The Author's POV

Beep—! Beep—!

[091]

Typing the codes on the side of the wall, the door of the office slowly started to open.

"Hmmm..."

With my eyes locked on the side of the door, my brows slowly started to squint.

'This number...'

There was something about the number that made me alert. Turning around and looking at the empty corridors of the classroom, I slowly entered the room.

Upon entering the room, my eyes locked on the professor's desk. Without further ado, I walked up to it and placed the folder he had given me on his desk.

"Haaa..."

Right as I placed the folder on his desk, glancing around the place, I let out a long breath as I thought about the state of the room the first time I came here.

Compared to the first time that I was here, it was now a lot cleaner.

Just recalling the state it was in and how many hours I had spent cleaning the place made me shake my head. It was quite frankly terrible.

"Anyhow..."

Turning my head, my eyes once again locked in the direction of the door.

'That number...'

There was definitely something about that number that made me apprehensive. Closing my eyes, I proceeded to use the chip inside my head to jump-start my memories.

They could potentially be just random numbers, however, it was never wrong to double-check.

"Ugh."

At the exact moment the chip activated, I felt a slight tingle in my brain.

'091...091...091...'

Instantly, upon activating the chip, my thoughts became a lot clearer as I started to look through all my memories in hopes of finding just where I had heard the number before.

It wasn't long before I finally figured it out, and when I did, my eyes snapped open.

"Ah! 091! I know who he is!"

Clank—!

It was then that at the exact moment I figured everything out that the door suddenly opened and a figure walked in. His deep voice echoed throughout the whole room.

"...So you've figured things out."

My head immediately snapped in the direction of the person who had come in. He was none other than Professor Thomas. My eyes instantly turned into slits.

Turning around, he closed the door behind him.

Gazing at him, I slowly opened my mouth.

"Professor, didn't you previously say that you wouldn't be coming back?"

"I did."

Professor Thomas nodded his head before slowly walking toward his desk. As he walked, I took a step to the side and allowed him to seat on his chair.

He had the same carefree look as he always had.

"..."

Without saying anything, I just gazed in his direction. After a while, interlocking his hands together, Thomas turned his head and our eyes met.

"It's been a while since we've last seen each other, 876."

Breathing out from my nose, my eyes closed for a brief moment.

'As expected, it's him. Professor Thomas is indeed 091."

My eyes opened up once again.

"...876? Isn't that the guy you were previously talking about back when I first met you?"

It was from that simple greeting that I was able to confirm my suspicions and that Professor Thomas was indeed 091.

I proceeded to sit down on the chair opposite.

Supporting my arm on the armrest of the chair, I crossed my legs and calmly observed Professor Thomas in front of me.

"How were you able to make yourself look like Professor Thomas? You don't seem to be wearing a skin mask, nor do I think you have an artifact that can help you do that."

Professor Thomas prior to entering the Lock was a real person.

That, I didn't doubt.

Since 091 had been an experimental soldier for a lot longer than me, I doubted the fact that he had been Professor Thomas for that long.

My doubts were soon clarified as Professor Thomas responded.

"I've had my facial and skeletal structure reshaped in order to mimic Thomas's."

"Hmm, that makes sense."

I leaned back on my chair and nodded my head.

Everything was starting to make more sense. Scratching the top of my nose, I continued.

"...After selecting someone that was soon going to be a professor, you decided to kill him and disguise yourself as him. Then, with the help of the Monolith, you were able to enter the Lock."

Even though the Lock's security was extremely tight, for an organization as massive as the Monolith, which was by far many times more powerful than the Lock, setting everything up and helping a couple of people infiltrate wasn't actually impossible.

Many people in the press complained that the Lock security was too lax, but they were quite frankly just ignorant.

Just because the Lock was the number one academy in the human domain, didn't mean they were impenetrable.

Didn't they understand that the Lock was going up against an organization many times more powerful than them?

"Correct."

091 nodded his head.

Silence once again descended in the room.

TRIING—! TRIING—!

Breaking the silence was the sound of my phone ringing.

Lowering my head, I glanced at my watch to check who the caller was. It was Kevin.

Before I could take my eyes away from my watch, 091 calmly opened his mouth.

"You can take it."

Wordlessly staring at Professor Thomas for a good minute, I decided to answer the call.

"Hello."

—Ren!

Kevin's voice sounded rather panicked from the other side of the speaker.

"What's going on?" I calmly asked.

—What do you mean what's going on? Have you not checked the news at all? Your name is all over the place. Everyone knows that you're 876. Not only that! Over ten professors at the Lock were found dead in their own rooms.

"Found dead in their rooms?"

—Their cause of death is suicide, and the time of their death is from 12 : 00 A.M. to early morning, during the exact time you were in the camera surveillance system. With the news of you being 876, some people are suggesting that you are the one responsible for their deaths.

Glancing toward Thomas, I thought.

'I see, so this is what you have been planning.'

