Chapter 14: Thunder
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A month had passed calmly since that incident; Mammon had spent the month earning the trust of Arachus and recording its behaviour while trying to develop its ability to communicate with others, it could now take the initiative to start a conversation with either Deus or Mammon and use words rather than feelings and images.

It'd taken it a while to become accustomed to it's new 'body-part' however it adapted faster than either of them could've anticipated and was able to create its own Virtual Space which it spent the majority of its time inside of a simulated open field, Mammon had even coded in the two other smaller creatures Deus had seen with it the first time to help it deal with their loss from a combination of the images he had of them and from observing the behavioural patterns of Arachus over the last thirty or so days.

The thing had been overjoyed, spending every moment it could with them - the problems only came when it realised all of that wasn't real, it'd eventually have to return to the real world and face reality.

Mammon had watched it descend into depression for the first few days following this realisation but nothing he did helped; eventually it seemingly came to terms with it, relishing in the time it spent with its 'family' each day. 

All these little things amounted to Mammon determining that Arachus had no less intelligence than an average human, it was able to understand pain and overcome grief but what was even more terrifying still was that it seemed to still be developing even now. 

It's brain activity was progressively becoming more active by the day as its intelligence seemed to grow without restraint with Mammon teaching it various things. 

It was like a blank slate ready to devour any and all information given to it. 

... 

"I've managed to map 67% of its DNA to various species including a majority 51% being human DNA but its that final 33% that's bothering me; humans certainly have the capacity for learning but that's not enough to demonstrate the rate at which Arachus is growing, this isn't as simple as it being a fast learner but its ability to learn at an accelerated rate is being improved with each passing day. Its cell activity has also shot up through the roof, it's not just becoming more intelligent but increasingly stronger as well." Mammon reported with astonishment in his eyes, simply put there was no sentient species in existence that was able to do what Arachus had demonstrated in the past month.

"Is there any way to figure out what that remaining part is without dissecting it?" Deus asked after thinking for a while, just like Mammon he'd been astonished at the speed of its growth, if its intelligence growth rate was to be displayed on a growth you would see an exponential growth each day from the day Deus had saved it.

"Even if we did that I'd be unable to determine what it is, we'd also lose the chance to study it further." Mammon glared at him as he gave a silent warning for him to keep his mind off of anything that involved killing or injuring Arachus. "It was just a question." Deus said defensively with a shake of his head, truth be told he'd grown attached to the creature as well - despite its appearance it was pleasant to have something else for them to occupy their time with while they waited for the SE-L to charge... speaking of...

"Anyway, the SE-L will be ready to fire soon. How're you feeling?" Mammon asked curiously as he watched Deus working from the side with a relaxed expression as he let his mind drift to images of the outside world that he still had stored. "Just don't get too excited just yet, we might be down here for another month yet if the SE-L doesn't pierce through in one shot; even if it manages we'll be stuck here for a while until we can build some transport off-world." 

"I know but at least we won't feel like rats trapped underground, the longer we spend cooped up in here the more I feel like I'm going insane." Mammon muttered in reply.

'Oh?' Deus didn't reply but he had his interest piqued at Mammons' mention of feeling as if he was going insane; 'So it's not just me...' He'd had the same feeling weighing down on him for a while now, it'd been one of the motivating reasons for him working so hard in the past month to ensure everything went smoothly. Of course, he wouldn't tell Mammon this but it was reassuring to an extent to know that there wasn't something wrong with him for having such 'feelings' despite his origins.

Over the past month it'd become much more likely to him that it had been the deletion of the code Leo had installed in him that had been responsible for him barely having experienced true 'feelings' during his time as the Lord of Machines; in fact, it might have been because of it that his original self had gone through such lengths to program simulations of such experiences.

'But is that even the truth?' He had no way of knowing, for some reason some of his memories simply didn't exist - there were large gaps in certain areas that didn't make sense, entire weeks or even months at a time just gone as if they'd never happened. He'd asked Mammon but he'd simply said that during those time periods he hadn't even caught a glimpse of Deus - it was as if he'd disappeared entirely, alongside Leo.

