Revenant exited the ship and found himself in a gray cement expanse. It was sparsely lit by halogen lamps, which showed that no guards were in sight- merely a row of additional empty drop ships. Crypto made his way down the exit ramp behind the simulacrum.
Above them, the giant circular hatch that had allowed the ship to enter slid closed. The two made their way between the row of drop ships, and found the wall. They walked alongside that wall - Revenant in front, Crypto watching their flank with his R-301 at the ready - until they came to an industrial metal door that was locked by a keypad.
Crypto's drone scanned the keypad and the locking mechanism. The external wires that attached to it were only used to supply power- the lock wasn't linked to any kind of security network. That was good; it meant that if he made a failed attempt to unlock this door, it wouldn't alert the corporation to their presence.
The drone identified and matched a frequency that could alter the electrical signals inside the locking mechanism. From there, he commanded it to send a signal that the mechanism had received the correct input from the keypad, bypassing the need to receive any input at all.
The door clicked and swung open an inch. Crypto was smiling as he put the drone away- he'd developed this process and written the program on his own, and he was proud of it. A lesser hacker would have used a program to try every possible combination systematically, which was primitive and slow.
Revenant pushed the door open the rest of the way and stepped into the hallway behind it. A blast of cold air washed over Crypto- he briefly wondered if the simulacrum was aware of the change in temperature.
The first thing the two could see past the door were hand trucks, neatly lined up to one side of the hallway. They each had a padded board covering the metal surface on which the cargo would otherwise lean, and were equipped with buckled straps- set at the right heights and spacing, Crypto realized, to secure a human's torso, hips, and limbs.
Revenant walked with confidence, though he was careful not to make any noise. He didn't feel uneasy in this strange building- that was a human emotion, after all; a weakness that he was above. Crypto was more nervous, more hesitant as they proceeded.
"Huh. Look at that… Fresh meat, just waiting to be sent to the slaughter."
The simulacrum had reached the end of the hallway and was looking into the room beyond, which glowed with orange light. Crypto was a few steps behind him- hearing his comment, the hacker jogged as fast as he dared to catch up, still being mindful of the sound of his footfalls. He stepped around Revenant, looked through the doorway, and found himself staring at… himself.
He was looking at his own naked, unconscious body, strapped to a metal table that was tilted into a nearly vertical position, inside of a cylindrical glass enclosure. A mask over its face supplied oxygen, which it breathed on an unwavering rhythm, its chest expanding exactly the same amount with each breath. Hundreds, if not thousands, of tiny needles penetrated skeletal muscles all over its body, carrying tiny electrical currents that stimulated the muscles and prevented atrophy. An IV inserted into its right arm supplied fluids, nutrients, and whatever chemical kept it in its dormant state.
Every detail - from the grafts on his face and jaw to the small scar on his forearm from a childhood mishap - had been perfectly replicated. It even had the same little line between its lower chest and upper abdomen, a mark that Crypto spent too much time hunched over his computer.
It was fascinating, and it was horrifying.
He wanted to look away, but he couldn't. The clone looked exactly like him… and yet, it didn't. It was a replica- a sculpture of him, made of living cells instead of stone or marble. Its face was entirely neutral, as though it were deep in restful sleep. It could have represented a younger version of himself; the time when he and Mila lived in their cozy apartment with their fluffy, orange cat and a sense of security. It showed none of the toll of fighting for his life in the Games, of fighting his way through the waves of energy that burned his body or the stress of never knowing whether his sister was okay.
Crypto wondered if he would ever have that sense of peace again.
To the left and right of his own clone, he recognized Wraith and Wattson. Wraith had some kind of cybernetic implants on her arms and shoulders, he realized- he'd never noticed that before. Likely they were part of the technology that allowed her to enter dimensional rifts.
It felt strange, too, to see her appearing to be in a peaceful sleep. The Wraith he knew was always wary, constantly looking over her shoulder and assessing the exits, anywhere she found herself. Wattson had a softer demeanor, but he couldn't recall ever having seen her without her being clad head to toe in oversized or bulky clothing.
He suddenly felt a heightened sense of awareness that he was looking at his fellow competitors' naked bodies, and focused on the ground in front of his feet instead. The others' privacy should have been low on his list of priorities right now, he thought- but after the time he'd spent in the Games, brief as it was compared to the years he'd lived, they had earned his respect.
Careful to avoid looking directly at the other competitors' bodies, the hacker glanced around the room. Duplicates of the robots' bodies weren't in this room- they must be stored in a separate area, or a different facility altogether. He noticed an empty cylinder to the far right. It must have been occupied by Mirage, he realized, before he'd hacked the respawn beacon to call the trickster back into the arena.
His focus returned to the cylinder directly in front of him- the perfect, imperfect replica of his own body. He felt repulsed by it, and at the same time, somehow drawn to it. He lowered the rifle in his hands and lifted his foot to take a step forward.
A clawed metal hand, firmly gripping his shoulder, stopped him. Revenant's other hand wrapped around the hacker and covered his mouth to prevent him from crying out in alarm.
"Look," the simulacrum growled into his ear.
The hand on Crypto's shoulder curled into a fist with a pointed finger, drawing his attention toward the ceiling of the room. A rotating security camera monitored the dormant clones and the area in front of them. It didn't have a line of sight on the doorway in which they stood now- but if Crypto had stepped more than a couple feet into the room, it would have seen him.