The professors that had died were most likely the ones that the Monolith had under them, and had sacrificed in order to frame.

The whole mental game that Professor Thomas had been playing was to get me to become paranoid enough to the point that I would check the camera system so that he could enact the plan.

Since I was the only one that was in the camera system while the deaths happened, the most suspicious person would be me.

Furthermore, the whole Ricardo scenario was most likely also on purpose.

He was probably trying to show the class that there was something off about me. Further increasing the validity of the claims about me.

—...What do you mean oh?! This is b—

Du.Du. Before Kevin could continue, I hung up the call.

Without looking at 091, I swiped my phone up and opened the news tab. Upon opening the news tab, the first thing I saw was my image on the first page.

[Breaking news]

Recent revelations have been made that Ren Dover, the missing student from the Lock is in fact 876. Because of his excellent performance at the conference, he made a deal with the Union and framed Aaron Rhinestone.

---Read More---

Reading the article and looking through the evidence that was brought forward, I calmly nodded my head.

"I see what you guys are trying to do. You guys want to incite internal chaos."

Turning off the phone, I leaned back on the chair.

"Not a bad move."

It didn't take a genius to understand the intentions of the Monolith.

By publically letting the world know that I was 876, they were essentially trying to tarnish my reputation. Had it been in the past, it wouldn't have mattered.

However, at the moment I was one of humanity's 'hope.'

"That's correct."

Professor Thomas, 091, nodded his head. His impassive voice rang throughout every corner of the room.

"Once a person reaches a certain point, the way people look at you changes. The stronger you become, the more they expect you to do, and at some point, they start to rely on you. They no longer view you as someone like them, they start viewing you as someone that must protect them. Someone that is responsible for their lives."

Professor Thomas suddenly paused.

Lifting my head up, my eyes once again met his. The edges of his lips curled upward.

"...Now imagine what would happen if their 'hope', their 'reliance' turns out to be a by-product of the Monolith? What would the people start to think?" Professor Thomas said as his words deeply echoed throughout the room.

"Not only that. But what would happen when the public comes to learn that Monolith, the one organization that they trusted, would go as far as trade the lives of some innocent groups for the sake of preserving the life of a wanted criminal?

"They would suddenly become warier of them..." I answered back.

Closing my eyes. Just as I was about to open them again, Professor Thomas's voice once again rang.

"Even though I want to continue this chat, we no longer have any time."

At the exact moment he said those words, my eyes opened up. What I saw after, was Professor Thomas twisting his neck with his own hands.

Crack—!

The sounds of bones breaking deeply resounded throughout the room.

Thud—!

Following the bone-breaking sound, Professor Thomas lifelessly slumped down on the desk.

Once again, silence descended on the room.

"..."

A good minute passed since then. Throughout the whole minute, my eyes never left the dead body of the professor.

Once again leaning back on my chair, I opened my mouth.

"Just like I expected, this whole fiasco was created by you, no?"

"..."

I was met with no response.

However, I didn't mind this as I continued speaking.

"I wasn't too sure at first. However, the first clue that I got that you were up to something was about a couple of weeks ago, when something happened to Aaron's dad. Back then I thought, just what in the world were you planning? What sort of link would you create in order to make my life more difficult?"

Raising my hand, I caressed my chin.

"No matter how much I tried to think about it, I couldn't come up with anything. Perhaps you weren't involved with any of this, and perhaps you were simply just trying to plan for the future, however, that thought never left my mind."

Standing up from my seat, I glanced at Professor Thomas on the table. Moving his body and turning it to face me, I continued.

"This thought only increased the moment I first interacted with Professor Thomas. Once he talked about me by name back at the Monolith, and once our eyes met, that was the first moment I felt that you had something to do with the situation. It was then that multiple different possibilities formulated inside of my head."

"Of course, since you are someone that lives inside of me, and I'm not really sure whether can read my thoughts or not, I decided to play along. I decided to follow the flow of this scenario you were setting up. Just to confirm a little something I have always been curious about for a while."

Extending my hand and reaching out for the folder Professor Thomas had previously handed me, I took out a small recording device.

"...and after playing along for the past few days, I came up with one conclusion."

Putting the device away, I glanced toward the right side of the room where a familiar individual stood.

"You can't read my thoughts, can you?"

"..."

Without saying anything, and bounded by thick metallic chains on both arms and legs, the individual stared at the book library in front of him.

Raising his hand, he picked one of the books up from the library.

Clank. Clank. Clank.

The rattling sound of the chain hitting each other resounded throughout the whole room.

"Interesting..."

It was only after a while that he finally spoke up, and once he did, a smile crept up on his face.

***

A/N : Sorry for the delays in the chapters, but for the past week I have been quite sick. I thought I was getting better, however, it got really bad yesterday, and I'm still struggling to write today. I managed to finish one chapter. I will try my best to get another one done, but I can't promise anything.