Prologue: Discovery

There is a hole in the world.

A carnivorous crater lined with large metal grey thorns all tangled around the rim, the fragile earth blood-red with vein-like carapaces running from the forest of thorns before disappearing into the raised slopes. The night sky is a sickly, oily black sheet and the stars are a uniform purple due to the viral pollution from Sigma's numerous Virus Bombs on Earth and the Eurasia space colony, the latter being destroyed in a last ditch attempt to prevent annihilation.

A Reploid was carrying a small case in his left hand, his white lab coat flapping in the southern wind as he walked up the slope. The rock was cracking under his feet as he reached the threshold of the thorn forest. He took a small handheld cutting laser from his right lab pocket and flicked a small switch, activating a narrow but intense beam and begun to hack and slash his way through the thick grey curtain of thorns, scattering debris around him. Black oil-like liquid was splattering over his face, lab coat and case and was slowly obscuring his exposed purple and black armour and silver-grey hands before he was standing two feet from the edge of the crater.

He unclipped the latches on the case and opened it up, revealing two small mechanoids. The first is a small device shaped like a pebble with clear plastic domes on the larger surfaces to record and store information, bar one where a parachute module is in place to deploy and slow it's descent. The second is a modified Batbone, a small bat-like mechanoid with claws large for its size and increased wingspan and fuel tanks for additional flight capacity.

The Reploid then pulled a small metal tube from a stained coat pocket, pressing a silver button below the mouthpiece and spoke thus into it "This is Gate at the Eurasia Crater at 0432 hours. The purpose of this mission is to locate Zero, if not his remains within the locality of the site, I have a Campod fitted with an anti-viral protection programme to minimise infection, and distortion that may corrupt any findings. And a modified Batbone to retrieve it if not anything that provides clues to Zero's fate."

Gate then depressed the button and lifted both Campod and Batbone from the open case and placed them beside it and folded out the latter. Its wingspan stretching two point forty-nine metres from tip to tip and the fuel tanks could create enough to carry the Batbone and another object from the deepest abyss on Earth, in theory. The campod shuddered as if it was suddenly aware of its surroundings, internal readouts coupled with activating its recording apparatus. Gate picked it up and with outstretched arms, and dropped it over the edge into the yearning abyss.

Parachutes blossoming after the campod fell a short distance, making it larger and stand out from the darkness of the crater, the parachutes themselves disappearing from sight shortly afterwards.

While Gate waited at the surface, the campod floated slowly downward in total darkness, its cameras working overtime as its systems switch to night vision. It eventually landed with a bump, the parachutes falling over a second later. Small wheels folded outwards from the underside as the campod's CPU relayed instructions to detach the parachute cache. The campod then rolled out from underneath the useless parachutes, getting away from the cables and spent cache, night vision functions at full power as it navigates the smooth, vein-like passage. Thin wisps of smoke were drifting from the many-too-many cracks along the passage; the campod observes and records data as it trundles alone in the dark. The passage gradually closed in on itself and was starting to branch off in different directions; a tube-like corridor with stalactites and stalagmites that seems to go on forever to the west, a deep gorge with smooth crystalline surfaces between north and north-east that stretches out into the horizon and a cavern of flaky calcium and leaking veins.

The campod calculated as it observed these new routes and rolled off into the cavern. The calcium cracks under the relative weight of the campod amidst the splashes of liquid from the wirily straw-like veins, the CPU simply adjusting the spread of the wheels while maintaining the campod's balance on the fragile calcium surface and its course through the cavern.

Only for something to catch it's attention!

The campod made a beeline toward the unknown thing, whatever it was, while its CPU struggles to adjust to the various weaknesses of the calcium. As it got closer, it found it was a metallic object, with a honeycomb pattern in its hexagonal centre and thick wires ending only one inch from the hexagon casing before the calcium suddenly gave way and everything in existence was gone in an instant.

The Batbone flew into the cavern, just in time to see the deactivated campod being dragged down into the shifting surface by silicone based appendages and just afterwards the object that caught the campod's attention. The Batbone observed the object from overhead, and gently got closer...

Time crawled by Gate, who was lost in his thoughts, "So many lives lost, so much has changed when Eurasia fell and all those who survived are left to pick up the pieces." He mused "Or wait for the end, the ecological implications of Eurasia are yet to be discovered." It was this string of thought that disturbed Gate as he continued to ponder the aftermath of Sigma's greatest war crime.

"And we are supposed to be grateful for waking up to a life of uncertain misery!" a bitter voice roared from within "Maybe it would be better to be either destroyed by the colony or devoured by Axle the Red after all." Gate stopped himself at this point for he heard his words coming from his mouth and the fear of being heard by anyone, however small the chance might be. And he dared himself to again think about the creature that was bought back online by a cult that held him and several Reploids hostage.

A creature that went on the rampage amidst the carnage of the virus bombs, the panic of the falling colony and the breakdown of law and order as many Reploids were driven insane by the viral pollution, a creature that was once a Reploid.

"So powerful, so monstrous, such an incredible force of nature." He sighed "He had to be destroyed for his own good." Finally forcing Axle the Red from his mind and banishing his thoughts to the back of his mind. Just in time for the Batbone to return to the surface, holding a small hexagonal object, lifeless wires trailing behind it. The Batbone released the object into Gate's open hand. "A DNA datacore?" He causally turned it in his hand. "Probably an unfortunate victim of Eurasia or…" his voice trailed off as he stopped himself from mentioning that name, stopping to look at the datacores design, turning it more slowly. "It looks so simple, like something from…" he said to himself, while trying not to say what he really thought.

And then he had to leave the crater, taking the Batbone and datacore with him, through the thornforest, back to the research station he is based, under Maverick Hunter protection – he had to study it.

He had to find out for sure, but in his Energen core – he already knew!