Before the meeting with Sirte could occur, there was the matter of the other door, the heavily fortressed lock vault just on the other side of the hallway. While Rost had taught her to be cautious, she was also naturally curious – perhaps to a fault – and she had to investigate the locked door. The temptation to stash at least one or two of the smaller books from this room into her pouch was almost overwhelming, but she made a mental note to find a way to get back here again in the very near future and continue her reading education.
The dim light on the wall had nothing of note around it. There were no signs, no words or instructions of any kind to identify the function of the light or how to open the door. Behind her, the automatic light from the library remained on just long enough for her to determine that there had been considerable effort made to open this door as well. The wall around the door was charred and warped, clearly evidence of an explosion; there were marks at the edge of the door that were most likely made by a prying tool of some sort. But it did not appear that the door had opened.
The lights behind her switched off and the hallway was once again dark. I wonder if this is some sort of spy hole, to see who's at the door? Aloy wondered. She leaned forward and stared into the hole with one eye, hoping to be able to see something through the light.
Suddenly, the light changed color, from dim white to pale red, and a female voice boomed out from above: "Retinal scan initiated." Aloy jumped at the sound of the voice, recoiling from the light on the wall, and as she did so, the light returned to its original white glow. The voice sounded again: "Retinal scan incomplete."
Aloy cautiously leaned forward once more, brought her right eye to within a fist's distance from the light, and it again turned red, with a repeat of the original message. After what seemed an eternity, as the light did nothing more and the voice was silent, she relaxed a bit, sighed in disappointment, and started to stand straight once more – when the light changed hues from red to green, and the same female voice said, "Welcome, Doctor Sobeck."
Doctor Elisabet Sobeck! This device thinks I'm Doctor Elisabet Sobeck!
Aloy stepped back from the door, uncertain what might happen next. Her DNA had assured that she was almost a perfect match for the ancient Dr. Sobeck, the brains behind Project: Zero Dawn, the movement that had managed to save all life from extinction as the Machines overtook the Earth, almost a millennium ago. Apparently the match in the patterns of her eye were also a match for Dr. Sobeck, and this device responded to the appearance of the good doctor – a thousand years later, in a different human body.
There was a soft clicking sound somewhere within, or behind, the door, then a loud thump! as something dropped somewhere, and the door was slowly pulled open.
The door scraped against something on the floor behind it, and as it began to pull open, Aloy could see that it was incredibly thick, apparently sealed tightly on all sides, hinged to her left, and extremely slow to move. A loud whoosh! sound escaped from the room (or was it air rushing into the room?) as the first crack between doorway and door was exposed. A foul odor followed. Aloy recognized the odor: a musty, acrid smell – the smell of death. A sliver of light shone through; lights were illuminated in the area behind the door.
As suddenly as it had begun, the door stopped moving. A whirring sound continued for a few seconds, then that too stopped. The door had not opened sufficiently to let even as a slender person as Aloy sneak through. Aloy was able to peek into a bit of the space behind the door; there appeared to be something lying against the door, preventing it from opening any further. Aloy knelt down, extended her arm through the open gap, and reached as far as she could behind the door. She felt something soft, perhaps covered in fabric, but very heavy. She tried to pull the object but was not able to get much leverage, so she withdrew her arm, stood, and put her shoulder into the door.
Pushing with all her might, she felt the blockage give very slightly, and the door opened just a bit more. So she backed up a step and rammed her shoulder into the door. She felt a slight pain in her shoulder but also felt the door move a tiny bit more.
There appeared now to be just enough of a gap for her to slip through. She unsaddled the pouches from around her waist and weapons from over her shoulder, tossing each into the room ahead of her. Then, holding her breath, wiggling with all her might, she slipped through the opening and into the room.
As she caught her breath and fetched weapons and pouches, Aloy took a quick look around the room, assuring herself that there was no eminent threat awaiting her. As she started to assess the layout of the room, she was startled by another female voice – but this was not coming from above, but seemed to be directly in front of her. And it was a familiar voice.
"You did it! I knew you were the secret to this room!"
It was the voice of Sirte. A ghostly image slowly materialized before her: the shadowy, translucent image of Sirte in her robe, an almost comically thin and unthreatening image. Her face was still hidden by the hood of her robe. Outwardly, Sirte did not seem to be as physically excited as her voice betrayed.
"Hello Sirte," Aloy said, almost unsurprised to see the holographic apparition before her. "I suppose you've been following me all along?"
"No," Sirte replied. "I knew you would get into Ted Faro's private library, so I waited until you started to deal with the vault door to his final resting place."
This was a surprising development: Aloy had to find out just what Sirte knew. "This is where Faro died? How do you know that?"
