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Chapter 2 - Still Standing
🕑 Added 2026-01-17 21:03:33 +0000 UTCSubterranean Labs
Thairon lurched from his bed with a gasp. He looked around with wild eyes but laid back upon seeing where he was.
And then got up again. The bed was sticky and dark due to the sweat mixing with the particles his nanobots expelled. He smelled like a rotten egg and gagged at the smell.
Rolling out of the bed, he lost his balance and fell face down. Slowly pushing himself up, Thairon moved to look at himself in the mirror. Turning the lights on, his lips curved up.
His haggard look was mostly gone, though he was still underweight. His brows and eyelashes had grown back, but the rest of him was still bald. Color had returned to his skin as well, to a healthy cream.
Taking his clothes off and throwing them into the overfilled trash can, he entered the bathroom. Turning the water on, he cursed as the ice-cold water touched his skin. Backing off, he slipped and fell, hitting the back of his head on the tiles.
A dull feeling ran through his head.
Straightening himself up, he sat on the cold tiles, checking the back of his head for any blood. His fingers came up clear, and there wasn’t even a bruise.
Getting back into the shower, he shivered under the cold water. Scrubbing himself as hard as he could, Thairon watched the dead skin cells and dirt go down the drain.
Once he was properly washed, he wrapped the bathrobe around himself, complaining. At least he didn’t have to dry his hair.
Throwing on whatever clean clothing he had left, Thairon stopped at the grumbling of his stomach.
“Nax, tell the restaurant to send in food. As much as they can send.”
“Placing orders for a well balanced lunch.”
Thairon grimaced. His Neural Architecture Extension was overdue for maintenance, as was the lab.
He had time until the food arrived.
—
The fabricator had been broken for a while due to overuse. Non-stop working for weeks had cascaded into blown fuses, fried processors, and molten laser lenses. The remaining maintenance bots had worked to the point of breakdown, and he had to do everything himself.
Most of the replacement parts were in stock, except for the crystalline processors. The sentum molecular foundry was in good condition, but without the necessary processing power, it would not be functional.
Taking the excavator drones apart, he removed the processors. Finding a consolidator, he placed a dozen of them in the available slots. The insulated transparent panel slid over the processors, and the electromagnetic-balanced coils were powered.
Working in a predetermined pattern, the nanometric electrical arcs created a system unifying several different processors into a single, superior one.
Connecting the workaround to the foundry, he booted the system. It was slow since the consolidated processors could not match the power of a Pentium processor.
The system came to life with glitching holographic screens.
His thin fingers glided over the keyboard, and a force field snapped into existence. The vents vacuumed the air out, and six pencil-sized molecular forgers fired their particle beams.
The timer read a little over eight hours until the purple crystal processor would be built molecule by molecule.
It was an expensive project, both in time and resources, but a single sentum processor was enough to make Nax the most advanced artificial intelligence on the planet.
If he wanted, conquering the world by hacking the digital network would only take an hour.
The elevator arrived with a ding through the intercom, and he went to take his order.
—
Clearing the closest table, he gorged himself on the food. It felt even better now that he did not feel like death warmed over.
His teeth, freshly grown back days ago, tore into the Kenzu steak. His mouth was overwhelmed with the juices now that he could taste properly.
Words couldn’t express just how being able to eat felt at that moment.
Over the course of two hours, he savored every bite and every sip.
A holo-screen popped next to him, showing an incoming call. For months, Nax has been imitating him to communicate with his brothers. It was time to face the music.
The blue screen gave way to a rather handsome face, with spiky brown hair, cerulean green eyes, and a scowl.
“I knew it; I knew there was something wrong,” his brother shouted.
“Nothing I couldn’t handle in the end,” he said, swallowing the morsel in his mouth.
Kael scrunched his face. “You look like a skeleton trying to pass as a human with fake skin.”
“Okay, you are just exaggerating now,” he drawled.
“No, I am not. I’ll be there in a couple of days; don’t go anywhere,” Kael said, pointing a finger at him.
“Don’t,” he shook his head, “I need to clean up and repair the lab. I’ll come see you two soon.”
“Uh-huh, I don’t think so. You’ve been dodging us for a year. I won’t let you do it again,” the younger brother insisted.
He took a long sip from the bottle of water and sloshed it in his mouth.
