"Pilot? Can you connect to this?"
"Absolutely not."
"Just do it for me, please. I want to read what's on here. What if there are more schematics for the building?"
That did the trick. The droid extended a wire from beneath his crab-like body, grumbling about how disgusting it was to be connected to something that was just resting next to a dead body.
She plugged him in and the tablet burst to life. It wasn't anything about the facility, but a diary, it looked like.
"Entry 213," she read aloud. "The facility is dying, just like me. I wish there was more we could do to preserve it, but the sands have started to take the building back. I have overstayed my welcome in this wild place. Perhaps I should have gone to the sea with the others. Yet, there will always be a part of me dedicated to my work here. I am the last remaining scientist. I am determined to find the cure for living on land."
Ellie paused, her eyes darting over the words. She sank down on the bed beside the skeleton, reading as fast as she could before setting the tablet down on her lap.
"Pilot... You both said this was a research facility, didn't you?"
"Yes."
"You didn't tell me they were experimenting on humans. They wanted to make a being capable of living on land again."
Pilot climbed down her arm and then bounced onto the floor. He clearly did not like being anywhere near that body beside her. "This facility was dedicated to preserving humanity at any cost. They had seen that the undine were capable of living in the sea, but the scientists who worked here were of the mind that there was no possibility for humans to survive long term in the oceans because of the undine people."
She took a deep breath. "So they decided to experiment with other DNA? Knowing that the planet was going to get exponentially worse as the storms sucked all the moisture into themselves? They know all that would be left was a desert until the rains came every year? And then only floods."
Pilot bounced his body. "Exactly."
But if that’s what Sanctuary had really been… "So what is it that Proteus is trying to do?"
"He wants to see if the scientists completed their work. And then he wants to show the undine that he is the god they remember. It will keep them in check while he learns the state of the planet. The humans must move here, regardless of safety."
Her entire world seemed to spin to a stop. "But what if the scientists succeeded? There could be people living on the surface."
"That was always the hope. Perhaps even some humans survived. Those who worked here were also building bunkers. Places for people to outlast even the worst outcomes. They were the wealthiest people, of course. Some of them split off from those who built the quadrants in the sea." Pilot bounced a little, almost like a nervous movement that he couldn't keep still.
He needed to get out of this room, but she needed her answers. "So they were experimenting on creatures like the undine? Were there any creatures even here to experiment on?Species like the undine, who were already more capable than humans?"
Pilot shook his head, his entire body in denial of what she said. "No, they weren't experimenting on other creatures. They were trying to create them."
They were trying to create new life in this cursed place. A being who could live in harsh climates like this, without fearing the storms or how a depletion of water would affect their bodies.
She scanned through the woman's diary notes again, seeing more and more horrific things popping up as she read through them. "They tried every animal they could," she muttered as she kept reading.
It seemed like they were obsessed with fixing what they thought of as broken. But humans weren’t broken things. Humans just weren't meant to live on a planet that looked like this. They weren't supposed to survive massive hailstorms and hurricanes that hung over the land for months on end. None of this was ever supposed to have happened.
But the biologists here hadn't had much luck, it seemed. There were a lot of animals they tested, but human DNA was so specific, it was impossible to create beings out of it.
Pilot made a whirring noise and headed out of the room. Ellie followed him, trailing along behind with the tablet still in her hands. "What happened to their experiments? It looks like when she was alive, there were some viable ones, but they all died in infancy."
"Splices," Pilot muttered as he headed through the trashed living room. "They called them splices. Abominations of man and beast. Most of them took after the latter. Some of them were so mangled, but had the brilliant mind of a genius. Others were viable in life, but they were little more than monsters. All of them had to be put down. Over and over again."
"How do you know all this?"
He stopped in the doorway, and his little crab body curved in on itself. "I was here, Ellie. I was one of the droids who helped all of them. I saw what they created, and it was terrifying to look upon. Nothing like that could have lived long. None of them."
Ellie frowned but then spun around. "Wait, the clothing."
"I will not stay in that haunted place any longer."
"You don't have to."
