Megaman X: Elysium Rising
Chapter 14: Pick up the Pieces
By Genoscythe
Marx watched as Zero's borrowed hover truck receded into the distance. The sun had set long ago, and now that he and Nephtis had finally found an apartment cheap enough to rent, it was nearly morning. Picking up Darius by the brim of his helmet, he turned around and opened the door to the old concrete apartment complex with Nephtis on his heels. Their first stop was the landlord's office, which was located, almost hidden, under the large stairwell in the musty, barren lobby. Marx pushed open the landlord's door gently, fearing his reploid strength would burst the rusting hinges that held the door upright.
The landlord must have been asleep, because he was sitting bleary-eyed on a pitiful cot in the corner of the cramped office. Between the over-sized desk and pair of chairs on the opposite wall, there was hardly any empty space in the room at all. Still, Marx and Nephtis managed to squeeze through to stand before the landlord. "We heard you have a free room?" Marx inquired. The landlord, obviously a human from his imperfect skin and frequent coughing, nodded his shaggy head.
"Yeah, room 302. That alright with you?"
"Why wouldn't it be?" Marx replied, starting to feel a bit uneasy. The landlord chuckled.
"No reason. Guess that question's a force o' habit," the landlord said. He got up, but then stopped to take another look at his guests. "You two're reploids, aren't you?"
"Yeah…" Now Marx was definitely starting to feel uneasy.
"Well, I don't got much of a problem with that, but this is an all-human building. We don't have your kind of…accommodations."
Nephtis narrowed her eyes. "What's that supposed to mean!?" She growled. The landlord held up his hands, fear growing in his eyes.
"No slight against you people. All I'm saying is we don't have any of those capsules you use. Don't have a source of reploid energy fluid, either," The landlord explained. Nephtis muttered something under her breath, then said no more.
"So…you said room 302? Are you gonna give us a key or something?"
"Patience, son. Give me your first month's payment, and we'll call it a deal," the landlord prompted. Marx and Nephtis slid their octagonal credit chips across the table, and the stocky human grabbed them in a pudgy hand. He made his way over to an ancient computer, possibly five years old, and fed the credits into the scanner. When all was done, he tossed two chips back at them, throwing the spent ones in the trash can. Next, he tossed them a key marked '302' on the handle. Marx had never seen a key quite like it before.
"Hey, what kind of key is this?" He asked.
"It's simple. Just put it in the hole in the doorknob and turn it."
"You don't have keycard readers?" Marx murmured, turning the small brass trinket over in his hand.
The landlord chuckled again. "Son, this building is made out of concrete. What makes you think we'd have keycards?"
"It's just…I've never seen a key like this before. Not even in my history databanks."
"These keys were used mostly before the twenty-first century. Nobody uses 'em anymore." The landlord explained. Marx nodded, taking a last look at the key before shoving it in the pocket of his jeans.
"Thanks," he said as they left the cramped office and ascended the stairs.
"We forgot to ask him about the room," Nephtis reminded Marx.
"Hey, when I see a 'for rent' sign and a reasonable amount of credits written on it, I don't give a damn about what the room's like," Marx responded.
"But shouldn't we have at least asked how many beds there are?"
"I'm sure it'll work out fine. We can adjust."
"You would want to sleep in the same bed with me, wouldn't you!?" She said accusingly. Though the thought had crossed Marx's mind, he felt offended anyway.
"Where'd that come from? I just said we'd make adjustments! Adjustments, woman!"
"I know what you were thinking!"
"So you thought you should blow up in my face because you presumed to know what I was thinking?"
"I didn't presume anything. You're just like every other man out there. I can see it in your eyes."
"That sounds like one hell of a presumption to me," Marx retorted. Their argument had carried with them all the way down the hall atop the stairs, and a groggy, squat human pushed open one of the doors in the hallway.
