Author notes: go re-read the last chapter, i rewrote some stuff!
The apartment Six had spied Rex in was unlocked when the extraction team tried the door, so they didn't bother knocking and they all silently crept into Rex's apartment.
Agent Beasly tried closing the door behind them as quietly as possible, but the door's hinges squealed as they closed it and floorboards beneath them creaked as one of the agents, possibly Agent Wade, jumped at the noise.
Everyone turned to look at the entrance of the hallway, expecting Rex or someone else to burst into the front room to investigate the noises, but no one came out so the team relaxed and started to explore the front rooms.
The first apparent thing about the apartment was that it was a cluttered mess.
Granted, the floors were mostly clear of debris and you could move around easily, but the desks and tables that lined most of the walls were chock-filled with scattered papers and random scientific equipment. Posters of diagrams and sticky notes with reminders written on them were tacked to the wall almost half haphazardly.
Holiday walked over to the desks nearest to her and leafed through a couple of the papers that laid on top of them.
There was a definite divide between the desks in the front room. One-half of the desks had its papers stacked neatly over white desktops and the other half was buried in paperwork on top of brown desks.
On the neater desks, Holiday recognized some of her work she had produced at Providence over the years on the desks, papers outlining theories and treatments of EVOs that Rex must have seen and memorized.
Her handwriting glared out to her on every paper and it dawned on her that Rex likely hadn't seen anyone else's since he first arrived at Providence. Any written word handed to Rex came directly from her own hand.
Holiday placed her papers back on the desk and moved on further into the front room, to the more cluttered desks, which were half-hidden by the shadows cast by the unlit lamps in the corner of the room.
She flicked on one of the lamps and picked up some of the papers on the shadowed desks, expecting to find more of her work, but to her surprise totally foreign papers stared back out at Holiday.
The drawings and writing on the papers were incomplete fragments of memories, blurred and ill-defined, yet the distinctive characteristics of blueprints on the paper were glaringly obvious.
Holiday squinted at the prints laid out on the desk, turning them this way and that, trying to see if moving them would bring the writing into focus. The drawings and writing on the paper were hard to read, but Holiday could make out the blueprints...for nanites?
But...this blueprint didn't make any sense being in Rex's dream…not the fact that Rex's dream had nanite blueprints in them, but the fact that Holiday could never recall ever seeing such complete blueprints of nanites.
Providence had their own blueprints of nanites, of course, and they were the most developed blueprints in the world one could get their hands on. Providence sank a good amount of cash into reconstructing how nanites were made from numerous scans and disassemblies, all of which Holiday knew she made Rex stay up to date with the research, but those blueprints she would have shown Rex were digitally drawn and incomplete despite teams of scientists and mechanics' best efforts.
These blueprints were far more complex than any of Providence's and these were hand-drawn and filled to the brim with information, so the only explanation Holiday could come up with was that past Rex must have at some point seen the original blueprints to the nanites.
This fact brought up numerous questions from Holiday.
She had already known it was highly likely that Rex had possibly been the closest survivor to the epicenter of the nanite explosion, but was it possible the reason Rex had been so close to the epicenter was that he had been the child to one of the scientists on the nanite project?
Did that mean Rex had more knowledge of nanites hidden inside his mind?
If so, this could be the breakthrough the world needed…
She grabbed the blueprints and marched them over to where Six was hovering over the other agents who had been poking at the various scientific equipment on the other desks.
"Everyone take a look at this."
Holiday unfurled the blueprints and the agents leaned over her shoulders to take a look at the papers she was holding up. Six hung back as the shorter agents crowded around Holiday to get a better look.
"Those are nanite blueprints, right?" Agent Wade questioned after they all had taken a minute to study the blueprints in Holiday's hands. "Like the ones they showed us in our basic training lessons on nanites?"
"I don't think I ever remember seeing ones this detailed at basic," interrupted Agent Beasly, pointing a gloved hand at the outer edges of the blueprint covered in writing. "Unless Providence recently updated theirs I don't think this is a Providence developed blueprint."
"Correct, Beasly," Holiday said, nodding. "I have reason to believe this blueprint is from a memory of an original copy of the initial nanite blueprints Rex must have seen before he got amnesia."
Holiday turned to Six in the back and held out the blueprints to Six.
"I need you to take a picture of this with the camera I gave to you before we went in here," Holiday asked Six, and held out the blueprints as flat as possible, angled towards Six. Holiday's fingers pushed against the corners of the paper to make sure it didn't curl inward on itself.
Six complied and with a flash of light, he snapped a picture. Holiday thanked him and tossed the blueprint aside to a nearby desk and they faded into smoke, which Holiday wasn't expecting. They were in a dream world, so Holiday wasn't very surprised.
"I think we need to tweak our mission here," Holiday said, turning back to the team. "We still want to guide Rex into getting out of the dream EVO's control, so he can wake up in the real world but I think we should take a crack at trying to influence Rex's dream to see if we can get any more information like the nanite blueprint out of Rex."
"You sure about that?" Agent Jones hesitantly asked. "I... mean it feels disrespectful to poke around in Rex's head like this. What if we end up hurting Rex? I think we should continue with our original mission and when Rex wakes up, we can ask if he'd be willing to go under the dream EVO's control again to see if we can get more information about nanites."
"Normally I would agree with you Jones," Holiday said, voice strained. She knew she was stepping over boundary lines, both with her relationship with Rex and her job at Providence as Rex's doctor, but the opportunity presented to her was tantalizing.
"But Providence and the rest of the world have spent years trying to uncover everything there is to know about the nanites since almost all of the original research that went into making the project either was destroyed in the initial nanite explosion or burned up in flames that had come after. We don't know if Rex's memories before the Nanite Event will still be accessible like this if we wake him up from this dream and try again later. If we can get Rex to show us more of what he knew before he had amnesia, it's possible we can save ourselves years of work, which means we can figure out a permanent cure for the world faster."
