(Oh well.)
Rex frowned deeply, watching the man analyze the grey inner contents of the EVO's body. "Van Kleiss?"
"Yes?" the man asked, bringing the ashes closer to his face for analysis.
"Do you think it hurts?"
"What hurts?"
The boy winced. "Being... you know... burned from the inside."
"Of course it would," the king scoffed. "Imagine feeling your organs burn white hot and incinerate you from the inside while you could do nothing but scream in agony, knowing full well you wouldn't reach the peace of death until the searing flames reached your brain and began to burn that as well-"
One look at the teen's face made the man cut off his sentence immediately. Rex's features were contorted in a twisted expression that conveyed a mix of horror and disgust, clearly expressing how stressing the explanation was.
"Oh," Van Kleiss sighed. "You're thinking about them. Yes, Rex, I suppose that they would have died rather painfully. It is what it is."
Rex nearly retched. "I really wish I didn't ask you to be honest with me. I don't wanna be here anymore."
"You want to go back to Abysus?"
"No! I just don't wanna sit here. Can we go further into the building? I hate being around these... burnt EVOs."
The king nodded, standing up. "I can tell. Your stress is making you ask idiotic questions about death. I suppose I'll have Biowulf guard this corpse so we can explore further. Try not to fall over and faint."
After the blue EVO in question took his orders, the two began to head towards the center of the destroyed building, finally moving past the Petting Zoo. The boulders around them were much more noticeably stained with dried blood, due to the fact that they were closer to where the majority of people had died, and it made them feel as if they were in a carnival haunted house. Decomposing limbs hung from the edges, remains of entrails were sprawled across the floor, and the atmosphere was dead silent.
But the quiet was deafening.
As they trekked forward, Rex began to feel a strange buzzing inside his stomach. He nearly panicked at the mental image of a fire being lit inside him, but soon realized that he felt no change in temperature at all. The feeling- neither hot nor cold- spread from his core to his chest and pelvis, then further into his limbs. The farther he walked, the stronger the buzzing became. It was as if a hive of bees had woken up inside him, rising to the occasion of driving him mad.
Was he losing his mind?
The boy stopped in his tracks. "Can... can you feel that?"
Van Kleiss raised a brow. "Feel what?"
"It's like a there are bugs inside me," Rex explained. "It doesn't hurt, but the deeper we go into Providence, the stronger it gets. Isn't it happening to you too?"
"You're under worse stress than I thought," the king remarked, looking the child right in the eye. "We should have turned back a while ago. You're hurting yourself."
"No! Listen to me! It doesn't feel bad or anything, but it's like something inside me activated!"
"Yes, your nanites."
The teen fell silent. As much as he didn't want to express agreement with his enemy, nanites were a far better explanation than thousands of flying insects in his bones. They coursed through every part of his body, after all.
Perhaps they were trying to tell him something?
"How would you know if they're my nanites?" the younger EVO asked. "What if it's something else? Like what I ate?"
The man shook his head. "Rex. Your eyes are glowing blue. You know exactly what causes that."
The boy instantly plucked his phone out of his pocket and turned it on, activating the camera. His eyes were indeed glowing a bright shade of blue, and thin, circuit board-like lines spread out across his face. He then slipped one of his gloves off and checked the skin on his hands, finding them encased in the glowing patterns as well.
"What- how- why-" Rex stuttered, utterly confused by the state of his body. "I don't underst-"
"I don't either, but if it doesn't hurt you, they might be signaling you for something," the gauntlet-clad EVO interrupted. "I want you to walk ten feet backwards."
"Why?"
"Now?"
The boy groaned but obeyed, putting distance between himself and his enemy in a short amount of time. To his surprise, the buzzing began to recede, and the lines across his skin began to falter, slowly shrinking out of existence. Upon hearing the command to come forward again, he made his way back to the front, feeling the sensations becoming stronger.
"Yeah," Rex breathed. "They're definitely getting more intense the farther we go."
Van Kleiss narrowed his eyes at the teen. "Make one of your builds to see if it's painful. That would give a better indication if there's something truly amiss with your nanites."
But to their surprise, the child was unable to transform his limbs at all.
"What?" Rex gasped, waving his arms wildly. "No! I can't make anything! What's happening to me? Do something!"
"Calm down," the king ordered him, annoyed by his theatrics. "I don't know what the issue truly is, so I can't help you at the moment. However, if you don't feel intense pain, this may mean that your nanites are simply too busy to follow your commands at the moment."
"Why would they be too busy?"
"I'm unsure, but it's obvious that your nanites aren't at rest. Perhaps they're defending you."