He nodded to show that he understood. Revenant let go of him.
"That's where we need to go," said the assassin. He pointed to the other side of the room, behind the glass cylinders and unconscious clones, where a locked door was visible. A placard above the door was engraved with the words Restricted Access.
Crypto nodded once as confirmation. "I'll take care of the camera."
He maneuvered his drone behind the security camera, where it wouldn't be spotted. As he'd done earlier with the locked door, he identified a frequency on which he could interfere with the camera's electrical signals. This would be a bit more complicated- he couldn't simply disable the camera; whoever was monitoring its feed would know that something was going on.
Instead, he'd disrupt the image transmitted from the camera to the network. The video feed, when it got to the monitor on which it would display, would be too distorted with static and interference for anyone to identify them. Once he and Revenant were through the area and out of the camera's line of sight, he'd recall the drone and the feed would go back to normal. That had the best chance of being written off as a minor glitch, and not attracting any attention.
"My drone is disrupting the signal. We're good to go."
The programmer collapsed the controller for the drone and returned it to his pocket before walking across the room. He kept his eyes focused on the door ahead of him, and refused to let them wander over to his clone, lest he become distracted and linger here. If he made a mistake today and died, that strange being would take his place. It would seamlessly pick up his life where he left off.
He didn't know how he felt about that. He didn't know how he was supposed to feel. He'd died and been replaced by a clone three times since his entry into the Apex Games, and he didn't feel any different.
The fact that he was apparently so easy to replace was hardly a comfort.
"Ah… Jenjang."
Standing in front of the restricted door, Crypto had become aware of a problem: with the need for his drone to continuously disrupt the signal from the camera, he couldn't use it to unlock this door.
Revenant crept up silently beside him.
"Would this help?"
The assassin reached into one of the tactical pouches strapped to his chest and brought out a data card. This one was larger - both in physical size and storage capacity - than a syncording. It was slightly bigger in length and width than the average business card, and roughly a quarter of an inch thick.
Crypto recognized it right away.
"That's-"
Revenant cut him off: "Is this really the time for you to criticize my lack of boundaries, skinbag?"
"I knew you were messing with my laptop before the Game," the hacker muttered.
He snatched the data card out of Revenant's hand before the simulacrum could change his mind. Working quickly, he retrieved a key card from an inside pocket of his jacket. He connected the data card to the embedded circuitry of the key card using a ribbon cable, and swiped it across the pad next to the door.
A click told him that it had worked. The door swung open slightly.
Revenant was the first to step through. Crypto followed, and positioned himself behind the door. He motioned for the assassin to stand next to him. When they were both out of sight of the doorway, he sent the command for the drone to return to him. It passed through the open door, and he allowed the door to close behind it. He snatched the drone out of the air and returned it to its holster.
The room they found themselves in contained rectangular tanks, like some kind of high-tech aquariums, each about seven feet long and two-and-a-half feet wide. They were on legs like tables, and stood about as high off the ground. The sides of the tanks were covered in all kinds of mechanical and electronic equipment, most of which Crypto couldn't identify at a glance. Thick cables and bundles of wires ran from them to the perimeters of the room, and up the walls.
"Any chance you're going to tell me what you were doing with this?"
Crypto held up the data card briefly as he spoke, then slipped it into his pocket. Revenant ignored him.
The hacker sighed and went about disrupting the signal from the security camera overlooking the tanks. When he was confident that it couldn't see him, he stepped up to one of the tanks and looked inside.
"O ileon sesange," he gasped. He suppressed a gag as he backed away.
Revenant approached the tank from the other side and looked down. The machine was a sort of 3D printer for living organisms, constructing them cell by cell from a source biological material. That allowed the corporation to produce clones of the correct age without having to wait years for them to mature. Inside the tank was an unfinished product that would have made an excellent anatomy lesson for some medical students- what appeared to be a bisected human body with its front removed, revealing cross-sections of every bone, organ, and other structure as the machine slowly constructed what was missing.
"You're pathetic," said the simulacrum. "Ah- humans. Cowering at the sight of their own insides."
"Insides are supposed to remain inside," Crypto retorted.
They were forced to drop the conversation in a hurry when a door on the other side of the room clicked open. Without a moment's hesitation, they dropped down behind one of the tanks, weapons at the ready. A robot made its way into the room. It consisted of a humanoid head, arms, and torso, mounted to a wheeled platform. Its metal hands were clasped around a container marked with the biohazard symbol- source material for the cell printer.
Revenant straightened up to his full height.
"What are you doing?" hissed Crypto.
"Relax," Revenant answered nonchalantly. "It can't see us, except as obstacles to avoid running over. This model is programmed to carry out specific tasks. It won't deviate from them."
The assassin walked across the room to stand beside the door that the inferior robot had entered. Crypto poked his head up from behind the tanks, and hesitated there.
The robot had finished depositing its container of source material in the appropriate receptacle. It returned to the door, swiped its key card, and exited. Revenant followed and held the door open.
"Don't slow me down," he growled at Crypto.
The hacker made his way to the doorway. He paused behind the door, out of the camera's line of sight, just long enough to call the drone back. They kept moving.