"I don't. Not for certain. But it makes sense: he had the building you entered constructed in a hurry, with a shell of a pyramid above ground and this shelter dug into the ground, deliberately built to protect him from the plague that ravaged the world outside. It is only sensible that he chose to live out his final days locked away, hoping desperately that the inevitable would not happen – that somehow, someone would find a way to stop the advance of the Machines he created."
"But you don't know what's in this part of the shelter, do you? You weren't able to unlock the vault."
"No, I was not. And I tried many means. At other areas outside this shelter you will find places where I tried explosives, drills, manual labor, any means I could find to try to enter the shelter. I had run out of ideas when I learned about you."
"Why me? How did you know the sensor would unlock the door for me?"
"Well," Sirte answered, slowly. "Really, I didn't know. It was just a hunch, a suspicion from knowing much about Ted Faro. I think he made it a cruel joke: set a lock that could only be activated by the one person he both loved and hated – the good Doctor Sobeck. And since you possess her biological makeup, you are the only person alive who could open that lock."
"But surely Dr. Sobeck wasn't the only person? Don't you think Faro would have been able to open the door too?"
"Why would he? He knew this was the end of his life, that he would spend the rest his days in this tomb, never leaving… unless things somehow worked out miraculously – and if so, Dr. Sobeck would still be alive too, and she would come looking for him, and she would unlock his final home.
"Besides that, there is another way I know that Faro's biology would not open the lock.
"You see, I am the recreation of Ted Faro himself."
Aloy tried to look surprised at this statement, but she was expecting it: true or not, she suspected Sirte at least considered herself to be a clone of Ted Faro, as Aloy, herself, was a clone of Elisabet Sobeck.
If Sirte detected the lack of shock in Aloy, she didn't indicate it. Instead, she waved an arm in Aloy's direction, and Aloy saw a thin, bony hand and forearm appear momentarily in the hologram.
"Do you think you are the only one?" Sirte asked as she retracted her arm and let the robe's sleeve cover it up again. "Are you so conceited as to think that you could be the only creation of the artificial intelligence known as GAIA Prime? Why not Ted Faro? His ego was large; he could not stand the idea that his existence on this planet would so easily end.
"And, probably again as an act of cruelty against his former partner Elisabet Sobeck, he had the GAIA Prime in this land create his image not of a man, but of a woman. A woman who is superior to you in almost every way. I am smarter, stronger, more capable of controlling both Machines and humans, bending their minds to do my will and making them think I am a god.
"Once I discovered who I was, and once I entered Faro's library and learned of the ancient Egyptians, it only made sense to declare myself the new Pharaoh, the Goddess of the New World.
"And soon, with your help, the Ruler of the World."
For the first time, Aloy showed emotion: this was the first really shocking statement she'd heard from Sirte.
And of course, Aloy would have none of it.
"Let's say you are smarter than me – Sylens seemed to be as well – and that you are stronger than me – the Eclipse leader Helis was… why do you expect me to help you control the world?"
"You have not yet heard the offer I plan to make to you. It is an offer that will entice you to assist me, I promise."
Aloy started to respond, "What off…" but Sirte cut her off.
"That is a discussion for another time and place, my dear. For now, you must explore the room around you, then make your way back to my… our… palace."
The ghostly image disappeared. Aloy knew, though, that Sirte was still monitoring her every move, seeing everything she saw, through the Focus on her right temple. Aloy briefly entertained the thought of removing the Focus and storing it in her pouch, but she quickly dispelled that idea: Sirte was clearly not someone to incite to anger. At least not yet.
She took the time to look at the open area around her. The room seemed quite large. A high ceiling paneled in dark wood gave it an outdoorsy feeling. Before starting her search of the room, Aloy turned back to the door: she wanted to assure that the door would not close behind her and lock her inside. There was no retinal sensor on this side of the wall, nor was there any sign of a handle or latch on the door. She decided to prop something strong in the doorway, hoping it would keep the door from locking if for any reason it closed on its own.
She inspected the heavy, fabric-covered lump that blocked the door. The fabric was not just any fabric: it was clothing, a checkered shirt. Within the shirt were the shriveled remains of a person. Under that person was a block of something very hard, and wrapped around the block was a swath of cloth. It appeared that this person had tried to keep the vault sealed, or perhaps had attempted to stop gas from seeping in at the base. Or maybe to stop air from leaking out.
Based on the shape of the corpse, Aloy suspected this was a woman, so it was most decidedly not the body of Ted Faro. But if it was the corpse of an Old One, it was well-preserved, supporting her theory that the room was absent air until the vault door opened.