Rex gave him a quizzical look, slowly lowering his arms. "No one's attacking, though? I can feel that they're stressed- at least, I think that's what the buzzing means- but I can't feel anything invading me. Invasive stuff usually hurts."
"They could be fighting something that's too insignificant in size for either of us to detect," the older EVO guessed. "Let's continue our expedition for now, and you can tell me if it becomes painful."
They began to walk through the halls again, and the buzzing in Rex's stomach- though not unbearable- became less easy to ignore. The halls around them were littered with bodies of soldiers who'd drawn their last breaths in panic, their entrails spreading across the floor in patterns of high impact splatter. The two avoided touching any of the corpses and carried on, feeling the cold of the building settle on their shoulders.
If there was a bad time to be superstitious, it would be now.
Rex shivered. "Do you think they knew they were going to die?"
Van Kleiss glanced at the positions of the soldiers' remains. "They appear to have been attempting an escape, so I suppose they had some semblance of the idea."
"But why couldn't they escape?"
"A better question is, why are you asking me?"
The teen zipped his mouth, regretting his words immediately.
The man raised a brow. "Don't take that too harshly, Rex. I know your thoughts are scattered, but you are starting to ramble a bit, and I won't allow you to delve into nonsensical behavior. This is for your benefit."
"Whatever," the boy mumbled. "Well, anyway, here we are- the control center."
The two approached a large, grey door, stepping over the deceased pawns that now guarded it with their bones. Van Kleiss, remembering that Rex's powers were on hiatus, used his gauntlet to pry the metal apart and discard it in order for them to enter the control room. Immediately, he felt a rapid sensation of buzzing shoot up his spine, causing him to double over in shock.
"What is that?" the king hissed, experiencing the same feeling the child had. "It's everywhere!"
Rex shrugged. "A better question is, why are you asking me?"
The man glared at him for a moment, then eased himself back into a normal standing position. "Perhaps we should turn back if you're going to be immature."
The teen ignored his words and entered the control room, only to find what could only be described as a disaster zone.
The room was practically drowned in grey.
It was as if a giant, dust filled piƱata had been whacked fiercely in every part of the room, drawing up a morbid image of soldiers patting before their deaths. Dark ashes nearly covered the floors entirely, and many EVO skins littered the area, devoid of any contents. Chairs, computers, and control panels were swathed in the filth, making it seem like it had piled up for centuries. The whole room was nearly unrecognizable as a professional command center for a highly advanced organization, seeming more like an ancient building they'd found on a trek through the desert.
"Did- did something explode in here?" Rex asked, startled. "It's like no one's ever swept the place!"
"No one's here to do anything of the sort," the king remarked, stepping in to see the room himself. "And I truly believe that there's something in this building that's causing our nanite activity to rise- though, I still can't tell exactly what. It might be what caused people to avoid launching an investigation here."
The teen remained confused. "How come you didn't feel it with me until we got in here?"
"Our nanites, as well as our genes, are different. They might be sensitive towards different things. In this case, yours responded quickly towards something mine took some time to notice."
"Does that mean yours are stronger, or mine?"
"This isn't a power play, Rex. Don't turn it into one."
Rex began to wander around the room, making his way towards the control panel. "I'm not turning into dust, so at least I have that going for me."
When he arrived at the control panel for the main screens up above, the young EVO pressed his hands against the control panels and tried to activate his nanites and pull up footage of the last events at Providence, but his machines refused to work. Muttering a curse in frustration, he attempted to switch the screens on manually, but found the equipment too clogged with debris to function. He stood there in an uncomfortable silence for a few moments, trying to find a way to continue his investigation.
"What a ghastly end to such a place," Van Kleiss observed, kicking aside some ash with his boot. "So, Rex. How are you going to ease your sanity now?"
"I'm not giving up just yet," Rex informed him. "I need to find some tech that still works. Data could be stored on it somewhere, and at this point, I'll take anything."
"Are you sure it won't be a lost cause?"
The boy whipped around, narrowing his eyes at the king. "Don't you dare."
The man gave him a knowing look. "Don't tell me the thought never crossed your mind. This place is nothing but ruins, you know."
"You really think I'm just going to abandon them?" the child asked, making his way around the control panel to find undamaged switches.
"And there's your other problem- you're still speaking as if they're alive."
"That's because- whoa!"
Rex tripped and fell over, nearly knocking the wind out of himself. If it wasn't for his reflexes, he would have nearly broken his jaw. After propping himself up and retracting his legs, he glanced back at the piece of rubble that had caused him to lose his balance- only, it wasn't a piece of rubble at all.
It was a radio.