"Stop yelling! Some people actually need sleep around here!" The man said in a hushed voice. Marx and Nephtis humbly apologized, but the moment the human had his back turned they were staring daggers at each other once more. However, they managed to refrain from speaking until they reached their apartment room on the third floor. There, Marx fumbled with the small bronze key that the landlord had given him, first putting the key in the wrong slot, then upside-down.
Finally, Nephtis snatched the key from his hand and fit the key into the doorknob perfectly. He stared at her in disbelief as she pushed the door open. "How'd you do that?"
"After you tried all the wrong ways, it wasn't that hard to figure it out," she replied. Marx merely grunted and stepped into the dark room. Immediately, he nearly gagged.
"What's that smell? Did we rent a trash dump or something?" He coughed. Nephtis seemed unaffected, save for a disgusted look on her face.
"It's the smell of humans. We might be the first reploids to set foot in this place," she explained.
"I never knew humans smelled this bad."
"You've never been around many humans then, have you?"
Marx shrugged. "Just two."
"Well, trust me. They all smell this bad," she said as they moved into the room. Marx flipped a light switch and the musty room was bathed in a rotten yellow glow from a single lightbulb wedged in the ceiling. As Nephtis feared, there was only a single bed, and a small bathroom to the right of the door. It looked more like a hotel room than an apartment.
"I guess you get what you pay for," Marx muttered, leaning against the wall. The concrete, not built to hold the weight of a reploid, cracked loudly. Marx jumped away from the wall in surprise.
"…whatever. Let's just get our stuff unpacked and shut down for the night before we break anything else," Nephtis suggested. Marx complied, dragging his bag into the room and setting it down opposite the bed. Without a word, he sat down next to his bags.
"What are you doing?" She asked him.
"Shutting down. I'm giving you the bed," he told her. She gave him a confused look.
"…why?" She asked sincerely. He shrugged, giving her a 'don't know, don't care' look.
"Sometimes I can't even figure myself out," he explained, and with that, he lay back against the carpeted floor. Being a reploid, he wasn't terribly uncomfortable, but warm sheets were sounding pretty good. Still, the gentleman inside him wouldn't let him take the bed. Plus, he was damn tired of arguing. He closed his eyes, and heard the light switch being flicked off.
"So, Zero, what exactly did you say to Signas?" X asked his friend as they drove through the darkness of Neo Tokyo City. The crimson hunter shrugged.
"Eh, you know. A little veiled hint here, a little blackmail there," Zero said with a devilish smirk.
"Blackmail!? For what?"
"He wouldn't transfer our new friend to the Cain Labs medical center. He said we should take her to a normal reploid hospital. Then I gave him a little proposition, and he said he'd work something out. He also said that he'll make both of your lives more miserable than Sigma ever did."
"What!?" Both X and Alia cried out. Alia's head was poking out from between the driver and passenger seat, as she was sitting alone in the back row. "Why us?"
"I let slip that it was you who was leaking the 'valuable information'. In all honesty though, I didn't think he'd take it so seriously," Zero replied. There was silence in the hover truck for a moment. Then, Alia's hands thrust out from behind the driver's seat and grabbed Zero's neck in a stranglehold.
"You dumbass!" She screamed, and X's eyes swelled. He had never seen Alia angry before. Suddenly, the truck began to swerve. Zero was having difficulty driving with a crazed reploid woman trying to snap off his neck.
"Not while I'm driving, woman! You wanna crash?" Zero cried out. Slowly, Alia reluctantly drew away her hands.
"You haven't heard the last of this, Zero. You know Signas doesn't make idle threats!" Alia growled.
"Oh, come on. The old fart probably can't do any worse than a whoopee cushion on your operator's chair. No pun intended," Zero said disarmingly. Alia didn't seem to believe him, but she became quiet anyway. They drove on in silence until Zero's comm. link activated. Axl's high voice could be heard on the other line.
"Hey Zero, we found a pretty good place. It's two bedroom, so Selene and Endy are taking one and you and me are taking the other."
"Sounds good. Should I bother asking how much it was?"
"It wasn't too bad. You've got a handful of credits left."
