, I am completely unsatisfied with how this story turned out for a large variety of reasons, but hey, maybe you thought otherwise. If you feel inclined, please leave a review.

Thanks.