Aloy carefully pulled the corpse off of the block upon which it lay. The block was of a light but dense metal and was just narrow enough to form a wedge in the open vault door. Reasonably assured that she was not going to be trapped in this tomb, Aloy turned her attention to the room at large.
Large paintings adorned every wall. They were abstract, not of a sort Aloy had ever seen, but still somehow beautiful in their own right. In the middle of the room were several stuffed sofas and chairs; against the far wall and extending to the left was a counter with stools next to it. All but one of the stools lay on the ground. Behind the counter were a few bottles standing intact, but all around them were many more bottles and drinking glasses smashed into bits on the ground and on the countertop.
To the right was a large, arched open entrance to another room. Aloy walked through the arch and looked around. As she approached, more automatic lights turned on and she saw a circular bed, with three corpses lying on it, all of them fully clothed but wrapped in an embrace. The closest of the bodies lay with its back to her; based on the length of the ginger hair that lay along the bed, Aloy surmised that this was another female.
She approached the group of bodies and, almost with trepidation as she feared what she might find (was one of these bodies Ted Faro?), she looked at the other two bodies, and was surprised (and perhaps a bit relieved) to discover that all of the bodies appeared to be female.
But she had to be certain: perhaps one or more of them is really a man.
She returned to the single corpse beside the door. She activated her Focus and looked at the rotting body. DECEASED HUMAN. NATALIE FRANKS. INTERN, UCLA SCHOOL OF MEDICINE. The Focus was only a little help.
The story was the same for the three bodies on the bed. All female, with identifications that meant nothing to her.
DECEASED HUMAN. DR. TERESA BUCK. DNA SPECIALIST. UCLA REAGAN MEDICAL CENTER.
DECEASED HUMAN. PROF. ALYNNA MEYERSKI. CHAIR, UCLA FARO ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE RESEARCH CENTER.
DECEASED HUMAN. MS. KIJANNA KUZIMA. PHD STUDENT, UCLA FARO ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE RESEARCH CENTER.
There were common threads here: four females, all appeared to be relatively young, all working in human DNA or artificial intelligence. But why were they here? Why were they (apparently) trapped in this room, sealed off and left to die?
While a slurry of explanations and theories whirled about in her head, Aloy decided to continue her exploration.
Was there more to this room? Could there be more bodies somewhere else? If Faro was here, why? If not, why not, and where did he die? She recalled finding a snippet of information that suggested Faro spent his last days in pyramid, surrounded by "holo holo girls," whatever that meant. These women didn't fit what Aloy pictured by "holo holo" – they were very real, clearly intelligent women – and all bore a faint resemblance to Dr. Elisabet Sobeck.
Aloy kept the Focus active as she walked to the counter with bottles strewn around. In a cubby on one side was a metal box, its door ajar. Around the metal box were empty containers that the Focus identified as food storage boxes. It was evident that, before the residents of this tomb passed away, they had run out of food. Starvation may have been the cause of death, but she doubted it: she knew that people who were starving would not be inclined to die in an embrace. Something else had led to their deaths. Perhaps even something self-inflicted.
As she scanned through the rest of the room, her Focus identified a holo player lying on the floor, next to the overstuffed sofa in the center of the room. As soon as she picked up the player her Focus started playing the images.
The images began with two women and a man sitting on the sofa, and two other women in chairs gathered around the sofa. She recognized the image of the man: Ted Faro. He was talking, and the four women seemed to be reacting emotionally to his words.
"You know the world is in deep trouble right now. You know we may not live much longer. You know none of us wants to die. So let's live! Tonight, and for as long as we're together, don't worry about the outside world. I've got this place stocked with all the food, drink, alcohol, entertainment we could ever want. So don't cry! We may be the last hope for the human race – we may get out of this suite someday and find we are the last people on earth! If we are, we'll remake the earth as a paradise!"
The image crackled and faded. As it did, Aloy could see the odd expressions on the faces of the four young women, as they began to comprehend what was happening around them.
The image closed. A scan of the remainder of the room did not reveal any more holo players or bodies.
Ted Faro didn't die here! Aloy thought. But what happened? Did he leave these women to die alone? Did he kill them – as he had done to good and loyal people before?
She chose to take the holo player along; perhaps Sirte, or someone in her employ, can extract more images from it.
As she turned to leave the room, Aloy deactivated the Focus and spoke aloud: "Do you see all this, Sirte? Ted Faro did not die here after all. This really didn't tell much more about his final days. It just goes further to show what an inhuman lowlife he really was."
No answer. Just as well, Aloy thought. I'm not in the mood for conversation anyhow.
She dropped her pouches and weapons outside the thick vault door and forced her way through the doorway, heading back to the world above her.