Agent Jones still looked skeptical but reluctantly agreed to the changed mission, as did the other agents. Six stayed silent which unnerved Holiday.
Sounds of Rex yelling from another room brought their attention to the hallway that led into the rest of the house.
It was time to actually confront dream Rex and start their mission.
Agent Six led the way as the team made their way further into the house. Pictures and artwork adorned the walls, and Six let his eyes linger on them as they passed them by.
Some of the frames held photographs that Six could remember Rex taking when he got his hands on an old camera Holiday let him keep; Bobo in funny poses, Rex trying to take selfies, and action shots Rex took of Six himself. Some of the colors were wrong as they often were in dreams, as Six spied one photo of himself in a red suit instead of his usual green.
Other picture frames held family photos of Noah's family, oddly enough. Noah had let Rex into his house a couple times for dinner or to hang out together after Noah was done with his school day over the weeks Noah had known Rex, but Six hadn't no idea that Rex had familiarized himself with Noah's family photos enough that Six could clearly make Noah's parents' smiles as they wrapped their arms around their son.
As the team hesitantly entered the dining room, the thought of Noah's family pictures weighed guilty on Six's mind as they walked in on Rex animatedly talking with two adult figures about the math project he was supposedly going to turn into his teacher today as Rex shoved eggs into his mouth.
The adults didn't spare the team a glance as they walked into the dining room.
Rex, however, glanced back from his chair and at the team. His eyes turned glassy as they glossed over their Providence uniforms and masked faces and he turned back to the adults he was talking to.
The team stationed themselves around the room so they weren't crowding in one corner of the room.
It was safe to assume the adults in the dining room were Rex's parents as Six heard Rex calling the adults "Viejo" and "Mami" respectively.
Despite the dream EVO having been able to uncover and access memories Rex had lost when he got amnesia to use to construct the dream world everyone was in right now, Rex's parents were sadly not the clearest figures in the dream.
They were dressed in white lab coats like Holiday's and their faces were almost blank, with wisps of eyes and vague hints of glasses on Rex's mother's face and facial hair on his father. Rex's mother was sat at the table with a blank clipboard in her hands and Rex's father stood at the stove, cooking eggs and chorizo.
Six watched as Rex's mother's hair subtly changed its length as she bobbed her head along, nodding and making hums of acknowledgment as she listened to Rex.
Rex's father at some point moved from his place at the stove to the table with a plate of food in his hand and his head inexplicably disappeared, leaving behind a floating mustache.
"Rex, go take this plate to your brother," Rex's father said. "He's in his lab, hurry! You don't have much time."
Rex nodded and took the hot plate of eggs and chorizo, and handed his empty plate to his father before his father shooed him out of the dining room.
Rex passed Six on his way out of the kitchen and Six snapped a photo of Rex's parents before following Rex out.
Holiday stayed behind and started to ask Rex's parents questions, trying to find out who they were and what they knew.
Six heard them give Holiday nonsensical answers before he got out of earshot of them. Rex's mother's voice reminded Six eerily of the rogue A.I. Rex had only bad things to say about. Certainly an odd choice on Rex's part.
The walk to Rex's brother's room was a short one, and Rex led Six into a small dark lab at the end of the hallway.
The lab felt different from the rest of the apartment. The entrance leading to the lab looked more like how Providence looked rather than the apartment Rex's dream was set in.
Six got the impression of warmth and love from the rest of the apartment, even the front room, which was fairly dark in the light.
The lab, however, felt cold and unwelcoming.
The sight of a young man standing in a white lab coat was the sight that met Six's eyes when he trailed after Rex into the lab. The man was standing over a console that looked like it didn't belong in such a small room, staring into the screens of the console.
The screens from the console were brightly lit in the dark room and completely obscured any facial features of the man in white light. Distant sirens echoed in the distance in the lab and a faint red light pulsed as if the light of an alarm was going off outside the lab.
Six peaked his head out of the lab and saw that no alarms were going off. He started up his camera and pressed record as he pulled his head back in the room, and aimed the camera at Rex and his brother.
Rex slowly approached the man from behind and tapped his brother on the shoulder.
"Hey, Hermano, I got your breakfast for you. It's still hot."
"It's too late," his brother said in a low voice, turning to face Rex, who back away scared.
Very briefly when Rex's brother turned, the harsh light of the console allowed Six to see a flash of what the man looked like before the shadows across his face drowned his features out again. He hoped he got Rex's brother's face on the video he was recording because his face was the clearest thing he's seen yet in this dream.
"It's too late," his brother echoed again, looming over Rex. "You're going to be late for school. I'm going to have to press the button."
Rex's brother held his hand out over a bright red button, with its plastic cover flipped open. Warning tape surrounded the button with the big bold letter "Emergency Use ONLY" written on it.
The shadows sifted and completely washed over Rex's brother until all Six could see was the faintest outline of the man's somber face. His hand could clearly be seen hovering over the button.
"NO!" Rex shouted, yanking his brother's hand off the button. "Y-you don't have to do that! I'll go to school right now. I won't be late, I promise! Here's your breakfast!"
Rex shoved the breakfast plate at his brother and ran out of the lab as fast as he could.
Six stopped recording his video and glanced back at Rex's brother. His figure was twisted to be some horrible shadow of the man Six had first seen when he walked into the room and his shadowed face still hovered over the red button. Six could see why Rex was so eager to get out of the room.
Was Rex's dream version of his brother nightmarish because he had been less than stellar in real life or was this alluding to something more?