"Great. Thanks, Axl," Zero said dryly.
"It's your fault for refusing to get paid. Look, I'll send you the co-ordinates. Come on over after you drop off X and Alia."
"Yes, sir," With that, the link was severed and Zero was left to finally focus on driving. Within moments, they arrived at a tall apartment complex made of smooth neocrete and glass. The towering white structure was infinitely more advanced than the apartments the hunters had dropped Marx and Nephtis off at, and was also infinitely more expensive. Fortunately, X had accumulated years of hunter's pay despite his constant refusals. Alia was similarly well-off, mostly because she never refused a paycheck.
"This looks like the place in the ad," X said to Zero as he slid open the door of the hover truck. He and Alia got out, and waved as Zero throttled the accelerator and blasted off down the street. X sighed. Without he and Alia in the car to nag him, Zero was free to do as he pleased. X pitied anyone who might get in his way.
"Wow. This place looks great," Alia remarked as they entered the lobby. A spiraling metal staircase curved along the inside of the building, leading to numerous hallways that led to individual rooms. Dotting the spacious lobby were couches and chairs, some of them occupied by reploids engrossed in a book or handheld game. X and Alia began to ascend the stairs, and when they reached a certain hallway X bid Alia farewell. She smiled and twirled about, walking quietly down the carpeted hallway toward her room.
X continued his trek up the stairs, until he reached the hallway marked 'E' above the entrance. X recalled the ad he had downloaded in his mind's eye. Seeing the room number again, he found it with ease. Beside the thin neocrete door, a card reader was set into the wall. X pulled an ID card from his pocket and slid it into the card reader. He waited, and the card was processed. Another card reader next to the first spit out his room key, and he swiped it through the lock on the door.
The door flashed open, and X flicked on a light switch. The clean, barren room before him held a couch, HV (holovision), and meager kitchen. He proceeded to the opposite wall, which was made of glass, and looked down the hallway. There, he saw a bedroom with both a bed and a regen capsule. Deeper inside the bedroom was a plain white bathroom, which matched the rest of the apartment.
X sat heavily on the bed, laying back and breathing in the cool air. The room was tasteless, but with any luck it would only be temporary.
Marx was aware that neither he nor Nephtis had any desire to shut down for the night. Though the light was off, he could sense her, curled up in the thick sheets of the bed which he was beginning to long for. He knew she was awake, but for what purpose he couldn't figure. Fortunately, it was she who broke the silence.
"So…" She began, making sure that he was awake. "Since we're gonna have to be a little closer to each other, we might as well learn a little bit about one another." When she didn't hear a reply, she proceeded. "Like, where we're from, who created us, and all that."
"Like Osiris?" Marx inquired, waiting to see what kind of reaction he would get by mentioning the name.
"Yes…my brother…" She murmured, suddenly becoming distant. Marx rolled over. Now this was getting interesting.
"So there's some truth in the myth," Marx said. Nephtis sighed.
"Parts of my past are…embarrassing. I'd rather not go first."
"Ah, so you can invent the game, but you can't play it?" He expected a rebuttal, but he got none.
"Please…I really don't want to go first," she said in a surprisingly sweet voice. Marx was staring absent-mindedly at the base of the bed when suddenly she sat up and lay back down on her chest, her face peering over the edge of the sheets. "Please," she implored, and her tone of voice and beautiful auburn eyes twisted a wrench in Marx's proverbial heart. With a sigh, he sat up and she folded her hands under her chin, looking for all the world like a school child ready for story time.
"Okay, you asked for it…" Marx began.
End of Chapter 14
AN: Uh oh, I seem to have lost almost everyone (except for Dragon Man and Zidet. You guys rock). I don't blame you, though. My updating schedule has been nothing short of horrendous. Well, being in school kinda kills my creative genes, so I'm afraid sporadic updates are gonna continue until summer. Plus, I now have Half-Life 2, which p0wnz. Seriously, if you have a good graphics card there is no excuse for not getting this game.