He was just a hairs breadth from beginning to question his own existence at this point; he couldn't think of any logical or reasonable reason as to why those portions of his memory were simply gone - but he knew one thing was certain, finding Leo was the key to discovering what exactly had happened to him during those times.

...

"SE-L Power Test #01 - Test Report Begin" Deus said calmly as he stood next to the weapon in the body of a Labour Drone, Mammon was standing as far back as he could out of fear of getting caught up in the fire by mistake - or something somehow going wrong with the process.

"There's a 1.2% chance of that thing imploding you do know that right? What if you destroy the Drone?" It was that last part that caused Deus to pause, they currently had no way to repair a Drone or even create a new one if it was destroyed entirely - if he wasted one doing this then it'd truly be a big loss.

He didn't say a word as he quietly walked to the elevator and forced the doors open before jumping inside to watch from a distance, if Mammon had eyes they would doubtlessly be filled with judgement as he watched Deus act nonchalantly about the whole situation. "Beginning the first test." Deus said calmly as he ignored Mammons' gaze, his vision was glued to the sealed entrance.

Whirrrrr..... 

A low humming sound to emanate from the SE-L as it came to life from the bit of power that Deus had given to it - the power quickly brought the systems of the weapon to life as they prepared to fire almost immediately, unfortunately for it the energy Deus had given it was only enough to test the initial start-up so it could only droop back in disappointment as the power it'd been given was exhausted a few moments later.

"Test #01 Complete, Test successful - moving forward with firing of the SE-L at point X" Deus said calmly but he struggled to hide his anticipation as hit foot began to tap the elevator they were 'observing' from impatiently as he sent the required energy to the SE-L without holding anything back.

Whiirrrrrrrrrrrrr.....

This time the sound was much louder as it thundered in the room, he'd never heard the sound so loud before but maybe that was because he was firing it in a room rather than in an open area or even space this time.

They watched as the barrel perked up and aligned itself with the doors of Mammon and began to greedily devour the power that was being pumped into it, the room began to steam up from the heat being given off by the weapon as the humming grew louder once more and began to sound like a true thunderstorm taking place in this room alone.

Had either of them been humans the sound would most likely have caused their eardrums to begin bleeding from the sheer vibrations alone.

"ARE YOU SURE THIS IS SAFE?" Mammon shouted as loud as he could at Deus' side and even then he could only just hear him, Deus didn't reply and instead simply sent a command to the elevator to go down a few floors - that was enough of a reply for Mammon as he ordered overrode that order to make it go even lower, they stopped on the fourth floor to pick-up Arachus before using the spare power to push the elevator down to the tenth floor.

It was only that deep down that they were barely able to hear the weapon as they hid on the tenth floor and used cameras to observe the situation above. 'Happening?' They were interrupted by a question from Arachus who was curiously looking around the tenth floor with interest.

"Don't worry about it." Deus said aloud without switching his vision back, the room was filled with too much steam for them to make out anything but he was monitoring the power usage as it reached the level needed for firing...

BANG! 

The entire room began to shake violently as they were all thrown to the floor from the sheer power behind it, both Mammon and Deus had their views cut off by the camera suddenly cutting off its feed.

The shaking ended as abruptly as it had begun as silence once again took over.

"That was- I didn't think it'd be that powerful!" Mammon exclaimed in shock, he was receiving reports from all over the stronghold of system failures, "A slight malfunction occurred in the weapons systems as it was powering up." Deus said slowly as he filtered through the reports he'd received before his connection with the weapon had been cut off.

"That was slight?!"

"Repair the damaged systems as fast as possible, get the Kinetic Generator fixed first." Deus said lightly, "I'll go check the entrance." 

Mammon could only nod speechlessly, 'Help...' They were both cut off by a message from Arachus, the creature was tangled in cupboards and boxes that'd it'd been thrown into when the room had shook with no way to get them off, it wasn't hurt in the slightest but it did look pretty irritated as it struggled to try and free itself.

"Go check the entrance..." Mammon said as he tried to stifle a chuckle before moving to help it out of its predicament, "Don't worry big guy, just stay still."

Feeling much better today :) Got college tomorrow so not sure about an update tomorrow as I won't be at my laptop for the majority of the day, also going out for some interviews so fingers crossed. See you all next chapter! Have a great day :D

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