“Go somewhere private,” he said, getting up. He took one of the containers, putting some food inside.
Seeing Kael look at him with a raised eyebrow, he just sighed, “Just do it.”
Cursing under his breath, his little brother left the restroom of the beach cafe, walking to his office.
“What now?” Kael asked, waiting.
He ended the call after the space distorter locked on the exact coordinates, and Thairon was gone in a flash.
Kael stared at the dark screen for a second. “Did he just?”
“Yes, I did,” a voice called behind him.
“What the?!” Kael screamed, accidentally throwing his phone up. Thairon, fortunately, caught it without even looking.
“Before you ask, it’s teleportation,” he said, handing the phone back. His brother took it slowly, eyes wide and glued on him.
“You discovered…” Kael began to scream again, but it turned to an unintelligible muffle as a sandwich was shoved in his mouth.
“Don’t announce it to the whole world. I already had to use it in the open more than I am comfortable with,” he warned.
Kael bit down, quickly chewing and swallowing the sandwich.
“You discovered teleportation?!” he hissed this time, eyes flickering around. This was too big for his little office.
“Yes,” he replied with a flat tone, biting into a fruit tart.
Kael raised his hands, mouth open in a silent scream, before he dropped his hands. “Why the heck didn’t you tell us?”
“Because I need to perfect it. You guys can use it after that,” he replied.
“Oh, okay,” his brother scowled, gathering him in a hug. Thairon patted him on the back.
Kael let him go, one hand on his shoulder, and tilted his head. “Are you taller, or am I seeing things?”
Now that he said it, Thairon was looking down on his brother, rather than up. “Huh, guess I am,” he said.
His eyes drifted down, and he grinned.
“Shorty,” he said. Kael’s lips thinned in return.
“Bro, what the heck happened to you?”
“Really long story. I’ll tell you once I stop the lab from going up in flames.”
“Alright, but if you ditch us again, I am camping outside your place until you come out.”
“Just focus on your exams,” he said, ruffling his brother’s spiky hair.
—
In four hours, he managed to fix twenty maintenance bots, cannibalizing several in the process.
It was a personal record, and he could have done more, but the constant hunger he felt had to be sated.
“Alright, group one, cleaning duty. Take out the trash, sweep the floor, and replace my bed with a new one,” he ordered. Five of the bots, roughly human-shaped with rectangular heads, moved as one, feet clanking on the metal floor as a choir.
Cleaning that gunk wasn’t worth the trouble.
He turned to the second group. “Group two, you have the kitchen. Restock everything, and watch out for the mold in the fridge.”
Five more bots were gone, three heading to the elevator for shopping and two to the kitchen.
“Group three, maintenance duty. Fix whatever you can with the materials we have, report, and leave the rest for later,” he called out.
The rest of the bots dispersed across the lab, picking up the maintenance tools. Until the sentum processor was ready, he was free to take a nap.
—
The alarm woke him up five minutes before the foundry order was complete. He freshened up just in time to hear the bell.
The vents pumped the air back, and he shut down the force field. Using a silicon-covered tweezer, he took the small square crystal out carefully; it was barely the size of a knuckle.
Decoupling the consolidator from the socket, he put the new processors in and activated the coolant flood. Blue, nonconductive liquid covered the purple crystal, and the fabricator came to life.
“Damage report.”
A holographic screen appeared in front of his face, showing quite the list. The fusion reactor’s magnetic field had to be recalibrated, and its coolant system flushed.
The Neural Core’s sentum processors had to be placed back since he had taken half of them for other projects, and the remaining three were previous models. The workload of managing the wealthiest company on the planet, the consumer goods production facilities, his ghost satellite network, and keeping the reactor stable was slowly grinding down the core.
Some of his previous experiments had to be disposed of, and the disassembler was out of order.
The list went on like that.
Six sentum processors would take thirty minutes. In the meantime, he could recalibrate the magnetic field.
—
The elevator needed service too, because it took two minutes to go down five floors. The door opened, and he could feel the difference in temperature. Approaching the console overlooking the fusion core, he put his palm over the interface. It was faster than the phase-shifted subspace relay and more secure.
His eyes widened as the flow of information to his brain was different. Smoother, the data flow did not have to be bottlenecked to prevent a sensory overload.
He could see everything now.
Recalibrating the magnetic field, which would usually require Nax to step in to save hours of work, was child’s play.
