"PSHH."
Mariah instinctively woke up and pointed her right hand toward the direction the noise came from.
It was just the window automatically opening.
Seeing there was no danger, Mariah sighed and lowered her arm.
"I still can't get used to this place."
Mariah got out of bed and walked toward the door. It looked different from what she was used to—more like a black screen with four options: open, close, lock, and transparent.
The first three options did exactly what they said. However, the last one was different. Although it said "transparent," it was only one-way: you could look into the hallway from inside the room, but not the other way around.
"PSHH."
Even the door made that sound when it opened.
Mariah stepped out of the room and walked downstairs.
After a few steps, she noticed something strange.
"The room is gone."
In fact, everything that had been there yesterday was gone.
Realizing she was lost, Mariah went back upstairs. Her plan was simple—wait in her room until D-45 or Agni came to find her.
After reaching the second floor, she froze.
"My room..."
Mariah's room was gone. The entire hall had disappeared, replaced by a wall with a glowing number two on it.
She was now completely lost.
She decided to try the third floor. But when she arrived, there was nothing there.
The floor was floating apart, actively repairing itself. Drones flew overhead, sparks scattered around, and there wasn't a single safe place to step.
Mariah gave up and headed back downstairs. Strangely, the hallway had reappeared. Seeing her chance, she rushed to her room, slammed the door shut, dove onto the bed, and pulled the blanket over herself.
"This place is cursed!"
She was now terrified of stepping outside again.
Meanwhile, D-45 and Agni were in the lab. Agni had returned with no problems. D-45, as usual, had spent the night there.
D-45 had something important to tell Mariah, but she never arrived. The unit had no idea about the strange adventure she had just endured.
"Where is she?"
Agni, on the other hand, wasn't surprised.
"Maybe she's still sleeping?"
"Well, I've got something else for you, boy."
"What is it?"
"There's a hermit living on top of the mountain—where the outskirts of this city would be if it wasn't upside down. The hermit sent me a message asking for you."
"How does the hermit know I'm here?"
"No clue."
"Is the hermit trustworthy?"
"No clue."
"How the hell am I supposed to trust the hermit?"
Agni wasn't exactly comfortable with someone knowing about them when even D-45 hadn't noticed.
"The hermit seems nice. He—or she—gives me solid information."
"Is the hermit a guy or a girl?"
"I have no clue. I haven't seen them. But if I had to guess, I'd say male. He's got a deep, grungy voice."
"How am I even supposed to get up there?"
The night before, Agni had been monitoring the city and noticed one big problem—there was no transport system that reached beyond its boundaries.
"You jump into the valley. The gravity decelerator will reverse the pull and launch you up."
"Simple enough."
Agni was still shaken from the last jump. This next one felt even worse.
Before he could take a step, something emerged from the floor.
"Here's the map, in case you need it."
No matter how many times Agni saw it, he could never get used to how the building worked.
After Agni left, D-45 stood up and went to find Mariah. He had something very important to tell her.
"Knock, knock."
Mariah heard tapping on her door.
She got up and opened it. Standing there was D-45.
"Were you sleeping? Why didn't you come down to the lab?"
"I TRIED. THIS STUPID BUILDING KEPT CHANGING AND I GOT LOST!"
"I knew this would happen. If only I had given you a map last night. Oh wait—I DID."
Mariah had completely forgotten. The second she reached her room the previous night, she threw the map on the floor and went straight to bed.
"Oh."
She had nothing else to say. Remembering that made her feel like an idiot, so she quickly changed the subject.
"Where's Agni?"
"He went to visit a hermit outside the city."
That caught her off guard. This was the first she'd heard about any hermit.
She started throwing questions at D-45—who the hermit was, why Agni went, and what the hermit wanted.
But every answer D-45 gave her matched exactly what Agni had been told: nothing useful.
"Forget about that. I have something important to tell you."
D-45's tone shifted. It was serious—like life-or-death serious.
"Listen. You're a Mutate. Like Agni."
Mariah blinked. Then sighed in relief. She'd half-expected him to say she had three days left to live.
"I didn't know ya could tell jokes."
"Your accent is a joke."
"WHAT DID YA SAY, YA LITTLE FUCK?"
"Actually listen. You are a Mutate."
"You think I wouldn't notice if I had powers?"
"Here's what I figured out from the lab results. A mutation can happen to anyone, but it requires exposure to a specific type of radiation—one that activates the X-gene. That gene showed up in every survivor's offspring after the war. It needs to be triggered by a certain threshold of radiation. Once triggered, the body mutates in a way that adapts best to its own physiology."
"So... someone has to be exposed to a special kind of radiation to become a Mutate?"
"Radiation from another Mutate. It's different from normal radiation—it behaves more like a virus. It usually makes you sick. If your body can't handle it, it could even kill you. But you? You're fine."
"Better than ever, actually. So what's my Mutate ability?"
"Let's go to the lab. We can find out safely through testing."
Outside the city, Agni was walking cautiously, making sure not to trip and fall into the valley below.
After walking for what felt like over thirty minutes, he reached the hermit's house.
It was a small hut, reinforced with metal plating that looked like it would fall apart if you even stared at it wrong.
At the top of the door was a small peephole.
Agni stepped forward and knocked twice.
"Who is it?"
The voice matched D-45's description perfectly—deep and grungy.
"It's the guy you asked for."
"I asked for a kid. Go away."
"I am the kid."
"You just said guy. I'm not an idiot. Now go away."
Agni paused, realizing he had walked straight into a misunderstanding.
"I meant kid, okay? It's me. Agni."
He heard the sounds of multiple locks unlatching.
"Come in."
To Agni's surprise, the hermit wasn't some old bald man with a long beard.
Instead, it was the complete opposite—a short, old woman with white hair long enough to touch the ground.