Sasha was truly speechless with astonishment, especially after hearing the scientist's final words. If his words were true, weren't the beings who created that spaceship "gods"?
"Don't be so shocked, Ms. Sasha, because the truth... doesn't stop there."
"Upon receiving the news, the world government immediately scrambled a fleet and 50,000 people. They had to bring everything back to Earth intact, no matter the cost."
"It's just that I... no, we all wish we had never reported back to Earth."
Sasha listened, a sudden premonition of misfortune welling up inside her. Her fists clenched, a habit she had whenever she was anxious.
"During the excavation and transport, the fleet awakened a creature. It woke from deep underground and nearly wiped everyone out. Its appearance was so terrifying that ten years couldn't erase the memory."
"Ma'am, was that..."
Sasha's voice trembled slightly. The woman calmly replied, "Yes, it was a doom lord. It broke out of the ground and almost completely devoured the 50,000 people. Fortunately, a part of the fleet managed to salvage the relics and fled in a hurry."
"We thought that was the end of it. But the doom war machine possessed the ability to fly through space. By the time humanity reacted, it was too late. The doom war machine hurtled towards Earth at the speed of a meteorite. And that... is how the invasion began."
Sasha sat there, dumbfounded. She didn't know what to feel now. Anger, pain, or hatred? It turned out that the doom hadn't meant to destroy humanity; it should have continued to sleep and rot on Mars. Her father wouldn't have died. She should have been a normal girl, not a short-lived warrior.
Should have... should have...
Faces flashed through Sasha's mind, people she couldn't save. They shouldn't have died!
It turned out that everything came from humans themselves.
CRUNCH!
The sound of twisting metal rang out as Sasha's hand plunged directly into the steel wall beside her. All the metal around her fist was twisted into a spiral. She looked at the woman in front of her, her eyes blazing with fury. The woman met Sasha's gaze without flinching, but her expression couldn't help but darken.
"The old man was full of remorse when he found out what happened. He worked tirelessly to atone for his sins. The armor project, the modified human project, they were all his."
The hatred in Sasha's eyes suddenly died out, and she lowered her head weakly. Was that crew wrong? No. Was the government's decision wrong? No. It was all a matter of ignorance. The day the crew set foot on Mars was like humanity opening Pandora's Box.
The elderly woman sighed. Sasha wasn't the first, nor would she be the last to know the truth. She had seen cases where people's reactions were even more violent. Sasha was considered quite rational. These warriors, each one stronger than the last, had their past and pain as both a source of strength and a deadly weakness that could lead to a mental collapse.
"Pandora's Box released calamity, but it also left hope. We are the same. All the tests over the past six months have been to prepare for that final hope."
Sasha finally regained her composure and looked up. The elderly woman stood up and walked toward the center of the storage room. It was then that Sasha noticed a large metal pillar. The woman stood in front of the pillar to perform a verification. The thick steel casing opened.
"This... is hope."
Inside the pillar was a hovering cube. Its surface was chaotic and could be hard on the eyes if you looked at it for too long.
"What... is this?"
"As I said... It is hope. It's the last thing the 'gods' left behind for humanity."
"Ms. Sasha, now, try to touch it."
Sasha nodded and reached out to touch the cube. A mysterious energy from the cube shot directly into her hand. Sasha screamed in pain and fell backward. But then she suddenly came. She was still standing in front of the cube, her hands perfectly fine, but the previous image seemed like nothing more than an illusion.
"It's not an illusion. The cube just showed you what the future would be if you touched it."
"Others have had the same experience as you. Of course, some people didn't believe it and continued to touch it, and everything that followed was just like what they had seen."
The ability to observe the future was truly unimaginable. Sasha was bewildered and couldn't help but ask the woman, "With all this, we still lost?"
"If you give an ant a light bulb, can it research how to make it?"
The woman's next words left Sasha speechless, and she had no choice but to give up. "So, I'm not the one it's looking for, then."
"Thank you for your cooperation, Ms. Sasha. The cube will be moved in a month."
Sasha left, leaving the woman alone in the room with an almost imperceptible sigh.
...
Noid was about to close his coffee shop. The shop was empty of customers now. Jack had already gone into the back room to read comic books. Noid went to the front door and saw a familiar figure sitting on the stone bench. He recognized it was Sasha, but he didn't call her inside. He just went back into the shop and brewed two cups of hot coffee.
She was just sitting there in a daze. Only when the warmth of the coffee wafted towards her face did she realize someone was nearby.
"Sorry, I was distracted."
As a seasoned warrior, being so distracted that a normal person could approach her without her noticing was not enough of an explanation. But Noid didn't press her. He just sat down beside her and handed her a cup of coffee.
They both sat there in silence. The scene seemed to rewind to a year ago. Noid was sitting on the stone bench in a trance when he met Sasha, and from then on, they became friends. Now, Sasha was sitting on the stone bench in a daze, meeting him.
"Noid, what would you do if one day you discovered that all the suffering you had to endure was caused by the people you trusted, whether intentionally or unintentionally, and it stole the happiness you were supposed to have?"
Even though he didn't know what she had been through, he could guess that she had most likely learned the real reason for the doom invasion of Earth. This had caused her to feel an intense sense of betrayal. Both Noid and Sasha's rational minds told them that they weren't wrong, the world government wasn't wrong, and the crew wasn't wrong. But that's how humans were; right or wrong was one thing, but being able to accept it was another.
He became unusually silent. Many answers came to his mind, but none of them seemed fair to Sasha. In the end, his only response was silence.
With the two cups of coffee placed next to them, Sasha buried her face against Noid's back and cried, sobbing with each breath. Perhaps crying was the best way for her to find release. Tomorrow, Sasha would return to being the brave warrior carrying the responsibility of protecting the city of Rorgh, but tonight, she seemed to have returned to being a normal girl.