Some of the coils needed replacements, though they weren’t urgent.
“Core stabilized at eighty-eight percent. Awaiting coolant replacement,” the fusion core interface, a distinct female voice, informed him.
The coolant was already overdue a change by several months, but he would have to get the cryofluid synthesizer working first. Modifying it as a non-stop cooling system for the molecular stasis device that would keep his body from degrading while using a bio-electricity converter to supply the necessary energy to his body was a desperate measure.
And the synthesizer was overloaded due to feedback, causing an explosion that turned the third floor into an ice cave.
—
Picking up the finished processors, he made his way to the neural core.
A dense metal cube half his size, this version of Nax was just a stepping stone to something greater. Something that he was working on ever since his first conception.
Breaching the force field, the scans of the photonic lattice conduits showed disintegrations in several parts. Seven of the ten conduits would need replacing at least.
Running his hand over the hardened transparent light, he put another order into the fabricator.
The empty processor slots opened with a mental command, and he put the new processors in. The system diagnostics showed green across the board, allowing him to replace the older models.
“Personality matrix engaged,” the deep, baritone voice of Nax turned to a lively, upbeat tone.
“How are you feeling?” he asked. For all that the Nax was modeled after him, his matrix had evolved into a wildly different person.
“Like I was asleep for a couple of decades. Damn, it’s good to be back,” the AI replied.
“We have a lot to do. Take over the fabricator; let’s start,” he ordered, turning around.
“Aye aye.”
—
The bots used a lever to force the frozen door open. Stepping inside, he shuddered, even though the personal force field made sure he did not feel the freezing temperatures.
He whistled. The ice was so thick he could not see the floor.
“Alright boys, melt the ice and get those pumps working.” He took one of the chemical sprayers, walking in first.
Pulling the trigger of the pressure gun, he sprayed the solution on the floor, and the ice quickly melted. He created a path inside, and the bots spread off to cover more ground.
The floor was simple to clean compared to the ceiling. He would have to be careful to not get crushed under the ice.
The pumps turned on automatically, following behind. The synthesizer itself was frozen solid, and the ice over it was so dense he had to dump the entire tank over it.
It was entirely useless. The internal parts were specifically made to expand and contract with the change in heat, but it had frozen so fast, the material had shattered like glass.
He would need a new one.
Defrosting the entire floor took three hours, and he would have to rebuild almost everything from scratch. Even the metal panels needed replacing, but the synthesizer took priority. He had to replace the reactor coolant as soon as possible.
The panels were modular for ease of access, and he got the electricity back after replacing the fuse box and the wiring. Panels were eroded, but there were plenty of them in storage.
The water purifier for the synthesizer was the first part to be replaced. Without clean water, he could not make coolant.
The thermally insulated tubes were replaced, as fabricating them was relatively quick. While he secured the new tubes to carry the coolant in place, the fabricator was already working on the purifier.
He also had to fix both water and chemical pipes that were cracked due to the ice. The tanks were built deep behind the walls and shut down automatically in case of an emergency. It had saved the entire floor from turning into a deathtrap.
With both issues solved, he installed the freshly built purifier while the fabricator was already working on the synthesizer itself.
Between the constant stream of bots carrying the wrecked parts out and bringing the newly fabricated ones in, he continued to work, only stopping for short snack breaks.
The synthesizer, a massive, orb-shaped device meant to mix all those chemicals in a perfect ratio, had to be assembled piece by piece and required hover lifts brought inside.
Screwing, fusing, and otherwise connecting the parts, he had the device ready sooner than expected.
“Not to burst your bubble, but are you alright?” Nax called, appearing next to him as a square hologram with a question mark.
“Yeah, why?” he asked, conducting the final checkups on the synthesizer.
“You’ve been working for twenty hours, nonstop, with no sign of fatigue. I didn’t want to disturb you, and your vitals are within expected ranges, but you might want to rest for a bit,” his neural extension advised.
Thairon stopped, his brows creased. “Twenty hours? I don’t feel tired.”
“In hindsight, you probably should have had the new genetic modifications tested before moving around,” Nax complained.
“You know what? Handle the synthesizer, and I’ll go to sleep. We can look at the full picture tomorrow,” he said, heading to the elevator.
He had done enough for the day.
“Got it, good night.”
